Saturday, September 15, 2012

The Flatface

It had been six years since the incident. Six cruel and painful years. I have tried everything, a psychiatrist, emotional therapies, and for a while then it worked. I had forgotten the incident and lived my life, for quite sometime, normally. But today the memory came rushing in again. 6 years ago. Six years ago it had been a perfect Saturday. I was 7,and my dad had taken my brother and I to the park. I had played there for hours with my friends, playing tag and whatnot. The sky had turned vermillion and shades of pink enveloped the orange heavens , creating a peaceful hue. "Alice, let's go home," my father had said, carrying my sleeping older brother Candon in his strong arms.
"Oh, come on, dad!" I had complained, crossing my tubby arms across my chest. "Just one more game."
I begged and begged until he finally said yes.
"Fine, just a couple of hours more. After that, go straight home and no more excuses," said my dad. Our house was just a corner away from the park, so he didn't have to worry much about me getting home safe.
I went to my group of friends, and proposed to play a game of hide and seek. They all agreed, and the game had begin. We all hid as Jeffrey, my friend, counted to twenty. Some had hid inside the tube slide, while some climbed up the trees. Some couldn't seem to choose where to hide, but I was not one of them. I had known a perfect spot to hide. I hid amongst a dense bush, far from my other friends. It was an exciting feeling, hiding inside the bush, knowing that I was hiding in the best place to hide. Everything seemed so relaxing, the warm and humid air encircling me as I laid down on the cool and moist earth below. The breezes blew, creating a soft hushing whisper as it passed by. I relaxed my body and closed my eyes, finally realizing the fatigue that runs in my small body. Without my realization, I had fallen asleep.
A shriek. Its sound pierced and wafted in the air. My eyes shot open. The scream, it sounded like it's coming from a young woman. I kept my body on the ground, and I peered through the gaps between the leaves. All I was able to see with my sleepy eyes was the broad back of a man in a navy blue shirt and a pair of light blue jeans. He was cornering a terrified young woman. She was quite small, her wavy auburn hair fell about her pale face, her white shirt was crumpled and streaked with mud and dirt. Her dreamy blue pupils were dilated with fear, her whole body was shaking with fear, and her left suede black heel was missing.
"P-please," the woman begged shakily, her arm was stretched out in a protective way. She swallowed hard, and I could feel my own heartbeat ringing in my ears. I was scared. Too scared to even move or scream. "I will give you what you want," the woman continued.
"It's too late for that, you broke a promise," the man said in a deep, eerie voice. The man produced a dagger and sliced the woman's throat. The woman gasped and covered the wound with her jittering palm, her knees weaking until she finally fell down on a pool of her blood. I sat there, my whole body shaking as I stared at the dead woman. Tears welled up in my gray eyes, but I just sat there, motionless. The man, his sleeves stained with the woman's blood turned around, finally revealing his face to me. To my horror, I was staring straight at a monster. Instead of staring at a man's face, I saw something that only existed in nightmares. No eyes, no mouth, no nose, just a flat skin that served as its face. My heartbeat seemed to stop. I buried my face in my hands and cried silently. When I looked up, the monster disappeared along with the dead woman. All that was left was the pool of fresh blood.

  Dr. Norman, my psychiatrist had helped a lot. She had taught me how to forget that incident, using therapies and even hypnosis. It took me three excruciatingly long years to move on from that incident. My family had also been very supportive for me, and finally I was able to live my life normally, the incident had been wiped out of my head and only remembered as a terryfying nightmare. Everything had ran normally, until tonight.
Almost everynight since the past 6 years, a message was sent to my brain. The messages are usually in a form of an image, but I couldn't seem to understand what it meant. Tonight, I understood the message with perfect clarity. Flatface is real, and he's coming to get me.