Vile Children Go to Hell

Vile Children Go to Hell

I used to be one of those people that would scoff at others who believed in the unexplained/paranormal; ghosties and goblins, demon possession, aliens, Bigfoot etc. You know the type. Very superstitious. Always coming up with these crazy conspiracy theories about how aliens helped the Egyptians build the pyramids and how there are actual ghosts in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, or how fairies are definitely real because their cousin's friend's sister totally saw one that one time hovering above their backyard swimming pool. Please.

I figured that these people were either just attention-starved twits and/or paranoid bullshitters just trying to get a rise out of and spook others. Of course there was a natural explanation, there was always a natural explanation. That is, until something happened to me that to this day, I'm still not sure I can fully explain. Something that I've scoured the depths of my mind for for days looking for some kind of scientific or naturalistic explanation that works. I've searched all over the internet and my local library for something that makes sense, and I have yet to find anything worthwhile. I always come up empty.

I saw something a very long time ago that I wish I never had. Way back when, in the days when human advancement was just starting to head in the right direction towards better understanding our complicated world. The mid-2010s, late 2015 to be exact. Yes, I'm old. Even in the highly technologically advanced modern world we live in today, I still haven't the slightest idea of what it could have been that I saw. But I know what it wanted me to think it was.

I do know, however, that it was something evil. Something unholy. Something that still brings showers of hot tears cascading down my cheeks and sends an icy, frozen chill coursing through my blood. It still makes my knees weak and my head pound with confusion and fear. My father saw it too, but he refuses to even speak of that accursed day. These days, I visit him a lot up on Salamander Pond Blv. The old folks' home. Making sure he's getting the proper care, regular meals and hygiene taken care of since he is no longer mobile, and just because I miss him sometimes. I often can't stay for long, but when I can, I ask him sometimes if he remembers that day. His body usually stiffens, slumping down in his wheelchair as if he is trying to hide from the very memory itself. Pretends like he doesn't remember it, but the times I dare to bring it up I am quickly silenced by a swift but gentle swat across the face and a knowing, watery-eyed nod. He remembers.

 I remember when I was a naive young thing how I used to laugh at those supposedly misguided people who believed in the paranormal and life after death, tell them they were paranoid and needed to get out more. I was much too smart for that shit, or at least that's what I used to tell myself. In a way, it made me feel better about things that confused me or made me feel uneasy to assure myself that I was the smartest little shit in any given situation. Maybe I was just afraid. I didn't believe in religion either, of any sort. I didn't want to. The very idea of being damned for eternity in the afterlife for finite sins made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I thought that no just God could or would send his creations to Hell, or damn them to a life of eternal suffering on this earth for the things they had done to themselves and others. Now, I'm not quite so sure. Is God real? I don't know. But I think the devil is.

It all started nearly 40 years ago on a chilly October evening. I can still remember it now, as much as it pains me to do so. October of 2015. I had just turned seventeen years old, and my family (meaning my father and stepmom; my "real" mom had disappeared when I was just a baby) was moving out of our old house and into a cheaper apartment. My dad had just been laid off his job working for Dish network as a satellite technician, repairing people's satellites that weren't picking up a signal and making sure their TVs were turned to the right setting and such. You would be surprised how clueless some people can be when it comes to things like that.

He dealt with a lot of difficult customers working there all those years. College-aged stoners living away from home for the first time who couldn't figure out why the TV wouldn't work and demanded he fix it "or else" abounded. The satellite was usually either crushed or blocked with a branch from a thunderstorm, plain as day. These people usually frustrated him the most. They were so hard to deal with, and would absolutely insist on informing him how expensive their high-tech ( for back then) HD flatscreen TVs were. Most likely not paid for themselves. Practically threatening him if they thought he was "handling them" too roughly. Guess those guys had a hard time even knowing what was what without mommy and daddy around.

Old housebound, hillbilly cat ladies in the middle of fucking nowhere, screeching and hollering about their precious magic boxes not doing what they're supposed to. Usually something along the lines of, *ahem* "Gad dammit where did that effin picture go, repairmayun? I just cain't figger it out. We ain't had no rain or shit recently, far as I can tell. Well shoot, I ain't seen the lighta day in a while now, but weather channel said we ain't had no rain. 'Fore the damn picture cut off, that is. Jus hurry up an fix it, cause I gotta watch muh programs 'fore I can git to sleep tonight, ya hear?"

As you can probably imagine, my dad came home exhausted every day. Often times he would just come home, grab a six pack of Blue Moon from the fridge, and sprawl out onto the couch, drinking himself into mind-numbing oblivion until he finally passed out. I never gave him grief for it either.

Even at a very young age, I understood more than most that life takes its toll on everyone eventually, and to cut my poor father a break. After all, he was doing the best he could to support my stepmom and I because she outright refused to work. Not to mention his life hadn't exactly been the easiest. I remember being four years old, watching him passed out cold on the couch, and covering up his trembling, sweat-soaked body with an old blanket my mom had knitted for him in home economics class. She was dating my dad at the time she had knitted it, who was a fresh out of college twenty-three year-old while she was still a senior in high school. She had disappeared when she was only seventeen years old, the exact age that I am today. Kind of haunting, really. Dropped out of school when she found out she was pregnant with me, then disappeared only a few months after I was born. Four to be exact.

I never knew her, but I knew she looked like me. I never had seen a picture of her before, but dad had always told me so. He's told me everything about her and his life when she used to live with him for those short thirteen months. Nine months pregnant with me and four months after I was born. Says it felt like a lifetime to him, though. I could tell he missed her so much, telling me all those stories. It killed him on the inside to even speak her name again. I used to catch him oftentimes, looking at old snapshots of her and sobbing, trying to suppress the urge to cry out in animalistic agony. He wasn't  always able to.

Every time I walked into the room while he was doing this, he quickly stuffed the pictures back into the small wooden box they had been previously resting in. Then he locked it. He absolutely refused to let me see those pictures of her. No matter how many times I whined, begged, and pleaded. Anytime I ever dared to ask why, I would get the same exact confusing answer. "I don't want you to have to see your beautiful mother like that." At the time, I had no idea what on earth he could've meant. At a certain point though, I just quit asking. It never got me anywhere.

Like I mentioned, my mom gave birth to me when she was just a girl of seventeen, a young and inexperienced student. Most people these days like to look down upon teen mothers, but my mom was nothing like the irresponsible hard-partying stereotypical teen moms you used to see on MTV back in those days. (Do they still have MTV nowadays?) She dropped out of school and sacrificed her future so she could focus on taking care of me full-time and making sure that my future was secure. Back then, my dad was doing part-time modeling work down at some skeevy agency in Brooklyn. He never enjoyed it, but he had the looks and the body and it paid the bills and put food on the table, so he did it for his family.

 Mom never liked the fact that he was hanging around oftentimes flirtatious, stunningly gorgeous female models with the sculpted bodies of Greek goddesses all day while she stayed home taking care of me, but she rarely spoke up because my dad was working so hard for us and if he wanted to cheat he would find a way to do it anyway. I guess my mom was very insecure, because my dad was very attractive when he was a young man. Shaggy platinum blonde hair cascading to his shoulders, tan skin and sea foam blue-green eyes. 6'5 and 250 lbs of pure muscle. Saw pictures of him back in his day and, not to sound pervy or anything, but I definitely would have given him a double-take if I saw his younger self on the street now. You know, if he wasn't my father and all.

My mom would often worry if he stayed out too late, worried that one day the temptation of infidelity would be too much.Women (very beautiful women, from what he's told me) would often come on to him even while my mother was right there, walking down the street with him and pushing me along in my little pink stroller. Sometimes the attention was so persistent and crude that they had to cross the street or just go back to the house. He would constantly have to assure Mom that those women meant nothing to him, and he had no desire whatsoever to sleep with them. Which was true, by the way. He never cheated on her. Never would. He loved her far too much.

Despite my dad's faithfulness, my mother had always been very insecure and obsessed and fretted about her appearance a lot. My dad of course thought she was the most perfect angel he'd ever seen, but she never believed him when he complimented her. Growing up with a physically and emotionally abusive mother and no father most likely had a lot to do with it. Growing up, her mother would constantly berate her about her appearance, intelligence, work ethic, interest, hobbies, weight, grades, clothes, friends, and general perceived moral failing. Always referred to her as a VILE child and a mistake who should have been aborted or died in the womb, just shriveled up and fallen out into the toilet like the piece of shit she was.You can probably guess that as soon as she found out my mom was pregnant, she was booted out of the house and onto the streets until she moved in with my dad.

All that abuse in one lifetime, as I know very well from just living life, takes a toll on your self-esteem. Your mental health. Your very soul and essence as a human being. You begin to forget who you are as a person and only think of yourself as a thing, a body to be looked at for everyone's approval. I know that feeling all too well. I experience it every day of my life.

When my mom was only eight years old, she developed an eating disorder. Bulimia. A bad case, too, which lasted up until the day she disappeared. My dad, in moments of drunkenness he most likely doesn't even remember, used to tell me stories about her "episodes." He remembers a very particularly bad one that looks like it almost physically pains him to even speak of. The look of anguish on his face when he speaks of that story is indescribable. I can see the hurt in his usually sparkling, bright blue-green eyes, his nose and forehead wrinkled with disgust and another strong emotion I can't really pin.

I can see the dry lump that always forms in his throat. His calloused hands become cold and clammy and beads of sweat drip down from the top of his head, running through his hair and dampening the blonde locks tumbling down over his creased forehead and falling nearly into his eyes. A lot of times, though, I see something else. Fear. Pure fear. Something bad, something awful. Demons swimming in his head worse than you could possibly imagine. It haunts me that I will never truly know the extent of this pain he feels, following him around like a black dog day after day and year after year. No relief. Weighing so heavily upon his broad shoulders, the shoulders I used to think belonged to a superhero who could protect me from anything, who would never let anything or anyone hurt me. But there's only so much a man can take.

He remembers coming home from work at the agency one day to find the house in extreme disarray unlike anything he had ever witnessed before. Obviously, he was in shock. First thing he did was check my crib to make sure I was okay. My Mom was nowhere in sight among the trash, but he could hear her wretching in the bathroom. Gagging and spitting liquid into the toilet. Once he saw me sleeping peacefully within the confines of my pale lavender crib, pacifier in mouth and clutching my favorite stuffed lamb with the pink and purple bowtie, he scanned the house cautiously. He didn't even have to guess what my mother had been doing all day. Why wouldn't she get help? He surveyed the disgusting room, and an intense wave of unease rippled through him like a tidal wave.

 Dozens upon dozens of candy wrappers, empty jelly jars, half-eaten fancy bakery cakes with plastic star decorations and bright pink icing smeared haphazardly all over the white carpet, empty tupperware containers, heavily-stained cracked bowls with small puddles of puke-green pea soup pooling at the bottom, empty Little Debbie boxes, Little Caesar's boxes, empty pie tins, broken and smashed plates with peanut butter and some unknown white substance (whipped cream?) all over them, and 3 boxes of Cheezits of all flavors that had been ripped open from the sides, roaches skittering in and out of the little holes my mother had obviously made when she had carelessly dug into the boxes with her fingernails. But the worst of it all was the sounds and the gut-wrenching, putrefying smells coming from the bathroom in that house. The door wide open, splattered with a liquid-y brown substance that was oozing down to the black and white tile floor.

 He could make out chunks of what appeared to be half-digested macaroni noodles and thick, massive, sticky globs of chewed pepperoni mixed with what was clearly blood. My father was afraid to even peer in that bathroom for paralyzing fear of what lie inside, but his growing worry for my mother and guilt for just standing there while she hurt herself like this was eating away at him. He knew all about her illness, and they had had many arguments about it before, interventions, and even threats of hospitalization, but he had never in his life witnessed an episode this bad before. Most of the time he tried to give her her space even though he worried himself sick over her terrible habits and ever-shrinking frame. He had nightmares of her dropping dead out of nowhere from heart attacks or passing out in the street and getting hit by cars, bone and blood and intestine mixed with the gravel and dust in the road.

All of a sudden, the sickening gagging, choking, and gurgling sounds coming from inside that room came to a stop. Complete and utter silence. A loud metallic banging and what sounded like cracking and shattering bone made my dad nearly jump two feet in the air. One final choked gurgle, a low moaning sound, and then...nothing. Complete silence, once again. Wisely choosing to follow his instincts this time, my dad immediately bolted for the vomit-stained door, trudging through spoiled-smelling tubs of melted strawberry ice cream and hearing a sickening "crunch" as his weight came down on the hollow shell of a big, fat brown cockroach. "Amyyyyy!" He screamed at the top of his lungs my mother's name, but there was no reply. Not even a peep. He knew something was very, very wrong. He made it to the door and threw caution to the wind, scrambling and nearly tripping over himself to get inside. What he saw made his heart skip twenty beats and his body freeze in sheer terror.

Lying on the floor, body limp as a ragdoll and drenched in vomit and blood, was my mom. Her head was resting on the edge of the bathtub, blood pouring out of her ears and nose. Her limbs were sprawled out, lifeless. There was so much vomit in the sink and toilet that both of them were clogged, overflowing. Bubbling over the top of the seat and dripping down onto the floor in a foamy mess. Some of it was mixed in the bathtub, along with the the thick half-clotted clumps of blood gushing forth like a geyser from my mother's massive head wound. The front of her flowery dress was soaked in vomit, fresh blood, piss, and some leftover icing from that damned cake. Strings of vomit and large chunks of food were tangled in her long brown hair. Apparently while forcing her sickly, weakened body to expel every last drop she had stuffed it to the brim with, she had gone into cardiac arrest and fainted. Her head was cracked on the tub, and she wasn't breathing. I started to stir in my crib, letting out high-pitched wails and screams while my dad hyperventilated by the door, nearly screaming himself.

This is the part of the story where Dad always breaks down crying, and can't go on anymore. The only other details I really know is that he called 911, she was taken to the hospital and revived, and the next week she had decided to move back into her mother's apartment, claiming that she couldn't take the pressure of having to compete with those model women Dad worked with. After she moved back in with her mom, who actually welcomed her with open arms knowing the severity of her condition and having missed her daughter despite past mistreatment, she went missing a week later. The police questioned her mother, but she claimed she had no idea what happened and was later dropped as a suspect after they'd found nothing. A year later, she moved out of the apartment and into some beach house in Jersey. I think, at least that's what my dad told me. I'm pretty sure that's what was said. I think he also said the apartment complex she used to live in was torn down, but again, I may be fuzzy on the details. Either way, she no longer lives in that building. I'm not exactly sure where it even was. Even to this day, nobody has any clue whatsoever what happened to my mom all those years ago. Except me.

I can still remember it like it happened only days ago, clear as a bell. A loud, head-poundingly obnoxious bell haunting the very recesses of my consciousness. Haunting my dreams.Right on the cusp, but always there to remind me that nothing is ever what it seems. My dad, my stepmother, and I were unpacking our belongings from a rusty, broken-down old moving van and loading them into the living room of our brand new apartment in Manhattan. It was a grimy, old, solemn-looking brick building, and the inside living space wasn't much better. Peeling yellowish-white paint in every room, kitchen and bathroom that smelled like mold and fungus, and a horrible looking beat-up faded powder blue carpet probably infested with fleas, ticks, roaches, or god knows what else.

 A small black earwig was slowly inching its way up the wall behind the tub in the bathroom. A wall that, somehow, stood out from the others. It looked...newer somehow. In better condition. And I couldn't really explain it, but the structure looked different. Like it was made of plywood or something hollow underneath, crudely painted a stark faux-cheery white in comparison to the peeling, yellow wallpaper covering the rest of the dirty apartment. I decided to give it a little tap, just out of curiosity. It was indeed hollow and, just as I suspected, felt like a thin plywood barrier was under the fresh coat of paint. It felt flimsy and amateurish, most likely not put there by a professional or even originally there at all. Maybe I was just overthinking it, maybe I was tired from carrying all those heavy boxes up all those stairs. Even still, I couldn't shake this weird feeling.

Something seemed out of place about this wall. It looked out of place. Like it hadn't originally part of the building, like someone had erected it recently and painted over it with thin, liquid-y cheap paint and an unsteady paint roller. Some of it looked crudely overlapped. Definitely not done by a pro. How odd. I gave a tap to the wall just outside the hall and hit a very hard, sturdy surface. Like wood layered over brick. Yep. No other walls were like that one. Sure they were old and peeling, but you could tell the walls had always been there since the original building of the complex and the old chipping paint still seemed like it had once looked professional. My thoughts were interrupted by my father's booming, deep voice right next to my ear. I jumped.

 "Whatcha lookin' at, kiddo?" he asked me in an out-of-breath voice, patting me on the shoulder and wiping the sweat off his brow as he put down the heavy box of books he was carrying on the ground. They quickly dropped to the hard linoleum with a thud. I turned around and looked at him, not quite sure what to say. "Uh, I..." I trailed off, not wanting to sound like a weirdo. "Well, it's just this wall. It looks, um, different from the other walls. In the bathroom and all around the house. I guess I was just studying it." He scrunched his face into a puzzled expression, dropping on one knee to my level to further examine the strange wall. "Hmmm," he grunted, feeling the surface of the wall and lightly tapping it with his knuckle. He stood up again and turned to me. "Well, I'm no expert, but this feels like plywood under here. It doesn't feel solid." He tapped on it again with his fist, this time harder. Hollow, still hollow. "Maybe something put up by the previous owners?" I suggested. Whoever they were.

"Could be..." he said quizzically, his words trailing off. We both suddenly noticed the strange smell that seemed to be emanating from behind the plywood barrier. How could I have not noticed it first thing? The smell was strong. Like a mixture of spoilt milk, expired food, some type of fungi or mold, and the putrefied stench of a long-dead animal. There was also a strangely burnt or chemical-y smell. So VILE. If the torturous afterlife of a man damned to Hell smelled like anything, this was it.

"Oh dear Lord Jesus Christ, that smell!" my dad gagged, holding his nose and sticking out his tongue. I did the same, suddenly overwhelmed by this pungent odor violating my burning nasal cavity. "How could I not have noticed this before?" I asked Dad in a nasally voice, still holding my nostrils closed for dear life. "I don't know, honey," he said, coughing. "But I do know one thing. Tomorrow, me and your mother are going to get my power tools and this goddamn thing is coming down!" I cringed. I hated it when he referred to my stepmom as my mother. She wasn't my mother. She wasn't. How dare he say that, after all we've been through. After we lost her. Possibly forever. I sighed and stormed out of the bathroom, moving down the hall and exhaustively flinging myself onto my creaky but comfy old bed from our old house that had already been moved into my new bedroom. I was just hoping for a few minutes of rest...

 I awoke, hours later and very confused, with a gasp. How long had I been out? Why was it so fucking cold in here? I glanced out my window. It was pitch dark out, save for the pale moonlight wafting through the window and spilling out onto the pale blue, stained carpet. Shit, I must have been out for a while because when my dad and I were in the bathroom discussing that strange wall it had only been 5:30. I was sure of it. I picked up my phone off the nightstand beside my bed and checked the time. 3:00 AM. Fuck. I had three messages from Twitter and a few broken-up, unreadable texts from my friend Matthew, who liked to stay up late texting me random things while getting either stoned or shit-faced drunk. Either way, it was too late and I was too tired for this shit. Plus I had school tomorrow. It was FREEZING in this room. God damn it, who messed with the thermostat? Probably Melinda, (my stepmother) as she was always complaining of being too hot. Forcing myself to sit up, I made my way down the hall and to the bathroom. I wasn't even really thinking of the strange wall at the time, I just had to pee.

 I walked in to the bathroom, noticing it was somehow even colder in there, and  flicked the light on. I gasped, nearly paralyzed with fear. I could feel my heart working faster, about to burst through my rib cage and out the front of my chest. It was only for a split second, less than a second actually. More like a millisecond. But I KNOW what I saw. The wall had a large gaping crack split down the center of it, and peeking through was an absolutely grotesque, unholy image of what could only loosely be described as a human eyeball, surrounded by leathery green and black skin.

 The smell was stronger than it had ever been before, and I almost heaved up the remains of my early dinner. The parts of the eye that should have been healthy, lubricated and white were as yellow as the AM sun and crusted over in a thick layer of transparent film. A cruel, shriveled cerulean iris with a dilated pupil blown out to three times the normal size stared right at me. The skin surrounding the horrible, jaundiced, dried-out organ appeared to be black with rot, covered by some kind of nauseating moss. As fast as it appeared, it was gone. No crack in the wall, no anything. I timidly walked over to the wall, my heart jumping inside of my throat. I'm not sure exactly what I expected to find as I felt my trembling hands along the hollow painted plywood, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Well, besides the wall in and of itself. I sighed, my rapid heartbeat starting to calm down. It had to be my half-asleep imagination running wild, probably manifesting these strange visions as just a representation of my uneasiness about that wall. That had to be it. I mean, what else could it have possibly been?

Beginning to question if I really was going batshit, I sat down, pissed, and reached for the toilet paper. After I was finished, I flushed and got up to wash my hands. I turned the squeaky, rusted faucet, but nothing came out. I tried the other faucet handle, thinking maybe this one was just broken. Nope. This one wasn't working either. Were the pipes maybe clogged? Did we have our water turned on yet? Funny, I distinctly remember my dad running his dirty hands under the kitchen sink for a few seconds after he had finished loading in the couch and dining chairs. Plus the toilet flushed. Maybe the sink only worked in the kitchen. God, I hated this stupid apartment already.

 Just as I was getting ready to walk to the kitchen to wash my hands so I could go back to sleep, I heard a sound that made me stop in my tracks. It was like a squishing, squeezing, wet...almost throbbing sound. It sounded like something trying to come up through clogged pipes. Faintly, I thought I could make out a noise that somehow seemed to resemble gagging. Maybe even choking or sputtering? Ignoring my better judgment, I turned around.

 Facing me in the mirror above the sink wasn't my own reflection, but someone else. A girl, around my age, that I didn't recognize. Her eyes were the most beautiful sky blue eyes I have ever had the pleasure to behold. Her lips were full and soft, with a gentle upturned smile at the corners of her mouth. She had an adorable button nose, and long dark silky hair. She was wearing a dark blue belted dress decorated with dainty white flowers. She just looked back at me from the mirror and smiled a shy closed-mouthed smile, her soft healthy pink cheeks flushing a rosy red. I couldn't explain this feeling that washed over me. A feeling I hadn't felt in a very, very long time. Security. Peace. I felt like everything was going to be okay. I felt...comforted. Like someone was watching out for me. I had no idea who she was, but seeing this girl made me feel like I was the most loved and important person in this world. At least in her eyes.

 She flashed a genuine, happy smile at me, her pearly white teeth sparkling as much as her beautiful orbs the color of the cheery daytime sky. I felt so safe. It was surreal. I never wanted her to leave me, I wanted to go into that mirror and stay with her forever. I wasn't a lesbian, but this wasn't like that. It wasn't that kind of feeling. It was more like feeling a deep love for a close friend or even the warm fuzzies you got as a little kid when you fell off your bike and your grandma kissed your scraped knee and gave you a cookie and a hug. It felt like everything was right with the world. It felt like home. I didn't know the identity of the blue-eyed teen standing before me, but it was like we were long-lost kindred souls. That is really the best way I am able to explain it. I just don't have the words.

 I was snapped back to reality as a cold, wet, slimy sensation ran across my toes. I looked down, disgusted to see brownish green, slimy, chunky liquid pooling around my legs and feet. Squish, squash, splurt! A large chunk of something soft and moist plopped and stuck to the top of my right foot. I tried to shake it off, but it was sticky like an over-frosted cinnamon bun. That's when I realized. The squeezing, throbbing sound. It was this goo. Spurting forth from the faucet like some kind of polluted, sick brown waterfall.

 The room instantly filled with the smell of long-rotten, moldy food and rancid, spoiled milk. I realized that the brown liquid clumping and pooling around my feet was puke. Human vomit. I knew it, I'd smelt it before when I'd been sick or my dad would drink too much. Never this awful or strong a smell, though. This smelled like, in addition to vomit, it was mixed with...something else. That's when I saw the red and globs of what appeared to be flesh and hair begin to squeeze through the faucet with a sickening wet sound, plopping forth into the sink. Clumps of long, greasy brown hair. Soaked with blood and covered in algae, followed only by more sick. A loud cracking sound made me snap my head back up to the mirror. Almost like bones popping or joints snapping back into their sockets.

The sweet and beautiful girl that comforted my very soul so much had been replaced with a grotesquely thin, rotten abomination of a being. It looked like a cosmic mistake, an abortion. Something that should never have existed in the first place. It was VILE. Its black, rotten skin was covered with a thick forest of moss, mushrooms and other fungus-like creatures, spores, pods, and bugs. Oh, the bugs. Maggots, flies, worms, beetles. All the squirming scum of the earth wriggling upon its wrinkled black skin, charred and mummified by rot. The creatures' bones could be seen jutting through its spindly arms right underneath a thin coating of barely-there leathery skin, like freeze-dried beef jerky. Somehow, despite all of the horrible and disgusting things violating my senses, I had a peculiar craving for a rare burger.

"Wha...what the hell is that thing?!" My mind was like a TV randomly flipping channels. I was unable to focus. My thoughts were racing and my cold hands were shaking and trembling with the spastic ferocity of a heroin addict's, overdosed and hallucinating on his deathbed. I felt a large knot in my stomach, only twister tighter the longer I looked at the horrendous, unearthly creature. The thing's eyes were an inhuman jaundiced yellow, a sticky and filmy layer coating their shriveled surface. Dark yellow crust gathered at the corners. It had bright blue irises, but its pupils were dilated to the point that it appeared as if the eyes (the parts that weren't a sickly bright yellow, of course) were pitch black. Its jaw hung open in an expression of agony and horror, and its skeletal hands were clasping at its throat in a stiffness that appeared to be rigor mortis.

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. More and more of the sickly puke poured out of the faucet in large globs, the smell only getting worse and worse. The horrific creature in the mirror continued to grasp at its throat, something obviously lodged in it. After minutes of what looked like torturous struggling for the inhuman thing, my body still frozen in fear, it stopped. The ghastly thing in the mirror went away, the faucets stopped leaking, and every single bit of evidence that could have ever indicated anything had ever been out of the ordinary was just...gone. No vomit covering the floor, no monster in the mirror. Nothing.

"Nikki!" I heard a deep male voice call out. Dad. I ran out of the bathroom and into the hall where my dad was looking for me. I jumped up straight into his arms, nearly knocking him off his feet. Something I haven't done since I was a little kid. I buried my head deep into his neck, feeling his stubble tickle my face. I was so terrified and confused, and I needed to feel safe. I needed to feel that sense of warmth and security I had felt earlier so strongly, looking at...

"Nikki, baby, are you alright? Are you hurt? What's wrong? What happened? Oh my god. I heard you screaming. Are you sure you're okay?" Screaming? I hadn't been screaming. Had I? I could barely move, much less audibly scream. I looked at my dad, his kind turquoise eyes reflecting like glowing stones in the dim light. His shaggy white blonde hair was messy from sleep, and framed his angular face like a piece-y halo. He was biting his lower lip, studying my face for signs of distress.  He looked so worried. "I'm fine, daddy," I said, although I was literally on the verge of tears. He gave me a small, closed-mouth smile and a pat on the head before setting me down on the ground. I didn't want to leave his embrace, but I didn't want him to worry about me or think something was wrong. So I shot him a quick smile back and a nod, then off to bed I went for the second time.

In the morning, I could barely drag myself out of the comfort and warmth that was my bed. I didn't feel like going to school, didn't feel like talking to anybody, and I certainly didn't feel like getting yelled at by Mr. Anderson for completely forgetting about last night's history assignment. Whatever. That shit could wait. I figured I would just play hooky today and deal with it tomorrow. After all, I didn't usually miss school and based on the previous night's circumstances, I felt that maybe I could use a day off to unwind and try to calm down. Even though, if I was being completely honest with myself, I knew that was next to impossible. However, I had to try. Try to forget what I saw.

I knew I couldn't tell anyone what had happened, and what I was planning to do next. But the curiosity inside of me was too strong. My logic was wrestling with my instincts, and I just had to know, or I could never get any peace. I was terrified, but I had to know what was wrong with this house. Even if I didn't want to go back into that bathroom, even though I told myself I wouldn't, I felt like I had no choice. I couldn't not know. Not now.

I peeped out my window, the morning rays streaming through the eggshell curtains and seeping their way into my puffy, bloodshot eyes. I was tired, but I had to find out. Outside my window,  I watched my dad walk out the door to the apartment and down the driveway towards his car. He was dressed in a black business suit and a dark blue tie. His layered blonde hair was slicked out of his face with gel, his usually eye-grazing bangs  combed back to reveal his sharp widow's peak. A style he usually only wore when going to formal events or trying to impress his bosses at work. He looked nervous and appeared to breathe deeply as he got into his old red Chevy and slowly backed out of the driveway, speeding off into the distance. I watched his car go by, getting farther and farther away until it was nothing more than a small red dot before disappearing altogether. It seemed so strange to me to see him dressed up in work clothes like that, because ever since I was seven he'd been working for Dish as a repair tech and always came home in dirty, tattered jeans and a sweaty ripped T-shirt. I really hoped he would find a job soon. We needed the money more than anything.

I thought I vaguely remembered him telling me yesterday that today he was going job-hunting and would be out all day. Perfect. I sat up in my bed and stretched. My bones felt weak and sore. My head felt stuffy and throbbed. I had to practically force myself to walk down the hall. As I made my way towards our small living room, I could see Melinda passed out on the couch,snoring. Her cheaply-dyed, tangled blood red hair was draped over her eyes like a bloody curtain, her matching red lipstick leftover from yesterday smeared across her sleeping face. Her half-closed hazel eyes were caked with clumps of mascara, raccoon-like black liner, and heavily smudged silver glitter eyeshadow. Drool was drizzling down her chin and puddling on the couch arm she had her head rested against, and she was snoring and snorting in her sleep like a lazy 50-year-old overweight man who nodded off on the basement couch digging into his bedridden mom's stash of Cheezdoodles. Real classy lady, quite the catch.

"So, does this woman just not give a fuck about anything, or...?" I thought to myself, rolling my eyes at her general lack of concern. Almost made me jealous, in a way. That she could just not care. About anything, seemingly. Her spring green tube top was almost pulled all the way down, dangerously close to exposing everything I had never wanted to see from her. Her faded, ripped low-rise jeans were just on the brink of revealing her naughty bits. Just slung low enough not to be illegal in public. Not to mention her lovely crusted-over, severely infected lower belly button piercing and poorly done blown-out Tinkerbell tattoo on her hip. Disgusting. Who wants to see their stepmother like that?!?I shook my head. Figured she would be passed out for a few more hours before she turned on the TV and started mindlessly consuming more of her "reality" shows and pathetic soap operas while noshing endlessly on fried kale chips. 'Cause, you know, healthy. What the fuck did my father see in this woman? She had nothing on Mom.

Rolling my eyes at her slobbishness, I quickly tiptoed back up the hall. I stopped dead in my tracks, though, when I came to the bathroom door. Not because I saw something I didn't want to see or some horrifying being was standing in front of me. No, nothing like that. Still, waves of uncertainty and unease washed over me, followed by a strong, unexplained giddiness. There, sitting in the middle of that ice-cold room, was a small wooden box.On the floor next to it lay a shiny silver padlock, broken into two pieces by some apparently blunt trauma.

That's when I looked up at the mirror and noticed it. On its slippery surface, still wet with condensation from whoever had used the shower this morning, (hint: likely not Melinda) were three short words, scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Some gloppy green slime traced the sloppy letters, as it someone had written the message with hands covered in swamp goo. The last word was smeared not with swampy green ick, but with crusty blackened red. I could barely make it out, and it didn't help that now the fog was turning into water droplets that ran through and smeared the sloppily-formed letters. I still could make out what it said, though just barely.

SEE? SO VILE!

A thick smear of green slime, dripping down from the question mark, was slowly making its way down the mirror. I looked down at the wooden box on the floor, and took a deep breath. I knew what it was. I recognized it. It was Dad's wooden photo box, the one he kept those pictures of Mom in. The ones he didn't want me to see. I knew, now, that it was finally the time. Kneeling down to the dirty linoleum floor slowly, I hesitated to open the box. What if I saw something that I didn't want to see, something that I couldn't unsee if I tried? Was that something I wanted to risk? Was it worth it to finally be able to lay my eyes upon my mother for the very first time since before I could form memories.

 My heart was ramming hard against my breastbone as I opened the soggy wooden lid. "VILE," I begin to think, my mind racing, struggling to make a connection to something I knew in the back of my mind I had heard before. Vile, vile, vile. But what was it that was vile? Who was it that was vile? Where have I heard that word? Who uttered that word?

 I looked down at the contents inside the mushy, rotting wood box. Old Polaroid snapshots separated into two stacks, every picture  face down to where I could only see the blank black squares on the back of them. Those black squares were like evil voids, taunting and daring me to turn the yellowed photographs around and look upon what waited me on the other side.

In a moment of fleeting bravery, I reached out my hand to pick up the first photo in the stack. As I did, I could feel the temperature in the room drop considerably. That same stinging, nipping cold as last night. That horrifying night. My teeth chattered at the sudden chill. I draped the hoodie I had slept in wrapped around my waist over my shoulders and put the warm fleece hood over my head. Still freezing. It felt like there was a draft coming from a window, but that was impossible because there were no windows in the room. Thinking back on it now, I definitely remember where it was coming from. Behind, or possibly underneath, that flimsy plywood barrier behind the tub. I'm sure of it.

 I almost cut my finger as I nervously grasped the sharp edges of the worn photograph, slowly picking it up out of the box. I squeezed my eyes shut, horrified of what I might see. Gathering all the courage I could muster, I forced myself to reopen them. With pale and unsteady hands, I turned the photo around to face me in one swift motion. My blood ran cold.

The photo was grainy, dusty, stained, and of poor quality. However, I could still just make out the occupants of the old Polaroid, two sepia toned figures. Yellowing with age and with visible water damage. I blew off some of the dust and it swirled around my face like a typhoon, making me cough and hack. In the picture stood two women outside the balcony of an old apartment complex, one that looked very similar to the one we were living in now. I recognized the first woman. She was middle-aged, probably early to mid fifties. She had long brown hair peppered with gray stripes that she wore tightly tucked into a neat librarian-style bun. She had cold blue gray eyes that honestly scared me a little bit. On her petite upturned nose balanced a pair of tortoiseshell cat's eye glasses. She wore a billowy white blouse and matching white slacks.

 I knew who this was. I had seen pictures of her before. This woman was my grandmother on my mom's side, the one who had made her life a living hell growing up. Dad was willing to show me pictures of her, but never of my own mother. I don't know what he was so afraid of showing me. Looking over to the right at the other woman, my breath stuck in my throat. Looking up at me from the inside the  photograph was a teenage girl, around my age or a little younger. She had long dark brown hair and piercing cerulean blue eyes. She was wearing a dark blue belted dress with small white flowers printed on it. The room was spinning, and I tried my best not to cry out. I couldn't wake Melinda. Not now, anyway.

This was the girl I saw in the mirror. It was her. Except in this photo, she didn't look right. She didn't look well. Instead of the healthy, pink-cheeked complexion I had saw staring back at me through the glass, her face was skin and bone. Her brightly colored eyes looked duller and hollow. Her expression was heavy-lidded like she could barely keep them open. She was not smiling, but her mouth was just open enough to see that she was missing a few teeth. The other ones looked worn away and corroded. Corroded by stomach acid. Her very life force looked as if it had been sapped out of her, taken by her illness. A VILE child from the very start, it was a battle with her head she could never win. A demon she had been fighting for years and losing to. Bulimia nervosa.

Where were these thoughts coming from? They didn't feel like my own. How did I know all this? Out of the corner of my eye, hard to see through my tears, I noticed a small set of numbers in the corner of the picture I hadn't payed attention to before. May 7, 1998. The date the picture was taken. Literally one day after my mother had left Dad to go live with her mother. Further below that, in barely-legible chicken scratch, read the words;  "My dearest Amy, all of my heart." It definitely wasn't my father's handwriting. But...how could he have this picture? It was taken after she had left us. A sharp knot in my gut told me something was horribly wrong. I swallowed. It couldn't be true. It wasn't true. Looking back up at the wrinkled face of her mother, my grandmother, I noticed a small dry smile that definitely had not been there before. Had it? I wasn't sure what was real anymore.

That's when it dawned on me. My mother hadn't disappeared. She hadn't run off to some backwoods town or taken a boat across the Atlantic to escape her slowly-falling-apart life. She wasn't happy somewhere without me and Dad. She had never recovered from her illness after promising my dad and I that she was going to when she moved back into her childhood home with her mother.

She never got better like she promised. She had never run off, because she had never left the apartment. Her corpse had been molding and decaying behind that wall for over sixteen years, the one my grandmother undoubtedly barricaded her in during a bulimic episode. "What a VILE child. Doesn't deserve to see the light of day where decent people are trying to live out their lives in peace. What a shame. VILE children go to Hell, Amy. You know that, don't you? You're going right now."

Pretended she didn't hear the panicked gurgles while layering coat after coat of fresh paint on the erected plywood wall. Sealing my mother's tomb. My poor mom was in there, choking to death on her own sick expulsions. No one to help her. Her pupils dilated in fear. Her cold, bony hands desperately grasping at her blocked windpipe. She's still back there. Right behind that flimsy piece of plywood. Right in this very room. I could smell her. I could smell the moss growing across her rotten epidermis. Covering her blackened body from head to toe. I saw bugs. Insects of every order, genus, and species crawling upon her. Rats. I could smell the rotten scent of bile wafting out of her eternally open mouth, the sickly-sweet stench seeping through the thin wooden barrier.

 Don't ask me how I knew this, for the images I saw only occurred in my head. But I just knew. Those graphic, disturbing mental pictures running through my mind in a sickening loop, seemingly coming from nowhere. Like they were being transmitted directly into my brain from some mystery source. No matter how hard I tried not to think about them, they were there. I couldn't block them out. I don't know if what I was smelling was actually real or not. I don't even remember feeling anything while those disgusting visions played themselves over and over again in my head like a broken record. I felt numb.

 Like I mentioned before, some of those thoughts were NOT my own. They couldn't have been. I looked over at the plywood blockade behind the rusty claw foot bathtub. A brown, liquid-y substance was slowly leaking through underneath a small crack where the wood didn't quite touch the floor. It smelt like rotten milk, iron, and mold. So much mold, mixed in with the putrid brown grime slowly making its way across the floor and towards my feet.

I was suddenly startled by a tapping noise, a light klinking sound like delicate fingers on glass. I looked up into the mirror above my head. The words from before were completely gone, replaced with something else entirely. Instead of meeting my own light teal eyes, filled to the brim with tears, my gaze was fixed upon a set of bright sky blue irises. Pupil blown out nearly to the rim. Clouded over with film, the whites a sickly shade of deep yellow. Rotten black skin covered almost completely with moss. The creature drew back its gaping maw to reveal a row of black and yellow teeth, maggots wriggling their way out of holes in the decayed black gums and falling to the floor with a barely audible splat. Brown crust caked around the corner of the thin, stretched green lips. I smiled, feeling a great sense of peace wash over my entire being.

"I missed you. I missed you so much, Momma."

The thing inhaled sharply, making my smile fade as I felt its foul sulfur breath caress my face. It was grinning at me now. Mocking me. It's crusted-over light blue eyes were boring holes into my own as it let out a distorted and drawn-out wail that I assume was supposed to be its laughter. It had...so many voices. So many contorted, shrill, crackling, eardrum-splitting voices. Some of them sounded reversed and spliced, others were almost robotic or were in a language I've never heard spoken or written anywhere. The laughter stopped, and it finally spoke. Or should I say, they finally spoke. Whoever was inside of that thing. There had to have been thousands, millions even. Their wretched, warped voices began to cry and scream. That's when I heard it, clear as day. A deep bass voice, louder than the others and supplemented with a choked shriek and the pained, tortured squeal of a swine sent to slaughter. Its powerful garbled cries shook the floor as it spoke.



"Nos es non vestri matris, sed sua vilis spiritus est ardens apud nobis. "