Merchandise - Part 5

V

HE WAS in a hallway, lined with metal doors. Old rusty ones that were speckled with heavy rivets, the padlocks on them, thick and covered with some kind of fungus, the smell of it was damp and spicy.

The stones underneath his feet were solid, but they didn’t feel like stones should—something about them was just wrong. It was almost like they were moving underneath him. Not like they were loose and moving as he stepped on them, his weight causing them to shift, but moving of their own will—because they were alive.

The doors were breathing, he didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. They were breathing slowly: in…out…in…out. The flaring locks and bars, shifted as they breathed, though at the same time they were still. Dead still.

He was heading forward, he wasn’t sure; he just knew that he had to get into the room at the head of the hallway, the one with the large, iron door.

He glanced around him, feeling like he didn’t belong there. The angles of the hallway felt off, as if they were from another realm completely. Something about it was wrong, very wrong—the kind of wrong that turned his knees to pudding and caused his spine to grow tiny little pins up and down it.
“Help me!” A voice behind the door said.

He knew the voice; he knew he had to help. He had to get there. He ran forward and reached for the door, grasping the slippery, breathing handle, and pulling it open.

Inside there was a large pile of stuff that filled the room. He recognized the plastic containers with their neat labels, but he tried to ignore them.

He saw Beverly, tied with restraints that were impossibly made of paper, twisted around each other and roped tight.

“Help me,” she said. Her foggy eyes were still that cobalt that seemed to go on and on forever. He moved forward, trying to dig his way through the stuff, the stuff that was knee-deep. The wrong angles screamed at him from every side, as if they were bent just moments ago, the entire building folded into shape, but it was slowly coming undone—breathing doors and all.

He tried to wade through it, but it was feeling thicker and thicker, impossibly holding him back slowly.
“Help me!” She cried again, tears streaming down her face, her copper mane streaming madly in ever direction.

“I’m trying!” He said; it felt like he was trying to speak with a mouth full of tiny rocks. Sandy pebbles filled his throat, scraping away the flesh on all sides.

The angles creaked, as if they were coming unfolded.

He managed another foot forward, and an arm immediately met his leg, the bluish-gray fingers wrapped around his leg, latching onto the thin pants he wore.

Jim shouted and tried to shake the thing off, but it was no good, he tried to manage another foot forward when the other arm to the thing beneath reached out and joined its companion grasping his leg.

He tried to pull his leg, but the creature had a heavy grip on him, refusing to let go. Jim gritted his teeth and pulled up as hard as he could muster, calling all strength in him to that one moment.

The corners groaned, protesting their shape.

He pulled and the thing that he had emerged, the hideous face twisted and sneering—Jim shuddered when he saw it.

The man with the half-burned face was holding on as tight as he could. His eyes were cold and dead—but at the same time they were hungry. A mouth full of grinning razors shone at him in the most twisted parody of a smile that Jim had ever seen.

Jim tried to move forward again, trying to get to Beverly, trying to get her out of the building before it was gone, and before the monster of a man got to her, the one that had such a grip on his leg.

He pulled again and felt a hand land on his shoulder, and a cruel chuckle broke the air. He felt the hand squeeze, and just as he turned his head, a hammer was raised in the air, poised to strike.

Then he woke up.

The room was dark, and the electric tingling of a nightmare slowly fading away—the angles collapsing on themselves—danced on his scalp and tickled the back of his neck. He looked at the clock.

4:33

After a few deep breaths he knew that the dream had more significance, deep down he knew that something was different.

Something was wrong.