Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Waiting in a Non-Linear Line

He sits on the table, his legs swinging over the edge, his arms folded tightly against his naked chest. He closes his eyes as his lips tighten and his brow furrows. He tries to take a deep breath but finds his body unresponsive to the command. His lips curl back, baring his teeth. He unfolds his arms, clutches the edge of the table, and tries to breathe again. Once more, his body refuses—he thrusts himself to his feet and roars like a child throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.

As his cries die away, an eerie silence settles over the room—the kind of still silence that slowly eats away at your mind and quietly buries you alive. The vibrant walls shimmer and flicker. A grotesqueness creeps down his back as shadows dance before him, but the longer he stares at them, the more he realises they are not shadows but something beneath the flesh of the walls. Insect-like creatures writhe and crawl under the sheet of fabric that hangs loosely before him. He reaches out with a nervous hand, his eyes widening as he touches the silk-like fabric—only to find it solid, like plaster. Then the room is back to how it was, and he is sitting on the table once more.

“You’ve had your fun!” he calls out, tossing his hands into the air. “You’ve made me look like a fool, and I’m sure you’ve taught me a valuable lesson that will stay with me for the rest of my life, but the fun’s over!”

“The fun is far from over, and teaching you a lesson at this stage of your life would be a waste of both our time. As I said to you before, you have to perform the task on your own. Otherwise, you cannot move onto the next stage,” a voice whispers in his ear. He spins around to find the room empty, his hands tightening into fists.

“This isn’t real,” he mutters under his breath. His lip curls, his teeth clench, and his voice cracks. “Y-Y-You’re just screwing with me, trying to get in my head. R-Right?” he calls out.

But the voice doesn’t answer. Instead, the silence feels worse than it was before as the lights flicker again. The walls pulsate once more, and the insect-like creatures move beneath the wall again. His hands twitch, his fingers flexing against an itch he can’t scratch. He tightens them—then, without warning, reaches out and touches the softness of the wall. Peeling the paper-like shell away reveals a million or more bugs that spill into the room, filling it quickly. He screams and cries in terror as he scrambles to the other side of the room, pinning himself into the corner crevice. He closes his eyes tightly. Moments stretch into minutes as he waits for the swarm to overwhelm him. But when he finally opens his eyes, he finds the room silent and as it was before.

“This is bullshit! I’ve done everything you’ve asked for. I’ve practised all your little exercises, and I’ve answered all your fucking questions. So how about you just cut a guy some slack and let me through? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“To my knowledge, before I started here, there have been seven known violations of the rule. Each violation ends in apocalyptic conditions. Each event is cauterised from time, space, and reality, along with all those involved. So even though you may feel that a breath is beneath you, we hold these in high regard—and as a requirement!”

He slaps his arms together and tries to draw in a breath so he can thrust it back out. But as before—as now—he cannot. He grabs the table and upends it, screaming obscenities into the air before turning back to the empty doorway.

“So I’m just expected to stay here until I do?” he grunts.

“That is the way. That is how it is. Unless you choose to take the stairs down. Breathing is not a requirement to journey down there. In fact, I don’t think there are any requirements. He doesn’t even care if you’re dead or not—he takes all.”