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2024-10-29 19:42:56The room beyond the door was simple; squarish and small, able to be crossed with only a handful of strides. The walls were painted eggshell white, and the paint had started to peel, just a little, at the corners. The room had probably, Janice assumed, begun its life as storage.
The only things in the room were a small bed covered with hospital white sheets, slightly yellowed with age, and a small machine which filled the air with soft, rhythmic beeping. Tubes ran from the machine to the bed where they attached to the figure tucked beneath the sheets.
It was Emily Diamond… the real one.
***
Adara felt the atmosphere change in her small apartment, the energies swell above her ritual space. She sensed (more than saw) a figure floating overhead in the shape of a majestic grey wolf.
Thank you. She mouthed the words silently, not wanting the sound of her voice to break the preternatural silence that had eng
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Emily arched her back, letting out a small groan. She had been hunched over her keyboard since the sun poked its head over the horizon that morning, making her stiff and sore. When things went well, she could churn out a few pages in a matter of hours, leaving the rest of the day for her to do as she pleased.Today, things were not going well.Shaking her head, Emily picked up her favorite coffee cup, the one with the black chaos symbol on the side that she had bought in New York City, and took a taste test. The coffee had long since grown cold.“Time for a refill,” she mumbled. Even if it was of no consequence, she often talked to herself. Idle self-chatter often helped fill the void.Her last book had made a fair amount of money, more than everything else she had written. But even a sizable advance didn't last forever and Emily had again found herself back in the land of Ramen noodles and Taco Bell. Hopefully, this ne
Broken Night Part I - 1
Byron Matthews didn't know what to expect from the girl.His experience with prisoners was, besides those that he saw on television, pretty much nil. He had never hung out with the crowd that found themselves incarcerated, and while most families had the uncle or cousin that was always in trouble, it seemed his was the exception. Still, when he first laid eyes on Janice, he was surprised.She looked every ounce the privileged rich girl that she was, tall and blonde, with the clearest skin money could buy. Something in the way she moved and held herself even made the orange jumpsuit look good, like the work of some avant-garde fashion designer from Paris. The hardness that he assumed all inmates eventually obtained had touched her but it didn't erase the years of private school and privilege; instead, it seemed to almost enhance them, giving credence to the nonchalant disinterest that so many young girls wore like a cloak. Byron found himself impressed in
Broken Night 2
Janice opened her eyes, which had been closed the entire time she spoke. It surprised Byron at how well the girl narrated her story, more like a memoir than a casual conversation. He wondered if she rehearsed all of this in her cell, eventually deciding that there was very little that Janice didn't rehearse.“Sorry I'm spending so much time on this crap.” she fiddles with her fingers nervously.“It's fine. Just talk about whatever comes to you.”“I don’t think this is what you want to write about, is it?”“You never know.” Byron gave an encouraging smile. “And it's good to have as much background as possible. It makes for a better book, even if I don't end up writing about any of this.”Janice nodded, and Byron could tell from the girl's expression she was indeed thinking about what he had said.“I guess you're right. Besides… I'm not re
Broken Night 3
This time the girl, (Byron was still calling her that in his mind. She had yet to become Janice Rosse) seemed nervous. As soon as the guard, a new one this time with a scar on his right cheek, sat her down and removed the handcuffs. She began to drum her fingers on the table between them, creating short, staccato beats that led to nothing. Byron waited a moment to speak.“Are you ready to begin, Janice?” He finally asked, setting up the tape recorder.“Oh.” she seemed a little surprised, wide blue eye blinking rapidly as they stared through him. “Yeah.”“Is something bothering you?”“No… well, yeah… It's just that I try not to think too much about what happened, and last week, after talking to you, it's sort of hard not to, you know?”“I'm sorry. If you find these talks too distressing...”“No, I want to tell someone. To a person tha
Broken Night 4
“We've known each other forever, since before I can remember. We went to the same daycare, the same schools, we all graduated from Manhattan High School for Girls just before… before it all started. In fact, though we never talked about it, this trip was going to be our last hurrah as a group before our lives tossed us in different directions.Lacey was going on to college. We all knew that was coming. She wanted to be a scientist of some kind, something about physics, but cool… like the real Twilight Zone, Star Trek kind of stuff. If you could get her talking about it, and if you could get her to not use all the fancy math terms, it was really neat to hear about. She wanted to find out if there were really other dimensions, you know, like other worlds that were almost totally like ours, with little tiny differences.You know what I mean, right?Anyway, she was going to a college that none of us even had a prayer of getting
Broken Night 5
“It's alright. If you want to call it a day, that’s fine.” Byron assured seeing her state. It was in that moment, when Janice went from a calm, almost detached monotone to hitching sobs, that he stopped thinking of her as The Girl.Killer of friends or not, she was Janice to him now.She nodded rapidly, gulping in an attempt to choke back her tears.“Okay,” Byron shut off the tape recorder. “You never have to talk about anything you don't want to. I want you to know that.”She nodded again. After a moment she was able to get herself back to a state that was, if not controlled, at least it was rational.“I don't want to talk about any of it, but...”“But you want people to know your side of the story.”“Yes. Even though nobody will believe me.”“I wouldn't be so sure. I can tell, just from tal
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“It's been a while,” Janice remarked as the guard brought her to the table. Byron noticed she wasn't tapping her fingers or jiggling her leg this time. Just looking straight at him, eyes expressionless, voice flat.“A couple of weeks,” he said, glancing up at the two-way observation window and smiled at the officers he assumed were watching.She nodded.“I want to ask you about the House today, if that's alright. You don't even have to talk about what happened there, not yet.”“Then what about it?”“Why did you go there, what drew you and your friends to it? You said earlier that it was a fitting last hurrah, but I want to understand why.”“Alright,” Janice said and began to tell her story.***“When we were kids, we lived for Halloween. We didn't care about the candy, spooky movies, the cider, or any of that stuff, we wer
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Broken Night 13
The room beyond the door was simple; squarish and small, able to be crossed with only a handful of strides. The walls were painted eggshell white, and the paint had started to peel, just a little, at the corners. The room had probably, Janice assumed, begun its life as storage.The only things in the room were a small bed covered with hospital white sheets, slightly yellowed with age, and a small machine which filled the air with soft, rhythmic beeping. Tubes ran from the machine to the bed where they attached to the figure tucked beneath the sheets.It was Emily Diamond… the real one.***Adara felt the atmosphere change in her small apartment, the energies swell above her ritual space. She sensed (more than saw) a figure floating overhead in the shape of a majestic grey wolf.Thank you. She mouthed the words silently, not wanting the sound of her voice to break the preternatural silence that had eng
Broken Night 12
Byron heard a sniffling noise from behind him, and in his mind the demon girl had her head in the air, attempting to scent track like a bloodhound. He wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one and realized he had no way of telling.Everything has gone topsy-turvy. He thought to himself.“Clever,” The demon sneered. “Very clever. Which one of you summoned the seraph?”“Not me,” Byron grunted. “I don't even know what a seraph is.”“And not the girl… she hasn't had nearly enough time to learn how to do such a thing. It would take years of study… no...” All at once, Byron felt the stool under his feet jolt as though the demon had kicked it roughly.“Wait...” he hopelessly, foolishly grabbed the rope as though holding it would save him from hanging.“Who is helping you?” she exhorted, her voice tinged with anger. Byron
Broken Night 11
One night before all the madness started, back when Janice and her friends were looking for something, anything, to break out of the doldrums of day-to-day life, they had stumbled upon a film festival. It was being held in a shady, dirty, independent theater, one of the final 42nd Street dives that had somehow survived the New York cleanup of the early nineties.Though they had seen a handful of short films that day, one managed to somehow stick in Janice's mind all these years, though she could never find out its name. It was nearly plotless, relying on stunning, garish visuals. In the film, a group of people, dressed like gods and goddesses from mythology, participated in a party/orgy that very much took on the trappings of an occult ritual as it went on. What Janice was seeing as she carefully followed the wolf through seemingly endless hallways, reminded her very much of that nameless film.Figures would flash before her for seconds, giving h
Broken Night 10
This isn't real. Janice thought to herself. She had made her way down a long hallway, dark except for a meager supply of tea-lights which were placed in scattered recesses along the wall. Now she was standing in a room unlike anything she had seen before.Clearly, it was a living room decorated opulently with silks and overstuffed furniture. It was the sort of room where Janice expected to see Victorian men, dressed casually, sitting around smoking pipes, and talking about their latest trips to Africa. It was a nice room and not that unusual.Except that everything was wrong.This isn't real, this can't be real.For one, the walls were waving as if they were no more substantial than curtains. Shadowy things moved just beyond the walls which had taken on the opacity of theater scrims. Every once in a while, one of the things would push against the walls. Its hand (or claw or tentacle) would push out aga
Broken Night 9
At some point, the demon had lit a candle, and for the first time since being brought here, Byron could see the room that had become his prison.It was a simple room, unadorned. In the House's former life, as a normal place where normal people would live, (if it had truly ever been such a thing), the room would have acted as a sort of storage space for jackets, handyman tools, or whatever other sundry things the family had collected.He stood on a small footstool, painted black. The rope around his neck was nothing special, the same sort of thing you could buy at any hardware or department store in the country. It struck him as funny that such a simple thing could be his barrier, and possibly, if he wasn't careful, his vehicle to the afterlife.“She's coming,” the Emily demon jumped in excitement.It didn't sound very concerned to Byron, but then again, he wasn't an expert in reading the emotions of demons. He
Broken Night 8
The flickering light registered first. It seemed to come from all corners of the room beyond the door, all directions until it replaced everything in Janice's world with cold fire. The door slammed behind her with a defiant thud, leaving her alone with whatever was causing the prismatic world. Slowly, images began to come to the forefront.An animated demon perched on a mountain, summoning spectral figures from the ground.A man, standing in a busy street, throws a Molotov cocktail into an oncoming car's window. Janice could now tell the walls had been covered with sheets of thick plastic and an unseen projector was throwing up images on every possible surface. The air was full of noise, a dirty, toothache inspiring static that swelled to a volume which Janice feared would do permanent damage to her inner ear.If I ever get out of here… Janice thought to herself.A 50s era rock band plays
Broken Night 7
Looming like the villain in a million slasher films, the House cast its shadow over Janice. She stood now on its front steps, holding the vial of who-knows-what in her hand. She pulled the stopper from the vial and put it to her lips before quickly pulling it away. Whatever this concoction was, it smelled awful.Though she was no expert on drugs (that was always more Julia's domain), she knew that hallucinogenic drugs were often placed in an alcohol solvent for easy ingestion, so she had expected a grainy, yeasty smell. Whatever the liquid was, it smelled nothing like alcohol or grain. It was more like rotten eggs and the lingering fragrance you got after striking a match.“You can't be serious,” Janice said to nobody in particular. She tried the front door and was not in the least bit surprised it refused to yield. The doorknob had no give at all, not even the wiggle you get when you try to open a locked door. It was as though a mere m
Broken Night 6
Adara dropped Janice off a few blocks from the House.“I could bring you right to the door,” she proposed as Janice stepped out onto the rain-slicked pavement. “It's not far.”“No,” Janice wished for all the world that she could be dropped off at the door, or even better, she could skip the whole thing and just go back home. Her parents would be thrilled to see her even if she was an escaped jailbird. Although she knew they would probably call the police, it would be nice to see them again. Nice to know that for some people the world wasn't insane, hadn't fallen topsy-turvy; to know there were still people that only had mundane problems (like a murderess daughter...).“I don't want you to get any closer to this than you already are,” Janice said, trying to dissuade her.“If you're sure...” Adara raised one eyebrow.“I'm sure. I don't know who you are, but I know
