Trembling With Fear 05/10/20

​The Hallway by Nathaniel Friedman

It wasn’t the longest hallway I had ever seen, but it was maybe pretty damn close. And all lit up by bare bulbs, flickering freakily and sending prickles right up and down my back where the lady left scratches last night. Not that I’m not used to that stuff in my line of work, but jeezus, you’d think these guys took an architecture course in creepy the way they laid this thing out.

And all this was to say I was trying my damn best not to think about what was at the end of that hallway. Now that was something I hadn’t seen before, and something I damn well hoped I wouldn’t see again. The slick, rusty looking floor, the limbless bodies stacked up like so many old mattresses…shit, it was almost enough to make a guy lose his appetite.

But I was just here to clean up. And so I hefted my gas can, flicked my lighter, and headed down that long, long hallway. Usually in situations like this I try to say a little prayer, save myself a couple millennia in the heavenly washing machine, but today, mum was the word. I’d taken off my shoes, for chrissake!

And there was the smell again. A good strong glass of whiskey can make me forget a lot of things, but that damn smell comes back at the strangest times, tickles in the back of my throat and grabs me by the collar and it’s like I’m right back here in this hallway. Walking real soft, and nobody knows I’m here, but I can feel someone watching. 

And because it’s a memory, of course I know what happens next. The footsteps. And I stop and I think to myself, maybe just a little cool sweat trickling down my forehead, “Shit, he said nobody would be here.” In this business you listen to the money no matter whose hand it comes out of, so maybe sometimes the hand belongs to a damn liar. But then I stop and think a little more and I realize which end of the hallway the footsteps are coming from.

This is when it gets bad, real bad. The wife and I don’t sleep in the same bed no more, because she says I can keep my damn sharp elbows to myself and the rest also. The lady doesn’t mind, but then she never stays long. You ever woken up vomiting? You ever woken up bleeding and you know nothing touched you?

The door at the end of the long, long hall opens, and I see I was wrong. It wasn’t footsteps I was hearing, because they don’t have feet. They don’t have legs, or arms, or heads, just a bleeding gaping maw. But they’re still moving, crawling, sliding around in their own blood and gore. I can’t feel any part of my body except my hands, the one on the gas can and the one on the lighter. But I can’t move, I can’t breathe.

The way they move is like a worm. The back arcs up and the chest pushes forward and they keep sliding closer and closer across the floor. But the way they groan is like nothing else. Their cries are like babies, but their laughs are old as sin.

And this is where the guys at the bar start rolling their eyes, cuz how can they talk if they ain’t got heads? Well at the moment I’m not real interested in the technicalities. The facts of the situation are that I have a very long hallway with a door on each end, and I have a can of gas in one hand and a lighter in another, and I have the children of the damned coming toward me, and I have lost control of my arms and legs.

When they reach me, when they touch me, I feel a strange warmth. They’re still warm, bleeding, gurgling. I’m ice-cold, may have pissed myself. Still can’t move. They’re slithering around my legs, sliding against me and leaving their slick and their smell. I wait for them to pull me down, the stench so strong I can taste the flesh and the suffocation, and the bulbs could just be the pearly lights of Heaven, should I be so lucky.

But they keep going. They keep squirming down that damn long hallway, and that’s when I realize I left the door unlocked. The lighter. The gas can. But I feel a breeze on the back of my neck, the heat of the sun, and it’s too late. When I can finally move enough to turn my head, it’s almost dark and the door is swinging back and forth in the breeze.

I walk to that door and that sky and that fresh air like I’m walking to the electric chair. My socks are soaking in blood and piss and I’m still holding the lighter and the gas can. I reach the door and I look to the left. I look to the right. They’re gone.

And that’s why I’m telling you this now. And yes, I can see you looking at me like you think I’m too damn stupid to know I’m a loon. Everybody’s a loon in my business. I’m just telling you that they’re out there. And I think I know what they want.

Because you’ve seen them, haven’t you. Seen ‘em stumping down the street on mismatched legs, their heads a different color than their necks. You’re too polite to stare, but they’re looking at you, kid. Ogling those long, lean legs of yours. And the ones that have faces…they’re licking their lips.