The Former Online Journal of Eric T. Marin
This is my former online journal. To read current entries, please visit my LiveJournal blog here.
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Photo copyright 2004 Eric Marin
The Things Outside
I've decided to add my other story from AlienSkin Magazine to my journal. It's a bit longer than "Unfulfilled Expectations," but it's still a short short.
Without further ado, I give you:
The Things Outside
Copyright 2003-2004 Eric Marin
(originally appeared in the November 2003 issue of AlienSkin Magazine)
At night, with his parents asleep in their room, and his brother snoring on the lower bunk below him, Jack forced himself to lie awake. He listened for the Things Outside. He never saw them, but he could hear them hissing among themselves, scraping along the walls of the house outside his bedroom, and scratching at the windows.
“Let us in, Jack,” they whispered. “Open the door for us.”
They wanted into the house, into his bedroom, and into his soul, but Jack knew better.
He felt the same fear he had experienced as a boy of six, staring at his shadowed closet door, waiting for it to open and the monsters inside to pour out and swarm over him, all teeth and claws. Older now at fourteen, the monsters had grown with him, no longer immediate threats but more insidious.
They called to him, challenging him. They named him a coward, demanded that he confront them, those fears made flesh.
“What teenage boy still dreads the nameless creatures of dark imagination?” they asked.
Jack did, and he knew in his soul that if he opened the windows, the doors, and met them armed with a baseball bat, a hunting knife, or even a gun, the Things Outside would consume him.
He huddled in bed and attempted without success to banish the fear that kept peaceful sleep away, that brought on the nightmares. For the monsters kept out by wakefulness could reach him in his dreams, and they lurked in the shadows of his subconscious, waiting to pounce on him when he at last succumbed to exhaustion.
The dreams terrified Jack because they did not end when he awakened. His screams would bring his parents running to shake him out of his nightmare, and Jack would cry to them of the monsters eating his feet, gnawing on his hands, gouging at his eyes, and they would walk him to the kitchen murmuring that it was only a dream and nothing to worry about, and the nightmare would rekindle, even as he sipped a glass of milk handed to him by his mother, and his vision would shift into nearer and nearer focus and the monsters would return to maul him, and his father would hug him and tell him to wake up, and Jack could not for he did not sleep, but dreamed awake.
Held by his parents, he would finally fall into sleep so deep that the monsters could not find him, dropping below the place where his subconscious manufactured dreams, so far down into the pit of unconsciousness that he struggled to awaken each morning. Jack worried that he might never wake up from such sleep, sleep that left him shadow-eyed and thick-headed in the mornings.
He never told his parents or anyone else of the Things Outside and his nightly battles with them; he feared they would think him crazy. Instead, he tried and failed on his own to banish the fear, to vacuum it all right out of him until one Autumn day he read a novel that contained within it a mantra that shone in bright letters before Jack’s hungry eyes.
The book told him, “Accept your fear, and you will have the means to master it. Once you master your fear, you will control your life.”
That night, Jack stared up at the darkened ceiling of his room and listened to the Things Outside. As always, their calls frightened him, raised goose pimples along his arms and legs, gave him sweaty palms, and sped up his heart to thump loud enough to echo in his head.
Jack thought of the book he had read, and he realized that he needed the freedom it promised more than anything he could imagine. He took a deep breath, another, then spoke aloud in a shaky voice.
“I am afraid of you, you Things Outside. I am afraid of what you will do to me in my dreams, and I am afraid I will never wake up when I fall asleep. I am afraid, and I accept it.”
The calls, the noises, ceased.
In the silence, Jack spoke one more time.
“You are the Things Outside and the Things Inside, and you are me.”
Moments passed and the stillness remained unbroken. Jack grew calm. A few minutes later he fell asleep, smiling.
Later that night, Jack awakened and slipped from his bunk to the carpeted floor, ghosted out of his room, padded down the dim hall, and crept through the living room to the back door of the house. There he unlocked and swung open the door and drew back his gray lips in a grin full of obsidian-sharp teeth at the sight of the crowd gathered outside.
“Welcome,” cried the Things Outside.
Still smiling, the creature, once a boy named Jack, darted out the door on clawed feet to join the Things Outside, leaving his fearful humanity behind him like the skin shed from a snake.
Without further ado, I give you:
The Things Outside
Copyright 2003-2004 Eric Marin
(originally appeared in the November 2003 issue of AlienSkin Magazine)
At night, with his parents asleep in their room, and his brother snoring on the lower bunk below him, Jack forced himself to lie awake. He listened for the Things Outside. He never saw them, but he could hear them hissing among themselves, scraping along the walls of the house outside his bedroom, and scratching at the windows.
“Let us in, Jack,” they whispered. “Open the door for us.”
They wanted into the house, into his bedroom, and into his soul, but Jack knew better.
He felt the same fear he had experienced as a boy of six, staring at his shadowed closet door, waiting for it to open and the monsters inside to pour out and swarm over him, all teeth and claws. Older now at fourteen, the monsters had grown with him, no longer immediate threats but more insidious.
They called to him, challenging him. They named him a coward, demanded that he confront them, those fears made flesh.
“What teenage boy still dreads the nameless creatures of dark imagination?” they asked.
Jack did, and he knew in his soul that if he opened the windows, the doors, and met them armed with a baseball bat, a hunting knife, or even a gun, the Things Outside would consume him.
He huddled in bed and attempted without success to banish the fear that kept peaceful sleep away, that brought on the nightmares. For the monsters kept out by wakefulness could reach him in his dreams, and they lurked in the shadows of his subconscious, waiting to pounce on him when he at last succumbed to exhaustion.
The dreams terrified Jack because they did not end when he awakened. His screams would bring his parents running to shake him out of his nightmare, and Jack would cry to them of the monsters eating his feet, gnawing on his hands, gouging at his eyes, and they would walk him to the kitchen murmuring that it was only a dream and nothing to worry about, and the nightmare would rekindle, even as he sipped a glass of milk handed to him by his mother, and his vision would shift into nearer and nearer focus and the monsters would return to maul him, and his father would hug him and tell him to wake up, and Jack could not for he did not sleep, but dreamed awake.
Held by his parents, he would finally fall into sleep so deep that the monsters could not find him, dropping below the place where his subconscious manufactured dreams, so far down into the pit of unconsciousness that he struggled to awaken each morning. Jack worried that he might never wake up from such sleep, sleep that left him shadow-eyed and thick-headed in the mornings.
He never told his parents or anyone else of the Things Outside and his nightly battles with them; he feared they would think him crazy. Instead, he tried and failed on his own to banish the fear, to vacuum it all right out of him until one Autumn day he read a novel that contained within it a mantra that shone in bright letters before Jack’s hungry eyes.
The book told him, “Accept your fear, and you will have the means to master it. Once you master your fear, you will control your life.”
That night, Jack stared up at the darkened ceiling of his room and listened to the Things Outside. As always, their calls frightened him, raised goose pimples along his arms and legs, gave him sweaty palms, and sped up his heart to thump loud enough to echo in his head.
Jack thought of the book he had read, and he realized that he needed the freedom it promised more than anything he could imagine. He took a deep breath, another, then spoke aloud in a shaky voice.
“I am afraid of you, you Things Outside. I am afraid of what you will do to me in my dreams, and I am afraid I will never wake up when I fall asleep. I am afraid, and I accept it.”
The calls, the noises, ceased.
In the silence, Jack spoke one more time.
“You are the Things Outside and the Things Inside, and you are me.”
Moments passed and the stillness remained unbroken. Jack grew calm. A few minutes later he fell asleep, smiling.
Later that night, Jack awakened and slipped from his bunk to the carpeted floor, ghosted out of his room, padded down the dim hall, and crept through the living room to the back door of the house. There he unlocked and swung open the door and drew back his gray lips in a grin full of obsidian-sharp teeth at the sight of the crowd gathered outside.
“Welcome,” cried the Things Outside.
Still smiling, the creature, once a boy named Jack, darted out the door on clawed feet to join the Things Outside, leaving his fearful humanity behind him like the skin shed from a snake.
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