The Music Box
1.
Plains. As far as the eye can see, flat farmland. Looking out one may think they can see the end of the earth, an eternal road that only ends when existence does. Rarely does the road ever get traffic. The highway is a more popular way of travel, the “scenic” detour ignored. (Although the word “scenic” isn’t what most would use to describe the land.) It was dry and withered. The sun’s enmity seemed to destroy all plant life that tried to survive in the area. There are rarely any clouds anymore. Just a blue sky that seeps into oblivion. Yet if one was to travel along the road, miles from civilization, they would see a tiny spec on the horizon. Upon further inspection, the spec would turn into a farmhouse.
The farmhouse was old. It was built in a prosperous time when money and work was abundant. Now the white paint is all nearly chipped away, shedding its skin like a snake. The porch, which feels unstable under ones feet, its caving in giving the look of it smiling. The windows are deformed, mutated in nature. Once they may have seemed benevolent, yet now they have taken a more demonic form. The roof’s shingles are falling out, leaving the home looking vulnerable and weak. The door still had remnants of its old, happier life. It was still red, yet a much darker red than that of its previous memory. The red seemed to look more like blood, its chipping away gave the illusion of it seeping out from the door. The house was ugly.
The man who lived there, Sheldon, was uglier than his house. Hideous even. Perhaps he had been kind, loving at one point in time. It seemed as if the house and the land underneath it had sucked his happiness from him and replaced it with hatred and pain. He despised the house, the farm, his wife, his daughter. His love only went to a few things in his life. He loves money, power, and himself. Every night he can be seen drinking. He had a drinking problem, no doubt. He was usually numb to everyone. Choleric and scary. In a sense, he was a psychopath. Again, he may not always have been this way. Once he may have been human, now he is nothing of the sort.
His wife was not all there. She had crawled inside herself, refusing to live in reality. She dealt with her husband’s verbal and physical abuse. I would tell you her name, yet I doubt it would matter. She does not need a name because she refused to make one for herself. She blended into the background, accepting her fate. Weak, timid, afraid.
Leaving the daughter. Her name was a family name. A name shared by many of her ancestors before her. Mary. She was a small and skinny child. She had a petite face and big blue eyes and white blonde hair that reflected light. She seemed to be angelic. Yet when one looked at her dress, it spoke of everything but heaven. Her body was covered in bruises and dirt. The dress she wore once was pink, now it was an ugly sort of brown. She was a quiet girl, like her mother. Yet instead of feeling nothing toward her father, she felt hatred. A pure type of hate, embedded deeply into her soul.
2.
It was dark and quiet one night. The universe hung overhead, lighting the sky. Sheldon was drinking again. He stumbled onto the porch angry. He was furious at nothing and yet everything. He opened the door and went into the master bedroom, where his wife was waiting. He pulled her by her hair as she screamed. Her daughter stood near the door peeking into the room, obviously terrified. Sheldon raised his fist and slammed it down upon the woman’s head over and over again. Her nose was being crushed by his knuckles. Her eyes were turning black. Her face was swelling. Blood went everywhere, splattered on her husband as he continued to beat her. Mary flinched with every hit. She could her the muffled screams of her mother and the bones breaking with every snap. Finally the screams stopped. The woman’s body twitched for a few moments, then went limp. Everything went dark for her. She had been beaten to death. Yet the lack of struggle didn’t stop Sheldon. He continued to beat her for another few minutes. Finally he realized what he had done. His mind immediately flashed to how he was going to stay out of prison. He saw the clock: 10:24, still enough time to kill. He turned around and spotted Mary’s blue eyes peeking around the door. A split second after their eyes locked, she could read the expression in his eyes. It was murderous.
She ran up the stairs, trying to evade her executor. He grabbed her ankle and pulled the child down the stairs. He wrapped his dry, cracked hands around her small throat and squeezed. A few minutes later she was limp as well. Her lips were blue. Her eyes were vacant, staring into empty space. She was gone, yet her shell was still in the hands of a psychopath.
He buried both of them in the backyard. He dug a shallow grave. Dumped their bodies in the hole and shoveled dirt on top of them. Part of him was relieved. He hated them. They only weighed him down. He went inside to wash himself and the floors of blood and dirt and went to bed.
3.
Day 1.
In the morning he was awoken by music. The sound drifted into his ears and filled him with confusion. The music was coming from Mary’s music box. The one with a pink ballerina, it had been a gift for her birthday from her mother. It had to be wound up and opened for it to play music. He brushed this fact off and walked to the upstairs bedroom. He saw the music box opened, the little ballerina spinning inside. He slammed it shut. Annoyed, he went back downstairs to continue his day.
That night he was lying in his bed. Drifting in and out of sleep. When he heard footsteps upstairs. He immediately thought he was being robbed. He grabbed his shotgun out of the closet and walked upstairs. As he ascended he cursed and spoke various threats about what he was to do to whoever was intruding. He searched the entire upstairs. He found no one. He went back to his bedroom to resume sleep. It began again. The pitter patter of small footsteps walking across the hall, the sound of scratching at his door. He got up to check again. He found nothing. He went to bed and decided it was his mind playing tricks on him and he fell asleep.
Day 2
Again he was awoken by the music box. He stomped upstairs, annoyed. This time he noticed a pocket watch in the music box. He picked it up and examined it. It was silver and delicate. Had it been there the day before? He wasn’t sure. The pocket watch had flowers and vines carved into it. He opened it. The clock was stopped at 10:24, exactly. He slowly placed it back in the music box and closed it. He walked back downstairs to the kitchen. The various cupboards that aligned the walls were open. All of them. Sheldon knew someone must be in his house. He grabbed his gun and a whiskey bottle and began searching the grounds. All the while saying colorful words and descriptions of what he would do to him or her once he caught him or her. He searched for a full hour, with no success. He went to the kitchen to sit down. At this time he was becoming more remorseful of killing his wife. He was hungry, after all, and who was there to make his food? Cursing under his breath he climbed into his pickup truck to go to town.
When he returned everything was in its place, except for his bed. It had managed to cross the room while he was gone. It now barricaded the closet door. Frustrated, mystified, and angry he pushed the bed back to its original place. Tired and in a drunken daze he quickly passed out lying on the bed. His mud caked boots were still on.
Day 3
Ah, the music box again. It chimed its way down to Sheldon’s ears and danced into his head making his brain throb. He was furious. He pulled him self out of bed and practically ran upstairs. He went into his lost daughters bedroom and slammed the music box shut. He looked in the mirror when closed it and saw her. She was standing there. Her face and lips blue, her eyes vacant, her dress covered in brown dirt. She was standing there smiling up at him, her father and her murderer.
He turned around screaming, “You little bitch!” and hurled the music box at the wall. No one was there. Was he delusional? Had he not witnessed and caused her death? Did he not see the color of her blue lips and the black stare of her eyes? He had, he knew he had. He buried her in the backyard, along with her wretched mother. He decided he was drunk. Sure, that’s a kind of logical explanation. So, in order to cure him of his drinking, he drank more whiskey. After drinking way more than one too many he passed out on the kitchen floor.
He was awoken by a little cold hand around his neck. He jumped up, but no one was there. Surely it was his mind! But he could not stop thinking about the thing he saw in the mirror. He looked outside. It was dark, yet the clouds had stopped the stars from shining. When had it become so dark?
His head was pounding. He had to know what had happened to Mary. Surely she was dead! He buried her in with her mother. Perhaps she was not dead! Perhaps she had somehow survived…
He grabbed a shovel and started to dig up his family. The more dirt he dug the more the smell of decaying, putrid flesh assaulted his nose. Finally he found his wife, and the place where his daughter should be. But her body was gone. His wife, beginning to decay and smell of death was laying in the dirt. She was unrecognizable due to the beating she had obtained on her face. But the girl… The girl was no where to be seen. Where was she? How was she not dead?!
His head shot up to the barn, where he had seen a shadow move swiftly into. He grabbed the shovel and torch, ready to kill whatever was inside. He opened the barn door and saw a human sized raven with sharp daggered teeth and pieces of skin dangling out of its mouth. Its red eyes and pitch black feathers doused in blood were shining brightly when Sheldon’s flashlight hit it. It took a step toward him and he fell. Stumbling backwards, running into the house, he moved quickly. He locked the door and waited. The handle began to shake and the door began to break. Sheldon ran to the bedroom to grab the shotgun and was getting ready to point it at the thing whenever it busted through the door. Yet everything was silent. He waited for a few minutes, terrified. He slowly got out of bed and checked everything out. The door was still. The barn abandoned. The grave he had dug up was still open, the body of his slain wife still lying there motionless. He felt a shiver crawl up his back as he buried his wife once again. He wasn’t alone anymore.
Day 4
He awoke in his bed with a burning sensation on his back. “What the fuck?” he said as he stumbled over to the mirror to get a better look at the wound that arrived while he had been sleeping. There were three long gashes on his back, like three razor sharp claws had tore into him. They burned but he could not reach them well.
A fly landed on the lashes. In disgust he tried to swat it away, yet he could not reach the location where the fly had landed. Then another fly came. And another. And soon an entire colony of flies were swarming. He swatted at them in vain, unable to destroy them, for they were in such a large mass. They tried to get into his mouth, his throat. They tried to go up his nostrils, into his ears. They began choking him. He vomited up stomach bile, whiskey, and live flies. He panicked and ran. He had to get away before they strangled him. He was running all the while coughing up the carcasses of the newly deceased flies. He ran into the upstairs bedroom and slammed the door. Relief swelled over him, until he saw what was on the bed. Mary was there. She was partially decayed. Her blue eyes all black. Her veins were more prominent. Her golden hair matted in blood and dirt. She began to move.
Sheldon was beginning to have a nervous breakdown. He tried for the door again, yet to no avail. The door would not open. Slowly he realized the flies were coming in through the bottom of the door. Obviously out smarting its human counterpart. They began swarming him. He was trapped. All the while, the small child was staring at him. Her face was expressionless except for the curl of her little blue lips. Thinking quickly he leaped out the window, to his own death. The last image he ever saw alive was that of his daughter. The child he killed had killed him.
4
The police report stated that Sheldon had jumped from the upstairs window. An obvious suicide attempt. An awful stench caught the attention of one of the police officers, thus allowing them to discover the wife. Her face was severely deformed. She had died of blunt force trauma to the head.
Mary’s body was never found.
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