User blog:MrTyeDye/The Nightmare House (Part 6: Lucy)

Fear

Knees wobbling, weakening, wavering

Blood drains from my-

From my-

...

From my-

...

''UGH. Dang it.''

Lucy gripped her pencil in frustration. She struggled to keep her groans internal, so as not to disturb the other students in the school library. Said library was typically a pretty peaceful place, and Lucy often liked to spend time hanging out there after school, so she could work on her poetry. On this day, the library was just as calm and serene as it usually was.

It was the room two stories below the library that was creating a problem.

Apparently, there was some kind of dance going on in the school gymnasium that Lucy hadn't heard about (not that she would have been interested if she did). The school DJ was playing the music at ear-splitting volumes, as DJs were wont to do, and the din was driving Lucy up the wall. Every time she tried to write another line of her poem, that incessant, monotonous thump-a, thump-a, thump-a, thump-a beat would break her concentration. She could even make out some of the lyrics from that abhorrent EDM track they were blasting:

Moist and juicy

Moist and juicy

Moist and juicy

Moistened mound

Moist and juicy

Moist and juicy

Moist and juicy

Juicy mound

Lucy shuddered with revulsion. She could write better lyrics than that. What did people find catchy about the constant, droning repetition of one disgusting phrase?

After about fifteen minutes of trying to block out the noise, Lucy had had enough. She was going to march down to that gymnasium and tell that DJ to turn it down. She didn't see much likelihood of success, but it was worth a try. She packed her notes into her backpack, left the library, and marched downstairs.

As she descended the stairwell, she could feel the handrail vibrating from the sheer volume of the music. Why did DJs insist on playing their music that loud? Sure, she understood that it had to be loud enough for everyone in the room to hear it, but did it really have to be that deafening, to the point that nobody in the vicinity could even hear themselves think? It was baffling.

Once she reached the gymnasium, Lucy walked in to find it, as expected, jam-packed. The entire floor was engulfed by a mob of writhing, gyrating grade schoolers, moving in time to a pair of blaring speakers set up on the opposite side. Lucy cringed as she forced herself inside, at the oppressive volume of the music and the utter lack of space for her to breathe. Rooms just weren't designed to accommodate this many people at one time.

"Um, e-excuse me," she muttered, as she tried to maneuver her way across the dance floor towards the DJ on the other side. "I-I have to get through."

She shuddered every time she had to brush up against the dank, sweat-covered body of a dancing classmate. Lucy, an introvert by nature, wasn't used to being close to this many people at one time. As she moved through the crowd, she noticed a few students she was at least acquainted with, but none of them would acknowledge her, so entranced they were by the rhythm.

At long last, she managed to cross the dance floor and arrive at the other side. Once she did, she was greeted with the sight of a set of turntables manned by a basketball jersey-wearing DJ, who looked far too old to be working at a lower school dance.

"Excuse me," said Lucy, in a voice that was barely audible over the din of the music, "but could you please turn down your music? I can hear it from the library. And it's distracting."

Much to her surprise, the DJ actually seemed to acknowledge her. He turned his attention away from his turntables and towards her, giving her a good look at his eyes. They were pupilless, and emitted an eerie sapphire glow that cut through the darkness of the room, though Lucy assumed that he was wearing some fancy pair of glow-in-the-dark contacts. It was harder for her to come up with an explanation for what he did next; instead of answering her question, he began to lip sync along with the song.

It was then that Lucy realized that she had been mishearing the song the entire time, and her blood ran cold as soon as she figured out what it was actually saying.

Join us, Lucy

Join us, Lucy

Join us, Lucy

Join us now

Join us, Lucy

Join us, Lucy

Join us, Lucy

Lucy Loud

With her flight response triggered, Lucy whipped herself around with the intention of making a mad dash towards the exit. Her path, unfortunately, was blocked by the crowd of dancers - who, she noticed, were no longer dancing. All of them were standing still, turned in her direction, lipping to the song, and leering at her with eyes that glowed the same tint of blue as the DJ. Lucy hoped that they wouldn't actually pursue her, but that hope was squelched as she saw some of them marching up to her, their steps in perfect time with the beat.

Frantically, Lucy tried to dash past them, but before she could make it past the crowd, someone latched their fingers onto her wrist and yanked her backwards. As she was trying to pry those clammy, sweaty fingers off of her, another arm grabbed her shoulder, and yet another grabbed her by the waist. The three arms dragged her kicking and squirming into the center of the mob, and before she knew it, she was swallowed up by an ocean of damp, perspirating flesh.

Lucy tried to push back against the writhing bodies invading her personal space, to no avail. It didn't help that she now heard them chanting, not just lipping, but vocalizing the lyrics of the song. "Join us, Lucy" was being echoed by what must have been hundreds of voices around the room. Lucy could feel the air around her growing thinner, greedily sucked up and depleted by the dozens of forms surrounding her. She was trapped. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't-

"I'LL DANCE!" she yelled as loud as she could. "I'll join you. I'll dance."

Seconds later, the dancers unhanded her and backed off, forming a decent-sized circle around her. Lucy sighed, relieved at the sensation of having a bit of space to herself again, though her relief was tempered a bit by the fact that hundreds of eyes were still upon her.

Regardless, Lucy only saw one way out of this predicament. She walked up to the center of the circle, and after a deep breath, performed the only dance step she knew - or, at least, the only one she could perform well. She folded her hands behind her back and started bouncing up and down on her calves, letting her head bob with each bounce.

Lucy repeated the step for a moment or two, when suddenly, she heard the music cut out. That pounding beat just abruptly stopped without so much as a record scratch to signify its end. Lucy paused mid-bounce as her entire body tensed up in anticipation of what was to come.

But there was no way she could have anticipated what did come.

The dancers' faces transformed from blank stares to furious glares, and their glowing eyes changed from blue to blood red. Once dancer unhinged his jaw and let out a hellish roar of, "WRONG!"

The roar was echoed by another dancer, and then another, until Lucy could hear it coming from all sides of the gymnasium. Lucy crouched down on the floor and clasped her hands over her ears, trying to drown out the noise and praying that it'd eventually let up. As she shrunk away from the crowd, dreading what they were going to do to her, she suddenly felt something moist and slimy splatter against the back of her head. Shivering with revulsion, she ran her fingers through her hair and held them in front of her face. They were now coated in some black, tarry, viscous mass, which was somehow slimy enough to trickle down to her palm but sticky enough to adhere to her skin.

Lucy spun around, ready to accost whoever threw that at her, and came face to face with a furious looking dancer, who had droplets of that same substance dripping from her lips. It didn't take long for Lucy to put two and two together.

Sure enough, the dancer opened her mouth and vomited up a torrent of that black slime right into Lucy's face. Lucy hurriedly backed away from her, but was blindsided by another wave of gunk from another dancer in the circle. Before long, she had half the circle spewing on her, while the other half continued to assault her with repeated bellows of, "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!"

Lucy, with her clothes ruined and her hope of escaping all but extinguished, sunk down to the floor and curled herself up into a fetal position, making herself as small as possible. She wanted to disappear. Vanish. Cease to exist. Anything to put an end to that incessant roaring in her ears, to the feeling of slime soaking through her dress and clinging to her skin.

"S-stop, please," she mewled, shivering. "L-let me go. L-leave me alone. I want to go home..."

The crowd paid her no heed, and in fact started to edge closer to her, making their collective cries even harder to block out. All the while, they continued to bombard her with balls of sludge, some of which sloughed off her face and trickled into her mouth, making her gag. Silent tears poured from her eyes, as she lost hope that her multi-sensory torment would ever come to a conclusion.

The sensation of one last blast of gunk splattering against her back was the last thing she felt before she woke up.