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“It’s stressful. Work has been stressful” the 50 year old man yawns, wrinkling deep shadows on his face. The sun sets before the park. Children happily playing around with their balloon, faces muddy and dark from the morning’s traditional festival. If only, he can relive those moments, where his droopy eyes were once wild and lively and not sullen and sunken. Jealous irises protest his age with dry lips. He is about to swear at his benchmate when she asks in a careful tone–
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“then, why don’t you take a break?” politely placing her hands to herself.
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She reminds him of his kind hearted secretary. Her poise brings out a generous smile against his hunched neck. He chuckles, “haha, take a break. Yeah, I’d want to take a break. But I have to work. You only get to live once.”
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“That's exactly why you should take care of yourself more” she points out. Even though she is a stranger, she talks as if he is her long year friend. “You’re already old. Bones don’t grow back when they’re old. There are still people there for you…like me! So, you have to take care of yourself, old man. I think it’s time that you should stop.”
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The Old man cannot help but rocks a hearty laugh. He stands up, noticing the clear sky calling in the clouds. Gray and a bundle of ominous darkness sends a chill down his spine. “mmm, yeah. It’s going to rain” saving his pride. “I’ll head back first.” stretching out his hand, “uhm…what’s your name?”
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“Betty” she says, looking at his ID“and you are Mr. Goggy?”
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Goggy nods, “you a delivery lady Betty?” asking because of the parcel by her feet.
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Thunder claps as she answers, “yeah–eek. I think it’s really goibg to rain hard.” standing up like a chipmunk who just had an electric shock, making Goggy laugh. “I gotta go too old man. Take care of yourself!” she runs into the forming mist. Her wave fading along with the parcel on her back. But, it almost looked as if the hand was coming out of the parcel.
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Still, Goggy waves back goodbye with a relieved chest. His apartment is twenty steps from the park which strangely enough is silent. The children are gone, almost vanished. The streets are quiet with only a few passing cars and tattooed folks. Goggy has to hurry himself, thinking about the delivery girl she met washes away his anxious beads of sweat. His hump back grow heavy with every step, seconds becoming minutes. There are parcels at his doorstep. He unhesitantly charge into his apartment and bring in the parcels before panting like an overused tractor. “I’m too old for this”
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Icicle rain pelts lightly before battering the roofs with hail and thunder. The old man who thinks he is hale and hearty enough to run but ended up out of breath had childlike sat on the floor with two stacked boxes. He did not bother to turn on the lights, simply tying the curtains for the pale blue to give his room a cold and deathly glow. The fireplace is left alone with only the charcoal and ashes of past winter. Rubbing his hands together, and snorting back a runny nose, he glances at the tv on the wall. His reassuring reflection with the open box. A black video cassette recorder darker than his own shadow. Old jaws and bones clicking, as he shifts himself for the other boxes. “wooo” blowing dead warmth to his hands, “it’s cold.”
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Wrapped in a clear bubble wrap and a sterile scent, the stack of tapes, presumably a bundle of classical playlist. The old man is excited, running his fingers together as he looks for the VCR plug. But it was already plugged. A red light glaring straight at him. “Okay…Maybe I already plugged it.” Matbe plugged it in when he didn't even know there was an outlet behind his old desk picture frame. Cobwebs have hidden the mother spider, and some mini ones crawl around the rotting wood. Instead of questioning he claps for the blessing of alzheimer. Happy that he is able to forget what he did not do.
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The first cassette plays his favorite playlist. Melodious mix of leisure notes with violin and cello. Goggy still sits on the floor, closing his eyes and imagining the park in the storm of rain, hail and thunder. One lonely bench and a parcel. Then, a shadow comes up to the parcel, running towards his familiar street. He recalls about the parcel lady, hoping that she delivered safely. After the form disappears, a church fades in from the mist. Messenger doves flying through the harsh weather, some bloodily falling and lay lifeless on a festering pile of mechanical marionettes. Their wide eyes staring blankly without a soul. One deathly holds the center. Its head twisted and body flat as if it had been hit by a truck. Hit by a delivery truck, a loud honking explodes the entire pile into the air, splashing a bloody mess on the same truck that had minced and juiced his sister. Driving straight to him, filling his vision before— he startles himself awake, panting in cold sweat.
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He is alone, but the driver of the truck looked like the lady and he saw himself on the passenger seat.
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Blues flickering, the sound of static accompanying the melanchic pianos and flute. A melody that calls for attention. Goggy looks up and sees that the television is turned on. He tilts his head in confusion. Sure enough, it is connected to an outlet. But when did he plugged it?
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Curtains flap from the banging winds. He glances at the clock that seemingly tick counter clockwise. Every number is replaced with an eye. The VCR instruments lulling the amazing grace, a voice echoing from some corner in the room.
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In direst night, when shadows creep, And whispers fill the mind with dread, A chilling truth I come to keep, From solace sleep has gently fled.
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I once knew peace, but now I'm bound, By unseen chains that hold me fast, In realms of honking where shadows scream, A haunting echo of the past.
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Terrors unseen, with eyes that pierce, Unveil the secrets I once hid, A twisted fate, my cruel late, Where solace sleeps, forever hid.
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Was blind, but now these eyes perceive, The horrors lurking in the dark, A twisted form I can't believe, A chilling truth that leaves its mark.
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“Whose there?” Goggy asks, barely a whisper by how frozen tight his neck became.
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Nothing responds, the eeriness of the room and static replaying the twisted song. Goggy stands, his old legs shaking with pricking needles. “Who!?” He screams then struck with an unseen force that force him to sit on the couch. Teeth gritting and fists clench. He tries to wiggle but he cannot. The darkness in the room suffocating his paced breaths. A door creaks open.
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Creaking, creaking, creaking open–ajar. The darkness inbetween staring directly. Then,
A shadowy human sized rat scurries into the kitchen. A brush of rot stains the air. Dreadfully clicks, not from his own bones, snap snap snap.
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Bzzzzt. The Television flashes, psst.
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On and off, the static finally shows an inverted chapel. People, cars, and a familiar street are all upside down. Except for a dark slit on the chapel bell tower. Goggy can still remember it. That’s where his sister jumped on her first and last piggyback ride.
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An ominous afternoon of November, where the sermon ended with a story about a hunched baby. The friar was adamant to tell the story, threatening everyone who attended with a curse if they didn't believe it. Mother and father both go to the parking lot first to fetch the car. Eight year old Goggy and his sister were left by the bell tower.
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Minutes of waiting, the TV suddenly flickers gray to colored at the moment when the weird friar passes by. His exit of the frame is followed by his shadow on Goggy’s cross on the wall. It pops, tilting, and inverted. The shadow figures the friar, walking, and walking until it stops by the ajar door. It reaches for the handle before pushing it fully open. An eerie chill gusts into the living room. Flapping the curtains and sliding open the glass window panes. Goggy keeps his eyes on the shadow. The night tempest storms into his living room, tearing papers and flying beads in living hell. Thunder claps and the dead friar flash on the shadow.
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Its eyes are black, skin riddled by the bullet wounds of father, and an unsettling smile that it always shows to mother.
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The television screetches, distorted voices in the VCR. Groggy barely breaths as his hairs wants to tear themselves off the inviscible force that keeps him still. Eyes wild in confusion. Then the video resumes. Cutting to the dialogue with Goggy and his sister about piggyback. But, the boy was speaking to no one.
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An unequal disquiet framing where if was only Goggy and his shadow. Then, the boy gets into position, as if talking to his sister. His sister, which the camera panned up to the thin opening of the tower and shows the friar holding her unconscious body up like a bread offering. He preaches for the lord, and Goggy does not seem to hear it. The boy’s eyes are pale but with a warm smile. Then, the friar, televisiin glitches, stopping frame by frame as the sister gets thrown.
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Goggy screams to stop
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The Goggy in the television devilishly grins wider. Uneven teeths breaking out like fangs on his bloody lips. Sister falls, and falls, each frame taking more than seconds before, thud and crack. The boy receives the lifeless girl and carries her to the parking lot as if nothing ever happened.
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At the same time, something leans on Goggy’s shoulders. His frail old heart beats for life when death is on his back.
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“Ah-ah-ah-” it rumbles to his ear, low guttural noises from a monster on his back. Then the screen cuts to an image, the boy’s shadow carrying no one. “P-i-g-g-y-b-a-c-k” a dark flesh riddled with holes, maggots, flies and worms points at the moaning VCR. “B-a-c-k-h-o-m-e”
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Static corrupts the television.
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With a flash of thunder, the grinning dead friar appears once more, hanging with a rope around his neck. The television shuts off, with a familiar face–the delivery lady from the park–plugging in and plugging out the sparking socket. In all a brief shower of light, sister’s baby face appears on old Goggy’s back. A rotten baby face covered by prickly strands of rat hair, and an expression of daunting relief.
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