《Crow》


 01. Pills

    Breathless, Philip Rogers made his way throughout the black and red forest, running as fast as he could while he tried to escape from the dark thing that was chasing him. The vermilion sky turned into fog over the unclear horizon. The ground was cold and wet under his naked feet, and with every step forward he sensed the darkness closer than before, just about to swallow him.


    His ears buzzed painfully. He could feel his heartbeat throbbing in his head, and his lungs could not make oxygen fast enough to keep him breathing. His legs were too heavy to keep him going. He was about to faint, but doing so would set his body just at the mercy of whatever underworldly creature was behind him, trying to devour him. He could feel its cold presence right there, inches away. It was hungry and it did not get tired of the chase. Philip was the prey.


    All of a sudden, in front of his eyes, emerged a stairwell made of rock and metal that led to the entrance of a large, sombre castle, darker than darkness itself, with broken windows and a gigantic front gate. With no time to stop or think, Philip climbed up and reached the gate, but it was locked. He threw punches at it with rage; one, two, five times, like a drummer playing a bleak song of despair.


    "HELP!", he screamed. "PLEASE! SOMEONE HELP ME!".


    But no one was listening. No one would open up. No one ever did. He didn''t want to look back because he did not want to see its face, the face of the monster. He was terrified.


    He could sense it coming near. He could sense its dark halo approaching. It was too late.


    He clenched his eyes as if it could dissolve in the darkness it came from if he did not see it, but a cold touch posed on his shoulder. Slowly, a skeletal hand with sharp claws wrapped around his neck and squeezed. A whisper in his ear froze his limbs and numbed his heart to the point it wasn''t beating anymore. The game was over to Philip Rogers.


    "I got you".


    The hand let go of his neck and as the air returned to his lungs he felt the claw nailing on the skin of his back, ripping his flesh. It didn''t even let him breathe again. He watched the blood splattering almost in slow motion. He lowered his gaze meeting his torso, only to see red pouring out from him. His face smashed the cold ground in a clatter that deafen his ears as he could see and feel a thick pool of blood coming out of his mouth. Slowly, his lids closed and darkness embraced him, taking the pain away.


    He rose from his bed in the worst of the horrors, cold sweat had soaked his shirt and so the sheets. He crawled to a corner of his room, between the desk and the window where he cried silently, hugging his knees.


    Was it over? He could still perceive the awful monstrosity creeping behind him.


    But as the cold morning light passed through his lids his heart started to beat slower and his body stopped shaking.


    Just like every night.


    Just like every hideous, endless night since he could remember.


    Nightmares had been his curse, his prison for a long time now. Every dusk brought the same terror, the same endless and torturous dream of the same grotesque scene depicting his death at hands of a creature he never dares to see. Sometimes he would wake up in pain, in the middle of the garden, or the kitchen, tired of wandering around. Sometimes dreams leaked into reality, and he remembered things he shouldn''t even know about. Dark things stained with blood.


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.Philip dried his tears and brushed his eyes as weeps kept escaping from his mouth. He needed to know if he was still sleeping. It had been such a long, vivid dream.


    The door swung open in a blare.


    "Are you alright?", his mother rushed to hold him in her warm arms, and as her kiss posed on his forehead, Philip came back to existence. "Another bad dream?", she said rhetorically, already aware of the answer.


    "I''m okay...", the boy whispered.


    "I''m going to phone Dr Grey to tell him that the new pills are not working. It''s the fourth nightmare of the week. They should be working by now right?"


    "It''s fine mum, these things take time."


    "He said they should work better than the last ones, and they''re not working at all. I''ll phone him. That''s why I pay him for."


    The slender woman sounded nervous and upset. Philip knew how much she cared for him. Her face used to be juvenile once, framed by lovely strawberry blonde hair and adorned with deep grey eyes, but at this point, she had grown some greyish threads on the soft hair she had no time to take care of; the black circles in her eyes had turned deeper and her cheekbones were more visible now. She seemed to have aged fifty years in sixteen. Philip hated himself for doing that to her.


    "Mum!", he yelled, still with a shaky voice. "Don''t. Is not his fault. I skipped the pills."


    "You did what?"


    "Yeah...and I''m sorry..."


    "Why would you do that? The medicine is supposed to help you sleep."


    "Yeah, but they don''t take the nightmares away. Most of the time I''m just too drugged to even wake up. I hate them, alright? They make me feel bad, heavy, they give me an awful taste and they keep me like a zombie most of the day."


    "Philip...", she cried, taking her hands to cover her face in awe. "That''s not fair. You have to take the damn pills. You are not okay. This is just like that time...You know what happens after all these sleepless nights. Your body won''t take it much longer. Please... I don''t want to lose you."


    Her expression was of someone who was staring at a corpse. Philip recalled the last time he was tubed on a hospital bed, after falling from the roof while sleepwalking.


    "What if I want to die?"


    Philip''s mother let a cry out as a dagger had just thrust into her heart.


    "Don''t ever say that again! You''re so selfish, Philip!"


    "Selfish? Me? I''m the one stuck in here remember?", he jumped on his feet raising his tone. Tears burst out. "I''m the one who hasn''t lived anything at all, from one hospital to another. While other teenagers go to parties and make friends I''m high on pills and incapable of having a normal life! I can''t even go to school anymore, mum! Do you really think this is much different from being dead?!"


    "Just remember you''re not alone in this Philip! I had to quit a lot of things too. My life changed drastically as well!! I''ve made a lot of sacrifices and I don''t regret them, but at least you could have a little bit of consideration."


    "I''m suffering mum...badly. You can pretend to understand but you don''t know what it is like. You don''t know how it feels...Why on earth did you bring to life such a damaged thing like me? Why?"


    The woman hugged him but he pushed her away. Not knowing what to say, she grabbed the pills jar from off the nightstand and offered it to him.


    "Sweetheart...I love you. I''m trying to help you because I hate to see you going through all this. It''s painful. I wish I could do more, but this is all we have. Please, Philip, take the pill and go to bed. You need to sleep, you''ve been awake for too long...Let''s try this for a while until we can find you a better treatment. Please..."


    Philip looked at her with hate. He grabbed the plastic jar, pulled out a pill and swallowed it.


    "Leave. I wanna be alone."


    Adaline wiped her tears and shut the door behind her. Philip crawled into his bed and closed his eyes, only to see the vivid memory of his nightmare once more. He wanted to disappear, to evaporate, like a drop of rain getting heated by the sun. He could feel his heartbeat slowing down and his limbs starting to feel heavier a few minutes after he swallowed the white little thing.


    Before he could close his eyes he took another one and faded away. He would''ve wanted to remain asleep for the rest of his life, but he wanted to sleep without the nightmares.


    But life had other plans for Philip Rogers, and the true nightmare had just begun.

 02. Lovely Red Eyes

    His vision was blurred, distorted.


    Everything was black and red. The shadows were longer and the lights brighter. His arms were covered in dark coloured feathers and his fingers had been replaced by long, sharp claws. He could feel his own breath heavier than usual, and his heart seemed to beat a hundred times faster.


    Someone was screaming in front of him. It was a female with a long, red hair -or at least it looked like it- whose hopeless expression far from making him scared of himself, could only make him more excited.


    "Am I dreaming?", he asked, but he couldn''t listen to himself saying a word.


    What a weird feeling. He could feel himself warmer and taller, like this body did not belong to him and its will was uncontrollable, but its emotions were more intense.


    "PLEASE!!", the woman on the ground begged, but he knew her prayers were pointless, he just wanted her to feel despair. Although he didn''t know why.


    He caressed her face with the tip of a claw, slowly... making a thin line of pouring blood on her cheek. It is beautiful, he thought, but he felt his thoughts did not belong to himself.


    Blood. Red and thick.


    The smell made him frantically hungry.


    He opened his mouth and he knew it was big enough to fit her head. For a moment he could not believe he wanted to eat her, but it seemed like something he had done before. The girl''s yelling became louder and louder and he roared because she was annoying.


    "Shut the fuck up!!", he thought; words didn''t come out though, but the deafening guttural sound of a beast.


    It was hard to think now.


    She knew what was coming. Every living thing can sense the danger when approaching, but this prey of his would never imagine the exact amount of pain she was about to suffer.


    He ripped an arm off her. He didn''t really want to, but he could not control it. He didn''t feel scared or sad about her either. Blood splattered on the nearest wall. She screamed louder and begged for her life, trying to crawl away, but she smelled so good he couldn''t stop, he held her by a leg harsh enough she couldn''t go anywhere. He swallowed her arm whole, munching the bones like a biscuit as she gasped and moaned. He spat up her wristwatch and prepared to eat her head. The most delicious part -for some reason he knew- but first, he had to take her eyes off. Eyes were a special gem. People used to say that eyes were windows to the soul, and they were right for every pair of eyes could tell a different story, and he could read them. Tasting them was even better. He did not know why but he knew.


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    Lovely red eyes.


    Everything was black and red. Red and black. Always. Pulling the first eye and swallowing it made the woman faint. All of a sudden, he sensed someone else staring at him.


    He faced the stranger: a familiar face that slowly turned into colours. Shaded by the large shadows of the alley he was at, Philip Rogers distinguished his father standing not too far. The look in the man''s eyes was nothing less than pure horror and fear.


    What was he doing there? Whose body was this he was locked in? How could his father know it was him under all those feathers and the blood and the screams?


    Maybe he had looked into Philip''s eyes. Maybe he had known his secret all this time. Maybe he knew because it was  Philip''s dream.


    "Dad", he growled but words did not exist.


    The man disappeared behind the corner with the agility of a serpent and a few minutes after, Philip heard an engine on. The wheels complained on the pavement as the car went away. He had been caught, but he wasn''t sure how he had gotten there. Not anymore. A few seconds ago he was sure of what he was doing, he was certain of what he had to do. Now he felt lost, like floating in outer space. He looked to his feet and everything was red down there. Deep red and wet.


    The boy half beast, half man now, stepped away from the body he had barely eaten, and with a still big hunger, he faded in the night, leaving a bunch of his feathers behind.


    Philip Rogers was confused about everything. He had forgotten his name, although he knew he wasn''t just a beast. He was something else.


    With anguish in his heart, he reappeared in his room. He could feel the ground sinking under his feet.


    What a weird nightmare.


    He sensed the car approaching. He was familiar with that unique engine song. He came near the window, and sliding the curtain he watched his father running to the house, nervous and upset.


    The shadowed room started to spin. Phil wanted his old body back, he wanted to wake up.


    He crawled up on his bed and closed his eyes. He could still smell the blood in his nose.


    "Tomorrow I won''t remember", he whispered as everything turned black. "Tomorrow I will wake up."

 03. Nightmare

    Philip woke up to a bitter taste in the back of his mouth, and his head felt like hundreds of needles had been nailed to his brain, like a needle case. When he finally opened his eyes he was lying on the floor, staring at his room ceiling. The large glass windows were wide open and cold, the rainy wind passed through them with hate. The trees from the yard were trembling and whaling under a vacant sky where nothing but blackness could be seen. The room was darkened too. Philip had no idea what time it was, but many hours had passed, a whole day actually.


    He felt nauseous and dizzy, and as he tried to sit up, whatever substance was left in his stomach climbed up through his throat and ended up sown over the greyish carpet. He dragged himself to the door, still unable to stand up.


    "MUUUUM!", he tried, but the house felt lonelier than ever. "MUUUM, I NEED HELP!"


    It was like a bad tasted deja vu. He had caught up himself aking for help and surrounded by that feared blackness, and as he listened to his own echo resounding amidst the walls, a flash of the nightmare made its way into reality, and now the floor was turned into coal mud, and the walls were crumbling down about to bury him. He rushed to cross the door which colour had changed to a rotten black and kept dragging himself all along the hallway. His heart was beating erratically and once again, the feeling of a shade about to catch and swallow him was there.


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    The stairs encountered him, and in the rush to escape he could only fall down, rolling like a rock down a hill, feeling his bones complaining about the painful falling. As his body finally reached the bottom, he could see his mother being dragged to an immense dark pool that floated in the middle of the room. Her eyes were red and her knuckles too, bloody and bruised, as she tried to hold on to whatever she could, to keep herself from being dragged by the black.


    "Philip!! Philip!!", she begged, but her boy was too weak to move and too petrified to even answer. He wanted to hold her hand but he couldn''t move. The floor seemed to curl up and bend under him, everything was swirling too fast for him to be able to move. He watched her mum struggling to hold on to the floor. Her nails scratched the wood of the ground as she finally disappeared in the dark, leaving only a deaf scaream behind.


    Philip couldn''t move yet, and it was hard to understand what was happening.


    "It''s a nightmare!", he told himself. But this nightmare was even more real than anytime before. "It''s a nightmare. It''s a nightmare. It''s a nightmare."


    He closed his eyes so hard it hurt, and everything turned white.

 04. Tragedy

    A familiar voice brought him back from whatever trance he had been caught up in. He battled to open his eyes and as soon as he did the intense white of the lights forced them back close. He couldn''t move, there were tubes in his throat and through his nostrils, and also in his arm. He was sore to the bone and he wanted to cry. Where was he?


    "Who''s taking care of the kid?", a warm female voice said, one he didn''t know.


    "I am his closest living relative.  His mother would''ve wanted it that way", said the familiar male voice.


    His uncle Peter.


    Philip''s heart clenched as if his ribcage became smaller. What was his uncle doing in here? The man lived in Aberdeen, and he only travelled if there was an emergency... Unless this was one, he had no particular reason to be there.


    "This whole thing is a tragedy..."


    "What...", Philip managed to move his mouth, taking the oxygen mask off his face, pulling out the tubes and disconnecting the electrodes on his chest.


    "Phil!", his uncle rushed to help him sit up. "You should not do that..."


    But it was too late, the boy was already coughing and spitting blood, groaning, but he was awake now, ready to ask questions.


    "What are you doing here? Where am I?", he asked nervously.


    "Hey...take a breath, you need to calm down", Peter said.


    "Hey Philip", said a nurse moving Peter aside weaving him a sign to leave the room, and approaching to check on the boy''s vitals, since he had removed himself from the monitoring machine she would have to do it manually. "I''m Penny, you are at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital." The nurse checked his blood pressure and pulse, his pupils, his breathing, and asked him about how he was feeling.


    "I have no clue of what the hell I''m doing here", Philip spat, not wanting to be pestered with unimportant things.


    "You were found on the floor, unconscious, after what happened...where else could you be?"


    "What happened?"


    Philip could feel his blood running cold. It was like that one time when he was around eight, and he had lost his cat, and his parents sat in front of him, gave him candy and a new book, not knowing how to tell him what had really happened to the cat. He had known all the time something was wrong, his body knew before his mind had knowledge of the truth. A bad feeling, they called it.


    "You don''t remember?"


    Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on."I....", he swallowed a stone in his throat. "No."


    "I think is best if your uncle explains everything to you. He requested to be himself who tells you, I''ll let him in now."


    The small woman retired taking her medical gear with quick moves, and a second after Peter got in. His eyes seemed to be darker than usual. Bad omens were in every detail Philip could find.


    Uncle Philip was a typical blonde man, with short carefully combed hair and a usually neat shaven face. He had brown eyes just like Philip''s, but his looked gloomy and distant today, in a darker shade, like a deep dark swamp. He was wearing a grey coat over a black turtleneck sweater. His face seemed aged a tired and blonde beard had started to grow in a sloppy way.


    "Hello, Phil." Peter walked towards the bed and sat on the edge. "It''s been a long time since I last saw you. You look like a man now."


    "What''s going on, uncle? Where is mum?"


    "What''s the last thing you remember, son?"


    Questions to answer questions were never a good sign. Philip swallowed again. His throat seemed to be filled with pebbles.


    "I...I woke up from a nightmare, then mum made me take the pills. I took an extra one. Is that what sent me here? I swear I knew it wouldn''t kill me. I want to talk to my mum, please..."


    "Phil, listen to me: your mother....", Peter''s voice broke for a moment. "There was an accident. Apparently, there was a malfunction in the gas system and there was an explosion in the house. Your mum and dad, they...."


    "They what?"


    Philip became deaf. Was he dreaming again?


    "They didn''t make it."


    He stared at his uncle for a moment. The man seemed to say something for his lips were moving but Philip didn''t hear the sound of the words. He felt his ears and his head getting numb.


    "I want to see my mum...Please", his voice broke at that last word. His uncle''s eyes crowded in tears. "WHERE IS MUM?"


    "Phil...listen to me...there was an accident."


    "What accident?! MUM!! MUM!!"


    Uncle Peter shook his head with sorrow.


    "This can''t be right..."


    Philip''s face turned into a giant bowl of red tears. He was shocked, he couldn''t believe what his uncle was saying. He was confused and nothing made sense.


    "I''m so sorry", the man covered his face for a moment. "I''ll have to take care of you now."


    "I don''t understand!! Do you mean mum and dad... are dead?"


    "Yes, Philip. This is a tragedy!"


    "A tragedy? Is that how you named this? This is impossible!!", the boy could barely hear himself talking. His voice trembled with every word he uttered. "It doesn''t make sense!! I was home too!! How didn''t I explode with them?! Why am I still alive?!"


    Philip burst into tears, his golden hair soaked in sweat. He hid his face behind his hands.


    "Phil, you weren''t home", the boy looked at his uncle even more confused. "You were laying on the middle of the street, you were bruised, but there was no sign of you being inside the house when it exploded. At least that''s how they think it happened. The authorities are trying to figure things out, but it will take time."


    Philip laid down on the bed and turned his back to his uncle.


    "Leave me. I want to be alone."


    "Phil..."


    "LEAVE!!", he spat with anger.


    "Alright. I''ll be outside if you need me."


    "I don''t need you...I need my parents. Just...just go away."


    "I''m sorry..."


    "Don''t be! Just..."


    Peter looked at the boy for a last moment before walking out of the room. Philip could feel his eyes over him till the door finally shut closed and silence embraced him again.


    He shut his eyes as he was used to, but this time, it wasn''t a nightmare. There wasn''t a reality to come back to. That fucked up moment...it was his new present, his new life.


    It was a tragedy, just like uncle Peter said.