The Haunted Short Stories (Requests Appreciated!)

Point of No Return

It began like a play. The curtains rose from the stage, the lights brightening. Before me was a hallway of closed doors. Nothing was behind me, just a pure inky blackness urging me forward. I had no choice, so I wandered down the hall, looking at each and every door. They were all identical, and I tried opening a few, but none of them opened.

Even as I began to become fatigued from all of the walking, my body did not allow me to slow down. It trudged on physically while I stumbled behind mentally. My legs and feet became sore from walking for what felt like days on ends, the bones in my knees and ankles beginning to make creaking and cracking noises. My very being was rejuvenated upon the sight of a door at the very end. It was different from the others; it was tall, broad, edged with silver and carved within the wood were intricate decorations and words I could not pronounce or understand.

The holiness within my soul, my virtues, and my mind wanted me to keep my hands off the door, to walk away, to rest the urgency, but I had no control over my body. My hands, outstretched, shoved the door open to reveal a world I had never seen before, and never wanted to see.

The earth was barren of life, no trees, no bushes, no flowers nor blades of grass; all a strange grayish dirt. It crunched like brittle bones under my feet as I approached a stream of odd black liquid that boiled and breathed like hot tar. I gazed upon my reflection, my glazed eyes lulling downwards in the deep-set sockets I never knew I had with the blank expression on my face. I had thought for the majority of the time my face was twisted in a look of fear. Witnessing putrid whitish blue liquid oozing from the holes in my face, I lifted a hand to touch it, but once I did my hand burned and I hissed through newly formed cavities in my chest.

I felt no more joy or sense of morality upon my soul. It became darker than any night without the moon or stars. As I looked to the sky, it was pure white, but not bright or glowing, just... blank. Like a piece of paper waiting to be written on.

My gaze returned to the horizon and all of the ground around me disappeared, leaving me on the small island of earth and a mound of it within the distance, jutting upward like a shard of glass. Walk to it. My mind told me. The parts of me that once struggled to save me from the experience I was having now gave in, an abused slave to my body and darkened soul.

I walked through the murky black slug, my feet dragging along like I were in a swamp. The depth stopped at my waist as I trudged through. My body did not stop to rest, even as it threatened to shut down completely and sink into the thick black ooze surrounding me.

Even I was shocked to have reached the landform rising from the inky ocean, the journey having felt like a hundred years since it began. Everything in my being was exhausted, deprived of senses and thirsting for answers, for what I was missing. What was I missing? Why was I missing it?

The ooze had stuck to my clothes and arms, slowly climbing up my body like a disease. Though my being was weak and frail, my arms pulled me up as I crawled my way to the top of the cliff, and as I stood at the very edge, within the stone-like ground were the words engraved within: "Point of no return."

For a second, hundreds of images flashed before my eyes; a little peaceful cottage in a grove, a river and fish swimming, children running through the streets, a tavern full of men and women swilling their ale and mead, a boy hugging me and telling me how much he appreciated me as a big sister. Each of them brought a smile to my face, but it all faded away as the images were disturbed and rippled like a droplet of water splashing into a lake. My mind was now erased, broken and sewn back together.

I opened my arms and dropped. A mouth within the ooze opened wide, sharp teeth surrounding the edges, and as I passed through the mouth closed, leaving me suspended in the darkness. My senses were taken from me and I was numb, yet a feeling leaked from my mouth and spread over my body, little pricks of pain and minor scratchings littering my flesh. I touched it and felt nothing but the agony of a thorned vine, a briar bush branch. My whole body was wrapped in them, and I had figured they would all stay until they enclosed on my form. I was stabbed a thousand and six times, the branches constricting every part of my body. The thorns covered my mouth and closed my throat; I could not scream in the immeasurable pain I was feeling.

Slowly, most of the pain faded away, but some it stayed, and the type that remained were the worst kind of pain; hate, loneliness, longing. I no longer acknowledged who I was, what I was, who I once knew, where I was. All I recognized was a sword sinking into my chest and a string of words I couldn't understand.

What was once my clean skin had turned to a bluish black, more brutal than any bruise, and what once I knew as my eyes were now circles of blue set within the shadows of my face as the hood of corruption and darkness covered my head. I no longer had legs, I lacked a vocally functioning mouth, I was missing a finger on each hand, and I rose from the shadows of the earth as the moon greeted me devilishly.

I began anew as a haunter of travelers, a slave of the night to the white-eyed Demon, a Nightmare.