Friday 5 December 2008

Following Annabel (part two)



His juddering hand pressed lightly upon the white door, to see if it could be pushed open. The door felt like ice. Such a jolt of cold went through him when he touched it that it almost repelled him from the house altogether. But then came the moans of Annabel filtering through the cracks around the door, he had to enter.
Wrapping his hand in his sleeve, he gripped the door handle. It seemed almost frozen to the touch but it turned and the door slowly opened before him. He took a step back as a blast of icy, reeking air flowed out over him.
The man staggered a little under the charnel stench, but stumbled forward into the room. His senses were reeling; he rubbed his eyes and lurched towards something he might hold onto. In the strange twilight of the room, he saw red carpets running into purple walls. He found a supporting pillar and leant against it in a daze.
There was a strange fog in this room, it was stopping him from understanding quite what was real here. He tried to look through it, to peer through the wisps to the motion beyond, the place where he could hear Annabel struggling.
He stumbled on then, brushing the effervescing smoke away and walking into a couch, which he rolled over and lolled upon in a stupor. He could see her now, Annabel in the fog. Her eyes were closed and she was leaning back against the cloud that enveloped her. Her black blouse had been removed and she was twitching a little and murmuring in seeming ecstasy.
Around her, the cloud was snaking into some kind of form. Nothing precise and definite, but there was a sensation of form, of a grey shape stroking her body and holding her in space.
The sight of Annabel’s bare white breasts, moving in the asphixiating room, shook the man and angered him. His fear draining away, he ran to the girl and grabbed her, wresting her from the spectral form that danced upon her flesh. She opened her eyes then, but her pupils had rolled back in her head.
She pushed the man back against the wall, kissing him and scratching at his neck. He wanted to succumb to this, all of this, the reason why she brought him here, the limits of strange lust and desire, the complete wanton destruction and devastation of the soul. But he opened his eyes then, and saw the fine grey mist grow thicker and less gaseous. Its form grew darker, like an oily pulp, pulsating and flowing forward towards them.
A thousand futures seemed to race through his mind as the sludge descended. Would he give himself to an eternity of urges and feelings?
Instead, he pushed Annabel hard, back into the open arms of the thing that possessed her and ran for the door. He flew from the room and bounded down the stairs. He noticed a thin layer of smoke trailing from under the doors in the ground floor rooms and he kicked at the grey mist as he pulled open the front door.
Spying a motor-scooter further down the street, he hopped on and forced the engine to start. He heard the gutteral scream of a young woman from a room somewhere above him and saw thick black smoke pouring from a shuttered window. Not for a second, though, did he think to go back for her. Not for a moment.
Soon he was propelled along upon a moped, whizzing out of the warren of the back streets; every second getting closer to sanity.

1 comment:

Sucharita Sarkar said...

Now that was scary, like a subconscious fear oozing out and strangling consciousness and sanity. No wonder he ran out on Annabel.