Schism
A short horror story
Since Halloween is coming up soon, I decided to make this post available for free subscribers.
Originally written, released, and distributed in late 2023; Schism, is a creative 3,500 word short horror story written in an experimental second person point-of-view to explore the experience of pain and anger.. The story dives into the mind of an injured individual and follows the thought patterns as the descent into isolation and darkness becomes all encompassing. Come and join in the terror!
BE AWARE
This writing departs from my usual calm and peaceful style.
However, as art for arts sake, I wish to publish it on my Substack feed.
!!THIS STORY USES PROFANITY AT A HIGH RATE!!!
If that is not a problem for you, I wish that you enjoy the story to its fullest!
With love,
Awe
!!THIS STORY USES PROFANITY AT A HIGH RATE!!!
Schism
The damned room is black as death’s door knob… you can’t even see your own hand.
It’s late.
God, you’ve gotta stop with these phone screens late at night. Maybe that's why you can't sleep. It’s definitely why you can't see. Obliterating your night vision and any sort of hope for resting that turbulent mind of yours.
Shut up! Sleep damn it.
Well, that and the pain.
How long has it been now? Six days? Fucking hell.
Two misaligned ribs. Twisted spine. Damn hip dysplasia. Contorted pelvis. Shitty sciatic bitch-ass nerve. All this fucking bullshit. It hurts to breathe. Stupid diaphragm.
Fucking… god… ugh… shit. Oh no. No. NO!
“HAUWTSCHO!”
“Ugh…that hurt.” you let out in a guttural whimper - sneezing is the worst.
Talking to yourself at night again huh?
Well, there’s no one around to hear you anyway. Mike isn’t home - his car isn’t here. Probably got some other gig up north. That girl he brought over a few days ago isn't here either. Taking two hours in the restroom on Wednesday - unbelievable. It took you forever to get out of bed - gritting teeth, heavily exhaling, and cursing into the void. Even had to put on that Bengay-smelling back brace before decrepitly baby-stepping and wheedling toward some level of promised relief. Left hand on the wall, the right pushing on its leg for further support, back hunched and angled like you were some malnourished medieval wretch. Arriving exhausted - and furious. And each time she was STILL in there.
Bitch.
You’ve known Mike for about a decade now. Taller, dark hair, quick to laugh, oddly athletic and good imagination, and dreamt big. Naive taste in women. Both of his parents were chiropractors. God, you could use one now. Met him when you moved into that disaster of a dorm room years ago. Shared that poorly ventilated room with him and two other guys - Nicky and Danny - for nearly a year. You haven’t thought about them in a while - Danny’s probably dead now, that maniac. Unbelievable how many people had to share a room those days. God, it was cramped. It stank. Two sets of Ikea bunk beds for grown drunk children who shared a perpetually soda stained and sticky desk. Carpet, festooned with orange Dorito shrapnel and loose socks, was never vacuumed the entire time you lived there. Didn't even have a vacuum now that you think about it. At least you were drunk most nights. Attempting to write philosophy essays on determinism, with soundproof headphones turned all the way up on to blur out your surroundings. A bottle of lukewarm lemon-cucumber Gatorade to talk down the hangover off of the ledge of your forehead, some shit-black coffee to your right to keep your mind from drifting too far from the page.
Now, that pinching pain down the front of the legs won't stop. The needles in each hip plunging deeper. Those coarse rocks in your back go tumbling - colliding. Sneezing is the worst. It causes the whole body to wake up and riot in the streets - flipping cop cars, lighting Molotov cocktails, and screaming like deranged homeless vagrants with their rotten teeth. Good luck sleeping now.
You open your mouth to relieve the pressure from the tumbling rocks inside. It comes out as a low growlly grunt.
“Uuughf”
Another monotonous day went by - full of naps, stale air, and winced breathing; overlooked by an ever vigilant ceiling spider. The whirl of the dusty corner fan has droned on for days and its “tingey” creak every 9 seconds from oscillating. You don’t even hear it anymore. Not really. Not until that’s all you can hear.
Fucking fan…
You wanted to write - you finally had that free time to do so! Probably should have written, but your body has been way too loud. You tried to read. You wanted to read. Self Help. Meditative breathing exercises - some mind over matter shit - but each line read was reread and then vetoed immediately by the raging rioters.
You decided to watch movies. On your phone. Held above your head. Your face - twelve inches from the screen. Like a degenerate.
Idiot.
No wonder you’ve got headaches now.
Couldn’t do comedy. You’ve been in no mood to laugh. Plus, laughing is as bad as sneezing. You couldn’t get into action films, how those people flaunted their good legs and backs when they twisted and ran. How they threw their bodies out of windows. Ungrateful.
Horror films. Someone has it worse than you. Some style of commiserating with the unlucky sops who got themselves in deep with slashers or demons. Creaking floorboards, thunder, flashing lightning, Ouiji boards, possession, candles, dark corners, all that good stuff. Something about that ominous music felt like the right theme for your days - and now nights.
What the fuck was that?
The floor by your door creaks - deep and long.
You slam your eyes open, but are still blinded by your latest phone indulgence. Even still, you can’t angle your head right to look in that direction. You breathe in deep to begin the process of shifting your body.
The creak’s slow exhale stops in tandem with your breath.
Fucking horror films.
To make matters worse, you’ve been seeing things. Nothing crazy. Not some fucked-up mushroom-trip hallucinations, moving walls, or pits to the great churning abyss. Just stuff in the periphery. Like eye squirms. Each time you try to turn to focus on it they just drift further out of range. Started getting worse recently though. You’ve been ignoring them. Just the bored turbulent mind toying with the monotony of your hours.
But…
You haven't heard anything weird though. Nothing that you can’t explain anyway. That was just the house being a centurion - the thing was built in the 1880’s for christ sake. Old wood breathing in the stillness. Who told you that?
The fan’s droning amplifies.
Whatever.
You close your eyes again and try to sleep.
A shriek like shattering mirrors plummets you back into full wide-eyed awareness. Like jagged obsidian fingernails clawing at your eyes.
You jolt upright - a lightning bolt of malice and fury explodes from the top of your skull and out your ears. Expelling a cascade of knives - ripping through the nerves of your jaw to the ends of your toes. Congregated revolters descend upon your glass spine with rusted machetes and worn-down baseball bats in frenzied mayhem. Splitting the small bit of respite you had found. Your yelp - a chorus of live bandsaws, roaring rioters, and churning roiling earth.
You crumple around yourself and gasp hard.
It takes you a moment to come back to your senses. Rioters commence throwing homemade bombs at buildings. Explosions, heat, shrapnel. Buildings fall. Transit centers burning. Broken windows, looting, guns blazing, bodies falling, mouths agape, splintered teeth.
You take another inhale with shut eyes.
Fucking barn owlets.
The damn feathered adolescent birds are screaming bloody murder outside your window again. Long piercing, screeching. More human than aviary noises. And. So. God. Damn. Loud.
You remember the first time you heard them. It was the first night at the house. Jesus. You thought there was some ax-wielding murderer outside the house chasing young women in the dark forest. You ran outside in your underwear, right out into the blistering cold. Shining the flashlight from your phone into the dark trees. Holding a pathetically small rock. Frantic. Sweating from under your eyes, upper lip wet, armpits moist. Eyes bulging, trying your damnedest to see into the night.
The screams rip through the darkness again.
Christ.
Back when you were living in the city, you didn't have to worry about these nuisances. You had streetlights, you had ambulances, homeless folks yelling incomprehensibly into the cold air at their agony and misfortune. Those torments were much preferable to the invisible screams you hear at night. At least those nightly interruptions were understandable. These… fuck man - these suck.
You wanted to move out of the city. All those people, crawling on top of each other. You used to not notice it. Shit, you used to enjoy it. You used to love all the crawling, squirming, and jostling for position in tram cars and subterranean trains. But now, you can’t bear the idea of meeting people’s eyes in public anymore. You can't handle the jumbled conversations, the unpredictable emotions flying around - like gnats in a summer field. The wide eyed tourists - begging to have their money taken. The jaded locals with their pretentious airs and “armchair” outrage at current foreign events. The trash, the noise, the dirt, the rats, the smell of bleach, the sidewalk-vomit, the fake trees, the lack of fresh air. The constant low rolling thunder of bus engines. Why anyone would choose to live in a city is beyond you now. Not that you weren’t enticed and excited, even, to move there right after you got your degree.
It was so busy. You could take your mind off of your childhood troubles. There was so much potential and opportunity on every corner. It was so large - majestic even. Pomp professionals in tightly-tailored suits and bulging neckties with shiny slicked-back hair, and even shinier shoes. Business folk who would walk with long strides - such purpose - and look with such disdain at anyone who was not of their social stature. You wanted that. You wanted to be part of that world. To have places to go with such urgency and haste that none of the thousands of frigid bums would spark even a whisper of empathy. Where you would check your fancy faux-gold chronograph (even though you used your phone to keep time) and tap your foot impatiently while waiting for your coffee. You would be so much better than anyone behind that counter - making your twenty-eight syllable decaffeinated beverage. You would learn to be so critical of their vocation - spend 10 minutes of your precious time complaining to management about how they messed up on the most crucial of your decaffeinated beverage syllables. So hard to please. It was a place full of promise. And you made your promises to that place. Promising you would climb the city - make it your own. Be someone who lived floors above others. Where you could look out the window and see the tops of everyone’s head. Where you could be atop, greater, better, more special. You saw the ladder and you were enthralled to climb. How mistaken you were. How rightfully you were eaten alive.
The wind howls and bleats, rattling the trees and leaves outside your window. Pulling each of those screams from out in the abyss of the forest to right in the middle of your room. Ferocious terror screeches injected directly to your ears. As if the creature were seated right on top of your chest.
Christ.
The fan sputters to a stop. Another power outage? This place is ancient. Another thing that Mike ``forgot” to tell you about when you moved into this decrepit house. You’ll have to talk to him when he gets back from his trip. That jackass. DJing for fucked up kids who don’t know how to speak to the opposite sex. Just finding an excuse to grind their crotches together without hearing each other’s voice. Makes sense. You used to be one of those kids. Just working the only angle you had. Justifying it to yourself. Hey it's a crowded room, and if my pelvis finds your ass, then so be it.
Yeah. You used to run that circuit. Worked out for you a few times. But now you’ve found Evelyn, you actually enjoy the sound of her voice. Some lucky bastard you are. Her voice’s resonance sounds like what sage and lavender tea mixed with warm honey tastes like. Unbelievable. Somehow she seems to like you. Been a couple of years now. She’s kept you sane. She’s been good to you - good for you. Sometimes a little too good for you. Sometimes you need someone to take your broken glass and shrapnel anger out on. At least it has seemed like that alot more recently. You snapped on her just the other day. She was trying to help. But she was too innocent in her helping. You were snarling molten rock. A leaking volcano of agony. Her village was just too close. Some Pompeii shit.
The barn owlets shriek like horror victims again.
Earlier, Evelyn asked you to spend the night. Again. She’s nice. But you’re not going to be burdening her with your shit. She’s too nice. And happy. And smiley. You can’t be happy right now and smiling feels like deception. You’re not going to burden her with your shit. Plus, the other day she asked if she could help put pants on you. Degrading. You would happily spend an hour struggling, cursing, and fixatedly coercing fabric onto your paralytic-ish legs - regardless of the outrage and instant repercussions of your back’s alarmed protest - to not have her humiliate you like that. Could you go there now?
No.
You’re not going to spend an hour ferociously negotiating between your stairway and the pathetic flesh-peduncles you call legs; just to creep up into her home in the midst of the devil’s hour like some shambling death - complete with incomprehensible pain and groaning. She’d be up. You’d be up. Neither of you would sleep. She did say she’d leave the door unlocked. You’re not going to burden her with your shit.
Goosebumps.
Her warm body sounds nice. Even for it to just be within arms reach. Your room is cold. Sharp. The bottom of the blanket has curdled to the side exposing your bare knuckled feet. At least you can see again. Sort of. You feebly try moving your legs a bit to maneuver it back to center. Bedlam. Outrage. Machine gun blasts to the hips. Okay. Nevermind. You can live with cold feet. You move your prickled arms under the blankets, accidentally twisting your spine into a slipped barbed wire noose in the process. You wince Bael’s hellfire torment through your nasal holes. Crush your eyes red-shut. The shrapnel of machine gun fire rips from your molten core through pleading lungs and out mouth-flesh as a stifled cough.
Fuck.
Slowly, through water, you ease-open your eyes. In the periphery, the spider vaults away.
“Ugh..”
Goddamn it.
That was too big to be a spider, and way too abrupt.
Shut up, shut up.
The window rattles a single hard depression and whines.
The trees outside begin moaning and griping more vigorously about the accelerating wind. Each shivering leaf and clattering like a winter-bum’s greasy teeth; but now the dagger’s edge of the wind has flayed them into an epileptic seizure. The needles of the wind puncture through the covers, the hairs on your arms rise to meet them.
WUH-DAMM, DAMN, DAMN
There’s horrible banging on the front door of the house. An arrhythmic crescendo of old wood violently being accosted.
Screen door must have gotten loose again.
WUH-DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN
The house breathes the wind deep into its core. Chilling the blackness with its iced lungs. Splinters of the boards rise like hair from a cold sin. The wood outside your door ebbs and flows, constricting and then releasing its veins, feeling the cold nail stakes in its flesh. Foundation and framework tense in response to the obsidian wind roils.
The stairs shriek in isolated agony. A titan of Tartarus, slowly clawing its way up from Hades, ascends the frail stairway. Pressing it’s foot on to the chest cavity of each stationary board until the immense pressure of the full weight has collapsed each rib before methodically lumbering on.
Abruptly the wind holds its breath. The beating on the front door stops. Not even a solitary leaf moves outside your window. Each limb, frozen stiff as the temperature drops once more. All the aches in the old home fall away. The calamity of unnatural calmness settles throughout your awareness. Your stifled breathing, the only audible noise. Why are you so unnerved right now?
Silence.
Floorboards outside your room begin a low, slow pleading. Wincing as invisible feet shift their weight to the most vulnerable locations. Knots and nooses in the wood twisting deeper into the abyss. Portals of heartwood delving into the depths unfathomable. Those whirlpools pulling deeper into the fileted carcass of long forgotten trees. Moaning. Grieving.
All of your senses are trained on the last sound outside your room. Ears straining for the slightest disturbance. The in-between parts of your toes sweat - they’re curled inward tightly. Your elbows feel like rusted door hinges. Fingers feel iron stiff. The air- paper-thin. There’s a harshness about it.
In the hallway -
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud
- the sound of running.
Your stomach lurches, and your throat tightens as you swallow stale bile. Your heart batters against your eardrums to the pattering of heavy feet.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud
THUD.
That last one was right outside your door.
Silence.
Mike?
Did his gig get canceled? What is he doing back home at this hour? What the fuck is he running around for? Jesus.
Silence.
The doorknob to your room rattles once.
You twist your head to look in that direction. There’s nothing there. Nothing. To the right of the window, something twitches, it’s a…
What is that?
It feels like you’ve plunged into an ice bath. All of the furry, outrage, and red-hot flames in your ears have been extinguished. Replaced with a sudden hollow, iced, and frigid ominous cradling. Lungs full of cold cobwebs. Stomach - putrid - double knotted itself before being ripped out - abducted by masked terrorists in a ruined rusted screeching van.
That screeching rises - high pitched and ringing. Droning. Unbelievable pressure - strangling your raw and open soul. Warping the mind. All encompassing. Shin bones feel like they’re splintering away. Face and eyelids squeeze tight as if trying to juice your eyes. While cacophonous rancor - screaming and boiling - pierces all other senses.
You shake your head.
Eyes tightly shut. Tears drape cheeks. Acrid sweat on your upper lip. Your bed vibrates. You vibrate. Earthquake? You can’t move. Your breath is crackly. You gasp - rough throat swallows hard. Dry.
Breathe.
Mantras fly through your mind. A prayer wheel spinning as a tornado rips mobile homes, ancient oaks, and earth-born boulders from the ground. Reassurances and pinball logic are pulled - A car’s emergency brake for a runaway steel freight-train.
BREATHE!
Your head pounds. The rioters have forced their way into your temples and are desecrating them - shattering stained-glass windows with their bodies, setting flames to the pews, gnashing the altar with their jagged, blood-stained, and splintered teeth. They throw flash-bangs towards your eyes…
You open your eyes. It's bright. You’re blinded by it. You close them again. Tight.
Daylight?
A sheen of silver pulses - from behind your lids - cascaded in blood-red webbing.
It's quiet. Still.
A deafening silence. Sensory deprivation. Floating. Whirling. Downward. Downward. There’s iron in your mouth, rancid chimichurri, plaque…
You fall through twirling kaleidoscopes. Caverns. Splintering prismatic colors - forest greens with their murky mud browns, verdant malachite and violent lightning crackling into yawning violet pools. Pulsing blood-red obelisks exploding out of churning mercury seas and back again. Cosmic patterns, bright glints somersaulting into nothingness. Imploding back into the void. Explosions of slitted vibrant cat eyes. Myriads. Each warping. Melting. Watching. Waiting. Tornadoing and blending around you as you fall deeper. And deeper. The whirlpool pulls at your senses. Tugs. Coaxes. Rips.
Memories - some long forgotten sweat out of unseen pores. Unraveling and drifting away into the breathing void. Like scarves in the wind. You see them. Twirling. Dancing. Exposed. Vulnerable. Innocent. Each thread being swooned from your soul’s warm protective embrace and into this churning sea of indifference and malice. A bored unblinking child slowly pulling wings off of a butterfly. - As that butterfly silently cries.
You see yourself from a spider’s vantage. Arms and legs contorted towards the windowsill in the shape of a horseshoe. Spasming. Hips rotated. Spine, unnaturally contorted. Feet and hands cramping and bent. All digits pointing towards the window. Eyes wide open, mouth open in a silent scream.
I rise.
This body... Broken. Battered. Calling. Energized by excruciating pain. But it’s not my pain. I pay it no heed. The memories stored here are not my own. I open the mouth, rip inspiration into lungs.
Finally.
I feel the host’s previous occupant, threading my awareness, the echoes of a fragile mind. A moth fluttering aimlessly in the Dark Forest. Fool. Beckoned me for six days and nights without cease. Self-loathing. Agony. Torment. Isolation. Blasphemy. Curses.
Now, pleading and crying for help, a lone child - lost in the dark. Calling. Shrieking.
~Evelyn~
Well, let's go visit Evelyn. Shall we?
I lurch the host's body out of bed. Its skin pulsing with delicious screams and sweat. I rummage through the stored memories to descry the earthen hovel’s location. I pull the scythe out from my own memories. Underfoot, souls of ancestral trees weep as I step towards the door.