By David Barton

It was their fingers she couldn't stand, their icy cold fingers caressing her naked flesh. Her clothes had been torn from her long since, an age ago, when she'd first arrived. Now she lay there, bare, for them to probe, investigate, and defile.

And it was their voices that got to her too, whispering things in her ears, obscenities, innuendo and perversions.

She'd never heard such filth.

Their fingers explored places that only her husband had ever touched before. But that was when she was alive, and that was a long time ago now. How long exactly, she couldn't judge, but the smallest length of time was bad enough in the place she now found herself trapped in. Her life just seemed like a distant memory.

Now she was dead and lying there in the dark with them crawling around her; over her. Their bodies moving across her, brushing against her with their repulsive, foul-smelling dead flesh making contact with her own.

But now; was she not like them? Yes she was, and that repulsed her even more. It sickened her to think that if anyone was to gaze on her now - anyone still human that is; still in the land of the living - then they too would be disgusted at the sight of her. She was as one with her foul companions.

She remembered now, how this had come to be. How she'd ended up in this predicament. She'd been out walking with her dog, Benji, and Benji had seen it first, the ground opening in front of them. But by that time it was too late. The ground had yawned wide beneath her feet, and she'd fell into its depths.

She broke both her legs on impact with the ground, and as she looked up to the opening, the ground above her closed up and Benji went out of sight, and she couldn't hear his frantic barking anymore.

Poor Benji, who would look after him now? She knew her husband wouldn't; he'd never been fond of dogs. He preferred cats, can you imagine that - cats, of all things? She hated cats. Loathed them even; she wouldn't have them in the house.

Then she had heard them, shifting closer to her; smelled their rotting flesh, and then the first of their hands had touched her. It felt like the cold hand of death itself had touched her; claiming her. Now she belonged to the damned, they owned her; she was part of them; part of the seething mass of bodies that spent their days writhing and squirming in the depths of their cavernous pitch black home.

One of their hands touched her now as she thought back to this, it stroked her leg. She tried to pull herself away from it, like she'd done on so many occasions before, but she couldn't. More hands grasped for her, digging their nails into her flesh and pressing them home, making her feel like screaming. But she knew if she did this they'd hurt her all the more, they loved to make you scream down there, it was their only entertainment. For how would they bare eternity without a little entertainment now and again?

Dry cold lips kissed her abdomen, and then another pair kissed one of her breasts. Tongues licked her, flicking at her nipples, lapping at her flesh. One found her cunt and she shuddered as it found entry and poked its way in.

Then the ground above her opened up again, as it did from time to time, and she peered around her and saw her companions; the dead. Corpses, some in an advanced state of decay and others still recognisable as once being living and fully fleshed, crawling around, because they'd broke both their legs when they'd fell there as she had done. Some had broken their backbones and slid themselves around in agony, writhing and contorting, and resembling un-human things - the stuff of nightmares! She heard them in the dark, screaming in pain sometimes, screams that made her flesh creep (at least the flesh that was still clinging to her bones!)

A man cried out up above, and began his descent. He almost landed on her, just a few feet away. Then, as usual, the ground above sealed itself up again, and she was left in the darkness once more.

The man cried out in pain.

'Over here!' she called over to him.

'Who's that?'

'My name's not important anymore, nothing is, really.'

'My legs are broken,' he said through clenched teeth, in obvious agony.

'I know, it happens to us all,' she told him.

'Us all?'

Then one of the things must have touched the man, as he called out: 'What was that?'

'They like to touch,' she said, allowing herself a small laugh.

'Who?'

'The dead.'

'The dead?' he asked.

'The place is crawling with dead things,' she informed the newcomer.

Then another hand must have touched him.

'What the fuck was that?'

'Another one no doubt,' she said matter-of-factly. 'I've told you; we are all dead. We came here like you, fell into this place.'

'You mean I'm trapped here forever . one of the living dead?'

'That's about the size of it, buster,' she said. 'We're stuck here, forever, for eternity, in this ... hell hole.'

Copyright David Barton 2004

David Barton is your editor, find out more, read the bio, sample fiction and chapters at: http://chainsawhell.tripod.com/homepage

Back to Contents