A Splitting Headache

It all started with a splitting headache. One that nearly brought me down to my knees. The pain was so sudden and so sharp I thought I immediately got nauseous. My vision darkened and my whole body felt like a building had fallen on top of me. Worst of all was the light; a dim light started shining right in front of me. Slowly but persistently expanding over my field of vision. Shifting and twisting it into a rather serene forest scenery.

I was sure I was about to die. At that moment, I was convinced I was having a stroke or some other brain death-like experience. Stumbling as I dragged myself to the phone. Never got to that phone. I ended up tripping over my own legs and falling. Strangely enough, as soon as the room flipped upside down around me, the pain subsided as suddenly as it first appeared. I remained for a few moments, lying down, trying to steady my breath as everything seemed to return to normalcy.

This was the first of many such headaches.

It all started with a splitting headache, not mine actually. My sister’s, to be honest. Addie never suffered from migraines, but after a few bouts of crippling headaches, she ended up getting her brain checked. It turned out to be worse than anyone could expect. She had a brain tumor. A terminal one too. It was too deep to operate on and Addie refused to take any meds that might just prolong her suffering. In short, she accepted her fate.

It took aback me when she told me about the diagnosis. Rather cheerfully saying she’s got only a few months left to live. I’m lying. In reality, the news left me devastated; I was so overcome by disbelief and worry that I couldn’t sleep for the first few days after she had told me. Addie was the last family I had in this world I cared about. Mom was gone years ago, Dad offed himself not too long ago too. I wanted to just disappear from this world for a moment, fall asleep for a while, and wake up when this nightmare was finally over.

I didn’t get the pleasure to do that, Addie decided we had to spend as much of the little time we had together as possible. And that’s how it was for the next four months. We’d spend all of our free time together. I was forced to watch as the tumor slowly ate away at my sister’s ability to live freely and took away, bit by bit, pieces of her personality.

She wasn’t entirely lost by any means. Nothing close to a demented individual, but there were moments where the metastasized malignant growth must’ve pressed on some regions that made her go on unintelligible rants about nonsensical verbal diarrheas. It didn’t hurt as much knowing she was going to die as much as it hurt to watch her wither away. The slow process in which one becomes utterly unrecognizable to their loved ones hurts the most. From the liveliest woman in the world, she turned to a slow and lethargic shadow of her former self. Sometimes getting lost in mid-sentence. Other times, she’d just start sobbing as the pain became utterly unbearable. And I could do nothing to stop it. The painkillers were practically useless. All I could do was watch.

All of it ended as suddenly as it started, unexpected, completely unexpected.

I came by to check out how she was doing. She had given me the spare key. Allowing me to enter any time I wanted to. Just in case she couldn’t answer the door or something happened. That day, the moment I entered her apartment, something felt completely off. Certain darkness hung in the air, sucking out the oxygen from this place. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer. Looking around the house, I found her in the apartment, as peaceful as a sleeping infant.

My brain went into a different gear the moment I saw her that day. A different person took control of my body at that moment, a person I hoped I’d never have to meet again. Let’s just say I am used to seeing blood… but I guess I handle it better.

Seeing Addie lying on her red-stained bed, a gun between her hands and brain and skull matter sprayed all over the bed and wall. An eerie sort of calm washed over me as I called the authorities and notified them of my sister’s suicide.

It’s not to say that I didn’t care. It’s just second nature. One I’d like to get rid of. Unfortunately, I can’t. The police suspected me because of the coldness in my voice and overall attitude. I don’t blame them. They questioned me, but they couldn’t dig up anything about me. So that was that. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone still suspects me to this day; even though I’ve explained to them, she was dying from a brain tumor. Can I blame anyone, though, for potentially not believing me? After all, you don’t get to see normal people not breaking down at the sight of their dead siblings.

But break down I did; this was just the very telling calm before the storm. And what a storm it was. As soon as the cops and the medics left, I felt the stinging tears build up in my eyes as I collapsed and cried every ounce of tears I had in me. I wouldn’t stop crying for the next few hours. Hell, I was a mess for weeks after the fact. I couldn’t do anything without breaking down and crying like a little kid. That one stung the most. I was in hell for a while. The days went by with me, trying my best not to collapse under the gloomy monotony of sorrow. At the same time, the nights passed sleeplessly as I regurgitated memories of us together over the years.

In these moments, I found a bit of solace; having a mental image of her radiant smile, her shining blue eyes that could make the oceans envious of their clarity, and her voice. I went through the whole five-round deal with my grief. Denial, especially since she had hated guns. I made up an entire conspiracy in my mind that this wasn’t her, that she wasn’t gone, that I had followed in our father’s footsteps and gone insane.

Anger; mostly at myself for letting her die in my head. Bargaining, once again with myself; telling myself I should’ve made her take the medications she was being offered. I also prayed to God to have my life replaced by hers. I know it isn’t really feasible and outright selfish, making her live the kind of life I had a hard time accepting for myself. But in these moments of despair, I wasn’t thinking rationally. The depressive period that came after, I don’t really remember it that much. It was just a cloud of sheer mental and physical nothingness.

Eventually, I came to accept that she was gone. Life went on, and there isn’t a single day I don’t miss her, but life went on, and I moved on with it. Adrianna, I love you, and I know you are watching over me over there. I know you already can tell that life resumed its normalcy. I even almost fell in love, almost. Sadly, that didn’t pan out.

The days rolled on, and I stopped counting how long it has been since she was gone. I was back to enjoying my job, enjoying the company of friends, and enjoying life. I even found a news article about some local nut job that robbed the local cemetery. Found that funny at the time, not thinking about the possibility that my sister’s body could’ve been among his loot. It just didn’t register in my head.

And then everything started with a splitting headache. One that nearly brought me down to my knees. The pain was so sudden and so sharp I thought I immediately got nauseous. My vision darkened and my whole body felt like a building had fallen on top of me. Worst of all was the light; a dim light had shone right in front of me. Slowly but persistently expanding over my field of vision. Shifting and twisting it into a rather serene forest scenery.

I was sure I was about to die. At that moment, I was convinced I was having a stroke or some other brain death-like experience. Stumbling and dragging myself to the phone. Never got to that phone. I ended up tripping over my own legs and falling. Strangely enough, as soon as the room flipped upside down around me, the pain subsided as suddenly as it first appeared. I remained for a few moments, lying down, trying to steady my breath as everything seemed to return to normalcy.

This was the first of many such headaches.

They would come and go, lasting no longer than a few moments, but each time, they’d be unbelievably torturous and bring about increasingly intricate visions of a forested scenery getting bigger and bigger with each episode. While the insides of my skull were being fried, my soul was traveling through this beautiful heavenly locale.

The mental hellfire was so severe it started affecting my day-to-day life, from bouts of explosive migraines at work to just completely draining me of my energy and disturbing my already fragile sleep cycle, which sent me further down into the rabid hole. Soon enough, I was once more consumed by grief and longing for my dead relatives. Often feeling their presence around me. I would catch glimpses of them sort of meandering about the house or hear a whisper of their voices, only to find out I was alone. Instead of getting fearful for my fleeting sanity, I’d get upset and mournful all over again.

The headaches and visions consumed me during the day and the night. Everything in my head was being geared toward this forest, but each time, the pain was becoming far worse. My days were slowly but surely becoming a singular cacophonous delirious headache.

During the night, I’d frequently dream about that same forest, albeit in greater detail. It was almost becoming familiar. The trees, the grass, the rock formations here and there, the distant rushing of water. All of it was growing more and more familiar, as if I had known this place. Some days, though, the pleasant dreamscape would become a terrible nightmare. It was completely the same serene forested landscape, but with the gut-wrenching addition of my sister’s likeness appearing in the distance and guesting me to follow her somewhere.

Whenever I saw her in my dreams, I’d wake up with nauseating vertigo, accompanied by the sensation of a crack forming in my skull. These nightmarish dreams would become frequent and soon enough, I could hear her voice in my head. Every time I heard it. I felt chills running down my body. And every time she asked me to follow her, I did. Yet, every time she’d disappear somewhere before I could reach her.

Dreams bled into reality and I could see her likeness standing behind my reflection in the mirror, albeit briefly. I could hear her voice calling out to me from beyond the nothingness of death. I’d catch glimpses of her everywhere I went. It’s like she was haunting me. A ghost of a memory turning into a waking nightmare.

One night, I had finally reached my dream’s nightmarish conclusion. It began as it always did. I found myself walking about in this beautiful woodland. The sun was shining pleasantly on my skin. I walked around purposefully, lost until Addie’s silhouette appeared in between the trees. My body moved towards her. Like a game of tag, she ran while I followed, trying to catch on. My voice was muffled and distant as I called out to her to stop and wait for me. She didn’t say a thing, merely looked back at me every now and again. We ran for long minutes across the forest until I finally saw what I thought was a clearing. It was at the edge of the woodland. The familiarity of the environment struck me immediately. I didn’t even need to the sign indicating the distance to our town to know that this was the woodland not far from where I live.

Addie ran into this old cabin by the edge of the woods while I could not stop her. The moment she ran inside, the pleasant atmosphere of the dream seemed to turn on its head. Trees turned black as the skies became blood red. The surrounding scenery turned into a perverted version of itself. Violent flames burst within the cabin as I watched it hopelessly.

A cacophony of anguished screams woke me up.

The darkness in the room seemed unnaturally dark and cold. My body still felt numb and stiff. A shadowy figure seemed to move in my direction, threatening me with its ominous presence. All the while, I couldn’t move. As the shadow grew closer, my body grew colder, but before I knew it, Adrianna’s form stood over me. Her eyes were ice blue, shining like beacons in the dark. Pure hatred burned within their gaze. A familiar scowl on her face, one of an unstoppable anger.

Even though she wasn’t moving her lips, I could hear her voice in my head screaming. I was trying my damnedest to reach out to her, but I could barely feel my body moving by the point I felt like I had finally moved an inch closer to my sister. Her form burst into a flock of loudly cawing crows that covered the entire room.

As the birds threatened to swallow me whole, I could move finally and realized I was all alone, sitting upright in my empty room. My heart pounded in my chest cavity, while my mind was torn between the feelings of pain and longing and terrifying confusion. It took me a few moments to gather my bearings. My head was pounding as a hammer was used to wake me up. My limbs were weak and unsteady, and it took me a couple of hours to get myself out of bed.

I feel as though something was trying to tell me I needed to go to this empty cabin at the edge of town. For as long as I’m alive, I have known it as this abandoned building no one ever bothers looking in because it’s apparently as ancient as the oldest parts of the country and anyone within a living memory remembers it as being empty and unused. That said, I followed my gut feeling that day and made my way to the dilapidated cabin.

The headache that day wouldn’t go away. It kept pounding away at my skull in searing waves over and over. The closer I got to my destination, the worse the pain seemed to get. By the time I was facing the cabin, the pain was spreading down my neck and my eyes were watering. Slight soreness caressed my entire body as if I had come down with a fever.

Walking slowly towards the cabin, my entire body began feeling as though it was going to explode soon enough. The tension was almost radiating from under my skin. But all of that would go away as soon as I opened the old wooden door and set my eyes on what was inside the cabin.

The headache, the soreness, and the immense weight of this unknown condition fled from my body with wave after wave of chills.

A decapitated head, unpreserved; half rotten blue, and missing one eye. A few teeth were missing as well.

For the first time in a long time, I’ve felt such a strong reaction to human remains. My stomach twisted and my head spun. The stench finally penetrated through my shock. The previous night’s dinner mixed in with digestive juices tasted fresh in my mouth as I looked around.

The whole place would put the lowest depths of hell to shame. Human body parts were strewn about. Furniture made up of yellowish leather all over. Pants, coats, gloves... A necklace from five nipples on a string hung about from the ceiling. Another head, in a more advanced stage of decay, stood on display on a shelf. My head was spinning, and my body wanted nothing to do with that place. Until I caught a glimpse of a leather jacket. Yellow and brown. Patched up awkwardly with random pieces of leather, including a couple of faces at the bottom. I was going to throw up all over the damn thing if I didn’t notice a mark on the center. A tattoo; A rose flanked by six wings.

It was Addie’s tattoo. One of a few she had gotten.

All feelings of disgust turned into an all-consuming flame in my bowels as the memories come down drowning my mind in a mixture of rage and misery. I trashed half of the trinkets and homemade clothes. I wanted to destroy all of it, but in my anger-driven rampage I overexerted myself and ended up finding a hunting laying under a table.

Whoever was responsible for this sick house of horrors had to pay dearly.

I picked up the hunting rifle and made my way to the nearest chair that had no leather on it. Sitting on that chair, clasping the rifle firmly, all I could think about was how I’d torment whoever desecrated Adrianna’s body. Whoever disturbed her peace was about to experience hell on earth before I sent them to the next life.

Old addictive habits were creeping up in the back of my mind as memories I’d usually hate to remember, but at that moment, I accepted the return of the other me. I wanted him back. I needed this. The world could use him at that moment, or so I thought. The blinding flames of rage were all I had in these moments.

The moment I heard a truck approach the cabin, I stood up and carefully made my way to the window, as I didn’t want to make too much noise and scare off the owner. A middle-aged man about my father’s age, tall and lanky, he has been carrying yet another, fresh trophy. I kept following his eyes as he inched closer to the door. I’ll never forget that empty, almost side-eyed gaze. As soon as he opened the door, I leaped out of the shadows and clocked him across the face with the butt of the rifle. He went down instantly. Letting out a pained moan as he lost consciousness.

Oh, how human this monster had looked. So much like myself and yet so different. Animalistic, alien of sorts.

I stood over him, wondering what kind of torture I’d inflict on him before I blow his head off. Looking around the room for any source of inspiration, I once again looked at that damned coat with Addie’s tattoo. The memories came flooding down again.

It all came back; us playing in this very forest; us going to school, going camping with our parents, how I knocked out the first boy who broke her heart, how she popped the tires of the bike of the first girl that broke my heart, how we fought and made up, how we were best friends even though we didn’t speak for long times during the last few years of her life. The way she hugged me when I quit the army, her voice echoed in my mind as she expressed her gladness at my return to civilian life. The pain we shared when our parents passed. All of it came back, rendering me unable to do anything to this monster at my feet.

I broke down into tears all over again, cursing him repeatedly until my head started aching again. After that, I called the police instead and told them I found their grave robber. I had to fabricate a story about how I was passing by the cemetery when I saw him drag out something suspicious and followed him up to the cabin. I don’t know if they really bought into any of that, but I don’t care. The blow to his head made him forget who I was, and he ended up confessing everything. Turns out two of the six women whose remains I found in this cabin were murdered by this man as opposed to being dug out.

A local handyman whose name is now all over the local news, like he’s some kind of new Dracula or Jack the Ripper. They sent him to an asylum because he was too insane to stand trial. The media barely mentioned the names of the victims because an insane fetishist murderer is somehow more appealing to the public than the sum of his victims. Personally, I wanted nothing to do with the outrage. Luckily, the police force that arrived at the cabin took credit for everything.

I’ve better things to do, like fixing my cervical spine and getting rid of this constant splitting headache.