She

She

The car winged and whined, accentuated mostly due to the bitter cold weather that had swept over the city of Halberg.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on..." Oliver Lynchley urged his car
to start as he wrenched the key in the ignition and peddled his foot
delicately on the accelerator. "Come on, come on, come on, come on!"
He was not usually an impatient man, however the blanket fog that had
encompassed the city seemed to inject its chilling bite throughout the
suburbs, growing and evolving as it went, which seemed to bring out the
worst in people. It happened that Oliver was feeling the spiteful wrath
of the fog now more than ever.

Oliver was a teacher at Halberg Senior High School, and it was
there, in the staff car park, long after the other faculty members had
parted ways, that he sat in his car praying that his battery was not
dead, and that the motor would roar into life at any moment now; upon
which result he'd be home basking in the warmth at the hearth of his
fireplace. It was to his misfortune that the battery was too stubborn
to give, and that he would not be driving anywhere tonight.

With a heavy sigh of defeat, he tugged the keys from the ignition
and slumped back on the driver's seat. He was exhausted, perhaps too
much so to walk home, but the sun was rapidly falling below the
horizon, and too much procrastination would have him freezing to death
from the twilight chill. He glanced in the rear view mirror at the
pathetic orange-purple sunset, barely peeking through the fog, and he
sensed that unwanted presence again. She was nearby, and it sent a
bitter, dejected shiver cascading down his spine.

He left his files and workbooks in the front passenger seat, opened
the door on the driver's side, and stepped out into the brewing storm.
He would come back tomorrow to collect his things, and to try and fix
his car. But on this night, he just re-wrapped his coat around himself,
lest the cold finds a way of getting in, and he walked out of the car
park and down the centre of the ice slicked road, inhaling the thin,
misty air as he went.

The wind whispered his name, and echoed off into the darkness, rain
drizzled over the concrete playground, shining up the grey surface to
reveal her ever present gaze. He maintained his stride, sensing her
madness was about, but until the playground was behind him Oliver
couldn't hold back his fascination with the face on the surface of the
concrete. Black as the night his beautiful wife Amelia died, the face
tortured him, with wild, gnashing teeth of a ravenous, hungry mouth,
and eyes that bore no resemblance to any others within this world. He
shrugged the slack of his coat off his shoulders and tugged the garment
tighter across himself, and willed himself to shut her from his
thoughts.

This was not the first time he had seen her, felt her unwanted gaze
upon his unimposing self, once before he was tortured by her menacing
ways. It was the night of the accident, he was driving his Amelia back
home from a night out on the town, he estimated it to be about one
o'clock in the morning. There was not another vehicle on the road, but
he could see not ten meters ahead with the high beams on, as the rain
came down in sheets nigh on impenetrable.

The wiper blades ran back and forth, scarcely improving visibility
but for a moment, yet he drove on relentlessly, throwing caution to the
wind. The car was roaring down the road at speeds unfathomable, least
of all in the current condition. Whereabouts on the road he was, Oliver
couldn't tell, but he'd thrown a couple of drinks back, and his wife; a
couple of dozen. She was passed out, head slumped back uncomfortably in
her seat, quite unaware of the madness that had consumed her husband.

He did not usually succumb to such recklessness, but the accident
would later be put down to inebriation. However, Oliver was adamant, as
he plunged the accelerator hard to the floor, that his drunkenness had
not caused this unfortunate event, but rather a sober anxiety, a fear
caused by his seeing of a demonic apparition, a vile, torturous
devil-woman thrusting her madness into him through the mirrors, the
windows, speaking to him through the car's radio, looking at him
through his wife's eyes, glowering down upon him from the sky,
hammering upon him with the rain, reflecting her image towards him from
the road and tearing his soul open with her very own hands had caused
the car to skid on the road and slammed heavily into a tree.

Amongst the tangled wreck of metal, wood and flesh, she had claimed
her victim, his dearest Amelia. Oliver stepped out of the driver's side
with little more than a scratch, and a dull ache coursing through his
body. He rested his body against the hood of the car, wallowing in
self-pity over her torment, he waited for the sirens to arrive, to
interrogate, to apply medicinal practices, and to take Amelia's
twisted, mutilated corpse away. Oliver rested against the crumpled hood
of his car, suffering the defeat of a merciless demon woman.

That was a little over a year ago. Time had passed, wounds had been
covered over and the scars had begun to heal. For a while he felt that
he had permanently descended into madness, and that no amount of
begging for mercy would bring him back, no amount of pleading could
salvage his soul from the colossal pits of hell. But with therapy, he
was able to move on, to get his life back on track, go back to the
school, and resume teaching again. So it was with the utmost horror
that he found these healed scars to be opened up again, and that
wretched demonic spirit at his gullet for a second time.

He tried to ignore her, he continued to force his feet one in front
of the other, but she was there with him, every step of the way. Her
cries echoed through the streets, how one voice sounded like so many,
he couldn't comprehend, yet he remained adamant that he was stronger
than this, that he could ignore her, to force her out of his life.

"You're not real, you're not... you're just a figment of my
imagination" he said mostly to himself. Yet the fog still crept in and
lingered around his throat, and the otherworldly howls sent their
demonizing vocals penetrating into his eardrums.

"No! You can't hurt me, you're not real!" He spoke a little louder,
in an attempt to fool her with false confidence. The wind heaved and
whirled with a peculiar polyphonic cackle which almost swept him off
his feet.

He returned her laughter, a hearty twinge of madness snapping across
his fragile outer-shell. "You can't hurt me any more!" This time he
roared his confidences with a loud clarity, so that the whole street
could hear. "You've claimed my wife, and you've tried to take my life
too, but you won't! I won't let you! I'm stronger than this!" He opened
his arms, to represent his discarding of that which he had previously
feared.

The wind howled in anger and took the opportunity to sweep his coat
open and to nestle its bitter chill deep throughout his body. He ran,
hard and fast down the road, far away from the cursed playground, far
away from the demented wind, yet the howling of beasts so demonic still
rattled about within his skull. He turned down a side street, heading
for home, as the heavens unsheathed their fury upon him with much
aggression, soaking him to the bone.

It was there in the dirt and the filth and the mud that the wind
finally did sweep himself off his feet and to the gutter. With a
swelling lip and a gash in his side, he continued to laugh a hollow
laugh, and in his madness he felt his grasp on the world before him
slip away. The last thing he saw was a wild, large, greyed, stray dog,
with amber eyes and elongated fangs and razor claws. It howled its
sombre note and trudged across the muddy road. The dog proceeded to
bend at his side and with its warm, wet tongue it licked at his wound,
the blood feeding the canine with the devil's heat, for Oliver's body
now belonged to the she-spirit whom had haunted him, and his blood was
hers. That which was him, had now become She.