Decompostition. Chapter Four.

Chapter One.
Chapter Two.
Chapter Three.

When Michael finally started to think about where he was going, he realized that he was running home. He was unconsciously avoiding anything organic. And he didn’t notice the weird stares from the random cars passing by. Michael started to think about the way the tree groaned, tears falling from his eyes.

By the time Michael reached home, he was near hysteria, looking around wildly and not slowing down even though he struggled for breath. He hammered on the door.

“Mum! Mum! Open Up! Please Open Up! Please Mum Please!” Michael shouted to the tall mahogany door.

Michael’s mind flashed back suddenly to the time they had first moved into the house, thinking about how excited he had been, asking his parent’s if he could go to that nearby cage and play soccer.

“That…damned…cage.” Michael muttered to himself, relentlessly pounding on the door and gasping for air.

After what seemed like an eternity, there was a loud click as the door was unlocked. Without thinking and without warning, Michael was suddenly overwhelmed and forgot about everything. All he wanted was his mother now. Michael pushed the door opened and hugged his mother tightly, tearing streaming from his eyes and his chest heaving rapidly.

“Mum oh mum I’m sorry I’m so sorry I know I’m wrong the cage the ball the leaves the groans oh the tree oh” The mutters dropped to a whisper.

“Why Michael, what’s wrong? You know that I…I…”

Suddenly, it hit Michael like a cold bucket of water splashed over his head.

“No Mum no please not you too! PLEASE MUM NO MUM NO NOT YOU!!” Michael started shouting in agony. Leaves decomposing were bad, a tree decomposing was worse, but his own mother…

“I…I…” his mother’s voice dropped to a dead whisper as black patches began to appear all over her skin, “I love you Micha.” She never finished that last word, as Michael’s screams drowned out all other noise. Looking like someone whom had just fainted, she fell to the floor with her eyes wide open yet blank.

The black spots appearing on her skin looked like cancer, and she started to shrivel up like a dehydrated corpse. The worst part of it all was, she was still alive.

Then the groaning began. The groans sounded inhuman, hollow and empty. They didn’t seem to be coming from her mouth, but from inside her, as though her very insides were groaning in agony.

Her eyes became shriveled balls before bursting with a pop sounds and exposing the bloody sockets underneath. Her skin also started to shrivel up and was almost completely black. Her hair simply started to (fuse) melt together and drip off her forehead like black tar.

Michael’s mother started to groan louder, sounding like a dying man’s last, raspy, breath. In a way, she was dying, but at an accelerated pace.

Her body continued to shrivel until nothing was left except skin and bones. Still she was alive, groaning in a way that was worse than Michael’s screams and the tree’s groans combined. Suddenly, her fingernails simply blacked into liquid and joined a growing pile of sludge on the floor.

Soon, nothing was left except a few bits of false teeth and the ring Michael’s mother always wore floating around in yet another black pile of sludge, which had also started to seep into the hardwood floor.

Michael’s screams turned to sobs of mingled grief and agony.

Yay okay that's the end. About 2500 words in total, so it's more like an essay then a short story. =) Thought of this story one night when I suddenly wondered what it would be like to watch a time lapse video of a human decomposing. Wrote the first 2 chapters on that same day, then finished the rest in bits and pieces. =D

Read everything in one shot here.

Decomposition. Chapter Three.

Read Chapter One first, and then Chapter Two. If not you won't understand a thing I'm writing.

It was like watching a video of those leaves fast forwarded, showing how they shrivel up in just a matter of seconds, showing how the faded to black, then holes started appearing, and soon nothing was left except that black goop. Only it wasn’t a video, and everything happened in less than a few seconds.

Michael felt weird. He thought he would feel cool, discovering that he had such an awesome superpower like those Heroes on television or the X-Men, but he just felt weird.

“This is wrong, just so, wrong.”

Michael turned and began to run, he didn’t know where he was going to, all he knew was that he had to get out of that place or he would puke his guts out and start screaming hysterically. All of a sudden that friendly, usual atmosphere of the soccer cage seemed ominous and dark, like a monster watching its prey silently.

Although it felt like an eternity to him, Michael ran only for about 10 minutes before slowing to a stop on the sidewalk. He could no longer see the cage, only small trees that dotted the sidewalk periodically.

‘This is stupid, it can’t be real. I had one of those, hallucinations. Yeah. That’s it.’ Michael grinned to himself.

‘Haha, maybe the leaves were already decomposed in the first place.’

Michael’s grin grew wider, now he started to feel embarrassed at having run off in the first place.

Michael started to turn and go back, swiping his hand past a tree absent-mindedly. He had barely walked for a few minutes when he heard a groaning sound. Michael whirled around; his mouth open in a silent scream as his fear came rushing back to him.

The groaning sound came from that tree he had just swiped. If the sight of leaves decomposing was horrible, the sight of the tree was revolting, atrocious and disgusting at the same time. The groans emanating from the tree seemed to vibrate in Michael’s head, and sounded to him like the scream of an old man.

The tree started turning black all over. Leaves turned to black sludge immediately and for a moment it looked like the tree was raining oil from its branches. Then the branches were bare and started snapping off on their own, landing in the sludge beneath and seeming to melt into it.

The stem itself started to grow huge white holes in the midst of the black. Michael stared, enthralled at the holes. You could see the living cells of the tree turn black at an amazing rate. And the white holes oozed sap out of them. Then tree started to melt into the ground, and soon nothing was left except the black sludge which was also fast disappearing. Michael couldn’t bear to think about even breathing particles of that sludge.

In fact, Michael didn’t think at all. He simply stopped and started, thinking of nothing, feeling nothing, hearing nothing. Slowly, comprehension started to dawn in his eyes. His eyes started to widen with shock and his mouth started to emit a sharp scream.

‘Let’s run we have to run please run oh please get away from that thing I want to go home please run.’

His legs were rooted to the ground and nothing he thought could move them. But even as he started to scream, his eyes noticed movement. The black sludge on the ground was moving slowly towards him even whilst seeping into the sidewalk.

That was enough to get his legs moving. He turned to run, this time not stopping, not looking back, and definitely not thinking that it was all a hallucination. He thought of nothing at all except running.

Decomposition. Chapter Two.

Read Chapter One first if you haven't already.

Michael rushed to change his shoes, grab his ball and leave. He knew that he was in the wrong, and every silent second spent in the house seemed to remind him of his guilt. Claire sighed when she heard the door slam and the sound of footsteps leading away from the house. And she had hoped that she wouldn’t have to lug the groceries home again.

Michael walked quickly to the cage, trying not to concentrate on the guilt but on his anger towards his mother. The soccer cage was a 10 minutes walk away and by the time he reached, he found that his anger had dissipated. He was however, sweating from head to toe already due to the extremely hot weather.

Michael was disappointed to find that no one was there, it was around 4pm, and usually 7 or 8 boys would be in the cage playing at this time, but today there was no one. It was a weird sight, seeing the cage which was almost always full of boys playing inside so empty.

Brushing away his disappointment, Michael went in with his ball and started to kick it into the unguarded goals. With each kick, he tried to vent his anger, or what was left of it, on that red and sliver ball, expertly guiding it into the goal at the far end of the cage. Soon after, he realized that this was boring and decided to sit outside the cage instead.

“Okay, okay, I shouldn’t have left home at all, but I’m already here.” He thought aloud to himself.

After a few minutes, Michael walked over to pick up his ball and go home, deciding that maybe grocery shopping wasn’t that bad after all. Michael bent down to pick up his ball, brushing off a few leaves that had stuck on the ball in the process. Suddenly, Michael leapt up and dropped the ball. His heart started beating rapidly and he looked around wildly to see if there was anyone around. The place was deserted, and Michael looked back at the leaves, blinking a few times to be sure of what he saw.

The leaves Michael had touched had shriveled up and withered, as if they had been left there for a few weeks. But that was not the only thing. Michael bent down for a closer look, what he saw was the leaves beginning to disintegrate, melting into a brownish black goop that slowly began to seep into the concrete floor of the soccer cage. It was hard to describe, but even in his shock, Michael knew what it was, he had learned it in Science class, his teacher had taught them about life cycles and to describe it in one word, it was…

“Decomposition,” Michael whispered to himself, awed and appalled at the same time.

Decomposition. Chapter One.

Haha okay wrote this short story some time ago, but only finished it today. It's quite short, only about 2000+ words long. Read it if you want and comment on any grammatical mistakes or spelling errors or factual misrepresentations or whatever. I won't be posting the whole story at once though. =)

Michael Summers was just your normal average 13-year old boy. He had a mother, father and a sister. He lived just 15 minutes away from his school and scored pretty okay grades, usually straight Bs but an occasional A or C popped up from time to time. The former getting him a reward and the latter getting him grounded.

The interesting thing about Michael, if there was anything interesting about him, was that he was a pretty good soccer player. Cage soccer, to be exact. Having played about everyday with his friends since he started primary school, he had progressed to the point where he was a formidable opponent when in the cage.

Michael found soccer a great way to relieve stress and anger. He usually played with his friends after school, running around in that rectangular box made of steel wires and concrete. Sometimes they played on weekends too. For his thirteenth birthday his parents had given him a Nike soccer ball with a note that read: Happy Birthday Mike! Chase your Dream! That was one great thing about Michael’s parents; as long as his grades were passable and his conduct good, they allowed him to play soccer whenever he wanted. They allowed him to chase his dream. This naturally, turned out to be a mistake Michael would live to regret.

It all started on one hot Saturday.

“Michael, have you done your homework?” his mother, Claire Summers, asked.

“Yes Mum, can I go out now?” Michael asked, the trace of impatience in his distinct and unmistakable.

“Well, I was thinking maybe you could help me with grocery shopping today,” Claire replied, ignoring that growing impatience she sensed in her son.

“But you said I could play if I did my homework!” Michael shouted indignantly.

“I know perfectly well what I said, and don’t you raise your voice against me like that young man!” Claire snapped back. She knew that her son would soon become an angry, oppressive teenager and after hearing the horror stories from other mothers, she wasn’t sure if she looked forward to that change.

“A promise's a promise. Or are promises made to be broken?” Michael questioned, deliberately trying to act innocent just to irritate his mother. He knew it was wrong to treat her like that, but he wasn’t prepared to give in without a fight.

What he did not expect however, was his mother to reply in a calm, resigned voice.

“Okay, if soccer is what you want, you may go.”

These words would haunt him for a very long time.