Gray Poncho

## **Gray Poncho** *by BloodySpaghetti*

Living in southern Arizona, you don’t get to see much rain, let alone in the summer. It was quite odd when it started raining that August day, I had a really eerie feeling about the rain but it's not like I could wrestle nature into stopping the rain, so I just shrugged the feeling off and continued walking home. Once I got there my old man heard me enter the house and made a remark regarding the Global warming being a "real deal". I wanted to say that I felt something weird about this unusual rain but for some reason I just stopped myself and just agreed with my father.

It kept raining for a week, but surprisingly it wasn’t cold outside, so all those who didn’t mind getting wet, like myself, would still go out and play football or just enjoy the feeling of refreshment that the rain offered. The thing is, each time I went outside during that week, I had this odd feeling, if I had to describe it, I'd say its something like having your spine tickled softly, but different, it was unlike anything I've experienced before, all I knew is that it was like the feeling you get when you know something bad is about to happen. After the rainy week was over everything seemingly became normal again. Right then I started developing a slight paranoia. I don't even know why but I just kept feeling like I’m being followed around and whenever I looked back, there was nobody there. Since this hadn't gotten out of hand I didn't get myself checked out in spite of the ever growing discomfort I felt.

My paranoia lasted about a month until one day while hiking in the hills outside of town I noticed something strange. A symbol drawn in the ground below the hill I was standing on, it looked like one of those crop circles or nasca lines except it was different, the symbol looked like a circle in which there are four triangles, each pointing at another direction. The odd thing is the perfect shapes it had, as if every move and every line in the drawing were measured precisely with some extremely high tech measuring equipment, but if that was that was the case everyone in town would know about that. It wasn’t however, it seemed like I’m the first person to come across this drawing. I’ve decided I should go and inspect the thing from up close so I went down the hill and entered the drawing and once I did, I felt like a million eyes penetrate right inside my soul. That feeling was horrible, I started looking around hysterically to see who's looking at me, but there was nobody around and the longer I stayed inside the drawing the worse the feeling got.

In fact the feeling became physically painful and I just fell on my knees grabbed my head and shouted at the top of my lungs after the few agonizing moments that seemed like eons of painful screaming, the feeling was gone, everything was gone, I felt like I was alone again. I raised my head slowly as my body shook from the copious amount of mental stress I've just experienced and right then a movement of a gray body caught my sight. I jerked my head to see what it was but I guess whatever that thing was, it was too fast for my eyes to catch, so since I didn’t get to see anything truly unusual I shrugged that thought off and slowly made my way home. In all honesty, on my way I thought I should tell everyone about my condition and maybe even get checked.

Once I got back in town, I got a word from Steve Olson, a friend of mine, that the antique water tower collapsed and crashed few of Mr. Browne's sheep as well as caused some damage to his property. Due to the overflow of adrenaline in my body I decided to go check the scene and I dragged the reluctant Steve with me. Once we arrived there a gut-clutching feeling of disgust filled me and Steve, the poor guy threw up after seeing sheep guts smeared all over the ground. I don’t really blame him, I wanted to puke too, but I manage to suppressed the urge. There were animal guts all over the place, I could see shattered bones and even a severed eyeless sheep head lying in the ruins, I suppose its eyes popped out when it got crushed under the weight of the water tower... poor little thing.

As I was looking around a police officer who was expecting the area said something about a human body and everyone including myself ran towards him. There was a female body lying there missing its lower half which was buried under the metal supporting pillars of the tower. Mr. Browne quickly realized the body belonged to his wife and immediately snapped, he just started whaling and weeping while hugging the lifeless upper body of his late wife. The police officer made everyone leave the scene so that the cops could do their work properly and I just went back home, it was pretty late by then so I skipped the dinner and went to bed. That night was probably the worst night of my life every sleeping moment I had was filled with hellish nightmares full of mangled dead bodies and other gory stuff that I get nauseous thinking about.

The next morning was no better. When I got to the kitchen my mother told me Mr. Browne's body was found hanging on a hook in the abandoned meat factory, she proceeded to say the police concluded it was a suicide in which Mr. Browne tried peeling off his own skin, and when that didn’t go as well as he expected he gouged his eyes and hung himself on a hook. That didn’t surprise me considering the only thing he had left in this life was gone, however the manner in which this suicide of his had been committed made little sense. If that wasn't bad enough, later that day in school we found the body of Julie Harrison hung by her spine on the on the gym's ceiling fan apart from having her spine pulled out her body was mutilated beyond recognition; face missing, and the contents of her torso were spilled on the floor beneath her. Of course everyone started panicking, including myself, for some reason I started thinking about what happened with Mr. Browne, suddenly my mind told me it was more likely to be a murder than a suicide, but of course I could not tell anyone, because who would listen to some paranoid brat? so I kept it to myself, hoping I'd never have to think about it again.

As expected the school was closed for the day and we were released home, just as I walked out of the school's gate I saw a girl with a gray poncho standing at the site of the road, looking on at the direction of my school. I don’t know why, but I decided I should try to figure out who she considering she wasn’t someone I knew. I shouted at her but she just turned around and started walking away. A sudden urge to follow her filled my body and I just started running in her direction, by the time I reached the road she was already on it's other side and as I was about to pass it a stream of cars appeared out of nowhere and prevented me from going further. When the cars were finally gone, the girl was nowhere in sight. I collected my breath and decided to simply go home. Since my school was on the one edge of town and my house was on the other I had to pass through the whole town to get home. When I was going through the shopping center, I saw that girl from earlier again, I tried shouting at her she turned around, noticed me and started walking away again. This time I was determined to catch up to her and ran as fast as I could, but again she simply disappeared once a large crowd of people came at us from the opposite direction. I yelled out "Shit!" While tossing my hands down in despair after that I just kept on walking on home thinking about that mysterious girl, no matter how much I tried to get her out of my head, I just couldn't.

When I reached a park about two minutes away from my home, I saw the girl in gray poncho sitting on a bench, by herself, I again I had this weird urge to speak to her so I approached her quietly and asked, "Just who the hell are you?" The girl turned her head, smiled at me and then just got up and walked away, as she did I was somewhat paralyzed, I just watched her go. Once she was out of sight I kicked the bench and shouted "Damn it!" At the top of my lungs, I wish I knew why, but it I just did it on an instinct. After that I pulled up my bag pack and went home, there I thought all day about this girl until at around 9pm the whole house shook, as if there was an earthquake, but during this tremor I had a familiar eerie feeling. The feeling I had during the rainy week over a month ago had once again surged through my body. When the tremor was over, my bad feeling had gone stronger and just to make sure everything's alright, I went outside.

Once I opened the main door I saw a pool of blood as far as my eyes could see in the dark, before I could construct a

solid thought inside my mind my eyes stumbled upon what seemed like countless bodies floating in their own blood. I wanted to enter the house and lock myself up but before I could turn around, the door that was wide open just shut itself closed. The noise startled me and made me fall down, I started breathing heavily and slowly got up. Placing my hand on the handle I tried to open the door but it just would not open, I started hitting the door, but it didn't help at all. Suddenly the painful feeling of being watched by a million eyes hit me again, my pulse had risen like never before, I could feel cold sweat run down my body as I slowly turned around to see what was looking at me.

The thing that stood there was the girl in gray poncho, staring at me with her glowing green eyes, penetrating my soul to its core, I froze in fear as she pulled out something from beneath her poncho, and in one swift move that I could barely see, she pierced my throat with her blood stained blade. As the realization started to sink in so did the pain of being stabbed in the throat by a metal object, I tried to scream, but I couldn't, my voice was gone. The girl widened her eyes and softly said, "I am Cain" before violently pulling the blade out of my throat.

You know it's true what they say about your whole life flashing right before your eyes when you are about die, and as I no longer see anything but pitch black darkness I guess I'm going to die any moment now.