Rob

I slammed the door open! Wham! Well, maybe slammed is a tiny bit over-dramatic exaggeration on my part. You’ll have to bear with me and my fucked up all over the map recollection of the following events. I’m normally not a very well-spoken guy. But since this is a rather special occasion, I decided to break the habit. Like I said, in order to get the whole story, you’ll have to bear with my scattered brain, with my disjointed storytelling. ‘Think you can manage that? If so, great! Well, I guess all that’s left for me to do is to tell said story to the best of my abilities. Get comfy, ‘cause it sure is a horror fueled-stuff-of nightmares doozy. But you’ll be the judge.

As I opened the door a sudden frisky and whistling wind penetrated the house, filling it with a brief short-lived ghostly lamentation. And here I was standing at the hard-wooded threshold. Try to picture like the first appearance of The Thing from 1955 The Thing from another world but cranked up to eleven on the gruesome aspect. Come to think of it, so in other words John Carpenter’s The Thing. But why don’t I use my own verbiage to describe to you what it looked like rather than using an unimaginative, excessively copious and very redundant amount of film-centric comparative examples. Ah, I swear! Sorry about that. I know you’re not here for that. Or are you?

So. I hesitantly stood there. Scanning the place first, like a perfect stranger cowardly trespassing. The dead of night filling the door frame behind me. Intense dark blue engulfing me. I finally took one first step inside. I advanced slowly, very slowly. One hesitant step at a time. All the meanwhile frowning with dubiousness at

(Rob?)

the hunched over quite big and somewhat ominously mysterious silhouette sitting in the wooden chair. Entirely cloaked, hidden by a thick mitten infested greenish diamond pattered old rag of a blanket beneath which emanated a rather odd bluish-Grayish vibrancy. Flies didn’t seem to mind. They seemed attracted by it. By the putrid aura.

Firmly holding my Ka-bar knife in a tight grip I cautiously paced myself toward

(Could that be him?…)

him? It?…Fuck it!

‘R-Rob?’ Nothing. Save for more coughing, groaning, growling like some sort of tuberculous. Then, more moaning and heavy breathing. As well as more inhuman-sounding guttural sounds. And the occasional squeaking of the chair.

“Rob?...s’that you?...” As I, ever so with that same prudence and trepidation, closed in on that so far unidentifiable...well, I guess Thing (for lack of better word) draped in drabness and mystery like an old alluring witch.

“I’m cooold...” Eventually let out the Presence, in a hauntingly trailing cavernous growl of a voice. (Rob…?...It is him...Who else would it be?! Who the hell else could it be?!…)

“Rob?”

As I walked around, approached trepidatiously.

How to describe it to you as vividly as I can manage? But not too vividly though!...What am I saying! A detail-less body horror scene. What kinda nonsense is that! And moreover, where’s the fun in that, right?! Well, it for damn sure was no fun at all as I’m sure you can imagine.

Unnerving as whole hell. That’s what it was. Heck. That apprehension filled slow burn of a reveal alone was nerve wracking.

I was now more and more convinced that it was him. It had to be him. But why? After all these years? Why now? Why come back home after vanishing for more than a decade? Almost two decades!

Of course, I knew why. Or at least I had a faint idea. Anyone who would have witnessed firsthand the distressed agonal death rattles coming out whatever was sitting there would have guessed. Especially when the aforementioned whatever in question used to be your brother. Dear old son of a bitch (sorry mom!) big brother Rob.

And now here he was. Back home sweet home.

“So damn coooold...Constantly cooold.” He lamented, in the same haunting broken patterned trailing utterance. As he was sitting close to the fireplace. As close as humanly possible. But what part of him was still human anyways!

My god! Rob. What the hell happened to you?!…

I stood there utterly speechless. Taking it in. Transfixed by what I was staring at right now. Remember the horror fueled-stuff-of nightmares doozy one that I mentioned earlier? Well here it comes.

What was once my brother was now a grotesquely dysmorphic creature of a man. If you still could even call him that. His entire viscous glistening oily inhuman-looking body was now (or by the look of it for awhile now, this wasn’t an overnight thing) failing him. Gangrened with bulbous protuberances of varying sizes, which looked like it was nesting gestating jellyfishes. The biggest protuberance being on his right shoulder. His insides seemed shallow, like void of any entrails, organs, or anything remotely human for that matter. It was as if anything inside there had been liquefied into this sickening pale Grayish-bluish translucent tumid shell of oozy substance.

I was unable to utter a word, hell, a sound even! I was completely engrossed in this enthralling morbid curiosity-(fascination?)-inducing sight. Funny, now that enough time has passed, in retrospect, I don’t think I once questioned my sanity or the tangibility of what I was actually seeing right before my very eyes. You’ll see what I mean. It’ll all make more sense later, trust me. At least I hope it will. At first everything inside me, inside my already not-all-there head was in utter shamble. I wasn’t sure what to think or feel, what to make of it. But that didn’t last. It quickly faded and now I was assessing the situation in a rather most pragmatical way. I don’t know how to put it so that it makes more sense. It was like, okay, so that’s Rob right there. It sure as shit doesn’t look like him anymore but it damn sure is Rob. Check. He’s dying. Yep. Check. Get what I mean? But I guess given our history, like I said, everything checked out.

Hey, credit where credit is due, I owe my pragmatism to Rob. At an early age he was always the pragmatic one. If it wasn’t for him we (mom really) would have throw away a ton of stuffs (namely a certain microwave). Rob was the McGyver of the house.

Everything checked out in my head somehow. Like it was meant to be, not to get too religious or spiritual. I definitely never subscribed to none of that. At that point I had lowered my knife. What was the point. He wasn’t going anywhere and he was surely not a threat.

I could not help but to feel sorry for him. He was so pathetic looking right now. His entire body was like a visual haunting supplication. Longing to be put out of its misery of an existence. He was, or at least seemed, so imposing in stature and yet now that I stood before him he looked so frail. Although he was tall he was not in his prime anymore. If that makes any sense to you. And trust me, I know what I’m talking about. Having witnessed it firsthand. Bggrrrr!! PTSD-inducing bone chilling stuffs I tell you. You don’t want to know. Or perhaps for another time. Once I feel like I gained your trust. We’ll see then. Time shall tell.

I guess, if I’m being honest here, and lets face it, isn’t that the reason why I’m presently relating this whole ‘based-on-true-events’ story of mine? Like I was about to confess, right then and there I might have felt the tiniest bit of vindication. I’m not proud of it, mind you, I’m simply laying it all out on the table. I don’t know, I feel I’m in good company. And if not now, then when?

His left shoulder and overall left harm was apparently now permanently stuck into that beasty scaly, spiky looking appendage which he so often affectionated. I have this fucker to thank for me dying once, before eventually coming back to life. So yeah, I guess I’m sort of immortal too. Now you know. An immortal hooked up on a fairly good amount of Codeine.

His entire left side was permanently stuck into this terrifying Wendigo-looking form, with its black dorsal spikes (more like spiky and pointy dreadlocks-looking dorsal spikes). His face was also stuck into this ratherly grotesque post-stroke-like ghoulishly two-face expression, half semi-human, half-Wendigo. With this repulsive abominable frozen gnarly rictus. It was as if both Picasso and Salvador Dali did a job on it.

And here he was, at death’s door. Like an agonizing addict whose body finally caught up with. All those years of excessive transformations must’ve taken a toll on him. And my god, what toll!

All these years. I could’ve at least try to go after him, track him down. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I simply lived my life the best I could. A hermit, shut in life. Bothering no one. And leaving the Past where it belonged, in the Past. The world didn’t interest me. It had nothing to offer me, to alleviate my emotional disconnection. I just became desensitized I guess. I shielded myself. I lived this cocooned existence where everything outside of it was Not My Problem. I know, not very selfless or heroic. Even when I was reading some testimonies in some tabloids about some – Rob-like – creature I would shrugged it off and go on about my day, not once more thinking about it. I’m not proud of it.

One particular one was very specific and quite fucking gruesome and haunting! A little girl – between the age of 9 and 11 I think – in Wyoming reported that she and two of her friends were trick-r-treating when they stopped at a house. The door opened and what greeted them was Lovecraftian, to say the least. A dysmorphic, amorphous The Thing-looking monstrosity with kelp-looking dangling things. But that’s not even the worst part. Not even close. The Thing’s body was wide open in its midst like some sorta vertical mouth revealing trapped inside – in a Fay Wray in King Kong X-position – a little girl of about their age and apparently being half-way assimilated. Half of her visage as well as other parts of her body morphing with the grotesque monstrosity. The trick-r-treating girl said she could hear the other little girl’s bones being crunched. ‘Help me...p-please…’ The assimilated girl managed to let out in a haunting trailing voice.

So I guess he eventually tested, tried his assimilation idea.

Poor kid.

Poor kids.

Karma is a bitch. And you know what they say, what goes around comes around eventually, inevitably sooner or later. Although, save for few worth mentioning examples I don’t know if I really ever subscribed to that commonly agreed upon notion. Must be the nihilistic fatalist part in me I guess. I have my mom to thank for that particular trait I suppose. Man! Between ‘I guess’ and ‘I suppose’ one might think (rightfully so) that I’m as clueless as a character as they come. And one might be right. Sue me.

The smell alone was all over the place. Whatever had been brewing in there was for sure one of a kind. Even the sizzling fire from the fireplace seemed to be affected at its prolonged contact. Have you ever seen a fire looking like it’s being nauseous? Did you ever wonder what it would look like? Well, I’ll tell you. It looked like it was slowly, agonizingly dying out. Begging for its life, in the form of feeble cracklings, whilst spewing a copious amount of thick greenish-khaki bile-looking cinders. I promise you this is the last time I use a movie as a mean to convey what I’m trying my damnedest to convey. Remember in The exorcist when Pazuzued Regain slowly barfs thick green bile? Not the first time. Not the over-the-top projectile in Karras’ face (and some in his mouth, ugh). No, no. The one later in the movie. Well, you got it. That’s right. It’s okay if you feel like you need to take a breather, put the rest on hold. I get it. As long as you don’t throw all over the pages (or screen). It would be a shame. You’d be missing out, trust me.

There was no trace of fear in his eyes though. More like mild distress, maybe, if that. And weariness, palpable exhaustion. Like he’d ran his course and that was it. Fun was over. And he decided to come back home, the finish line. Maybe it’s my own untrustworthy inner, mental reenactment of the facts but I’d swear I seemed to have seen remorse, guilt...ah, maybe that’s just me grasping for straw. Maybe there was nothing going on behind those once very so human eyes. But to this day I like to think, to believe there was something there.

Speaking of which.

Something I omitted thus far, all this time his right eye kept wanting to escape its socket, to a point where it was gruesomely dangling from its stringy optic nerve like a Slinky. Rob simply kept failingly trying to push with the palm of his right hand the grossly deserter back into his socket. Nonchalantly, like it was a mild annoyance. Whereas to me it was utterly unnerving as all hell.

He then eventually managed to place it back into its socket.

In the end he ended up coughing so uncontrollably hard that he somehow managed to cough his own right eye out directly from his mouth.

The discolored squid-like organ fell on the floor with a squishy thud. Its gruesomeness ever so accentuated by the fireplace warmish light.

Now you probably wonder what the fuck is that?! Maybe you’re even tempted to stop right there and walk away from this. And frankly I wouldn’t fault you for that. Choice is yours. It’s up to you. I can’t force your hand. If you’re thinking to yourself, ‘alright, I think I’ve had enough’, hey, I’m glad you stuck around, gave it a fair shot and made it that far.

But for the others…