Bogleech.com's 2013 Horror Write-off:

"A Mother's Love"

Submitted by Nicholas Bragg

The boy stood, frozen. Around him, the walls of his study peeled, flaked away into darkness, no, not darkness, nothing around him, the floral wallpaper curling up and disappearing behind a shroud of colours he had not yet seen in nature before. It was not a static thing, the place around his perception, but undulating and moving as things of this world should not, a solid mockery of physics and everything godly in this limited human understanding of the world. The simple, stained bookcases faded away whilst still existing in front of him, the furniture playing out every possible scenario for itself.

 He saw horrid things moving about on it, life beaten and raped away in front of his eyes, things violated in a sudden mockery of what anyone would feel natural to their simple perception. He felt something move along his leg, a sudden wet, warm feeling about it.

A tongue, a solid, fibrous tongue was leeching up about it, swirling, dark saliva falling on his now bare leg, the tongue attached to nothing, only leading down under the floorboards, the wood splintered around it. The thing grasped hard, a needle thin sliver of numb nothingness creeping up his leg, a warm silent creeping feeling over taking his appendage. He tried to move, get away, but it only failed, his limp leg allowing no leverage for him, only grinding against the slick meat. The flesh of his leg was half way between numb and alive with feeling, the thick tendril blocking the flow of precious blood to his muscles.

 They grew weak, collapsed, the cells bursting, the bones and cartilage creaking against the pressure. Suddenly, a snap echoed in his nearly dead ears. He moved his leg, attempting to flee, the muscles working, pulling against broken bone, but no avail. A flash, a glimpse of something at the end of it. The tongue twisted and ended in nothingness, a floating silence of black, before picking up again, flesh ended with a babies’ bottle as if suddenly placed there.

 It was stitched on as if by a blind man, bloodied gauze and surgical wire cementing the plastic to its flesh. It was a strangely phallic creature, undulating and convulsing erotically in a perverse manner. The thing drew back menacingly, as if a threatened reptile made of stringy meat and inexistent things in this world. The creeping silence moved throughout his head, the numbness only taking over his face and legs.

  A thin stream of liquid poured from the tendril. He attempted to cry out, but, nothing. His mouth would not work.

  Suddenly, it twitched, slinging it’s girth about it, the entire ropey tendril slamming into his face, the thin plastic of the bottle forcing it’s way past his teeth, down his throat, the pink flesh doing little to hold, expanding against the bottle. He could not feel the painful process, only the pressure of the thing twisting inside of him menacingly. His body tried to force it up, his gag reflex forcing it away, but it did little to stop the advances of the invading body.

 A dim light grew from the floor boards, an amber glow penetrating the fog of distorted space around him. The appendage was swelling, bottom up like a grotesque balloon, as if preparing something deep inside it.

  Another building pressure in his gut, the thing f Around him, the scenes grew dark, dim, even more grotesque, filling with a black light, the walls falling into a void around him. Beyond this, a dim light grew in the distance, a shapeless form, arms, legs growing out of the black, driving a stake of literal horror through his mind, the form not available for our eyes to truly see, convulsing colours falling into limp flesh.  Then…black.

He was alone. He was alone in this place, this terrible place, abandoned and self aware, the only awareness in this cold space his own, foggy psyche, fragmented and light in it’s levity. Even now, even the booming silence around him was dead, yet sleeping in it's girth.

A buzzing, a distinct buzzing, filled the void. It was a dark, swirling this, physical and malleable whilst ethereal and fleeting together at once, a violet, full, pregnant darkness, followed by simple black. This is what was going on inside the boy's mind. Soon, a light would fill his head, a burning, piercing beacon, beckoning him while still managing to keep him distant from the exit, stage left. All he could smell was the sickly sweet scent of ozone. Eventually, though, color flooded the chalky fog, followed by what seemed to be color and sound. but, it wasn't the sound he knew. It was alien, foreign to him, a cacophony of horrid and thunderous action.

He was returned, birthed into existence before his very eyes, expelled into life without a whim, a care, or even a 'how do you do' from the forces that be. They probably would not call him in the morning. Now, he was in his den yet again, alone in his humours, sans temporal mockery, but alone all the same. But, no, it wasn't HIS den. It was different, a cold, horrid thing. Its meaning lost on him. What a shame.

He cried out, into the closed, disgusting angles he once called home, called basic and normal, now frenzied parodies of time space, mock shapes, barreling infinitely in front of him. Then, back to him. Nothing. His house was fine, the angles manageable to his frazzled brain. The boy looked down, placing a hand to his leg. His leg was…unbroken. He was simply, fine.

Suddenly, the sound of rubber on gravel, the sound of his mother returning home from a shopping trip.

He giggled, as his tongue began looping from his mouth, the sound of plastic scraping against his teeth audible in the quiet room. A silent click, click, click. There was a lot to tell her about today’s events.