Read Online Scary Holiday Tales to Make You Scream by Various - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Various
Tags: Suspense & Thrillers
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are sticky and green with the same chemical ooze. Everything is. The itching, burning is becoming unbearable, and in a futile attempt I chase after a clean-looking food wrapper that has been caught in the wind. BEEF-STUFFFF! MMMMM! it reads, and it looks, if not clean, then at least not covered in the stinging chemicals. But it proves too small and too non-absorbent to be of any use.
It strikes me that this is the end. The End. The rules of life and death and reincarnation in Crack City apply in the Refuservoir as much as anywhere else: In life you can only go down, never up. In the Refuservoir there is nowhere left to go. I've reached the bottom and could descend no further, in this or any other life. But more importantly, down here in the Bath, there is no means of Ascension, no work to justify my soul's promotion to the next level. I'm trapped.
For me, there is no salvation.
Oh, how could I have fallen so low…--
***
Neural Log: 23:70-45-
--Something pinches the small of my back, and then my thigh, startling me from my despondent slumber. By now I am a swollen, infected mess. I haven't eaten in days, and had barely eaten in the weeks that preceded my fall. There'd not been a peep from the neural net, and a growing electric pain deep in the meat of my brain has begun to worry me. I have no idea if the neural log is recording, but the net wasn't broadcasting.
I'm starving, alone and waiting to die.
Another pinch, this time on my neck, rouses me fully and I open my eyes. In my slumber I'd disturbed a nest of… something. Tiny, segmented double-clawed creatures, leaping up out of the muck with stinging needle-tongues and a chitinous, toothy grip. They swarm up out of the ground and over my fevered body.
I shriek and jump to my feet, awake and brushing them from me. The tenacious ones cling like the devil, pincers locked onto flesh, probing tongues flicking and licking. No sooner do I pry them off and toss them away than others leap up to replace them.
I run, putting distance between me and the nest. Passing a deep, wide puddle of chemical slime, I consider just diving in and ending it all. But I don't.
I take refuge in a deep, dry crater and pull the last of the clinging monsters from my skin. Tiny, pocked sores appear where I've been bit, already turning purple at the edges. Throwing the insects to the ground and stomping on them is enough to kill them. Their shells cut and slice the heel of my foot, but two or three good stomps and they stop moving.
Once they are all dead, I sit down in the crater, exhausted. My stomach is moaning as I stare at the smashed corpses. My mouth begins to water…--
***
Neural Log: 23:70-64-
--After gorging myself on the foul insects I begin to feel tired, woozy, poisoned. A burning sensation erupts in my stomach and grows and spreads through my belly. At first, it was all that I could do to bring the creatures to my nose, touch my tongue to their shells, without gagging. But soon enough hunger took over, and I was able to close my eyes and my mind and suck the wretched juices and organs from the shells, until I'd had my fill. Bug-juice stains the weeks-long growth of beard on my chin.
And now I am feeling sicker by the moment.
My naked skin is pink and burning, slick with sweat and mucous. My desperate mind is going quietly insane. And my stomach…
My stomach-the pain is unbearable, belching geysers of gas and foul liquid that smells like rotting death erupt from me as I curl into a fetal position in the muck and garbage of the crater.
Oh, let me die…--
***
Neural Log: 23:71-13-
--But I don't die.
After timeless hours (or days?) of feverish nightmare-sleep, I awake with a parched throat, shivering in the damp cold of the city's floor.
I'd dreamt that the Arches of 24-G were opened up to me and that a Great Eye was peering down at me from the sky-crack above. I was naked, but the voices of my neural net had returned, and they were laughing at me, mocking me, telling
It strikes me that this is the end. The End. The rules of life and death and reincarnation in Crack City apply in the Refuservoir as much as anywhere else: In life you can only go down, never up. In the Refuservoir there is nowhere left to go. I've reached the bottom and could descend no further, in this or any other life. But more importantly, down here in the Bath, there is no means of Ascension, no work to justify my soul's promotion to the next level. I'm trapped.
For me, there is no salvation.
Oh, how could I have fallen so low…--
***
Neural Log: 23:70-45-
--Something pinches the small of my back, and then my thigh, startling me from my despondent slumber. By now I am a swollen, infected mess. I haven't eaten in days, and had barely eaten in the weeks that preceded my fall. There'd not been a peep from the neural net, and a growing electric pain deep in the meat of my brain has begun to worry me. I have no idea if the neural log is recording, but the net wasn't broadcasting.
I'm starving, alone and waiting to die.
Another pinch, this time on my neck, rouses me fully and I open my eyes. In my slumber I'd disturbed a nest of… something. Tiny, segmented double-clawed creatures, leaping up out of the muck with stinging needle-tongues and a chitinous, toothy grip. They swarm up out of the ground and over my fevered body.
I shriek and jump to my feet, awake and brushing them from me. The tenacious ones cling like the devil, pincers locked onto flesh, probing tongues flicking and licking. No sooner do I pry them off and toss them away than others leap up to replace them.
I run, putting distance between me and the nest. Passing a deep, wide puddle of chemical slime, I consider just diving in and ending it all. But I don't.
I take refuge in a deep, dry crater and pull the last of the clinging monsters from my skin. Tiny, pocked sores appear where I've been bit, already turning purple at the edges. Throwing the insects to the ground and stomping on them is enough to kill them. Their shells cut and slice the heel of my foot, but two or three good stomps and they stop moving.
Once they are all dead, I sit down in the crater, exhausted. My stomach is moaning as I stare at the smashed corpses. My mouth begins to water…--
***
Neural Log: 23:70-64-
--After gorging myself on the foul insects I begin to feel tired, woozy, poisoned. A burning sensation erupts in my stomach and grows and spreads through my belly. At first, it was all that I could do to bring the creatures to my nose, touch my tongue to their shells, without gagging. But soon enough hunger took over, and I was able to close my eyes and my mind and suck the wretched juices and organs from the shells, until I'd had my fill. Bug-juice stains the weeks-long growth of beard on my chin.
And now I am feeling sicker by the moment.
My naked skin is pink and burning, slick with sweat and mucous. My desperate mind is going quietly insane. And my stomach…
My stomach-the pain is unbearable, belching geysers of gas and foul liquid that smells like rotting death erupt from me as I curl into a fetal position in the muck and garbage of the crater.
Oh, let me die…--
***
Neural Log: 23:71-13-
--But I don't die.
After timeless hours (or days?) of feverish nightmare-sleep, I awake with a parched throat, shivering in the damp cold of the city's floor.
I'd dreamt that the Arches of 24-G were opened up to me and that a Great Eye was peering down at me from the sky-crack above. I was naked, but the voices of my neural net had returned, and they were laughing at me, mocking me, telling
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