ON YOUR LAST BREATH | Mike Schmidt ✔️

chapter eight .. making adults run

CHAPTER EIGHT —    " making adults run "

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          "... EVEN WHEN THEY EVENTUALLY remember enough to recognize me again, what more can they really do to me that they haven't already done?" A deep voice faded into Haley's return to perception, a good moment before any of her other bodily sensations, leaving her in the sort of sleep paralysis shiver of fear, where the line between reality and dreams disappears, overlapping the two realms into a convoluted and terrible new world. Her world was dark, apparently inhabited only by a mildly familiar voice, one that felt to her like it had crawled from the very bottom of her most scream-worthy nightmares.

"I would have let them kill me sooner if I knew it would give me this much power," the voice continued on a rant that Haley was unsure if it was truly directed towards her anymore. "Sure, there's the pain — this damned pain," a loud metal banging sound and a groan of consequence interrupted his speech, "that just won't let me breathe anymore — but pain can be fuel too." He agreed with himself in a hum that picked up his tone from mournful to cheerful in a disturbing upward curve. "Of course, you know all about breathlessness, don't you, Haley Anne?" He continued with a dark chuckle.

Calling her by her name sent a shiver down Haley's spine and awakened that part of her mind that stored memories:

The key twisted back in the lock, then fell out. The signal on the phone went out. The door creaked open slowly, revealing onto her fast beating heart a vision of complete darkness. There was no breath for her to draw in on. Her shriveled hand lifted the inhaler, but from the darkness lunged forward a horrid creature of synthetic fur and mechanical springs, dripping in blood and opening its mouth below glowing eyes to reveal sharp teeth. The Yellow Bunny on the brochures had been covered in dirt and decay and stained in red and rust, but it sprunged towards her, stopping right in her face.

Like a broken record, her memories went blank after that.

"If only I knew," the voice sang along, then plunged into a sigh. "So much time wasted on waiting for the right opportunity, when my perfect little attack dogs were already at my disposal," he couldn't contain a chuckle. "You see, children have very simple minds. They hold grudges, yes," that contagious chuckle followed, "I mean, look at me — but at the end of the day, they're still just children, waiting for an adult to tell them what to do. Wanting it. It's so very easy to point fingers, to convince them of that or the other. Such simple minds ready to be bent and modeled. And I don't lie to them!" That sudden crescendo marked an exaggerated anger, as if he was suddenly defending something he would never stand by. "No no no. I only tell them the truths they need."

A cough followed by a fleshly sound morphed into a rusted creaking commenced, and the man changed his voice to be a little thinner, mimicking himself in those moments when he must convince the children, "No, because you see, had Vanessa been a better child, you would all still be alive. She stood by and watched while I did what I did and she did nothing. Aren't you angry with her, children? Aren't you? I killed you, yes, but she let it happen."

A shorter cough returned him to his normal voice, albeit a bit bemused, "Let me do another, let me do another." After a short break, he returned to the pathetically thinned voice, "But if I had Haley Anne when I wanted her, she could have taken your place. Why, if only she hadn't run away! If only she hadn't been so fast. How selfish of her to run away! Look what she did to you. She abandoned you all."

After a brief sigh, his voice returned to an apathetic numbness, "Or rather the truths I need. Makes little difference. None of those little jerks will admit it, but they needed to be used. They needed me to use them. After they left me there, bleeding out, it's not like they were any better. Hah, of course they weren't. Boredom is the most merciless facet of afterlife. It feeds on your good memories until you have only nightmares left to keep you company. It feasts on your sanity until you understand eternity is torture. Oh, they needed me to give them purpose again, and like a nice creator that I am, I forgave them and gave them a new meaning. After all... Why shouldn't I take advantage of this condition they put me into?"