Days of Horror

Day 8: No More Room

October 21, 1965. New Hope, Pennsylvania

I don't know why I'm back. Why any of us are back.

In fact, I know very little about this whole situation. Not to mention my old life.

All I remember is falling asleep beneath a bright, warm light, surrounded by people staring down at me as my eyes closed and I fell into darkness.

The darkness was soothing. Calming. A relief from the noise of the outside world.

And for a long time, I stayed there, sleeping contently in the darkness.

Not wanting to leave.

But the choice wasn't my own to make.

One day, something in the darkness changed. Its hard to explain what happened, really. The dark went from being soothing to harsh. It stung my eyes, made it hard for me to keep my eyes shut.

For a while, I resist the black, keeping my eyes closed tightly against the harsh black.

Then something else comes with the harshness: a whine.

It starts small at first, like a fly circling dead meat. Then it grows, becoming a maelstrom in my ears. It's so loud I can barley think. I scream against it, but even that doesn't penetrate the whine.

The harsh black and whine beat against my mind like a storm battering a building.

It becomes so much that I realize there's only one way to make it stop.

And so I leave the blessed darkness behind.

And open my eyes to a much lighter darkness.

It takes me a moment to realize the darkness is dirt pressing on my face, filling my mouth and nostrils.

If I needed air to breathe, I have suffocated then and there.

But my time in the darkness... it changed me.

Pushing my way out of the dirt, I emerge in a grassy yard, dirt spilling off my body.

I stand there for a few moments, unsure what to do. I know I should try to figure out where I am, figure out why I was forced out of the darkness.

And yet, it's like I'm back in the harsh black with the whine in my ears. I can barley think. Can barley form any rational thoughts.

Any thoughts save for one: I need food.

The hunger burns a hole in my belly it's so intense. Droll drips out of my grey lips, followed by a low, almost instinctual moan, almost as if the hunger is speaking to me.

Commanding me to find it food.

The hunger drives me, moves me across the yard. Stumbling across the grass, I start to see others like me.

Men, women, even children shamble across the yard like me, moaning and drooling.

We move as one, oozing across the landscape, more joining our ranks with every passing second.

I try to speak with them and maybe they try to speak with me.

None of us can form anything past the moan that forces it's way out our lips and rumbles across the land like thunder.

We never stop walking. Some of us fall to the ground, legs to weak to keep standing. Those that do are trampled and stepped on by the ones behind them.

And yet they still move. I see a woman wearing a flower dress covered in dirt, her legs twisted and mangled and useless. And still she pulls herself across the dirt, moaning for nourishment. For release.