Kendall Sharpe Spooky Flash Fiction 8/11/13 You're looking at an owl through the window of your bedroom, a big

wide eyed owl and it's looking so intently at you. It scares you, enough that you look away, walk out of your bedroom, down the hallway and out into your backyard; intent to shoo the owl away... Come You stomach is uneasy, you feel nauseous. Along your forehead a cold sweat develops. Where are you? You're being led, you feel a pressure by your sides. You can't move your neck. You're being pulled, hurried. You were in your bedroom, or were you? Yes, you were sleeping, dreaming of an owl or was that reality? Now you're here. Where is here? You are led into a large room, the walls are white; a cold hard clinical white illuminated by no one central point yet so bright it hurts your eyes and makes you unable to focus. Everything is a continuous blur. You continue to stare straight ahead, there is no other option. In the center of the room is a white slab, the word-image table flashes synaptic across your mind. The pace quickens. For the first time something small darts into your vision and that small something, with it's long cold fingers attached to long twig thin arms forces you to strip naked. Feeling the fabric, an unnerving air of reality strikes you. Your clothes are a pile on the floor. You are made to lie on the table; compelled to lay down, something is different and the fear you were forcing back overwhelms you. This is not a dream, and you can no longer convince yourself of that. You scream. You can't do this! You are ignored. Terrible things are done to you in rapid succession. Those small hands work quickly; your mouth is opened despite your best resistance, something is shoved down your throat. Gagging, choking, you can't breath, can't breath. Reflex kicks in, you vomit. Your airway is cleared. You gasp for breath. Too small even to lean over you, the ghostly blur that owns of those small appendages stands on a stool to finally tower over you and looks at you with big, black, empty eyes. The moment is almost comic relief, if not for the metallic looking device in it's hand. Calm Are you still screaming? Do you only have the perception that you're screaming? Existence is awash right now. The being is unreal and you fear reaches unknown levels. You'd be grasping at your chest if you could. The metallic thing is shoved violently up your nose. Is this Hell? You're numb, but you feel a changes in pressure, the stretching and tearing. Blood is dripping down your face and into your throat. The taste of iron before blackness envelops you. When you come around, there are more of those things. You count three and one of them is between your legs, you feel sick but also aroused, which disgusts you. They're touching you, violating you, sticking things on you. An incision is made somewhere between your legs, you're too numb. Can't focus, fear. You feel something wet and hot running down your legs and you lose consciousness again. Empty The little beings, with their dead eyes that stretch forever and their frail, emaciated haunting bodies wake you once more. They're ghosts or demons, monsters. This must be a dream. They wake you and you're told, compelled, forced to sit up. For a few brief moments you're in control of your body, too struck by fear to think anything except on thought: The rules you've always followed no longer apply here. From somewhere unseen, a new presence enters, an imposing presence that commands your attention. A creature, similar to the others but larger, taller and in that effect more terrifying. If you were to stand you would still tower over this creature by at least a foot. But this being is the leader, It is in control.

It continues to get closer to you. Stop please stop! You ask, yell, plead It is necessary Why? Why are you doing this to me? The words come from everywhere at once. They are patient, unhurried, contempt-less. It is necessary. The being closes in on you, seemingly gliding the fast distance across the pale harshly lit room. It's right up against your face, almost touching you. No, it is touching you and it stares into your eyes. It grabs your face, you feel rubbery dry skin, it forces you to look int it's eyes...The blackness swallows you and reality, this reality, ebbs. The white walls become something else, a field on the edge of a forest at dusk, the large eyes of an owl in the trees but then you're in the white room. Your sister's high school graduation, in the bleachers but the stadium is empty. Your falling, your nose is bleeding. White walls. White walls. Images flash: A large, uncontrolled explosion. A building collapse. Piles of bodies. A view of the planet with large plumes of smoke. Your former lovers bifurcated, their viscera delicately arranged. You are now We and We are inside You. We know You, will always know You and we are inside of you and we will do what we please because it is our right and our duty, You are special, don't you see. Why can't you see? You are so very special to us. So very important to everything that's going to happen. You lose yourself and everything that ever made you who you are is gone and obliterated. More images: Daisies, daffodils, plants and flowers you cannot recognize. Rolling hills and beautiful landscapes. Mountains rising out of seas. We are forever and never. We are always and forever. Measurements do not apply to us. You will never call us by our ninety nine names. You're in the while room, you never left and you are you again, but with those nintey nine names echoing inside your violated skull. You've been raped in so many ways, unable to ever put yourself together. You are only as much of yourself as these ghosts will ever let you be. You are broken and defeated. With the last of your independence you shout, why!? It's time to go. The taller, authoritative one exits. You are not alone. The small sickly ghosts lead you, their tripartite hand griping yours, from the large room of ashen white into a darkness deeper than anything you could ever know.