Optophobia

CW: The following story contains instances of Violence, Blood, Pregnancy, Self-Harm, Suicide, Mental Illness, and references to child abuse and abduction which may be too much for some beings to endure. Listener discretion is advised.

{Intro Music}

This is Queer Ghoul. An anthology of short queer horror stories written and produced by me, Adriana Oister, pronouns she/her and they/them. 

With various tales of horror, suspense, mystery, and science fiction, I in the role of “The Narrator”, will introduce you to a diverse set of characters each of whom trapped in their own hellish landscapes, and teeth-clenching nightmares.

{Intro Music slows down…then picks back up}

Monologue: For those who don’t know, the word “phobia” comes from the Greek word “phobos,” meaning “horror” and “fear.” So, tell me, what are you afraid of? For what your fear is, can say a lot about you as an individual. There are such phobias like arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, but I’m looking for an answer which lies even deeper. Is it atelophobia (AT-EL-O-PHOBIA) or atychiphobia (UH-TICK-UH-PHOBIA), the fear of imperfection and the fear of failure? Catagelophobia (JELLO)? The fear of being ridiculed? Necrophobia? The fear of death or things that are deceased?See, every phobia no matter how seemingly irrational, usually stems from a trauma in that particular person’s life. A woman in this story for example, Isabel Santiago, pronouns she and her, has Optophobia. The fear of opening one’s eyes. There are scary things happening every day in our world to make anyone want to shut their eyes and turn away, but Isabel’s fears come from her past, the past that has come back into her present. As you’re soon to learn, Isabel is about to receive help from the unlikely source of Lucinda de la Cruz, pronouns she and her, and together they’re going to learn that things about their situation are not just black and white. I now present to you…OPTOPHOBIA.

 

Optophobia

When Lucinda heard the news that pregnant Isabel had drenched her eyes in acid, she was already boarding her flight at the JFK airport.

            She sat in the back of an Uber studying the iPad in her lap as the Floridian nighttime scenery zipped by through her window. She paid no attention to the sparkling stars or the palm trees they passed in the Honda Accord as she scrolled with her finger through photographs of a shadowy figure with long black hair obstructing her face, followed by two separate photos of a man and woman’s mugshots. She read through scanned journal entries of her own handwriting from her youth and official police documentation. 

The last document held a transcript of a testimonial from a seven-year-old girl about her account of what had taken place.

The driver kept scrutinizing her through his rearview mirror.

            “It was a woman.” One of the testimonial paragraphs started. “She wasn’t pretty. Her hair is long and black, and she never lets you see her face. I can’t see her eyes, but I know she’s watching me. She’s always in my room, or out my window. She touches me when I sleep, she talks to me and tells me to leave. She tells Mom and Dad the same things. They don’t know that I know. But I can hear them shouting about it.”

            The driver parked the Accord in the front entrance of the Tallahassee hospital.

            Lucinda powered off her iPad, and placed it back into her red handbag, strapping it over her shoulder.

“Here you go Miss,” The driver said.

“Thank you so much.” She smiled at him and opened her car door.

            “Wait.” 

            She paused and her deep brown eyes met his cloudy gray in the rearview mirror. She prayed that he wouldn’t say what she thought he was about to say.

            The driver cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you. If I don’t, it’ll drive me crazy. You look familiar. I feel like I’ve seen you before. And your name. Lucinda de la Cruz? I can’t place it, but I feel like I should know who you are. Should I?”

Lucinda tucked some of her black locks behind her ear.  She was used to encounters like this, and while at times it led her to praise, it mostly ended in mockery and embarrassment. Her heart clenched, but at this point in her life she knew how to play the game. She never dulled her smile. “I’m sorry. You must be mistaken. I’m just as average as anybody. There’s nothing special about me.”

The driver turned his head, his eyes moving like ping pong balls as he looked at her. “Positive?”

            “Positive.” She replied.

            When he found the chance to do so he would look her up online and know that she had lied.

            She saw the driver nod and got out of the vehicle. They both exchanged a wave as he rounded the corner and sped away. She sighed and felt her shoulders slump. She pulled out her phone, which opened to the Uber app, and she punched in to give the driver an expensive tip and a five-star rating. The phone buzzed while in her palm with a text which read “Love you! Stay safe! You’ve got this! Make sure you drink water!” She smiled and quickly replied to it before she placed the phone back into her bag next to the iPad and her bottles of medication.

            She walked through the automatic doors and past the grouped together sets of wheelchairs as she stepped foot into the chilled air-conditioned lobby where a waft of cleanliness product punched her in the face. There were no security guards, or anyone waiting to ask her if she had flu-like symptoms in the past seven days. The place was deserted as the day plunged towards its end. The fluorescent strips of light above her blinked. The small café was dark and had bars pulled down over it, which Lucinda thought was probably a good thing since she already drank four large Dunkin coffees since landing alone.

Instead, she went over towards the electronic directory sign, and went through the list of medical sections and elevator directions until she found the one she had been looking for. 

Goosebumps trickled down her arms as out of the corner of her eye, she saw that she was being watched.

            A woman with long black hair was peeking at her from the corner of the hallway by the elevators.

            She turned her face to it, and the woman hid.

            The lobby floor was bright white, shining and pristine. But creeping out over it from that same corner, was a lingering cloud of black mist.

            Lucinda raised an eyebrow. “This can’t be good.” She said as she gravitated towards it, passing empty waiting rooms and pitch-black front desks where during open hours people would be waiting to get blood work. She went past the large elevator sign and rounded the corner.

            Something came at her, and she shoved her body tight up against the wall and got out of the way. Just in time.

            Two men in bright blue scrubs were navigating a large gurney with a pale wrinkled old man lying on it. Oxygen tubes were connected to his nose and his eyes fluttered. He was groaning. They were going so fast that they almost hit her. They didn’t give an apology as they sped away although Lucinda didn’t expect one.

She refocused onto the figure, who was nowhere to be seen. But the mist was still there, floating and shifting around on the floor. 

She pressed a hand down onto her maroon colored skort and got down on her knees next to the mist. She was aware that if anyone would come by, they would find it strange for a forty-two-year-old Filipino woman to be crawling on the floor.  

If they recognized her, they probably wouldn’t think anything of it.

Her other hand came up towards her neck and clutched onto the circular gold pendant which rested against her ivory blouse. She slid the top of it to the right with her thumb, revealing the magnifying glass hidden in its center. She bent closer to the darkness. The mist split apart and formed thick tentacles. They snapped forward and coiled themselves around her arms like a boa constrictor. 

She dropped the pendant which was caught by its gold band, and she released a short cry as the tentacles squeezed. They grew and grew and grew out of the cloud, jerking her down and gliding their arms into her eyes. 

            She was expecting burning or perhaps a frozen sensation. Some level of aching. Something having to do with pain. And that’s exactly what she got, but not in the way she thought.

            Her eyes grew glassy and wet, tears sprang from them and trickled down her cheeks. Fat droplets that she couldn’t control, and along with them, with each blink of her eyes, the color from her vision disappeared. Her clothes, her skin, everything she saw had become different tones of gray, black, and white. The world looked to her like she was watching a noir film, or perhaps more accurately an episode from the original Twilight Zone series.

            “This definitely isn’t good.” She said as she studied her fingernails, they were painted in red, but now they were black.

            A voice rattled in her skull, and to her intense shock, it was her own. Except she wasn’t controlling it, and the voice was speaking with much more devilish of a tone. “Now you come back to her, after all this time.” The vibration of it shook her spine. “But do you really think you can help her? You can’t even help yourself.”

            She jumped back against the grayscale wall and rubbed at her eyes and wiped at the ongoing tears. She attempted to quail the sinking low feeling in her chest. “Who are you?” She asked.

            It didn’t answer.

            She looked over towards the elevators just in time to notice the keypad next to the C Elevator and a gray potted plant was blinking the down arrow. The doors to it creaked open, but not all the way. They opened only just enough where through the crack of white light, Lucinda could see the familiar black figure standing straight in the middle. 

“Hey, wait! Stop!” She said as she sprinted towards the elevator.

            The doors closed on her. 

            “Come back here.” She slammed on the down arrow multiple times, before banging hard with her fists at the elevator. “Come back here. What do you want?”

The mist was still wrapped around her hands and arms like snakes, clouds swirled in her vision and her ears rang. Another violent vibration crawled down her spine and tried to pull her away from the elevator. 

But she wouldn’t let it.

            The voice spoke again. “You’re a disappointment to your family, your ex-wife whom you know you married far too young, to the people you claim you wish to help. If you had any friends, you would be a disappointment to them as well. And that young girl you care about so much, you know you’re unfit to ever be considered a mother. How are you supposed to even guide her in life when your own is a tragedy?”

            Lucinda only banged harder against the elevator doors. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

            The elevator dinged, but Lucinda didn’t hear it against the pounding of her fists against metal.

            The doors came open as her fist was raised mid-air.

            A custodian with a mopping bucket stared at her in horror and shielded his face with a Wendy’s soda. “Don’t hurt me.” He said.

            She froze, placing her arms back at her sides. A blush rose to her tanned cheeks. Well, normally tanned cheeks. To her, her skin was currently a darker gray. She was sure that her eyeliner was probably also smudged from the crying, which she just noticed had stopped. “Sorry.” She said, humiliation swarming her throat. 

The janitor didn’t wait for an explanation as he bolted out of the elevator and rolled his cart down the hallway.

            Lucinda sprang into it herself, and eyed the silver interior, before tapping onto the white button for the fifth floor. She swiped some black particles of dirt off her clothes and pulled out her phone to fix her make-up in her reflection, and during this she saw that the mist vanished from her body. Yet, the grayscale vision didn’t go away.

She had a bad feeling about what was taking place.

When the elevator doors opened, she stepped through into a series of hallways and doors leading into hospital rooms both occupied and vacant. The walls and floor were still that painful bright white. She passed by a few hospital workers in scrubs tapping at keyboards next to medical equipment. None of them paid her any mind.

“It was a mistake to ask her here.” She heard a feminine voice just down the hall.

            Another voice answered. “She was there when all of this happened to her. She’s done great things; she can help her.”

            “Anyone who actually knows her history knows that wherever she goes, trouble follows, and that’s the last thing we need more of right now.”

God, they were talking about her, weren’t they?

            Lucinda approached the voices and came across the man and woman talking just outside of one of the hospital rooms, its door shut. The Latino man in the wheelchair, who she recognized by his voice and investigating his social media profiles was Nestor Santiago. She didn’t recognize the caucasian woman next to him, who leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. Neither of them noticed her approach.

            “I heard after her little binge; she didn’t even finish this Psychology degree of hers you keep referring to.”

            Lucinda couldn’t help but interject. “Actually, I do have my Master’s. It’s only my Doctorate I never finished.” She said to the woman, whose face sneered at the Filipina. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me, wasn’t it? I would have given you a more proper greeting, but it seems like you already know a lot about me.” Lucinda inwardly winced at her words. Antagonizing was never the way to go. That was not the person she was.

            The worried expression on the man’s face brightened when seeing Lucinda. “Lucinda? Thank you so much for coming.” He said as he shook her hand. “Please excuse whatever comes out of Susan’s mouth, she’s a family friend who's been helping us during this. We’re all just very stressed at the moment.”

“I understand. Has there been any more news on Isabel?”

            “She’s going to be fine. Her eyes are bandaged at the moment. Luckily, she won’t lose her vision. Although that seems like what she wanted desperately. They want to keep her here for observation.” 

            “Naturally.”

            Susan stared at Lucinda. “I don’t see what more you could do. Doctors can’t seem to help her with whatever fear she’s dealing with, so how in the hell is Nancy Drew going to figure it out?”

            Lucinda ignored her. “Can you please describe to me her Optophobia?”

            Nestor sighed. “It’s been going on for months now, since we first started trying for a baby. I’m transgender so we went through IVF. She’s terrified to open her eyes, because she says that the woman is back. That she speaks to her in her sleep and tells her that if she opens her eyes, something bad is going to happen. It’s only gotten worse, now it's threatening her life and our baby’s. If she was willing to throw acid in her eyes, who knows what she’ll do next.”

            “How far along is she in the pregnancy?”

            “Two months.”

            Lucinda nodded and rested her hand across the gray door’s silver handle. “When I was in school, I interned under a brilliant psychologist. During my time with him, we only ever helped one person with Optophobia. The man refused to open his eyes. He didn’t claim to see a woman like Isabel has, but his anxiety was just as bad. Eventually through vigorous rounds of therapy which lasted months, he made a breakthrough. The fear of opening his eyes was triggered through trauma from childhood. The most common reason for Optophobia actually. I’m going to do whatever I can to help all three of you through this.” She said. “I’ll talk to Isabel in private.”

            “I don’t think that’s smart.” Susan said. “You’ll only upset her more, and who knows what you have in that bag. Some booze maybe?”

            “Susan,” Nester warned.

            “I’m asking serious questions. I sure hope you came here with a driver, because we all know what happens when you get behind the wheel.”

            Lucinda took a deep breath. Kindness. Kindness. “That was a long time ago. I’m not perfect by any means. I’ve never claimed to be.”

            “That’s obvious. Isabel could have killed herself and the baby. I hate that we live in a world where it seems like the wrong people die. It’s people like you that should do everyone that service.”

            “Susan! That’s horrible to say!” Nester said. “Lucinda happens to be a Giovine Detective. She deserves respect.”

            “Giovine? Well, excuse me. I guess in the city up north even the rats get their chances to crawl back up from the gutters to the surface.”

            Lucinda’s lips were tight. “I’m going to go talk to Isabel now. Unless anyone 

else has anything more they’d like to tell me.”

            Nestor glanced up at her. “Again, thank you for coming.” He said.

            At the same time Susan said. “You lost all respect from anyone the moment you started acting foolish.”

            Lucinda gave Nestor a small smile as she lightly pushed Susan away from the door and slipped herself through into the room.

            A wet warm droplet crashed onto the back of her neck.

            She wiped at it and saw that the moisture on her hand was a deep gray. It dripped off of her hand and formed tiny puddles on the floor, turning the white floor the same dark shade.

            She really wished she had another coffee, with some water of course.

            And was grateful that she took her pills earlier.

            The curtains were closed over the large glass window which took up most of the opposite wall, the only light in the room was from a lamp at the side of the bed. The silver light projected black shadows of both Lucinda and the woman sitting up.

            The woman’s bed was raised up and flush against her back, a white pillow cushioned her head. An IV was stabbed into her veins. A light gray blanket was draped over her body, and her head was wrapped in layers of white gauze which covered her eyes. Her cheeks had dark gray, almost black, burn blotches which seemed to have come from her eyes. The acid.

            “Isabel?” Lucinda asked, sitting in the chair next to her, taking off her handbag and setting it behind her. “I know you can’t see right now, but do you know who I am? We’ve met before. Last time I saw you, you were seven years old. Last time you heard me, I was eighteen.”

            Isabel’s cold pale hand snapped over Lucinda’s wrist.

            “I remember who you are.” She said. “Lucinda de la Cruz. The Detective Teen. I guess half of that is what you were, not who you are. You came and helped me and my family, and when you solved the case you promised you’d visit me again.” Her head turned slowly towards Lucinda. “You never did.”

            Lucinda winced as shame ate at her heart. She was not having it easy today. “You’re right. I didn’t visit you. I’m sorry.”

            “I’m sure I’m not the only person you didn’t deliver a promise to.”

            Heat bubbled up behind Lucinda’s eyes. There’s the pain. She took another breath. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m assuming that Nestor called you.”

            “He did.”

            “I’m also assuming that you didn’t even remember me or what happened, so you had to do research before coming here. You’ve solved so many cases, I wouldn’t expect you to remember them all.”

            “That is not true,” Lucinda shook her head, even though Isabel couldn’t see it. More spirit was in her voice. “I remembered you. The bad guys are the ones that are sometimes hard to keep track of. But I remember the good ones. I remember playing and talking with you. I remember the haunting of the woman and the things that were done to you and your parents. I may have been involved in countless mysteries, but they were never just games to me. I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people like you. I did refresh myself on the case before coming here, but I always remembered you.”

“I don’t know if I really believe that. I don’t know if you even believe that yourself. You saw what those people did, what they tried to do to me. They kidnapped me. They locked me in the basement. They tried to kill me. You outsmarted them and had them arrested, but then you left me. You left me scarred. You left me scared. You left me for the next person haunted by a mystery and then the next and the next, leaving behind a trail of fear just so you could selfishly indulge in thrill.”

            Tears ran down Lucinda’s cheeks, and they were not caused by a mysterious mist. Her hand flushed against her mouth to choke the forming sobs. She was like that for a minute, going through breathing exercises, before she moved her hand away. “I understand why you’re upset, and you have every right to be. But I swear to you now, that I’m here for you. And we’re going to figure this out.”

            “Every person I talk to just thinks I’m crazy. You’ll be the same way. Just like the doctors. Debating if I have Schizophrenia or telling me I should be on medication. You’ll think I’m just delusional. That I’m making all of this up. That I’m irrational for never wanting to see anything again.”

“I don’t believe in using such ableist terms, nor do I believe you have Schizophrenia. Most of what people know about the disorder are only from what they’ve seen from horror movies, so there’s a lot of misconception. Same for medication. SSRIs and SNRIs don’t always help everyone, but they do help many people get through their conditions like Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, ADHD. There can be side effects depending on the person and their genetics, but overall they’re very safe.” She stopped herself from going on more of a doctor's speech. This isn’t what she needed right now. “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve seen some weird things over the years. I know what’s possible. Now, what’s been going on?”

There was a long pause, and for a moment Lucinda believed that Isabel was choosing to ignore her. She finally spoke. “The woman is out there. She’s watching me. Every time I open my eyes, she’s there.”

“Isabel, before you continue I just want you to know that the woman that terrorized you and your family years ago, was really just another human being named Sandra Martin. Her and her husband Chad Martin were trying to scare your family off to move the bodies they hid of those they had killed. Both of them are still in prison as we speak.”

“No. This is different. This woman isn’t human. Every time I would open my eyes she’d be watching me. This wide smile on her face, I couldn’t see the red, still I knew that her lips were smeared in blood, and she had long black hair. Even when I have them shut, I know she’s there. She whispers in my ears, even when I sleep.”

Couldn’t see the red? Perhaps like Lucinda could only see gray. “What does she tell you?”

“She tells me that something bad is going to happen to me when I awake. When I open my eyes. So I don’t. Not anymore. I can’t. I’m too scared.”

Lucinda squeezed her hands. “When did she start telling you something bad was going to happen? Did she specify what?”

“Months ago. She won’t tell me what it is. But she’s watching me. She’s waiting for it to happen. But I won’t let it happen to me or Nestor. I won’t let it happen to my baby.”

“Would you say that the woman appeared around the time you found out you were pregnant?”

“Before actually.” Isabel swallowed a ball forming in her throat. “Please, don’t let anything happen to my family. Not again.”

Pieces of a puzzle were beginning to click into place in Lucinda’s mind. “I imagine that you must be feeling stressed about becoming a mother. On top of the woman who’s stalking you. Especially because of what happened to you when you were younger.”

Isabel went quiet.

Lucinda gently shook her hand. “Isabel?”

Isabel raised her finger, and motioned for Lucinda to come closer to her bandaged and blotched face.

“What?”

Isabel answered her in whispers. “She’s here.”

Lucinda looked around the dark room. “The woman?”

“She’s watching us.”

“Where is she? Do you know?”

“Keep your voice down.” Isabel motioned for her to come closer.

“Isabel, where is she?”

“Don’t move.” She said. “She’s right behind you.”

A hand flattened across the top of Lucinda’s head.

The pitch black bone fingers curled over her forehead and tapped against it. The tips of the fingers dangled in front of her vision, brushing against her nose and eyelashes.

Lucinda didn’t allow herself to panic. She’s seen worse. But it was still unnerving. She twisted in the chair, the hand pulled away, and she stood face to face with the female apparition.

“I know,” Lucinda said to Isabel. “I see her.”

“You-You see her? You actually see her?”

“In clear black and white…and gray.”

“You have the grayscale vision too? That looks like a film from the TCM channel?”

“Yes.”

The woman faced forward, not moving an inch. Her black hair covered all of her face, except for the lips, the smile that was carved into it, and holding it in place were staples at the edges. It was smeared in gray. The ghost woman from Lucinda and Isabel’s past had a face made of rubber. The face on this woman’s bottom half was that of a corpse.

“How can you see her, see the world in that way like I do, and no one else can?”

Lucinda dismissed the question, but only for the moment. “Do you mind if I try to talk to her?”

“You’ll wish you didn’t.”

“I’ll take my chances. I’ve done more questionable things.” Lucinda stared at the woman, but spoke to Isabel alone. “I need you to understand that no matter what you hear, whatever you think is happening. Whatever fear you’re experiencing. It’s very real. But it’s also very dismayed by strength. The love you have, hold it close to your heart and mind. And you and your child will be protected. And remember to just breathe.”

Isabel let out a weak reply.

The apparition didn’t flinch.

“You must be the woman I keep hearing about? You were watching me when I first came here, weren’t you?”

The ghost cocked her head. 

“You don’t need to be shy with me. I only want to talk. Clearly you’ve been watching Isabel for months now, warning her of misgivings if she is to open her eyes. I was wondering if you could tell me. What should we be afraid of?”

The woman leaned her face closer, moving her mouth towards Lucinda’s lips.

Lucinda raised her hand in front of her face. “Sorry, but I haven’t kissed a demon since my twenties, and I’m not going to start again now.” That came out of nowhere for Lucinda, that urge from her teenage years to be a little sassy. “Whatever you want to say to me, whatever you want to do with me, you’re going to have to do it in a different way.”

The ghost floated backwards. Slowly. Slowly. It’s back pressed against the wall. She stilled. Her smile never flinched.

Something from behind wrapped around Lucinda’s waist, and yanked her back.

Lucinda was thrown into the wall with a crashing thud. She sat up and rubbed the back of her head. “I bet Freud never had to deal with this.” She said, opening her eyes to see that the room was still dismal, but the window and door were gone.

“Lucinda? Lucinda? What’s going on?” Isabel asked, her fingers clutching onto the bed’s thin mattress.

She got back onto her feet, and scowled at the room. Under her breath she muttered something in Tagalog. “I’m okay, just do as I told you, and you’ll be fine.” She said. 

Her eyes met with the apparition, who was still just standing there with a smile. Unfazed.

“The woman has been haunting you. But really she’s only the messenger I’m afraid. She’s not the one we should be concerned about.”

Lucinda winced, her ears rang as the voice imitating her own clattered in her head. “Interesting. You’ve tried to end it before, haven’t you? You’ve at least thought about it. Let me help you.”

“Reveal yourself.” She said aloud. “I’ve had enough of you. You’re not fooling me.”

A physical manifestation of the monster morphed in front of her. It didn’t have eyes, a mouth, or hands, or legs. No trace of a face. It was a tower of black mist that absorbed its side of the room. It laughed, still in her own voice. “You think that you’re too smart for me. You think that you know how to defeat me. You and I both know that’s not true. You always struggle, and you try to hide it away like a masquerade.”

“I’m not scared of you.” Lucinda said.

“Oh really?”

Lucinda stared at the creature, whose streams of tentacle mist slithered towards her, and snapped around her ankles. She tugged her legs against the mist, but it's hold grew heavier. As fast as a crack of a whip more tentacles came for her and grabbed hold of both her wrists, raising her arms up in the air. The muscles in her shoulders burned as she cried out in pain. A fury of tears rushed down her face.

Isabel screamed.

The mass of mist came for Lucinda. It overtook her and swallowed her body whole. 

It encased her into a pulsing cocoon of night.

The tentacles tightened. They turned sharp like blades and cut into her skin. “I find it fascinating.” The voice reverberated the sack, overloading Lucinda’s sensory as her body was quivering. There was no temperature inside. There was nothing but her agony. “Why do you keep trying when you’re just a waste?”

“Stop talking.” She managed to spit out. She was choking on her tears, the swelling in her throat.

“Open up your mind some more, let me see your pain, let me make it go away. I can do that for you. Make it all go away. You can stop fighting. You can end it. You have the choice.”

“Shut…up. You’re just a psychosis.” Lucinda felt a pull in her brain, an unexplainable influence which attempted to turn and unlock the metaphorical safe of trauma lodged within.

The cocoon started to overheat, the warmth far worse than the Floridian humidity. The demon spoke. “You came all this way to help her again, after all these years, after what happened, and even she has lost faith in you.”

“You might as well give it up. I’m winning…actually, I’ve already won. My brain has increased levels of serotonin right now, a shield to your mind games.”

“All shields are penetrable the longer you stab them.”

“True. But I won’t ever give up. I’ve come so far and I’m not stopping now. I made a mistake, I’ve made multiple mistakes, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthless. I know I’m loved.”

Her arms flailed against the mist, the tentacles loosened. A portion of the black barricade ripped, and a hole appeared. 

“You said it yourself, you are nothing special.”

Lucinda clenched her jaw, forcing her mind to go silent. She broke away from the tentacles, and threw herself through the hole and face planted on the hospital room floor.

She laid there, coated in sticky sweat. Her hair clung to her skin. She looked up at the creature as she attempted to get her breath back. Her eyes were still wet.

“Lucinda? What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“If you won’t give in, then I know she will.” The voice said as the creature throbbed towards the woman in the bed.

“Isabel!” Lucinda shouted. “Don’t let it get to you, that’s what it wants! Breathe!”

The mist soaked itself through Isabel. Lucinda watched with alarm as the bandaged pregnant woman laid unmoving in its belly. 

There was a long pause and Lucinda controlled her own breathing. The tears had stopped.

The mist twitched and soon began to shake intensely. Lucinda backed away from it and shielded herself with the striped dark gray chair in the corner.

The apparition woman stayed still.

The creature made an unpleasant sound, like it was choking. It sputtered gray droplets across the room. A hole opened in the center, and Isabel’s body was thrown back down onto the bed.

The black void creature shrank. Smaller. Smaller. The smaller it got the more it absorbed the grayscale of Lucinda’s vision. The whites, gray, and blacks melted and were replaced with everything’s original color. Including her maroon skort, golden pendant, and tanned skin. The room was still white but at least the chair had some shades of green in it. The hospital bed was light blue.

And the apparition woman’s lips were scarlet red with blood.

The creature was now tiny and resembled bubbling ink.

Lucinda stomped down on it with her shoe.

The door and window reappeared.

She sighed in relief and rushed to Isabel’s side, seeing for the first time the reddish-brown scars of dripping acid down her cheeks. “Isabel! Are you okay?”

“It’s gone. She’s gone. She’s not there anymore.”

Lucinda looked over towards the wall. The apparition woman was no longer there staring.

“Yeah, they’re gone. I watched the creature die. She must have left right after.”

Isabel’s hand grabbed onto Lucinda’s arm. “How did you defeat it, how were you able to survive that darkness? It was horrible. Every fear, every pain from that experience just flooded back all at once.”

“It was an aswang, a demon. I’ve seen them before, they thrive in hospitals especially. Each one does it’s own thing. This one was a form of a psychosis, you could say. It latches on to people experiencing pain, trauma, mental health struggles, and it manipulates all of it and uses that struggle against the person to hurt them, to distort their reality. The reason you and I could see it and not them was because we were both connected to that same event. It saw me as a threat, maybe as an opportunity for another victim. I defeated it the same way you did. By not giving in. ” A small smile crept on Lucinda’s face. “Except I had years of therapy and medication of my own to help me out. I have Depression and Anxiety, I’ve had them now for a long time. I’m used to that on-the-edge feeling that comes with those conditions, much like how the mist wanted us to feel. Even with help, that feeling, that dread can and will always come back. Sometimes it's triggered and other times, it just happens. The key is to not give in to the monster when it does come. No matter what they say. No matter what they promise.” 

Lucinda lifted up her shoe, and saw the squiggly small creature wiggle like a slug under the bottom of the flat.

“Over the years I’ve been poisoned, run over, stabbed, shot at, shoved, spit on, locked in trunks and basements and tombs. But the absolute worst demons I’ve had to face, have always been my own.”


{Outro Music}

Outro: For the written version of the story you just heard and other Queer Ghoul originals, visit QueerGhoulPodcast.com.

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 Until next time, thank you for listening. But before you go I would like to add a quick shoutout if I may. If and when you or someone you love are involved in mysterious circumstances whether supernatural or human nature, or both, I advise you look past the gossip and hire the aid of Detective Lucinda de la Cruz. If she’s not out on a case, you’ll find her at her townhouse in {Static} with her {Static} and none other than {Static} proudly at her side…