Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Horror

want to re-call, for you, a story that I haven’t shared with anyone in quite some time.  Very shortly after these series of events took place, I sought out a professional psychotherapist to help me to come to terms with what I witnessed and what I felt at the time.  I talked about it at length with my counsellor and people i trusted.  I hope I never have to bear witness to these events again.  I hope I never have to experience the emotions I felt during that time again.  I am much happier now, in my waking life, three years on.  However, Im haunted at times by this person, still, in my nightmares.  They might only plague me once a month now on days i feel off or disconnected from myself.  My therapist told me that these dreams don’t mean much and that it’s just my brain trying to process the unimaginable horror that very few have experienced first hand.  They feel so real.  They smell so real.  I would wake up in a cold sweat and scan the room for him, beliving I was under attack again.  It felt like my spirit was being ripped apart. Then the nausea would come and stay with me for hours afterwards.  It lingered for days but only as a burning sensation in my stomach.  To this day, especially when I’m alone, it feels like my guts twist and contort as the ancient feeling of wanting to wretch overcomes me.  Sometimes I feel like I want to purge myself from this planet and be born into a different soul.  This is my burden.  These are the hard times now, but they are fleeting as the months go by.  I always sleep with a night-light now.  I would have scoffed at the idea five years ago but now, it really does help.
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When I was 25, I felt young.  I felt like my world was my own, to shape and create different experiences of whatever I saw fit.  I still had a youthful innocence and playfulness that captivated others around me, so I was told.
It was mid August and I was getting ready to start my final year of college.  I wanted a change of scenery so I moved out from my previous house share, just a few yards from the college.  I ended up taking another apartment this year, only it was slightly further away from the college.  It wasn’t the nicest looking apartment but due to financial difficulties at the time, it was all I could afford.  IT was, however, quite spacious, which I liked.  It could’ve done with a coat of paint and some repairs but overall, it was fine.  It was livable for sure.  I was the first to get my key and move in.  It had three bedrooms, all of which were en suites, which I loved.  I wasn’t that keen on sharing a bathroom again.  We all had to share the living room and kitchen though, but this was fine as I was used to it. If the apartment looked better and more modern furniture it would have cost a lot more, but it dosen’t matter now.
I did my room up the way I liked it.  Everything was pretty perfect and I was keen to get this year started. A week later, another person moved in.  She was in her first year of the same college.  She said her name was Lauren. She was understandably shy and a bit quiet so I tried to make her feel at home by giving her space and not being too much up in her business.  I could tell that she valued neatness and tidiness, like me but she was on a different level.  In college, if you share with different people over the years, you can tell pretty quickly who’ll be the neat freaks and who’ll be the slobs.  I thought of myself as somewhere in the middle, depending on how much energy I had to clean.  Over the last few days of summer, she kept to herself but would often come out and chat, especially in the evenings when things were winding down.  She wasn’t from the town so she was feeling lonely and missed her parents, which was understandable.
At the time, I didn’t think the third room would be taken, but it was.  At the very last minute, on the last day of summer, it was taken.  It was taken by a man in his late thirties i reckoned.  He said that he was a mature student.  I would have wagered that the last person taking the room would have been somewhat our age, not that it mattered.  I didn’t discriminate or want him to feel out of place so I welcomed him in.  Out in the world, you wouldnt have looked twice at this guy and thought anything was wrong but in here, I was afraid for his sake, he wouldn’t fit in but i didn’t want to jump to any conclusions yet.  The landlord then told us by text that she was going away for a month and wished us luck with college.
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So there we all were, us three all trying to make it work living together.  The man told me that he was having relationship problems with his wife at the moment and that he thought he would get divorced.  He lay a lot on me very quickly, like I was his therapist or something.  All of his martial problems were a lot for me to take in.  I told him he should go see a marriage counsellor maybe.  I felt like he was displeased with this advice as he stopped talking to me about his troubles from then on.  As the days went on, I felt like I had less in common with this man then ever before.  His cooking habits were strange.  I could hear him cooking downstairs at 3am most nights.  The apartment was divided up as such that his room was next door to mine.  There was a fairly large space before you got to the other persons room, so they were slightly more isolated within the apartment.
What he cooked smelled AWFUL.  It smelled like old dishwater mixed with very strong spices.  It would violently permeate the whole apartment and leave a stench that lasted hours.  Lauren would often text me at night and complain that the smell was so strong that she had to open the window in her room at night, which she hated doing.  I think she was afraid someone would try climb into her room while she was sleeping.
In the mornings, while myself and Lauren were going to class for 9am, he would still be in his room.  You could hear him snoring a mile off.  I didn’t really like  to be judgemental on other peoples living habits but it almost felt like his days were nights and nights were days.  I never saw him around the college and we’d been there a week now.  What started happening now was on another level then what I was used to.  When I arrived home at 5pm, I would walk in on him walking around the apartment in dirty white boxer shorts on the phone.  That in itself was slightly weird but his face would be red with rage.  He would be shouting down the phone to a person on the other end of the phone that i assumed was his wife.  He would never say hello or even acknowledge I was there.  I tried to carry on as normal but between him walking around in stained boxers, the anger and the wretched smell of the kitchen, I seriously wanted him out.  I reasoned with myself that it was too early to go to the landlord and complain as it had only been a week.  I had also reasoned that if i DID complain so early on, I might have made myself look bad and too picky about roomates.
I went to the kitchen and cooked myself something to eat and just went to my room and texted Lauren about what I had just witnessed.  I told her to be prepared when she came home.  AFter an hour he went into his room and slammed his door shut.  She was out with a few of her new college friends until about 10pm, I think.  I remember this night well. Almost as if having a 6th sense, as soon as Lauren walked in the door, the man opened up his room and walked out at the same time.  I held my breath and waited for what was next.
I could hear them talking.  Lauren sounded quiet and reserved, while he was loud, boisterous and aggressive.  He almost sounded drunk, to me.  I remember him shouting about how all women were cunts and that she’d grow up to be a cunt, just like everyone else.  With that, he brought his fist down on the table, I think.
When I heard this, my heart was in my mouth.  Im sure Lauren was scared.  I went out to her and tried to de fuse the situation that had just escalated out of nowhere.  She had a look of shame and embarrassment on her face.  He was drunk, for sure.  He stank of whiskey.  He was wearing clothes, at least.  After talking to the both of them and trying to defuse the situation, he stormed out of the apartment.  I told Lauren that we had to go to the landlord about him as this couldn’t continue.  She agreed and we both texted the landlord.  We didn’t get a response or even a message seen on Whatsapp.
It was 11,30pm now and he still wasn’t back.  Lauren sat in with me, in my room.  We had talked for a while about what had happened.  I think she was in shock still.  Nothing else happened that night, because it didn’t sound like he came home at all.
Through all of that, what stood out to me, to this day, was the look of shame and embarrassment on Laurens face.  It broke my heart and i barely knew the girl.
For 24 hours there wasn’t a sound coming from his room.  We assumed he wasn’t there.  There was a new smell now.  The smell came from inside the man’s room.  It was only pungent for a second as I passed by his room and then it would vanish.  It would strike my nostrils for all of two seconds and then be gone again.  It was a smell that made me stop and pay attention, but I didn’t want to go into his room to investigate, just in case he came back and caught me.
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He came home the following day, before I went to college with Lauren.  He said nothing to me and just glared at Lauren as he walked past.  We were both thankful we could be somewhere else.  I had a gut instinct at this time, that I should take care of Lauren around this man.  Something felt really wrong this time.  This wasn’t just weird or odd, but this felt like something more serious.  What disturbed me even more is that the landlord wasn’t reading our messages.
I remember things being almost peaceful for a time.  He would stay in his room, while myself and Lauren chatted and made dinner together.  We kept away from him and didn’t talk to him about anything.  We almost pretended like he wasn’t there.  It stayed this way for the next 2 weeks roughly.  What didn’t stay the same were the smells that came from inside his room.  It wasn’t his usual foul odor from cooking what he called ‘Pork’.  This smelled…different.  It smelled like sewage mixed with alcohol, if you can imagine such a smell.
It was only when I came home from college one day, that I realized fully how fucking crazy this man was.  Now, at this time, Lauren was back with her parents for the night.  I arrived back to find the kitchen nearly destroyed.  The door to the fridge was broken, there was a head shaped hole in the wall, in the living room.  There were clothes everywhere.  The place stank of cigarette smoke.  His bedroom door was wide open, with no one inside.  There was no sound coming from the apartment.
My heart was pounding out of my fucking chest, yes, I was scared.  I looked into his bedroom.  The place was very smokey and all the windows were shut.  He had bottles of urine strewn about his room.  It looked like he had ripped up the carpet what was in his room, exposing the wood underneath.  The walls had been punched.  On his bed there were numerous bottles of whiskey and vodka, half drank.  I noticed a broken bottle on the ground.  The smell of shit was overpowering, as i stuck my head into the room.  Behind the bed, there were black bags bursting at the seams.  I had to hold my nose as i went further into the room.  I didn’t want to look inside but i did poke them.  They felt like a mix of something squishy and more solid.  A wheeze picked up in my chest as it felt hard to take in air.  I left the bags there and ventured into the bathoom, keeping a very close ear on anyone coming in through the door.  The bathroom door was slightly open.  There were puddles everywhere.  The toilet was stained with yellow and brown markings everywhere.  It was then i noticed that blood was smeared into the shower walls.  It was as if he was cutting himself and smearing his blood everywhere.  I stood in the puddles as i inspected the bathroom further.  In the very corner of the bathroom, behind the door, there was a jar with a lid on it.  Within the jar, there was a soup mixture that was tinted green and silver.  There was a label on it that said someones name.  I didn’t want to touch it but it had the name of a woman on it.
Suddenly I could hear keys opening the front door.  I panicked as I tried to flee the scene without slipping in any of the puddles.  He was back.  He grunted loudly as he slammed the front door shut.  He walked into the kitchen and hit something.  It sounded like he was moving something around.  I looked around for any sort of weapon I could find.  He would have known I was in his room.  I tip toed quietly back into his room, my feet skidding on one of the puddles.  I picked up the broken glass and prepared myself.  My whole body was shaking as my mind went into overdrive.  He then started shouting the word cunt over and over again.  When he stopped, he’d giggle like a maniac and start moving things around again.
I just stood there, waiting.  This guy was fucking insane and anything could happen.  I thought of Lauren and thanked God it was me here and not her.  He stopped hitting and moving things to come in my direction.  It was now or never, I thought.  He stood at the doorway to his room, facing me.  He told me he was Satan.  I told him he was crazy.  He was holding a rucksack in his right hand.  He told me he had killed his wife.  I didn’t believe him.  His eyes were bloodshot and blood red.  He reached into his rucksack and pulled out a handgun.  For a minute I thought he was going to shoot me.  He killed his wife and now he was going to shoot me.  I thought of running but where could I run to?
I told him I had called the police and they’d be here any second.  I think I said that out of panic.  He dropped the rucksack, waved the gun in the air and at any second I prepared to be shot.  His face then contorted into what I could only describe as overwhelming fear.  He looked more scared then I’ve ever seen someone look.  It was the look a child has after their parents go missing.  He opened his mouth to reveal he had three or four blackened teeth that were crooked.  I remember that face as it was in stark contrast to his bloodshot eyes, that almost looked black.  He looked hideous in that moment, like he was the devil.  He put the barrel of the gun into his mouth, aimed upwards and fired.  Blood shot out of the back of his head as he collapsed onto the ground, grunting.  I can still hear the gushing sound of blood rushing from his head.
I didn’t realize I was holding the glass so tightly, it was biting into my hand.  I went to my room and sat on the bed for….I don’t know how long.  I felt like a mental patient with a thousand yard stare.
THE POLICE DISCOVERED THAT WITHIN HIS RUCKSACK, THERE WAS ROPE, A DAGGER, SOME DUCT TAPE, A BOX OF NAILS AND PHOTOGRAPHS THAT WERE PRINTED OUT.  THE PHOTOS WERE OF BURN PATIENT VICTIMS WITH SKIN PEELING OFF THEIR FACES THAT THE POLICE SAID WERE ACID ATTACK VICTIMS.