At the Gates of Madness

by Shaun Meeks

  Nobody except for Robin, who found it hard not to look over at her, feeling as though her eyes were being drawn towards her again and again, seemed to be aware of her. As she walked and watched the child, the living porcelain doll opened her mouth and began to speak. Even though Robin was at least fifty feet away from the pond, she was still able to hear the child’s words, as clear as if she was speaking them directly into Robin’s ear.

  “We curse you all. Each and every one of you that sin, the lazy and the slothful alike are cursed. We are your punishment, we are God’s will. We shall be your cancer and rid the world of your stinking flesh!”

  Robin heard those words leave the mouth of the child, but could not believe they belonged to her, could not believe that deep and gelatinous voice that sounded wet and full of rot could belong to something so small and beautiful. Her voice was like something dead, like her ears were hearing what her eyes had seen during a horrible car accident when she had seen a decapitated body lying on the road. If there was a sound that could equal that visual, it would be what she heard coming from that little girl’s mouth.

  Death.

  Rot.

  Robin cringed at it, and once the girl stopped speaking, before Robin could even have a chance to think over what the meaning of those words were, it happened. The water around the girl, the still water that was full of change and chlorine began to change color, going from the clear it had been to a deep charcoal blackness. All around the girl, starting from where the now blackened water was touching her shins, it began to bubble and almost boil as she continued to smile and stare at Robin. The water bubbled more intensely and then began to rise up looking more like tentacles than actual water, as though it had never been a liquid thing at all. Robin stared on in a near state of shock, but didn’t stop walking as she did, and luckily for her, that was what saved her from the horror that was to come.

  Just as she was about to stop, about to turn back around and get Logan’s attention, the water rose into multiple tentacles of blackness and shot out into the crowds around the pond. Robin watched as a stream of it shot past her face, almost in slow motion still, and she saw that it was not really water at all. It certainly seemed as though it had been water at first, and moved like water, but as it passed her face, Robin saw that it was hundreds if not thousands of small black creatures or bugs, woven together and simply appeared to be water. There was the tiniest clicking sound coming from the stream of darkness that went harmlessly by her, that made her think if their little legs chirping off each other to make a cricket song.

  Whatever it was, this blackness was alive and flying through the air towards a group of people standing together by a cell phone store, oblivious as to what was coming towards them. They just stood there, talking away, laughing occasionally to a random joke that was being said, and seeing nothing until the blackness connected with the first person. And from there, everything happened so quickly.

  Blood flew through the air in a thick red shower as the blackness from the pond struck one of the group, a young man in his teens with his hair hanging in his eyes. His skull exploded in a mist of blood and bone, wet chunks of what had once been his brain smacked against his girlfriend’s cheek and slid downward, leaving a snail-trail of blood. The young man collapsed at the same time as the meaty flesh hit her face, not a sound out of his mouth as his legs buckled from under him and he dropped, but his girlfriend made it up for him. She began to shriek as loud as she could, echoing through the mall and people began to turn and look her way, seeing this screaming teenage girl with what looked like red paint on her face. If they had looked long enough, their brains might have had time to see that it was blood and not paint, but the blackness didn’t give anyone time to react to it. Some people seemed to be aware of what was going on, as fast as it was happening, the horror registering in their eyes as they saw strangers and people they knew falling in a bloody wake of the massacre. Some stopped to help the fallen, some ran away to save themselves, and the latter were the lucky ones.

  A chorus of screams echoed through the mall to match that of the girls and blood seemed to be spraying in every direction. Robin turned her head to see the massacre, nearly stopping in her tracks as she did, seeing blood and brains and intestines hit the mall floor. Luckily for her she was a quick thinker on her feet, and was able to see what was going on as she also processed what the little girl had said with her rotting voice. The only people that seemed to be getting hit were those that were standing still, people not moving.

  The lazy.

  The slothful.

  That was what the little girl had said before the blackness had risen from the water and began striking out and killing people all around her. It was going around the mall killing people it deemed to be lazy, people just standing or sitting around, people not moving at all. It was killing people that were...

  LOGAN!

  Robin turned around quickly, away from the little girl back towards where her husband was standing and saw that he was still alive. Logan was still standing by the sporting goods store, his head looking around at the horror that was around him, and Robin began running towards him. She called out to him, told him to move, to walk, to run, to just move, but her words were lost amongst the screams of the crowd. He began to ask what; to raise his hand to his ear as if cupping it would make him hear any better. As he did that, with Robin just a few steps from her husband the blackness found him, striking him just below his left eye and making his head jerk backwards. A chunk of bloody skin with hair still attached to it slapped against the window of the sporting goods store with an almost arterial like spray of blood. When his head came forward again, Robin saw that most of the side of her husband’s face was now missing; thick streams of blood were drooling out of the wound and down the front of his shirt.

  I bought him that shirt, got it for him when we were going to Disney World for our first real vacation as a couple. I remember seeing it in the store and thinking of how it would make his gorgeous blue eyes just shine away. God his eyes are beautiful.

  She looked at his remaining beautiful eye as it started to roll back in his head, his lips moving as if though he trying to say something to her, maybe tell her one last time that he loved her, and that they should have a baby, that he was sorry, but nothing came out. They just moved like a dying fish struggling to figure out why it can’t breathe out of water, and he fell face down on the fake marble floor of the mall. Robin could her bone shattering as she was less than two feet away from him, and then felt his warm blood hit her jeans. She cried out, screamed, but did not stop; she knew that she couldn’t stop, not yet anyway. She looked at his motionless body as it lay on the ground, blood pooling under his still twitching body and tried not to think about what she was seeing. She had to get away, had to run. Later, she would have time to think about her husband, Logan, dead on the ground. Her husband who would never kiss her again, make love to her again, who would never let his hot breath touch her neck and ear as he leaned in and whispered “I love you” to her. Not ever. She felt tears burning at her eyes as she passed him, resisting the urge to hold him one last time. The continuing screams urged her forward though, telling her over and over again to just run.

  So she did, she ran and ran, leaving Logan behind and the smiling little girl in the pool.

  NOW

  Robin drives instead of running, moving as fast as the car will allow her go. This is the second car she has taken, finding both this and the first one in park, but the engine already running, which was good in both cases because she has never hot-wired a car and doubts that she would have had the time to do it even if she did. It had been quick, the way she jumped into each of the cars and sped forward, trying to get away from the mall and the impending darkness that is chasing her. She has seen its path of destruction as she drives along the city streets and now the highway. Dead people lying on sidewalks, in the road, behind the wheels of their cars, their mouths hanging open in what clearly looked like terror, blood spraye
d inside, flies swarming the fresh stench of death ready to feed and lay eggs. Blood has painted the city red and still she drives on, not wanting to become just another victim of the darkness. She wants to survive, needs to, but she doesn’t know how she will, wonders if she has the strength to even go on much longer. She has been driving for well over fifty miles now and has yet to see another car to take and the one she is in won’t last much longer. Just as her fuel is running low in the way of the quickly dwindling food, so is the cars, the needle on the fuel gage was dancing on “E”. She watches as it moves closer to empty, like a doomsday clock ticking away towards the quickly approaching demise.

  Robin looks at her ring again and feels tears fighting to pour out of her, thinking about Logan, she looks down at the blood stain on her pants. She looks away from the road and lets her fingers trace the outline of the now brown stain and she feels something inside her letting go, saying enough is enough. As Logan’s face jumps into her mind, all his sweet words filling her up, she explodes into tears. She realizes she will never again kiss, hold, touch, hug or look at him again, so what’s the point of running anymore? He had been the best part of her life and now he was gone and what was she going to do? Keep running until she finally died, until the blackness finally caught up with her and did what was inevitable?

  No.

  She can’t allow that to happen, she won’t let it win, whatever “it” was. She pushes the gas pedal down as hard as she can, trying to gain as much speed as she the vehicle will allow before the car dies. Ahead of her, she sees something glint in the waving heat, just off to the side of the road, something that might help her beat the darkness that hunts her. She sees it is less than a hundred yards from her, and as she gets closer to it, the hatchbacks engine whining as it goes, she sees it is another car, one that was sitting on the side of the road, smoke pouring from the wreckage. Whatever had happened to the car and its owner, Robin doesn’t care, she is set and determined now.

  Why should I let it kill me? Why should I let it win?

  She looks down at the speedometer and sees that it is now passing one hundred miles per hour and she smiles to herself, something she had not done since she was at the mall with Logan. She smiles knowing that she will not win if she faces the darkness head on, that if she stops the car and tries to run, the darkness that moved swiftly and violently through the mall would finally catch her and make short work of her. Yet she smiles with hope that very soon, she will see Logan again, very soon. She reaches down as the smoldering wreckage approaches and unclips her seatbelt.

  Robin wipes away the last of her tears and takes in a deep breath.

  "I love you, Logan.” She whispers and never truly feels the impact as the Honda she is driving slams into the wreck that had once been a BMW. The Honda’s hood buckles like an accordion as Robin is sent flying through the windshield, her neck snapping on impact. She hits the asphalt face first, sliding along the ground leaving a trail of herself behind, but is already dead and does feel the skin being peeled away by the unforgiving road. Darkness has already fallen over her and in the end, the blackness wins anyway.

  Madcap

  He sat in the dark, staring into its vast space as dust breed all around him, covering the floor and all other surfaces of the attic with its allergenic children. Madcap didn’t have any allergic reactions to it because he didn’t have to breathe. With his plastic head and his body made of multicolored fabric that was stuffed with lentils, there was little in the air that could bother him. What was below in the house that he resided in was the real problem.

  Madcap cocked his head, the small bell on the top of his polka dot hat jingled softly as he moved, listening to the sounds below him. Four people lived in the house aside from him and they were all making different noises. The two young boys, whom he had originally been bought for, were running around playing some game that sounded fun, though slightly violent. He could also hear the man and woman, the mother and father busying themselves in the kitchen, making a meal of some sort. Madcap had never had the pleasure of eating food, with his mouth forever closed there was little point in thinking of that, but it wasn’t the act of eating he longed for. He just wanted to be there, amongst them, part of the family. He wanted so bad to sit at the dinner table with the family, listening to their banter, explaining how their school or work day had gone, discussing kids in the neighborhood that should be avoided or why smoking, drugs and premarital sex were such bad ideas. Madcap dreamed of days where he would be sitting on the couch as the family ate popcorn, drank soda and watched movies, one of the kids holding on to him tighter as a scary scene came on. It was all he ever wanted, what he was made for. He was just a small plastic and fabric clown that wanted a place he could truly call home, instead of being trapped in his dark, dusty prison, being forced to hear the happiness and joy of everyday life being filtered through the floorboards.

  Four other families had come before the one he was currently living with. None of them had ended well; though he had done everything he could to make life there a happy place. Just like the current house, those families had also discarded him to the confines of the forgotten realm of the attic where he had been put with old furniture, outdated books and yesterday’s fashions. He was always tossed on the floor or on top of a box, left in solitude where he was tortured daily with the sounds of love, joy and family life; something he yearned to be a part of. He would be left alone for weeks and months, never seeing any of the family members, only hearing them below and with each passing day he would feel his rage growing like a cancer. He didn’t want to be so anger, didn’t want to feel the hatred growing like a fetus until he finally could carry it no longer. He wanted to love the families he was with and wanted in turn to have the feelings reciprocated, but that was never the case. He had nothing but dust, darkness and the world of the banished to keep him company and incite his malice.

  He knew those feelings that had been born with the first family which had brought him home were not proper, and he wanted to make it better. He just didn’t have the tools, though with the third family he almost had hope.

  The third family also put him in the attic, though that one had a small stained glass window which allowed daylight in for a few hours each day. As the sun filtered into the room, Madcap would roam around the room and looking for things to keep his mind busy and off his feelings of how alone and isolated he felt, to staid his anger. Some days he would just sit in the room and draw pictures on the dusty floor of the family he wish he could be part of; a mom, a dad, and a child or two. Then he would lie down next to the drawing and place his hand on that of one of the children’s hands and imagine them in a distant land or down at some local park or just walking along a path by the creek. One big, happy family.

  Some days he would lay with his dust family, staring up at the rafter with his unblinking eyes and see particles dancing in the sunlight, looking like dandelion wishes floating before him, waiting to be grabbed and grant his greatest desire. He found himself reaching out to the dust floating before him, teasing him with the promise of granting dreams and when he came back empty handed, his anger grew. He sat up and kicked at the false family that lay on the ground, cursing them in his head since he was unable to form any words and thought of the previous two families he had lived with. They had also left him to grow old and become weathered with filth, but in the end of it all, they had paid for it. As he looked down at the destroyed family he had drawn, he remember the mother from the first family he had lived with, the way her blue eyes were like pools of a clear lake, reflecting his non-typical clown face just as he took the shard of broken mirror and turned her eyes into a drooling mess of what looked like partially cooked egg whites. He didn’t want to think of the sounds she had made as he reached into the emptying socket, pushing his hand deep inside; until he reached her brain and began to pull bits of her that had refused to love him and accept him.

  After he kicked away the dust family and fighting the memories of the familie
s he had destroyed with his hands, Madcap sat next to an overturned box of books. He moved them around and found most were of the self-help variety. He looked at the covers and saw words he knew; rage, anger, family, and opened the book with new hope that he would finally be able to get a grip on the beast he called Anger, and if he could do that, he thought one day he would be able to make someone love him.

  He turned the pages with newborn hope, feeling his stuffing shaking inside as he looked at each word of each sentence on each page, doing his best to absorb what was there, hoping it was a cure to his anger. He saw words that he knew; the, a, anger, family, alone, lonely, rage, it. Trying to string any of the words together into something that made any sense was proving to be impossibility. The hope the book had held quickly began to bleed away and the agitation of it all bled back into him, filling the emptiness that the fading hope left with a frenzy of madness and hopelessness. Whoever had made him, given him the strange life and motion, the ability to want and need, had not given him the know how to read, to speak, to change his expression or to be liked or loved. He slammed the book shut, screams echoing inside his small, man-made head and felt that he could take it no more. He started thrashing around the room, overturning boxes, dress forms and anything else he could get his hands on, knowing that the noise would bring someone up the stairs to investigate. He had found an old Swiss Army knife weeks ago, and picked it up as he heard someone, more than likely the father, heading up to where he was probably thinking there were rats in the attic.

  When the father came up, and turned on the lights, Madcap went to work, expressing his feelings to the man as best he could. He showed him, then the rest of the family what it meant to lose, what it meant to be alone and to feel as though you were an ugly object that nobody would ever want or love. He let the knife introduce itself to their faces, arms and finally their secret inside selves, crying silently with each cut, screaming out why with each slice.