Eyes Layered in Hard Candy
A short horror by Matthew Tonks
A late-night drip becomes a hinge between worlds. Malcolm’s bathroom warps into something rotted and official, and three suited strangers promise an ‘upgrade’ to a truer life. The offer tastes like metal and loss, and the choice arrives with a hiss.
The water swirls down the drain, sucking and gurgling, spinning in a spiral as it pours relentlessly from the tap. His eyes, a glassy stare, look past the water, down the sink’s drain, and fix on a point well beyond his view. Thick clumps of drool drip from the corners of his lips, as his hand loosely rests on the tap’s lever. A pulse pumps through his hand and up his arm as the water splutters and spurts through the spout. A breath stammers—he gasps—as the tap’s valve chokes and shakes, the water stolen away, empty breaths. He blinks with a harsh grimace, his eyes suddenly dry like razors.
The world around him is now a decaying, mouldy, run-down apocalyptic nightmare. He stutters grotesque breaths, his hands before him scarred, covered in aged, blistered flesh, dirty, his nails caked with grime, folds of flesh ripe with decay. He gasps again, stutters, and allows his aching eyes to look around the new world that surrounds him—almost the same as the one he’s always known, but as if he’s made a sudden sidestep, a shift. The walls and floor are the same, but broken down, disgusting, aged, poorly kept, riddled with holes.
He staggers and sways, his face screwed up in petrified fear. A stench wafts into his face, and he dry retches, his stomach a hard, empty rock. His flesh is dried, sinewed, and sticking to his bones like cling film wrapping. His heart pulses and he stammers and stutters as he stumbles to the floor. He gasps again, and before the breath even leaves him, the door bursts open and three figures barge through, suits of white, devices in hand, their heads sealed in helmets, breathing apparatus strapped to their backs.
“W-W-What’s happening?” he stammers as he reaches out desperately.
“You’ve been called up, Malcolm. It’s the day you’ve been waiting for.”
“W-W-Waiting for?”
“It’ll all make sense once you take your first few steps towards reality,” one of them says with an almost childlike laugh. “You’re upgrading, you’re moving to the real world!”
“T-T-The real w-w-world, I-I-I, I don’t understand,” he stammers.
One of the men laughs and turns to the other.
“They’re always like this when they first come out. They forget the shit they’re living in. They actually think the world is what the big boys in corporate want them to think it is. As long as they keep taking their vitamins, they keep the fantasy alive and keep churning the machines for all us alpha-level citizens.”
“I heard a rumour there were another three levels underneath this, and the guys who handle the level below this think they are doing the job we are doing, and that they are alpha level.”
“It ain’t no rumour, it’s fact. I’ve seen them, watched them, doing the talk, walking the walk, thinking they’re doing the work of the chosen, when all along they’re just living in the same shit, existing like dirt-eaters, waiting to move up to upper management.”
“P-P-Please. I-I-I, I don’t understand. What do you mean, reality?” Malcolm asks, his mouth dry, his lips cracked, his tongue feeling like sandpaper. He gasps, takes a breath, splutters, and chokes.
“P-P-Please,” he whispers as he reaches for them.
They place a large white suitcase-like product onto the floor before them and it hisses open. A helmet similar to theirs sits in the centre. They crack it open and hold it out towards him.
“Put this on and we’ll take you away from here, to your new home, and then you’ll understand.”
“W-What about m-my family, Rh-Rhonda and the girls, w-w-what about them?”
The next few moments are caked in silence before one of the men produces an electronic clipboard and quickly scans it before looking up at Malcolm.
“They’re not on the list. This one-time offer only applies to you.”
“B-B-But,” he stammers.
The man places the helmet back in the suitcase and seals it back up.
“This is a limited-time offer, Mister Dwyer. If no is your final call, I need you to confirm it in words. You could be living in reality with all the real people, you could be someone, or you can stay here, living a lie.”
“I-I, I can’t leave m-my family,” he stammers, as the world swims in violent shifts of green and grey. A sharp hiss. One of the men slams him to the ground, a needle stabbing into his spine—a sea of pain floods him. He gasps, gags, writhes, and then, with a jolt of déjà vu, shakes his head.
Suddenly he’s back—the last few moments nothing more than a dreary daydream, the nightmare tumbling from his lips like a murmur—as he turns the tap off.
💬 Did this one echo?
Tell me—before it forgets your name.
—
Written by Matthew Tonks
→ Read more nightmares at mtonks.com
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