Horror 100 Volume 2

Stillborn

Running away from home, I found myself eventually walking the pockmarked concrete of our town's industrial outskirts, chain link fences, rows of factories & no trespassing signs surrounding me, my foot falls echoing eerily off the steel girder landscape in sharp whip-cracks that must've broadcast my lonely trek to anyone near-by.

I could almost feel their blood shot eyes on me, slowly wondering this alien land with my hoody head bent down, only rising for quick snatches of sight, arms crossed tight, holding myself. From my mind's eye they tracked every move, peeking out from behind windows & between skeletal scaffolding high up above, from impossible vantage points like the blackened rims of smoke stacks or passing slits of sewer grates- wherever I went these piercing pupils would go, just on the periphery, teasing me like a pack of black Cheshire cats. I whipped my head around every few minutes, trying to catch these clockwork gremlins in the act, creeping up on me & grinding sharp teeth, chittering to themselves maybe...nothing there. Not even the far away rumble of traffic could be heard.

Rain began to drizzle softly down, my disquiet turning into something close to panic; I forced myself to admit then & there how lost I was, how no amount of blind hiking on those iron planes was going to bring me back to my stomping grounds. And when the rain went from light trickle to full fledged downpour I had to make an even larger concession, biting down anxiety & sprinting to the nearest building, frantically searching for shelter in the midst of a surprise shower. Up above, the sky had turned from formless grey to dark pregnant purple, the kind of cloud that promised worse to come.

A delivery garage door yawned open like the mouth of a dungeon, welcoming me in away from the plastering downpour. Reluctantly, inching slowly into the darkened loading area, frightened yet thrilled, I was pulled into that building by something I couldn't put my finger on. Raindrops dive bombed the dusty panes of windows I passed on my stealth tour, moving deliberately down the length of a shadowed hallway, through strangely unlocked doorways, peeking into deserted offices, abandoned workshops, seeing all the twisting angular machinery that took on a sinister bent, half illuminated by the light of my upraised bic & half hidden. They almost looked like the mandibles & pincers & feelers of some race of gigantic insects.

Under the steady glow of the cigarette lighter, it all took on the ambience of a graveyard; I'd entered a twilight zone where everything ordinary, everything on the level now threw up a shadow side, disquieting & uncertain from this new point of view, a strange new world instead of the reassuring land of yours truly.

On & on I went, exploring every crack & crevice, every monochrome corner & grease caked borough, listening to the pitter patter of rain fall, distant & faint against the factory roof which might as well have been the distant plains of Pluto for all that: our intrepid explorer braving the subterranean depths of some far flung satellite, armed only with a backpack full of library books, the clothes on her back & the lighter in her hand.

The deeper I went the more unfamiliar it got, huge swathes of graffiti now inking passing walls, multi colored jumbles of visual noise forming some lunatic canvas that stretched on & on, whispers of wind swaying dangling chains & wicked looking hooks above my head, rusted a soiled brown that pissed down clouds of flakes, lazily cascading mid-air like ash. Puddles ran between the cracked concrete under my toes & a dank moistness hung all round, fetid & foul.

It was the usual come-ons on the passing wall side meanwhile, dirty limericks & doodles, insults & shop talk. But as I sauntered along, eyes glazing over specifics & just going with the hand scrawled flow, those messages slowly changed, irreverent voices gone solemn, prophetic snatches of coherence & dry land in the midst of schizo speak, Martian mush mouth cadence a'plenty. New doodles too, no longer x-rated rigmarole but strange symbols & shapes that made my head hurt just looking at them. This continued on for some time, interspersed with more unpronounceable words til I finally came upon the main mural itself.