Kristen Jacobson

©️2025 Kristen Jacobson

A dank, windowless room, and she was trapped inside. Wrists bound to the arms of a creaking wooden chair. Mouth gagged with putrid cotton. Bile gurgled in her cheeks. Her eyes bounced around the room. How did she get here? Why was she here? She frantically searched her memory banks. She remembered walking home. She remembered smiling briefly at a man…woman…? walking the other way.

Then nothing.

A leak in the pipe just above secreted foul juice that traced a line from the peak of her forehead to the tip of her nose. Each drop collected there until her nose was at capacity, and the liquid dripped off and into her lap. She had never actually smelled a dead body, though heard mention of how terrible the odor was, and she was certain that this liquid smelled worse. There were a lot of things she was unfamiliar with, had never experienced. Her world was cordoned off by white picket fencing, dappled in sunlight. Warm. Clean. She shut her eyes and was transported to her old neighborhood, where the pristine streets were shaded by rows and rows of trees and the parents never let their kids out unless they knew exactly what they would do, with whom, and for how long. Smiling faces that said good morning every day and goodnight every evening. Straight-A students who were on the football team or cheerleaders. Popular, well-liked teens who were somehow also saccharine-sweet. She inhaled the smell of fresh cut grass and prize-winning rose gardens and smiled. Perfection.

But then, perfection began to curl at the edges, browning, cracking, and decaying. She remembered the last Thanksgiving she ever spent in the old neighborhood. How the doors had been flung open throughout the day for friendly visits from family friends and neighbors, the usual dignitaries. As the autumn sun floated lazily toward the horizon, an early dinner was served and conversations meandered to and fro, finally landing on the new housepaint someone down the street chose.

“I can’t believe they chose that color,” her mother muttered. “It’s an eyesore and I don’t know how they got it past the HOA.”

“Sweetheart, I’m sure the HOA knows and is taking necessary action,” her father replied, over the glint of his scotch glass, before taking another smug sip.

“I hope so,” her mother replied. “I’m literally on the verge of writing a letter.”

“I wish you would,” her grandmother spat out over a forkful of stuffing. 

She silently rolled her eyes. The thought that a few hours might stretch on to eternity played at the back of her mind. This wasn’t real. It was hell and she had somehow pissed enough people off to land here. 

Enough.

“Hey, I have a joke,” she interjected, mania coloring her voice in bright, clashing colors.

The table fell silent. Eyes that had hardly registered her existence were suddenly locked on her in confusion. She continued: “How many dead babies does it take to paint a house?” She waited a beat and then, pretending like someone had responded: “depends on how many you throw at it.”

She let a grin spread across her face as her dinner companions erupted in disgust. Not over the joke. No one mentioned the joke. It was her that they found so odious as to speak at that moment. Interrupt their heated discussion. Heaven forbid.

That night, she packed a bag with essentials and got the hell out, letting the image of her “perfect” life stretch and distort in her mind. Now, it was no longer sunkissed lawns, but flaming piles of tires her neighbors so painstakingly cared for. It wasn’t pleasant grins and eager waves from across the street but slack-jawed leers and stupified eyes that bore holes in the back of her skull, sending tremors down her spine. She took a deep breath in and her nostrils filled with the sick smell of decaying flesh. They were here. All of them, packed into this room, staring at her. The moisture on her skin was not sweat or the polluted substance leaking above her, but the cumulation of their brainless slobber, dripping from unkept mouths. They stood, catatonic, plastic, overwhelming. 

A surge of electricity shot through her body. She would get up and run if that were an option. She would break down the door. She would fight her way through the hoard if she weren’t tied to this fucking chair. She struggled against her bonds as if it hadn’t been tried in every thriller greenlit in Hollywood, as if her captors–whoever they were–hadn’t thought that she might try to resist and left the slightest bit of slack in the zip ties around her wrists. At this point, however, she was willing to try anything, even if it seemed completely stupid. Her breath heaved in and out through her nostrils as she continued to rotate her hands, flexing the tendons in her wrists. No good. The hoard watched, a constant reminder that this was her doing. That she was here because she left there. 

She rotated her hands back the other way. Still, no good. She could feel the air rushing from her lungs. It was quickly replaced with the surrounding rancid cloud, and she coughed against the stench. She tilted her face to the ceiling, trying to catch a breath of comparatively fresher air from above the fog, ignoring the sheer stupidity of the attempt. She had hoped that she would be able to sniff something a little cleaner than what was presently consuming her, clawing at her insides. What she got instead was another bead of filthy liquid, this time landing at the exact opening of her left nostril. It ran into her nose and to the back of her throat, where it dripped down her windpipe and into her lungs, detonating the tender flesh inside, tinting the space around her a bright red and clenching every vital organ in her body to get the putrid substance out. Her head snapped forward as the sheer force of her collapsing lungs pumped every ounce of moisture out of her body. Eventually, there was nothing left, but her lungs kept going, this time pulling bile from her empty stomach and forcing it through her mouth to be absorbed by the filthy t-shirt prying her jaw slightly open.  The rudimentary gag gave way to the deluge of human secretion, and the excess spurted out onto her lap, stopping only to dribble down the front of her torso. She sat, pathetically watching her body force every nonessential substance out onto her lap. Her nose dripped thick, clear mucus as her mouth let go of all her stomach’s contents and her skin languidly marinated in salty sweat and tears. She might piss herself if there was any more moisture left to give, but she could feel herself slowly dehydrating and shriveling so that any more liquid escaped not through normal channels but as if the mothership was calling it home and all it had to do was evaporate into the dank, musty air around her. She coughed at the last of her stomach acid and shut her eyes against the acid fire in her belly that was now consuming everything. On top of everything else, her eyes itched. It had been a bad allergy day, and she was still griping at the pollen.

If I make it out of here, she thought, I’m burning these clothes. 

Then: a sharp clanging, like trumpets. Her heart rate quickened to the pace of the heralding, and the heavy metal door swung open. Through it shuffled a stiff-backed sentient, laboring under an immense black bag. His jaw was clamped down tight against his burden, which, swung over his shoulder, forced his back into a stoop  

After, a bald behemoth in a fine, tailored suit and mirrored sunglasses, his forehead glistened with dew, power, and privilege. A subtle snort escaped her nostrils at the caricature that stood before her. Some people really were just parodies of themselves, weren’t they? 

“Forgive me,” the bald man tittered. “I should have been here to welcome you, myself. How impolite.”

The sentient set down the big black bag on a rusted metal operating table (had that always been there?) and unzipped it. The bag unfurled like a chef’s knife kit, displaying all sorts of implements of varying finishes from the sleekest of chrome to dreadful rust. Each item looked like it had been pilfered from a different activity, but all were meant for the same use: to rip through material, to destroy, to slip inside. A chill crept up her spine, gripping the muscles at her belly, her chest, and her throat as it went. It unsettled her nervous system but was still oddly titillating. Her thighs began to quiver.

“I see you’ve noticed my toys,” the bald man giggled. “They are quite impressive, aren’t they?”  He strode over to the table and selected one. It was a rudimentary implement with a dry, cracked wooden handle and a short, curved blade, tarnished with age. “Some of these have been with me for years, decades even.” He studied the blade wistfully and then applied the tip to his pointer finger, presumably to test the sharpness, but the look that shot across his face, electrifying his features behind his ridiculous glasses, suggested he felt something more for it. He slipped off his glasses and placed them gently next to the bag.

She watched as he closed his eyes, turned his back to the room and began to breathe deeply. All was quiet, save for the sound of his breath inhaling and exhaling, taking in what little oxygen was in the vacuum-sealed room and expelling carbon dioxide. There was a formula that helped determine exactly how much time a person could stay locked in an air-tight container before suffocating, but she didn’t know what it was nor was she ever good enough at math to sufficiently carry it off. The bald man continued to breathe deeply.

Then, as if under the control of an invisible force, he shot around with a huge grin on his face. It was the maniacal grin most people got when overly excited, but seemed to elicit more fear in the pit of her stomach than anything. Her thighs quivered again, sending an alarming twinge between her legs that she swore she’d never feel again. His smile grew wider, wilder. He held out the blade for her to see.

“This is my favorite,” he giggled. “I always start with this one. It’s like a band opening a concert with their old music before introducing the new.”

Her wrists instinctively began to twist and a small moan escaped from behind her gag.

“Excited are we? Afraid maybe? Both are satisfactory.” He moved closer and with each slow step, panic shot quicker and quicker through her body. Soon, he was mere inches away, the blade extended to touch her cheek with a delicate caress. Electric blue eyes stared into hers, bored into her skull, mining for possession. She didn’t shut her eyes, didn’t sweep him away from her psyche.

Then: a pleasant electronic jingle from his pants. Her eyes dashed down to the place where the noise was coming from.