It jolted him awake out of a dream filled sleep.
A harsh noise echoed through the halls of his house and into his room on the second floor. His door was closed, but the sound penetrated through the thick wood.
Cutting, slicing, hacking, with hints of brutality. His eyes winced when it came again. It was faint, but it still ripped straight to the center of his brain.
He rolled out of bed and put on his slippers. The sound came between long beats of silence. Each one physically assaulted him. He cracked open the door and listened intently till it happened again. This time something organic crossed the harshness. It was a sound that he had never heard before, a sound that clawed at his soul, he had to know. The curiosity was fueled by fascination of being violated in such a manner.
He crept forth into the hallway and turned on a light. Why would fear not come? The imagination must have turned off the center that generated the bogey man. As he moved down the stairs he noticed that the light in the hallway next to the kitchen was still on. He peered down the long straights. They seemed to be stretched beyond what was possible and down there, way down, was a large opening he did not recognize with a yellow light and haze rolling out from it.
The sound came again. It was sharp, and only lasted as long as he paid attention to it, which wasn’t long. He moved down the hallway. towards the yellow haze. His body shook as the sound got louder and louder as he approached. He could hear it clearer now.
Flesh.
Something thick and full of blood and bones was being cleaved, butchered with a monotone beat.
Curiously he did not smell anything as he was fully engrossed in the haze. The yellow light filled his vision with bits of red as his eyes started focusing on the room that the sound now radiated from.
The room was large, much larger then it could be. The walls were tiled and scaled into thirty foot ceilings where long lights hung shining pale yellow. The walls shone of murals of blood and carnage. Bits and pieces of flesh and organs slowly dripped towards the floor. His eyes scanned the piles of bodies that where mutilated beyond belief and stacked all around. A large L-shaped table stood in the middle of the room with a body on it, which was being hacked with a large cleaver. He stepped closer, the figure hung the cleaver in the air as he approached.
He recognized the figure.
The cleaver flew from the figures hand and struck him in the right shoulder. The sound that he had heard filled every piece of him. The cleaver ripped through his skin, though muscle and sinew straight to the bone. Carving him up. The figure stomped over and past bodies around the table towards him. The pain had caused him to fall back against the wall. The pain paralyzed him, the terror filled him with cement.
His own eyes stared at him. But they were not his. No eyes lids, no lips, and a nose that looked as if it was bit off. How did he know it was him? The eyes that stared at him. He had seen them many times in the mirror. He screamed, clawed at the figure as it grasped the cleaver and ripped it from his body.
All breathe was savagely torn from his lungs with the release. He could not close his eyes though. He stared at his eyes.
The cleaver rose into the air again for one final blow.
The figure moved to strike but instead of the ungodly sound, gunshots rang from his right from his original house. He scrambled to his feet, but blood spilled from his shoulder at alarming rates. He stumbled and fell as some man grasped him and others ran past him. More gun shots rang out as his eyes blurred against the muzzle flashes illuminating the hallway.
-
He awoke to blue and red flashes. Cool air filled his lungs and he stared up in to the sky.
Sirens and people were scrambling all around him
“This is the sixth case this month.” A man was standing close the ambulance talking to an officer.
“Yeah, and what do you think about it, at least we got to this guy in time.”
The officer blew out a breath before speaking “This is some like Nightmare on Elm street shit, did you see that guys face in there?”
“Of course I saw it, I shot it”
“Mick, where are these things coming from?”
There was a long silence between them and then Mick said “Somewhere we don’t want to believe exists”
They then walked away and back towards the house.
Pain throbbed from his shoulder as he closed his eyes.
Then it came.
Like a slice through his thoughts, the sound rang through him and his head whipped to the darkness across the street. The blue and red lights splashed back and forth and among the illuminated darkness, two lidless eyes peered at him.
The sound came again.
He screamed.
-
I feel that sound for me is much more impactful then the other senses. I have always had sensitive ears and sound effects are the things that get me to turn away or not want to watch something. I can witness gruesome stuff in movies and tv’s, but if they get the sound right, then it started getting to me.
What if a sound was so disturbing, so unconscious, so violating that it dragged you towards its open jaws?
The town is heating up it seems. Watch those shadows my friends.