The Carpenter’s Project

The building was in a poor state. The paint was peeling, and the bricks coated in a blanket of moss and grime and damp. It cast a menacing shadow on all that stood before it, and consumed whomever dared in darkness. In this case…it was me. Finding who had had the gaul to take my precious child from me and left only a bloody mess at my doorstep and a note telling me this address. I felt a sudden chill as I opened the door, and someone grunting, but it was distorted and almost deformed in its tone. Then, footsteps, far too quick to be human, came toward me. I froze as it saw me.

Towering, torn limbs finished with spidery, elongated fingers and what looked like appendages, almost human-like in its appearance. It moved to the side, like a mutilated person as it did so, the light throwing the bones sticking sickeningly out of the flesh into relief with a melancholy glow. It’s ‘clothes’ were torn and bloody, with revolting brown organs spilling from its ‘stomach’ Caves leaked maroon tears over a too-wide grin held with rusted, greenish nails, the teeth (jaggedly formed and sticking out at horrendous angles) acting as an anchor, or a surface in which they were secured. The smile was sadistic in its chilling way, intent on sabotaging someone’s happiness by tearing them limb from limb. Tears formed in my eyes and clouded my vision as the stench of rotting flesh took over my sinuses and overtook me like a poltergeist. Looking over it once more, I noted it looked quite lost. Abandoned, even…like an old and embarrassing toy that a child swept under a carpet after stripping the worth from it. Flesh dripped from its body, and hasty patches covered parts that had been taken from it. Dust acted as a coat for it, covering its clothes, as if it had been left here by the carpenter whom I had yet to meet. Needles acted as nails for the grotesque creature, and they made the decaying flesh surround them in cloud-like clusters, enraged and infected with who knows what. I was so lost in stomach-churning emotions that I didn’t notice it approach me.

Unnaturally, it moved rapidly, bones creaking against the fleshy boundaries as it did so. Just that move seemed to exhaust it, and it panted heavily, as if it had just run a marathon. A music box stuttered, then a twinkling tune played as it chased me, on all fours as if an animal. How can something so disgusting, so foul in its ways have so many relations to living creatures such as myself? The room turned to ice, and a high-pitched whistle filled the air, piercing my eardrums as I fled. Creak… went the bones as it let out an inhuman roar and took after me. The mould in the rooms seemed to reach out to it, and I ran faster and faster, but the footsteps and bones and floorboards groaned simultaneously as it sped up

Moans and shrieks joined the music as more mannequins were animated by disrepair’s infection, joining the Project in its goal. Heart pounding, I looked up to see a massive pit of the creations, crawling up and spilling out as if an endless sea of wood and flesh and nails. A sickeningly cold hand pressed around my neck, savouring the dread and choked pleas for mercy like a cool glass of water on a blazing summer morn

“Don’t worry, human…

It’s barely begun…”