By Erik Suchy
The sense of prolonged rigidness had never been amongst his feelings before until he found it was consuming him from where he lay.
Please do a wiggle. Please.
Its resistance was bold. Naturally, the potency of total consciousness was never submissive at any and all ordinary limits. Its imperial mother superior complex would force out a spasm, then at least ten in succession once awoken. To now not save him made him genuinely afraid.
No, maybe it’s savoring itself to pop out whenever it wants to, like some overdone horror movie jumpscare.
He waited. So did the power of arousal. The dread that gripped him did not bother to impede.
Oh God, so this is what Hell is: to feel gone and be nowhere all at the same time.
The mundane, tiled design of a ceiling overhead caught both eyes. Amid this, he found he could not move them either.
Why am I here, and why like this?
His hazelnut brown crew cut tasted softness against each hair from its fringe edges—airy, smooth, tones of fresh polyester.
Someone was speaking nearby, and before long, at least several more had entered into a series of mumbled, clogged sobs.
“It shouldn’t have been now. Why now?”
“May he have mercy wherever he’s guided, above or below.”
“Shhh, Robert! Don’t say that. Have some respect.”
“Please, if you could all be seated, we will begin the funeral shortly.”
He made an effort to force as many pupil shifts as possible in any unrestricted direction.
No success.
An air conditioner’s neighboring draft stealthily crept over his pant legs, seam by seam.
He would not attempt the same mistake of trying again.
Bio: Hailing from North St. Paul, Minnesota, Erik Suchy prides himself as an aspiring horror writer, crafting tales of the bizarre, unknown, and often downright macabre. You can usually find him in front of the nearest available laptop with a cup of ginger tea and a head full of stories dying to be translated from brain to screen.