Nyctophilia

Warning: graphic violence and sexual themes. Incredibly awful nightmare ahead.

Night falling, there is a strange broadcast on the radio. The muffled voice of the news anchor delivers the story that a group of men are going house to house and murdering families. I was shocked to hear this and there was a certain aura of doom about those words. In that moment I hear a commotion from down the road and a desperate, blood-curdling scream from a woman. The glow of a fire I can see in the reflection of the windows of the house across the street. I do not hesitate, but I grab my family and we trek through the woods behind the house, hiding in the pitch black of the forest in the middle of the night.

There we sat, fearfully. More screams were in the distance and I heard the sound of bombs detonating, guns firing, and screams pouring out into the night air. I listen in shock as my house is destroyed and I can see the glow of the fire rising over the treetops and brushing the underbelly of the clouds. They had caught onto us and began moving through the woods in a hot pursuit. I caught a glimpse of them, men in jackets and hoodies, wearing black gas masks. I run and run but my feet fail me. For some reason I am running in place, unable to move forward. I am tackled and dragged out into the street where two more masked men join me. One holds a staple gun and the other a serrated knife. I scream as I am pounded by a thick silver blade and shot in the leg with multiple metal staples.

Somehow I am laying alone in the street. The bombers are still ransacking the town, running about the roads. I got up and began running, somehow my wounds no longer afflicting me. I kept running until I reached my grandmother's house, a few miles away. It had also been completely obliterated. Rubble was everywhere and the remains smoked heaping black clouds into the air. Rounds are fired into the air all around me.

I then see the world behind the hard glass eyes of a gas mask. There is a medical needle in my hand filled with a strange black fluid. I stand with a group of other men, all wearing gas masks. I noticed that I was also wearing a black hoodie and dark sweat pants. They break the door of the house down and we began to move inside. There was a man inside with a shot gun, firing a round square into the chest of another madman. He dropped dead. I watch as another masked one punches the shotgun out of the man's hand and forces him into a bending-over position. With a hatchet he immediately beheads the man.

We moved throughout the house in search of more inhabitants. It took some time, but we stumbled upon a hatch in the wooden floor and pried it open, finding a woman and two children inside. As we dropped into the basement, they grabbed a hold of them all and began to strip them down until they were completely nude. They screamed, struggled, wailed. The children are molested and then I am invited over to them. One man shoves the little girl towards me. I inject her along the side of the neck with the needle and she begins to cough up blood. She falls and I emit a demented laugh, unlike any laugh I have ever heard. It was sick and vile and hellish. As the girl drops dead, the boy is brought forward. I notice that he is very young and obviously has not gone through puberty yet. I inject him under the chin, in the soft of the throat. He falls over as well. The woman is then brought to me, and after she is raped, I lay my needle down into her breast and she dies.

I blink, and I am somewhere else. I am myself again. No mask. No anything, for that matter. I was completely naked and my hands and feet were tied behind me. I am surrounded by more men in masks who throw several naked women next to me. In that instant they pounce upon us, ripping off their own clothes and defiling us. I am desecrated and afterwards lie there, screaming and crying. We, the victims, curl into the corner of the room together. We are all naked and I am the only male, yet I am far more afraid than they are. We are all a giant pile of pale, cowering flesh rubbing up against each other. I hide my face in the hair of a lovely young girl who is covered in blood.

Suddenly, someone else enters the room... It is me. An exact copy of myself, only dressed in dark clothing and wearing a plastic face mask. My double was carrying a large machine gun and began mowing down the madmen. Once the final enemy had fallen, he approaches me and helps me up. The other girls are still clutching to me and are holding to me as we stand together. Clothes appear on our bodies and we move outside. There are police cars roaming down the road and I see fallen bodies in gas masks scattered everywhere. They are in every lawn and every block and all across the road. The police vehicles squish them under their tires.

I stand there, watching. My double in the plastic mask is vanishing into the distance. I watch as he pushes into the bushes, falling under cover of the forest.