The Man Who Was Screaming
I was laying in bed one night, about to fall asleep, when somewhere far below me I heard a screaming. It was faint, and might not have been a screaming at all, actually. Might have been just wind howling between some rocks, or water running through a pipe below. I thought nothing of it, and went to sleep.
The following night, however, it persisted. A horrible, distant, eldritch wail. I got up, put on some some sweatpants and a coat, and made my way outside to investigate. The sound seemed to come from the direction of the woods. Following it, I found myself in an isolate grove. An almost abnormally large, wiry tree stood in its center, and what was now certainly a human scream emanated from below it.
I approached cautiously. Just below the tree, underneath one of the roots, was a small hollow. Still curious about the noise, I stuck my hand in, illuminating the opening with my phone’s flashlight. It was more than large enough for a human. I squeezed through between the roots.
A spiraling dirt staircase led downwards into the earth. Gradually, it became a stone staircase. And gradually, it became more refined. Indiscernible symbols of some ancient language at first spattered, and then totally covered the walls. The feverish scribbling was punctuated with crude drawings of an enormous creature made seemingly only of darkness and limbs. As I descended, torches began to appear, glowing with a reddish flame, bouncing shadows in mad patterns among the cavern.
The spiral staircase came to an opening – an enormous atrium of black stone, which I entered through the middle of the ceiling. Below me, a sea of dark liquid. The screaming was almost deafening now, as I stepped onto the floor of the atrium.
The distinct smell of iron and rot. It was blood. This unthinkably enormous opening, where I could barely see the walls in the distance, was entirely submerged in about 3 inches of blood. It reflected the light of the chandeliers dangling above wildly. I turned around, and saw the man.
On the far side of the cavern from the staircase, there stood a humanoid figure, covered entirely in the thick red liquid. It looked as if the blood was flowing both from him, and into him, at every pore. His whole body was a turbulent red. And he was screaming a scream that spoke of years, perhaps centuries of screaming. Grotesque, and unending.
“STOP WITH THE SCREAMING,” I told him.
“Yeah, sorry, my bad,” he said.
And so he stopped, and I went back to my house, and went to sleep.
But the next night the motherfucker was at it again, so I guess that’s life for you.
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