For the latest Blog, I’ve decided to move a bit away from educational or self-help or spiritual or the other Blogging categories. Just to make a difference. I’ve decided, to simply blog [republish] a short story (albeit with psychological undertones….) Maybe you enjoy and maybe you don’t (and please forgive the grammar mistakes!)
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He pushed open the door and started walking down the drive, his shoes crunching with startling loudness on the gravel. He felt uneasy at the silence of the night, always did, and quickened his pace to try and distance himself from the old house behind him.
Tense, his heart plummeting so that he could hardly breathe, he kept on walking to the end of the drive before glancing back a last time. What if someone had seen him? What if someone had heard the noises, what if? He had to lean against the stone walls next to the gate as the strength drained from his body before he could go any further. The stillness around him was a listening silence, the lack of a breeze the holding of breath. He could never come back here again, now. But he didn’t want to. And he didn’t want to go back to the Other Place either.
He wasn’t an attractive man, nor impressive, and the bus driver didn’t so much as glance at him when he asked for a ticket. He watched the dim streets through the haziness of the bus windows as the city sped by. He was the only person on the bus. Absentmindedly he tried to clean his fingernails with his right hand-thumbnail. He saw street lamps sputtering shadows on pavements and night people crawling out of their holes like a disturbed colony of ants.
So much activity, so late at night. Not like at the Other Place. He shuddered and tried to bite a piece of nail off his third finger. He found a dry patch of blood, succeeded in fishing it out from under the nail and put it in his mouth, savoring the salty, decaying taste. It wasn’t his. He knew what his own blood tasted like.
How far would the bus go? He neither knew nor cared. It was a long time since he’d been on a bus. At the Other Place they’ve had no buses. No cars either. He looked through the windows again at the night people and felt a strange kind of longing.
He didn’t like the dark. As a child, his mother always had to leave on a night lamp for him. He would go to his bed scared, knowing that something under his bed or in the closet was just waiting ... waiting for him to close his eyes and fall asleep. So he would leave on the night lamp and wait. Wait for them to crawl from their hiding places and try to sneak up on his bed. He knew they had long, sharp teeth, and claws, big enough to rip a calf open. And he’d compromised. He’d slaughtered one of his tame rabbits and had left it for them on the floor in front of his bed as a peace offering. The next morning there had been no traces of the rabbit, only a few drops of dry blood, and he’d found a couple of strange looking hair next to the closet. Then he’d known what they wanted. He also knew that as long as he could keep their hunger satiated, they would leave him alone.
After that he’d finally got some decent sleep and his mother didn’t ask questions. She was simply thankful that he didn’t wake her up at night anymore with his terrified screams or nightmares. But after a couple of months he didn’t have any rabbits left. His dad had started to enquire about the disappearance of the rabbits too, and he’d got one hell of a hiding when he couldn’t give satisfying answers. They didn’t buy him any new pets either.
That’s when he discovered that the Leprechauns (some people called them Tommy-Knockers or Gremlins) didn’t like cereal or vegetables. They didn’t like fruit, nor bread or anything except raw and bloody meat. So he’d simply decided to roam the neighborhood for cats, dogs, anything he could find. After all, he had a right of living too, a right to take the necessary precautions to defend himself.
His mother once had caught him strangling a kitten. She had been horrified, especially when he’d shown no remorse over the ghastly deed. He’d been forced to raid his piggy bank in order to buy the neighbor a new cat, but he hadn’t minded. He carefully memorized the road to the SPCA all the way. Now he knew where to find plenty of food for his Leprechauns.
The bus sped past featureless places. A cold northeaster had brought rain while he sat thinking
He touched the cold window, his breath condensing into tiny drops of water clinging to the glass. Like drops of blood, he thought, drops of blood sprayed on the window, brought by the wind.
Like the spray of blood when he’d beheaded the puppy he’d received for Christmas when he was thirteen. A warm spray of blood, the warm smell of it and the stickiness that’d stuck to his hands. For a moment then he had almost grasped the essence of the Leprechauns as he’d sat gazing in wonder at death. The blood had tasted salty and the meat sweet and tough. He’d wondered if human flesh tasted the same.
At the Other Place they had no pets. Animals hadn’t been allowed. The high white walls and forbidding gates had kept him on the inside, had kept the world outside. They hadn’t understood about the Leprechauns. He’d tried to explain but gave up when he realized they didn’t have the vision to. He’d almost wished the Leprechauns would follow him there. That would have shown them. But he guessed the Leprechauns couldn’t smell him amongst the cold stone walls and antiseptic hallways.
“It’s for the best, George,” his mother had said with tears in her eyes, wringing her handkerchief. “They’ll make you better, you’ll see.” But he hadn’t seen and he hadn’t liked it there at all. All the questions… always the questions. And they’d never been satisfied with the answers either.
He didn’t know most of the answers himself. He wasn’t educated, he’d barely finished high school when he was sent to the Other Place. Everything he knew about life the Leprechauns had taught him. Life is one big question, he thought, a conglomeration of why’s. And most of the time one never finds the answers until one dies. If at all. Death fascinated him, the darkness at the end of the tunnel where his spirit would be whisked to one day when he died. Were the Leprechauns part of the darkness, he wondered, or the light, the living? He didn’t know. Maybe there was an in-between place where the creatures of the night belonged. If they belonged.
Of course, at the Other Place there’d been no Leprechauns. To a certain extent he felt safe there, harbored. At night there’d been a bright, white light shining into his cell from the hall way, causing him to sleep with his face turned away to the wall. Leprechauns didn’t like the light. He knew he should be grateful to his mother for sending him there. For protecting him from them. But all he could feel was resentment. And hate.
The light had kept the nightmares at bay. But sometimes he did have dreams. That was the only place where the Leprechauns could reach him, in the world of dreams. The subconscious. And all along he’d known they were waiting for him to come out. To join them. To become one of them.
The bus sped on through a small huddle of houses, a small town within a suburb, a town within a city. Traffic died down completely, lights began to go on. Night people going to bed, day people waking up. It was still dark, the hour before dawn. The hour where thing that bite, crawl back into their hiding places. And old tramp wearing two tattered jerseys and carrying a rustling plastic bag got onto the bus and startled him.
He looked out again. In the bypass he could see into brightly lit rooms. The people were grainy blurs but he could feel them radiating coziness and happiness. Two things he resented them for having. Two things the Leprechauns didn't like either. He imagined laughing couples and children, babies safely sleeping in decorated nurseries. The soft touch and feel of their skins, the smell of baby powder and Fissan paste. The sweet smell of young and innocent blood.
A vast contrast to the dried streaks of blood on his faded denim. Old blood. Dead blood.
It was still raining outside. He smoothed his hand over his face, felt the first stubble of a blue beard shining through and grimaced. He didn’t have any clean clothing with him, neither a razor. He didn’t own one. At the Other Place they’d been allowed to shave every second day, under supervision. Razors were sharp and accidents could happen. But he’d only shaved for the first time that morning when the forbidding gates finally had opened. Actually he didn’t care what he looked like. But appearances were important. The Leprechaun had told him so. To melt in with the crown, with his surroundings.
He knew what to do when he finally stood outside the Other Place. Even from outside it had looked like a bad place, with its white concrete walls snapping at him with hungry jaws. Not a friendly place. Not a nice place. Not a happy place at all. Seven years had been a long time, a very long time to be locked away from people, from the world outside. But enough time to think and to understand. To realize that he didn’t have many choices.
He had found the house easily, even in the dusk, the death of yet another day. It was still the same, the red roof and old walls peeling paint. One would have thought that she’d have repainted the place, but he guessed that she simply didn’t care anymore since dad had died. He tried, but couldn’t remember what his dad had looked like. It was too long ago, just another peace offering to his Leprechauns.
The grass had been long, ominous looking in the shadows of night and it was obvious that nobody had been paying any attention to the place. The hinges of the gates had squealed and creaked when he entered. It had been home, such a long time ago. But not anymore.
It didn’t matter. He had things to do. And he had known that afterwards he would never see the place again. She’d known it too, he’d seen it in her eyes. She’d tried to struggle, had tried to scream. She hadn’t believed about the Leprechauns, but he’d shown her. When she’d seen his hands and the way his teeth had grown she’d tried to run away, but he’d caught her. Oh boy, did he catch her. If she’d have had half the chance, she would’ve called the Other Place to take him a way again. Of course he couldn’t let her.
That’s why he had to kill her, too.
Tense, his heart plummeting so that he could hardly breathe, he kept on walking to the end of the drive before glancing back a last time. What if someone had seen him? What if someone had heard the noises, what if? He had to lean against the stone walls next to the gate as the strength drained from his body before he could go any further. The stillness around him was a listening silence, the lack of a breeze the holding of breath. He could never come back here again, now. But he didn’t want to. And he didn’t want to go back to the Other Place either.
He wasn’t an attractive man, nor impressive, and the bus driver didn’t so much as glance at him when he asked for a ticket. He watched the dim streets through the haziness of the bus windows as the city sped by. He was the only person on the bus. Absentmindedly he tried to clean his fingernails with his right hand-thumbnail. He saw street lamps sputtering shadows on pavements and night people crawling out of their holes like a disturbed colony of ants.
So much activity, so late at night. Not like at the Other Place. He shuddered and tried to bite a piece of nail off his third finger. He found a dry patch of blood, succeeded in fishing it out from under the nail and put it in his mouth, savoring the salty, decaying taste. It wasn’t his. He knew what his own blood tasted like.
How far would the bus go? He neither knew nor cared. It was a long time since he’d been on a bus. At the Other Place they’ve had no buses. No cars either. He looked through the windows again at the night people and felt a strange kind of longing.
He didn’t like the dark. As a child, his mother always had to leave on a night lamp for him. He would go to his bed scared, knowing that something under his bed or in the closet was just waiting ... waiting for him to close his eyes and fall asleep. So he would leave on the night lamp and wait. Wait for them to crawl from their hiding places and try to sneak up on his bed. He knew they had long, sharp teeth, and claws, big enough to rip a calf open. And he’d compromised. He’d slaughtered one of his tame rabbits and had left it for them on the floor in front of his bed as a peace offering. The next morning there had been no traces of the rabbit, only a few drops of dry blood, and he’d found a couple of strange looking hair next to the closet. Then he’d known what they wanted. He also knew that as long as he could keep their hunger satiated, they would leave him alone.
After that he’d finally got some decent sleep and his mother didn’t ask questions. She was simply thankful that he didn’t wake her up at night anymore with his terrified screams or nightmares. But after a couple of months he didn’t have any rabbits left. His dad had started to enquire about the disappearance of the rabbits too, and he’d got one hell of a hiding when he couldn’t give satisfying answers. They didn’t buy him any new pets either.
That’s when he discovered that the Leprechauns (some people called them Tommy-Knockers or Gremlins) didn’t like cereal or vegetables. They didn’t like fruit, nor bread or anything except raw and bloody meat. So he’d simply decided to roam the neighborhood for cats, dogs, anything he could find. After all, he had a right of living too, a right to take the necessary precautions to defend himself.
His mother once had caught him strangling a kitten. She had been horrified, especially when he’d shown no remorse over the ghastly deed. He’d been forced to raid his piggy bank in order to buy the neighbor a new cat, but he hadn’t minded. He carefully memorized the road to the SPCA all the way. Now he knew where to find plenty of food for his Leprechauns.
The bus sped past featureless places. A cold northeaster had brought rain while he sat thinking
He touched the cold window, his breath condensing into tiny drops of water clinging to the glass. Like drops of blood, he thought, drops of blood sprayed on the window, brought by the wind.
Like the spray of blood when he’d beheaded the puppy he’d received for Christmas when he was thirteen. A warm spray of blood, the warm smell of it and the stickiness that’d stuck to his hands. For a moment then he had almost grasped the essence of the Leprechauns as he’d sat gazing in wonder at death. The blood had tasted salty and the meat sweet and tough. He’d wondered if human flesh tasted the same.
At the Other Place they had no pets. Animals hadn’t been allowed. The high white walls and forbidding gates had kept him on the inside, had kept the world outside. They hadn’t understood about the Leprechauns. He’d tried to explain but gave up when he realized they didn’t have the vision to. He’d almost wished the Leprechauns would follow him there. That would have shown them. But he guessed the Leprechauns couldn’t smell him amongst the cold stone walls and antiseptic hallways.
“It’s for the best, George,” his mother had said with tears in her eyes, wringing her handkerchief. “They’ll make you better, you’ll see.” But he hadn’t seen and he hadn’t liked it there at all. All the questions… always the questions. And they’d never been satisfied with the answers either.
He didn’t know most of the answers himself. He wasn’t educated, he’d barely finished high school when he was sent to the Other Place. Everything he knew about life the Leprechauns had taught him. Life is one big question, he thought, a conglomeration of why’s. And most of the time one never finds the answers until one dies. If at all. Death fascinated him, the darkness at the end of the tunnel where his spirit would be whisked to one day when he died. Were the Leprechauns part of the darkness, he wondered, or the light, the living? He didn’t know. Maybe there was an in-between place where the creatures of the night belonged. If they belonged.
Of course, at the Other Place there’d been no Leprechauns. To a certain extent he felt safe there, harbored. At night there’d been a bright, white light shining into his cell from the hall way, causing him to sleep with his face turned away to the wall. Leprechauns didn’t like the light. He knew he should be grateful to his mother for sending him there. For protecting him from them. But all he could feel was resentment. And hate.
The light had kept the nightmares at bay. But sometimes he did have dreams. That was the only place where the Leprechauns could reach him, in the world of dreams. The subconscious. And all along he’d known they were waiting for him to come out. To join them. To become one of them.
The bus sped on through a small huddle of houses, a small town within a suburb, a town within a city. Traffic died down completely, lights began to go on. Night people going to bed, day people waking up. It was still dark, the hour before dawn. The hour where thing that bite, crawl back into their hiding places. And old tramp wearing two tattered jerseys and carrying a rustling plastic bag got onto the bus and startled him.
He looked out again. In the bypass he could see into brightly lit rooms. The people were grainy blurs but he could feel them radiating coziness and happiness. Two things he resented them for having. Two things the Leprechauns didn't like either. He imagined laughing couples and children, babies safely sleeping in decorated nurseries. The soft touch and feel of their skins, the smell of baby powder and Fissan paste. The sweet smell of young and innocent blood.
A vast contrast to the dried streaks of blood on his faded denim. Old blood. Dead blood.
It was still raining outside. He smoothed his hand over his face, felt the first stubble of a blue beard shining through and grimaced. He didn’t have any clean clothing with him, neither a razor. He didn’t own one. At the Other Place they’d been allowed to shave every second day, under supervision. Razors were sharp and accidents could happen. But he’d only shaved for the first time that morning when the forbidding gates finally had opened. Actually he didn’t care what he looked like. But appearances were important. The Leprechaun had told him so. To melt in with the crown, with his surroundings.
He knew what to do when he finally stood outside the Other Place. Even from outside it had looked like a bad place, with its white concrete walls snapping at him with hungry jaws. Not a friendly place. Not a nice place. Not a happy place at all. Seven years had been a long time, a very long time to be locked away from people, from the world outside. But enough time to think and to understand. To realize that he didn’t have many choices.
He had found the house easily, even in the dusk, the death of yet another day. It was still the same, the red roof and old walls peeling paint. One would have thought that she’d have repainted the place, but he guessed that she simply didn’t care anymore since dad had died. He tried, but couldn’t remember what his dad had looked like. It was too long ago, just another peace offering to his Leprechauns.
The grass had been long, ominous looking in the shadows of night and it was obvious that nobody had been paying any attention to the place. The hinges of the gates had squealed and creaked when he entered. It had been home, such a long time ago. But not anymore.
It didn’t matter. He had things to do. And he had known that afterwards he would never see the place again. She’d known it too, he’d seen it in her eyes. She’d tried to struggle, had tried to scream. She hadn’t believed about the Leprechauns, but he’d shown her. When she’d seen his hands and the way his teeth had grown she’d tried to run away, but he’d caught her. Oh boy, did he catch her. If she’d have had half the chance, she would’ve called the Other Place to take him a way again. Of course he couldn’t let her.
That’s why he had to kill her, too.
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