Photo by Mikkel Amundsen on Unsplash
“You sure you got the right address? I don’t think anyone lives here, man.”
I peeked at the towering mansion behind the steel gates for the second time.
The walled garden stank of rotted roots even from this distance, so I rolled up the car windows and breathed through my shirt as I spoke on the phone.
Something about the boarded-up windows, pillared porch and the dilapidated state of the massive building gnawed at my conscience.
“Come on, dude! Chickening out or what?”
“Who did you say called?”
“Some girl. I didn’t get her name.”
“And she called me by my name?” I said, looking around the darkness-shrouded vicinity. “If this is some fucked up prank, I’ll—”
“Not only that, dude! She called you by your real name.”
“You’re the only one who knows that, asshole.”
“That’s exactly my point! Look, if you don’t want to do this, fine. But if she’s telling the truth and those fuckers beat us to it, I’ll kill your fucking ass!”
I placed the phone on my other ear, rolled down one of the windows and scanned the outside.
“I don’t see a damn thing, goddammit! Where’s the girl—”
The call disconnected as the phone slipped through my fingers. I spun my head and looked in the direction of the banging.
Only when I noticed the contour of a young woman in her early twenties did I stop holding my breath and relax my shoulders.
She motioned for me to roll down the window.
“Hey, Mikail is it?”
“You’re the one who called us here?”
She stooped over and leaned in. Taken aback by how close she got, I turned my face away and felt my cheeks burn. What was up with that smile? She looked as if she knew me or something.
“You’re not getting out, huh?”
“What?”
“I don’t bite, you know.”
I gulped. I wasn’t much of a ladies’ man and the few girlfriends I had over the years were people I knew from my childhood.
While I had a decent face and a large build, I had sustained some trauma growing up, which rendered me incapable of talking to girls. Not anything serious, just the usual getting-rejected-by-a-pretty-girl-in-public kind of stuff.
“Do I know you?” I asked as I stepped out of the car and followed her to the steel gates. She hesitated before answering, as if she was considering how much she was going to let me on.
“I don’t think so.”
“But we’ve met before?”
She let out a laugh, “Why do you think that?”
Without letting me respond, she unlocked the steel gates and ushered me in through the wilted garden swarmed with flies wherever I rested my eyes.
Something about her bugged me but I couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Most of all, how did she know my real name?
As we approached the pillared porch on the verge of collapse, I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself anymore.
“You called the channel and asked for me. You knew my name.”
She came to a halt as she was about to open the weathered door and turned to face me. Her cocked head was a mix of confusion and amusement.
“Everyone knows your name, Michael.”
“You didn’t say that a moment ago.”
“Hmm? What are you talking about?”
I dropped my eyes as I tried to find the right words. She was feigning ignorance. But I wasn’t the type to let people off the hook so easily.
“True, everyone knows me as Michael on the channel. But you called me by my birth name; you called me Mikail.”
The smile across her face faded away as she straightened her neck. Her expressionless face was an enigma, a box of secrets that chilled me to the bone.
When the smile on her face finally returned, I followed her emerald eyes as they kept avoiding my brown ones. What was this feeling?
I turned around as her eyes locked onto something behind me. The next thing I knew was a blur of motion before everything turned black.
Ring, ring. I snapped awake upon hearing the distant sound of my phone ringing. Seated on a wooden chair in the middle of a dark and damp place, my hands were tied behind me.
Something dripped on my forehead. I looked up. Startled, I jolted up only to fall sideways to the wet stone ground with my legs bound together. Panicking.
The ceiling was suspended with untold limbs, some ripped apart, others disfigured beyond recognition.
When my heart calmed down, I scanned the darkness my eyes got accustomed to and noticed that I was behind bars.
What in the whole world was going on? I spun my head to the right, realising too late I wasn’t the only one in the damp cell.
“Took you long enough, man. Want a joint? Keeps you alert.”
The smoke got all over my face. The dude in the corner wasn’t tied up, but he was hardly skin and bones. I could see the ribs through his hole-riddled shirt drenched in grime and sweat.
“What- what’s this place?”
“You’ll figure it out soon enough. Sure you don’t want some of this goodness—shush! Can you hear that? They’re coming! Quick! Get back in the chair before they see you!”
I followed the shrill screams growing louder with wide eyes, unable to move an inch. My limbs froze, and my mind became a muddled mess.
The joint guy crawled and helped me back on the chair, which was barely sturdy enough to carry my weight.
Fearing the worst, I let my neck hang from the chair and shut my eyes in time with the rising bars.
Something stooped over me. The stench of the saliva hitting my face and trickling into my half-open mouth almost made me twitch.
Whatever leaned over me now headed to the other guy. Where were they taking him?
The poor thing screamed his head off, begging for his life. I had to shut out all sounds to keep his pleas from getting to me.
Only when the bars dropped did I dare to open my bloodshot eyes.
I looked around in the cell, searching for anything that might help me out of these tightening ropes.
That was when I saw it, just inches from the bars. A shard of glass. With newfound energy, I jumped my way to the bars and let my eyes land on the glass on the other side. I wouldn’t be able to reach it in this state, though.
Blood dripped on the tip of my nose. I peeked up. A suspended leg, with some flesh still hanging on, greeted me. Fuck! I stood on my toes and bit on the bone that stuck out, desperately trying to pull it down.
As the rotten flesh gave in, the bone slipped out and hit the wet ground. I was so focused on the task at hand that I didn’t notice I was being watched from the other side.
When the footsteps finally reached me, I grabbed the bone with my toes and jumped back to the chair. I then slid the bone slightly under it and pretended to be unconscious again.
I flinched as something hit the bars repeatedly, screaming at the top of its head like a wild animal. When the thing finally retreated, I got back to work and managed to bring the shard of glass closer to the bars.
At this point, I was drenched in cold sweat and several minutes had passed by. I cut myself free and tried to unlock the cell. It didn’t budge.
Now more panicked than ever, I looked around myself in the cell to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I was.
There was some sort of vent I could fit through on the right-side wall. If I were quick enough, it would take me only ten minutes to climb up the suspended limbs and reach the vent.
As I was having these thoughts, the moment of truth came much sooner than I anticipated. This time, they were coming for me, I just knew it.
I placed the chair close to the wall and climbed up to the vent while keeping myself steady on the suspended limbs.
When I finally made it to the vent, I looked down and locked eyes with a morbid creature. Its cocked head displayed a mix of confusion and amusement. Its fangs bloody and sharp, even from this distance. Then it came to life.
“Mikail, where you going? The fun’s only begun.”
Without looking back, I escaped through the vent and made it to the walled garden. They had slashed my wheels, so I ventured into the dense woods instead and spent the night there, cowering behind an uprooted tree for hours on no end.
As soon as the sun rose above the horizon, I hightailed it out of there and managed to reach the path that led to the city.
I quit broadcasting after this incident and retreated from social media altogether. My fans were heartbroken, and many demanded to know what had happened to me that night.
I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t even tell the guys.
It kept ringing.
I kept hearing my phone ring. Even in my dreams. Like a never-ending nightmare, I felt my blood sucked dry each night as if those fangs bore into my skin.
Maybe they did. I couldn’t tell what was real or a hallucination anymore.
Something dropped on my face.
I looked up.
“There you are. Mikail.”
The End.
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