The Woman In Black

The word. What was the word? 'Mind tricks' and 'ridiculous' had floated past my head, but fear prevented me from grasping either words. But 'fear' wasn't the word either. Not even close. This was too cold and too dark, and reality had long since slipped out of my sweaty hands.

'Death'. That was all. 'Death'. It was everything I could see- a mangled, crippled body, encrusted with dirt and blood, a look of terror etched upon the frozen face, and a woman dressed in black, no part of her to be seen, apart from her shocking, ghostly white face, shrunken and shriveled, with no expression or life upon it, standing rigidly over the corpse.

I could also smell 'death'. It burnt my lungs as the stench crept swiftly up my nostrils and down my throat. The smell was indescribable. I could make out blood, sweat and mud, but the other various smells that mixed them together were so unimaginably foul, no words could add them up.

That's when it hit me like a carving knife on a slab of juicy meat. Or perhaps the whacking of a cane on a simple child's desk. She was here.

I could feel her presence, like a spider let loose onto my back. I shut my eyes tight, but it just added to the fear. She could be standing right in front of me, and I wouldn't know about it. But the thought of having to look at her and stare into the large, black pits in her face where her eyes would be...

I would've shuddered, but she would see the fear inside me, overpowering me. Fear was her oxygen. Her energy.

I opened my eyes, and as I had feared, there she was. Standing before me, like she was waiting. Waiting for me to scream, scream for anything and anyone. But I just stood there.

Could this be the end? Was I never going to tell my beautiful, precious children that I loved them again? Was I never going to kiss my gorgeous wife on her rosy, pink cheek when I got home from work again?

Home. Work.

It all seemed like a joke now. An infantile game, designed for foolish people, playing around with their happiness.

As I looked into her eyes, (if one would be kind enough to call them that) I felt something. Pain. Pain and loss and anger. I thought it was from me that all these emotions were coming from, but I wasn't ready for the shock, when I realised that the strange and various feelings were coming directly from HER.

How could a creature so vile suffer from pain? How could a beast with naught emotion or mercy, cause so much torture to others, when pain had once been an experience?

But I had no time to think about it anymore. With a sudden ear piercing shriek, the shapeless figure sprang upon me, like an elegant cat, toying with it's helpless prey before sinking it's dagger-like teeth into it's body. As a wave of cold and darkness swept before me, telling me I was on the verge of death, a chorus of echoing screams filled my head. The pleads and begs of every victim the woman had cruelly targeted. I was now at the point were I could hear my life draining out of my ears, and before my body became a corpse to add to her collection, a scratchy voice hissed slowly into my ear.

"Never forgive......Never.......Forgive."