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En lille "horror story" som jeg egentligt havde regnet med ville blive noget værre lort.. Åbenbart ikke. Læs hvis i lyster..
Animals
The room was packed with stuffed animals of all kinds, whenever I looked, some owl or squirrel stared back at me with dead eyes. I was deeply frightened. I couldn’t breathe when realizing that the intense smell came from hundreds of dead animals that surrounded me as a big heavy wall of fear. I wanted to scream, but I was so shocked that even that was completely impossible. My eyes were flickering and I wasn’t able to keep focus anymore. I started crying hysterically. Those were dead animals. I shouldn’t feel anything, but the fact that I did, scared me even more. The smell of metal pervaded the room completely; it probably came from the small pools of blood on the floor, fresh blood. I tried not to use my nose while inhaling; the smell made me feel sick and gave me a headache. The light from the lamps made the animals look powerful. I had no idea why those lamps were placed on the floor; it almost looked like a museum, spotlight on this grotesque kind of art.
Last thing I remember I was taking a walk in the woods with my girlfriend. I didn’t like the idea at all, but admitting that you have a problem with wild animals didn’t really seem like an option for me. I guess a girl would find it pathetic for a boy fearing to enter the woods, being afraid to see a fox or a hare. I couldn’t stand the thought of her sympathetically laughing at me while kissing me and letting me know that I was so cute. The thought almost made me shudder, so I decided to just pretend to be all in. Bad choice.
It was freezing outside, but my girlfriend insisted on taking a quick walk, which actually surprised me a bit, since she usually hates cold weather. The whole forest was covered with snow that afternoon, new-fallen snow that squeaked under our shoes and created deep footprints. I suddenly felt a bit more relaxed about the whole situation. The white layer of snow lightened up the forest and no animals could hide in this landscape. As we walked deeper into the forest, the trees were slowly closing in on us and even though the snow had been lighting up the whole place, the darkness now began to overtake the tiny track. Soon I couldn’t help but notice how the shadows were no longer showing in small fine patterns anymore. The trees covered the track, and the sun could hardly shine trough the layer of branches covered with heavy snow. I felt claustrophobic and even though I tried to ignore my own fear, it continued to attack my thoughts. Pictures of animals appeared in my imagination, I started feeling unsafe and I was shocked when suddenly noticing that I could no longer hear my girlfriend breathing. I turned around to make sure she was behind me on the small track. She was not. It rushed through my bones when realizing I was alone in the woods, surrounded by nature that seemed to scare me more than ever. I started screaming her name. My voice resounded through the trees and even the snow didn’t deaden my bellow. I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Suddenly a sparrow tweeted from its shelf between the otter and the dromedary; I quickly turned around to confirm the fact that a dead animal had just given me a sign of life. As I stared into the eyes of the dead sparrow I realized that the eyes weren’t dead. I noticed how the animals was partly stuffed, some of them dead and some of them suffering in pain. I didn’t understand how this could happen, it couldn’t be real, but it was. I somehow recognized the intense smell and as I tried to deny it, the images suddenly appeared. Images of my big sister crying and screaming and my mother who vainly tried to calm her down. It was an ugly memory that I didn’t want to be confronted with.
My sister wasn’t a social person, she had never been. I barely even remember if I ever saw her talking to her classmates at school, she always sat all by herself in the corner of the schoolyard. My mother never explained to me why she behaved like that. My sister had a lot of rodents back then: hamsters, rabbits and rats. They seemed to be the only existences she paid attention to. It sedated her being around those animals. One day I came home from school and the whole apartment was a mess, chairs felted over and broken glass spread around on the carpet. I winced when hearing my sisters scream, and ran into her room. The sight I got when entering, I tried to clear away for many years. The rodents were all lying on the floor, torn apart like pillows after a pillow fight, but instead of feathers, guts and blood was spread all around. The cute little newborn rabbit kits lied next to their mother with bones sticking out from their backs. It was a pet massacre caused by my sister, who sat like a stranger in the middle of the whole show with her hands filled with blood. The look on her face, I’ll never forget. Her eyes were just as dead as the animal’s. Nothing was to be found in that look, only the fear that I’m now carrying around in silence. The next time I saw my sister, she was in a hospital. The look on her eyes never changed.
The sparrow tweeted once again and threw me right back to reality, a stifled little tweet that almost sounded mechanical. I’d stopped looking at the animals and tried to find a spot to fix my eyes on, but the fear of getting attacked by the animals made me check on them constantly. My eyes caught a fox with only three legs. I started wondering where the fourth had gone and how it had even lost a leg, perhaps during the stuffing. My thoughts were instantly interrupted when I heard a door unlocking behind me. I turned to find out who had locked me into this nightmare. The light was blinding and it took me a little while before I realized that it was the shape of my girlfriend who was standing right in front of me. I started laughing in joy and reached out for her but she refused to take my hand. Instead she grabbed my head with both of her hands and forced me to look at the animals while peacefully exclaiming: “How you like my little exhibition?” The voice wasn’t hers, but my sisters.
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