“Time To Play”

This story is by Caitlynn Dixon and was part of our 2018 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

All my senses are overloaded with so many details. I am drowning in the clacking of metal against metal and the bereaved screams of those who were deprived of even themselves. I’m being smothered in images of darkness and cool metal tables with traces of the unethical things that happened on top of them. The memory of all those who were wronged in this place crushes my heart, and the feeling is so torturous I wish I could rip my heart out.

Every second feels like a year in this abyss yet each time the scene quickly flashes and transforms into the next, that second was not nearly enough time to understand. To register. They keep flashing, the same scenes making my heart pound faster and faster.

The dark pools of blood on sickeningly bland grey cement that, with effort, could be mistaken for wilting rose petals scattered over the sidewalk. However, my mind has already undertaken too much fabrication that one more forged memory could break it as easily as a sledgehammer to a thin sheet of glass.

Suddenly, before I could have even fathomed the possibility of it occurring, his face is staring at me in the next scene and my entire body quivers in fear and resentment. His omniscient eyes forever follow me, see inside of me. The way his lips curved in the smirk I had known to be deadly, forced all of the breath out of my body until it felt as if I was about to pass out.

Abruptly everything turns black and everything grows silent. Until I hear it. The sound that forever plagues my soul. The sound of It. The saw.

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My eyes slowly drifted open, feeling as if they couldn’t withstand their own weight. Remnants of dismay and melancholy from the ever fading dream that had just escaped my mind, left me with invisible scars. For that reason, I would not allow myself to fall gently back into the thick embrace of sleep. To further this, I pushed my heavy body up to sit, my bed calling out to me, trying to pull me back. Nevertheless, I would still resist the call of sleep and my drooping eyelids.

I continued in my motion without a second’s doubt and pushed myself off of the warm seduction of the comforter, my bare feet shuddering from the coolness of the hardwood floor. The ground seemed to get increasingly frigid with each step I took.

When I finally reached my destination, my feet felt as if they had become their own arctic desert. I drew open the shades on the window and instantly the room was filled with the most intense and luminous light that anyone could have ever witnessed.

I turn away and look at the now illuminated room, which seemed starkly different from the one I awoke in. I scanned over it, seeing things I couldn’t have seen in the dark. The haze of sleep now dissolved, my heart rate increases dramatically as I find what I hadn’t seen before was not just a pile of dirty clothes on the floor or the chip in the paint on the far wall, but a trail of liquid of a dark red almost blackish hue. It became harder to breathe as if my lungs were struggling against their job and my mind began to race as flashes of memories came flying back at light speed.

His smirk telling me what he wanted. My mind telling me that I wanted to do what he said. The filthy blood that covered my hands. The weight of his narrow body as I dragged him out to the backyard. The way my heart fluttered when I found my actions made him smile.

The memory of the burning hatred I felt for him was a distant dream, that hatred now blown out like a candle and replaced with something else entirely. All I know is that I want him to be happy. I want to do what he says.

Who am I?! I look down at the trail of blood. What am I?! I can feel the difference in me but I can’t place it, moreover, I can’t stop it from happening. I know that if this keeps up, everything will change. I glance down at what I’m wearing, seeing my usual black sweater and jeans, which had recently been covered with bloody handprints. Undoubtedly from the person pleading for his life last night only for his pleas to fall on deaf ears.

The thought of what happened last night makes my throat tighten and my stomach twist. I can feel myself disappearing, and I know I need to do something, anything, to stop this. Suddenly I get the thought of the only plausible solution and everything ceases. My mind comes to a halting stop and I know it has to be done. It has to be done before I see him again.

So, without a moment to spare, I get to work. The whole time I get everything in order I can feel her coming. The one who would do anything for him. I can practically hear her footsteps as I work. Luckily enough, however, I finish quickly and get right to it, grabbing the razor-sharp and bloody knife from where I left it to sit in the pool of sticky blood which had accumulated on my desk. Just as I lifted it up to my own neck though, footsteps echoed in the hall outside my closed door coming closer.

I knew these weren’t the imaginations of my disheveled mind but in fact, the footsteps of the guy who had no doubt put me in this predicament. Whether it was due to my newfound insanity or my desperation but a cruel and unethical idea popped into my mind and I knew that there was no way I would turn it down.

I quietly moved behind the door and listened to the footsteps that got louder as he approached. I tightened my grip on the knife in my hand and pointed it towards where I imagined he would be. The footsteps stopped and the door began to slowly creak open and I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to fight if I caught even a glance at his face.

However, this thought was too late as I found he had walked through the door while I was stuck inside my mind and as if he knew, he turned and was looking directly at me. I look down at his small face that had always gotten to me more then any of the others did. No matter what I did to him he would still give me that same smirk that reminded me too much of what I had already lost.

I knew that I couldn’t fight anymore, the knife slipping right out of my hand, clanging to the floor. I look down at my hand that had previously held a knife and for a moment, I am sickened by the blood residue left there. I look back up at him and I remember the smile on his face as I dragged him out to the backyard.

Blinking away the memory I notice the blood over his ragged clothes and the stitches on his skull where I opened him up. He keeps looking straight at me as if he knows. After a few moments of my mind racing, he begins to turn and stare out the window I had opened what seems like hours ago.

I knew he was looking down at his grave in the flowerbeds. The only grave to occupy this house where hundreds have died. He was the only one who deserved a grave. All the others got to burn. He was the only good little boy. He was my good little boy.

His apparition turned back to me and continued to stare. “What are you looking at me for? You asked me to kill you remember?” And just like that, I let go of the only thing that had resembled a conscience in my life.

I turn and walk out of my bedroom door. There is work to be done in the basement, and I can’t stand around talking to my murder victims all day. As I walk down the bloodstained basement stairs The sound of metal clanking against metal gets raucous and I smile as I unlock the metal door. opening it up I look at all the little toys that I get to play with. I see the tears streaming down their cheeks and the dead look in the eyes of those who have been in my playhouse longer than most and grin. I no longer have to worry about the things I felt when he smirked at me as I played with him. It’s no fun to play with a toy you can’t break. I pick up the worn bone saw off of my cold metal table and think ‘Time to play’.