For the Hell of it

“For The Hell of it”

From somewhere off in the distance, the phone rang. Calvin was lying on his bed in a dazed stupor. He was a handsome young teen with dark brown hair and penetrating hazel eyes. The kind of person you’d expect to see on a the cover of a magazine one day. The ringing started out as a slight jingle in his head. Was it Christmas? No. Suddenly, Calvin bolted upright in his bed and jumped out. “Get the fucking phone!” he bellowed in his upstairs bedroom. Of course, Calvin was the only one in the two story Colonial style house. Perhaps it was merely an exclamation to give him the energy to get up and answer the contraption. He grabbed the phone from the receiver. “Hello?” he inquired in the mouth piece. “Hi honey!” said an enthusiastic female voice. “What mom?” dreaded Calvin. “Well look sweetie, The nurse that’s supposed to take over for me at Seven called in sick, so I volunteered to work her shift and get a little overtime. Are you going to be alright for a few more hours?” “Yeah.” “Are you sure, you sound kind of down again today?” “I’m fine.” “Did you take your pills yet?” “Yes.” Calvin admitted, staring at empty bottle of Depakote lying next to his bed. “You know, you’re never going to get better if you don’t take your pills.” “Jesus fucking Christ, I took the God damn pills” Calvin seared in anguish. Of course, he failed to tell her he took the whole bottle. “Alright, it’s not that I don’t believe you, but, I worry about you. I’ll be home later honey, I love you.” “Yeah.” Agreed Calvin in a monotone voice. “It wouldn’t kill you just to say it onc“…CLICK. Calvin hung up the phone before his mother could finish. Still on the other end, a lonesome tear streaked down the single mother’s cheek. She wiped it away before anyone noticed. Although heartbroken, she wasn’t even surprised when she arrived home hours later to find her son lying dead on the floor next to an empty bottle of anti-depressants.

Back in Calvin’s upstairs bedroom, the euphoria started to intensify to an unpleasant state of sedation. “Fuckin’ bitch.” Calvin muttered as he replaced the phone to its dormant position. He staggered and nearly fell over doing this. “Whoa shit, I don’t feel so good.” He walked over to his stereo and pressed the power button, then fumbled over to his bed to lay back down. He did this, but fell off the bed. Fittingly, Blue Oyster Cult hymned from the speakers. All our times have come. here but now they’re gone. Seasons don’t fear the reaper… “Oh, but you should.” a voice whispered from the shadows, almost hissing. Calvin’s half closed eyes jolted open. “Who’s there?!” he exclaimed. No answer. “I am fuckin’ Trippin’.” Calvin said as a smirk attempted to cross his face. With long, slow respirations Calvin’s eyes eased shut again. Reality started to drift away to an empty black oblivion. His breathing eased to a point where it was close to non existent. He was almost asleep when his stomach churned. “Uh oh, I think Ima puke.” Calvin announced to the ceiling. With a great struggle he sat up, pushed off, then fell back to the ground. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” he tried to shout but the curse came out so weak it wasn’t even audible to a human ear. He rolled over and started to crawl across his bedroom floor which was scattered with dirty clothes, magazines, and a half eaten slice of pepperoni pizza. Out the door and to the left he went. Eyes closed and dragging his limp legs he worked his way passed the hall closet to the next open door. “Success!” he thought, as he could hardly speak. He crawled across the tiled bathroom floor to the toilet. He lifted the toilet seat up and stuck his head in. Splash! They poor boy hadn’t enough energy to support his head, so it plunked into the toilet water like a massive bowel movement. “Furrrrk.” He gurgled. With a bit more spunk from the cool, ironically refreshing toilet water, he removed his face and stood up. “I guess I don’t have to puke after all.” Still pretty dazed, Calvin inhaled a great breath of air. This made him retch, yet still he was unable to vomit. He sauntered over to the sink and turned the right handle, the cold water, to full blast. He rinsed his tainted face with soap and cold water, towel dried himself and then gazed at his reflection in the mirror. At least it appeared to be his reflection. All was the same except the two black voids where his eyes should have been.

Shocked to a state of full alertness Calvin grasped the sink and peered closer in the mirror. Staring into the Ebony orifices of his eyes, the reflection face around them began to turn the purple. Veins began to make evidence as the flesh around them decayed. Calvin reached for his face to feel if what he was seeing in the mirror was accurate. He smothered his hands over his face and felt his skin. Still in the same soft complexion it had been. He looked back to the mirror and saw his face reformed to normal, except for the eyes. Still so eerily black, no light was touching the surface. “What the fuck!?” Calvin cried. “The fuck indeed.” his reflection mouthed. Calvin jumped back. “What!?” Calvin and the mirror mouthed. Calvin moved closer to the sink. Gazing at the atrocity before him, he crowded to the mirror until his face nearly touched his maladapted reflection. “Calvin, I’m going to show you something.” The mirror mouthed. And this time Calvin not only saw this, he heard this. The voice was slow and careful in a hissing whisper, yet toned almost taunting like a child. Calvin started to carefully and quietly retreat. “This is not an option.” The voice rasped with a matching sneer in the mirror. Before Calvin could even move, his left arm shot out from the mirror and grabbed him around the throat. Using his own left arm Calvin try to remove the hold. This was doing nothing so Calvin used his right. Too strong. The mirror arm was so robust it lifted Calvin from the ground. With the hand gripping so tightly around Calvin’s throat, his world started to faint around him. With a mighty tug, the arm pulled Calvin through the mirror and everything Calvin knew or felt went black. Black as the insatiable ebony eyes of his reflection.

When Calvin regained consciousness he was in room. The walls of the room were padded. Calvin was a wearing a blue colored outfit that was a made entirely out of paper. Wearing the suit was like being wrapped in paper towels. Calvin was lying on a bed. He sat up. “Hello?” Calvin said weakly. No answer. Calvin stepped off the bed and moved over to the door. This did not take long as the room was not very large. Calvin peered through the looking glass in the door to find what looked like doctors and nurses roaming the halls. Along with them, there were other people dressed in similar suits like the one that clothed Calvin. “Is, is this a psych ward?!” Calvin questioned out loud. Again, No answer. Calvin turned to face the desolate room when he noticed something orange resting against the back right corner. “Is that, no, it couldn’t be, It’s like the comics I used to read when I was younger.” The object slumped in the corner was a black and orange stuffed tiger. This is when Calvin realized everything he was seeing was two dimensional. “What the fuck is this shit!?” “What the fuck is going on!?” “Help!” “Let me out of hear.” All were exclaimed in a string of anguish, fear, and sorrow. Calvin started to bawl. “Hey buddy, if you don’t keep it down, one of those psych techs is gonna come in here and shoot you in the ass with a hypodermic full of sedatives.” Calvin jumped and uttered a startled cry. He rubbed the tears from his eyes and saw that the stuffed tiger had grown in stature and come to life.

Out in the hall a psychiatrist was giving a new psych tech a tour through the ward and detailing on certain precautions along with other vital information. “ And over here we keep Calvin. He’s on twenty four hour lock down. One of our most vicious patients. When he was a little boy, he murdered a neighborhood girl. Suzy Derkins her name was. Brutal slaying too. He sodomized her with a tennis racket and then bludgeoned her. Authorities didn’t catch him for that one right away. It wasn’t until he attempted to rape his grade school teacher, Miss Wormwood. Then they he confessed to the murder as well. He suffers from paranoid delusions. Sometimes he thinks he’s a spaceman, sometimes a great expeditionary. You never really know. Oh yeah, and then there’s the tiger. He’s got this stuffed tiger named Hobbes. Claims that’s who told him to do those things. Text book Schizophrenia. We’ve taken it away before but he’ll either go catatonic or become even more violent. So we gave it back. Now, we pretty much just keep him sedated at all times. Every now and then he gets out of control, but with him, the game is don’t give him the opportunity.” “Right.” Said the psych tech. “Alright, moving on.” The doctor and psych tech went along on their way.

Back in the room Calvin stared bewildered at the tiger and his current situation. “Relax Calvin,” Said Hobbes “They don’t realize your awake yet. It’s almost lunch time though. Did you put tuna fish on your menu like I told you?” “Wha, what’s going on. What are you talking about?” Calvin rigidly answered. “YOU SON OF A BITCH!” Hobbes belted and with a gigantic paw smacked Calvin across the face. Calvin cried out in pain. Even for a two dimensional cartoon it hurt. Blood began to drip from Calvin’s nose. “WHEN I TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING, YOU GOD DAMN WELL BETTER DO IT. WE WOULDN’T EVEN BE IN THIS MESS IF YOU’D LISTENED TO ME IN THE FIRST PLACE!” Hobbes lectured. With much discombobulating, Calvin said the first thing that popped into his head. “Fuck you.” Hobbes eyes grew large. The eyes were so strikingly similar to something Calvin had seen before, but he couldn’t remember. He was so confused. “Fuck me?” Hobbes questioned with a laugh. “No, FUCK YOU!” With that Hobbes pounced and Calvin and began to maul him. Calvin screamed.

From the hallway a psych tech heard the scream. He rushed over to look through the window. “HE’S DOING IT AGAIN!” he yelled. “RESTRAINTS!” Three more psych techs rushed over. They unlocked the door and barged in to find Calvin rolling around on the floor choking himself with a stuffed tiger. One tech injected a needle full of something into his arm. He struggled a little bit and then fell weak. By the time the Psych techs had left, Calvin was strapped to the bed on which he had awoken. As he drifted away to sleep in his state of inebriation, He saw his mirror image with the hideous black eyes staring over him. “Now we must talk.” hissed the dreadful voice. No longer in the psych ward, drifting along somewhere in the astral realms between waking realities Calvin and his tainted reflection spoke.

“Tell me boy, why did you take that whole bottle of pills?” The voice inquired. “Who are you?” Calvin answered. “You will answer my question first, then you may be permitted a question!” The voice snapped. “I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to get fucked up.” “And what you just experienced, was that not pretty fucked up?” “What?” “Ha, Ha, Ha.” the voice mocked. “You wanted to get fucked up, what I showed you was fucked up, no?” “Well, yeah.” Calvin answered more confused than ever. “You see boy, You’ve killed yourself. You’re dead. I have come to collect your soul for its rightful owner.” “No, that’s impossible. You lie! This can’t be true?!” Calvin raged. “I didn’t mean to, I was just, I was lonely and sad, I messed up, just make it stop.” He continued. “Sorry boy, what’s done is done. Now…” The reaper was cut off by Calvin. “No! I wanna wake up, let me wake up, I wanna go home, I’m scared.” “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT FEAR IS!!!!!” The Reaper roared with it’s raspy tone. “BUT YOU WILL…..NOW!” And with that said, Calvin awoke.

Calvin came to on a door step. It was dark, cold, and snowing. “Oh, what the hell is this?” Calvin yelled to the sky. The reaper appeared beside him, still in the form of what could be Calvin’s duplicate give those dreadful eyes of oblivious nothing. “Don’t worry, this time you won’t be heard nor seen.” The reaper told him. “What?!” Calvin exploded. “Think of it like being a ghost.” The reaper told Calvin with a smirk followed by a series of diabolical chuckling. “Well, go in and watch. The sooner you see this, the sooner you can go.” Calvin attempted to turn the door. He then realized what was so funny when his hand passed right over it. Trepid, Calvin took a great breath of air, let it out, and went through the door without opening it. It was just like being a ghost.

Calvin came through the door solo. “This mother fucker.” Calvin muttered regarding his new friend. When he looked up and saw what he had come to view, his heart dropped. It was Christmas in whatever time this was. The inside of the house was decorated for the festivities. Greens, reds, blues, and gold wrapped the house like it was a giant present. The smells of cookies and fudge circulated the warm room and made Calvin’s stomach rumble. The tree was so eloquently decorated in the same holiday colors all over the house. A bright yellow twinkling start rest atop the evergreen. The presents were packed under the tree in wrapping paper of all sorts. Some were metallic silvers and gold. Others had cartoon Santas and reindeer on them. Seeing the cartoons made Calvin shudder. Five stockings were hung over the crackling fireplace. This made Calvin long for home, but was not the sight that was detrimental to his contentment. It was the four people tied up and gagged on the couch. A mother, a father, a daughter, and a son all huddled closely together with torrential looks covering their faces. The women had tears streaking from their eyes making their mascara run. The father was unconscious with blood running profusely from the back of his head. He at least appeared to be alive. The Son wasn’t moving. Not only wasn’t he moving, he wasn’t breathing. Then, the man dressed in the Santa Claus outfit made a reentry to the room.

Santa was a thin man. He wore tattered old faded Reebok shoes on his feet. His pants and coat were so baggy the real Santa would probably have fit in there with him. He wore a fake white beard caked with blood over his dirty face which was also covered with blood. He had several open gashes on his forehead. Then Calvin saw the eyes. These eyes freaked him out particularly because they were light blue and had a kind, gentle, welcoming vibe coming from them. He also wore a utility belt in which several different knives, a hammer, pliers, and other tools hung. The daughter screamed upon seeing Santa. “Hush now hunny, it’s time to open up the presents.” He said with an Elvis southern accent. From the other side of the room came crying. Calvin looked over and saw an infant baby in its crib. “Oh no!” Calvin moaned.

The mother nuzzled her gag partially out of her mouth using her shoulder. “Please, my baby, you have to untie me so I can’t get my baby.” “YOU SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH YOU DIRTY BITCH, I’VE HEARD ENOUGH OF YOUR SHIT FOR ONE NIGHT!” Santa snarled at the woman. He moved towards her and hit her with a right hook to the eye. She screamed in pain and the tears flowed harder from her eyes. “ Please.” she said weakly “My baby.” “Alright.” Said Santa softly. “I’ll get it.” He walked over to the baby crying in her crib. Santa stuck a dirty, blood covered finger in the baby’s face and wiggled it. “Goo, goo,” Santa said playfully. The infant began to laugh in amusement. Santa gently removed the baby girl from her crib and cradled her in his arms. He carefully started walking over to the mother and was about two feet in front of her. “Whooooops!” Santa joking announced. And then he lifted the baby higher into the air and threw her down on the tiled floor as hard as he could. The baby didn’t make a sound. The living coherent members of the family screamed. Then Santa lifted his right Reebok up to his chest and brought it back down with a tremendous stomp. Calvin was family able to vomit when he saw the baby’s head crush like a melon. He too started to cry. Santa had a sickening grin of satisfaction on his face. “Problem solved.” Santa said graciously. Then he looked over to the mother and the expression on his face changed in the blink of an eye. A sadistic grimace crossed his face and he glared at the woman. “Your turn.” He decided and drew a hammer from his belt. He rushed over to the mother and started to beat her over the head. He swung and struck until blood and chunks of skull started chipping away, some landing on the other family members. Santa backed away and saw the woman was limp. He dropped the hammer and removed the red hat on his head. He ran his fingers through his greasy hair and inhaled a great heap of air. He let it out with a sigh.

The daughter had gone into a state of shock, eyes open, short respirations, otherwise motionless. Finally, after all this, the father regained consciousness. He sleepily open and shut his eyes until the reality around him became familiar. He awoke to see Santa sitting Indian style on the floor eating a chocolate chip cookie. “Hi!” Santa said cheerfully. The father looked around the room at the aftermath and began to cry. “So check it out.” Santa proposed “I’m gonna make a deal with you. You see your daughter over there?” Santa motioned to the catatonic adolescent on the other side of the couch. “mmm,hmm” The father shook his head and muffled through his gag. “She’s still alive. If you want to keep it that way and you would like to live through is…” He stopped. “You do want to live through this, correct?” The father shook his head as tears streamed down his bloodied face. “Excellent, then, You have to do something for me.” Santa grinned. “I want you to make love to your dead son.” A look of hatred crossed the father’s face and then he cried harder. Santa started to walk over to the daughter. “Wa, oay, I oo ii” He muffled from the gag. Calvin wouldn’t watch anymore. He made for the door and was reluctant to find that he passed right back through. If he had only known it was that easy he would have left much earlier.

On the outside of the house Calvin bawled and trembled. “Please, take me home. I just wanna go home.” Calvin ran down the steps, slipped and fell to his knees. He leaned over and saw his reflection in the ice. Then the black eyes formed and Calvin knew it was back. “Get me out of here, please!” Calvin whined. “As you so desire.” The monstrosity in the ice concurred. The last thing Calvin heard before he was pulled into the ice by his courier’s manifestation was “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT, YOU’RE FUCKING SICK!” followed by a single gunshot. And then nothingness.

When Calvin regained a sense of being, he was standing in a grave yard. “Here you are, home.” The raspy voice of death echoed in in Calvin’s ears. Calvin dropped to his knees at the sight in front of him. In the very back row, Calvin was kneeling in the presence of a tombstone. This particular Tombstone read “Calvin Johansson Beloved Son March 15th 1987 - July 16th 2006.” Calvin’s eyes began to water. “NO!” he barked in fear and frustration. “This isn’t true! Take me back!” he cried. “My boy, I don’t think you understand what’s happened. You are non existent to that world. Erased like a erroneous pencil marking.” “Fuck you!” Calvin uttered, “Take me back!!!” “Alright, but you aren’t going to like what you see.” Having said that, the reaper advanced on Calvin like a predator to its prey. The assault knocked Calvin to the ground.

Stunned momentarily, Calvin quickly scrambled from the ground. It seemed he was now in his own driveway. An ambulance and a sheriff truck were both parked there. His mother’s Blazer was parked on the side of the road. His mother was in tears sitting on the front stoop with the police officer comforting her. Their lips were moving but Calvin could not hear a thing. He hadn’t been able to since the reaper’s attack. Two Coroners wheeled out a stretcher which appeared to have a human body wrapped in a body bag. He had to see for himself. Calvin followed the coroners as they put the body in the back of their truck. They closed the doors and Calvin was alone in the back with the body. Trembling, too frightened for tears, Calvin slowly unzipped the bag. He opened about a foot of the zipper and that was enough. He could see the face. His face. With his eyes. Calvin felt nauseous. A light headed stupor over took Calvin. He closed his eyes. He Reopened them and looked down at the face. The insidious black eyes had returned. The corpse was smirking now. Calvin opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The corpse’s hand reached from the bag and grabbed Calvin by the throat and pulled him in the bag. Calvin was able to utter a blood curdling scream before the bag zipped up and everything faded to dark. But when you’re a ghost, no one can hear you but Death.