The Sanguinarian

The Sanguinarian

Tuesday 23 September 2014

The Nightmare on Loony Street

She is standing in the middle of a desolate road, bordered on both sides by dense forests. She’s dressed in a white dress which comes halfway down her thighs. In her hand, she holds an axe. Beside her lies a white paint can. It is actually filled with vermilion, sticky fluid which looks like blood.
In front of her is a car. All the windows and doors are open. Bodies lie halfway in, halfway outside the open doors. Rivers of blood and gore flow in all directions, the bright vermilion interspersed with the dull grey.
But there is no blood on her dress or bare legs. Her face is covered completely by a blue bag- there are no slits for eyes or lips or nose. Suddenly, her whole body shakes in spasmodic intervals, her limbs moving in a methodical madness to some rhythm.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! They’re all dead…hahahahaha!” a disembodied voice comes out of nowhere.
                                         ***********



Nightmares. So many of them exist, so varied in their horrors, sometimes so vivid in their presentation. They may come only in the night to other people, but not to me. Nightmares are a part of my routine thoughts- they come and go anytime they please. People have nightmares when they sleep- I have waking nightmares too. It’s been like this for a really long time, so I have made my peace with them. I have had to do so, even though these nightmares scare the hell out of me- every damn time.
I have seen a whole lot of nightmarish visions. Some are bright, Technicolor  MGM movies, while others are old black and white videos, blurred and flitting. Some come often, some only once and some are frequent. All of them are scary and creepy.
But the most frightening one is the one with the woman in white. This woman is particularly special, because she haunts me even in my waking dreams.
She appears of out of nowhere, anywhere and everywhere, and just stands nearby me, with an axe in her hand and her face obscured by a light blue bag-like thing. She has never shown her face till now. I have wondered often as to her identity, but I daren’t go near her and try to lift the bag from over her head. Something I’ve been dying to do for a long time.
This lady is not the only one whom I see everywhere. There is the man in the brown suit who sits on the swing, outside the house, when nobody else is there.
There is the old lady, in a red gown and with long, silver hair and heavily wrinkled skin who sits on the rocking chair in my room and oscillates it noisily, anytime she so pleases. If I happen to drop in on her while she’s at it, I find her staring at me with a constancy that sends a chill down my spine.
There are the twin sisters, very young, who often sneak around in the basement.
 There is the boy, covered in blood and mud, who roams around in the backyard frequently.
There’s the robed and hooded figure that appears outside my classroom window at school.
There’s the girl, in tattered clothes and a burnt face, who often sits beside my desk in the classroom.
There’s the other girl, with most of her lower jaw blown away and the blood and bones showing beneath, who appears in the lavatory when I’m the only one there.
Sounds crazy, right? I know. Everybody thinks I’m crazy. My parents, my teachers, my classmates. They all think I should be in a mental asylum. I have heard them say it.
People at the school call me Crazy Vera. I know it because they call me that to my face. I don’t care much for it. They call me crazy because I can see people who’re invisible to them. In their terms, I see people who’re not there in reality.
They don’t understand. Not even a little bit. Their world is limited to popularity, puppy romance, fashion, good food and stupid chick-lit movies and football games. Nothing in their horizon of interest has an iota of reality. I can see reality, and I’m the only one who can do so.
My parents even took me to a psychiatrist. She asked me about what I keep seeing, and I told her the truth. Every little bit of it. And she told my parents to give me some white pills- to stop the nightmares and visions, I suppose.
The waking dreams got a little blurred, like I was looking at them through a translucent glass pane. I started sleeping anytime, anywhere and everywhere- in the shower, in the classroom, in the school bathroom, in the kitchen, in the backyard.
The meds suddenly stopped. My mother told me I’d nearly drowned in the swimming pool of my school’s gym, when I chose to doze off during a swim lesson.
That was it. My parents stopped trying to ‘cure’ me of my nightmares and visions, still thinking I’m crazy. I chose to lie to them and say that the visions have disappeared, along with the bad dreams. It was then that I found Harry.
He is the only vision whom I can talk to. He appears as a hazy, background character in the nightmares. In my waking dreams, he is a tall, dark-haired, handsome boy, who tells me he’s 17- my age- and that he likes talking to me. Harry and I have long conversations in my bedroom. Sometimes he stands beside my desk in the classroom and smiles at me. Sometimes he appears outside the shower curtain and we talk while I’m bathing. I really like Harry. I want to kiss him some day.
He tells me not to be scared of the old lady in red, the hooded figure, or the girl with the burnt face. He also tells me to ignore the other people I see- they’re harmless. I want to ask him who these people really are, but am too scared of the answer.
I did ask Harry if he’ll be with me forever- because I’m so lonely in this world and he’s the only one who gets me. He has said yes, that he’ll never leave me because he also likes me and my company. That makes me very happy.

                                            ************
 Ward 201, Baltimore Psychiatric Hospital For The Criminally Insane
“I’m telling you, this chick’s super crazy,” Nurse Greene says to Nurse Linden.
Nurse Linden: Yeah. Unbelievable, this is. I heard she killed her own family. She’s Vera Morgan, right?
Nurse Greene: Yeah. Hacked them all to death with an axe. Have you heard the whole story?
Nurse Linden: No, tell me.
Nurse Greene: The way I hear it, the Morgans were driving to Vera’s grandparents’ estate in Maryland. Their car broke down on the highway outside of Newport. Apparently, she killed her father, mother and two brothers with an axe. When they found her, she was standing in the middle of the road, holding the bloody murder weapon, and she was laughing continuously, while her family’s corpses bled, lying halfway in, halfway out of the Morgan’s car. She was wearing this white dress, which was also covered in blood. Also, she had a paint can beside her, filled with blood.
Nurse Linden: Wow. That is one of the weirdest and craziest things I have heard in my life. How do you know so many details?
Nurse Greene: Vera’s dad, Dr. Brent Morgan, was a friend of our chief, Dr. Leeds. I overheard the police detective talking to him the other day.
Nurse Linden: I’ve never seen a loony like Vera. She doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t do anything. Just sits and mutters something all day.
Nurse Greene: I know. I’ve heard her talking to someone called Harry. She even scratches his name on the walls.
Nurse Linden: The scratching is worse. She has broken her nails and bled her fingertips with that.
Nurse Greene: She’s stuck in her own brain, poor kid. Let’s go and have some coffee.
Nurse Linden: Yeah. Lets’ go.

                                                    **********

 Some days after this conversation, Nurses Greene and Linden were the ones who found Vera Morgan dead in her ward. She’d died by slitting her wrists and throat with a pointed piece of wood she had managed to find somewhere. But there was something, written in blood, on the walls of the ward. It was interpreted by the cops as a suicide note.
I LIFTED THE BLUE BAG.
I KNOW THAT GIRL IS ME.
I DON’T WANNA SEE ANYMORE.
I WANT TO BE WITH HARRY FOREVER.

Copyright @ Percy Kerry 2014