A Horror Anthology

Blackout - @DriveInHorrorshow

Broken glass. An overturned milk crate. A splash of blood.

A woman's hand, bruised.

She lies on the ground, her blouse torn, her white shirt stained with dirt.

She looks beaten.

Nearby, a plastic bag is pinned under a coil of white rope. The bag blows in the breeze, whipping like a filthy flag.

The hand moves - a twitch of a finger.

An eye opens, then another. The woman squints as her eyes adjust.

She sits up, propped on her elbows. She looks around her: the broken glass, the milk crate, the blood.

She looks straight ahead. She's in an alley, her only companions a dumpster and some old, rain-soaked wooden platters. Gashes split the pavement.

She looks up. On the facade of each building, endless rows of iron-edged windows run in lines, ending at a point hundreds of feet above her. Their cracked panes of glass are opaque with filth, the buildup of years of neglect; plywood covers a few that seem to have been smashed out. Black splotches drip from the bottom of each window onto the yellow brick, a slowly advancing decay that will one day, left unchecked, turn the entire building black.

Directly over her head is a rusted, iron fire escape.

"Where am I?"

She sees a purse on the ground. It is overturned and lying in a pile of ash, a large gash torn through its light brown underbelly like a gutted fish.

She reaches for it, opens it. Empty.

She winces, sees stars. She puts her left hand on the ground behind her to keep from collapsing, and puts her right hand on the back of her head. Her hair is wet.

She recoils from the touch of her hair and looks at her right hand. Blood drips from her palm.

A memory FLASHES in her mind-

-I was in a locker. The silhouette of a Man was visible through the slats. "Ooooh baby," he said. "The things I'm gonna do to you"-

-the image SKIPS-

-I lay on the floor. The Man stood above me, a silhouette in a nondescript, out-of-focus room.

His face emerged from the shadows; it is pulled back with rage. He made a fist and swung and-

The memory disappears.

She stands up quickly - too quickly. She feels dizzy, stumbles to her left, and leans on the wall next to the dumpster-

-then man's fist pulled back, then flew towards my face and-

-and she recoils, struck by her memory, and is thrown backwards against the brick wall. His fist on her face sounds like a board hitting a slab of meat; the sound reverberates through her head and seems to spill out, bouncing off of the countless unseeing windows above and around her.

She takes deep breaths. Slowly, she staggers down the alley towards the street. Her feet make arrhythmic sliding sounds as she drags them over the cracks in the asphalt and around potholes.

Her head swims.

She makes it to the end of the alley before she slips on a pile of loose sand and gravel. She stumbles forward onto the sidewalk, right into an old man pushing a shopping cart. He has a huge white beard and he's wearing a dirty parka and old thick pants, despite the warm weather. She knocks his cart over.