literature

Worm

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Literature Text

He froze, hand on the handle of the door, pausing. Why was he here again. He shook his head and walked back through the apartment to his desk. It had been one of those moments where you found yourself standing somewhere with no memory of what your intentions might have been. He was a little distracted of late.

He sat down at the wooden desk and idly ran his fingers around and over the keys of the typewriter. It was a shame that he had nothing to write about. He pursed his lips and nodded to himself, looking around at the whitewashed walls, the simple furniture of dark wood.

He shook his head again, the same tic. Of course he did! He was going to write about the neighbours. What a thing to forget. What odd people. Monstrous, really.  The readers lapped up the exotic though, these days.

He sat down at the typewriter and reached for a sheaf of paper. He glanced at the typewriter and saw that there was already a sheet there. With writing on it, no less. He leaned over the desk and peered at it. It appeared he had started the article after all. He frowned. Eloquent yes, but a bit more vehement than he would have intended. He didn't remember them being all quite that offensive. And he certainly didn't remember doing to them what he had wrote here in this article. It seemed very unlike him. They would have had to be truly hideous for him to do that. And he would have remembered that for certain.

He tore out the paper and placed in a new sheet. He wrote a few lines and yawned. His hand froze on the typewriter when he opened his eyes again. The sentence was cut off. He couldn't remember the ending. He suddenly felt incredibly angry. He had no clue where he was going with this. He had been so certain. And the article was due… He blinked his eyes. He couldn't quite recall. He stood up and walked away from the desk. He found himself once more lost in front of a door before he made his way to bed, forgetting to take the shoes off he had worn since returning to his apartment.

--

The next morning he got out of bed. Doors continued to mock him with grim uncertainty until he made his way to the kitchen. He opened the drawer with the bread. There was no bread there. Was this the bread drawer at all? Had he run out? When had he run out of bread? He went out into the hallway and froze. He looked both ways. Which way was out again? He started to walk down the hall and came to another intersection. He looked back and realized he had left the door to his apartment open. He suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. With hurried, frantic steps he rushed back down the hallway and clung to his door.

A door opened further down the hallway. He turned and saw an old woman looking at him, wide-eyed and pale, with dark eyes, likely startled and alarmed by the noise he had made.

Her dark eyes terrified him utterly. The dark pits of commonplace age showed familiarity and recognition. But he had surely never seen this woman before in his life. And yet she was only just across the hall. Who else would have lived there? He glanced up and down the hall, back and forth, counting the door numbers, struggling to attach names and faces. He found that he could not. And the old woman was starting to talk.

He stumbled inside, slamming the door behind him. His apartment greeting him and he gazed over the increasingly unfamiliar landscape in wonderment. Doors and cabinets stood in monolithic intimidation. He staggered to the window and gazed out. A line of buildings was in front of him, series of grey windows surrendering no secrets. Below was a thin street, small between the towering structures.

He struggled to understand what was going on, but the more he understood the less he could understand.

The walls loomed up menacingly. Objects drained away their purpose, becoming only shapes that haughtily shunned his comprehension. He fell to his knees, disoriented, crawling to the center of the room.

He tried to calm himself down, clutching onto paranoia tightly. He needed to calm down and proceed carefully. This was his room. His. He was a man. And his name… his name… his name was…

--

He was found a few days later, when he was filed as missing. The officers that entered the apartment were greeting by vague moans of consternation.

He sat, filthy and disheveled, pressed against a corner of the room. He gazed at them with wild, fearful, animal eyes.

It had gone slower. He had forgotten about the outside places and the apartment became his universe. The history of it had slipped away at an easy, cruel pace, eluding any grasp. He forgot theories of cause, of the visiting monstrosities he had offended in eager petulance. His past had slipped out the door while he was still sleeping, leaving no memento.

The typewriter had a sheet of paper in it, filled with reminders. He had forgotten how to change the paper. He had written in pen until he found the reason lost to him. Slowly, the room itself became an alien landscape.

He was terrified by this new, strange world around him, that he had been only just born into, but with the dark trappings of a previous something. But he was content. He had not yet learned sorrow here.
A short bit of writing, done in thirty minutes as practice and warm-up.
© 2012 - 2024 JaetteTroll
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Archsteel's avatar
Creepy. As. Hell.