Nighmare Asylum-Book One of the Mad Mad World Series

Vengeance Is Mine-Part 1

"You must be careful when you look too long into darkness, for some day you might find the darkness looking back at you."

:::

Is it possible to have one's hair hurt? I'd had headaches that made me think there were little men inside my skull trying to carve their way out with dull drill bits, but never one that made every single strand of my hair hurt. And when I came to think of it, my skin hurt. Not quite as bad as a sunburn but it was in the neighborhood. I started to open my eyes...

They wouldn't.

My eyelids felt like they were sealed shut with Super Glue. Panic gelled in my gut as I struggled to force them open, but they didn't budge an inch. I thought I must have had a thick coat of sleep-caused eyeball goop combined with eye makeup stuck to my lashes and all I had to do was carefully scrub the goo off my eyelashes while not pulling any of them out.

But I could't move.

Not one muscle. The panic came on full blast then, cold sweat breaking out all and a metallic taste flooded my mouth. My heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of my chest. It was like overdosing on bad coke, almost like a bad acid trip. But I was never been paralyzed like that, never able to at least twitch my fingers when I got fucked up in the past.

Oh my God, was I in a wreck? What did I do? Did I break my back, sever my spinal cord? Did I fall off stage or walk into one of our pyro stunts and I can't feel anything because I've been burnt to a crisp? Damn, Kruspe, get hold of yourself. Maybe you're having a nightmare, one of those where you want to wake up but can't. What do they call it? Sleep paralysis? That might be it. Maybe you tied on one too many last night and you're still too drunk to move. Stop panicking, that's making everything worse. Take a deep breath and start over.

So I started over. I took a deep breath (thankfully something I could do just fine), and thought very hard about moving one of my fingers. After moments of straining and cursing to myself, I got the pinky finger on my right hand to move ever so slightly before the paralysis set back in. Working on getting my eyes to open was easier after that but by then I was so tired I wanted to fall back into the well of unconsciousness I've crawled out of.

What the fuck have I done to myself? I haven't done dope in years, so why am I such a fucking mess? This better not be some stupid practical joke of Paul's because if it is, I'm gonna stomp his ass right into the rug! But wait a second, I haven't seen him or anyone else in the band since...I can't remember. Why can't I remember?

"Easy there," a soft, feminine voice drifted through the fog of my growing fear. "The worst of the side effects will wear off in a bit but if you panic they'll get worse. Take my word on it." Warm hands pushed my hair off my face and I welcomed another human's touch even if it made my head ache more fiercely than ever. The touch seemed to jerk my nerves completely online and before long I could feel that I was lying on something rough-textured but soft, a scratchy cover thrown over me. It took me even longer to convince my eyes to open halfway and I had to close them quickly against the dim lights dangling from above me as they were too bright. The same strong, gentle hands moved from my head and massaged the feeling back into my limbs, soothing away my panic.

At long last I had the energy to open my eyes fully and push myself up until I was sort of half sitting up, propped up on one arm. I peered into the murky darkness around me, trying to figure out where I was. The first thing I figured out is I was in a windowless room about the size of a recording studio, made out of cinder blocks with a heavy steel door. The door looked like one you'd find in a bank or in an airplane, and next to the handle was a keypad with two lights on it, both glowing red. I could feel cool air blowing around me and I noticed several small slits near the ceiling, too small for a person to fit through. The floor was concrete and bare save for whatever I was sitting on with a drain set into the floor nearby. There was a pile of stained mattresses shoved up against one of the walls, a locked, steel cabinet set into another wall, and I could sort-of see through a gap in the wall across from me that there might be another small room, probably a bathroom, but the darkness was too deep for me to figure out more.