“To my friend, Arshenique. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and allowing me to create my spin of it. You are one of the strongest people I know.” – D. Thom

Arshenique is glad to be home from an exhausting day at work. Her hands ache from typing all day, her feet hurt from walking up and down stairs with high heels on, and her knees have started squeaking from constantly getting up and sitting back down. As lead journalist at her news station, she never gets a break in those eight–sometimes sixteen–hours. The only thing to stop her from quitting because of the constant death threats she receives from angry locals demanding she erase some of the gossip she’s spread about them to boost her ratings are the bottles of vodka and tequila stashed in various places across the house. 

As she scrolls down twitter and facebook reading “die, bitch!” and “fuck you,” from almost everyone in her city, she cracks open a bottle and drink straight from the spout. Sitting at the dusty dinner table, lights off, feet propped up, she nearly falls out of her chair at a strange twitter comment. 

“Arshenique, one day you’ll find yourself drowning in your own blood, not a bottle of cheap liquor. I have something coming for you.” Their photo is just a black circle and the name is blank. She clicks on it to check the page; an error message pops up instead. She backs out and clicks it again, a black screen covers the display. Her thumb taps the screen over and over but nothing changes. “Damn battery must have died.” 

On her way to get the charger from her purse, a thud from the ceiling stops her in the living room. She switches on the lights, thinking she saw something move; and when the overhead light shines she sees something moving in the ceiling like a basketball traversing through water. The phone slips from her hands onto the floor, as she backs away the ball once moving in a circle stops, then creeps toward her. Arshenique runs upstairs to her bedroom, locks the door, grabs a bottle from under the bed, and dives under the comfort of her covers. Sometimes vodka plays tricks with her mind, whiskey tends to cancel it out.

Whatever it was in the ceiling, she may have seen it before, but blacked out and forgotten it. The way it moved in the ceiling gives her chills that make her throw back three quarters of the bottle. She convinces her drunken self that the cheap vodka made her hallucinate, making her comfortable enough to get out of hiding. In the bathroom are some sleeping pills to help her get to sleep before work in the afternoon. She opens the medicine cabinet, searches for the pills, grabs them and puts two in her hand. “Hopefully, I won’t wake up, so they’ll get their wish,” she mutters before putting them on her tongue and washing them down with liquor.

She closes the medicine cabinet and stares at her defeated reflection. A moment of silence for her pathetic state, then it’s off to bed with the bottle. But as she turns her head, the sound of glass breaking catches her heart and a dark red hand with long, sharpened claws grabs her by the ponytail, forcing her head into the shards of the broken medicine cabinet mirror. Arshenique would scream, but the glass shards gliding down her throat and cutting into her neck make it impossible. Her fading eyesight catches a glimpse of her own face, eye-sockets empty and mouth filled with spiky, nail-like teeth. 

Arshenique’s eyes roll to the back of her head. This is a different kind of numb…

Her scream startles her awake, still in the bathroom, hunched over the sink with the water running. She splashes the cold water on her face. A flash of the blackout nightmare makes her back away from the medicine cabinet with caution. It all felt so real, her face hurts like hell, but it must be from the alcohol. She’s sobering up; time to drink some more. The whiskey bottle on the floor is gulped down in seconds. In the bathroom cabinet, she reaches for another bottle and puts the empty whisky one inside. 

The bedroom is dark, however in her drunken stupor she can find her way through any poorly lit space, so long as there’s a spirit to lead her. Her hand touches a bottle on the bed, so she moves it over, the sound of glass breaking wakes her up again, another reminder of the strange dream. It sounded as if multiple bottles broke, yet she has no recollection of keeping more than one in the bed…okay, maybe a few? She gets back up to check the mess she made, her foot immediately steps on a shard of glass. Of course, she can’t feel anything, only the sensation of stepping in water, so she continues toward the light switch, but there’s something in the way. 

Her hands reach out, she knows the shape of a bottle all too well. A headache ensues. She asks herself how is it possible for a bottle to be directly in front of her. Arshenique feels for a way around the bottle, to her surprise, there’s more. An entire wall of them. The realization weakens her knees, forcing her to the ground as she tries to back away from the enigma. She’d been wasted before, five bottles in on a cold night desperate to fall asleep so she can get away from her thoughts, but this is more than a melancholy thought and well beyond the effects of alcohol. 

Too drunk to move fast enough, her eyes widen, watch in terror as the wall of bottles comes tumbling down like an avalanche. She’s at the bottom of a snowy hill, about to collapse under its weight in glass shards. Arshenique shields her face with her arms, yelping with each prick in her skin, bottles still filled without alcohol bursting on her open wounds, searing the skin. The shards dig deeper into her body, stabbing into her intestines, heart, and other vital organs. 

She succumbs to the pressure, her body a needle in a haystack…

Arshenique wakes up screaming. She rises like a vampire, the weight of the glass is present, yet the room is empty and her skin is free from wounds. She puts her hands to her head and cries, “what is this? Why am I not asleep? I want to go to sleep! I want to go to sleep…” 

The sleeping pills haven’t kicked in yet; she’s tempted to get more but whatever grabbed her from before might attack again. She staggers to her feet, gets in bed. There’s a bottle underneath her pillow. What number is this one? Five? She twists top open, presses the bottle to her lips and starts guzzling it all down. The refreshing taste of Jose Cuervo. 

Perhaps an old show would help calm her nerves, so she searches for the remote, last seen on the nightstand. Remote in one hand, bottle in the other, she turns on the television and takes a swig, and spits everything out when the gruesome image she saw before is the only thing on the screen. She tries clicking away from the frightening image of her face–teeth like rusty nails and gaping eye holes, as if someone peeled her face off–but every channel is the same thing. 

“What the fu–” Sharp nails grip into the bottom of Arshenique’s chin. The hand forces her head to tilt up, her eyes gaze into the black holes of her own face. Attached to the mask is a woman’s pale body hanging out of the ceiling; her body laced in glass and red spikes, like nothing she’s ever seen before. 

The mysterious woman wearing Arshenique’s face begins pulling her arm upwards. She grabs onto the woman’s arms, foolishly forgetting she was covered in glass and spikes, which stab into her hands. Just like an orange, her face peels back, the squirming of Arshenique’s legs rattle the bed frame until her heart stops from the shock. 

***

“You damage me. Now it’s my turn,” whispers a raspy, unfamiliar voice in Arshenique’s ear. Those words awake her; soft touches to her face ensure it was just another bad dream, or something else entirely. Now she questions if someone broke into her house to poison her supply. No doubt it could be any one of her fans online. A thought pops into her head: the strange account from twitter. 

She crawls out of bed, searches the bedroom for her phone. After a few minutes, she remembers dropping it on the floor in the living room because of the weird phenomenon in the ceiling. It’s too risky to go outside. It could trigger another nightmare. Best to just forget about things and try to sleep. So, Arshenique returns to bed and wraps herself in her blanket, afraid to look at the ceiling, watch television, go outside of the bedroom, or to the bathroom. 

The room is so cold. She stares into the blanket, her alcohol infused breath ensues a headache and her insides burn like they’re going to expire. She questions why she drank so much. It doesn’t even work anymore; proof in her lack of sleep and body pains. Shivering, she reaches her hand forward to see if there’s another bottle nearby, one thing that never fails is the warmth it brings. 

“You don’t get it do you?” The blanket is yanked out of Arshenique’s grasp, a tall, naked and pale body, torso rotted like the plague, stands before her, donning the mask of her peeled face. 

“What are you?” Arshenique cries out. 

The humanoid creature creeps toward her, places it’s knee on the bed near her face and says, “unfortunately, I’m you.” 

Arshenique’s heart thumps in her chest. “Wh–what do you m-mean?” 

“You can’t see it?” The creature backs away. It sticks its claws in it’s disgusting torso and pulls out the intestines, the other organs fall out into a pile on the floor. Its stomach, now empty, mirroring a dark abyss, somehow shows her everything. Within the darkness, Arshenique sees every bottle she’s ever drank, every negative side effect her drinking problem has done to her body, every time she’s made herself look foolish at a get-together because of the open bar, blacking out in front of strangers, all the money she’s wasted on liquor, embarrassing, drunk tweets, the family events she’s missed because she was too hungover to get out of bed, all of the awful words she’s said, everything her terrible habit has ruined. 

Fear has escaped her body, only the urge to be different remains.

***

“Good Morning, Cincinnati! This is Kiss 107. 1 radio with your morning news…” blares the clock radio.

 The bright sun burns her eyes as they flutter open, her next door neighbor is on cue with the lawn mower, and for the first time in years, there’s no headache banging against her skull. Arshenique sits up, squints out her window to bask in the sun’s illumination over the trees, Victorian style homes, various birds, and reflecting the shadows of people walking by. She questions noticing these details before. 

Arshenique brushes her teeth then showers, makes a small breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, makes a small batch of coffee, and enjoys it at the dining table. The coffee is too bitter, so she goes to the cupboard for sweetener. Bottles of liquor take up every space on the shelves. The scent of vodka turns her stomach, but brings forth an excellent idea. 

Bottle after bottle is opened and emptied into the kitchen skink. All of the bottles in the kitchen, bathroom, garage, under the bed, in the closets, in her car, in her purse, in the attic, all of it, every last drop is flushed away. She throws the bottles in a few recycle bins on the curb outside of her house, and while outdoors, she perks her nose up to the air and takes a big whiff. It’s a little chilly, so she jogs back inside to grab a jacket. The static of the radio she forgot to turn off mentions the time, which reminds her about her job. Being late was cause for a drink to suppress the stress of her boss possibly firing her, but right now, she couldn’t care less. She loves her job, however, the stress of ratings has turned her into a person she hates. 

On her way to the stairs, her foot steps on something else she’s forgotten–her phone. Damn. Of course, the screen is littered with notifications of missed calls from work, it’s never anyone else. She returns the call, he assistant picks up and she proceeds to tell him she isn’t going into work today. He insists the idea is stupid and could cost her the job, a possible demotion, or worse. Arshenique can’t remember her last vacation. Every day, her eyes are glued to a computer screen or her next drink; now, feels like the perfect time to relax. The nightmares from last night were strange and oddly realistic, she needs a few days to reflect. Again, the assistant urges Arshenique to change her mind, so she hangs up. 

She proceeds up the staircase to turn off the radio in her bedroom. As her finger approaches the power button, a raspy voice on the radio says, “and if you ever need my assistance again, it will be much worse.”

Like the debilitating blow of a metal bat to the stomach, a twinge in her stomach forces her to hunch over her bed–the pain she endured in her dreams last night, tenfold. The scars from the glass shards form on her skin and the pressure of her body being under them returns, followed by images of the creepy mask of her face. 

“I promise…I promise, I won’t,” Arshenique pleads, spitting up blood and vomit while scratching the floor to alleviate some of the pain. The radio’s staticy broadcast cuts out. The pain in Arshenique’s stomach fades away, along with the scars and thoughts of cursed images. “I promise, myself, I’ll never drink again.”

The End