Horror story one

“Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee!” Came the electronic cry as it had every night for the past week. A piercing, shrill, and merciless assault on the senses, one that had an almost foreboding hint to it. Most people usually had a little trouble differentiating one tone from another, after all a beep was a beep. A phone handset in desperate need of a charging wasn’t too different in sound from an alarm clock. That said, the newest resident of the home in question was all too aware of the cause. Despite being awoken by the sound mere moments after it started, Jack knew that it wasn’t an mere alarm clock, though it was definitely something designed to awaken people: It was a smoke detector…

He didn’t want to move, he really didn’t; but Jack simply couldn’t lie with his back to the doorway: not when he knew what was coming, and not when his traumatized mind seemed to spend every available moment thinking of just how much worse things could be. Jack rolled over, and slowly moved to his feet. The young man’s fleece-covered legs didn’t have much friction on the plastic-encased mattress of his crib, exposed by the tossing and turning of his restless sleep; though the sturdy bars provided him with a perfect handhold, as he waited for the inevitable. Seconds didn’t feel like minutes now, they felt like years… But, soon enough, tonight followed the same trend as every other night: a shrill, woman’s scream pierced the still night, and as the first footsteps echoed down the hallway, Jack followed suit: anguished, terrified, inconsolable screams of abject terror left Jack as his eyes brimmed with wet tears; he didn’t want to make a sound, he really didn’t, knowing full-well who it would bring, but at this point it was instinctual. A silhouette, wreathed in flame streaked across the doorway, Jack’s vision became a blinding, blurry mess, and his white-knuckled hands released from the bars of the crib to cover his face, the very instant the shrieking, burning form had cleared the doorway, followed by his paralyzed, jelly-like legs giving way, and ensuring that the youth went straight down.

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Country-jobs were the absolute worst, they really were… The up-shot was often a full twelve hours of overtime, which translated to a well-deserved bonus, but after becoming the ‘go-to person’ for the insurance agency’s rural areas, it hadn’t taken long for Jack to tire of long stints in areas mainly known for corn. The first outings had been nerve-wracking experiences, tempered by the whopping paychecks that followed them, though it hadn’t taken long for the excitement gained from both areas to wane significantly: at first, wandering through darkened buildings along, with a flash-light in hand had been downright terrifying, with the slightest sound causing a major surge of adrenaline; and the well-deserved pay had made the work very-worthwhile. As things were, however, the long trips had lost their appeal: there was so much driving, to the extent that Jack would usually crawl into his car in the early hours of the morning, and sleep through the night there, rather than making the trip all the way back to the nearest town, purely so he could have the pleasure of sleeping through the day, and essentially causing a case of jetlag. The work wasn’t overly-stimulating either, given that it largely consisted of checking the frame to make sure a structure wasn’t about to collapse, ensuring there weren’t any tell-tale signs of mould, and giving a very, very rough estimate of how much would need to be spent, in order to render it inhabitable: all of which had grown boring fast, once Jack was able to finally able to put any fears of ghosts or ghouls behind him.

Tonight, Jack had found himself pulling an especially-late work-day, purely so he could make his way home first-thing in the morning. As a rule, he rarely worked later than ten p.m. even when he was in a rural area, but his list had a single property left, and the young man knew he’d be kicking himself, if he didn’t tick it off tonight; this was why he had almost-regrettably found himself wandering through a formerly-lovely, two-storey home, at the ungodly time of 2.50.am. Usually, vandalism was to be expected with places like this, though surprisingly enough, the property was untouched; whether it was out of respect to the former home-owner, or whether it was due to the pure creepiness associated with the events that had led to its vacancy...

Traipsing about alone so close to the witching hour was always going to be a mildly-scary endeavour, though the history of the building gave it just a little more of an edge: as the story went, following a lottery-win, a woman had purchased the home, and outfitted it to be her perfect dream home with everything from a fully-kitted out kitchen, to a perfect back-yard, to a fully-stocked nursery for her future little-one, evidently, she had her heart set on motherhood from the get-go. Sadly, the one thing the home was lacking in was smoke detectors, with one being located downstairs in the kitchen, and the other at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor: this had meant that falling asleep with a cigarette in bed one night, had been all it took for a truly-terrible tragedy to occur.

Generally, the homes Jack visited were left derelict due to bank-foreclosures, or the deaths of the owners far away from the structures, though he couldn’t deny that there was something just a little eerie about paying a late-night visit to a home where someone had met their end in such an awful manner. On the bright-side, he intended to make it a brief visit: it was his job to figure out whether the place was a complete write-off, or whether repair was possible, even if it had sat empty for almost thirty years. The evaluation didn’t take overly long, likely because Jack didn’t want to overthink the main areas of damage: footsteps charred into the floor, a large hole in the master bedroom’s floor, where the bedding had been tossed off, and slowly smouldered through, and a patch of ruined flooring near the top of the staircase, where ‘something’ had burned out, before it caused any major damage. The remainder of the home had required a quick walk-through, that ended with Jack in the nursery right as the clock hit three. For him, the night ended with a suddenly-growing, inexplicable sense of dread that reached its peak all of a moment before he fell unconscious, only to awaken in a crib that definitely hadn’t been sized for him upon his arrival at the home…

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“Oh… Oh… Sweetie… You had another nightmare, didn’t you? It’s okay, my gorgeous guy! I’ve got you!” The words were delivered in a cheerful tone, with reassurance obviously being the main goal, though unfortunately, the person delivering them may very well have been the least-reassuring woman on the planet. Her voice was sweet, and there was no denying that she cared for the young man in her care with all of her heart, though nothing could hope to make up for her physical attributes.

As Jack was hoisted up into the woman’s arms, his vision cleared for but a moment, only to be washed away into a blurry mess, by yet another torrent of tears. She wasn’t right: Everything about her was just ‘wrong.’ There was no light to her eyes, and her skin resembled that of a doll, more so than that of a person; she didn’t breathe, she didn’t blink, and her skin was so cold. Given the striking-resemblance the woman bore to a framed-photograph on the first floor, it was easy to draw a connection between the home’s current inhabitant, and its former, now-deceased owner too…

Futilely, Jack bawled, screamed, and wailed; yet despite the pair being relatively similar in size, the woman who only ever referred to herself as ‘mommy’ always seemed to have no problem keeping poor, perpetually-terrified Jack in check. Admittedly, for all her disturbing imperfections, the horrifying woman cared: she never raised her voice, was always at Jack’s side within seconds of him making a sound, and had no problem with doing what she felt was best for him, whether it was holding him in her embrace for three-full, sleepless days as she had upon his initial arrival, only pausing to feed the exhausted young man; or whether it was handling the uncomfortable messes that his body was responsible for, messes like the one currently contained by the disposable-diaper wrapped around his hips.

“You’re smelly…” The woman had sighed, as she moved away from the adult-sized crib, towards the similarly large changing table at the edge of the room; naturally, the sigh wasn’t one of annoyance, more so one of understanding, as if she could finally put her finger on the reason why her object of affection was so thoroughly inconsolable.

The mention of the unpleasant smell permeating the air around him earned a meek sniffle from Jack, though he was far-past the point of shame now, even when his infantile undergarments were packed to the brim with the product of the day’s meals. All it ever took was the first glimpse of that flickering, orange, burning person streaking past his doorway, for his fight-or-flight mechanic to kick in: without fail, his terrified body would always give in, voiding his bowels in sheer fright and adding his bladder to the mix too, pushing pudding-like mess into the seat of his diaper, until there was nothing left to give, and he felt every bit like the oversized infant his ghoulish caregiver saw him as…

With the greatest of care, Jack was deposited on the changing table, and the arduous task of cleaning him up began. Slender, pale fingers unfastened the two tabs of his disposable diaper: one that bore a striking resemblance to a brand from the nineties, and one that had only ever been produced for people who weighed less than forty pounds. The front of the diaper came down, and the rear was used to wipe away the bulk of Jack’s mess, before the cleanup could begin in earnest; slowly, an ever-growing mountain of soiled wipes formed, as each took more of the muddy mess away, starting with the remnants of it that clung to his rear, the remnants between his legs, and the remainder that had made it all the way to his front, which had been marred by the terrified trickle that also warmed his crotch when his brain pushed past the absolute limit of fear. A new disposable was quickly produced, cartoon-prints and all, a thorough dusting of sweet-smelling powder was applied, and the fresh diaper was finally taped into place, before the sleeper was tugged back up, and re-zipped.

“My poor babe, you’re already freezing, aren’t you?” Queried the woman, seeming to genuinely believe that her charge’s trembling was a product of the home’s chilly temperature, rather than her presence. “It’s okay… You can have cuddles with Mommy, until you calm down again. Mommy likes spending time with her beautiful boy, you know: even when it’s icky and late.” On the way out, the balled-up diaper was handily deposited into a pail he had yet to see the woman empty, though that was hardly surprising: given how poorly he slept at night, daytime always involved a nap, and it wasn’t a stretch to imagine the woman handling the more unsavoury tasks around the house, whether it was cleaning his bottles, emptying the pail, or tidying the living room which now held an adult-sized playpen which was used for sleeping more than playing, given how restful sleep in the sun was, for someone who’d developed a crippling fear of the dark, after unwillingly becoming the ‘baby’ of the world’s scariest woman… Of course, to debate logistics at this point was always going to be a losing battle…

Jack’s fondest desire to profess just how thoroughly he wanted to return to his own childish bed was thwarted, as his voice died in his throat as always, much like it always did, when the woman was present. Instead, he was easily carried down the hall, quivering all the more, as ‘mommy’ traced the trail of scorched footsteps leading back to her bedroom. It had been all of a minute since his diaper-change, yet Jack could feel himself dribbling urine into his diaper as the woman’s feet walked over thin-air where the floor of her bedroom had burned through, and settled herself atop a heavily-charred mattress, repositioning herself, so Jack’s head could rest on her bosom and receive all the kisses, hair-stroking, and soft-reassurances in the world, all of which would do little to ease his crying, when the mere action was enough to remind him that the woman didn’t have a heartbeat.

“Such a sensitive lil guy …” Mused the woman. “But you’re everything I ever wanted; you know that. Mommy’s perfect, precious prince… The only thing she’s ever wanted, and the only thing I don’t think I could ever give up. Feels like I’ve waited forever for you, and trust me sweetie, all the spoiled milk, and dirty diapers in the world don’t me love you any less, I love all of it, and I don’t want a single thing to change, not now, not ever…”