Bogleech.com's 2017 Horror Write-off:
It drips.
Submitted by Sinneli (email)
It drips.
Shadows pass along the hallway of these empty corridors, of this school as sun moves along the sky, as if it is a train moving along its tracks. Maybe it is a train, or maybe the sun itself is being dragged by a steam engine, revving and powered by its light and heat, the ball of gas that moves along a certain path. Maybe our earth is not moving, set in this universe as a singularity like the ancients believed and we believe that the sun is the center, because we fool ourselves.
It drips.
The shadows continue, narrow lights flooding the windows as it prevents us, prevents them from seeing what is true. Every passing moment. Every passing second.
It drips.
Seconds pass, minutes, hours, days, all of it and no one will know I am here. What drips, I don't know. Perhaps it is the drool of a young boy in school who has fallen asleep. Perhaps it is the water faucet that is leaking water.
Drip drop.
Plunk.
All that is funny. It's fun to be amongst classmates, amongst students, amongst teachers and staff members. They know their unease. One student, Emily, I am guessing her name, has nightmares about people staring at her, with their eyes wide open, everywhere, and she is nervous, antsy as she puts her hand on the faucet to wash her face, to get that fatigue out of her, to wake herself up.
She fails to realize that the faucet stares, as if she is mad, and she would have screamed as the faucet snapped at her hands as its hole grows teeth, razor sharp, and she would have bled had it not for her constant movement. The faucet is slow, and another prey is lost.
It drips.
Another boy, Steven, or perhaps his name is Stephen. He has an air of confidence. He had a great night yesterday, I bet. Got an ace in a test prior, which everyone dreads, and he fails to see the eyes, eyes of others seething with envy. How dare you, they think. How dare you get an ace on the test which we all had trouble with? I bet you cheated, they must think, and his bravado prevents him from seeing. He gains confidence, and he proposes to a crush of his, who, a young, dainty lady, smiles and accepts, and behind those lips, there are fangs, there are claws, and he fails to see the slug that is her tongue.
Or maybe the slug is her. No one knows.
He fails to realize that when he dies, the slugs will come out of his body, eating his innards, inside out, and crawl out of his coffin in matter of days. He has to avoid dying outside, hence he is filed missing. He has to narrowly avoid the faucets biting, signs beheading, and worst of all, he has to avoid cheating.
The slug found a mate. And it constantly watches.
It drips.
Anna finds herself plagued with homeworks, exams, and she is constantly sidetracked. She plays games, and then she switches back to studying. She programs. She writes. She does all those things, and every time she does so, the veil in her head thins, and something enters her mind to tell her the answers that she had no recollection of knowing.
It drips.
Anna does well, and fails at the same time, constantly gripped with worry as she hands in the assignments. "Oh, what if I did something wrong? What if I accidentally marked A instead of B? Or was C the right answer?" Constant doubt echo, and they feed on it, because with every answer comes a price. They drool, they hunger.
It drips.
Knowledge is a being, a being in our heads constantly on the move like a whale. A school of fish. One minute, Beatrice is the most popular girl in school, a cheerleader captain, and the prom queen. The next day, she might be known as the school slut. She is not, I assure you. The knowledge knows that. It's just that there is one red fish, the one red herring, that stares and chuckles as all look at it as if it is the truth. It shall be eaten, and it shall eat Beatrice.
It drips.
All this world is fabricated. The paint. The color. The sunshine, the rain, the drops of water... Drool, hunger, endless insanity that this world is not real, that it is just here, pixel after pixel, thought after thought, and all of this an imagination of another.
Ink drips.
This is all a lie.
This world is fabricated.
It drips.