Round and Around

Round and Around
By Scott Wilson
Word Count:566

Sally-Anne woke late, still dead tired after sleeping for ten hours from two in the morning until midday. Her head ached from a savage cocktail of scotch and coke, Black Russians and a handful of some sort of illicit drugs from the bowl on the coffee table at the party she attended. While she was not invited, she always seemed to end up at someone’s party every night, even if she had never met the people before. Yep, that was what everyone said; Sally-Anne, the Party Girl.

Her surroundings looked vaguely familiar; she kind of remembered dancing with a group of hip, young trendsetters on a large, marble tiled floor in the room outside of where she woke up. She pulled the sheet around her naked body and slowly stumbled from the low Futon bed into what must be the main entertainment area. Bodies in various stages of being undressed lay sprawled on the couches, floor and even tables.

Sally-Anne smiled and thought, “these people must have some money.”

The furniture all looked like the latest make and style from prestige designer retailers. No IKEA flat pack furniture for these guys. Hanging from the wall at the opposite side of the room was an enormous, flat screen television set. Sitting in front of the screen was the only, fully clothed, fully sober-looking guy in the place. He was enthralled by the movie playing; or skin flick. It didn’t look like it was any Hollywood blockbuster she had seen, or even any b-grade film. There were naked men and women going for it around a pool, some even at it like rabbits in the water.

Sally-Anne noticed that the pool was the pool outside the large, tinted glass sliding doors. Some of the people were the ones she had walked past moments ago.
The guy turned around and smiled at Sally-Anne.

“You’ll like this part,” he said.

Sally-Anne saw the guy on the couch on the screen, locked in a lover’s embrace in the swimming pool. She could see her naked buttocks pumping backwards and forwards under the water. The guy was looking up at the camera, smiling. Smiling like he was at Sally-Anne now.

“Great,” she thought to herself. “Another sexual escapade that I don’t really remember. I always wanted to have sex in the ocean, or in a pool. Now I have and I don’t even remember it.”

“I think you left your clothes by the pool,” the guy said, pointing out the sliding door to a large glass table.

Sally-Anne walked past him and rummaged through a pile of men’s and women’s clothes. She could not find her own bra, so picked an expensive white lace one the same size as hers. The camera that filmed the action in the pool swiveled around to face her as she dropped the sheet and pulled her clothes on. She gave it the bird then walked around the side of the house to avoid seeing the creep she slept with, apparently, the night before.

On the way out, she noticed a thick, brown wallet on the cobblestone path. It was loaded with fifty dollar bills, condoms and a pile of credit cards. She pocketed a few of the notes, just enough to cover the cost of a cab home, and another night out to forget what she saw on the television.

Hooray - He Who Has Power, Has Power

My story "He Who Has Power, Has Power" by Six Sentences for publishing http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/

Hooray - Grave Disorder

My short story "Grave Disorder" has been accepted by New Voices in Fiction, for publication in their printed magazine http://www.freewebs.com/nvfinprint/submissions.htm

Hooray - Anthology Builder

Two of my previously published stories, "A Nice Bunch" and "Grave Disorder" have be accepted by Anthology Builder to be stored on there custom publication site at http://www.anthologybuilder.com/submitstory.php
These stories are available for customers to choose and add to their own custom anthology. Each time it is selected I receive payment for my story.

Hooray - Visions

My story, "Visions" has been published by Sonar 4
http://www.sonar4ezine.com/submissions.html

Hooray - After Midnight

My story, "After Midnight" has been accepted by Bards & Sages http://www.bardsandsages.com/contest.html

A Whisker And Tail has been published by Static Movement

http://staticmovement.com/awiskerandatail.htm

Rock World

Rock World
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 588

A hover cycle sped across the secluded, desert plain, leaving a trail of red dust in its wake. The rider looked over his shoulder occasionally, speeding up when seeing a small black dot on the horizon. Ahead of the speeding vehicle, a large rocky outcrop jutted up from the barren desert like a child’s first tooth.

Upon reaching the perimeter of the outcrop, the rider slowed down, swung around and stopped. With the cycle safely hidden in a small crevasse, the rider began scaling the steep rock face like a spider. He stopped when reaching a small ledge that he could lay on out of sight. A soft beep emitted from a communication device on his wrist, letting him know the pursuer was within one kilometer now. Time to a showdown.
The rider flicked the safety off his Colt rifle, flicked the cap off the scope and waited. In the distance, the small black dot grew larger until the rider could hear the hum of the All Terrain Vehicle. It became a roar as it thundered closer, until within the range of the rider’s rifle. A carefully aimed, single shot took out the front driver’s side wheel. It weaved and slide out of control on the sandy surface, flipping and rolling when the driver finally lost control and swerved to get away from the rocky outcrop.

The rider took aim again, this time, waiting for the pursuer to scramble out of the wreckage. He did not expect the laser bolt from the shattered window at the rear of the vehicle. Rock and debris tumbled down on the rider from the large hole blasted in the outcrop a few feet above where he lay.

“Give it up, Braeden,” yelled a female voice from the wreckage. “We’ve got you outgunned.”

Braeden knew they did not know exactly where he was, they may have seen a flash from the muzzle of the barrel before their vehicle overturned, but if they could pinpoint where he lay, their laser sights would make him an easy target. He slide like a wounded snake backwards, lowering himself over the edge and out of their sight. He didn’t know how these bounty hunters tracked him down to this planet, but he did know he needed to relieve them of their advanced weapons. The technology of the planet he crashed on appeared to be that of early nineteenth century Earth. The only weapons he managed to acquire to date were a pair of six shooters and a rifle.

“Time to leave this party,” Braeden said softly as he slide down the steep incline until he gained a secure foothold. He felt a sharp pain in his right ankle from the heavy impact and gritted his teeth. Braeden turned around, saw he was still too far up to jump down with a twisted ankle. Time was running out, Braeden knew the bounty hunters would be making their way towards the outcrop now there had been no return fire. He leapt.

“Uh,” he groaned, landing on his both feet, rolling to lessen the impact.

He quickly clambered to his feet and ran to the hover cycle.

Another blast high above sent more rocks and debris came tumbling down, narrowly missing the hover cycle. Braeden kicked the cycle into gear and sped away from the three bounty hunters. They would not capture him today. Perhaps, being stranded in the middle of this hostile desert might even may be enough to stop them ever capturing him.

Cycle of Madness

Cycle of Madness
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 104

“Take that you stupid bastard,” Woody said.

He lowered his 30/30 lever action rifle, took a red felt tip pen out of his pocket and crossed out a photo of a cyclist in his diary.

The sound of cars screeching to a halt and people screaming in the distance could just be heard from the position Woody had bunkered down in at the top of the Milton Cemetery.

Woody flicked through the diary until he reached the next page with a photo of a cyclist glued down with a time, name and occupation scrawled beneath.

“Make me lose my driver’s license your cyclists scum,” he said, reloading his gun.

Down in the Mines

Down in the Mines
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 495

Jason hopped on the last train leaving the Roma Street station for the evening. He has a good night out with the lads from the office and was well and truly tanked up. Te thought of driving home in his BMW, did cross his mind, but he must have left his car keys in the office desk.

“Evening, Sir,” a voice behind Jason said.

Jason turned around quickly, his head felt as though it continued spinning after he stopped. He did not see anyone in the car when he chose it, just in case he had to hurl before he reached his station at Milton, so nobody would see him.

“Who’s there?”

“Got any change, Mister?”

Jason looked down to the floor where the voice emanated from. I must be drunker than I thought; he thought when he saw a thickly bearded dwarf standing just over three feet tall.

“Look mister, I ain’ got all night you know. I start work in ‘alf and hour and need change to pay for me ticket.”

Jason rubbed his eyes, then looked back at the dwarf, who was still there despite Jason believing that he should not be. Some things just shouldn’t be standing on a suburban train, and a dwarf was one of them.

“You’re a dwarf.” He said.

“Very observant, governor,” said the dwarf. “Now can you spare me some change or not?”

Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of one and two dollar coins.

“That ain’ real gold,” said the dwarf.

“It’s real currency, sir,”

“Not at the station, it ain’,” said the dwarf, turning his nose up at the handful of change. “Look, I ain’ got time for this.”

The dwarf pulled out his heavy war hammer and smacked Jason on the forehead. Jason thought he felt the train pull to a halt a hundred yards before his station. He thought he saw a new station, or one that he had never seen before, a bustle with hundreds of dwarves madly scurrying about, then fell unconscious from the blow to the head.

When he came to, he felt cold, heavy chains around his ankles and wrists. He was laying inside a primitive wooden cage on a rickety train track.
Queensland Rail didn’t make that one, he thought to himself.

The dwarf he saw on the train received a handful of gold coins, real gold coins, from an older looking dwarf.

“Right,” the elderly dwarf said to Jason. “You’ll be working for me now, son.”

The cage began to roll forward on the track, heading towards the opening of an underground mine. Jason recognized the general surroundings, like the suburb of Milton where he lived. But the mine was sitting where the real train station was.

“Should have given young, Reggie his train fare, Mister,” said the old dwarf. “He has a habit of selling you humans to pay for his ride to work.”

Reel Life

Reel Life
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 186

Boris sunk his two, pearl white teeth into the neck of the female actor lying half-naked on the satin sheets of the large brass bed. All props were dirt cheap in this remake of the classic, Dracula movie. She screamed, and the producer smiled widely. It sounded so believable that he would not need a second take.

“Cut,” the director yelled.

Boris continued gouging the beautiful, young actress’s neck, blood spraying on the sheets like a fountain and running onto the floor.

“Hey, Boris,” yelled the director. “You can stop now. The scene is pure gold, my boy.”

Boris turned around, a crimson beard running down his chin and onto his shirt. The director cringed. It looked so real, amazing what the special effects guys can do on a low budget flick like this, he thought.

The four other crew on the set thought the same, but nobody said it aloud.

“Fantastic acting, Deidre,” the director said.

Deidre did not move.

Before the crew or director could move in to check on Deidre, Boris leapt from man to man, tearing their throats with long, talon-like fingers.

Visions

Visions
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 769

Lexis shuffled down the cold, sterile hospital corridor to her private room in the west wing of the Sunnybank Private Hospital. Her eyes were still foggy from the experimental blindness treatment. Dr Faith Savage told her she should begin to see clearly in a couple of weeks. At the beginning of the week, Lexis could only see a single bright light, flooding her ocular senses like the incoming tidal wave on a beach. It wasn’t until the seventh day that Lexis began to see shapes, dark forms dancing in the light, like marionettes swinging and swaying on the strings of a puppet master.

Lexis reached her room a staggered across the open corridor to her bed, feeling another bout of vertigo. Getting used to sight after being blind from birth was not going to be easy. She reached her bed and saw dark shadow sitting on her bed.

“Who’s there?” She said, startled by the unexpected visitor.

There was no answer and the figure disappeared when she blinked. She was now in the room by herself, but the feeling of another presence in the room did not leave easily. Lexis had only ever felt objects before, so she did not know exactly what anything was supposed to look like. The feel of an object was not always consistent with how it really looked, especially to someone who had no preconceived ideas of what things were.

Lexis felt the buzzer to hail a nurse. She was scared now, she passed nobody on the way to her room, and more disturbing Lexis heard no voices. Finding the call switch only eased her tension slightly. Without a response to the buzzer, she would still be worried.

“Hello,” she yelled after no nurse came running within a few minutes. Five minutes was the longest she waited before today.

Lexis hoped up from her bed again and fumbled her way out the door and back into the hall with a hand guiding her along the wall. No movement seemed to happen up the hall, down the hall or at the nurse’s station. This struck Lexis as being strange, especially for a private hospital, she would understand it if she went public where half the wards were vacant.

Using the rail on the wall as a guide, Lexis edged her way down the long, bright corridor, looking from side to side for signs of other patients or staff. Everything around was still a blur, but the light seemed to be clearer and, somehow sharper. By the end of the corridor, she was sure that she was living in a bad rerun of the Twilight Zone or something. It just didn’t add up, everyone was gone; disappeared over night.

A noise behind Lexis startled her, and she almost tripped over as she pivoted around quickly. Down the end of the corridor, near where Lexis judged her room would be, stood two tall, dark shapes. She thought they couldn’t be nursing staff; they always wore white shirts and trousers.

“Hello,” she called.

There was no reply, but the figures did seem to hear her call. They slowly moved towards Lexis. As they came closer, Lexis thought they were hovering a few feet above the floor, rather than walking on it like a normal person would, or should.

“Who’s there?” she said.

Although the two towering figures were now only a few feet away, they were still fuzzy, lacking clearly defined outlines. Lexis realised that everything looked as though she were watching an out of focus television.

“Welcome, Lexis,” one said.

“We have been expecting you,” the other said.

“Who are you? Where are the nurses?”

“Oh, you are between time, now,” said one.

“Between time... what are you talking about?”

“When you began looking in-between things that were and were not,” one said.

“You eventually crossed over to here,” The other one said.

“What are you talking about? Where is here, it looks like the hospital to me.”

“Here, is where you were before you could see,” one said.

“But it is in the space between what you call time,” the other one said.

Lexis looked around the corridor. It looked like the hospital she woke up in, but was that the same one she was in before the operation. She could not be sure. Without sight, she did not know exactly what the hospital looked like, so she thought she could be anywhere now.

“Oh, you are anywhere,” one said.

“And nowhere,” the other one said.

A Sense Of Spell

A Sense Of Spell
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 100

Shiny Bling-Bling arrived home on Venus from another successful hunt for components listed in her spell book. She tipped her bag of human ears, noses, tongues and eyes onto her work bench. Shiny put each fresh ingredient in a labeled jar and flicked open her spell-book. Behind the large book sat and empty jar.

“Oh snazzlepots,” she said. “I forgot the fingers.”

Without these, she would not be able to cast the human touch spell. Not much of a market for the other human senses without the sensation of touch.

Shiny conjured up another wormhole and headed back to Earth.

After Midnight

After Midnight
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 469

It was well after midnight, when the dog began to whine, growl and then bark. It may have saved them. Not long after Rusty woke Jim and Trudy Livingstone, they heard a faint rustle at the back door. The door knob jiggled about like wind chime being blown by a soft summer breeze and Jim could tell someone was trying to break in.

“Get my gun,” Jim said, picking up his baseball bat as he walked down the hall towards the kitchen at the back of the house. The corridor seemed alive, with shadows dancing in the moonlight before Jim’s eyes.

By the time he reached the kitchen door, Trudy was at his side with the loaded pump action shotgun, held tightly in front of her chest. Jim put his finger to his lips as his wife was about to say something.

The door handle rattled, then the couple heard the chamber of the lock click open. Time seemed to go in slow motion, and the door handle turned slowly anti-clockwise.

Rusty, the neighbor’s German Sheppard, growled loudly, and the door knob creaked to a stop. A white flash shot across the back porch and Rusty whimpered sharply.

Jim motioned for his wife to aim the shotgun at leg height at the back door. He did not want her accidentally killing the intruder when he opened the door.

The door creaked open and a large figure in a musky smelling, black robe stood covering the entire height of the doorway. The figure held a scythe in its right hand that reflected the moonlight on the gap where the face should be. A pale, yellowy white, bony face stared at Jim and Trudy in the moonlight.

Jim and Trudy were speechless. Though Jim was ready to read the riot act to the intruder, no words would make the journey to his mouth now, apart from an incoherent, ba...baa baa.

“Good evening,” the figure said in a hollow and deeply British sounding accent. “I am Death, and we have an appointment.”

“Ba...baa...baa,” Jim stuttered.

“Which one of us?” Trudy managed to say.

“Sorry, madam,” Death said. “With your husband, Ivan Trundle.”

“Ba...baa...baa”

“Ivan Trundle?” Trudy said.

“Yes, madam. Mr. Ivan Trundle of 94 Bottlebrush Road.”

“The Trundle’s live next door,” Trudy said. “This is 92 Bottlebrush Road.”

Death would have looked embarrassed, if he has a face rather than a lifeless skull.

“Oh,” he said, turning slowly towards the yard with the dog he had just zapped with a small bolt of year remover.

“Ba...baa...baa” Jim stuttered.

“Do close your mouth dear,” Trudy said.

“I do apologies for any inconvenience,” Death said. “Third time that this has happened to me this week.”

Death turned and walked down the stairs from the porch, shaking his head as he moved towards number 94.

One Hell Of A Time

One Hell Of A Time
By Scott Wilson
Word Count:718

Toby opened his eyes, squinting from the bright yellow and red flames surrounding the cave in which he found himself. His skin stung, burning like a pig on a spit, blistering and swelling painfully. He quickly became aware of the sorrowful sound of a million moans, echoing in the vast, cavernous surroundings. Each bellowed seemed to ricochet off rough, red earthen stalactites and stalagmites like a stray bullet.

“Get up you scum!”

Toby felt a harsh sting run down his naked back. He turned and faced a towering red humanoid figure with the legs of a goat, the torso of a man and the tormented face that was the combination of a human and ram. Hanging from the creature’s tightly clenched fist was a long whip made of blood stained barbed wire and bolts.

“Get moving,” It bellowed, lifting the menacing whip high above its shoulder.

Toby scrambled to his feet, searing his palms on the hot, rocky floor of the cavern. A naked woman knocked him back to the ground as she rushed past. He felt the tearing flesh pull away from his back as the whip hit his blistered skin again. Quickly, he hoped up and joined the crowd of naked men and women of all ages, races and creeds shuffling along the sharp, rocky floor, towards the centre of the cavern.

“Hell-o, it's nice to see you all here,” A creature similar to the one that whipped Toby said, in a deep and thunderous voice. “Now, as the more perceptive of you probably realized by now, this is Hell and I am the Devil.”

“Now, you all are here for eternity. Which I hardly need to tell you is a heck of a long time. So you're all get to know each other pretty well by the end. No sorry, forgot, there is no end. Anyway, I'm going to have to split you up into groups.”

A young woman ran to the front of the group, screaming.

“Will you stop screaming, please? There will be plenty of time for that entire later, but for now, QUIET!” The Devil raised a finger and the woman’s mouth sealed shut in a fleshy gag.

“Thank you.”

The Devil opened a large parchment and looked down the list of souls for the day.
“Now, murderers, murderers... over here please... thank you. Looters and pillagers over here, thieves if you could join them and lawyers, yes you can join them to.”
Fornicators if you could step forward... Oh, bugger there are lot of you these days, isn’t there? Can I split you up into adulterers and the rest to make things a bit easy for my boys please? Male adulterers if you could just form a line in front of that small guillotine in the corner there. We can split the whisker, as you say.”
Toby looked around at the steady stream of naked men, walking against their will towards the punishment they would receive, over and over.

“Atheists... atheists? Over here please. You must be feeling a right bunch of tools about now. Oh, don’t worry; it won’t take long for the boys to make you change your mind about a few things.”

Toby tried to run. He could not move his legs and noticed that he defecated himself; the stench rose to his nose and made him vomit.

“Oh bugger it, I don’t feel up to sorting the rest of you out at the moment. What’s say we just start with a round on the rack for each of you, followed by a nice little disembowelment. Okay. Right...well...are there any questions? Yes?”

An elderly looking gentleman with a noose around his flabby neck yelled something out. Toby could not hear it and was pretty sure it wasn’t about anything like the answer it received.

“No, I'm afraid we don't have any toilets. If you'd read your Bible, you might have seen that is was damnation without relief. So, if you didn't go before you came then I’m afraid you're not going to enjoy yourself very much. But then I believe that's the idea.”

“And I'll catch you all later at the great barbeque, Bye.”

Psyc Out

Psyc Out
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 280

Bob Reece shuffled towards the surgery door, dragging his slightly deadened left leg on the paisley carpet behind him. The stroke he had ten years after becoming a psychiatrist deeply affected the way he saw his patients.

“You just think about that,” he said in a low, gruff voice, to the young woman leaving his office. “I won’t put up with that again.”

Marge, the sixty-year-old receptionist in Dr Reece’s office, looked up from the game of solitaire she played on her computer.

“Same time next week?” Marge said.

The young woman looked at Marge, wiped a tear from her eye and nodded.

Dr Reece hobbled over to the front reception desk and taped the receptionist on the shoulder.

“Make a note on her file,” he hissed in a venomous voice. “That she is non-compliant and resisting treatment. I recommend that she be taken off her benefits and forced back to work.”

Dr Reece shuffled back into his office, tossed the young woman’s file in the red tray he reserved for ‘patients with an attitude’. He moved behind his large, antique oak desk and dropped into his leather executive chair.

Although he had his stroke twenty years back, when he was only thirty-four years old, the bitterness still consumed him. He had to work to pay the bills, keep a roof over his head and food on his table. His permanent disability made him unsympathetic to anyone on compo and he did everything he could to make them loose their compo so they had to go back to work to.

Crypt Tales

Crypt Tales

By Scott Wilson

Word Count: 55

Under the blood, red moon, Samuel worked furiously against time. The shackles around his ankles were never a problem, nor were the one around his left wrist. Securing his right wrist and keeping the key safe for the morning took a great deal of concentration and careful manoeuvring. Lycanthropy was a real bitch.

The Carnival of Flowers

The Carnival of Flowers

By Scott Wilson

Word Count: 55


Bright, orange petals exploded colour into the morning sky with a jubilant fanfare, followed closely by an array of sweetly, fragrant white, yellow, and pink blooms. With the first day of spring, the flora obliged willingly with the season’s expectations of filling the gardens around Toowoomba with joy and startling backdrops.

He, who has power, has power

He, who has power, has power

By Scott Wilson

Word Count: 203

Jenny cried and sniffled uncontrollably, it was a life changing and extremely, traumatic experience for both her and her husband. Over six months ago, she ruptured the C6/C7 discs in her back, causing excruciating pain, suffering, and limiting both her ability to work and have a social life. While it changed her life in every aspect and clinical evidence, CT scans, MRI scans, and two neurosurgeon’s reports proved there were physical injuries, the psychiatrist she sought help from betrayed her over a disagreement on their first consultation. The battered ego of the psychiatrist caused him to extract revenge in the most vindictive and personal way he knew how, regardless of the evidence his accusations was blatantly false. By lodging a report stating Jenny was trying to rort the system and become “the sick person,” the psychiatrist caused the compensation board to cease paying benefits to her, leaving her without any form of income and the ability to earn a wage due to her debilitating injuries. As Peter Parker’s Uncle once said, “With great power, comes great responsibility,” there must be some justice in the world for those that abuse this power.

Good Foundations Make A Happy Home

Good Foundations Make A Happy Home
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 1043

John could not understand why nobody else could feel it. Every time he went downstairs, he dreaded it. His parents moved into the house a month ago and he already hated it. He could feel the evil oozing out of the dark, isolated space under the patio. There was only a small crawl space in the brickwork in the middle of the wall half way up and dead bang in the centre. John wished that whoever built the house just bricked the whole wall in and did not leave this scary opening to the pits of hell.

There was only one light switch in the dungeon as his friends and he called it. You had to crouch down to get through the small doorway in the laundry and then quickly maneuver down one-step and across one meter of concrete floor to the light switch, located on the beam on the ceiling. Why the builder did not put this on the wall near the door was another question John would like to ask the builders. Just what were they thinking when they made this split-level house. Three bedrooms, bathroom and toilet on the top level, then down six stairs to the lounge room, kitchen and dining room. A long stairwell down to the garage and laundry was the next level of the house, with the dungeon another step down into the ground beneath the house.
John walked down the stairs to the laundry slowly, hoping that his mother would call him back upstairs, telling him not to worry about getting her the stepladder from the dungeon. Although John’s parents didn’t call this area the dungeon, they knew John and his friends did. They actually thought it was funny and could understand why they named it the dungeon. The area was cold, damp and constructed entirely of concrete, concrete floor, pillars, foundations and stair. The only non-concrete part of the room was the wall beneath the patio. Inside this area the floor was just dirt and never used for anything at all. Cobwebs hung from wall to floor and floor to ceiling and the dirt stank of moisture.

John entered the laundry, still hopeful of a last minute reprise from going into the dungeon. He hoped that his dad would get home before he went through the small doorway and into the feared spot beneath the house. It was four o clock and the sun was just beginning to make it’s decent from the sky for the evening. His father should be home by now, but he wasn’t. So John was going to have to go in.

He stuck his head in the doorway and looked towards the daunting hole in the brick way to his right. He turned to the left and stared at the light switch on the beam on the ceiling. He could reach it by standing on his toes, but this meant he would be vulnerable and off balance for a second. John looked back to the right, stepped quickly into the dungeon, and ran to the light switch. The hum of the fluorescent light sounded like a ghost moaning to John’s overactive imagination. He stood stationary until the single tube kicked on, faintly lighting the large concrete sepulchre.

“There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there,” John kept repeating to himself softly as he looked around for the stepladder.

“No, not there,” he said, spying the small, wooden ladder leaning against the brick wall a few feet to the left of the opening in the wall.

John eyeballed the most direct route from the light switch to the stepladder against the wall. He whimpered, realising he would have to walk in front of the opening to get past it and retrieve the stepladder. No two ways about it, the path against the furtherest wall was blocked off by the old mattress and wheelbarrows.

John took five deep breaths, and then ran to the first support pole. He hide behind it for a second before peering around the corner at the brick wall. He took another five deep breaths, and then ran to the brick wall. There was no way he would touch it so he stood in front of it, building up his strength to fly past the opening.
“You can do it, you can do it.” He said softly to himself. John built himself up and took a step towards the opening.

“Johnnie...Johnnie...” a soft whisper floated across the chill in the air to John’s tingling ears.

“Just my imagination, just my imagination,” he said to himself again.

“No, I’m not,” the voice whispered to him softly. “I am right here, Johnnie.”

John put his hands over his ears and forced himself to walk across the space in front of the opening. He grabbed the wooden stepladder and swung back around. Inside the opening, John saw the faint, Smokey face of a small boy floating in the dark background. The boy smiled at John with tiny, but razor sharp teeth and big pitch black eyes. Those eyes, John thought. He had never seen anything as horrific in his life. There were no whites to the eyes and they were solid, not like the opaque face surrounding them.

“Come here, Johnnie,” The voice said in a whisper as harsh and coarse as a lifelong smoker.

John felt his strength seeping from his body, as though he sprang a leak and his very essence oozed out of his pores. He was petrified, but could not help but be drawn towards the face and the entrance to hell.

* * * *

John’s father came home half an hour later. He kissed his wife and put his brief case down next to the front door. He walked up the stairs, past the two single bedrooms and into the master bedroom, stopping briefly at the bedroom filled with John’s toys and books.

“I think we should seriously pack up the kids stuff the last owners left behind,” he shouted down the hall to his wife.
John’s mother walked up the hall and looked into her son’s bedroom, with a distant feeling of familiarity.

“I suppose you’re right, honey,” she said softly. “It’s not like we are going to have children any time soon.”