Halloween project... read it. :) Hey, do you know Dewey Bluth? That park? Ya. This is real.
:P
Oh, and don't forget to comment. :D
Passed Possession
It was past 3 am.
The yellow florescent lights lining the ceiling of the Trax-train shone dimly from the glossy, black window, obscuring Madelyn's ghostly reflection. Her pale skin seemed translucent against the night outside as the seemingly empty blackness tracked by. Her eyes looked only to be void irises as she stared at herself, though she was hardly repulsed by her reflection—she felt tired enough that it made sense that her eyes would look so empty. Tonight was her first night-shift at work downtown. Now she just wanted to go back to her apartment and sleep.
Madelyn was the very last person left on Trax—her seat the only one not vacant. The only thing keeping her awake was the occasional jolting as the train swayed back and forth as it took a gradual turn.
As her station—the very last one—finally drew closer, Madelyn groaned and readied her bag, promising herself that after her night-shift had expired, she would never accept another ever again. The monotone voice broke over the speakers, and Trax slowed. Madelyn got to her feet and stretched.
The train lurched to a stop; Madelyn had already stumbled to the automatic door, rubbing her eyes. The doors slid open,a gust of autumn air blew at Madelyn's face as she stepped out into the dimly lit, dreary Trax station. She shivered and tugged her jacket tighter around herself, dipping her head against he frigid wind.
Leaving her completely alone, Trax closed its doors once more and took off the opposite direction, almost sluggishly, unwilling to bellow through the dreary, night. Madelyn took no time to watch it leave—she had already set out from beneath the florescent-lit station, the biting air urging her into a brisk walk. The wind was still acting up, tossing her hair around in separate wild strands, out from beneath her hood. The florescents flickered as she pushed from the glass station, as if beckoning her to come back.
Madelyn cursed herself for choosing to ride her bike. Saving a buck of gas was not worth freezing to death pedaling all the way back to her apartment. And it was pitch black.
Her bike was chained to a tree in the park behind the station. She dug in her bag for her lock key, her teeth chattering as she bustled up the grassy slope. She was walking with her head down, swearing when her frozen fingers couldn't find the key. She didn't take notice of the vacant, bleak little playground as it emerged in sight over the hill, with its faded plastic coloring, twisty slide, monkey bars, and its rustic old swings, which swayed and squeaked in the wind. As she paused to rummage furiously in her bag, she stopped directly in front of the slide with the orange plastic covering—the one enclosed in a cylinder, like a tube, like a tunnel. Her legs could be seen through the dark hole, which in more lighthearted hours, children could be seen clambering in and out of, laughing while maybe playing a game of tag. But, with the wind billowing and howling as it whooshed through the dark tunnel of the round, orange slide, no child—of their right mind—would want to climb into that pitch black hole.
Madelyn, hearing the eerie monotone howl of air blow through the abandoned slide, felt an involuntary, unnerved chill shudder down her spine. The air became inexplicably colder at that moment; the shadows of the monkey bars seemed to cast a morbid omen across the whole playground, and the rusty-chained swings swung and rattled with even more fervor. She let out an urgent hiss through clenched teeth when she finally grasped her bike key.
When she looked up, without explicable reason, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She had barley taken half a step before stopping dead, her spine gone stiff.
She stared straight ahead without blinking, her heart jolting into a sudden frenzy. There—she had sworn she had seen it—in the black mouth of the playground slide—had been....
Her breathing elevated rapidly. She froze on the spot, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. But, even though she had seen it, nothing happened.
She stood there in a fit of shock for a long moment. Her terror simmered down, though not enough to stem the surge of nerves. Her bones thawed from their locked position, though she did not relax.
Her head turned. She stared at the slide.
She swore to herself that if there was even one noise, one hint of movement, any indication that something was in there, then she was gone.
So, Madelyn, pulsing with a rush of adrenaline, hair billowing around her stricken face, heart hammering into her ribs, slowly, slowly, bent to look inside.
She saw nothing but black. She squinted.
Then she blinked.
A sharp breath escaped her lips.
She swore she saw it—a shadow had shifted, at the end, the top, a shape, flitting out of view.
Breath rapid and shaky, Madelyn stood up and looked over the top of the slide, to the height of the platform, expecting it to be staring straight at her. But there was nothing there.
Her heart was beating into her lungs. She backed away, stricken in a new panic, and turned on her heal, to break into a run, but stopped dead with a yelp, a hand flying to her chest. But Madelyn blinked again, and what she had seen, sitting on the bench, had vanished.
Panic was now bursting from her heart. She lurched into a run and scrambled with her bike chain, her fingers too shaky to turn the key. She kept checking over her should, at the shadows of the playground, and the slide, and the bench, finally yanking the chain from the bike's wheels. She threw her bike onto the road and clambered onto the seat, trying to control her breathing.
“Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid!” she screamed in her mind.
Holding her breath, as if to give herself one last chance to prove herself wrong, Madelyn looked once more over her shoulder, gripping the handlebars fearfully.
Her eyes bulged wide.
There was definitely something—someone, a small girl, with a mass of tangled dark hair—sitting at the edge of the slide. Watching her.
Madelyn's blood drained from her face.
The girl smiled, then withdrew with pale, twitching, spidery limbs, back into the slide.
*************
“Why is there never any milk?!”
Madelyn slammed the refrigerator door shut, cursing to herself hysterically yet again that night, her teeth still chattering from the crisp air that had followed her through her apartment. She threw the nestle hot chocolate packet on the counter and stomped over to the sink. Her pet goldfish's buggy eyes followed her across the small kitchen from where he floated in his bowl.
Madelyn was both panicking and fuming with herself as she filled a mug with water from the tap and set it in the microwave. One, because her hot cocoa wasn't going to taste as creamy as it would with milk. Two, she was freezing. Three, she was stupid enough to ride her bike to the Trax station that afternoon, and four, she was practically going insane with what she had seen back at the creepy playground.
“Oh and five,” she added in a high, erratic cry, turning to her goldfish where he watched her, his fins undulating in the water as she stirred the hot-cocoa with a spoon. “I'm tired. After this week, never take another night-shift, got that Fruitcake? Don't let me take another night-shift! And don't let me ride my bike tomorrow either!”
Upon sipping her hot-cocoa, and bundling up in a thick blanket, Madelyn then plopped down shakily on her sofa and flipped on the news. It was as if she refused to acknowledge what she had seen back at the park as she stared with wide eyes at the T.V. She fell asleep just moments after the breaking news from the last afternoon had begun to replay, though as her denial was only enough to allow her a fitful sleep. She stirred, groaning, as the reporter's voice droned distantly to her ears...
“Today was full of remorse and alarm when two incidences at the downtown Trax-station occurred within the same hour this morning. Jonathon Partridge, 32, died today when he stepped in front of a departing train. Incident under investigation, though the most apparent reason is suicide.... And not too long after, a panicked father issued a missing child report—six year old, Lucy Baker—is about three feet tall with long, brown hair. Lucy was last seen at 11:00 at the downtown Trax station....”
***********
It was precisely 3:09 a.m—she counted the minutes—when Madelyn clambered off the train and started off at a hurried walk, to the park where she had parked her car.
Climbing over the grassy hill, once more, only this time clutching her car keys, Madelyn stared wide-eyed at the playground, practically running past it. The night was different than the last; it was still, the rusty swings were as still as stone. Completely silent. No wind, no sounds. Just darkness, and shadows, and frigid, biting cold.
The mouth of the slide seemed to suck at the air around her as if to swallow the very night.
Madelyn ran past it, heart practically jumping from her throat, and threw her car door ajar, only to collapse behind the wheel and slam it back shut. the still silence of the night—which seemed to be trilling with its own shrillness—was cut off from sound, exempting Madelyn's shallow gasps of air. She clutched with white knuckles at the steering wheel with one hand, while the other held the key.
Her car was directly facing the black mouth of the slide.
Without starting the car, Madelyn only stared. Stared into the looming darkness before her.
Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid...
Her breath then turned icy in her throat.
It was undeniable that she saw it. This time, she didn't blink, she couldn't blink. Out of the shadows, a shape emerged from beneath the slide and crept up the playground steps, to very top.
Madelyn's nerve shattered into panic. She jammed the key in ignition. The headlights streamed over the playground, right through the mouth of the slide.
She screamed. A gust of wind exploded from the slide, jolting the two rusty swings into a rattling, violent torrent, and blew all the way through the glass window of Madelyn's windshield.
There, inside, enveloped in the glowing, illuminated red shadows, was the crouched, smiling form of the pale, sickly girl.
The wheels screeched on the pavement as Madelyn lurched backwards and spun into gear, turning the steering wheel as fast as she could.
Madelyn was stricken in tears and hyperventilation—beyond panic—as she sped back to her apartment, the shadows of the road jumping out at her from every direction. She refused to look behind her after she'd almost crashed when she'd though she glimpsed a shadow of something through her rear mirror, sitting in the back seat.
But what she didn't' see—or wouldn't—was a small, stretching shadow, crawling beneath her very own seat.
Madelyn crashed through her apartment door, slamming the chain in place, and ran to the refrigerator. She was soaking in cold, clammy sweat, and tears streaking her checks, she threw a tub of mint chocolate ice cream on the kitchen counter, next to Fruitcake, and started shoveling it into a bowl. A bead of cold sweat slid down her neck; she let out a breathy sob and tore her jacket off.
As it fell to the kitchen floor in a heap, Madelyn shivered on the spot with her eyes squeezed shut. She cupped the ice-cream bowl in both hands.
Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid....
Why did she have to be so alone?
With a deep, tearful breath, Madelyn opened her eyes and looked down.
Fruitcake was staring attentively at her, his fins undulating back and forth, up and down, like they always did.
She smiled through tears. “Hey, Fruitcake...”
Somehow, her shoulders found a way to relax. She set the ice-cream down with a small clunk, and looked around at her apartment.
She refused to let panic take control of her. Everything was fine, she was seeing things, she hadn't slept well since Monday, it wasn't real.
Madelyn set the bowl of ice cream next to Fruitcake and bent down to pickup her jacket. Whenever she got upset, she would shove her favorite jacket in the dryer and warm it up for comfort. That sounded nice—to curl up on the couch with her favorite, warm jacket, and watch a Disney movie...
Fruitcake watched her as she bent down to throw her jacket in the dryer, and set the timer for five minutes. She then walked back to crumble a few flakes of fish food at the surface of his bowl. Fruitcake ignored his food and instead watched Madelyn scoop spoonfuls of ice cream into her mouth.
The timer beeped.
Madelyn set the ice cream down again. She strode to the dryer. Without thinking twice, she pulled the latch.
She then let out a blood-curdling scream.
There, among the tangles of her jacket, were the dead limbs and mangled corpse of the pale, sickly, grinning girl.
Her dead, black eyes snapped open.
With a strangled scream, Madelyn was thrown back in a tremendous gust of wind. Her head cracked against the back wall.
******
Outside the laundry room, Fruitcake leapt from his fishbowl. He flopped onto the kitchen counter and floundered weakly in the smallest of puddles, suffocating in nothing but air.
There in the puddle next to the half-eaten ice cream bowl, Fruitcake's gills flapped hopelessly, his tiny sides heaving, as the laundry door creaked slowly open.
A tall form sauntered meekly from the frame, her brow darkened, her mouth curled into a crooked, sick sneer. Her long, light brown hair was dripping with something scarlet in the back of her scalp, from the gaping gash, revealing an ivory paleness that was her exposed skull.
Behind her, half of Lucy Baker's frail little corpse was hanging out of the dryer, arms outstretched to the floor, hands crooked and wicked, like dead spiders. Her eyes were now empty of everything except death.
Fruitcake's round little mouth gasped for relief from his asphyxiation, his buggy eyes staring up at Madalyn as if begging for her to put him back in his bowl.
But Madalyn, now no longer Madalyn, smirked down at dying Fruitcake.
The possession was black in her eyes, seeing death as bliss. The possession that had captured that man who had witnessed it's first suicide, then craved a release, to feel that death again—that violent, rapid death—had thrown itself before that hurtling train. Then the girl that had seen it—she hadn't seen death before, but had she ever felt it. In the end.
There was no end to death, not yet, not for this possession. So as the goldfish took it's final pathetic heave, the smirking Madalyn turned slowly away, and faced the curtains where the balcony was.
Hurtling, rapid, violent, bliss, death.
The curtains blew open. She loomed over the balcony railing.
Her eyes stayed wide open. They watched, and remained watching, even after the ground whooshed up, and crunched through her skull.
*********************************
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oh my gosh. . .All i'm coming up with is O.O
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