Memories

An alarm clock shattered the ominous silence as the occupant in the bed next to it roused, and turned off the alarm. 4:18 AM, and the smell of alcohol and cigarettes still hung in the air of his first story apartment like ghosts, reminding him of the previous night.

“Oh, shit.” He grumbled to his empty apartment as he rubbed his aching head, and sat on the edge of his bed, still in the darkness. Pulling out his last cigarette from an empty pack on the bedside table and putting it in his mouth, his hand rubbed across two days worth of stubble. He also felt his eyes were bloodshot, and that the heavy bags underneath were pulling his eyes closed.

“Oh, shit.” He repeated, though this time his words were slightly muffled and slurred because of the cigarette in his mouth. As he lit his cigarette, he stood up to find a shirt in his untidy and dark apartment. Instead, he found a bottle of vodka with a couple swallows left. This time the only thing breaking the silence was a loud chugging noise, and the sound of his lips breaking away from the now-empty bottle.

His lit cigarette was his beacon in the dark as he found his way to the light switch across the room. Quickly finding a shirt, he pulled it over his head to conceal his thin, muscled torso. He could feel the silence eating at him as flies do a corpse, feasting on his thoughts and ambitions. He knew then he needed fresh air. Walking out of the door, he did not bother to lock it as he took in the empty streets around him.

Lights, both neon and white, were his guides across the dark cement sidewalks and the blacktop of the freshly repaved streets. He also noticed the glistening droplets on the sidewalks and buildings, which told him that rain had fallen late in the night. No person disturbed him, no car passed him on the streets. He felt he was perfectly alone in the city, just as he was in his apartments, when the telltale tinkle of breaking glass erupted from the alleyway beside him.

“Who’s there?” he questioned, as his mind raced back to memories that he could never forget, to memories he never wanted to remember. “Who’s there?” he repeated, this time with a touch of urgency and danger in his voice. Bent low, he crept around the alleyway corner to find a robed man sitting in the center of the alley. A circle of blood and broken glass surrounded the robed man, reflecting the light of the waning moon. Staring at this odd sight, he noticed the robed one’s hands were covered in blood and glass.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” He blurted, and lifted the hood off of the robed man’s head to find a bloody, eyeless face, scarred and pitted. “Where the fuck are your eyes?” he asked, the fear and urgency building up to a near shout, he stepped back, and let the hood fall back over his face. The eyeless man could only offer him a grin, and open his hands, palms up, to reveal two eyeballs, bathed in blood from his hands and face.


Sgt. Carl Harbrecht woke, breathing heavily, to the same ghosts of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Vodka and Basics always were his favorite. He remembered killing that same eyeless man, who had a curved dagger concealed underneath his robes two years ago, in the same alleyway in Chicago. He still had nightmares about it, and still couldn’t understand the horrors he witnessed after that eyeless prophet. The warehouses, long abandoned in Chicago, and the Church of God nearest to the warehouses and beachfront were the center of his horror and fear. Having entered the church only once, he could not remember anything about it, only the macabre and horror he witnessed in the room God had blessed. I am glad I cannot remember anything that happened after the sacrifice. The young Sergeant thought to himself. The only thing the young Sergeant did know was that he was the only person to leave the ruins of the church alive.

To the Sergeant, survival was all that mattered back then. Now he wondered at the many mysteries and longed for the rest he could have had from these unspeakable memories. There were many times he came close to becoming a permanent member of a psych ward. The only thing that mattered to the young sergeant now was to forget his memories, to drink away the craziness they brought on.

“Ugh. Damn shoes.” He did not realize that he was still dressed from last night until now, and that he was searching for his shoes. He had to walk, as he did in his dream. He had to find the man in the alleyway. The night was dark, and as his clock hit 4:18 AM, his watch alarm went off. Piercing the silent air of Chicago, the watch was quickly shut off, and the Sergeant strolled through the worse side of town to reach the North East, where his warehouses and alleyways were. His eyes burned in the cold air of winter, and his nose began to run by the time he reached the first alleyway.

Dipping behind the dumpster, he quickly found the same brick, and pressed it in. The wall moved aside enough to let him in, and he entered the silent, unholy sanctuary of the occult. He had been in here only once, and he wondered why he had ever even thought to enter again. The memories must stop! The sergeant thought. He knew he could not go on for another day in this world with these memories.

He stepped over the rotting cloth, and remembered the two men he shot here, in this very spot. He remember how they bled on the floor, how one got back to his feet, a pulled a dagger on him. He had dodged to the left, right in line with the dagger, and ended up stabbed in his abdomen. The searing pain had blinded him, had stopped him in his tracks until his anger built up into an erupting volcano. Pulling out his own knife, he worked left and right, and eventually slashed out the throat of his enemy. Reveling in his kill, the Sergeant didn’t realize that two bulky, muscled forms had him caught between them. They dragged him for a while through tunnels and passageways beneath the warehouses, to bring him up through the floor in the church.

As the Sergeant reached the dilapidated, defiled sanctuary of the church, he began to cry. Eventually the sobs grew stronger, and the Sergeant fell to his knees. Like a movie played in his head he had no control over, the scene unfolded. Many black robed men and women sat everywhere, and a priest of some evil sort, in black and silver robes, stood at the front of the church. In his arms rested a baby.

The baby was screaming as the Priest ran his razor sharp dagger down his body to cut an upside down cross into his chest. The baby screamed even louder at these few vicious and rough cuts. The priest sat the baby then on a stone slab, and plunged the knife deep into the chest of the baby. The sergeant could see from the back of the church the way the baby’s fingers still twitched, the convulsions that went through his little body. The sergeant could see the way the naked baby relieved himself for the last time. He could see the bloody froth at his tiny lips. Worst of all, the sergeant could feel the priest’s eyes on him. His glare was enough to send chills up your spine, and his breath was ice.

“This is our next sacrifice to the Dark Six, my unholy gathering!” the priest proclaimed to the eager audience, pointing directly at the sergeant. The sergeant was then but a boy, after his first few kills. He was scared. The muscled men walked him up to the priest solemnly, and unceremoniously threw him to the priest’s feet. The priest, very thin and seemingly weak grabbed the sergeant up as if he were a piece of paper, and pushed his face into the baby’s.

“In our gathering, dear sergeant, the next victim eats the last victim.” The priest’s mouth was a twisted sneer, unsmiling yet full of dark and morbid humor. He forced the sergeant to eat the entrails of the baby, and then the heart. The awful taste of the blood and entrails made the sergeant cover himself in the baby’s blood and his own vomit. He could not swallow or chew.

In the now empty and collapsed church, the sergeant stood in the entranceway, vomiting at the memory, yet still sobbing. He never wanted to remember this again. He now had his revolver in his hand, and it was a mystery even to himself where that had come from. He loaded it as he watched a demon rise from the center of the church. Another memory.

The bulky, inhuman form rose from something similar to an abyss, covered in black scales and open sores. Tattered wings spread across the sanctuary, and a black fire erupted on the many tapestries and other paintings. The wood was quickly consumed, and the demon rose to stand at full height. A full fourteen feet tall, and about five feet wide, the demon was solid muscle and destruction in one neatly wrapped package.

The demon snatched up the priest and ripped him in half. Blood spattered across the walls that were still left, and then flung the body out of the window. He killed every single person in the church that night, all save one. The sergeant.

The sergeant recalled the bloodbath that the church had become, and how slippery the floor was when it was covered in blood. He emerged from the church that night, covered in other people’s blood, completely unharmed, vomiting on himself, right into the arms of paramedics.

As the sergeant loaded his revolver with hollow point bullets, he sung to himself of the beauty in heaven, of the angels, and of all nature. He flipped the safety off, and remembered what happened after the church.

He had been in the hospital for about a week, and was finally released, sore and weary. He stopped by a library to look up the incident, only to find that the church he was looking for never existed. He cross-referenced his name into newspaper archives only to find that he had “broke down” and was discharged from the Marines. He was a soldier on leave, with a wife and four kids, who were unexplainably missing. “He went crazy,” the paper said.

The barrel of the gun now pointed to his temple, he pulled on the trigger for one last ride down memory lane, and viewed his life in its entirety. He saw himself playing as a kid, saw his birthdays, saw the incident, saw his wife and kids die by his own hands. The Sergeant saw himself as crazy. He felt the bullet fly through one side of his skull and out the other. He felt the sheer terror and fear. He knew he was bleeding, and looked at his hands. They were covered in glass and blood. Picking up his knife, he gouged out his eyes, and held them in his hands, as if they were some terrible secret he was hiding.

The police found his robed, rotting body in an alleyway, eyeballs in his hands, in a circle of blood and glass.