Urban Legends( An Infinite Book)

20. Compressed

20. Compressed Posted by evian

I've been like this for two days.

My head is pounding as if it's about to explode, the wall above me is slowly drawing nearer and nearer. All I can see is darkness. The ceiling is low and wooden, the source of many painful splinters, forcing me to keep my neck arched downward at an impossible angle. I'm stuck in a sitting fetal position, but I can't really feel it anymore, since I'm being compressed and pushed and squeezed to death so slowly that I've gone numb. I'm breathing the same air over and over again, my lungs aching for a taste of real oxygen. My hands press up against these walls, but they won't move. They can't.

I know I'm going to die.

That's why I'm typing this right now. A weak glow radiating from my cell phone screen dimly illuminates this dark hellhole. I have tried exactly 43 times to call my parents, my friends, my brother, 911 - nothing works. There is no signal here. It's that feeling that makes you wish you could hit the reset button - the one where you've got the solution to everything right in front of you, but it's just out of reach. Or the one where you just want to go back in time and take everything back and save yourself.

The battery is at four - no, three percent. I had better finish this fast. I want to say goodbye to my friends and family. It sickens me to imagine what they will do when they see how I've died. I don't want them to think of me and remember a rotting corpse scrunched up into a ball so tightly that its knees are lodged deep into its skull. But there is no use in wishful thinking.

I can get ahead of myself sometimes. I'll tell you what happened. Maybe you'll learn from my mistakes.

My name is Gethsemane (JETH-suh-mane). I'm just an innocent fourt-... Nevermind that, I'm just a fourteen year old teenager, whose greatest worry was whether the most popular guy in school was going to ask me to an upcoming dance, or whether I'd be able to get rid of the giant zit that decided to pop up right in the middle of my forehead. But now I'm wondering if I'll live long enough to finish this warning. If my blood flow doesn't cut off and kill me soon, dehydration will. My throat feels as if someone forced me too swallow a package of nails. But enough with my complaining - I've got to get this message out before he comes back. I know this will be the last time.

I was with the popular crowd. I always have been. There's this girl - Kelly - that always has her nose stuck in a book. She's such a nerd, I had thought, oblivious to the way she really was deteriorating inside every time we voice the fact. Her whole family is freaking creepy. Her parents never show up to anything, even fun stuff that isn't school related. She never even says anything.

My best friends - Claire and Jody - and I used to send her these texts - Just to joke around, you know? - With messages, telling her we were going to beat her up, or that she should just "go die in a hole." We... we never thought she would take us seriously. We loved teasing her and watching her run off, scared. We were terrible. It went on for years. It was about three days ago that we got the news.

One Monday afternoon, on Halloween night, Kelly committed suicide.

I felt the blood leave my head as I stumbled and fell to the ground, sobbing, where it quickly returned, pressing itself against my brain, making me feel like it was on fire. I wanted to follow Kelly's actions, end everything, fade away and disappear and forget anything ever happened, or let my mind invent a new life and eventually get myself wheeled away to an asylum where I'll never have to see anyone again or think about anything. I had killed someone. Indirectly, but the mediator that was the rope she used was the only thin barrier between murder and suicide. I had killed someone. I would never forgive myself. I still feel like there's a hole in me, a darkness that burns deep within. I can't wish for anything to not have happened, because it already has. It's too late to say sorry. I wondered what her parents would say to me. The thought made me think about where my dad kept his gun. But when their big white van with tinted windows rumbled up my driveway, the sound of high heels clicking on the walkway grew nearer, and her mother finally knocked on the door, I answered, knowing it was the only way to rid myself of a morsel of the guilt that was eating me alive. So I answered the door.

Her mother stood there, her green eyes completely expressionless, although tears stained her face. Her fiery red hair was up in a poofy bob, looking so smooth as the dim evening sun reflected a gentle shine off of it. Her form was tall and slender, and she was wearing a dark black dress that looked age appropriate. Her cheek bones remained perfectly prominent as she moved her mouth to speak.

"Are you Gethsemane Swift?" came the voice.

My heart banged loudly on the inside of my chest, and ignoring the stinging of tears having been wiped away harshly just under my eyes, I managed to move my head one half of a centimeter down and up again.

To my surprise, an empathetic expression touched her features, and she said to me, "Oh, darling, it's alright. You're forgiven."

She extended her arms and I ran forward, breaking down, and the two of us embraced.

Who was I to know that her parents were psychopathic killers that were constantly dreaming up new ways to torture their enemies to death?

Everything happened quickly after that. As fresh tears cascaded down my face, I felt her grip tighten, something covered my face, and I lost consciousness.

I woke up in this box. I know that every two or three hours, Kelly's dad comes and turns a screw or something and these walls get closer. I don't know where I am. But I know that Claire and Jody are dead already - Yesterday, I heard Jody's screaming close by being quickly heightened in pain and then stop. A stripping sound accompanied the silence with the day that followed. The smell of blood confirmed my fear: she was skinned alive,but I was in too much pain to mourn. I'm not sure what inventive, painful death he had come up with for Claire, but the smell of her perfume and blood - a lot of it - told me she was already killed, her corpse slumped up against me. I know that it's right there, behind the thin wall of wood that confines me.

But he's saved the slowest, most painful death for me. I'm being compressed, the walls thinning my air and making everything hurt so badly that it's all just an impossibly excruciating blur of agony that hurts everywhere and everything and I can't tell whether my knees are a part of my head or not. I can smell incense and can only assume that this is a Satanic family. Kelly's mom was wrong. I am not forgiven. And I know I'm destined for hell, the only result of my actions. My advice is this: Never bully. It's not a joke. You don't know what you're dealing with. Perhaps you'll end up like me.

Oh my God... I think I can hear him coming... He's definitely coming. My neck can only take so much more. He's in the room. He's coming towards me. He extends a hand and turns the screw.

A/N: Read more horror stories before anyone else. Become part of Exclusive Early Reader. Check out my bio for more info.