Finally Free
When I was a kid, I thought of myself as an adventurer. I watched way too much of Steven Irwin, and this lead me to think I could jump on a 20 ft Crocodile myself, bearing in mind I was around 12 when all of this happened, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I lived in a small town in Australia with my father and two brothers; one 16, Andrew, and the other was 19, Ethan. They both had jobs, so I was home alone a lot. Dad worked from home, he always had documents regarding his company's shipping manifestos, so this kept him busy a lot. When I was home, I'd always watch TV, mainly things like Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.
I loved the sense of adventure and discovery, I'd constantly go out and try handling wildlife, there was even one point where I was bitten by a Sydney Funnel Web on the arm, and I had to go to hospital for treatment. Even that wasn't enough to teach me a lesson, right outside the hospital I managed to catch myself a blue tongued Skink, that I called Charizard. Yes, I liked Pokémon too.
For my 13th birthday, my dad bought me a video camera so that, to quote him "Instead of holding lethal animals, you can record them instead." I honestly loved this camera; it meant I could go investigate places I'd never been before, due to its night vision ability. I lost count of the amount of caves I explored in the Outback, despite how dangerous it was, It was my favourite pastime. There was one adventure I can never forget, I still have the video of it to this day.
My brothers were both working, and my Dad was typically busy, so I decided to go looking for a cave, or something, somewhere I'd never been before. I looked around the Outback, but I'd explored that top to bottom, I wanted something new, something exciting. I was about to head back, disappointed, when I came across a manhole. The manhole wasn't sealed like the others, it was pried open. Back then, I thought nothing of this, how foolish I was. I turned on the night vision on my camera, and headed down.
There was little light, so the night vision was my only sense. All I could hear was water, dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. It was enough to drive a man insane. I walked further, looking at my camera all the while. That's when I stood on something, it had a different feeling to the floor, it felt soft. I used my camera to look at what it was. It was... a doll. A girl's doll that had been cut open at the mouth. But in its mouth were human teeth. Teeth that looked like they were taken right of the mouth of someone, they were slotted into place.
I dropped the doll, and decided I'd keep going, after all, most manholes link to other manholes at some point, and these manholes always had little slots in them that let light though. From there, it would just be case of pushing it open and running home. After a few more minutes of walking, I heard something else, it wasn't the dripping, it was louder. I've re-watched my video over and over since this day, and I've concluded it was footsteps. Now there are many creatures in Australia that could fall down a manhole, then panic and start running around.
I saw some protruding light, so out of instinct I ran towards it, sure enough, there was a manhole cover, I placed my camera on the floor, and climbed the ladder up towards it, then pushed. Of course, It didn't open, it was sealed tight. I jumped down and grabbed my camera in despair, slumping against the ladder. That's when something caught my eye. On my camera, I saw in the distance, a sewer grate. These were used in floods to control water levels, but to the sides of these, there were always emergency exits to Subways. I ran towards it, and noticed that the majority of it had rusted, meaning it had come away from the wall and was easily passable now. There was no exit as I had predicted, so I passed through this metal gate. I didn't know it at the time, but that wasn't keeping me out, It was keeping something else in.
Looking around with the night vision of my camera I could see there were several things tied to the roof of this room, closer examination showed them to be nooses, literally dozens of them just, tied to the roof. For no apparent fucking reason. So many fucking nooses. The floor was cold pavement, except for a section where slabs of wood were laid, quite oddly. I scanned the room from corner to corner. That's when I caught it, staring at me. It didn't move, it just, stared, for around 5 or 10 seconds. That's when It vanished, literally, just vanished. I looked around worried, checking all possible angels, but nothing. My head hurt like crazy at this point, I felt nausious, like I wanted to empty my stomach. It looked human, and I'm sure I saw something that looked very much like a suit on it. But there's no way it was human, there's no way. Where it was standing, there was an opening, I climbed through it and saw it lead to an opening, over a revine, I looked back, nothing. Had it left me alone? I climbed out, and edged across the revine to the bank on the other side, and glanced back one last time, that's when I saw him again. The nausia came back so badly that I vomited, hard and voilently. I then passed out, according to my doctors.
—
I woke up in Hospital. My brothers, father and the Police were all there when I woke up, I had been missing and they asked me why I was unconscious, apparently I was found by a hiking couple, and they got an ambulance to me. I told them I was simply ill and the exhaustion had caused me to lose consciousness. They gave me back my camera, and I wanted to watch it back, as I usually do with my cave expeditions.
The very last still screen, before I was knocked over was of the creature. That thing. That nightmare that I found cowering down there, that's when the Nurse came in and asked my family to leave temporarily, they were told they could come back soon, she just had to check for any injuries not yet noticed (they needed my concent first.) She asked me to lift up my shirt, and turn around. The look of sheer horror on her face is something else I will never forget from that horrible day.
"What's wrong?" I asked, worried. She said nothing; she picked up a mirror and showed it to me. On my back, charred into my skin, there was a circle, with an X darker than black in the centre of it. Below that,were the words "Finally Free."
Credited to LandMineTurtle
| Comments • 0 |
Loading comments...
|
