Bogleech.com's 2016 Horror Write-off:
The Silk Sheets
Submitted by
BenLWolf
He awoke with a horrific pain in his throat and tingling in his limbs. Eyes shot open. Light flooded the room, filtered white through a set of thin curtains covering a window dominating the left hand wall. He didn't know where he was. Thinking was rapid, fragmented. Where? How? Who? That was a funny question. Who? He felt he should ALWAYS know who. Who is... who he was. This wasn't bad TV or a video game. You don't just lose WHO.
After a few seconds without answers he turned to his senses. He was in an incredibly soft bed in a room... a completely white meticulously clean room. The ceiling was white. The walls, whitewashed. The floor? The floor wasn't visible. The bed was too high up. It wasn't his. That should have been obvious, but his thoughts were disjointed. He tried to lift a hand... found it firmly trapped under a sheet.
The sheets where white. Shiny. Why... why was that familiar? Something... a circle? Memories of shock and pain. So far away now. Was that a part of the missing Who? Focus. No. Just more pain. Rapid movement. Images. Glittering water, an almost invisible string, something shining silver hauled out into the sun, droplets hanging in the air... then it was all gone. What?
"Well now, you're finally awake aren't you sweetie?"
A voice? Where? There. A very tall woman smiling at him. When did she get there? She was dressed in white. The fabric was just like his sheets. Made him think for a moment of cheap Halloween costumes. More bits of who! He needed to think.. to dig deeper...
"You gave me quite a shock young man." She chuckled... the sound was warm and flowed over his mind like heated milk. He was supposed to be doing something... what was it? It didn't matter. He studied her instead.
She was very tall with gangly limbs visible even through her simple dress... like a nurse's outfit but... not. Besides, those hadn't been used in decades. Her eyes were very large, brown, and kind, staring down into his face with concern and perched just above them on her forehead was a pair of little sunglasses that almost seemed forgotten in their perch secured by her shiny white hair. Why did she have sunglasses inside? At least they weren't white.
A warm hand with slender fingers rested gently on his forehead as she fussed gently over him, her body oddly plump given how thin her limbs and digits appeared and a smell like old kitchens, cedar trunks, and damp grass clung to her strange proportions.
"I know the transition is always so hard, but you put up entirely too much of a fight! Now now, I'm not blaming you. You didn't know." There was a sweet giggle and the fingers began busily tucking him in. Why was it so hard to move when the sheets were so thin and looked so light?
"Just listen to me ramble! I'm so sorry. You need your rest. The recovery is always the worst part. And at least you slept through the painful parts." He could hear her voice recede as she glided across the room. Her feet didn't make a sound.. was she wearing slippers? It... didn't matter.
As he watched she began to hum to herself while smoothing the curtains... which stuck to the glass and began to block out a bit more light. The room grew dimmer as he blinked. Did he recognize that song? It.. So close.. He needed to focus.
"Don't worry. Your mother is here for you. I'll do everything I can to ease you through this then you'll get to meet all your little brothers and sisters! Doesn't that sound like so much fun?" Her voice washed over his senses.. concerns began to drift away. It didn't seem wrong how her hair grew as he watched. There was nothing off about her pulling it up with her hands.. even though the were both working at the fabric and attaching it to the plates of thick glass. Maybe mothers had more than two hands? Maybe they were supposed to gather up their hair and... attach it to the curtains to make them thicker and block more light? Maybe...
No. No. NO! He had a mother! And she wasn't like this... what was she like? She was old... Much older than this woman looked, even with her snowy hair. Yes! And chubby. And she had gray blonde hair! It was coming back him now in an almost horrifying rush. He was an only child. He was alone most of his life. He had been at his computer and then... then..
There was pain. So much pain. Ripping, hauling through the air. His neck should have snapped. He was pulled through things that... were impossible. Through layers of the insane. As if the universe were an impossibly grand cake and each thing we called reality was a bit of pastry or frosting. Places of darkness. Places of.. meat... writhing impossible meat. Places filled with water. Places that... weren't places. The memories poured back and he did the only thing he could. He screamed.
Well... he TRIED. All that came from his mouth was a choked, dried rattling which caused "mother" to whip around in concern.. an extra pair of arms neatly folding up and hiding into her now floor length silky white hair.
"Oh sweetie! No! You're not supposed to be remembering so soon. Shhhh. Let me take care of everything for you." Who. Who was so close to him now. He could almost grasp... And then the wrongness struck him. And it shattered the thin veil of acceptance cast over the room. He could see her face glistening in the light.. her eyes were TOO big, too round.. lidless even if they were concerned. The glasses above them.. weren't glasses. They were another pair of smaller pure black eyes shining like empty marbles until something seemed to swing behind them and they flashed in the light.
He could feel her stroking him reassuringly. No. She was still across the room. It took all of his strength but he managed to lift his head and look down... at a set of fingers.. impossibly long with what appeared to be a thousand joints slithering delicately over the sheets and his body.
He croaked again. Panic flooded every fiber of his being. The fingers... on one end was a delicately manicured and painted white nail.. the other... the other ends disappeared into her mouth. Like the skin of her face they glistened in the light, shining like polished leather.
"Let me just adjust your drip here, sweetheart. Shhh shhh. Mother is here."
Another finger snaked up from the floor and he struggled to turn his head.. saw it climbing higher then wrap around a grotesque cluster of white plastic... sacs sloshing with fluid. It was thick, translucent white with tiny.. things moving inside. Swimming frantically against the current generated as the finger curled around the bags and squeezed, forcing a rush of fluid into the tubes he saw below. Horror mounted as he traced the tubes downward, their cargo dancing in tiny eddies created by imperfections in the plastic. They finally disappeared into another opening.
This one was in his arm. A crude, puckered thing angry red and the size of a dime leading to a hideously swollen and throbbing vein and he could feel the crawling now. Millions of things, tiny lives in frantic activity underneath his skin. And so, as Who retreated he did the only thing he could.
He screamed.
"Sleep now, little one. You'll feel so much better when Mother is done." Disgusting fingers stroked over his cheeks and lips as his mouth surged open, releasing a pathetic squeek from his tortured vocal chords then... then...
He awoke to a mild pain in his throat and a pleasant numbness in his limbs. The room was a soft gray and dimly lit from the large window with thick, shiny white curtains at the left hand side of his bed. There was a thin woman sitting in a white chair next to his bed, smiling comfortingly and running her fingers through his hair, another hand smoothing his pristine white sheets.
"Good morning, sweetheart."
He didn't care about the third hand adjusting the drip on his IV.