Mismatched

01

      Jackson wakes up with a scream, a bony hand burying in his chest, deeper and deeper, squeezing and tearing through flesh, making way through his ribs until it grabs his heart, the claws cutting through the muscle and gripping it tight... tighter and tighter. The next bony hand follows inside his ribcage, attacking the lungs and everything inside, claws piercing his organs, the blood during through the holes and Jackson is dying. He feels like he's dying.

The boy starts coughing, bating his hands to hold on to anything, white sheets that do nothing to save him from the claws in his chest, they just tangle in his legs, making him fall to the floor as he gasps for air. Jackson cannot breathe, it feels like his blood is filling his body in all the wrong places and he cannot even scream, he opens his eyes but there's no one else around, the room is new and unknown for him, but familiar like the many other hotel rooms he's been in.

He coughs, dry heaving in a desperate attempt to breathe, but it's not working, his windpipe is blocked, he can feel something in there, slipping but still stuck.

Jackson crawls, desperate and scared, not knowing what's happening to him, but he needs to do something, he is dying.

Somehow, the young boy makes it to the hotel bathroom and with shaky hands, Jackson grabs the sides of the toilet and pulls himself up, then holding on to the sink. He can see himself on the mirror and there's no hands buried in his chest, nothing at all, it's just Jackson, pale, covered in cold sweat, bloodshot eyes and looking like the dead, but there's nothing else in the reflection.

The grip around his chest and lungs tightens and he's hovering over the sink, coughing and feeling the clog in his windpipe moving, cutting through his walls like scratches. His mouth fills with blood and bile and more, something more. Jackson keeps coughing and coughing, his whole body spasming with the gag reflexes like a cat throwing up a fur ball.

There's something in his tongue, so Jackson keeps coughing until he can put his fingers inside his mouth and grab what's on his tongue. His fingertips come back covered in blood holding something far more horrendous and inexplicable than blood: a red crimson petal.

"What the fuck?" Whispers the boy, his whole body cold and heavy with fear.

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Short story I wrote trying to get over my life block (it's worse than a writer's block). It's very angsty but with a happy ending.