Suburbia

My skin is burning. I can feel it peeling off layer by layer as the temperature rises and rises.

I’m burning up. The flames are licking up my throat, trying to escape through my mouth and unable to they simply burn and burn and burn inside me until I have nothing left.

I stumble forward one foot down in front of the other, one foot down in front of the other, tripping every other step. Since when did something as simple as walking become so difficult, how can I be expected to keep going if I can barely stand up straight, pretend that nothing is happening when I know that I am nothing but a pile of ashes on the floor? How has no one noticed as I have slowly turned from muscle and sinew, to skin and bone and now to this, a pile of dust on the floor, purposeless and at mercy to the world?

I lie on the ground, eyes closed, the pain of standing up too great; I feel the gritty tarmac beneath my spine and imagine it turning to a sticky, black molten mess beneath, consuming me, creeping down my throat and finally dampening the fire inside me.

Suddenly, I feel liquid drop onto my face and I squint my eyes open and look above me. There’s nothing there but a dark night sky with a few gloomy stars staring back at me. I reach up to touch my face where the liquid was but there’s nothing there.

I look around my surroundings: a long road with no pavement, bordered either side by thick copses of trees. I have a feeling of intense déjà vu for a few moments before I finally recognise where I am.

I’ve been here before. Once. About a year ago.

I was with Craig, he’d just had an argument with his mum and he was determined to not go home for the night so she’d think he’d been murdered. That’s what he said anyway, if I’m honest I think he just needed to get away from his house for a bit, that was around the time his parents were arguing a lot.
I’m not sure what it was about this particular place that had attracted him but he decided he was going to spend the night at this very spot, he’d lain down at the edge of the road and just tucked his arms behind his head and looked up at the sky.

I’d gone and lain beside him and we spent the whole night just like that, the cold and the damp not seeming to matter.

At one point I had turned to him and said, “Are you not afraid that a car will come?”

“Not particularly,” he’d replied, “We all end up the same way anyway… it’s just a matter of when. And you know, sometimes I reckon I’ve done as much living as I possibly can already.”

And I had said nothing in reply.

I try and think now about what I could have said to him? “Hey buddy, don’t kill yourself or else I’m gonna go batshit crazy?” Would he have said anything back? Would he have agreed? Would he have promised not to kill himself? Would he have done it anyway?

I turn my head to my right and imagine that he is lying there beside me, like he was that night, I squeeze my eyes shut tight and imagine every single curl in his hair and every fine eyelash and every dark chuckle, but when my eyes fall back open he isn’t there and I am alone on the side of the road.

I let out a ragged sigh and let the black, burning flames crawl up my throat again and consume me, maybe if I lie here long enough the wind will blow my ashes away and I can just float above trees for eternity, not having to think, not having to feel.

“Hey, do you want to see my blood?”

My eyes snap open and Craig is lying there beside me.

I blink. It’s him. It’s really Craig. Just lyin next to me like nothing changed... only his face is different: his eyes are sunken deep into his skull and his lips are a deep blue.

“Craig?”

He cocks his head to the side to look at me, the skin on his neck puckering grotesquely as he turns.

“Craig? What happened to you?”

He rolls his eyes, “Do you want to see my blood or not?”

I have so many things to ask him but none that I can put into words. My head is swimming and I struggle to pluck the words that seem to float in front of my eyes, unsure if what I’m saying even makes sense.

“It’s probably the same as mine,” I answer.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong! Take a look at this!” Craig’s eyes seem to light up from within their sunken pits as he sits up, pulling a knife from his pocket.

I scramble onto my knees quickly, my eyes darting from him, to the knife and back.

“Craig, what-“

“Just shut up and watch,” Craig orders and with that he carves a deep, jagged slit all down his forearm. I try to cry out but my throat seems to cut itself off when I see what is pouring forth from Craig’s arm…

Dark, sludgey tar pours from his veins as the inky, sopping, depths of the wound seem to crawl and writhe as if something is living inside his arm. I feel my eyelids widen as if they will peel back from my face, my chin bucking as my gag reflex kicks in.

“Told you, didn’t I?” Craig crows, “Fucking beautiful isn’t it? I knew I just had to show you, you’re the only one I know who would understand, you’re the only one who understands the beauty of it, you see it!”

I manage to drag my eyes away from the sickening carcass of Craig’s arm and wretch onto the tarmac on my other side but nothing comes out, I forgot I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Bile drips from my lips to the road.

Craig laughs a manic laugh behind me, “We’re blood brothers, remember! Always and forever!”

I glimpse back over my shoulder towards Craig to see the black tar is still pouring from Craig’s arm and is starting to pool towards me. I let out a cry of sheer horror as I desperately crawl away from it, out into the road. But I’m not fast enough and the bubbling sludge soon reaches me and starts to inch its way up my legs.

“Craig, help me! Do something, make it stop!”

“I thought this was what you wanted! You can’t turn your back on me now Leland!”

I tear my eyes away from the tar that is starting to crawl its way up my torso to look at Craig… But it isn’t Craig anymore.

His limbs have elongated to sickening lengths and his skin has stretched so far over his frame that it has begun to tear, his chalky bones glistening in the moonlight as they peek through the disintegrating flesh.

The creature that stares back at me has pits for eyes; a feverish smile splits open its face. This is not Craig.

“Craig!” I cry, “Craig! I need you! Where are you?” I can’t move, I can’t think: desperation fills me until I think my skin will split and burst from the sheer volume of what I am feeling.

“You never knew Craig,” the animal rattles back to me, “Or else he would have told you what he was going to do, wouldn’t he? You never had him, you’ll never have anyone.”

I open my mouth to scream but the tar has reached my lips and it crawls down my throat and it roars into my body and it eclipses any and all sense I have until only it’s pain is left and I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t live.

Suddenly the dark that consumes me is thrown to pieces as a blinding light cascades upon me. The darkness splinters around me as an echoing bellow seems to fall all around me.

I throw my arm over my face to shield myself from whatever new pain is coming as the noise reaches a crescendo so loud it seems to fill my lungs with its one unending, shuddering note…

Then, just as suddenly, the light is gone. The sound turns to a screech and I hear the sound of tyres on gravel.

I peer up from my crouch on the floor to see a truck parked haphazardly on the side of the road, a man clambering shakily out of it.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at sitting in the middle of the road” The man’s voice is gruff but I can tell he is shaken, “I could have killed you!”

I quickly spin my head around to the road but the creature is no longer there, not a single drop of pitchy black remaining. I look all around me my whole body shaking violently as I scan the surroundings for the horrifying creature.

“What’s the matter with you, huh?” I can hear the man approaching me from behind.

I slowly clamber from my knees to my feet until my stomach suddenly seems to flip over and I am forced to bend over and wretch again.

“Woah, woah, are you okay?” The feel a hand on my shoulder and I flinch so violently away I almost fall. But instead, I lurch myself into a run, trying to run as far away as possible from that little patch of road where I nearly lost my mind and my life.

“Hey wait, stop! You need help, man! Wait!” The man’s voice echoes into nothing as dive into the forest on the side of the path, the tree branches enveloping me so I can run where nothing will follow.