r/StoriesOfHorror

Heyo! This was a story I wrote for my cousins 11th bday so this is my first attempt at Middle Grade writing!

Eric looked up at the arch over the gateway made of rotting wood and rusting steel. Pinewood Cemetery. He looked back at his friends, Tim, Jeremy, and Carlos. The moon was high in the sky and not a single cloud threatened to get in its way. He shivered standing with them out on the cool September night, but unfortunately for Eric, his shivering wasn’t from the temperature. 

“Do I really have to go in there?” Eric asked, knowing already the answer he would receive in return.

“Yes.” the other three said in unison.

“You chose Dare, dude. This is the dare.” Tim said, keeping an eye out for other people that might be passing by. The wind howled just beyond the gate, mimicking the howl of a wolf. 

“Just walk around the outside path once you get in there, you’ll be done in no time.” Jeremy urged. He hadn’t brought a jacket and Eric could see the goosebumps growing on his skin. 

“I don’t know guys,” Carlos started, “when we were here before dark, the groundskeeper told us to avoid the place at night entirely. You remember that don’t you?” Eric nodded his head, though Carlos left out the other part where the groundskeeper said, “If you end up only seeing a ghost, you’d be in pretty good shape.” He knew that it was childish and silly to hang on the words of a grumpy old man, but he had said it with such sincerity, and uncomfortability. 

“Carlos, stop freaking him out, he’s already being a wuss and trying to get out of it.” Eric felt heat rush to his face with anger. 

“I’m not a wuss! Don’t call me that.” Tim crossed his arms in defiance. 

“If you’re not a wuss then walk through the cemetery quick. It’s not that big, and like Jeremy said, you’ll be back in no time.” Carlos put a reassuring hand on Eric’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to do it, man. It won’t make you a wuss.” 

“Uh yeah…It will. He’d be chickening out of the dare. What’s the point of offering him a Dare if he’s just going to wuss out of it.” Eric felt hot enough that he thought that steam would start coming out of his ears.

“I’m not a god damned chicken! And I’m not a god damned wuss! I’ll show you! I’ll show you right now!” 

“Alright! Then do it! We’re waiting!”

“Hey! Quiet down he said, whispering as loudly as he could while still keeping it a whisper. Eric glanced over at Carlos, he didn’t seem to have any reassurance this time. Without saying another word, Eric opened the gate to Pinewood Cemetery and started to walk. 

*****

By the time Eric got out of ear shot of his friends, his confidence he had built out of frustration and anger had subsided and the fear had returned with a vengeance. The wickedly bent trees above him cause even more wicked and sinister shadows on the ground and headstones. Every breath he took felt like it was going against the eerie silence of the space around him. Each crunch underneath his every step, felt like pulling the trigger of a loaded gun, causing what he thought were echoes all around him. Wherever he glanced, unfamiliar dark shapes danced and swung. 

When he glanced forward he saw that he was coming across a mausoleum, a large one, so large you could see it from the road despite that it was in the dead center of the oblong cemetery. It was already spooky to him in the daytime, with its chipping away off-white stone and crooked black metal barring over the windows. But now that he was coming up to it in the dead of night…it was out right creepy. Half of the building glowed in the pale blue light from the moon, the other half sat in utter darkness, holding whatever secrets its nooks and crannies had to hold. He stopped for a moment, trying to get a grasp on his breathing and only daring to look when he felt it was safe too. Eric didn’t know why, but he felt like the mausoleum was staring at him, watching his every move. 

He looked back toward his friends, he could barely see them due to the only light source around being the moonlight. He wondered if instead of having to walk around the whole cemetery, if he could get away with just sitting on the steps of the building for a few minutes and then slowly start making his way back. He tested this idea by waving toward his group of friends. They made no response or wave in return, seeming to continue on doing whatever they were on about. The slightest bit of tension released from Eric’s neck and shoulders, allowing him to breathe somewhat normally for the first time since he had walked in. He took a seat on the bottom step and pulled out his phone, trying to open Instagram only to see that he didn’t have any service. 

“Of course.” He muttered to himself, resorting to opening up the Solitaire app and starting a game. Before he could make his first move, he heard something from behind him. It was muffled and faint so he couldn’t make out what it was. He raised an eyebrow suspiciously, seeing that the only thing behind him was the door to the building. He went back to his phone and got ready to start his game once again when the noise came again, but much louder. 

THUD.

Eric jumped up, startled at the sudden noise. He could’ve sworn this time that it came from behind him, he knew he was only imagining it, but he also could’ve sworn that he felt the ground shake a little when it happened. He stood there, his shivering returning and now on the verge of tears. 

THUD. THUD. 

The thudding continued, rhythmically, like whatever it was behind the door was keeping time to a song only it could hear. Eric took a few steps back now, scrambling to close out his Solitaire game and turn the flashlight on. As he found the flashlight mode on his phone the thudding stopped. Silence once again blanketed the world around him, leaving only the howling wind, crickets, and his heart thumping madly with anxiety against his chest. For a few agonizing moments nothing happened. Then, the knob of the mausoleum door slowly started to turn. 

Eric wanted nothing more than to haul ass down the path to the gate and run, screw going back to the sleepover, he was going to run all the way home and cry in his mom’s lap while his dad chewed him up for trespassing…but he couldn’t move. No matter what he tried to do, fear had frozen him in place.

After half of a minute of the door knob first squeakily turning one way and then even more squeakily turning the other, the door knob stopped moving and everything was still once again. Eric found that his lip was trembling and that tears had started trailing their way down his cheeks. He wished so badly to be able to run, but he couldn’t, so he now wished that whatever was behind that door would just come out already, enough with the waiting.

As if Eric himself had willed his wishes into existence, the door started to creak open, swaying silently and slowly, inching itself open. When the door was completely open, the sound of scuffling and a low moaning sound came from inside the pitch black building. He raised his hand that was holding his phone and shined the light through the open doorway, hoping to the heavens above that what he was hearing was simply just a critter that had somehow made its way inside…but he knew that wasn’t going to be the case. What he saw when the light shined inside shook Eric to his core.

It was a man in a withered suit, tears all over the jacket and pants, dirt covered almost every inch of the man as well. The skin was pulled taut and ripped in multiple places across the face and hands, showing rotted black flesh underneath. It was missing one of its eyes with nothing but inky blackness in its place. The man was missing hair in many places on his head and blood coated his chin and lips. A dead and mutilated rat hung by its tail from the man’s hand. Both Eric and the rotting man stood silently, neither one of them making a move. After only a few seconds that felt like a millennium to Eric, the rotting man burst forward toward him. Eric, thankfully, found that his legs were no longer frozen and booked it down the path from which he came. 

He could no longer see his friends, clouds had found their way into the night sky and essentially flipped the light switch on his part of the world. A horrid scream echoed through the graveyard behind him, a mixture of a little girl's scream and someone choking on a piece of fried chicken. He didn’t try to hold back his fear anymore, he openly sobbed as his legs pushed him forward as quickly as they could. 

He felt he was halfway there when another one of those horrible screams came again. Eric glanced over his shoulder and saw the rotting man was only ten or fifteen feet behind him, random bones popping and snapping as he pushed to get closer to the boy in front of him. 

“GET AWAY!” Eric yelled and managed to push himself harder.

Finally the gate had come into view. It was hard to tell at first but he quickly realized his friends were still standing there.

“Help! Tim! Carlos! Jeremy! Help me!” They didn’t respond, continuing to chat amongst themselves.

 He slowed down as he approached the gate, quickly getting it open enough to slip through. Before he could fully slip through, he felt the icy cold touch of one of its fingers grazing along the back of his neck. He grabbed the gate and slammed it shut. Then tried backing away so quickly that he ran into Carlos and found himself at his friend's feet.

“Why didn’t any of you come help me?!” Eric yelled. His friends looked at him and were confused. 

“What are you talking about?” Tim asked, looking behind them at the cemetery.

“I was just yelling for your help back there before I made it to the gate!” Once again his friends looked confused.

“We didn’t hear anything, man…not until you damn near ran through the gate trying to get out.” Carlos crouched down with Eric.

“Why were you trying to get out so bad?” Eric looked at Carlos and the rest of his friends flabbergasted. 

“Are you kidding me?! There was a dead man running after me! All the way from the mausoleum! He was running after me like I was his next meal!” The boys stood in silence for a second. Then Tim started to laugh, then Jeremy joined in. Laughter filled the air as Eric jumped up to his feet to look past them, only now Eric was the one confused. The moon was out just as strong as it was when he entered the cemetery. Everything was just as it was before the mausoleum. 

“The mausoleum…” Eric muttered.

“What?” Tim asked, starting to get his handle on his giggle fit. 

“You guys will believe me if you see the mausoleum.”

“No chance. We’re getting back to the house, my mom will notice if we’re gone for too long.” 

“But…but…” Eric started as Carlos gently pushed him along when they started to walk back to Jeremy’s house. When the four got halfway back, Eric asked Carlos a question.

“You believe me right?” Carlos only shrugged his shoulders.

“The dark can play tricks on you, man. I remember a few years ago when I was afraid that the sound coming from my closet was a monster of some sort, but when my dad checked the next morning, it turned out to just be a water pipe that was just above the ceiling tile.” Eric’s shoulders slumped and he felt tears starting to form in his eyes again. 

“So you don’t believe me…” Carlos put his arm around Eric’s shoulders. 

“Look, I believe you saw something that scared the hell out of you. Obviously. I just think that maybe it wasn’t what you claim it is.” Eric didn’t say anything more for the rest of the walk.

*****

They spent the rest of the evening snacking on Doritos and playing Fortnite until they eventually passed out between one and two in the morning. Eric’s friends had him convinced that what he saw was probably just a trick on the mind over a rotting man chasing him through a graveyard in the middle of the night.

When his mom picked him up, he told her about everything they did, excluding the part where he was forced to trespass into a graveyard. On their way home, his mom drove past the graveyard due to construction closing off the normal way home. Out of curiosity, Eric looked out the window. His mom coincidentally slowed down by the gate and Eric saw two things that confirmed that his night wasn’t just a trick on the mind. The first, was that a dead, mutilated rat lay just inside the cemetery gates. The second was that he could see the mausoleum clearly in the daylight, and the door was wide open. Though when his mom started to speed up again, Eric swore that he saw the door start to inch itself close…

A lonesome night. A theater. An audience of only forty or so had shown up for a showing that was yet to be known. They murmured amongst one another in their finest fabrics, standing tall and sophisticated. Our fellow, minding his own, stood in the corner. He wore a plain black suit, white dress shirt, and a black tie. There was a time and place when he would’ve spent an hour or more getting himself ready, pressing his pants and dress shirt, steaming his jacket, and even trimming his beard. Nowadays, he’d be lucky if he could convince himself to take more than the average five minutes it took him to put this everyday ensemble together.

After seeing and critiquing what had to be thousands of productions at that point, it was just another show on an ordinary night. It was a different show with a different cast playing the same characters he had seen over and over again. It would end up being another critique in the newspaper the following morning, having to give a polite but harshly accurate professional opinion about the night’s performance.

But something about this particular night had a different feeling to it. The tension. The tightness. But also…Uncertainty…Nervousness…an unsettling vibration hung in the air of that lobby where he and the other forty-some attendees idled while waiting for the doors to open. Our critic removed the playbill from the inside jacket pocket, remembering the odd fellow outside in the ticket box.

It was an elderly man, with wrinkles beyond imagination and an extremely slouched posture, almost akin to a hunchback, a man who had bid farewell to his young years many decades ago and hadn’t dared to look back. The ticket box man never spoke a word during their short interaction, only looked at him with blank knowing eyes upon his tall wooden stool and used his fingers to show ticket prices when asked. When he received the ticket stub, he was handed a playbill along with it.

The playbill was another mystery. It was only a single page folded in half like a booklet. On the front, only the words “PLAYBILL”, and in the center where the title would traditionally be, was “A Play on A Stage”. He flipped to the center of the one-page booklet only to find five lines of text, two on the left side and three on the right. In order they listed, A Man, A Woman, A Boy, A Girl, and the strangest line of all, An Audience.

Our critic started to wonder what this whole thing was. From the outside and the lobby, he couldn’t help but find the structure absolutely gorgeous, a marvel of what he assumed was Victorian architecture. He couldn’t wait to see the theater itself, especially since he was about to get a box seat. What a view he hoped it would be. He then wondered if this was possibly an Experimental Theatre experience. He’d heard of it before when he was a young lad, finishing his master’s degree at university. Avant-garde it was called. But he learned that when speaking to the general public of unusual and niche things in theatre, to just use layman’s terms.

He thought about the lack of information and advertising, was it part of the experience? It certainly made a person think, explore the possibilities of what could be. He hadn’t experienced many examples of this type of theatre, but for that night, he could get behind it. It wasn’t the same old thing he had always seen, and for that, he was ever thankful.

He placed the playbill back inside his jacket and glanced again around the room. The walls were filled with framed paintings of all different shapes and sizes, he found it quite hard at times to stop and look at just one. There were depictions of ancient battles covering all eras of time, of angels and demons, portraits of men, women, children, and everything in between with every range of emotion. One could spend an entire night alone looking at all of them, just like a trip to an art gallery.

Along the corners and edges were slates of carved, silver trim going well with the off-white color base of the walls behind the paintings. Other than that, there were two simple but large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and a single set of oaken double doors that stood on the opposite side of the lobby from the outside entrance.

The lights then blinked in slow intervals. The set of double doors opened quietly, and the small crowd started to filter in through the doors. It was dark once inside the doors, a small hallway between the lobby and theater. A woman stood off to the side wearing an ushers uniform holding a jet-black box with a slot in the center of the lid that people were dropping their ticket stubs into. Yet another thing that struck him as peculiar, but he assumed that it could be a part of the show and didn’t think beyond it. He dropped his stub in the box and asked how to get to the box seats, explaining that he hadn’t seen a sign anywhere. The woman simply pointed to her left, and then to her right, all without looking, then stared back ahead and continued to smile at the other passing guests as she had before.

Sure enough, there were dim, candlelit staircases on either side of her, no more than twenty feet away. When climbing the staircase, he couldn’t but feel that something was eerily strange and ominous about it, the candlelight only causing enough light to barely see where the stairs were, the walls were painted black as night and so were the stairs, and each step he took was followed by creaking sounds from beneath him.

Once he reached the top of the steps, he was greeted by a hallway of similar fashion, candles lining each side and black painted walls. But this time the floor lined with carpet of some sort; he couldn’t quite tell. It didn’t seem to be a long walk though, he could see the light at the end of the hallway, no more than one hundred feet he imagined.

When he reached his box seat, he was blown away just as he had hoped to be. He had stepped foot into a grand theater. Despite being in one of only two box seating arrangements it had to offer, he looked out over the hundreds, possibly over a thousand seats, with the few audience members scattered about. He was too far away to count, but he guessed that there were sixty rows, twenty seats to each row. The mezzanine that partly hung over the floor seating had to have at least twenty-five rows, twelve or thirteen seats to each of those. He’d never seen a room that could hold this many people unless one was speaking of stadiums, arenas, or racetracks. This theater was none of these things.

He took a seat and found it to be surprisingly comfortable, not the usual worn-out seat that felt hard as steel that he had become accustomed to over the years. He started to reach for his tin of cigarettes in his jacket when he saw a metal ashtray on a stand get set next to him on the right. It was the usher from the entrance, still smiling…only this time she looked at him, her unblinking stare gave him chills up and down his spine.

There was nothing behind her eyes, nothing whatsoever. It felt as if he was looking at the shell of a human being, a robot only programmed to serve the most basic of tasks. He could’ve sworn those dead eyes could burn pits into his own, and for some reason, he couldn’t turn away. She smoothly turned around and disappeared into the dark hallway behind him. He shook it off after a few seconds and lit his cigarette. Some people just grow up to be weird, he knew that. Hell, he could probably argue that he was one of those people himself, but that woman was outright creepy. He breathed in the smoke and sat back in his seat, hoping it was just a spell of paranoia and nothing more.

He had just finished his smoke when the lights came down to complete darkness. A lone violin started a melancholy tune, ringing, spreading throughout the theater. How tremendously it rang in his ears. A spotlight shot down onto center stage, just where the silver curtain was starting to part, opening up to reveal a barren stage.

A second stringed instrument joined now, following the melody in a lower octave, making him think it was . A woman, dressed in brown pants, a black shirt, and white dancers shoes glided her way to the spotlight. She was tall, slender, and graceful with every move she made. The epitome of a ballet dancer. She danced slowly, with intention and passion, letting the music guide her. Then a second spotlight appeared, just off to the right hand side of the stage. A boy no more than ten years of age made his way out. The woman smiled as the boy held out her hand in an invitation to dance. They met in the middle and started a slow heart-warming two-step to the simmering tempo of the music. It felt like a mother and son, which he figured was what they were getting at but still found fitting. Not long after, a little girl anywhere between the ages of eight to eleven ran out to them. Two more stringed instruments joined the mix, a cello and a standing bass.

The trio interacted in beautiful glee, bringing a genuine smile to his face. It reminded him of simpler times, happier times, back when he was a child and had nothing more important to do than figure out how to enjoy the day ahead of him. It felt like a scene you might see from something akin to The Sound of Music.

The music suddenly stopped as one last spotlight appeared, pointing to the back left corner of the stage. Moments passed in utter stillness. No music, no dancing. The actors watched with unbreaking focus. Everyone’s attention was now on the spotlight in that back left corner.

One footstep echoed, then another, then four or five more as a tall, burly man in a plain black suit walked out. The children ran up to him and jumped in his arms. The woman slowly walked in the other direction, an expression of anger stretching across her face. The man put the children down and they ran off stage. The woman stayed distant, brewing in an unfound anger. The man came up behind her and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled back at him unconvincingly. The children came back on stage, skipping and playing, the man went over to them to play with what could be assumed were his children.

The woman put a hand to her mouth and mimicked a motion of calling out to her children and they once again disappeared off stage. The man turned around confused, why had she called for them to leave? She walked up to him, no longer attempting to fake her happiness at his return. She started her slow, solemn dance once again, this time around the man, touching him every now and then with longing but also with hints of reserve. The critic started to question what was happening in the scene now. They had started as a happy family. Mother, son, and daughter. But then the father came home, and the children were overjoyed…but the mother had other opinions. Why? What was it they were missing? Was he putting on a front for his children, just waiting to let the real man show himself? The “husband” started to fall to the floor, first to one knee and then the next. He would’ve fallen flat on his face if he hadn’t caught himself. The woman’s once light touches had turned into what looked like hits, shoves, jabs. The man held on to his left side, breathing quicker and quicker. The music started back up, intense, getting faster, and faster with every second. The instruments were no longer in time with one another, all off on their own erratic journey.

Sweat started to develop across the critic's forehead, his heartbeat quickened. He felt he could hardly keep himself seated. Where was this going? What was this? He glanced around at the rest of the theater and the other patrons were watching the show as if nothing was amiss. The boy child then walked out calmly as the woman stopped and faced the man. The boy held a familiar black box and brought it to the woman. The man was now bleeding, a pool growing larger and larger on the ground on his left side. She propped open the box, tossing the lid to the floor, and removed a single shot pistol from it. The stringed instruments started scraping and scratching, no longer making what the critic considered music, just sounds and noise he felt were made to make a person go mad.

The woman then pulled a slip of paper from the box, and breathed in a deep breath. She gently lifted the man's face to see hers, before he knew what would happen next, she pulled the trigger and removed him from existence, the smoke rising from the end of the barrel as he dropped head first to the ground.

The critic tried to get himself to stand and run. It was insane! This wasn’t a theatre experience, this was an execution, planned and choreographed to the very step. He had to get out of there. But something was wrong. He wanted nothing more than to leave and inform the police but he was frozen in place. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get his legs to move or his arms to lift him out of the chair. He glanced back down at the stage and what he saw terrified him more. The woman and the children were now staring at him. Unwavering. Not a single blink amongst the three of them. He then glanced around the theater, the patrons were staring at him too. He then started to feel drowsy, suddenly exhausted and in need of sleep. He fought hard against his heavy eyelids but knew within five seconds that it was a failing battle. As he drifted into unconsciousness, he saw the dead-eyed face of the usher tilt his head back.

---

When he awoke, the drowsiness was still heavy in his chest and limbs. A bright light was now striking his eyes with the intensity of the sun. He rolled his head over and began to open his eyes. Without a doubt, he was no longer in his box seat. He was laid flat on a hard black surface, his shadow stretching out a few feet beyond him. Without a second thought he attempted to lift himself up. He had to get out of here, wherever “here” was. But only moments after getting himself to his knees he was hoisted up onto his feet and carried. 
His eyes adjusted and unblurred as reality began to take hold. He was still in the theater, but he was on the stage. The spotlight followed him and whomever was carrying him as if he was a doll over to a wooden chair in the center. The critic moved his head around the best he could, trying to come to terms with the situation but two things perplexed him. Where was the man? If he’s on the same stage as the one he was watching, the body should still be there. And even more importantly…where’s the blood? The stage was just as clean as the beginning of the performance, only a few skid marks here and there from the years of use. 
He was lightly set down into the wooden chair now, the blinding light shooting back into his eyes. He could hear the murmurs and whispers out beyond as the strings began to play yet another tune. The woman, boy, and girl started dancing again, this time with the original glee and beauty that they had started with. But the critic was sweating rivers, breathing quickly, trying his damnedest to keep his train of thought to one thing at a time. How long have I been here? He asked himself. It would’ve had to have taken hours to get all of the blood cleaned up. Had he been here for hours already? 

He attempted to shoot forward, to jump off the stage and run through the oaken doors he had come in from, for as fast and long as he possibly could. But he only found himself on the ground again, having smacked his head and right arm in the process. He looked down to see that his torso, wrists, and ankles had been strapped down with leather straps. When did this happen?! He almost screamed. Laughter roared from the audience, creating a cacophony of echoes all at his expense. Nothing was making sense. Why had they chosen him? Why were they doing this? He stopped fidgeting and took a few deep breaths. The music was intensifying and the performers were still dancing behind him. He took a sideways glance out at the crowd, finally being out of the spotlight. All of the seats were filled now. Only forty or fifty seats were taken when the show had begun…but now there wasn’t a single seat left open. His breathing became erratic as quickly as he had slowed it down. He was yanked upright again and dragged slowly back to the center of the stage. The woman, boy, and girl, just like they had with the man before him, started dancing in a circle around him. The music had taken on a new tone. This one wasn’t nearly as fast and crazy. This one was slower. Lower. Each note drawn out in a stretch of notes that brought on the most ominous dread. The creeping motion of the piece had made it hard to breathe, as if some demon had his hands around the critic's throat and was subtly adding more pressure and cutting off just a little more oxygen. Then with a single, bone-cracking whack, all of the wind was knocked out of his chest and he was sent back to the ground. The woman now stood over him, a brutish well-loved club in her right hand. The spotlight had already coasted slightly over from where they were at the center. Slamming backwards had broken the chair significantly. He was able to freely move his limbs again…but he wasn’t able to make himself move. He only had to graze over his chest to tell that multiple ribs had been broken when he was hit. It explained why he could only let out short raspy wheezes. The boy and the girl now joined the woman, with clubs of their own in their hands. The critic looked at them up close for the first time. Despite being on stage with them for only god knows how long, he hadn’t had the chance to truly look at these people. They all seemed…ordinary. Bland normally colored hair, dark eyes, and cold expressionless faces. He couldn’t even fathom how they were able to keep a blank expression when committing such violence. On the other hand, how were they able to keep the same expressions when they were dancing the way they had? All questions he’d never muster. In a flash, the boy had reached back and swung the club at his left ankle, taking it out from under him and snapping it clean in half. In the moment that he was going to scream, the girl had swung and taken out his right ankle too. The agonizing pain only let him release a silent, hoarse scream. One that couldn’t be described, only shown or experienced. He couldn’t just lay there any longer. He had to get out of there…even if he had to crawl and suffer more and more from the performers' abuse until his body was nothing but broken bones and bruised skin. He could faintly see a staircase down to one of the audience aisles out of his peripheral. His crawl was painfully slow in every way conceivable, only having his arms and will power to keep him moving. As he moved inch by inch, the music continued and the performers continued as well, dancing and hopping over him as if he was just a prop on the stage to avoid. After a minute or so, he was within just a few feet of the staircase…that’s when the boy made a long leap and stomped on his left elbow, crushing the bones and joint beneath it. He wretched and heaved with the agony that followed. Then the woman came over to hold his other arm out straight. He did his best to fight her, throwing jabs and half-assed elbows. But she was able to easily grab hold of his wrist and shoulder and shove them flat to the floor. The little girl was only a few feet away waiting patiently. He knew what was coming next and again tried fighting against it. But there was no use, she had him pinned down…and she wasn’t letting him go anywhere unless she wanted him to. Only moments later, did the familiar snap and crack follow, and another fiery round of pain shot through his body. He could do anything but move his head now. He was battered and essentially paralyzed. The audience was excited, anxious, causing the theater to rumble with their reactions. Finally, the critic had started to silently shed tears. He didn’t understand what was happening. He was just doing his job, going to see a show that didn’t have a lot of details about it. Now, he was battered, broken, and most of all…he was most likely going to die for no reason other than the fact that when they pulled that slip of paper from the black box, that his ticket stub must’ve been pulled. It’s the only reason he can think up that would explain why any of this had happened. As he continued to silently cry, letting his tears drip onto the stage and start to mix with own blood that started to seep from the corner of his mouth, he was hoisted up onto his butt. The woman hooked her arms under his armpits and started to drag him towards the center once again. He hardly felt anything at this point, he was going through so much agony that his body must’ve sent him into a state of shock, numbing everything to the point of nothingness. He looked down and saw the grotesque view of his legs, primarily how his broken ankles pointed in every which direction and tossed and turned as he was dragged along. He didn’t even dare to look over at his arms, he could only imagine the catastrophe they both were. The spotlight followed them until it stopped, and he was dropped flat on the floor. He just stared at the ceiling for a second, hoping that any moment he would start to see a light and then he would go after it as quickly as possible. Then he was whacked in the chest again…and again…and again. With every swing, he could feel more bones breaking, more organs being ripped, more blood filling up places they had no business being in. There was a stop to the brutalizing. He hoped this was the end, he didn’t want to hang on. He started to cough up blood, covering himself in his own phlegm and blood. The woman then stood over him, her feet shoulder width apart. The club in her hand was now painted red. With her expressionless face she looked out to the audience. They roared with satisfaction. They were at the finale, the moment they were waiting for. She turned her stare back down to him and raised the club over her head. She held it there for a while, letting a couple of drops of blood and viscera drip onto him and herself. Then she brought down the club and his vision went black.

---

The critic shot up out of bed as he woke. He was sweating puddles into his sheets and his heart going a million beats a minute. What the hell was that? He muttered as he took inventory of his surroundings. He was at home in bed, the alarm clock on his night stand showing it was a quarter past one in the morning. He then remembered the brutality he experienced and scrambled to check his chest and arms. Everything was intact and seemed fine. He ripped the sheets off of his lower half and other than seeing that he had lightly urinated in his pajama bottoms, nothing was broken, let alone shattered and left useless. It was just a dream…thank fucking god it was just a dream. A large sigh of relief shot out of his chest and he laid back down for a minute, just catching his breath. After this lone moment, he had to take on the task of having to shower, change out of his pajamas into clean ones and having to change his sheets. What was even worse was that he knew his cleaning lady would greatly peeved if he didn’t leave a bigger tip for all of it. After all of that, he double-checked that his alarm was still set for nine and then drifted off into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

---

When he woke he ate breakfast, dressed in a simple brown suit and tan dress shirt, and went to his office at the local newspaper. While there, he was editing an article he had written about a horribly acted performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” when his boss stepped in and gave him a new assignment. There was a show that one of their scouts had heard rumblings about and he wanted his best guy (the critic) on the job. When the critic asked about any details, his boss said that he didn’t have any. Only an address for the theater it was supposedly being put on at. His boss gave him the slip of paper with the address written on it and then left. Later that night, the critic went to the address. On the taxi ride there, part of him wondered if maybe his nightmare from the night prior meant something. He had heard about premonitions and visions. But after just a moment, he waved it off. He didn’t believe in that sort of thing ever before in his fifty-six years on this earth and he wasn’t going to let a silly nightmare change that now. At just before seven-thirty the taxi dropped him off in a quiet part of town. At first he was about to ask the cab driver if they were in the right neighborhood. Then a little farther down the street he saw the glow of the theater lights and a small line formed just in front of the ticket box. He walked half of a block or so down to the theater and got into line. No one paid him any attention as he quietly waited. There was something familiar about the outside of the venue that he couldn’t put a finger on. He looked around the rest of the block and there wasn’t anything significant to look at. There weren’t any stores open, no lights in any windows. Just a slightly run down neighborhood that seemed to have seen better days. After ten minutes or so, he had finally gotten to the front of the ticket line. His heart instantly jumped into his throat and caught his breath…as the veiny wrinkled hand of a horribly familiar face had reached for his cash to pay for his box…