Fear Stalks at Midnight: A Correction and Expansion (Part 1)

I originally wrote the below story as a creative/descriptive writing assignment when I was in high school. (I did not get a good mark for it, since it was too short and lost impact towards the end.) Now, many years and much improved writing later, I have corrected and expanded it with more descriptions. Hopefully, my English teacher would approve.

Daniel is plodding through thick, black and rancid mud, his progress agonisingly and frustratingly slow. The foul ooze sucks at his legs and traps them like he's a prehistoric bear in a tar pit. Impeding his progress and sapping his energy, it squelches and bubbles with every effort he makes to free them and take another step. He wants to be free of it, to run, but it's slowing him down until he cannot move. It plops, sighs, hisses and belches like a bullfrog as gases escape from it, rising to the surface from thermal vents below.

The boy flails around violently but ineffectually as steam rises and assaults his nostrils before drifting away over the muck. Thrashing his limbs, his muscles taught from panicked exertion, his lithe and tanned torso is soaked in sweat. Try as he might, Daniel makes no discernible progress through the quagmire. Again, the horrible and putrid smell of slow death, sulfur, ammonia and natron reaches his nostrils. He gags on and contorts his face in disgust and pain at the noxious chemical brew that flays his skin.

Behind Daniel, in the thorny underbrush at the edge of the trap in which he finds himself, some shadowy predator has caught his scent, the smell of his slow pickling like a fish in lemon juice and vinegar, sensed the panic of a body stuck fast. The rumble in its throat, the high-pitched yips, are as vivid and real to the boy as is a nest to an eagle.

Long yellow teeth gnash in maniacal delight. Frothy saliva drips from anticipatory fangs and blue-black gums. Then, on long webbed arms, a monster races swiftly towards the helpless and seemingly immobile boy. Sleek and supple shimmering wings adapted for such terrain splash aside the sticky goop as if it were shallow water.

Cold yellow eyes, like those of a snake, glint menacingly with wicked, terrifyingly malevolent glee. Squirming and contorting himself frantically but to no avail, Daniel lets out a piercing scream mere seconds before the beast has swooped and closed wretched ravenous jaws around his throat, plunged long incisors, as sharp and pointy as a surgeon's scalpels, into his jugular and carotid, crushed his windpipe and muffled his terrified cry.

Waking from his nightmare with a start, sweating profusely and shaking in fear, the youth fights it off as if it is an oppressive opponent sitting on him in a wrestling match. Darkness cloaks the bedside clock in an octorine corona, a nimbus of malevolence at the corner of the eye. It leers at him almost threateningly, delighting in his distress. At least, it seems so to the boy in his shaken state. Dust and grime cover the large black bulk of it. The sickly lurid yellow hands with green stripes mark the small hours well before dawn. The dense plastic of the once white face stands out in stark contrast.

"Tick, tick, tick", goes the old chronograph, systematically slicing away the seconds of his life that he'll never get back. He wishes he could throw away the ghastly thing, the relic that belongs to his grandparents. It's one of those pieces of their nostalgia that seems to come from the same era as depth charges and deep sea mines. (Don't mention the war.) In the stillness of the early morning, the clock might as well be as loud as one of them exploding. Daniel glances at it again, anxiously. He is informed that the witching hour is long past. 03:00 is not far off. The ominous ticking buzzes in his ears as if mocking him for his fear of something so insubstantial as a nightmare.

At this point, it wouldn't be out of place for Death to make an appearance at the entrance to the bedroom and speak words like the slamming of crypt doors echoing in the cavern of one's skull.

"HELLO, DANIEL. I HAVE COME FOR YOU. IT IS YOUR TIME; IT HAS RUN OUT."

No skeletal specter appears, scythe in bony hand, to bundle him into a boat, put coins in his eyes and whisk him across the river Styx. Somehow, the clock seems disappointed (or maybe it's Daniel).

The night's terrors are not over yet, however.

To be continued ...