He places the phone on the bedside table and pushes his head into the pillow, sinking into it as if it was fluffy sand. For several seconds his eyelids flicker erratically before gently falling shut, and his world is swallowed into darkness. A sea of soft comfortable cushions engulf him while the rhythmic sounds of his wife snoring next to him drowns out the melodic music playing from the television that hangs perilously above the foot of the bed.

Seconds, minutes, and hours mix in a spider-web like blender, drawing him further into a mix of sights seen and unseen. Then with a panicked startle, he leaps up in spot, sweat pouring from him in buckets. His heart pumps vigorously as he gasps desperately for breath after breath, while his wife continues to snore loudly.

He looks around the room with wide awake eyes, searching the darkness for a sign that does not come.

“H-H-Hello?” he stammers nervously, then waits unmoving. As minutes quickly pile up before him with no result, he grits his teeth and squeezes his lips together.

“I-I-I, I know someone’s there, s-s-so STOP p-playing around!” he spits out as he leaps from his bed.

A gentle clapping comes from the darkest corner of the room as he can make out the outline of a shrouded figure.

“W-W-Who a-are YOU?”

“Does it matter either way, the fact that we can see each other is all as need to know, for that is the thing of dreams.”

“BULLSHIT!” he snarls sharply. “YOU TELL ME WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE, AND WHAT THE FUCKING HELL YOU WANT FROM ME NOW!”

“Touchy aren’t we.”

“Wouldn’t you be, if you woke up and found some stranger in you’re home?”

“How can you be sure that I am the visitor and not you?”

He laughs softly. “Seriously, are you gonna actually try and convince me that I’m the one shoes dead here?”

“Of course not my friend, I’d never disrespect your journey over mine with lies just for the sake of manipulation, not when reality can do such much more than my simple side step can.”

“What the FUCK does that mean?” he hisses through tightly clenched teeth.

“It means exactly what it was meant to mean Matty! Judge not, or you will be judged. Anyway I could manipulate any and all to achieve my ends, but why do something for fun, when the magic of today can achieve all that and more,” he sniggers as the figure leans from out of the darkness, revealing his face to be empty. Matty takes a

 succession of quick breaths as a demented grin slowly draws itself across the blank face.

“W-W-What’s s-so sp-special abo…” his nervous words find themselves caught in his throat as visions of calendar’s fill the air before him while the eerie voice cackles like a maniac.

Matt’s eyes shoot open and he launches himself up, looking around the room in a heightened panic. As his heart thumps furiously in his chest, his lungs pump vigorously, ejecting breath after wasted breath while he desperately gasps for there replacement. As the morning rays of the sun cut through the rooms darkness like a knife, his breaths slow to a slow and steady rhythms, which in turn cools the fires of his heart and he collapses back, and stares with widening eyes into the long dead eyes of his lover, and before he can scream her decaying hand covers him mouth and punches him nose.

He kicks and heaves, trying desperately to free himself from her long dead clutches, but her grip is too strong and he begins to feel his lungs burning as they call for air. He reaches out and grabs at his sleeping wife who thrusts his hands away, mumbling something incoherent at him before turning away and covering her head with the blanket.

He looks back up into her empty eyes, while tears stream down his as the darkness slowly creeps in, and once again he hears the cackling laugh of his strange visitor.

“Judge not, for thee will be judged yourself Matty me old mate!”

***

Follow the below link to purchase A Twisted Halloween 2021 to read all 31 five minute short stories.

Before you lies a piece of a puzzle far grander than you could ever know or imagine. For scrawled in blood upon the pages hidden within the above tome is stories twisted thirty-one in all, soaked in the embers of my insanity. Five minutes to glimpse inside the eyes of someone new, five minutes to answer, five minutes to sin, five minutes to do almost anything. A god, a demon, a harlot, a whore. A fascist, a killer, a sinner, a door. Death and division, humanity askew. A belfry of bats, a sea of black cats, so many moments out there to see, so many things you could see with me. So take a seat beside me and call it voodoo, because now you ride with me too…

 

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