In honor of the famous Black Dahlia Murder
Do wake up in the middle of sweet dreams by loud sounds, almost as if fifty people are having a slaughter party in the house. Hear women screaming, swords slashing, men yelling, and chains creaking. The whole house is shaking – not sure if it’s because of all those noises or your scared-to-death self.
Don’t fall asleep, although you will eventually.
Do regain consciousness after seemingly thousands of hours, finding yourself curled up in a ball on the edge of the bed.
Do drag yourself up and lean out the window. Take a deep breath, feel the stifling silence, the pure darkness, and the freezing air invading your lungs. You smell a strange smell. A raw smell. A smell like blood, huge amounts of blood. If you peak closer into the darkness, you will see the river of red flooding in the backyard.
Don’t pretend to not hear the distorted pieces of sounds booming right to your ear, as if there are footsteps approaching from behind. It starts very slow, then speeds up to a jog, and then its feet barely touch the ground. It eventually stops. You hear not one single breathing sound.
Don’t look behind yourself now as you are reading this, no matter how your furniture creaks, how your lamp flickers, how the wind – or something else – shakes the shrubs in your backyard, or how your dog busts out barking in the middle of the night. Despite if you feel like someone is approaching or if you think you hear footsteps, stay still. Now resume the story.
Do turn around and scan the entire room from the roof down.
Do see a pair of shoes hanging slightly above the ground. Shoes covered with a vibrant red color that looks so much like blood, shoes with a pair of feet in them – a pair of extremely pale, skinny feet. The no-longer-pumping veins squeeze their way through the layers of swell, leaving stripes of red and blue on the skin.
Do see it starts walking. Walking right towards you.
Don’t scream. You won’t be able to make a sound. Your throat is desert dry. You will hear no voice of your own, except that of the shoes tapping the ground when it is visibly not.
Do rush out of your bedroom.
Do hear the footsteps were so close that the shoes almost step on you a few times.
Don’t try to find your mom now: as you pass the master bedroom, you see thousands of flies gathering in the room, forming the shape of a human body; you smell a disgusting scent of rotten meat. Take a guess as to where all that came from.
Do get downstairs into the kitchen and slam the door.
Don’t hide your thirst. Get a cup of water.
Do see drips of red in the cup as your lips are about to touch the cup. Look up.
Do see a cricked upper body – from breast to waist, beaten and stabbed, with the wide-open stomach filled with worms, ants, little snakes, and flies – swinging right above your head, streams of blood dripping down into your cup. The body flicks, turning straight toward you. You can feel a pair of invisible eyes staring deep down at you.
Don’t let it get any closer.
Do hear something else speeding toward here, sweeping the floor softly.
Do hear the unstoppable giggles starting right behind your head.
Do feel something grabbing your ankle, pulling it tight to the ground — a pair of boney hands with no human warmth.
Do see a head floating from your back to face you, still giggling. Mouth slashed from one side of the face to another, face swelled with flies continuously landing on it, eyes with no focus, and black curly hair soaked in blood.
Don’t ignore her – if it can still be called a person – raucous voice whispering to you, “Here you are, my dear.”
Don’t say anything, don’t look terrified – oops, you just did.
Do get dragged down into the deepest of darkness.
Do see a huge, beautiful black flower blooming right in front of you.
Don’t forget about the news you heard this morning, how everyone calls the murder of the young Hollywood-dreaming girl “Black Dahlia”.
Don’t you remember the picture you saw. Black curly hair, fair-toned skin, bisected from the waist, got a slash on her face.
Do open your eyes, see the sun revealing itself from the roof of your neighbor. That was just a bad, random dream.
Do get woken up in the middle of the night by loud, loud sounds, almost as if fifty people are having a slaughter party in the house. This is the next evening.
Do feel the flies landing on your face and hear a sweet yet broken voice whispering to your ear.
“Here you are, my dear.”
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