The Inside-Out Man

It was a dark and stormy night when Arthur died.

The storm raged on like a banshee in the sky, shrieking as though it were a tortured ghost straining against the chains of the wind. The rain poured against the window in thick columns. Midnight struck, but Arthur didn’t think much of it while the clock chimed and the wind battled against his house. What did stir him while he warmed his cold toes by the fireplace was a great crash from above. It caused the chandelier to quiver, and he was too startled for any rational thought for a few moments. One often grew accustomed to the bumps in the night in such an old house, but this night felt different for Arthur. In fact, the whole day felt different. Something had been building up. The entire world felt...odd, like something had been dislocated from it.

Taking his wooden crutches, he hobbled towards the base of the stairs. He saw nothing through the cloak of darkness. All the candles were lit downstairs, but he had lit none upstairs. Taking a lantern and turning the gas up, he struggled up the stairs with his crutches and mangled leg. He had lost his right during the Battle of Waterloo a few years ago in 1815. He had a peg leg built, but he often didn’t like to wearing it as it rubbed against the stub of his limb, despite the generous amount of padding he placed inside it. For now, he had a stump.

He finally reached the top of the landing, and the lantern cast an eerie yellow glow on the corridor. The walls were covered in grand old paintings, purchased from his father’s side, and lining the beautiful polished wood tables were ornaments from all over the world: Egypt, Peru, China. He hobbled through the corridor and found the crash had come from his bedroom, though it was too dark to see anything significant.

‘Alice?’ he called with a voice shrivelled with fear. The servant usually liked wandering around, shifting things about and being a general nuisance. But all he could hear was the crashing storm outside. He lit a couple of oil lamps in the room, shedding some light in it. He could see clearly what had caused such a noise now. The window had flung open and knocked the vase of flowers onto the rug. Tutting to himself, he clambered over and tried his best to pick up the broken vase and each piece of broken glass. The wind streamed through the open window, rain pattering against his face. He decided it would be wiser to shut it first before resuming his task of picking up the broken glass, but as he was about to, two red eyes glared back at him through the open window. He screamed and fell back against his bed, losing one of his crutches to the floor. The two red eyes belonged to a corpse-like creature; a sheet of white skin seemed to be pulled tight over its skull, and its cheek bones stuck out like shards of glass. The creature, with its long, slender claws, climbed through the window, never taking its red eyes from him.

Arthur stared back in open-mouthed terror. He was so stricken, he almost fainted. But it seemed the eyes which bored into his cast him into a stupor. It didn’t occur to him to try and run, as he already knew he could not; the creature stood up on the carpet, its hooves clinking against the broken glass, and trailed towards him.

He was frozen in terror, but also frozen from whatever spell this wretched thing had cast upon him. He could do nothing but watch as the ghastly thing inched towards his face; the red eyes widened, and he could just about make out the tiny veins wrapped around the terrifying blood orbs.

The creature unfolded its finger and curled it towards Arthur’s mouth; the poor man tried to scream again, but could not, and the creature’s ice-cold finger poked between his lips and pushed against the back of his throat. Arthur could not believe this thing had invaded his mouth in such a way, and the stench from its skin was ungodly!

Soon, the rest of the hand joined the finger, and the creature forced its arm down Arthur’s throat. He could feel the nails scratching against his insides, picking at them, prodding them, and rearranging them. All he could do was stand and retch.

After he thought the creature could fit no more of itself inside him, the demon pulled open Arthur’s mouth and duck its head into the hole. Inside it went, climbing into him as though he was nothing more than a suit to be worn. And once inside him, once Arthur had swelled up to the point of bursting, the creature pushed its claws against the webbing of his stomach.

Arthur's brain merged with the brain of the creature's, and they became one. Arthur, although he knew in some way he was dead, now had the thoughts of the creature. His knee-stump throbbed, and he watched through the creature's bloodshot orbs his leg reforming. He was becoming two-legged, as he had been before the battle! He was becoming a whole man once again. But because he was no longer Arthur, he did not relish in this transformation.

Alice's voice rang in the corridor. 'Arthur, is anything the matter?' She sounded disconcerted. Perhaps she hadn't heard the noise, or the scream. She had been elsewhere in the grand house preparing a pot of tea or getting ready for bed.

Arthur's eyes - the creature's eyes - flitted to the doorway. No longer was there any need for emotion. There was no need for sleep or rest. He had the inexplicable desire to climb into the mouths of each human he encountered and claim their body. An endless spiral. A chain that mustn't be broken, because, and for some reason this made complete sense to the carcass that was Arthur, that if this chain was broken something awful would happen to the creature. There was a beauty in it, however, fixing the broken, the wounded, the ill, only to take the body that had been fixed. Beautiful, because Arthur was now mended in various ways. But now Alice is calling and he can hear her footsteps across the carpet. He must go to her.

He must swallow her.

She must scream.

It is part of the chain. The rebirth.

All creatures must bloom.