Claustrophobia - #OctoboPobia short story

Nobody pays much attention to Calloway. At the end of the day, as it turns dark, he walks around the graveyard. He locks the gate with a chain and padlock, and then walks around every path, picking up litter, collecting the dead flowers that have withered too much to be left, and making sure everything is clean.

Most people don’t want to see anyone there while they’re visiting. It’s a private time and they want to be left alone. So he’s used to staying out of the way, and used to people not paying attention to him.

He likes it. It suits him.

He’s old and quiet and his slight build belies a surprising strength. He isn’t the only one that digs graves, preparing them for funerals, but he does it more than anyone else.  It’s hard work, but he does it regularly. At other times, he can be found in the shed, drinking tea from a thermos and eating sandwiches. There’s a kettle there now, and a microwave, but old habits die hard, and he likes the way the thermos feels.

As caretaker, he’s a council employee, although nobody on the council really knows him. Nobody really measures the work he does. If they don’t have to go there, people don’t really like graveyards.

Well, most people don’t.

Teenagers, on the other hand. Some of them love graveyards. Some of them see them as somewhere to drink cheap alcohol, smoke poorly made joints and some of them have awkward, fumbling sex.

There’s a couple right now, on the other side of the graveyard. Can’t be much more than eighteen.

They’ve been furtively coming in here once every few weeks, and from a safe distance, Calloway has watched her take off her knickers, lie down on the stone slab and spread her legs as her boyfriend frantically pushes into her.

They always take their time when they’re not screwing. Drinking between their thrillseeking passions, then starting again. Calloway remembers when he was young and virile enough to do it multiple times like that, but he has other passions these days. Over the months, he’s got to know their patterns. And they’ve never even realised he was there.

He walks to the caretaker’s shed, opens the door and takes the shovel in his hand.

The teenager wakes up. He breathes, his head pounding and dripping blood, and it takes him a while to realise why the air is so musty and thick.

He tries to move, but he can barely lift his arms. He’s pinned by wood above him and to his sides. He scrabbles against the darkness, feeling sharp, broken pieces of bone underneath him.

He can’t get any leverage at all. He tries shifting his weight, seeing if he can bring his hands up to his chest by twisting, to give himself more space. He can now see the skull by the side of his own head, and he tries not to panic (although he’s aware that the air is getting thinner and thinner). He manages to bring a hand up, and tries to push the lid properly, but it won’t budge. He scratches frantically, until his fingertips start to bleed. He realises this approach isn’t doing anything.

He manages, slowly and painfully, to turn onto his side, and then his front. He doesn’t have the
strength to push with his hands, but if he arches his back…. Pushes with it…. He might just be able to shift the coffin lid.

He doesn’t think about the skeleton that he’s now facing. He doesn’t think of the fact that he can’t hear anything other than soil falling, muffled, onto the top of the coffin.

He pushes and pushes. And when that doesn’t work, he screams as much as the air will let him.

He no longer has the strength to turn.  And besides, there was hardly space.

Instead, he lies down in the remains of the first owner of this coffin and can’t find the strength to move any more.

Before long, he can’t find the strength to breathe, either.

As the teenager struggles and screams, Calloway slowly and calmly shovels dirt on top of the coffin. 

He doesn’t rush. There’s no need. There’s nobody around.

He knows what he’s doing. He’s done this dozens of times.

When the screaming stops, he keeps piling the earth in. Keeps filling the grave, adding weight to the lid of the coffin.

Nobody ever notices that the graves have been turned, as long as he relays the grass fairly carefully.
People expect a certain level of upkeep.

And when people come here secretly, in singles or in pairs, they tend not to tell others where they’re going. They might be missed, but nobody knew they were here in the first place. And Calloway knows how to spot the ones that will be less missed.

Because he doesn’t just keep out of the way.

He watches. And waits, and plans, and then fills the coffins with extra passengers.

Once he’s done, he looks down at the next grave. The funeral taking place in the morning will provide more cover than anything else could do. She lies there, her skull caved in, blood and brains spilled over the soil feet further down than the grave needs to be. Once he’s dumped enough soil over her, the coffin will be able to be lowered slowly down on top, and nobody will ever know.

During the funeral, he will stay out of the way, watching without the smirk that he feels inside.
Looking at the grave and knowing that there’s one victim underneath, and then just a few feet away, one that died screaming in a box only barely bigger than he was.

He’ll know all of that is there, but nobody else will have the slightest clue. And he’ll sit in the shed, and he’ll smile to himself thinking of those lying there, and the ones he left in there alive.

Once he finishes filling in the graves, he continues to clean up around. Then he locks up the cemetery and goes home.  The next day, he’ll come back and he’ll wait for an opportunity to do it again.

He’ll pick someone and he’ll wait until the right time. And it will come and it will happen.

Nobody pays much attention to Calloway, after all.

Chronophobia (fear of colors) - #Octobophobia short story

Great cinema is black and white. This is, as far as I’m concerned, indisputable. The use of light and dark to signify everything. Shadows and subtleties that screaming colour can never live up to.

A double bill of Les Yeux Sans Visage and The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Neither one a favourite of mine, but I couldn’t help but smile at the pairing. Schlock and sublime shock together. I only wish that it was the supposed lost cut of the latter – if it ever existed.

I sat in the projection booth and watch. So many cinemas now have digital, it felt like a privilege to work with well-maintained vintage film cameras. And as venues go, I loved working in this place. 

It’s culty and silly enough not to be fully arthouse, but there’s a genuine love of film seeping through every pore.

It’s after those films that I first noticed the colour.

I was sat in the pub with some colleagues and closed my eyes after looking at the menu and there were  lines and shapes dancing around behind my eyelids. Nothing unusual, of course. But they were a more vivid and sharp than they normally are.

I wear glasses, due to short sightedness, and I’m fully aware that I’m at risk of further sight loss as I get older. I get floaters in my vision fairly regularly, but I don’t worry too much about it.

What surprised me about the colour behind my eyelids was that it didn’t feel quite as natural. It…shone. It was like a burst of neon colour lit across the inside, and after it flared, it had gone.

It was, I thought, probably something outside. Someone had taken a photograph and the lens flash had taken me by surprise. I’d looked at something just as it went off, and it burned an after-effect into my vision.

The next morning, I woke up to it when my son came into the room, shouting that he was late for school. A vibrant, glowing river of colour behind my eyelids. It didn’t last long. Just enough to wake me up in a panic, utterly confused and disorientated.

It lasted a bit longer this time. It hung around for a couple of minutes, bright against my eyelids, burning them. When I opened my eyes, I could still see brief lines and shapes, like looking at the outline of a magic eye painting. But they faded quickly.

Driving carefully, I took him to school. I can’t remember the last time I drove with my foot hovering over the brake so gingerly.

That night, as I became more tired, helping him with his homework, the lights returned when I closed my eyes.  This time, it went on for long minutes, burning each time. Bright reds, yellows, scalding greens and blues. Shimmering crystal razor blades against my eyes each time. I tried to keep my eyes open, but each time I blinked, it was like having a shotgun go off in front of me.

By the time it stopped, I was in agony. My eyes felt scalded and sore. When I looked into the mirror, they were bloodshot.

My son looked at me, scared.

When it stopped, I did the obvious thing. I googled. I looked for symptoms, and after convincing myself it wasn’t meningitis, I decided it would be worth going to the doctor. This could be a stroke or similar.

I called the following morning. But by the time my appointment came round a few days later, I was in the hospital, sedated and in bed.

Unconsciousness was the only place that I could escape from the colours. Which were just getting brighter and more vivid each time. And it was going for longer and longer.

I would occasionally get a small bit of relief, and it would stop, and I’d be able to focus for a while on other things. But then it would return, even stronger than before.

They ran tests. They looked for eye damage, brain damage, tumours, blood diseases… nothing. Every eye test they could run, they ran. But they could see from the darkening colour of my eyes that something was happening.

The only time I had a prolonged period of relief was when my eyes were held open and moisturised with drops during some of the tests. While it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t the blinding lights that I saw when I closed my eyes.

And the colours were getting brighter and brighter still. Coalescing into the purest white.

Every time I closed my eyes, it was like staring at the sun. Even for a second, it hurt.

My son didn't understand, but I didn’t want him to hear my screams. He was staying with my ex for a while, and even she burst into tears when she visited and heard me.

I thought about his face. But each time I’d tried to look at him, a blink had led to fierce, stabbing pain. I thought of the movies, those pristine lines, and all I could see was the light from the projection booth. Harsh. Unforgiving.

This went on for weeks, until I could finally take no more.

In the middle of the night, while the hospital was at its quietest, I pushed my fingers into my eyes. 

Both at once. I tried not to think about the pain as I tore into them.

One of them ripped and tore, blood and liquid pouring down my face, as I held the remains in my hand. The other one came out whole, and I ripped at the fleshy connections to the back of my eye socket.

With no small effort, it ripped away, and for a moment, I knelt and laughed in relief. The pain was almost overwhelming, but not as much as that sense of freedom.

The blood and liquid dripped over my top and lap (which I could feel, each drop hotter than I’d expected). I laughed. In hope. In freedom. In pain.

And then I closed my eyes.

Whiteness blinded me once again. Intense, shining, glaring whiteness.

Like staring into the sun. Into death.

I could still see.

Chaetophobia - #OctoboPhobia short story

It starts like a joke. A hair in my soup. Thick country vegetable soup, just out of the can and heated up. No waiter to send it back to the kitchen. Just me on a Sunday afternoon. And I’m halfway through the soup when I find it.

The hair I find is long. I don’t have long hair. There’s nobody else in the flat (and there hasn’t been anyone else in the flat in some time). It must have happened in the factory.

If it was worth it, I’d send a letter of complaint, or take a picture and tweet it. But for a single hair, it’s probably not.

Despite my revulsion, I pick it up with the spoon and dump it in the bin.

And then I find another one, polluting the soup.

And another.

And another.

Sickened, I can’t eat any more of the soup, and I pour it out. A thick clump of matted hair comes with it, and I struggle not to throw up.

I leave it and try not to think about it, other than rethinking any ideas of pictures and complaints. A letter. That’ll do the job. An actual letter rather than an email. Maybe threatening to go to the papers. 

I take some photos of the soup in the bin, and the bowl, which still has some stray hairs. While trying not to concentrate too much on what I’m doing, I pick up the matted hair with a fork and take pictures of it.

It’s not until later that evening that I realise the mild tickle I’ve felt in my throat for hours isn’t psychological, but is actually one of the hairs. I must have half-swallowed it in that first half of the soup.

I can feel it in my throat, harshly stuck well behind my tongue. I don’t like the idea of swallowing it, so I try to cough to dislodge it.

It doesn’t move, so I cough harder, and then hard enough that it chafes my throat a little, but the hair doesn’t move its position, other than in a mildly tickling way.

Going into the kitchen, I retrieve a glass from the cupboard and run the tap. I may not like to swallow the hair, but it’s better than leaving it there. I let the water run until it’s colder, then fill the glass and take a few sips.

Nothing. The hair doesn’t move at all, although I feel the water going down against it. I drink a few proper gulps, some running down my chin a little bit, but still it remains.

Something solid. That’ll do the trick. I turn to the counter and open the breadbin. There’s half a loaf of multigrain, which I tear a chunk of, chew and swallow. When that doesn’t work, I try a few more chunks.

With every mouthful, I feel the hair moving. It really should have dislodged, but it hasn’t. I try more water to help the bread down, which has stuck in my glottis a little, but the hair doesn’t move with it.

It feels thick and wiry, and while I know that the more tense I feel, the less likely it is to shift, I can’t help it. What I should do, I know, is to try not to think about it, and at some point it will just shift, whereas the more I allow it to irritate me, the more it’ll physically irritate me. The more my throat is likely to swell slightly inside and become inflamed.

But I can’t help it. I try to bring the hair up a little instead, using the muscles in my throat to squeeze and push, somewhere between a glottal stop and a retch. This means that I feel the hair touching both sides of my throat, but it also seems to work. Not much, but there’s a bit movement and it tickles against my tonsils.

I feel comically like a bird regurgitating its food as I keep tensing and moving the muscles in my throat in an attempt to shift the hair, but it’s definitely beginning to work.

The hair works its way up a little, almost within reach of my tongue, if I curl the base of my tongue back. It’s harsh against my throat, and feels as if it’s longer than I realised – while the tip of the hair has definitely moved up, I can still feel the hair in the middle of my throat as well.

I have to stop for a moment, as I almost throw up – my body has got confused by the constant mild retching and thinks I’m trying to vomit. But a few gasps of air help, even though every one of them makes the hair tip move and tickle.

Eventually, the tip of the hair gets to the point where I can just about feel it if I pull my tongue towards the back of my throat as much as I can – it’s annoyingly out of reach at first, and it’s frustrating because my throat is now beginning to hurt,  but the hair is almost at the point where my tongue should be able to get some real purchase on it.

I push the back of my tongue to the back of the roof of my mouth, and try to pull the hair out with it. 

Each time I do it, it moves the hair up just a tiny bit. It feels like a wire going down my throat, because I still haven’t brought the other end up. It must be long, as it’s still in my throat as it was when I first noticed it.

I’d thought this would have brought the whole thing up by now, especially as the hair tip moves up the roof of my mouth, creating a straight line that pushes against my tonsils.

Instead, I reach into my mouth with my fingers, grabbing the tip between the end of my first and second fingers. I’m very careful, because I’m having to reach quite far and I don’t want to unintentionally gag, but I want this damn hair gone.

I pull it slowly but surely, and it’s tight, but it comes. I have it out to around my teeth.

This thing is long. I can still feel it lodged in my throat.

But I have it now, and I have a proper grip between my thumb and first finger, and I pull harder.

It still comes. Right out of my mouth, but still the other end is somewhere in my throat.

I pull harder, and I feel it slicing into my throat and tongue and tonsils as I do so, but no matter how much they’re irritating, I want this damn thing out of me. I’ll deal with the sore throat, I’ll deal with the stinging. But I cannot deal with this hair.

But it keeps coming, without the other end appearing. I pull it and have it out the entire length of the width of my palm, and pull with my other hand.

Now it’s slick with blood, and I can feel the blood in my mouth, but I still pull.

When I stop, the pain of my throat getting too much to keep relentlessly pulling, the hair is now hanging out of my mouth down to my chest. I spit the blood that’s collected into my mouth into the sink. It’s thick and red and mixed with saliva.

After a few deep breaths, each one like a razor blade against my throat, I pull again, harder. More comes out, more blood, more bile.

And it keeps on coming. Further and further.

I have it wound around my hand multiple times, but I can still feel it scraping the inside of my throat, which is now raw and painful, and every now and then, I have to stop and cough and spit up more blood, and each time there’s more blood than there was last time, which I have spattered down my chin and front. My hands are covered in blood, some of it now dried.

I pull and pull again, until eventually, I feel something new.

Deep inside my gut, I can feel the hair is attached to something. Something at the base of my stomach.

When I pull it, I can feel it pulling up my insides.

I tense. Each time I pull, it’s painful, but I have feet and feet of this hair now wrapped around my gore-crusted hands.

If I pull it, will it break? Or will it pull up something inside, tearing?

I can’t have it in me.

I pull one more time.

Arachnophobia - OctoboPhobia short story

My first memory is of spiders. I am seventeen now, and don’t really remember much before I was five, but this is something I’ll never forget.  And as I look at his eyes, I remember it.

I was wearing my yellow skirt. I don’t know why that is something that sticks in my brain, but it is.  I don’t know what else I was wearing, although I was wearing socks rather than shoes. That’s definitely important.

We were visiting my grandparents in the countryside, and I was able to run around their grounds as much as I wanted.  Looking back now, it wasn’t as big as I remember, but it felt almost like its own country. Like it should be on a map somewhere. “Grandparents”, just around the same size as… I don’t know. Birmingham or somewhere I’ve never been.

It was so much bigger than where we lived. So much bigger than anywhere I’d ever been.  We didn’t even have a garden of our own. We had a small piece of land outside our flats, and there was a park down the road.

I was allowed and even encouraged to explore, as long as I stayed away from anything sharp and I didn’t eat anything I found. And, of course, as long as I didn’t go near the road by myself. I’d seen a rabbit and chased it for a bit, shouting and screaming in delight.

Then I found the shed. Not the shed they actually used, the new, larger one that was also their garage. The old shed, the one on the top end of the garden that you couldn’t see into.

I couldn’t reach the handle with enough of a grip to open it, but I could fit my fingers into the gap between the door and the wall. I pulled it, expecting it to be locked, and it opened, scraping against the ground. I had to put all of my strength into opening it enough to fit into.

There were shelves and piles of cans, old tools and jars and bottles. It was like a treasure trove, and I ignored the dust and the cobwebs as I began to explore it, opening drawers and looking around everything that I could. There was an old wooden chair that served me as a small stepladder as I searched my way around it (including finding a small stack of old magazines, hidden in a drawer, featuring naked ladies that made me feel troubled and confused as to why there would be such a thing at all, although looking back, they were likely an old secret of my grandfather’s, although that thought never crossed my mind at the time).

There was an old, cast-iron lawmower in the corner that was heavily coated in grim, dust and webs. I felt my way around it, confused as to what it was, and found a small latch that allowed me to open up the green metallic hood. It was entirely black underneath.

And then the blackness moved.

I didn’t understand what was happening at first, as the centre of the blackness vanished, and it moved outwards, up the inside of the hood, and across the lawnmower, but then it began to wave over my hand, a black sheet of thin, hair-like legs, swarming over me.

I screamed and dropped the hood, which slammed down with a crash, but what seemed like hundreds, thousands, maybe, of small black spiders crawled all over the lawnmower and the floor. I fell, trying to brush them off my hand, and more came over me as they tried to escape the now-destroyed safety of the lawnmower engine.

I could feel them all over my legs, body and hair, and I kept screaming, trying frantically to brush them all off me. I shouted and screamed as loudly as I could, even when I felt one around and then inside my mouth, which I spat out.

I must have been screaming loud enough for my parents and grandparents to hear, as it can’t have been long until they found me.

I cried and cried and cried as they brushed them all off me, and as they told me off for going into the shed, and as they stripped my clothes off, and then put me into the shower. I cried when I was put to bed that night, and I screamed again when I woke up in the night, surrounded by darkness and convinced I could feel them all over me.

Ever since then, I have never been able to bear them. Any time I see one, I know there must always be more nearby, but I always kill them. Stamp on them, roll up newspapers and squish them until they’re just a small black and red smear, or whatever I have to do.

And it’s while I look at the toddler’s eyes, I remember it.

I babysit now, usually two nights a week. It’s a good time to study or watch television or talk to my friends on snapchat. I get paid pretty well for it, and I usually like the kids. The parents are out until whatever time they’re out until, and once the kid’s asleep, I get the house to myself. Tonight, they’re at something in town, and will be out most of the night. I have the spare room, which means being paid even more to sleep, which I’m okay with.

He’s old enough to help get himself ready for bed, although I have to help with some of the trickier stuff like changing and brushing teeth properly. But he’s well behaved and actually comes to tell me that it’s his bedtime. I’ve sat for him plenty of times before.

It’s when he does that, that I look at his eyes. They’re dark brown, with black pools in the middle, and framed with thick eyelashes. He looks tired and maybe a little unwell as he tells me he’s ready for bed.

It’s as he’s saying that, that it happens. Two eyelashes, just right at the bottom of his left eye, move. 

They curl up briefly, and then flex straight again.

I am stunned into silence, not understanding what I’m looking at, but then the memory of the shed overwhelms me.

They’re not eyelashes. They’re two small black, hair-like legs.

I grab him as he leaves and turn him around to face me again, and he smiles, not seeing my actions as aggressive, and leans in to hug me.

I let him do it, and then hold him a bit further away at him again, and look at his eyes again.

This time, the eyelashes stay still. Maybe they know I’ve seen them, but I don’t let on. I have to surprise them this time, not let them surprise me. And I have to be sure.

I help him get changed, and take the opportunity to look at the rest of his skin. It takes me a while, because I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but then I see it.

His back is very slightly moving. Underneath the skin. Small waves of constant movement. It’s almost imperceptible. But once I see it’s there, I understand what is happening.

In biology, a little while ago, I learned about parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside their prey. The eggs then hatch and they devour their victim from within, controlling them beforehand.

I can’t let them know that I know. But as he puts on his pyjama top, he smiles at me before he goes to brush his teeth, and I have to look away, pretending to check something on my phone.

His open mouth, smiling at me. I can’t look at it without imagining spiders pouring out of it. Not that close to me. I can’t do it.

He goes to the bathroom, and I follow him. I steel myself, and I put a towel around him as he stands on the step and I pretend everything is okay and I put the toothpaste onto the brush, and put my hand over his as he holds it and I pretend that I can’t feel the scuttling movement underneath my hand as we brush his teeth.

I put him to bed, which still has the barriers up a bit to stop him falling out, and leave the nightlight on, and I watch him carefully while I tell him a bedtime story. Every sentence I finish, I look again at him, and each time, I see more and more movement.

He pretends to fall asleep, or rather they pretend to fall asleep, and I go downstairs.

They are in him, swarming all inside him, just waiting to come out.

I go into the kitchen and take one of the knives. I don’t know if he can be saved. I don’t know if I’m going to be trying to cut the spiders out of him without killing him too, or if he’s already dead and just pretending. But if he is, at least he won’t feel anything.

I take a deep breath and climb the stairs. I know that once I make that first cut, the spiders are going to come swarming out. Thousands of legs and bodies.

But I have to kill them all.

I hold the knife carefully and open the bedroom door. 

Agoraphobia - OctoboPhobia Short Story

She walks with a stutter. A hesitation that she can't get past. Every few steps, it's like watching a needle skip on a record.

The mall is enormous and crowded. Escalators opposite the entrances are next to six feet tall maps with "you are here" pointers proving difficult to find quickly. It clearly overwhelms her. She stands in front of the map, trying to work it out but it confuses her. She looks at it like someone trying to work out a magic eye painting.

Frustrated and upset, she has to move when someone behind her says something. She steps to the side and immediately apologises, her voice a half pitch higher than usual.

No further conversation takes place, and she watches whoever it was walk away. She's burning with embarrassment. She got in the way. Again.

She has always hated being out like this. Ever since she was a little girl, hating school not because of the subjects or the teachers but because of the lunchtimes and the schoolyard. The hundreds of loud moving elements around her shouting and screaming and playing and, once they realised she was vulnerable to this, taunting and teasing.

Ever since she was at university, having to get food with everyone else and stand outside classes with everyone else, having to go through a thousand conversations she didn't know how to have. The everyday brutality of small talk.
With people she knows, she is comfortable. More than comfortable. She is funny and confident and relaxed. She has no problem surrounding herself with friends. But she doesn't know how to make them.

She looks for safety. Always. Bedrooms, houses, cars, classrooms... in these things, she has a roof and walls that keep the rest of the world out.

A place like this? All space and people, surrounded above and below by people, moving hassled and determined people, all of whom seem to know how to do this when she doesn't? A place where she feels she stands out like a white hair where there wasn't one before? If it isn't her worst nightmare, it's certainly on the list.

But she is still young, despite how she feels sometimes when she wakes up in the night,  and she is in love.

And for love, she has come to this terrible mass of corporations, and will brave the crowds and the spaces, all to buy a gift that will make her smile, and the next time they're lying next to each other on the sofa, their long hair tangled together, she'll be able to reach to her wrist, stroke it and smile and it'll be a perfect thing they share.

For this, she is here, trying to look at the map without getting in anyone's way, frantically hoping nobody notices her.
She traces the route along the map with her finger for a moment, repeating the directions to herself and then sets in search of the shop.

The escalator gives her something to hold onto for a few scant moments, and just the feeling of stability that provides gives her some brief salvation and calm.
When she gets to the top, she begins to panic, losing herself for a moment. The scale and size of the place threatens to overwhelm her, and she looks like she's stepped into a plummeting fall, until she sees a shop she recognises from the map, and the panic fades.

She walks uncertainly, the love in her heart proving stronger than the fear in her throat.

She tries not to look into the shops as she passes. It feels like looking in on someone's living room window on a street at night, something else she tries and often fails not to do. It feels intrusive, spying on a life she can never have.

A full quarter of the mall later, it happens.

It's the toy shops, of all places. The toy shops. A run of them, with a play area outside, keeping their wares in the site of the children playing while their parents rest, letting them see other parents and children walking out with toys that they immediately want and harass and cry and end either getting or being dragged away, kicking and screaming in jealous fury.

Something happens. A stumble. A trip. A fall. And then... children laughing? Pointing? Parents rolling eyes or, even worse, offering to help.

Suddenly the centre of attention with nowhere to escape to, her breath starts to shorten. Her eyes grow wide as she stumbles to her feet, and then she blushes and reddens and cannot hold back the tears.

It has all gone wrong. Children laughing and pointing, even innocently. Reminding her, almost certainly of being the object of scorn and pity in the school playground.

The regret at her attempt to come out and find a shop is written across her face, but there is no anger and there is no blame. There is only horror and burning shame.
She flees, her foot twisted painfully and her breath catching, somewhere else. Anywhere else. But the tears in her eyes blind her and she almost trips again, staggering into a stranger.

Now, she can barely breathe at all, except for occasional ragged wheezing loud gasps, that must only attract more attention that she cannot deal with right now.

She starts to run, tears streaming down her face, in absolute terror of people. She is partly doubled over, seemingly in agony.

With so many people around, she tries to find a safe area while trying not to look at anyone, so she can try to convince herself they are not looking at her, but the pain is making her clutch her chest again.
Trying to breathe, she sees a toilet and bolts towards it awkwardly.

Once in, she storms into a cubicle and sits, one hand against the door and the other clutching herself as she tries to regulate her breathing and get through to the other side of what she must surely begin to realise is far more than a panic attack.

I whisper to her that I love her and I try to hold her as she dies, the heart attack deadly and painful.

She doesn't hear me. She doesn't feel me in the cubicle.

But she never has. Not in these last three years that I've come here every day and watched her relive the last steps of her life.

I'll be here tomorrow and every day, trying to hold her and telling her that I love her and the watch that I found on the last page on her browser history would have been so perfect.

Maybe one day, it will help. Maybe one day I can help her be at peace.

Until then, I come here each day, reliving it as she relives it.

Acrophobia - OctoboPhobia Short Story

Acrophobia

I looked down.

Standing in the elevator, I looked at the floor, not at the buttons, not at the door, and not at the display telling me how many floors we’d climbed. I tried not to think about the cable holding us up, and I tried not to think about what would happen if the cable snapped, and I tried not to think about that moment where gravity suddenly decides to reassert its claim.

A double-booking. I gripped the handle of my suitcase and, not for the first time since I’d walked into this hotel, inwardly cursed the asshole that booked my room at the travel company my employers use.

I was desperate to sit in the bar for a bit. Sit and read a book for an hour or two with a glass of good whiskey and watch life go by. Or, hell, bad whiskey, for that matter.  But that would mean getting back into the lift and feeling my stomach slowly rise as it descended.

As it slowly (hesitatingly and grindingly) made its way to the top floor, I kept looking down.

It finally stopped and the doors, with a whine that called desperately for oil, opened. I pulled my luggage behind me, and walked down, looking for my room number. It was unusual, in this day and age to have a key rather than a card, but that was an unusual thing that I had no issues with.

When I found the room, I opened the door, switched on the light and looked around. The lights were on a low setting, and most of the room looked welcoming. But the sight out of the window made me immediately feel nauseated. I could see out over the buildings across a lot of the city. I let go of my luggage and dashed across to it, and felt at the curtains to close them, when I saw something that made me feel even more uneasy.

An old fire escape. The kind that zig zagged and stepped up the entire building. The ones that ended somewhere with a ladder dangling onto the pavement below.

I pulled the curtains together and frantically looked around the room, looking for the safety card, which was on the wall next to the door. I read over it, looking for their fire regulations, and slowly let out a sigh of relief.

There was an indoor fire escape down the end of the corridor, just past the elevator. One made of thick concrete, that would take hours for fire to even touch, allowing for safe exit. And, more importantly, safe indoor exit.

The rest of the evening passed smoothly. I didn’t leave the room. I worked for a while, then made my way into the slightly stocked minibar, and had a drink while I read a bit of the novel I’d been trying to finish for the last month.

The next morning, I would make my way across town to the meeting, and then I’d get back on the train home. Tired, I decided to shower in the morning, and concentrated on reading for a bit, so I turned the lights up a bit more. I settled back onto the bed, on top of the blankets, and, for a while, was peaceful.

That peace was shattered by a shout and some scuffling in the room across from me. There was the sound of some fighting, and then the beginning of a scream, which was cut off, almost before it got started properly. It was cut off by some sharp, strange sounding smacks. Which went on for a while.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call reception? I walked quietly over to the door and looked through the spyhole.

It gave a fishbowl view of the part of the corridor in front of me as I could feel my eyelashes against the small metal and glass hole.

I watched as the man with the fire axe walked out of the room across from mine.

He was tall and powerfully built. He had dark hair and his light coloured shirt was sprayed with blood. He looked around carefully, and was clearly listening as well.

He looked back into the room, and while I strained, I couldn’t see anything beyond the door, and then he took one final look around the corridor before he turned and began to close the door behind him.

Then, briefly, he froze.

He looked back carefully, looking around the corridor one more time, looking for something that had evidently caught his attention, as he tried to work out what it was.

He was staring right at my door.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.  I just watched as he looked down towards the bottom of the door. For what felt like long, long moments that stretched out like a yawning chasm, he just looked.

Carefully, slowly, I looked down towards my feet. And it felt like the floor had been ripped away from underneath my when I realised what he saw.

The light from the room was visible underneath the door. A little strip of light, interrupted by the shadows of two feet.

I looked back to the spyhole, just as he walked right up to it, face first. I could see that he had specks of blood on his face, including a spray down his right eyelid and cheek.. Tiny, almost imperceptible, but definitely there. I couldn’t help it, but I stepped back, recoiling.

The moment I did so, the door vibrated and shook. He was clearly trying to get in.

I forgot about subtlety and ran for the phone. Grabbing the receiver with one hand, I tried to dial with my other. My hands were shaking, so it took me a moment, as the door continued to shake.

It rang, and every time it did so, it felt like an hour had passed. Eventually, it was picked up by the man on reception.

“Please, I…”

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Help me," I whispered, my breath feeling icy cold and making it painful to breathe in. "Send help… I’m on the top floor, and there’s a man…”

A heavy crack sounded from the door.

“I’m sorry, sir, the line appears to be bad.”

The door shook with the weight and violence of the crack the second time, and this time, the dull thudding sound in the middle of the crack meant that I understood what he was doing.

“Help me!” I screamed at him. “He’s outside, oh God, he’s outside.”

Another cracking thud came from the door as he swung the axe into it again.

I left the phone for a moment, and moved back so I could see the door. As heavy and thick as the wood was, it was beginning to splinter and bend in the middle. It would take him time to get in, but probably not as long as it would take the police to get here.

I picked the phone back up. “There’s someone with an axe,” I said, somehow sounding so much more calm than I felt. “He’s killed people and he’s trying to kill me. I’m on the top floor. You have to send help and then get the police here.”

Another smash at the door, and this time, I saw the very tip of the axe break through.

“Sir, I’ll… I’ll call them now. Then I’ll ring you right back.”

I put the phone down and climbed over the bed towards the window. I didn’t look out, but instead looked right down at the catch, flipping it before lifting the frame up as high as it would go.

A blast of cold, vicious air whipped against me as another crash, this time with not so much a thud as a breaking noise, came from behind me.

I lifted my foot across the window until I was straddling it. And then I put my foot down onto the fire escape.

It shifted the second I did so. It obviously hadn’t been used in years. I grabbed the window frame as my stomach dropped and I stared at the wood. I clutched it so hard I could feel my nails digging into it.

I glanced back at the door and could now see a larger crack, and through it, the colour of the wall beyond. And then I could see a blood stippled shoulder barging against the crack, as it then lengthened and widened further up the height of the door.

There was no choice. No other option.

Without looking, I shifted all of my weight onto the metal lattice platform, and the entire thing swayed a bit, and I nearly lost my balance, but it held. I leaned across and felt the railing against my hand, noticing that it was a lot more slick with sweat against the flaked, thick and sharp paint.

I could barely breathe. The wind was like being hit with thick wet, cold blankets, and I could only take air in through the shallowest of gasps. I couldn’t turn back to the room, but I couldn’t bear to look around. I couldn’t bear to see the tops of buildings around me. It was a view I could hardly stand from the ground while looking up. From here…

The railing. That was what I could concentrate on. The paint and rust as I moved, hand over hand, and shuffled across to the steps…

As I found the corner, and could feel the end of the platform with my foot, I could hear what had to be one of the final cracks from the door in my room. It wouldn’t take him long to get through now.

I had to move faster. I couldn’t slowly grasp my way down the entire length of the escape. I had to move faster.

That’s why I moved down the steps faster, not carefully feeling my way down each step, but letting myself move down as if it were a normal staircase, a regular starcase, each one just a step from the front door onto the sidewalk.

It was only four steps down when I slipped. I don’t know what it was on. But one of the metallic steps was slick, and my foot skid against it, no purchase at all.

I tried to stick out my other foot to regain my balance, but I felt it twist and snap underneath my weight, and I crashed down hard.

There weren’t too many steps, but it was enough for me to gain momentum as I slammed into the railings at the end of them.

One of the railings was eaten through with rust. It gave immediately, and I barrelled through it.

The only thing that stopped me from falling was that I’d somehow managed to grab the latticed platform. The muscles in my shoulders screamed out in pain, as gravity took hold of my ankles and pulled with all of its might.

I could hear sirens in the background. Looking up, I could see his head looking out of the window, looking down and then looking right at me.

In movies, falling always looks graceful. It looks like swimming in air. But I’ve always known that it happens so much faster. You’re not moving through something with resistance. You’re whipping down, landing before you can even take it in. It's faster than you can possibly imagine. And then it's all over.

The wind slapped me, and the rusted metal stabbed into my fingers.

I couldn’t help it.

I looked down.

Cthulhu Bread

Morisssssssssssssooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnsssssss.

Why is tiger paw bread c\alled tiger paw bread?

It should be c\alled cthulhu bread.

You can see on these photos how cthulhuy it is.

Love from Christopher Brosnahan age 35 ½