Coming out of his house, the expressions on Sam's face once again turned blank, taking out a pocket-sized book from his bag. he began walking in the direction of his highschool while reading that book.
Sam spent majority of the time of his every day life reading books, not because he loved reading them but because he was scared – scared of himself and the deranged murmurings that kept resounding in his mind.
Those murmurings never left him alone and were sometimes so faint that noticing them was almost impossible but the other times were loud enough to make his head spin.
They all seemed to be hell-bent on coverting him into a person just like them – vicious, brutal, bloodthirsty and filled with rampant fury & resentment towards the whole world.
*****
While on his way, he heard someone laugh behind him, Sam stopped walking and turned his head around just out of pure curiousity. He saw that it was the sound of laughter of a group of youths on their way to highschool, just like him.
Seeing them laugh and joke around themselves, Sam could not help reminiscing about the time when he was just like them – a person enjoying his life to it's fullest with not a care in the world.
Those were the best moments of his life, he had everything one would desire – a loving family, a household which was quite wealthy and a life filled with joy and happiness.
But.
It all changed that night, he was only seven at the time he started having that nightmare. At that tender age, he had to go through literal hell almost every night.
After that first night, he started to dread falling asleep. Those extreme emotions that he felt everytime in that nightmare was not something a child's fragile heart could handle and with each successive day it kept on getting worse.
Seeing Sam's condition, his father spent money like water and spared no effort, just in the hopes of finding a way to get a solution to Sam's suffering.
The so-called world's best psychiatrists and neurologists had nothing but disappointment to offer and even approaching the self-proclaimed seers, fortune-tellers and clairvoyants had no results.
After years of countless fruitless attempts, Sam started losing whatever hope that was left inside him.
The ever-increasing intensity of his nightmare did not help either, eventually reaching at a point where he almost went insane. It was around that time, he started hearing those whispers in his head.
His parents who were his only hope, themselves did not have the heart to see the rapidly declining state of their only child, which showed adverse effect on their own physical and mental condition.
And so, here he was, lying to them about his nightmare suddenly disappearing on it's own just like it had first begun. Just so that they won't blame themselves for his condition.
Snapping out of his thoughts, Sam sighed and increased his pace of walking and once again concentrated inside the book in his hand.
*****
A few minutes later, Sam perceived something strange around him and stopped walking.
Inspecting his surroundings, he noticed to his surprise that the regular hustle and bustle of the area he was currently in, was nowhere to be found.
The place which was usually filled with various activities was eerily quiet and appeared rather gloomy.
Except Sam, there was no signs of any other person in that area and even the group of youths trailing behind him, who were there just a few moments ago were nowhere to be found.
Witnessing this strange occurance which he was not familiar with, Sam did not know what to make out of it.
Just then he heard an indistinct sound of something being crunched from an alley near him, which although unclear, was easy to make out because of the surrounding silence.
Maybe it was because of this bizzare situation he was in or probably something else, that the moment he heard that crunching he felt chills run down his spine.
Sam found himself instinctively distancing away from that crunching sound, his mind telling him to run.
Run and escape somewhere far away from here!!
But unfortunately for him, it was already too late.
*****
"What the hell is that?!" was Sam's first thought, gazing at the source of that weird crunching sound, slowly appear out of the alley.
He did not have words to describe the thing? he was currently in the presence of.
That thing was something that should not be alive, but there it was, all alive!
That is, if you consider the state it was in as being alive.
What was before him was a black cat?.
Well atleast it appeared to be one, if only just barely.
It was crawling on the ground, in a way that was physically not possible, steadily advancing towards him and with each movement making the same crunching sound from all over it's body – the sound of it's bones scraping and breaking from all it's movement.
It had marks of ruptured flesh all over it's body.
It's limbs looked like mangled lumps of flesh, on the verge of being torn apart from it's body and it's eyes (or eyeballs to be exact) were not present in their sockets but were instead hanging near it's mouth the optic nerves barely keeping those eyeballs from falling on the ground, away from the head and despite that, those eyes appeared to be staring straight at him.
But.
What frightened Sam more than it's zombie-like appearance which might be enough to give anyone watching a lifetime trauma, was the black miasma oozing out from every openings in that living-horror's body.
Just one glimpse of that miasma filled Sam's mind with fear of unimaginable degree – something he had only ever felt from gazing at insides of the abyss in his nightmare, which was many times more intense than what he was currently experiencing.
The moment Sam saw that abomination, he immediately tried turning around wishing to run as far as possible from that damned creature.
And just as immediately he realised that his body seemed to have stopped functioning, becoming immobile!