Scary Stories

I.C.U.

I looked too long. My eyes frozen onto hers, still open, but just beginning to become milky. I guess I should start at the most logical place; the beginning. I suppose it's the least I can do. I mean, people are going to go through all of my shit to find out why I did it. It of course being, me putting the barrel of a thirty- eight snub nose revolver (God bless America and its easy access to firearms) into my eye and pulling the trigger. I can only hope that the extensive damage obliterates me or at least obliterates the images of what I had seen. However, I get ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning and not the end, my end. 

It all started with a length of rope, a girl from my village, and a mango tree. If that sounds sinister, it was. She hung herself from a tree outside of my room a month ago. I should explain that I was a Peace corps volunteer in a small village in Nicaragua. I signed up to open my eyes up to the world. (oh God!) The village was small and in truth I was a mediocre volunteer that preferred listening to music and reading to interacting with locals. However this is not about my service (if you are reading this to understand why I was a poor volunteer all I can say is fuck you. We have slightly bigger things to focus on at the moment.) This is to help you piece together why I am writing this with a loaded .38 revolver sitting by the computer.

She had done it during the night and her death had not been instantaneous. She had writhed and swung in the mango tree outside my house for hours before finally dying. I, of course, heard nothing. I came out in the morning to find her hanging a few feet away from my door. Her eyes were wide open and just beginning to cloud and a soft breeze shifted her corpse like she was still struggling with her decision to hang herself. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have never done what I did. I stared at her in shock. She was wearing a cheap knock-off sweater that read "SpongeBill Rectangle Pants." Her black hair was cascading around her face like a halo. My eyes were locked onto hers. What had they seen in those last moments before the light was stolen from them? I couldn't look away from those opaque eyes seeing everything and nothing. That was how it all started. 

The police came and cut the rope that had hung her from the tree. She collapsed to the ground like a sack of bones probably breaking a few of them in the process. The gossip around my village was that it was unrequited loved. She had eyes (sweet Jesus!) only for me and couldn't bear to live without me. The story was spread through-out my community before she was even in the ground. I don't necessarily believe that as we had literally only shared one conversation in which we talked about beans. I have another explanation for all this, but I rather keep it to myself. She was buried within two days and I just wanted to move on.

It started with chills whenever I passed by the mango tree that she had done herself in by. I would sometimes catch glimpses of something in the branches like a small child or animal. (Volunteers will concur that children can climb trees like monkeys and strip fruits within hours as well as roosting  chickens.) When I turned my head to get a better view, I would find nothing there. I brushed it all off as heebie-jeebies. I was dealing with PTSD after all. I thought I would just wake up one day and sit under the tree and read a book like the old days and not even think of the girl clawing at her cyanotic neck with black and red nails. . . 

It all started to unravel one day when I sat down to eat a bowl of hot soup, which coincidentally was only given on the hottest day of the year. I spooned mouthfuls while giving the usual platitudes. "Que rica!" "Que saborosa!" ("Que mierda!") Until I fished the black hair out of my soup. This was odd as the only cook that day was my abuela whose hair was grey. This was not from the cook and due to the caustic nature of my host grandmother, neither was this a visitor. I ignored it and went in with my day as best I could, but the thought was already haunting me.

That night was the first time I saw it, but not the last time. I was lying in bed and looking at the passing night sky through the wooden boards that composed my house. The wind was rustling through the leaves and I caught a glimpse of something in the aforementioned mango tree. It was larger than before and my skin prickled. I brushed it off once again as nerves until I saw something through the cracks. They were milky white and they were looking at me.