The Void (Dream)

[TiaLynn]

Her sweet voice dribbled out of her mouth like honey, making the room that much more sweet. The son turned his small head in response to her voice and spoke softly, “Yes, mother.” It was a routine phrase to pretty much anything momma said. Momma would coo her commands to soften the blow like a baby chick telling you to go fuck yourself; you just cannot seem to take that message to its full insulting potential. “Charlie. I said to do the dishes right now, you lazy piece of shit,” she purred from the other room. “Yes, mother,” he said before rising and robotically gliding to his destination.

With many years of this, Charlie became used to it, and always found the sweet voice comforting at the end of the day. Momma knew what was best for Charlie. Charlie would never doubt his sweet momma. At least, that is what he thought then. Sitting down on the couch, he sighed softly and thought about how naive he was as a child. Always believing that momma was his savior. You could still feel her presence and energy in the air… Disgraceful. But what could make a son turn on his own mother you ask? Well, you may need to sit down for this one.

It was the perfect summer day. The kind that is a bit too hot, but the perfect cool breeze slaps your face to warn you not to give up and go inside with a fan. The kind that makes you want to buy every single glass of lemonade stand from the neighborhood kids and spend some of the greatest quarters you can. The kind you can tan in, swim in, and play in more happily than any other day of the year. The kind you remember for years.

Charlie loved to watch the other children play in the sprinklers outside. There was a boy in the neighborhood who looked a lot like him; Charlie pretended he was him. The mother called out to the children outside, “Dinner, guys! Make sure to eat it all, or no dessert!” she laughed. The kids stopped their play and looked at one another before crying out happily and charging in the house. Charlie sighed, and watched the door slam as he wiped his dish clean and put it in the strainer with the others. “Best summer day yet” he said in a bittersweet tone. Maybe momma would let him outside for a little while if he finished the dishes early.

After a few moments of speedy dishwashing and drying, Charlie ran off to find momma. “Mother, I finished the dishes!” he called out, still searching every room for her. “And what about vacuuming, boy?” she cooed. “Yes, mother I did that too,” he said with a prideful grin, “Can I go outside, mother?”

Silence.

“Mother… May I go outside please? I did everything you asked.”

“You want to go outside?” she purred. Footsteps slowly crept down the stairs as he held onto the railing on the landing below. Swallowing his own saliva like it was a brick, he nodded despite her not seeing him and chirped, “Yes, mother.”

“You may go if you turn on the large fountain outside so no one will hear you. If you become louder than the fountain, you will be punished again.” She said now standing in front of him. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun today, and her ruby lips curled into the sweetest smile one could ever imagine a woman having. The lights in her eyes glowed of life and death, her smile tainted by her own evil.

“Thank you” he muttered shyly before turning around with his head down like a dog.

“Thank you… Who?” her sweet voice tightened, wrapping around his heart and squeezing harder than ever. The hazel orbs that should have been so warm and welcoming turned cold and hardened into an evil stone.

“Th-thank you mother” he whimpered slightly, satisfying her once more. Before she could stop him again, he quickly walked outside and shut the door behind him. Taking a deep breath, he smiled. Nothing like the smell of a fresh summer’s day, it had to be the purest scent known to man. Taking his shirt off, he immediately ran to the fountain and played with it like the sprinkler children. Laughing softly in delight, he became a kid again before the alarm bell tolled. “Charlie, your ass is mine again. Tell Mother Nature you are needed in here. It’s not like you were born to be outside anyway.” She almost sang. With great hesitance, Charlie put on his shirt and strode back inside. Automatically, Charlie’s hand flew in front of his face as momma reefed a towel at his unsuspecting face. Normally, he would just take the hit, but momma was very predictable in most cases.

The sun slowly began to set, casting large shadows over the tired little town of ___. As always, Charlie trudged upstairs and brushed his teeth before getting into his sleepwear. He began to head to his room, turning around he faced momma dead on. Smiling down at him, she whispered softly, “I hope the bed bugs bite” she teased (find other synonym for teased) and walked off into the shadows of the night. With this, Charlie closed his bedroom door behind him and crawled into bed.

But Charlie did not sleep. Even though each and every single day he works (and plays very little) under momma’s watchful eye, he could not sleep very well. Whether it was due to a sleep disorder or out of fear, he could never tell. He decided to pull the naughty children’s act and sneak out after bed despite the voice in his head screaming to not budge from his comfortable, safe bed. Against every single signal saying otherwise the boy rose to his feet, his soles burning and sizzling against the blazing icy fire of the merciless concrete floor. His body shook as he walked down the hallway, instincts firing off with every single movement to run back to his warm comforting bed. His childlike, naive mind was after something else, something more. Something stupid.

After several moments, Charlie sat down on the large couch reserved for only momma, and picked up a small remote. In the darkness, Charlie pushed the correct button without ever holding it before in his life, having memorized the buttons after years of having it thrown at his innocent (pure may work better here) milky-white face. With a brief click and soft static that sounded simultaneously with the boys action, the television before him turned on. Charlie's position relaxed at the sight, melting into the couch as a normal boy would have done.

Smiling at various different cartoons on the screen, Charlie began to whisper to himself in a voice as sweet as honey. "Charlie... Don't stand in the way of my shows you little shit. Charlie, if you aren't going to dust the television set I don't know why you're even still alive," he mocked momma's childlike giggle after each insult. After a few moments of this, Charlie finally began to feel like a kid, but his eyelids were suddenly ten pound weights. And, with that came the sudden realization that it was actually one thirty in the morning. Whoops, sometimes rebellion really makes time fly. Before Charlie even thought about the time or where he was at that specific moment, everything faded to black. Lights out.

The wind agonizingly howled in the perfect storm of chaos and terror, as Charlie awoke with a start. Looking around, Charlie saw the room in shreds. The once very large television was now several thousand glass toothpicks and several papers were strewn across the room, acting as a brand new exotic carpet styling. All that could be heard was the murderous wind raging through the sky and air around Charlie as his heart rate and breath sped up in fear. His eyes darted around the room, his actions mimicking that of a mouse with the scent of a feline in a room.

Charlie's chest began to tighten in shock as he fell to his knees, gripping his chest for dear life. The hands of fate wrapped both of its skeletal cold black hands around his pulsating organ and began to squeeze tightly. Only a single pair of glowing hazel eyes pierced through the darkness, and the outline of the off-white toothed grin lay just under it. "He's coming. The Void is coming" cooed the sweet voice as it faded into the smokey darkness with a slight breeze. Wheezing heavily and twitching several times involuntarily, Charlie was forced to stay like a wounded animal. "M-Mother?" he cried softly in the darkness, choking on his words until threads of saliva began to bleed from his mouth with each attempted breath.

His cold breath rattled against his whole body as it yearned to simply stop but the brain needed to know more. The brain needed closure. "Muh... Muh... Mother..." he wheezed, coughing with each attempt. A loud scream pierced through the already loud wind, a scream that was unfamiliar. Neither woman nor man's cry but seemingly the mixture of both with a twist unheard of in this world, possibly the next. Charlie's tightly clenched hand began to grow numb against the chest that encased his slowly failing heart. "M... M..." he trailed off, growing weaker by the second.

That's when he saw it in a blurred haze of his own semi-consciousness. Moving too fast to be seen, the creature traveled around the room in a whirlwind of smoke, hate, and terror with the ghostly sounds of its prey trailing behind it like a fan club. So foolish, these mortals. So foolish indeed. Out of the darkness, several long silvery white stand slashed their way into Charlie's vision as the outline of its sheet white head faded in and out of the darkness too quickly to catch the eye of the attacker. Whether this was for the fear factor, or its method of hunting it did not matter; for the face, if it even had one, would not be worthwhile to stick around for.

Tearing at the boy through the fog and the blanket of darkness it encased Charlie in, the beast began to snarl nasally with each movement movement of its wicked being. The weak material couldn't handle the slender razor blade-like fingers (if you could even call them that) as they attacked the young boy. With loud crisp sounds of ripping material, Charlier began to sob and whimper, attempting to beg for mercy or death all at once between the raspy breaths. Covered in his own saliva, and small amounts of blood from frequent nicks the brute forced upon the unsuspecting boy, Charlie now lay motionless with his eyes shut tighter than he could ever imagine, in hopes it would all just end soon. "Please, just go away..." Charlie thought as a single tear tore down his face. And the screaming that surrounded him stopped.

Opening one eye in disbelief, Charlie moved his head around slightly as his other eye opened cautiously. The figure and its accomplices had seemed to just vanished from the house, and right before him. Still unable to move, he simply shivered in a heap of his own fluid and discarded, barely attached clothing before a sound was heard outside of the living room window. Shutting his eyes tightly in fear once more, Charlie winced in pain as the sweet, dove-like voice with the subtext of evil he once recognized became that of a scared, wounded animal. "No! No! NO!" the woman's voice wailed in agony as ripping sounds were heard in the distance. "CHARLIE! CHARLIE! IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE YOU. CHARLI--" she hollered out as what seemed to be like the sound of gunfire violated the peaceful town's night. With his sanity level dropping faster than Lindsay Lohan and a frat party, Charlie's head sagged into the cold concrete floor. And, just like before, the screaming stopped just before Charlie sunk into the realm of the unconscious.

~

Charlie's eyebrows drew together tightly as his body squirmed upon being touched by the second day of summer rays the sun so graciously provides slightly past six in the morning. Mumbled various things in a sleepy state, Charlie rose to his feet feeling well rested but freezing. Looking down, he noticed long and small gashes in both his clothing and skin to his horror. With no recollection of that, why he was in the living room, or why it looked like it was bombed, Charlie stood aloof to the situation around him. After inspecting the entire house (which matched the living room), Charlie soon found that mother was not anywhere to be found. Feeling an immense amount of curiosity, he checked the back yard to no prevail and began to get slightly alarmed. He had never been totally on his own like that for so long, and most certainly never over night. Something had to be wrong, here.

Walking back into the living room slowly, something outside caught his eye. To his utmost disbelief he looked up and down the street, his shaky right hand covering his mouth in horror. Being a relatively well-educated person for his age, Charlie had heard stories about hurricane messes, and war aftermaths but never in his wildest dreams or nightmares would he have ever guessed he would pretty much have seen one in person. A gentle wind blew over the tiny little town as shrapnel gracefully danced in the air and blood in the streets began to flow and break like five o'clock traffic.

With no real means of being able to look away, all he could do was let his eyes wander to further explore his new found wasteland before he stopped on the prize piece in the destruction. An average, slender woman's body lay in a large pool of presumably her own blood. Her head lay about a foot away from her torso, a clean cut in fact. She was rested in an unusual position, like a doll that belonged to the angry little girl's who fought over it and ripped its head off, tossing it aside when it became useless to both parties. Almost pressed up against the window, the memories played back in his head like a movie he wished he had never watched. Looking over his wasteland, his new sanctuary the void he once knew had made for him, he would have never thought this was how freedom would feel.