Nemo
by Cryohydra911
It looked up at me with sallow eyes, sunken into his decrepit skull; tear trails of blood stained taut, crusted cheeks. Lips drew tight against foul-looking teeth, the corners stretching to the edge of a lower jaw bone. Holes entered the skull where cartilage of ear and nose should be. It sat hunched in a corner, completely hairless; leathery and scarred skin barely covered bone, wiry sinew the only thing showing life in the rest of the skeletal body. The fingers ended in pointy claws with small, broken nails adorning both grotesque hand and foot.
My back was against a wall. The only door to this room was across it, next to where the thing had apparently been hiding the entire time. All my hairs stood on end, and it hurt to breath, I was so scared. I dared not move, in case it would attack me.
The silence stretched out between us in the torchlight. I forced myself to breathe, albeit short and shallow gasps, my hands nervously twitching against the wood planks of the wall behind me. The thing never moved. It just sat there, curled up in the corner, gazing into my eyes with sadness. I finally worked up the nerve to say something.
“Who – what are you?”
The creature flinched at my question.
“What are you?” I asked the gray form again.
It shifted a little, moving away from me and pressing its bony side into the wall. Those gray, sunken eyes never left my own, staring sideways at me.
“Can... can you understand me?” I asked hesitantly.
It looked away for a second, and then returned its gaze to me, moving its head up and down in an almost imperceptible nod.
“Can you talk?”
A visible shift in what appeared to be the creature's adam's apple produced a dry, husky swallow. It nodded again.
I worked up my nerve, and then took a small step forward towards it and the door. I kept my fingertips on the wall behind me.
“What are you?” I spoke once more.
Its eyes seemed to glisten with moisture, and it looked away again. I debated taking a step closer, and then a heaving, scratchy voice hissed through the room as the creature opened its mouth, and I took a step back as it spoke to me for the first time.
“I am nightmares,” it said, turning its mournful gaze back to me. “I am the thing that stalks all dreams, all fears. I am the boogeyman, the monster under your bed, the vampire. I go by many names.” It paused a moment, its lower jaw trembling. “But I am none of these things.”
I hesitated before questioning further; the hissing stung my ears and chilled me to the bone. “So what are you?”
The beast snorted once, twice, three times in what almost sounded like a slow laugh. “I'm nothing you know, or ever will.” It wrapped its bony arms tighter around itself and began rocking back and forth, removing its gaze from me and tucking its chin behind the knobby knees.
“Do you have a name?”
The thing shook its head. “I have no name I go by.” It stopped rocking and looked back at me. “But I have one I would like to be called.”
“What's that?”
A moment's silence. “Nemo.”
“Nemo?” I echoed dumbly. “Why Nemo?”
It took a moment, looking as if considering something. And then it unraveled and stood up.
My body cowered in the corner; I pressed myself against the wall, pulling my legs close to my chest, my heart beating hard in my ears.
He stood nearly eight feet tall; the top of his skull brushed against the peeled ceiling, bony shoulders scrunched up around his ear holes. I could see each rib as it radiated out from the sternum and wrapped around to the creature's protruding spine; an empty, desiccated gut was visible through the bundle of skin stretched taut between the chest and pelvis. A small shriveled something-or-other dangled between his thigh bones. Veiny sinews reached up from each thigh onto the hips, and created almost frost-like patterns under the skin. Spindly arms hung down, the fingertips of each ugly hand reaching almost to the knee. The thing's membrane was covered with knifelike impressions, almost like it had been cut time and time again.
“That,” the beast cracked once more, “is exactly the reaction of everyone I have met throughout the last three hundred years. They see me, and they run in terror.” He turned away... and I saw the bloody tears sliding down his face.
“I was driven from all the lands where people lived. I was called a demon, a spawn of Hell, and many more hurtful things... none of which are true. I was born with a neverending want to love, and share my wisdoms granted to me from birth. I want to help, I want to love.
“I thought perhaps somehow, some way, a person would wait, give me a chance to speak. But no. Humans cannot bear to look upon me. They shun me, beat me, try to kill me, drive me away.” He collapsed back into a sitting position against the wall, not bothering to wipe the drops of blood away from his cheeks. “But I cannot die, and every time I meet someone new, they strike me and bring fresh pain, or they run.”
“I'm still here.”
His eyes found mine. He smiled – a sickly, twisted Glasgow smile of melancholy.
“And I fear it is too late. For now I cannot remember any message I could impart that I had upon my creation.”
“So why Nemo?” I asked again.
He looked down. “Nemo. In Latin, it means human.”
“So you want to be human?”
He looked up at me again, the sad smile coming back wider, his lips parting farther into a nihilistic grin to reveal recurving fangs, browned and chipped. “No. Humans are so able to feel love... but you choose to feel fear instead. Something comes to your attention that you don't understand, you choose to fear it, run from it, deny that it can exist for any good.”
I stared at him, perplexed. “So then, why Nemo if you don't want to be human?”
His grin faded as he curled up into a ball again, seeming to shrink in size as he slowly wrapped his arms around his legs.
“It also means nothing. For that is what I wish to be. I no longer have purpose, any real identity, no reason to exist. I'm nothing but an eyesore.”
We sat in silence, both of us curled into our own little balls. Thoughts raced through my mind. Three hundred years? Wanting to share knowledge? Wanting to love? I glanced at the creature, taking in its hideous form. What if he's lying to me? What if he is some sort of demon, trying to trick me? Is such a horrifying being even capable of love?
Can I trust him?
“Why did you come here?” the creature croaked at me, snapping me out of my reverie.
“Because this place was said to be abandoned for thirty years and to be haunted, and I wanted to see if it was true.”
He stared unhappily at the floor. “So it would seem I am forced to move elsewhere again.”
He unfurled himself, and stood once again. He seemed a little shorter this time; he was stranding straighter, his head not bumping the ceiling anymore. He turned and slowly moved through the open door, bending under the doorframe.
“Hey...”
He kept walking, the light from my torch burrowing into his fleshy back.
“Hey, wait!” I stood up and quickly stepped outside, turning to where he had wandered out of sight. My torch passed over the walls of an empty hall, rotten beams from the ceiling fallen to the slat floor in showers of dust and rotten wood chips. Wallpaper peeled off the walls, faded beyond any recognizable pattern.
“Hello?” I called out, moving forward and looking into each room as I passed them. A kitchen with a collapsed wooden stove, a sort of bedroom with a moth-eaten mattress and a smashed dresser, a library with a few tattered books strewn about the floor along the empty rotting shelves and collapsed chairs. I called out again as I stepped into the foyer. I followed the beam of light as it passed over rubble of the collapsed stairwell and the open door I had come through. I listened, hearing nothing but the faint sound of crickets outside. The nearest sign of lived-in civilization was a good three miles away.
I made my way towards the open door, wondering if what I had seen was all a dream, if I had blacked out or something else. As I stepped over the threshold onto the first of three concrete steps down to the pathway leading up to the house, the sound of the crickets grew far louder, and I felt the chill of the midnight air seep through my clothes. I looked around again, searching outside for the creature.
I called out once more.
“Hello?”
My voice was answered with chirping and the hoot of an owl in the distance.
I turned back towards the house, debating whether I should go back inside or go home, when I felt an icy hand wrap itself around my shoulder. I froze up as I suddenly felt a presence behind me, a head lowering itself down next to my ear.
I waited for words, but heard nothing.
“N-Nemo?” I stammered, my teeth chattering. I couldn't turn around if I tried; my body felt paralyzed, locked in place.
A small puff of frigid air blew over my bare neck, sending a shiver down my spine. The hand on my shoulder released its grasp, and I felt myself shaking.
“Nemo, if that's you, please say something.”
I heard nothing. I didn't even feel the presence behind me anymore. Slowly, I turned around, pointing the torch in front of me like a weapon.
There was nothing there.
“Nemo, this isn't funny.” I began looking around frantically, breaking out in a cold sweat.
I heard a crack behind me, and I whirled around, directly into a shadowed face with burning yellow eyes. Before I could move, frozen hands gripped my arms, and I was staring into a face straight from Hell. My torch spilled light across an empty abdomen and a ribcage covered with a mottled gray membrane. I could see the vertebrae connecting the chest and the pelvis.
I couldn't speak. It was as if its touch turned my body to ice; I couldn't move,
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