Contrition

Contrition

By Jennifer Malatesta
Copyright 1998, 2003

His heart pounded through his ribcage. Sweat poured down his forehead and stung his eyes. He knew it was getting closer with every panicked breath he took. Somehow he was certain this was the night he would come face to face with the entity that had been searching for him for so long.

Each night, he stumbled out of his bed, creeping through the dark to the bathroom. The air in the hallway always seemed thicker than it had the previous evening. He began to believe the evil could sense his location by how his shifting body displaced the atmosphere. Similar to the way ripples in a pond could be traced back to their point of origin, each slight movement was leading it to him. If that was the case, he knew he stood no chance because even his breathing would send out these cosmic ripples. Still he always walked as quietly and smoothly as he could. He opened the bathroom door only wide enough to squeeze in and shut it noiselessly behind him. He longed to turn on the light or at least splash cold water on his face, but instead he slumped down, his back against the wall. He sat with his head between his knees, trying not to hyperventilate. And he waited.

It might have been easier if he knew what the nameless being was or why it was after him. The only thing he knew for sure was that it would find him. That made the terror more intense than anything. He knew nothing about the thing except that it was on the prowl, hunting him down like prey. His imagination, and the horror within, would constantly fill in the details. As he sat, curled into a ball, on the bathroom floor each night, he could see it methodically covering the distance between itself and him. He could hear its cloven hoofs clattering across the threshold. Its claws scratched along the hallway walls, as it made its way to the bathroom door. The smell of rotting flesh and decay was overwhelming, as the handle on the door would slowly turn. He could hear the sound of the entity\'s cackle as it realized its game of cat and mouse was about to end. And he could feel its claws and fangs ripping into his flesh in a frenzy of victory. These images of his final moments played over and over in his mind so vividly that he often wasn\'t sure if it was actually happening or if it was still an apparition of the future.

This had been going on for weeks now. He was always late for work, sleeping well past his alarm that rang insistently and unheard in his unoccupied bedroom. His boss was beginning to notice the huge red rings around his eyes, his disheveled appearance, and general inattentiveness to his work. He was sure his co-workers thought he was drinking or taking drugs. It was easier to let them believe that. After all, how do you explain to your supervisor you haven\'t slept in more than three weeks because you are keeping a vigil in your bathroom for a faceless monster that only you know exists? Chemical abuse seemed a safer excuse than insanity.

Even in the daylight he couldn\'t escape the presence. As he worked at the bank, helping customers make withdrawals, deposits, and payments, he would be constantly scanning the next people in line, trying to determine if one of them was spying for the being or was the thing itself. One day a little old lady with bony, wrinkled hands came to his window to make a mortgage payment. As she dug through her dusty old handbag, her hands turned even more pasty and her nails became black and pointed. As she handed him her payment book her now serpent-like eyes flashed and a jagged sneer crossed her cracked lips. The vision was so vivid that he had to leave right in the middle of the transaction and go to the bathroom to vomit.

Yes, the sense of being chased was continually with him. As he rode in his car he was constantly looking back in his rearview mirror, half expecting it to be sitting in his back seat, glaring at him in the reflection. As he walked to his office building each morning, every wayward glance at his unkempt appearance was a veiled threat. No matter how many errands he would have to run during the day, he would never take an elevator, fearing he would be trapped alone between floors with the thing. Every time he would have to answer a ringing phone behind the teller counter, he would brace himself to hear a sinister voice saying, \"I know where you are, and I\'m coming for you...\" He spent all his lunch breaks at work hidden in one of the bathroom stalls, waiting to hear the click of the entity\'s claws on the linoleum tile. Sometimes he would be looking at a customer\'s account on his computer screen, and he could see the words \"I\'m coming for you...\" type themselves across the transaction listing in big, flashing letters. The same words appeared on checks, deposit slips, money, scraps of paper, or anything else a customer might hand him through his window. Newspapers, magazines, flyers, and billboards he passed on his way back to his car in the evening all proclaimed the same message. Often he wanted to ask a passing commuter if they could see the words too, but he knew what their answer would be. This missive was meant for him and him alone.

For the same reasons, he rarely left his untidy apartment unless absolutely necessary. He never watched television. In a matter of seconds, any model or actor could transform into the thing right before his eyes. The radio not only was off, but unplugged. Messages were sent over the airwaves from the being, and the phrase \"I\'m coming for you...\" repeated over and over in the background of radio call-in shows, newscasts and music. He had his phone disconnected and all his mail forwarded to a post office box which he never planned to check. There was hardly any food left in the refrigerator because the supermarket terrified him and take-out was out of the question. The shades were always drawn, the lights were always off, and the deadbolt on the door was always locked. His apartment was now more of a bunker than a home.

But somehow he knew that despite all his precautions, this was the night he would meet it. This was the night of resolution. He clutched a rosary in his hands. It was a childhood practice he had long since discarded. In fact, he no longer remembered the prayers he was to repeat with every bead. He only knew that as a child, saying the rosary had somehow warded off imagined monsters in his closet or under his bed. He thumbed the cold metal chain as he sat on the hard bathroom tile for what seemed like eternity.

His visitor came quietly. He heard none of the sounds he had imagined over these past weeks. The cloven hoofs and claws were silent. The sulfurous odor of decay was strangely absent. There was no demonic howl or even a raspy sigh of success. But, in the eerie stillness of the bathroom, he watched the doorknob slowly began to turn.

The door creaked opened, seemingly under its own power, revealing a little girl. The shock of seeing her instead of a fanged monster caused him to spring up, his rosary clattering down on the floor by his feet. Stupidly he blurted out, \"Who let you in here?\"

She didn\'t answer, but instead stared at him from the doorway. She looked to be about four years old. Her long, straight brown hair hung in her ebony eyes. Her face was round and cherub-like. The rumpled pink jumper she wore made her look like she had just rolled out of bed in a neighboring apartment and walked into his.

He repeated his question, his blood beginning to quicken. She looked harmless enough, almost vulnerable, as if she was going to start to cry at any moment. But there was something about the way she mutely stared at him from the doorway that suddenly made her seem more horrific than any of his created demons. He felt himself back up as far as he could against the bathroom wall, an intense panic settling over him. He felt like a cornered animal.

Her dark, hollow eyes seemed to see through him, to the very core of his soul. He felt dizzy, and he sank to the floor again, his forehead resting on the hard crucifix of the rosary. \"Who are you?\" he choked into the cold bathroom tiles.

Before he even finished the question, memories came flooding back. He saw a wheel of a bicycle spinning on a patch of green grass. He saw a tennis shoe with pink laces lying in front of him on black asphalt. And he saw blood. What seemed like rivers and rivers of blood drained off the roadway into a gutter. The brown-haired child, that stood before him now, lay torn and twisted on the side of the curb. Her lifeless eyes stared up at the mockingly blue sky. The carnage was unbelievable, but he remembered mechanically standing up, checking to make sure no one had seen the accident, getting back into his car, putting his keys into the ignition, and driving away.

He longed for the fangs of his imagined beast. He wanted to feel his flesh and muscle pull away from his bones. He wanted the entity to return to drink his blood and splatter his gristle around the room in a feeding frenzy. Anything his illusory demon could have done to him was preferable to the searing pain he felt now.

It was several minutes or hours before he could bring himself to say, \"Oh my God, I killed you…\"

His confession was met with silence. He looked up, already knowing the doorway would be empty.