The Red Room

It’s hiding there, in the dark; watching. You can feel it in the air; the rancor, the gnats, and the smell of blood like nickel permeating through the room.

You are in the red room again; a culmination of your fears. They said they’d leave it in the corner, and once you relaxed, maybe move it a little closer. They said a lot of things.

You can smell, taste, and hear the fear. It’s burning on your lips, in your ears and nose; it feels like beestings under your skin, where it lies, eating away at you minute by minute, second by second, and bit by bit.

They said they wouldn’t move it closer until you were ready, but your not, and its closing in. Its spindly legs, crawling like pagan poetry across the floor. It surrounds you, it fulminates within you, paralyzing you in fear, and so you are helpless; forced to watch as it devours you from the inside.

The pain from it so intense, you scream out. But the scream isn’t yours; it is the shrill, like a woman in writhing pain, of screaming banshees, the scream of things in the red room.

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