The Small Blonde Girl

Chapter 3: A Wet Nightmare

Rose had finally reached the hotel room. The door closed and he let out a pitiful sigh.

He went over to the bathroom and locked the door. With a series of soft, echoing pats. He discarded his clothes and began to run a shower. Then walked to the mirror and gave a low, deep sigh.

"...Shit..."

He looked dead when he allowed himself to. His eyes seemed almost horrific. He had dark circles around them, slightly bloodshot and then suddenly began to brim with tears.

"I want to stay here... I want to be with her forever..."

He began to speak to nobody in particular.

'She'll never love you...'

He began to gasp and look around trying to see what had made the noise.

Looking all over, behind the shower curtains, it sounded so close but nobody was around.

Steam was beginning to cloud the mirror at this point, he no longer see his face, so he turned his back and walked to the shower and spread the curtains. Getting in and closing them. Rose just let out another sign and sat down in a fetal position and just let the water wash onto him. Then he got to thinking. That voice that he had heard too clearly to not be real. It sounded like someone had whispered into his ear. Yet nobody was around. No evidence. He wanted to say it was real... or would that just be crazy? He shook his head and began to reach for the shampoo, closing his eyes and washing his hair.

The water sounded... different after and few seconds. Heavier. Followed by a weird taste in his mouth, and this horrid reeking stench that filled his nostrils and toyed with his stomach, as though attempting to not only make him puke but rip out his gag reflex with it.

When he was sure it was all gone, Rose opened his eyes to see red. Just red.

He was covered in something that should be kept inside of his body, screaming he left backwards. Trying to wipe the vile flew from him but it stuck. Slowly beginning to dry at this point he began screaming. It tasted rancid, horrible and metallic. Smelled like a murder scene, like someone had cut hundreds of people open and just left the corpses, never cleaned it.

That's when he noticed the environment. It looked like hell. The floor had turned into some metal grates, like at a factory of some kind, the lights were old, flickering constantly, the shower curtains that were new fabric, we're worn and torn, and the shower head was plastic and now was like a facet that had seen its first day of service in over 100 years. The windowsill was covered in all kinds of horrific yet unrecognizable equipment, the door handles were covered in an orange coated rusted barb wire. The wood was completely falling apart, decaying more and more along with the rest of the dilapidating, nightmarish world around him.

He began to feel lightheaded, scrambling out the bathtub, he tripped and began to fall along the floor. Gripping his face to find his mouth, nose, ears and eyes were all bleeding. All his scars adorned his body - reopened - the walls held a message for his as he looked around frantically. Simply repeating what was heard:

'SHE WILL NEVER LOVE YOU!'

Written in blood, he looked to the mirror to see not himself, but a much darker, demonic and sickening clone of himself. Grinning menacingly at him.

Oh no, Rose knew. He knew precisely what this was because it all came from him. All this was what he thought was inside. What he was terrified of. His worst enemy stood before him and he was losing to himself.

His reflection tilted its head and then he did the same. Then almost as if without his control. It began to scratch at its own head. Then Rose did the same, scratching while his doppelganger began to scream at himself, smashing its head against the now cracking mirror. Over and over, trying to get to Rose while just constantly yelling over and over, again and again: "So itchy! So fucking itchy!" The nails began to cut into his skin, digging deeper and a deeper. That was when the blood began to drip into the sink below. The pain – Oh god the pain was so intense!

Every moment of it was real. Rose gripped his head as more and more skin began to tear away, being clawed away and there was nothing he could do, eventually the skin off peeling off in chunks. A drop of blood forming to a few on the floor and eventually a puddle to a lake. His face more or less torn off as his fake began to gouge out his eyes. Rose screamed and screamed, tears and blood running and squinting all over the decimated room. The voices came back louder and louder each time a new wound was made.

Suddenly, he had a massive outburst and began to punch the mirror repeatedly, glass being shoved into his knuckles. Breaking the skin like little contours. Deep abyss' of which bloody magma seeped.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE F**K UP!" He yelled louder and louder, tears filling his eyes from the bitter, brittle pain but onwards he pounded his fists.

The voices just repeating lines like: "You're useless", "She'll never love you" and cetera and cetera. Eventually, he just collapsed from the pain and ringing in his ears.

Eventually he awoke on the ground. His eyes bloodshot from tears. However as he got up. He noticed two things. Firstly, He was out of the bathtub and the shower was still running. So how'd he get out?

Secondly, the mirror was broken.

His face was still intact; back to normal and none bleeding. So he got back up. Strode to the broken mirror and frowned. The insanity inside him had followed him to salvation. It seemed determined to take him.

Not this time. He was equally determined to fight for something this time. Something he loved, that he didn't have before.

He had her.

He was prepared to fight for her. To die for her. So no way in hell was this going to take it all away now. Rose pulled himself away from the bathroom after finishing. Feeling refreshed yet a blanket of dread hung over him like a shadow. Like eyes watching him from a vantage point that didn't exist in the small lonely hotel room. Yet weary he remained. Constantly looking over his shoulder. He watched the shadows with curious eyes. He couldn't afford to lose control. Not here and certainly not now. He soon got dressed in some clothes that that he bought. Blow-dried his hair and gave it a nice brush through. It was soft, silky. A feeling he loved. It soothed him when he was afraid...

The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up. He feared what was to happen if he stayed in the room any longer. So he took his key, ran to the door and threw it open with a resonating 'whoosh' noise. He took one final look around the room around and fled from its constraining walls.

The only noise that remained, was the locking of the door and the fleeting footsteps down the hall.