The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Bowels of Darkness
by Melissa R. Mendelson

When I was young, I was petrified of the closet.  It didn’t help that I watched horror movies like Poltergeist. After seeing it, I wedged a chair under the doorknob just to be sure, but even that didn’t quiet my fear.  The basement was no better, or the attic.  I knew the monsters were there, but they never got me because I stayed in the light, and kept a small lamp shining under my bed.  But of all the rooms where the monsters lived, they never warned you about this room.  They just told you not to turn off the lights or look in the mirror, but they were wrong.

The bathroom door didn’t have a lock.  There was just a hook that dropped into a metal loop, and the window was small and cracked.  So were the tiles, and the tight space made me feel claustrophobic, moving in-between the walls.  I knew this was an old house, and there was a bitter draft coming from somewhere.  Just do your business, I said to myself, and get the hell out.  The toilet seat was ice cold.

The last thing that I remember was flushing.  Then, it was like an icy fingertip pierced my skull.  My eyes rolled upward, and my body slumped back.  Then strange vibrations crawled through my skin, yellow lights circling around and around, and I was no longer sitting on the toilet but standing at the edge of a golden black sky.  It was drawing me in, and I wanted to go, chase that light at the end, where the monsters don’t live.  Then, blood touched my lip.  My nose was bleeding, and the icy fingertip dug in further.  I convulsed, nearly falling over, but there was no ground.  Something told me that if I fell, I would keep falling.  I would never stop, and I was ice cold, out of time and out of body.  I wanted to go home, but I had no voice.  I still screamed, that was when my friend shook me awake.  I snapped out of it just as the old woman stepped back and disappeared into the mirror.

 Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Melissa R. Mendelson:

The Ticking

If we were masters of our own fate, what would you choose? Would you be wild and free until 21, or would you look forward to becoming wiser in your old age? Maybe, with the uncertainty of this life and horrific current events, you would choose to depart early, or would you live longer in hopes of seeing a better tomorrow? If you could decide when you would die, what would you choose?

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