I wake up surrounded by darkness. Where am I? How did I get here? How do I get out? These questions swirl around my head, begging for answers. I don't have any. I have absolutely no memory leading up to this point. I sit up and look for a way out. It's too dark. I see no signs of an exit. I stand up and start walking. The floor is dangerously uneven. What is it made of? I reach down to touch it. A hand grabs my wrist and pulls me down. Instead of hitting the floor, I keep falling, as if the floor never existed.
I'm floating through pitch black space. Suddenly hands from every direction are grabbing at me. Clutching, grasping, clawing. They tear me apart. They rip my arm from my body. Searing pain shoots through my shoulder. They take my foot, my fingers, a handful of my hair. The pain is utterly intolerable. I scream and thrash. The hands only get more aggressive. They are relentless. When will this torture end?
All of a sudden, the hands are gone, the pain is gone, my limbs have reappeared. I start plummeting downwards. It's still too dark to know how much longer I have until I hit the floor, if there even is a floor. Slowly light returns. I can see the floor. I'm plunging towards it. I'm about to be splattered all over it. There's nothing I can do to stop the inevitable. I'm going to die. My head collides with the floor, cracking my skull in two pieces.
I sit straight up in my bed. My heart is racing. My head is pounding. I'm covered in sweat. A dream. It was all a dream. It felt so real. I take a few reassuring breaths. When my heartbeat returns to a normal pace, I look into the mirror on my bedroom wall. I stare, horrified, at my reflection. The glass shows my skull; a huge, bloody crack dividing it in two.
YOU ARE READING
Cracked
Mystery / ThrillerHorror/thriller short story You wake up surrounded by darkness, unable to tell where you are. That's when things go from bad to worse.