|
Member
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Minnesota. The Icetray of the WORLD.
Posts: 24
|
Horror Story (What you think)
I need to first remind you that I was rushed for time on this one. The ending was a little...well, sucky. I'll deal with that later.
Valise
-1-
Eddie sat on one of the two hotel beds in the Radisson, looking out to the city of Duluth. The Mississippi river ran under him, gurgling along and carrying paddleboat after paddleboat of tourists. But he didn’t feel much like taking a ride or doing much of anything. He was tired, having just checked into the hotel. Besides, he was just at one of his close friend’s funeral. It didn’t exactly help his mood.
Sid wasn’t such a bad guy, and although they’ve had their squabbles over the years, he was the first one to laugh it off. He had a hilarious laugh; one that began in his huge stomach and shook it’s way into his throat, making a deep resonance of a chuckle. It fit him, really. He was a giant of a man. They had just finished their latest –and last, Eddie realized—reunion and Sid was driving back to his city. Eddie imagined that it would be at midnight, or around midnight, when the drunk driver struck Sid’s car. He was driving on the wrong side of the road, and he was probably taking another sip from his bottle when he smashed into his friend’s [insert car name for me, would you?]. The airbags did little to protect him; he almost never wore his seatbelt anyways.
He had received the call at work, and in the daze that followed he barely remembered talking to his boss, who grudgingly gave him the week off for recuperation. Besides, Eddie reasoned with him, he wouldn’t be much of a use while he was grieving. When he went home and sat down there was not much else to do but listen to that cynical voice in his head. The voice that told him to get his life back on track, that he already shed some tears and Sid would be proud. Eddie shook that voice away. It was the lazy part of him, and Sid wouldn’t be proud. He’s dead. He had munched the ole’ dirt sandwich, complete with all the trimmings.
So he attended the funeral, looking at all the tearstained faces through his own blurred vision. The faces of his relatives glanced now and then at his closed casket. Sid wouldn’t exactly appreciate that, he thought. But being dead took away the claustrophobia. He hoped that wherever he was now there would be no drunks. He thought about what a drunk’s heaven would be like, and desperately hoped that they weren’t on the same level. By the time he went up to the stand to give the eulogy, both his shoulders were soaked with tears and smelled of salt. He didn’t think it mattered at all what he said, anyways. Almost everybody wasn’t listening, or even looking at him. They kept their eyes to the ground and to Sid at all times.
The reception was a thing that he could skip. Eddie thought about the one time Sid joked that the only thing that they would serve at the reception would be brownies and steak. Complete with the little toothpicks, with the meat cut up into small, bite-sized chunks. Then he burst into gales of hearty laughter, thinking about the absurdity of it. Well, it didn’t seem so absurd now. Eddie didn’t stay to see if they had listened closely to his requests. He would ask Sid in the afterlife what he thought about it anyhow.
When he returned to the Radisson he was in for a surprise. He knew that he was grieving, but it was a little strange for him to ignore something that was sitting on the opposite hotel bed of his, right? After all, it was about the size of a suitcase. Looking more closely he found out that it was indeed a suitcase. One of those carry-on models, complete with wheels and the pulley that extended from the top. The covering was black, the zipper’s teeth forming a demented miniature grin. They were overly large, as if to remind the owner how to open it. Along the sides there was a yellow stripe of masking tape. There were pulleys on the zippers too, also bright yellow. Eddie thought that they did that so they would recognize it at the baggage claim. The first thing that came into the man’s mind was that the color scheme reminded him of wasps. The yellow and black contrasting colors were a way to warn others not to come near it. Bugger off, or I’ll stab ye, in other words. It looked like some sort of monster, a childish monster drawn on a sheet of paper with crayon. Or maybe it was one of those creative art projects, making something as innocent as a place to put your underwear menacing, reading to reach out with it’s teeth, bright yellow eyes glowing, dried gore stuck between those—
He cut off the train of thought there. What, was he crazy? It was just a suitcase and either someone had mistaken it for his or he just didn’t notice it. In his gut, however, he knew that there was no such thing in his room before the funeral. It was as if the funeral brought this thing here, something that followed him back, to lie on the bed and bid him to join his late friend.
Eddie quickly called the front desk, his fingers already a little slick with his, as he thought, overactive imagination. He got an answer after two rings.
“Hello, front desk, may I help you?” asked a high voice from the other side of the line. It was a voice that reminded Eddie of women wearing horn rimmed glasses, a bee hive hairdo, trimming their nails while having a phone wedged between their shoulder and neck.
“Uh, yes.” He said, “I just got back to me room, room 192, and there’s a suitcase here that isn’t mine. Have there been any tenants before me? I think that they lost it or something.”
“Lemme check, sir.” A sound of ruffling papers, “there was one a few days ago, but the cleaning crew should have picked it up. Where did you find it?”
“Oh my bed, it was just laying there.”
“Ah. Well, I think we should ju-” and then the phone line went dead. Eddie looked at it for a while, and then put it back on it’s hook. It was probably an accident, he reasoned to himself. What, did he think that damned luggage did it? But in the back of his mind, the subconscious animal part of his brain thought it did. He didn’t know how, but the thing somehow made him hang up. I’m yours now. I’m death in leather, I’m yours now. But that wasn’t true. He could leave it in the closet, wait for someone else to pick up the accursed baggage. In fact, that’s what he was going to do, by gum. Screw the dead, screw Sid, he was going to forget that this little episode ever happened. Walking over, he took the handle and heaved it onto the ground. It felt strangely warm, like the tongue of some animal. Dropping it quickly in the closet, he absentmindedly wiped his hands on his pant legs, although he doubted there was actually anything dangerous about the thing.
However, in dropping it, the top flopped open. He couldn’t imagine what sort of weight could tear apart such large zipper teeth. It turned out to be Rolexes. Not just one, however, Hundreds. Pouring out of the suitcase was an impossible number of Rolexes. Gold and platinum glimmered in the sunlight as they flooded the hotel room. Frantically, as it to steam the flow, Eddie lunged for the luggage and turned it over again. It was surprisingly light, about the same weight as before. And before there was no way there could be so many watches in the thing. It worked. The Rolexes stopped pouring out, and yet they seemed full in the black cloth lining inside. The man hesitated, and picked one up out of the pile. He put it on his wrist, replacing his old digital watch. Nope, he realized that his arm didn’t burst into flame or anything like that. It looked real, but then again almost anything could be made to look real these days. He could make hundreds, thousands with these watches if they were real. He could become rich, or at least earn enough to go by for a while. He could buy something really nice for his girlfriend, Jane. Why, this suitcase wasn’t that bad at all.
Except that there wasn’t really any watches.
He blinked in surprise. The one on his wrist was still there, working perfectly, but the piles and piles of watches that littered the floor and piled up inside the suitcase were gone, gone without a trace. But of course. They weren’t there in the first place and this was nothing but something his weak mind had conjured up. But what of the one on his wrist, ticking away without a care for the phenomenon that just happened? Something was gong on here, something inside those teeth and bright yellow orbs, and he had no idea what do to with it.
Oh well, at least he still had the watch. Who cares if it was probably a fake? People don’t exactly go up to your arm, hold it aloft and check, do they?
But he would carry the suitcase back home.
To show reason, so that it would do away with the baggage.
Jane waved over the crowd of people, waiting for their loved ones to come home to them, and to board other planes. The woman was one of the former, and as she waved, her slender arm high up in the air, Eddie saw her and wheeled his two suitcases—one in each arm—and went to her. As she hugged him, she noticed the glimmer of his wrist, and frowned.
“Honey, where did you get that?” she asked, glancing at the precious watch.
His happiness disappeared. He took her by the shoulders and ushered her along. “That’s what I’m going to tell you. As we get home. Promise me you won’t think I’m a nut though. You can’t marry a crazy man, can you? Bad for the kids.”
She giggled, but the frown and confusion was still in her eyes. “Ed, what’s this all about? Don’t tell me you bought it from one of those alleyway bums. They’re never real, you know.”
He nodded, and gestured toward his new suitcase. It looked like a child’s plaything, Jane noticed. But it still sent a shiver down her spine when she looked at it; the yellow zipper extensions looked too much like eyes.
When they arrived at home, he showed her his new watch, which, he realized, stopping ticking every now and then. That much should have proved that it was faulty, but Eddie had noticed that many things moved at an excruciatingly slow pace whenever the ticking slowed. He told her all this, then told her of the other odd things that happened on the plane trip. When he stowed it in the overhead compartment, his regular luggage in the cargo space, he didn’t really know what to expect.
But the two other bags and backpacks that were with the suitcase in the overhead compartment had disappeared. For some reason, the two owners looked at Eddie as if to shoulder the blame. But they damn well knew that the young man hadn’t even gotten out of his seat the entire trip. So they said nothing, even Eddie allowed them to check the inside of the suitcase.
Obviously there was nothing there but emptiness and sickly warmth. Someone beside him said that the thing “Felt like it had a damned fever or something”. Eddie wasn’t surprised at all, and just nodded when the speaker abruptly returned to his seat and stayed there for the rest of the flight. He felt better telling these things to his girlfriends, throughout all of this listening quietly and intently. However, he didn’t miss the slight raising of an eyebrow, a look that said Are you sure you didn’t get drunk there. He sighed, and took the watch off to show her.
“I know it sounds crazy. Look at the watch yourself.”
She caught it deftly, and looked him straight in the eye.
“You know, I believe you. I bet I could ask the person you’re talking about on the flight. I know you’re an artist and all, or at least you like to think so.” She winked and laughed. “And this doesn’t exactly sound like one of your little stories.
“It isn’t. I already told you all tha-”
“I know, I know. I don’t doubt you anyways. Even though it sounds like a weird sort of acid trip, there’s no harm in believing you. All we have to do now is give it to the police or something. They’ll give it to someone responsible if they see anything weird.”
Eddie felt an unexplainable surge of anger. “Are you saying that I’m not responsible? I say we keep it and see for ourselves what this thing could do. Think about it! If it can spout Rolexes, what other riches could it spill out on the carpet?”
She shrugged. “I’m not saying that you aren’t responsible, but I just…I don’t know…I just don’t like the thing, alright? It’s like the supernatural, something that we don’t exactly understand, and I for one don’t exactly want to understand it that much. Besides, the watches disappeared, didn’t they? All but one. It’s like leprechaun gold or something like that.”
Eddie compromised, instead of going into another argument. “Alright, maybe you’re right. Tell you what; we’ll put this thing in the basement. That way we won’t have to worry about it, and if it does that weird disappearing act again it’s not like anything important will disappear into it.”
Jane agreed with a hug and a kiss. He always saw it her way. Sooner or later.
But the suitcase did do something strange again. Something so painfully wrong, something so alien that Eddie had to keep it in a locked box afterwards.
While sleeping, Eddie suddenly heard a thump in the floor below him. He was never a light sleeper, and this one was definitely loud. He turned to Jane, she was still fast asleep and didn’t notice the sound. It was probably nothing, he thought to himself, and looked at the digital clock on his bedside table. The glowing read letters told him it was 3:19 in the morning. What luck. Thirteen in added time. Although it probably meant nothing, he groggily climbed out of bed and went to the door. Suddenly, he heard it again. Thump. It sounded like a slab of meat repeatedly hit with a mallet. A bit more awake now, he opened the door and peered downstairs. What he saw made his eyes widen and say softy “Holy Shit.” Somehow this instead of the loud thumping awoke Jane, and she went to his side, asking him what was the matter. Wordlessly, he pointed a trembling finger at the thing that was slowly crawling and wheeling it’s way up the staircase. The soft thump was the bottom of the bag hitting the stair, which it turn made something topple out of it’s top, almost vomited out onto the staircase. It was a bright orange duffel bag. In fact, the same duffel bag that disappeared in the carry-on compartment. The one that they couldn’t find, the same bag that was toppling it’s way down the stairs.
Having spit it’s last meal up, the two yellow zipper eyes zipped themselves to the front, staring at them like those things were it’s eyes, eyes on little bright yellow antennae, moving quite a bit faster than the last few steps it had crawled up on. Jane promptly screamed and rushed back into the bedroom, and he could hear whimpering and the soft beeping and dialing of a phone number. Most likely 911, but Eddie doubted that the policemen knew what to do in a situation like this.
Besides, he realized with a thought, they would probably shoot this thing. Or tackle it, or break something that would make this extraordinary anomaly stop working, probably forever. He couldn’t allow that to happen. This thing was scary, sure, but a part of him still thought of it as a souvenir of the funeral, of Sid, come back from the dead to greet his old friend in his own home. Hey Ed, how’s it going? Long time no see, eh? I probably looked a bit fat in the coffin, but now I’m here, greetin’ you! Nice, isn’t it?
Why yes, yes it was nice, Eddie thought in a daze. But I can’t have you scaring my girlfriend, however jealous you might be old buddy. He chuckled at bit at this thought, and promptly kicked the suitcase in the ‘face’ when it reached the top of the stair. His foot felt like it was on fire, but the thing was toppling down to the first level, and suddenly his thoughts of Sid’s reincarnation disappeared. It had him in a trance to distract him all along.
“Why, you bastard.” He muttered. “That was downright low.”
Jumping down the stairs three at a time, he reached the bottom of the staircase within a matter of seconds and opened the suitcase to see what was inside. Sure enough, half a green backpack was in the bottom, and when he pulled it out a hairbrush, half a stick of lipstick, and a third of a magazine fell out. These looked like they were pinched into an end, but ragged as if chewed. Eddie hated to imagine what sort of teeth could do such a thing, if they were teeth at all.
He grabbed the suitcase and started to lug it to the closet. Strangely, it wasn’t resisting at all, and had reverted to the luggage that it was meant to be. Inside the closet was a coil of strong rope, for tying things onto the car if they were too large for the trunk. He unwound the coils, but after hesitantly letting go with the suitcase. A part of his brain mocked him, what’s it going to do, bite you? Yes, that was exactly what he expected the damned thing to do. It would apply at least some constant to it, but to Eddie’s frustration it just lay there. So he wound the rope around it, covering it so that couldn’t open it’s top or move, for that instance. But it’s not like you know how it climbed up the staircase. What’s to stop it from doing it again? He pushed it from his mind; he could deal with the problems as they turned up.
Deep in his mind, he thought about the danger this posed to him and Jane. Another part of him, however, thought about all the money and fame he would gain if he showed this to some of the world’s leading supernatural experts. Unfortunately, he had a nagging suspicion that everyone who worked in that “field” was a complete fake. So whom could he go to? Jane would undoubtedly want to get rid of the thing, something that he wouldn’t, couldn’t be able to stand. This thing something, something important, that was for sure. He would keep it. It wasn’t like it posed any sort of physical danger climbing and dragging itself around their house. Yes, he would keep it for a while. Make some experiments, if that was necessary
Try to find to find out what made this thing tick.
The police arrived, but all they saw was a roped up suitcase. Apt a creepy one, but it wasn’t like it was doing anything strange, and it sure as hell wasn’t moving around or anything like that. In fact, it seemed like an act of idiocy tying up something as inanimate as a suitcase, and they left grumpily because of the false alarm. Dealing with nuthouses.
It left Jane grumpy as well, and she yelled at Eddie for tying up the thing so that it couldn’t move, and making them look like idiots to the cops. He argued back it stopped moving when he kicked it down the stairwell. Besides, the police arrived about fifteen minutes later. What could happen in those fifteen minutes? The suitcase was already at the top the stairs, anyways. She went to bed with a huff, and Eddie found himself on the couch. He wondered to himself why she always got the bed when she was mad, and then wondered about the suitcase for a while. He would conduct some experiments. He had a camera, and he would show them to his colleagues and friends when the right time came. Not now, however. The thing had an annoying habit of dying whenever someone credible came within 10 feet of it. He could deal with it though. The camera told no lies.
The next morning, he took to putting some of the clothes, and even parts of an old appliance now unknown to him, found in the basement. He took a few snapshots of the suitcase, and filmed himself touching the warm surface, his hand coming away red and sweaty. It wouldn’t prove anything besides the fact that he was probably nervous, but it was something other than his word. But in locking it, he found out that the numbers on the rotational lock went above the normal eight, nine and zero. In fact, when he peeled past the nine, strange symbols took the place of one and two, which he scribbled down on a notebook and filmed himself flipping the locks, in and outwards. It looked like they could only fit one through nine, but somehow they changed throughout the sequence, almost randomly reverting back to the numerals.
Later, when he went back to retrieve the items, all he found inside the suitcase was one screw. And strangely enough, It was in the center of everything, sitting there. Did this thing suggest that he was crazy? No, of course not. Just because it could move didn’t mean it could think or anything like that. Just because it could perform miracles didn’t mean it could communicate. And yet he felt anger boiling up from deep within him, and he kicked at the suitcase, hurting his toe in the same instance.
“Ed, what’re you doing?” said Jane as she walked into the room.
“Trying to make some sense out of this damned thing.” He replied, and began to flip the lock switches again. The symbols rotated through, one by one. Suddenly he thought he heard a tiny click, but it stopped as soon as he peeled through the next symbol. He paused, and looked at Jane to see if she heard it. But she wasn’t hearing anything. He just realized that she was talking to him, shouting at him that he was spending too much time on that damned thing ever since getting back from Duluth, that she knew about grief and this wasn’t the way to handle it, to immerse yourself in something as stupid and unexplainable as this. That he wasn’t going to work anymore, and the ploy that he was down with the flu had stopped working. She was almost ranting now, tears at the edge of flowing down her face. She complained that he was never paying attention to anyone else anymore, much less her.
He felt that anger rise up in him again. More and more frequently he had to control his anger, to tell her that this thing was more important. Oh, she knew about grief? She didn’t know anything, that naïve fool. She didn’t see what he was doing, how famous and rich that they were going to be once he had compiled enough information and proof that this thing was extraordinary, and yet all she cared about was the attention that he didn’t give to her? Who the hell did she think she was, that little brat? And yet she was still screaming.
“You shut your mouth.” He whispered.
She did.
“You don’t know anything about grief. None at all. This isn’t grief, can’t you see that? This is about making a better life for me, you too, but you seem so intent on leaving, you won’t share the spoils with me? You won’t share the spoils that this thing would bring in researching alone? Then fine with me.” He didn’t say another word, lay down, and started to hear for the clicking again.
Tears were now flowing down her face. He didn’t care. She would come around, hopefully. Then she would come back to him, even though he could see her brushing past time, calling someone. He didn’t know why he didn’t get up, why he didn’t stop her. He didn’t know why the glance from Jane as she opened the door with her own, normal, suitcases, carrying her away from his life and into the fancy blue sports car in his driveway. He was trying to concentrate. To hear the faint click, that meant something.
Finally he heard it again. This time click was followed by something that sounded like the slamming of a door. He didn’t know if this was Jane or the suitcase, but he opened the suitcase anyways. Turned out he couldn’t. No matter. He went and took a hammer, smashed the thing open. Inside, there was no bottom. Nothing was here but a black tunnel that wound down into God knows where. He went and took a fork from the kitchen and dropped it into the tunnel. He waited for five minutes, but still he didn’t hear the clunk of the fork. It hadn’t reached the bottom.
He waited a while longer.
Then climbed in himself.
__________________
FTAIRES! WE HAVE FOUND FTAIRES!!!
|
