Shadow Games Read online

  Maybe I am going mad, came the fleeting thought. It was true that she had been under a shit-load of stress lately, that she was barely holding things together, thanks to her hectic lifestyle.

  The bed lurched once beneath her, and she screamed.

  Four black, sharp points appeared sticking upwards at the foot of the bed.

  His bladed fingers, she thought in terror.

  The blades waggled, like the hand was waving. Then all four blades lowered so that the tips were pointing right at her. She scrambled backwards as the hand edged towards her, followed by an unnaturally long and thin, black arm. It slid along the Egyptian cotton sheets like a black snake and for a moment all she could do was stare at it, paralysed in terror.

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed.

  Fuck this.

  Her paralysis broke and she jumped off the bed. Her legs were shaking so much that they threatened to crumple beneath her and she stumbled, almost landing flat on her face. She lurched forwards, heading for the bedroom door that led out into the spacious living-room, and the shared hallway beyond.

  She barely got two steps before a weight landed on her back and pushed her to the ground. The air left her lungs in a rush and the room distorted around her as blind panic set in.

  Her hands formed claws, the perfectly manicured nails scratching uselessly at the heavily varnished floor. She was dragged backwards, towards the bed. Her stolen t-shirt rucked-up around her neck, almost choking her and her heavy breasts mashed painfully against the floor, her nipples catching in the frequent cracks, causing her to cry out in pain.

  Then the dragging stopped. She went to lift up her battered, aching body, but before she knew what was happening, she was airborne. She wasn’t sure how, exactly, the thing had lifted her so easily, and right then she didn’t care. All she knew was that one second she was on her front on the floor, the next she was on her back on the bed.

  She stared up at her captor in the murky light of the bedroom, at the man made of shadows. He was straddling her hips, with only the flimsy cotton of her panties separating them. He was ice-cold, and easily as heavy as a flesh and blood man.

  She stared up into the thing’s face, her heart racing and her mind twisting. The outer edges of his form undulated, like he might come undone and float away in a million different directions at any second. His hat kept elongating and distorting, and her mind reeled.

  He opened his mouth to reveal razor sharp teeth – the only distinct feature along with the hat and razor-fingers in his otherwise indistinct form. All that could be said for his body was that it was long and thin – it was impossible to know if the thing wore clothes or not.

  With his knifeless left hand clamped around her throat, his knife fingers reached down for her and gently cupped her ribcage on her left side. She struggled uselessly beneath him as the freezing cold metal pressed against her flesh.

  The terrifying thing edged down her body slightly so that it was straddling her thighs, and, because of the abnormally long arms, he was able to keep hold of her neck.

  Inside her head, she howled, but no sound escaped her lips. His fingers may have felt like real knives, but how could a thing made of shadows have substance, yet alone feel like metal?

  How could this thing even exist?

  The cold metal of his fingers slithered sideways across her abdomen, stopping her terrified musings stone-dead. His hand slid ever lower, gliding over her exposed skin in an ice-cold trail. It stopped at the top of her knickers for a moment, before effortlessly slicing through the thin cotton.

  She went to scream but the hand around her neck tightened. Then the knifed fingers were moving upwards again and sawing through the bunched-up t-shirt around her neck.

  A cold hand cupped her breast and she squeezed her eyes shut with a whimper. The hand around her neck showed no sign of letting up the pressure, and part of her wished that he would squeeze until she passed out.

  Or kill me, a nasty little voice whispered in her mind. Because anything is better than this…

  Her eyes involuntarily snapped open when he squeezed her tit hard. The cold press of his knife fingers made her squirm uselessly beneath him and she became aware that his bulk on her body had shifted.

  In the moments before it happened, it dawned on her what he was doing.

  Oh, dear God, this thing is going to rape me.

  Before the horrendous thought could properly sink in, she was flipped over onto her front and effortlessly manoeuvred onto all fours. The shadow-man fisted her hair, tilting back her head so that she had a good view of her helpless position in the mirror opposite the bed.

  It wants me to watch…

  The shadowy figure loomed behind her, a grotesque parody of a lover. Its head was cocked to one side, the hat continuing to distort and elongate at random.

  The devil’s hat.

  For the briefest of seconds, she remembered how ‘Undertaker’s hat’ had been the thing that she had written down when they had played that infernal game.

  Then came the pain. Amber had never been one for sodomy, and the all-consuming agony that ripped through her body like wildfire was stupefying.

  It felt like a real penis, and an oversized one at that.

  Panic mixed in with the terror.

  He’s going to rip me clean in two.

  Her lower abdomen sung out with fierce cramps, like she was suffering from the most severe bout of food poisoning. Her rectum was agonisingly tight, and she felt something rip deep inside her. Hot wetness flooded her thighs and the room span and closed-in around her.

  Yet still the monster held up her head, forcing her to confront her own reflection. She tried to keep her eyes closed, but his hard thrusts were somehow even more alarming and dizzying when she couldn’t see.

  Dimly, she became aware that the shadow-figure raping her was changing. Or more specifically, his head was changing shape. At first, her brain couldn’t quite comprehend what her eyes were seeing, and she just thought that he was no longer wearing the hat. But then she realised that his head was thrown-back, that his jaw was becoming unhinged.

  The most awful simile slammed into her mind; that of a snake about to devour its prey. The shadow-thing leaned over her body, the head travelling up her back.

  Impossibly, the oversized cock remained inside her as the thing’s body elongated to accommodate the new position. His head hovered over hers, his mouth now such an impossibly yawning cavern, that its circumference was bigger than her own head.

  He’s going to eat me all up.

  The pointed shark’s teeth framed her terrified face, black as death, yet clear as day.

  But something was different now. It took her a second or two to realise that the pain in her bowels had lessened, that the horrendous tight feeling in her rectum had diminished. Also, the creature’s face was growing increasingly more transparent, the outline of him less distinct than it had been a minute ago.

  Then just like that, He was gone.

  She thought she heard the thing howl, but maybe it was just her. She flopped face-first onto the bed, smeared in her own blood and shit from the vicious excavation of her arsehole.

  Before she blacked-out, her last thought was of Sean.

  Sean’s right. We should’ve played the game again. We should’ve sent that fucking thing right back to where it came from…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  2017

  Brett Ellison lay on his back on the squeaky, lumpy bed, staring up at the peeling paint of the hotel ceiling. The whore noisily slurped on his semi-erect cock, and, growing increasingly frustrated, he fisted her hair, shoving her head until her mouth grazed the tops of his balls.

  Still it wasn’t enough. She let out a little moan of pleasure – not the effect he was after. He wanted to hear her gag, wanted to hear her cry out in terror. He pushed harder so that the tip of her nose mashed into his groin. He hoped that the bitch was choking.

  This slag must have fucking gills on her back, he thought in
despair. This wasn’t what he had paid for. He had specified that he wanted it rough, but he’d had rougher with his own fucking wife.

  “Swivel round,” he ordered gruffly. “Knees either side of my head and spread your cunt.”

  Willingly – too willingly he thought, considering the price he’d paid for her – she obliged him so that he was staring up into her cunt. As he gazed at the fleshy pink folds, stripped of all hair, a great sense of loneliness washed over him.

  His life wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to have escaped the shadow of his past.

  A memory of his dad washed over him, with his belt looped once around his hand.

  Don’t hit me, Dad. Please don’t hit me.

  He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, forcing out the memory. Roughly, he grabbed the whore’s rump, hard enough to leave angry red fingerprints on her firm little arse. When he probed her puckered arsehole with his thumb, ever so slightly she flinched. That helped things on a little bit, and his cock twitched its approval.

  Fleetingly, Jessica’s sweet face blazed in his mind. He liked to think that he was doing this for his wife, that he was protecting her. Better that he took out his anger on some prostitute rather than his darling wife. And now his cock was growing increasingly limper by the second, just at the mere thought of what he was doing behind the back of the woman that trusted him so wholeheartedly. It was time to take action, to get what he’d paid for.

  Not wanting the whore to accidently bite off his cock with what he was about to do to her, he shoved her off him.

  “You know the drill,” he said.

  Indeed she did, for this was hers and Brett’s third time together.

  Obediently, she lay on her back and opened her legs. For a second he faltered. This was the part where he roughly fisted her cunt before he fucked her in the arse, all the while whispering obscenities in her ear, telling her how much he’d like to choke the life out of her, or gut her like a fish…

  He had no real desire to do so, of course, but the words just felt so damn good… Only by exerting total control over someone else did he feel free and at peace with himself.

  But somehow, today, he had lost his taste for it. He couldn’t stop thinking about his wife and their two children, eight-year-old Zac and six-year-old Isobella.

  How long before I hit them like my father hit me?

  No. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t his dad, he was a successful banker, a powerful businessman. He wasn’t some sad prick that caught fish for a living and drank away his wages down the pub.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” the prostitute slurred.

  He suddenly noticed how out of it she was. Her eyes were glazed and his stomach clenched in disgust. He liked women to be clean and healthy, full of sunshine and laughter.

  Like my wife.

  And like Amber.

  Amber Hyde? That kid from his hometown? Christ, he hadn’t thought of her in years, how weird that he would suddenly think of her now.

  He shook his head to dispel the images of the two, tanned blondes; the only two females he had ever really loved.

  And only one of them – his wife – had loved him in return.

  My wife. The Amber substitute. He shook his head in disbelief. What the fuck is wrong with me today?

  Throughout the ten years of his mostly successful marriage, he had always known that deep down, he had been searching for Amber. Or at least, a girl just like her. Ever since his first hard-on, his heart had belonged to that sunny, beautiful blonde from his youth.

  But what a time it was for such a fucking stupid self-revelation. Mad at himself for the bizarre turn in his thoughts, he turned his full attention to the blonde slut on her back: “You’re on drugs. I told I don’t like drugs. I told you not be high when you were with me.”

  “I ain’t taken a thing,” she slurred.

  Critically, his gaze swept over her offered-up body. Last time he had been with her three weeks ago, she had been glowing with good health and was at least five pounds heavier. Now, she was pale-skinned like the underbelly of the mackerels that his dad used to catch and sometimes gut for their dinner. It was painfully obvious to him that her all-over fake tan had long-since washed off and she’d been too busy shoving coke up her nose to eat. Her hipbones jutted and her stomach was concave beneath the protruding ribs. Brett got to his feet, not able to stand the sight of her for a second longer.

  “Get dressed and get out.”

  “But we haven’t finished.”

  “Believe me, darling, we have.”

  “You still owe me fifty.”

  “Fine,” he said, hopping off the bed and reaching for the wallet which was in an inside pocket of his jacket, slung over the back of the over-stuffed chair.

  Wordlessly, she took the cash and scooped up her work attire – a little black dress and killer heels – slamming the door shut behind herself.

  Brett pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel the mother of all migraines coming on and, wincing slightly, he reached for his shoes next to the bed. The lack of shoes aside, he was still fully dressed – that was part and parcel of his whole ‘power-trip’ with the prostitutes. Brett didn’t ever want to feel out of control again.

  Sighing heavily, he laced up his designer Italian shoes, stood up, shrugged on his grey, suit jacket and straightened his tie. Inside the pocket of his jacket, his phone buzzed.

  It was a text from his wife.

  Hope work isn’t too hectic. I’m doing your favourite for dinner, don’t work too late, I miss you. x

  Unexpected tears blurred his vision and he let out a strangled sob. This really wouldn’t do at all, standing there, balling like a goddamn pansy. In a second he was under control again.

  Cool, collected, and in control, remember?

  He repeated his favourite mantra over and over in his head as he made for the door of the seedy hotel room.

  As his fingers curled around the doorknob, he felt a rush of air on the back of his neck. His entire body stiffened with the shocking sensation, the tears of self-pity drying instantly.

  It had felt like somebody had breathed on his neck. The room lurched around him as he spun around.

  There was nothing and no one there.

  Of course there isn’t, you dumb twat.

  Once again, he reached for the doorknob, turning his back on the room. He twisted the knob, but nothing happened. He rattled the door, his mouth suddenly as dry as the scorched earth of the desert and his heart slamming in his ribcage.

  A low chuckle assaulted his ears, coming from somewhere close behind.

  “No, no, no,” he said, rattling the door, much harder now.

  Still, it did not budge.

  He’s come back.

  The unwelcome thought slammed into his head, momentarily leaving him weak with terror and unable to so much as catch as his breath.

  The adrenalin kicked in, and he chucked all thirteen stone of his gym-honed physique at the door, a cry for help just inches away from escaping his lips…

  He never got the chance to scream. One second he was pressed flat to the door, the next he was airborne. The air left his lungs in an almighty whoosh as He grabbed him from behind and flung him into the air as if he weighed no more than a sack of feathers.

  Brett landed on his back next to the double-bed, his body paralysed by pain and terror.

  Oh, dear God, it’s come back…

  The nightmare figure that he and his friends had invited into their world had returned to finish what had been started. He didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to see what he knew would be standing over him. The stench of sour breath hit him square in the face – a mix of damp, mouldy earth, rotten meat, and something far, far worse. Against his better judgement, he opened his eyes.

  The nightmare visage of The Undertaker was mere inches from his face.

  It undulated slightly, parts of its face blacker than the blackest windowless room at midnight, yet some of the face showing
small spots of transparency.

  The Undertaker was composed of shadows; a shadow with solid form. It opened its mouth and grinned, displaying two neat rows of pointed, razor sharp teeth that were closer to a set of shark’s teeth than a human’s. Atop his head he wore a tall, black hat with a wide rim – a traditional Undertaker’s hat straight out of Victorian times. His eyes were invisible beneath the wide rim, but Brett knew without a shadow of a doubt they would be empty sockets that would reflect the blackest pits of hell right back at him.

  Dimly, through the screaming aches and pain of his body, he was aware of a pressure on his lower stomach where the shadowy figure straddled him, pinning him to the ground.

  “No,” he gasped, finding his voice at last.

  A black, yet transparent hand clamped down over his mouth, as cold as a gravestone in a Winter’s night, stifling his cries. Above the hand, his eyes widened in terror.

  The Undertaker raised his other arm in the air with a speed that would be impossible for a human-being. Brett’s mind lurched in terror when He splayed his long, shadowy fingers. Impossibly long fingers. Fingers that had to be at least fifteen inches long from bottom to tip… Fingers that ended in pointed knives.

  He screamed into the ice-cold hand, and The Undertaker’s smile broadened. The hand came swooping down to his chest, gleefully theatrical, connecting perfectly with his ribcage and piercing the sternum.

  Brett screamed a muffled scream and arched his back. The shadow man didn’t pierce his heart – he was too crafty to end his life so quickly and wanted to prolong his suffering, like a cat toying with a mouse.

  The fingers wriggled inside him, slicing slowly but effortlessly downwards. The agony was unspeakable. The strength of Its fingers was diabolically strong; He seemed to exert no pressure at all, yet at the same time was able to slice through the bone of his ribs like his fingers were rotary-saws.

  Brett’s back ceased to arch and he flopped to the skanky carpet, powerless and trapped beneath the creature. He heard the echo of his snapping bones deep inside his head; an atrocious sound that untethered his mind and set it free as surely as a boat drifting away from its mooring.