twenty eight. monster in the marsh

twenty eight

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↳ monster in the marsh ↲

WHEN I WAS FIVE, I cracked my head open of the edge of a dock.

It was an old vintage thing, all creaky, and swallowed in thick moss. The rotten boards were splitting apart, the whole platform rocking with the water like a ship at sea. Mom was back in the tree line, rocking my newborn sister to sleep. She softly called out, instructing me to slow down, but I was too busy chasing the heron gliding into the water, my feet pattering so wild and erratic that a passerby may have confused me for a monster that crawled straight out of the marsh.

It happened too quick. I stepped on a slickened part of overgrowth, and the corner of the dock greeted my skull. Then, I was engulfed in the swamp. Sinking into the warm, blackened water. The blood reaching out around me like an oil spill.

As I lost a grip on reality, everything went still, like time had made a silent promise to seize its own existence. My mother had been able to pull me from the water and rush me to the doctors, but I didn't remember any of that. The only lingering memory was the feeling of being in a veil—one caught between life and the stillness of what lay beyond.

Ten years later, I was slipping under the same spell. Unable to decipher what was real, or imaginary. I knew I hadn't just fallen off a dock, but my body was enveloped in warmth, similar to how I'd been that day, sinking into the water.

Something was calling out. Not just something, but someone. The voice was unintelligible, impossible to understand. It sounded most similar to the soft static murmur of my old TV, infomercials the only thing left playing in the late hours of the night.

Suddenly, my skin tingled, becoming aware of the hands on my face. I thought that when my eyes had the ability to open, I might find myself before the Lord I wasn't even sure existed. The hands felt safe. That was all I knew. They were enticing me further towards the warmth.

Then, a voice came through. A voice that must have belonged to the pair of hands.

Get

up.

Get up,

Get

up!

As they continued to call, the sounds became submerged. Like my ears were filling with the Okefenokee swamp water, once again. Silence had coaxed me back into oblivion, coming across my limbs like the medicine the vets used to put our old bloodhound down.

Sarge was a good dog. My father had bought him to hunt, but he turned out to be more of a homebody, barking up a storm when Dad tried to load him into his truck. He much preferred sleeping on the edge of my bed, and fattening up on my leftovers. He was playful with me, yet gentle with Allie. He curled up at my Mom's feet when she stood in the kitchen, making dinner. When my father would come home many beers deep, Sarge would growl at the smell wafting off him, until he retreated into his room.

I could still remember the two men that it took to lift our dog's limp body from the clinic, into our trunk. The way my mother had taken extra time to roll him in his favorite blanket before we drove home and buried him.

It had been my first real understanding of death. I was able to grasp the concept that Sarge wouldn't be digging his way up from the heavy soil above him. I'd cried the entire day. Made myself red in the face, eyes so puffy they were painful to open the next morning.

W a k e

u p!

All at once, I was pulled from my dreamlike state. My eyes fluttered open, blinking rapidly to adjust to the morning light shining through the blinds. I was laid upon a plush bed, the soft blanket cradling my aching limbs. I pulled it over my head, sighing at the darkness it brought on.

I didn't want to get up, just yet. I needed a few more minutes.

"Please." A voice sobbed, belonging to someone different than the last. It was unrecognizable.

Okay, you win.

I sat myself up, adjusting to the new scenery. I was in a room, painted a bizarre yellow color. It was decorated in beach themed paintings, and small trinkets like conch shells, sand dollars, and dried starfish skeletons.

How odd. My room didn't usually look like this in Alexandria. The room in front of me reminded me of somewhere else. . . somewhere I couldn't put a name to, but that I had been before, a long while ago.

"Dad, wake up!"

I pulled the covers back, my feet making contact with the cold floor. I opened my door, making way to the staircase. With my hand on the railing, I quickly took the steps, stopping dead still at the last plank.

Carl. He was here, standing over a very ill-looking man laid out on the couch. I blinked, focusing in on his beaten face. Rick. The image in front of me was flickering like a picture book. This scene looked all too familiar. Why was nostalgia eating at my insides?

I'd seen this before. I'd been here.

"Is he dead?" I found myself asking out loud.

Why couldn't I control my own voice?

He looked at me with an angered expression then. "Why are you down here? Do I need to put you on a leash, or something?"

I fought the nausea that swept over me. I should have been angered at his words, but I wasn't. It didn't even seem like he was talking to me. It all made me terribly confused, and all the more distressed. I felt as if I'd been asleep for months, only now rising from the thick slumber.

"What time is it?" I asked, my voice strained and quiet.

When I looked to the window, it was pitch-black outside. Snapping my head back to the front, I noted that Carl was gone. If it wasn't for the creak sounding at the top of the staircase, I wouldn't have been able to pin-point him in the darkened space. But—there he was, standing straight as a rod, staring at me from above.

"Don't you get it?" His voice sounded out.

The echo of it made it seem like the house itself was completely empty, no furniture to absorb any of the sound.

Every muscle in my body became rigid with fear. "No. Am I supposed to?"

"You tell me." His voice was now in my ear, but he was gone. "You brought me here."

Carl was no longer at the top of the stairs, and not by the couch. Even Rick's body was absent. Nobody was here but me, in this terrible, dark home.

A whimper sounded out from my throat as I scanned the living room. "Have I done something wrong?"

Hands then wracked against the door. Knocking. Scratching. The thickened rope tied around the silver knob began to loosen, allowing me to hear the pleading voices coming from behind it. They were begging. For what—I did not know.

Carl was now beside me. I couldn't see his face. It was too blurry. Too shaded by the hat upon his head.

"All of this is wrong."

An intense heat rose in my abdomen, sparking a shock to travel throughout my body. I looked down, gasping at the sight of Carl's blade lodged in me. My hands wrapped around the handle in defense, trying to remove the pressure. But he held the weapon here, unwilling to move. I couldn't breathe. Each time I tried, I felt the metal tip shift inside. All I could do was pant. The blood was soaking through my shirt. I removed my hands, silent tears burning my skin as I examined the red. He turned his head up, and finally looked me in the eye. His weapon then ripped from me, and I succumbed to the ground.

The banging at the door wasn't stopping. It was only becoming worse. The dead had created enough of a gap to reach their hands through. I could better hear their calls now. They were asking me to join them. To let go and belong to them—only them.

I attempted crawling on the floor, fingernails digging into the wood as I tried to distance myself from it all. Before I could even make it an inch, I was being pulled by my legs, my slippery hands squeaking against the hardwood in an attempt to get a grip. A hiss left my throat as I was flipped onto my back. Carl was now kneeling over me, his blade raised high overhead.

No one other than the devil would get a kick out of me being brutally murdered by Carl. That had to be it. I must have been in hell. How long would it last? Would he end my life, only for me to wake up again, just as confused as the last time? Would this happen over and over for eternity?

Was that what was happening?

"You have to wake up," He said, eyes glassy now. "This is the only way. Forgive me."

The blade plunged deep into my chest.

▬ ▬ ▬

I sputtered and coughed, my pupils dilating and contracting in an attempt to adjust to my surroundings. There was light. Lots of it. I thought maybe I was looking straight up at the moon, before I dialed in on it, and understood it to be a flashlight.

A shaken sigh of relief came from beside me. Glenn. He was kneeled down beside my slumped-over body, his hands holding onto my shoulders. Noah was on the other side, his palm against my face like he'd been touching it in an attempt to have me open my eyes.

"We don't have time for this!" Nicholas panicked, standing a few paces behind them.

Noah faced him. "Nicholas, for once in your Goddamn life, shut the fuck up!"

My head weakly dropped. I couldn't hold it up on my own. A shroud of disorientation brushed over me. Their faces were blurry, just like Carl's had been, in that awful dream. All I could be certain of, was that there were many pairs of hands on me. After a slight pull by them, pain. A horrendous amount of it, forcing a gutted scream to tear through my throat.

It was this sobering pain that finally caused me to take in my surroundings. Expending all of my energy to tilt my head up, I caught sight of a bloodied body pushed through the rod of a fractured shelf I sat against. It had many sharp metal arms pointing out, like it had snapped in half. This person had been skewed by one. He was utterly limp, and from the looks of it, not alive.

Aiden. It was Aiden.

After the slightest twitch of my body, it dawned on me that he wasn't alone. Directly through the side of my upper abdomen, an inch or two of metal was bursting through my own skin. We'd been close enough to one another to be blown back, into the same death trap.

Glenn's skin was stained with mahogany. Crimson, garnet, maroon. An array of colors trapped in his very hands. Was that mine? A wave of panic washed through me, one that brought all feeling back into my body. It hurt. Oh, how it hurt. There was nothing else I could possibly focus on, apart from the affliction.

My lip trembled. I was going to die. This was not the kind of thing that one could recover from.

Noah's hand subsequently brought my chin up, connecting our eyes. "We're getting you out of here. Don't let go."

"No," I begged, unable to imagine going through another round of being pulled on. "Please, God no."

The two looked at each-other. Despite my request, they leaned forward, each taking ahold of an arm. Glenn barked a command at Noah, and they were then both putting a hand on my back to provide a bit of support in the action they were about to carry out. I picked up on the snarls coming from the depths of the building. The groans sounded spaced out now, as if the cage had bursted open as a result of the bomb. They would tear me apart, still alive. And that, even then, would be better than this.

"They're coming." Nicholas called out, looking behind himself. He took a few steps closer, his gun aimed at the aisles. "We get her off of this now, or we leave."

"We're not leaving you." Glenn gripped my arm tighter, now nodding at Noah. "Three. Two—"

"No!" I shouted through grit teeth. "Stop. Stop!"

" O N E . "

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • · 2,121 words • 2:00am

reese's puffs reese's puffs...

2025 edit: I changed this chapter sm guys...1000 more words and twice the amount of agony.

sincerely yours,𝓜 ᥫ᭡.