THE CABIN IS ALWAYS HUNGRY

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NIGHTMARE SUBURBIA

Part 1

The darkness stirred, and I called out.

I couldn’t remember how I died—only the pain that almost caused me to black out and the confusion that followed. The darkness awaited me; it was all I had ever known since I awoke. It was constantly stirring, silent, and unbroken—an expanse of infinite horizons. I called out nonetheless, hoping for someone to answer back.

How long had I waited? Weeks? Months? Decades?

Without sight.

Without hearing.

Without feeling.

It’s all too much to take. Hard enough to imagine that this must be the afterlife and that I must be dead. I hadn’t eaten anything for a long time, and still, I breathed the same; I felt the pulse under my jaw, on my wrist. I’m still alive.

Barely. I wouldn’t call this living.

I looked down at my body. I was still wearing my school clothes—a white T-shirt, a brown jacket, dark blue jeans, and black shoes. I could even spot the stain of the burrito I ate during lunch, the spilled coffee stains on the hem of my pants, when night came…when the alley beckoned…when the truck swerved up the curb….and the door opened…and…

A sharp pain wormed from the center of my forehead, radiating to the back of my skull and down the spine. I didn’t want to think about how I died anymore. I was there, and now I’m here.

Yet my new existence was impossible.

I should be dead a long time ago from hunger. From thirst. I bit my tongue and bled and bled and bled, but it regrew the next day. All the blood drenching my shirt dissipated. I reckoned I must be dreaming. No, I was trapped in a nightmare. A coma? Was I stuck between life and death? I imagined laying on a hospital bed for months while my family and friends visited me. Did I even have visitors? I couldn’t hear them in the darkness—their sobs and conversations. I had read somewhere that coma patients were still aware of their surroundings.

Only the darkness kept me company. Always the darkness. No reassuring voice from my mother. No hushed whispers from my friends or the hums drips, and beeps of machinery that kept me alive.

Nothing.

I had never been a religious man, all dressed in my Sunday best. I went only to church twice in my life (the first was for my baptism, and my grandmother dragged me to the second). Perhaps I shouldn’t have shunted it away. Maybe then Heaven might be real, and this was Hell. Maybe Purgatory? I hoped I’d run into another soul trapped like me if I walked far enough. I didn’t find anyone.

I prayed. That never worked.

I cursed and screamed. That didn’t work, either.

I bargained, but no one took it.

So, I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I was a lonely flame in the darkness, and I had forever.

Until someone blew out the light and saw everything.

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Standing at the glade’s edge, I saw my own naked corpse lying on the ground, a grotesque semblance of its humanity.

My eyes were hollow, the organs floating inside a jar stained red, sitting north. My ears were sheared off, floating inside their own jar to the east. The tongue got ripped out, entombed in another jar to the south. And the nose was torn off, again in a jar to the west.

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Etched upon the damp earth were the painted glyphs of some demonic ritual. Candles illuminated the dark forest. The air hung heavy with the acrid scent of death, urine, and feces as the moon’s pale glow seeped through the gnarled branches overhead. The night was a mere inky backdrop against which the ritual symbols danced in vibrant defiance.

Around my body were seven figures—Four men and three women. For a bunch of demon-worshipping killers, I didn’t expect them to be like some upstate suburban parents in a midlife crisis, off to see their kid at a football game. No robes. Just a bunch of puff jackets, khakis, and basic tees.

The two men crouched beside my body had just finished slicing through the torso and abdomen, disemboweling it, while the others chanted a strange language I had never heard before.

I screamed. I wanted to tear them apart but could not move a muscle against them. I couldn’t raise my arms to strike them down.

“Stop!” I howled, my voice cracking with desperation. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” But my empty pleas resounded through the air, and the merciless butchery persisted.

They couldn’t hear me.

They weren’t even aware I was there standing amongst them.

The knives continued their relentless dance, slicing deeper, extracting the heart from the ribcage. The gruesome trophy raised triumphantly, a perverse exhibition that made their chants louder.

I’m dead.

Dead.

DEAD!

Panic clawed at my sanity as I scanned my surroundings, desperately searching for a way out of this waking nightmare. I stumbled into the dark woods, every step taking me farther yet inexplicably leading me back to the glade. The maddening loop of my torment played out endlessly, mocking my feeble attempts to elude the horrors unfolding before my eyes.

Unable to bear it any longer, I put my hands to my ears, a futile attempt to block out the sickening symphony behind me. The wet and hard schlick-schlick of the garden shears opening up my ribcage to plunder the remaining organs assaulted my senses.

This is a nightmare, I thought, a twisted figment of my tortured mind.

I resorted to desperate measures, pinching my own flesh, breaking an arm, and crashing my skull against the trunk of a nearby tree. But no amount of pain could stop the horror, unyielding and all-consuming.

They were at it for about an hour when the youngest woman of the group, long blonde hair tied into a ponytail, looking more annoyed that it was taking too long, marched toward the two men and handed them an odd-looking stone. She and the second man desecrating my corpse returned to form a circle around the man who pried my heart out. I pegged him to be the leader.

The Leader walked and stood by the northern end, right underneath the jar where my eyes floated, raising the translucent gem high in the air.

They recited another long chant.

I stood up from where I hid. My legs and feet had a mind of their own, and I found myself walking toward the gem like a moth to a flame. As I stumbled forward, the world infinitely became smaller, suffocating, seemingly blurring into a tapestry of haze. I didn’t like it. The air clung to my skin, heavy with an unspoken tension that prickled at the edges of my consciousness.

Run.

Run.

Run, you idiot. Get the fuck out of here!

But there was nowhere to go—only the dark gathering in the periphery, waiting hungrily.

I could see the Leader’s features more clearly now that I was closer to the bonfire. He almost looked like…

…A name.

I remembered a name. Coach Hodge. Justin Hodge. My high school’s football coach.

“What are you doing walking alone in the middle of the night, Marky?” Coach Hodge asked me once, a truck parked by the curb, window rolled open. I couldn’t remember when this memory occurred. I couldn’t remember why I was walking home alone in the first place. “Do your parents know you’re out?”

“Don’t tell them!” I remembered saying. “Um, they…they don’t know. Please. I live a few blocks from here, coach. I’ll get right home.”

“Come on, kid. Get in. I’ll give you a ride, at least.”

I hesitated. “It’s just close by. I don’t want to bother you.”

“Nonsense. You still got a mile to go. And I can smell vodka from here. Get in. I’ll get you home before your folks notice you’re gone, maybe get the stench of alcohol off you.”

“Okay. Um, thanks, coach.”

“No problem, kid. Now, what’s the address again?”

I didn’t remember anything after that. All messy and hazy. Radiohead blaring on the radio. Wrong street, wheels turning somewhere else. “You made the wrong turn, coach.” A blue handkerchief over my nose and mouth. I kicked and tried to scream. The darkness seeped in.

My heart pounded against my chest, clenching my fists to the side as the trees seemed to close on me. I couldn’t contain the tears any longer. Every nerve ending crackled with searing energy, propelling me to tear Coach Hodge’s throat out.

No.

A voice. Distant. Hollow.

The gem.

Touch the gem.

At first glance, the gem appeared unassuming, its size no larger than my fist. Its smooth and polished surface betrayed no hint of what it contained. Yet, upon closer inspection, tiny cracks meandered across the gem, like spiderwebs spun by invisible hands. A chaotic dance of colors played out within its crystalline core—an intricate kaleidoscope of shades, as if the gem held glass threads to keep itself together, glowing brighter and brighter as I drew near.

A burst of crimson energy leaped from the gem’s surface, forging an electric connection with my outstretched fingertip. My flesh remained unscathed, but an otherworldly sensation permeated the rest of my body. Coach Hodge seemed ignorant of the vortex of colors emanating from the gem. To him, it was nothing more than a rock devoid of the energy I now watched grow outward, enveloping me.

My rational part screamed for me to flee, to escape the clutches of this magnetic force. Yet, an inexplicable compulsion compelled me forward, rendering me powerless against the gem’s allure. The welling pit in my stomach grew, a bottomless chasm threatening to devour every rational thought.

Touch. Yes.

Grasp the gem. Go on.

Determined, my fingers closed tightly around the strange gem, knuckles turning white under the strain. A sinister thrill coursed through my veins, mingling with a primal fear that refused to be silenced.

I thought, No, Mark. Let go. LET GO!

Yet I willingly embraced the beckoning abyss, surrendering to the tantalizing unknown that awaited beyond the boundaries of the glade, gradually creeping in to consume me.