This is an old dream: The Lifeless Child

It is breaking through.

It's Breaking through the door!

slowly pushing on it and moving it. The door isn't solid anymore but moves and grooves and flows.

It's getting through, god, it's getting through!

The wood splinters and drips down to the floor. I can see through the door now, enough has melted away.

I can feel the hands on the other side pushing in as I'm pushing back. I'm sliding back on the slick floor as my hands and body and arms push at what's left of the door, brushing against flesh so cold and hard as if it were turgid sea weed.

I can't hear myself mumble words of panic bit I know I am.

Ash gray hands with dead black and green fingernails claw at me through the breaks in the door.

I'm soaked now and it's WET. It doesn't seem to dry, it's always wet. I could see the lake now, that cheery green water front from which this thing had drowned itself out of. I screamed so hard it hurt.

The image of the lake was replaced by something much more frightening. That face, it's face. It looked dry, but I could tell it was wet, soaked through.Its grin greeted me. Tiny, far spaced, brown teeth and the glimpse of a swollen black-and-puke-green tongue.

I jumped away from the door and scrambled back but it was faster than me.

I could hear the grinding of bone against bone and the soft rubbing of dry muscle and tendons snapping. It moved in a sort of jerk dip that came off as childlike and tottering.

I could smell it's breath, molded, soggy, crackers, rancid milk, and the rot-flesh smell of newly old corpses.

A flashback memory: I'm falling, pushed into a set of catacomb graves and landing on a body, laid fresh not a weak ago. Screaming, I remembered screaming and crying and falling down in the dark trying to get away, trying to find my way out in the dark. Giving up, curling up and shaking.

Sobbing not able to take my eyes away from the direction of the body I'd landed on even though I couldn't see anything but the dark.

Backing up into a whole, too small, too small the hole's too small for an adult. Oh god I want out.

Screaming and sobbing and begging to be let out. Shaking and clinging to myself.

I'm there again in that dusty old tomb trembling and crying and pleading for it to leave. I can hear it now it's talking. That voice, my, my, my oh shhi--

"I just wanted to play, daddy. I just wanted to laugh and run with all the others."

I was mumbling again still shaking and backing away and begging and pleading for forgiveness.

I could hear how close it was now, so close I could feel the water dripping from it. It leans down so close. Too close. I'm still dragging myself away but it's not moving, how?. Oh god oh god oh god.

"Why can't I live?" I stop dragging myself away and I hold my breath. It leans farther in and tilts it's head. "Why did I have to die?" It's voice is so soft, so curious, too patient. It brought that hand up and reached out to me with a tiny little claw of a hand. I reached my own hand to it. Mirroring it's, transfixed. So transfixed.

It brings it's other hand up, its grin widening, squinting those glistening, lifeless eyes.

It rams a shining razored wire through my cheek into my gums and out the bottom of my jaw.

The only thing I can do is chuckle. I laugh and fall back, my head resting on the stone pillow in one of the corpse cuby holes and laugh softly as it lowers it's grinning mouth to me and kisses me softly and says: "I love you, daddy." I'm drowning slowly, quickly, drowning.

I break and die and close my eyes to rest. Too tired, far too tired. I give up, I wont, I can't, you can't make me. Then of course, it said something more, something far worse. Something heart breaking.

"I forgive you, daddy. We all do, father of mine own life."

I screamed and slammed my eyes open struggling to sit up feeling something small, something warm in my lap. I pick it up and cradle it. Weeping violently and clinging to this small warm thing as it rasps and struggles and reaches one tiny week hand up. I smile bitterly and wrap my fingers around its little hand.

It finally is overcome, is undone. There is no more life left in it and it turns gray and green. I watch with wide, horror struck, eyes as its tiny body shifts and grows and becomes hard and cold.

Slime oozes out of its mouth, covering it in a disgusting wetness.

I whimper and crawl out of the hole, crying profusely and clutching the fastly morphing thing to me. I stand and stumble, struggling to keep it up.

It gets bigger and heavier. I scramble to hold it and walk towards where I think the stairs to be.

There's a wet cracking crunching noise followed by pain and a small shriek of despair as I fall. Holding it close as it clutches back, wrapping limbs around my neck and hips. I can feel my leg give out and bleed.

Break and die.

I can feel the intake of breathes against my skin but I know there is no exhalation.

I stand back up slowly, using only a perverse sense of desperation to keep from falling back down. Crying out with every step, I lurch forward. Every step and every noise I emit echoes off the walls of the tomb.

I see a light near, just over the other side of a stone coffin and up a set of steps. The light doesn't penetrate this far in, no.

The light barely makes it past the second step, quickly fading and leaving the darkness behind.

I can hear it whisper little words, hatingly sweet little words. Words that make me cry and cringe and hate myself with every syllable. I reach the steps.

At last.

My god, at last.

I climb them, they grate against my skin and tear at me. All the while it clutches tighter, then loosens its grip. It's scared, I don't know why. It's pleading with me. "Please, daddy. please, please, don't make me die. I don't want to, please, Father, sweet kind father, can't I live?"

I scream and climb faster.

If I just reach the light, if I just TOUCH it, WE'll be safe.

It and I.

I cry out in joy, grin and lurch and fall on my back into the light.

I look down in joy, reach my hand up to smooth, that wet head resting against my chest. "It's okay, baby, it's okay, we're safe."

I begin to say.

my hand reaches out and barely touches the strands of that wet hair.

It turns to ash and crumbles. All of it crumbles. Falling away and slowly caught on a breeze. Blowing away and back to the dark.

I'm too shocked to move; to think. I just sit there, trembling and unblinking.

I killed it. I killed it.

I did.

I killed it.

I break down and crumble. Curling into a ball and shake.

I'm drowning.

I killed it.

I can't breath.

I killed it.