Room Fourteen

“I work hard everyday at hardly working, and yet here I am destined to be Damned. A demon within an angel. I would kill for you, die for you to die for me. I am not what you think I am. I am a clown possessed by a wolf possessed by a demon. The demon strengthens the wolf that eats away at the inside of the clown. Clawing and tearing at my insides, ripping me to shreds, the wolf wants out. I fight it. An eternal struggle. An epic battle of Good vs. Evil, raging constantly inside of me. I’m a golden hero in a dark way in this dark age. I would rather kill the bastard criminals then let them get off scott free because of a judge and jury bought and paid for. I wouldn’t kill them with a gun or even a knife. Way too easy. Too painless... I would give in to the wolf. It would command me. Control me. Beat them to death. Do to them as they have done to their victims. Destroy them. Clean up the streets in a very dirty way! Let the rage consume me only for a minute. Like watching a bloody ballet. Like watching a cat playing with a mouse before he eats it. Disgustingly morbid but hypnotically beautiful. Leave the body on the steps of the police station. All Superheroes leave the bad guy with the cops right?”

This was no superhero. This was truly a sick madman. You begin to wonder if the patients that had the murderous impulses ever gave in to them. You realize that you’d rather not know.

“We’ve housed madmen, cannibals, children, rapists, murderers, prostitutes and priests. No one is safe from the dementia that lies just below the surface. We all have primal instincts to feed, we just pick and choose which ones to give in to…” the clown says sitting on a table in the middle of the hall. He sits almost childlike, swinging his legs back and forth as they dangle from the table’s edge. The clown begins to fade away.

As you turn to enter the fifteenth room you realize that this is the last room on this floor, and that the fourth floor is the top floor, which means you are almost done. That feeling puts your mind at ease some what. As you look around the dark room, it all starts to melt away. You find yourself in a car driving down an old country road. You try to step on the break, hoping that somehow this had all been in your mind, but soon realize that you are just along for the ride.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. I nearly doubled over and vomited at the stench that filled the house. The smell was enough to make my eyes water. I didn't remember that smell from when I visited as a kid. I figured the plumbing got backed up or something. I called for my cousin, but got no response. The house looked as I remembered it, well kept and neat. I headed over to the fridge for a cold beer, something my uncle always kept stocked. As I opened the door I again was taken back by a wicked smell. This time one of rotting meat and spoiled milk. It appeared that the fridge had been broken for some time. I decided to head up stairs. As I made my way to the old wooden grand staircase, I found my self remembering the creaking sound that the stairs made and how that always spooked me as a kid. As I came to the top of the stair case, I again yelled for my cousin, or uncle. Neither they or my aunt were any where to be found. I opened the door to my cousin’s room and got a fresh whiff of urine. I knew that smell all to well, as my cousin wet the bed until he was 13. I was about to close the door when I heard a distant thumping coming from the closet. I walked slowly to the closet and placed my hand on the handle. I took a deep breath as I opened the door to discover that nothing was inside. Again I heard a small thump. Thump. Thump. As I moved the clothes aside I noticed a small hole in the back of the closet. Because I had no idea what kind of animal might be inside the small hole, I took a pen out of my pocket and pulled at the hole. To my surprise, A door opened into another room that I never knew about. Then I saw something that would forever be burned into my memory...

... A Boy. He was bound with barb wire to the wall and couldn’t move. He was blind folded and the only thing he could move was his heel which he had been thumping against the wall to get the attention of the stranger he had heard. I quickly hurried to his side to try to untie him. I grabbed my cell phone to try to call the police, when I realized that I had no signal. I was in the middle of nowhere. Of course my phone wouldn't work. As Removed the pair of dirty underwear that had been stuffed in his mouth, he spoke to me. "Get out." He said. I thought for a moment that I had misunderstood him. "What?" I asked. "Get out." He repeated. I began to remove the barb wire that held him, and suddenly he began to scream. It was an almost barbaric scream, not of pain but of annoyance. I clapped my hands over my ears until he stopped. "He is in the basement. Get him and leave." The boy said. "Who?" I asked. Again he screamed but this time he didn't stop. I quickly left the room, but left the door open. The moment I stepped out of the room he stopped screaming. I thought it might be time to check the basement, but had a strange feeling.

As I approached the Basement door I remembered why I hated the basement of that old farm house. The gutted and cleaned carcasses. My uncle was a hunter and he cleaned the animals in the basement. I remembered when I was a child and wondered into the basement on accident. I saw a headless deer cut from chest to groin, it‘s blood pouring into a bathtub below. That picture haunts me to this day. As I opened the door, I came to the conclusion that the horrible smell had to be coming from the basement. I tried to flick on the light switch but there was nothing. "Great. A fuse must be out." I said to myself. I must not have noticed it before, but all of the power in the house was out. "well," I thought, "that explains the refrigerator." I took a few steps down into the darkness hoping that the small windows would be enough lighting for me to find the box or at least a lantern. That's right! I remembered a lantern that my uncle always kept in a storage room in the back of the basement. The light was minimal and I was scared. I felt my way around the basement, and through the cobwebs that were everywhere, into the general direction that the storage room had been in. I felt around for a wile with no results until suddenly I felt it. The old wooden door to the storage room. As I opened the door, pushed it open but it was stopped by something blocking it. I pushed harder, hoping to get it open enough so that I could squeeze through. Slowly the door gave way, but there had to be at least 150 pounds of weight behind it. I squeezed through the door and bumped into something that had been hanging from the rafters. I felt it and realized that it had to be the ribcage of one of my uncle's deer carcasses. "Ewwww." I said as I felt through out the room and bumped into another. And another. I felt for the counter and found something hard and sharp poke my exploring hand. "Antlers." I said as I continued to feel for the lamp. I Finally felt a shelf... and my hand brushed against something hard and furry. "Must be a stuffed rabbit or something." I mumbled trying to reassure myself. Then I felt it. The evasive lamp. I turned it on and a dim light began to feel the room. I turned around to see the quickest path past the deer carcasses that I had bumped into, and realized that they weren’t deer. Suddenly I felt a rush of illness rush over me as I saw what filled the room. Bones and human skulls lined the counter. The shelves that I had just retrieved the lamp from were home to severed heads. The lamp in the corner was made of human flesh, and the bodies that I had bumped into were headless. I forced myself to get a better look at the all too familiar severed heads on the shelf. My uncle and aunt. Even decomposed I could tell it was them. Then without warning, the lights came on and I was amazed by who stood in the door. It was him. The boy from upstairs that had appeared too weak to walk. "Don't you recognize me?" he asked and as I looked closer I realized that the boy in front of me was in fact not a boy but a fragile man. My cousin. He held the large kitchen knife in his hand and stepped closer to me. I panicked. He lunged and I pushed one of the hanging carcasses toward him, throwing him off guard. I ran past him, up the stairs and out the front door. Then I slipped. The owl. I had forgotten about that damn owl. Slipping on that owl was a big mistake. I smacked my head on the cement stairs and everything faded to black.

I woke up some time later in a hospital. I got up and tried to go to the door but was stopped by a large male nurse. "Whoa, where you goin' buddy?" he asked me. "I have to get out of here, he'll come for me!" I said. As the nurse lead me back to the bed I saw a sign over his shoulder that I wish I had never seen. Through the window the words CITY ASYLUM tore through me like a knife. They thought I was nuts. I let myself heal for a few days then convinced a local cop to go back with me to the house of horrors. There, I told him, he would find the bodies, the blood and the psycho man who my cousin had become. As we drove up to the house, my stomach fell as I saw the dogs playing in the yard. We got out of the car and were greeted by my loving aunt who welcomed us with open arms. Behind her stood my uncle who wanted nothing more than to have me come in, sit down with him and his son and a cold beer and watch the game. I took him up on the offer thinking that surly the cop would smell that rancid smell that almost took me out. We walked into the door and the only smell in the air was that of a dusty old country home. I took the cop upstairs. The secret room! That would show him! After inspecting the closet, the basement, and the storage room, the cop had decided that I was nuts. I'm not nuts. None of them believe me, but I swear to you this: I swear it's all nothing but the truth! You believe me right?

Before you know it, your back in the dark hospital, lighting the second to last candle. You see a man on his knees at your feet begging for you to help him out. To believe his story. You reach out to help him up, and feel yourself pulled out of the room as the door slams. You reach to open the door again, wanting desperately to help the man, and find that the door is locked. You slam your head on the door asking yourself if anything you had seen tonight had been real. You know it couldn’t have been real, maybe the asylum was filled with some kind of gas that made people hallucinate. You know that had to be the case. You go to the sixteenth room and see a man sitting in a room being interrogated…

“That night I came home after a late night at the office and noticed my door was open. I never leave my door unlocked, let alone open. I was shocked and appalled to find my house had been vandalized. I felt so violated. My house was a complete mess. I ran to the living room to get the phone to call the police trying not to touch anything else in the mess. I didn’t want to mess up evidence. I began to reach for the phone when I noticed something that I had never seen before… Not in real life anyway… a blood trail. It looked like someone or something had been dragged across the living room, through the kitchen and up the stairs. I followed the trail, driven by fear and sheer morbid curiosity. I tried to be quiet as I went up the stairs, fearing that the person who did this could still be in my house. When I came to the end of the trail I found that it lead to my closed bedroom door. I slowly pushed open the door and witnessed a man raping a woman I had never seen before in my bed. He was stabbing her while he violated her. She was barely alive and couldn’t put up much of a fight. I opened the hall closet door to grab my metal baseball bat. I kicked open the door, ready to defend the woman. The man stood up just in time to catch a bat across the face. I ran to the woman to see if she was alright. Her neck had been slashed and she suffered many stab wounds in her chest and abdomen. I turned to look at the man, when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my side. The man had stabbed me.”

“I managed to get a good look at his face. He had narrow brown eyes with a long nose. I could tell that my hit with the bat had broken his nose, and probably some other bones in his face. His hair was pulled into a pony tail and he had a scar above his right eye.”

“It was at this point that the intruder ran from the room and out of the house. I turned to the woman and found her choking on her own blood. I reached for my bedside phone and discovered that the cord had been cut. I remember telling the woman to stay calm and that I was going to get help. That she would be alright. I knew in the back of my mind even then that she would never see another morning. I ran down stairs and grabbed the phone fumbling to remember the number for 911 then struggling to dial it, my hands trembling with fear and dripping with the woman’s blood. My fingers kept slipping over the buttons as I dialed the number and told the lady on the other end frantically what had happened. It took thirty-two minutes for the ambulance to get to my house. The hospital is less than a mile from my house and it took thirty-two minutes. She was dead before they even pulled in the driveway.”

“I remember being interviewed several times, as I was the only witness and chief suspect in a grizzly murder. The police sketch of the man from my description was all over the news, but not one tip came in. The news had said that she had been stabbed fifty-seven times.”

“Eventually I was dismissed as a suspect and, despite massive media coverage, the case went cold… until I saw him. I saw him at a gas station a quarter of a mile from my house, scar and all. It had been over a year since it happened. I remember being totally shocked. I remember the images of that night came back to me. They hit me like a tidal wave. I was filled with rage. I knew I couldn’t let him see me, so I followed him to his house. There I used my cell to call the police. They came and brought him in for questioning. He must have had all the answers because they let him go.”

“A week later a woman was found raped, stabbed and with her throat slit a mile from his house thrown like trash into the river. I guess it was too similar to the murder at my house for the police to ignore so he was arrested.”

“After a long and grueling trial, even with my testimony, the bastard got off. Despite massive evidence against him, he was found ‘not guilty’. NOT GUILTY?! Can you believe that?”

“I couldn’t let it go. I tried and tried to go on with my life, but I couldn’t let it go knowing that that sick piece of meat had gotten away with it. So I began to plan. I knew I had to take justice into my own hands or he would kill again. Who’s daughter would be next? I couldn’t let it happen again. The blood on his hands was still on mine. I planed out everything perfectly. I left no detail unattended. I had thought of every thing that could happen. I went out to the local hardware store and bought wire cutters, some chains, a box of 20 gallon black garbage bags, a hack saw, and painters plastic.”

“I followed him for weeks, learning his routine. Turns out everyone has a routine. I stalked him like he had done to at least two women. Following his every move, I soon learned that he regularly patronized a local bar. That night I laid plastic out in my bathroom, knowing I would need it later. I followed him into the bar and waited until he was just drunk enough to approach. He thought at first that he knew me, but couldn’t put his finger on how. I assured him that we had never met. I offered to buy him a drink, and like the moron that he was, he accepted. He went to the bar’s bathroom and when he returned I had a nice, tall, cold, drugged beer waiting for him. He chugged it down, without thinking twice. After about ten minutes the drug took effect and he began to slowly pass out. The bartender suggested that I call him a cab. I offered to take my ‘friend’ home, being that I was totally sober.”

“I remember loading the heavy bastard into my car and taking him back to the house that he had destroyed a year before. I carried him into the bathroom where I chained him to the toilet. I can only imagine his surprise when he came too and found himself chained to a toilet, sitting in a plastic coated, sound proof room, naked with a long glass tube injected into his penis…”

“I told you I planned out everything.”

“When I went in to check in on my guest, I brought my beloved baseball bat. I asked him if he remembered me. When he said no, I asked how well he remembered the bat, and hit him across the face with it. I must admit it felt so good to hit that son-of-a-bitch. He swore he had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I welcomed him to my violent pornography. I remember slamming the bat down on his crotch and could only imagine the agony the broken shards of glass must have caused. I wanted to make sure he never used his ‘weapon’ on anyone ever again. Once he stopped screaming, the man looked up and smiled at me. He smiled! I left the room and went to the kitchen, where, using duct tape I strapped a butcher knife to the bat, and brought my new toy upstairs. Back in the bathroom, the bastard, dared me to kill him. He tried to tell me I didn’t have the guts, and that he knew what it was like to kill. What kind of a man it took. I remember slashing at him with my baseball bat-blade, and blood spraying all over the room. I used the wire cutters to cut off his fingers and toes one at a time. I believe part of my justice involved shoving a plunger up his rectum, so that he could feel what it was like to be raped, but I could be wrong there. I remember that his screaming became almost symphonic to me. I can still hear it ringing in my ears. I took great joy and pride in avenging the deaths of the two women. I knew that their families would thank me. I was sure to stab him fifty seven times and not one more.”

“By the time I was done, I had made quite the mess, and my ‘friend’ was quite dead. I had planned the clean up too. I unchained him and lifted what was left of his corpse into the tub and turned the hot water on. This was to rinse the blood away during my next stage. After changing clothes, I wrapped them in the plastic from the walls and floor, and brought it out, in the middle of the night, to the burn barrel in my back yard, where I burned some ‘leaves’. It took almost a whole can of lighter fluid to get the package to burn. Once this was done, I went upstairs with my hacksaw and trash bags to finish cleaning up my mess. I was glad I had thought to run the water while I burned the plastic and clothes, because it made it cleaner during the dismembering process. I cut off his hands and feet at the wrists and ankles. I was sure to place them in separate bags, so if found, they would be harder to identify. After removing the head, I placed it in my bowling ball bag and buried it in my back yard. The rest of the body was fully dismembered and placed into garbage bags, and then loaded into my truck. I loaded some bags of other miscellaneous junk I didn’t need and waited till daybreak to take the ‘trash’ to the landfill. It cost me, ironically, thirty-two dollars to dump my garbage at the landfill where it would be buried immediately.”

“I went to the police to tell them my story because, unlike the monster I killed, I do feel guilt. I kept having the same nightmare over and over again. I relived that night. The nightmare went on for weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I would do it all over again, but I still don’t feel quite right about it. They didn’t believe me. So I showed them where I buried the head. In it’s place were the heads of two women. I knew I had buried the man’s head there! They said that many women in the area had turned up missing, and that now I was the chief suspect! They blamed me! ME! I knew I didn’t do the things they had said. They later found the dismembered body parts of several women, all missing their heads, in the city landfill. It was a nightmare. Only a dream! I only killed one person and he was a man, not several women…”

As the interrogation/confession came to an end, you see the room return to it’s darkened state. You feel sick to your stomach after hearing the mans twisted delusional rants. He was a woman killer. And a sick one at that. You have tried to reserve judgment in all the rooms, but in this one, there is no doubt in your mind that he deserved to be here, or dead. You light the candle in the room and throw it in, closing the door.

Just as you begin to go to the last door, you see flashes of war across your vision. Lines of twisted, angry poetry flow through your mind. You can’t make out the words but they slowly become clearer. You see a man banging his head against the wall of the hall as he begs for the poem to stop. He screams his apologies in vain. You suddenly begin to hear, the poem yourself.

You watch the man fade away into his infinite suffering and you morn for both he and his friend. You take a momment to collect yourself then head into the last room…

You enter last room and hear a click behind you as you enter. You reach for the door, trying to get out, and find that it’s locked. You begin to panic. Then you hear a familiar voice.

“Light the candle.” The voice says. Where have I heard that before? You ask yourself. Then you remember. The voice in the room was the same as the one from the laptop in the coffee shop. The door opens as the clown returns. He shuts and locks it behind him then he begins to speak to you as his body mutates into that of a grown man. A doctor. He holds something in his hand as he steps closer to you. You try to back away but cannot move. He tries to hide it behind his back, but you know it’s there. You look down and find that your wrists and ankles are chained to the wall. You’re trapped. You watch as the walls morph into clean where they once were charred. The pads of the walls go from ash and charred wood, to thick white pads.

“I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but you continue to show no progress.” The doctor says. “We’ve tried every therapy we can and still you insist to tell these stories of ghosts and fire. I’ve worked with no patient as much as I have you. I’ve made curing you, my passion… Until I finally have realized that you are the only one who can cure yourself. The state will not allow the funding it will take to keep you here, and I refuse to allow you to return to the streets. I’m sorry that I have no other solution. Here is your final medication. Take one to cure all your ills…”

With that he places a gun on the floor just out of your reach. You stop to think about what has happened, confusion washing over your mind. As the doctor leaves the room, you hear the door click behind him, locking you in. A loud buzz sounds as the shackles that held you prisoner open, releasing you. You pound the door as depression and panic sweep over you. You look at the gun and consider your options… you aim at the door and realize that shooting it will do no good. After considering all your options, you place the cold muzzle of the gun under your chin, look to God and close your eyes…