A Collection Of Nightmares
an excerpt

As an overnight cashier, who hated her job with a passion, Emily thought she had seen everything. Her nights consisted selling beer and cigarettes to already drunken people who looked like they hadn’t touched a bar of soap in years. She thought she was prepared for anything; she had even been robbed at gunpoint before. Nothing prepared her for what she was about to endure.
She brushed a loose stand of red hair behind her ear as she stocked the shelves in the store. She was the only person in the store, which was the way she liked it. No drunken idiots around to bother her. She pulled out her phone and started to text her boyfriend when she heard the chimes above the door sound. She turned around and saw a Mexican man standing in the doorway.
The man appeared horribly burnt and his skin was bubbling. Emily could see the blood and bone under his bubbling flesh. He cried out in pain as he walked into the store, seeming to feel pain with each step he took. His face was blistered and Emily wondered if he had been in a chemical accident. Tears appeared to be falling from the stranger’s face.
At first Emily was too shocked to move, then without thinking she dropped a box of red hair dye in the floor as she rushed to the door. She was worried about this man; she’d never seen such horror. He stumbled a little ways into the store and ended up falling on the floor. Emily rushed to him and kneeled down so that she could be face to face with him. His head was near her knee. She reached out to him and he bit her arm. Emily stared in shock at her bleeding arm.
The burns on the Mexican man disappeared, his skin stopped bubbling and he appeared to have been somehow cured. She could no longer see his blood and bone under his flesh. He looked like a normal man, no burns, scars, or bubbling skin. He looked at Emily, an expression of pity on her face. He said something to her in Mexican that she couldn’t understand and then he stood up. He threw a strange necklace to her and then he turned and left. Emily sat, dumbfounded on the floor of the 24 hour store.
The wounds on her arm appeared to disappear before her eyes after about ten minutes. She was physically shaking uncontrollably. She sat for what seemed like hours paralyzed by the events that had happened before her own two eyes. A man she thought was dying had healed before her, after biting her. It reminded her of those old horror stories she used to read as a child about vampires. Vampires didn’t exist but how could she begin to understand what she had just seen with her own eyes?
She picked up the necklace and held it before her eyes. It had a thick, gold chain with a blue pendent. The pendent was the oddest thing, it had something written on it in Mexican, but she didn’t speak Mexican. She just stared at it with wide eyes full of confusion. She could see her face in the shiny pendent; she started to feel pain and noticed her skin started to blister. She thought of the Mexican man, the way his skin looked.
She touched her face and felt the pain of the blisters and saw more breaking out in her reflection on the pendent. The pain she felt was almost unbearable. She fell to the floor, curling into a ball as she sobbed. More blisters broke out on her body and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she looked like the Mexican man who had somehow passed his curse into her. She wondered if she would die, if the strange man had given her some disease she would die from. Had the man been a vampire, feeding on her and healing himself then leaving her to die or become like him?
“Em, you okay? You look sick.” Emily looked up to see who had spoken. Her eyes were blurry from her pain but she could see the girl standing before her. It was her replacement, Annie. Annie wore a worried look but didn’t appear shocked at Emily’s appearance. “Don’t you see it?” Emily asked Annie, not moving. “See what?” “Annie, look at me, I’m blistered. I’m probably going to die, help me, damn it!” Emily tried to reach for Annie but Annie just stood looking over her.
“Em, are you crazy, you look normal. You’re just lying on the floor, crying your eyes out. You should go home and get some rest or maybe go to the doctor.” Emily was confused, why couldn’t Annie see it the blisters that were clearly there and causing Emily pain with each breath she took. “I’m calling the doctor Em, maybe he’ll make a house call when I tell him what’s going on. You must have a fever or something. I promise you there are no blisters.” Annie left Emily alone and went to the phone to call a doctor.
Emily began to choke and her blood spattered across the floor. She was curled into a ball on the dirty 24-hour store floor with her blood spattered near her blistering face. She choked on her own blood and her skin began to buddle, she could see her flesh and bone under it. Blood spilled from her arms into the floor as she choked, shaking and bleeding on the filthy floor. Emily felt a pain that she had never known before.
Somewhere over her pain she heard sirens. A few men came into the store a few minutes after Annie disappeared. They wore scrubs, if Emily was thinking she’d have known that they would have been wearing uniforms and not scrubs to bring her to the hospital. She looked straight at them and had no knowledge of what they looked like. It was as if they were faceless, bald men with overpowering muscles. Their faces were featureless, but Emily assumed her vision was clouded through her pain. They each grabbed an arm and took her away, she passed out as they brought her.
Emily woke up with a burning pain, as if her flesh was being melted off. There wasn’t much on her mind other then her pain. She could no longer see, but if she could see she would know she had not been taken to the hospital. Skulls and bones littered the floor; layers of dust covered the bones. A man stood, watching Emily struggle with her pain before him. She didn’t know he was there until he placed his hand under her chin, bringing her face up to look into it.
Her eyes were white, those of a blind person, no longer the pretty green shade they had once been. Her once freckled, pale white face was now covered in blood and blisters. Her beautiful red hair was now caked with blood. Her body was shaking, she felt more pain then she had ever felt in her life. Tears rolled down her face uncontrollably. Her lips were bloody and swollen. Emily’s veins were visible through her red and bloody flesh.
She wasn’t scared at first, as she faced him without being able to see him. She shook in his hand and her mouth was barely able to form words anymore. “Doctor?” she asked him, hoping he could make her pain disappear but fearing she would be marked with blisters forever. “No,” he simply said, the word bringing fear into Emily. “Help me?” she begged of him. She hoped the man she feared would be the man who could help her. He released her face and walked away from her, she reached out for him as he walked away without a word.
Her hands rested on his arms, leaving blood on his shirt. “My child, you have been cursed, only you can help yourself.” He brushed her hands off, not minding the blood left behind. She heard him pouring himself something to drink and then slowly sipping the drink. “My dear, what would you have said was your best sense?” he asked her. “My eyes, it was my eyes and now I can’t see.” She sobbed for a moment, the teardrops burning her face as they spilt down her cheeks. “Do you know why you can not see?” “Why would I know, a man came into the store and bit me as I was trying to help him. Then this happened to me, the same thing that had happened to him.”
“In a way you are correct, he gave you a necklace. It was the necklace of my little girl. She was born unable to hear, see, or speak. She was helpless in a world that didn’t want to help her. The necklace chooses the people it wants to take. If you let it take you, you will die and my daughter will have your vision. As soon as you pass the curse on to someone else, you will be free and they will be in danger. As of now, my daughter can see.”
“What do I have to do?” Emily asked, only being able to hear the man in the room with her and feeling completely helpless herself. “The necklace choose you, I’m sure you will know what to do when you it chooses someone else.” She heard footsteps walking away from her. “Wait, help me,” she cried, reaching for him blindly. “I can not help you, you can only help yourself. You have twenty-four hours. I want you to leave now.” He seemed to disappear with his words as he left her alone among the bones. She sat, very confused, wishing she could have at least seen the man who cursed her.
Emily wanted nothing more then to be her former self once more or to die, right there on the floor in the most pain she had ever been in. The things she had once believed were important escaped her as she wondered how to end the curse and crawled across the dust and bone covered floor. Her body burned with unbearable pain as she crawled along the floor, wishing her pain away. She couldn’t see, she could only feel the things before her and she prayed that she wouldn’t touch anything that would harm her.
She wondered if she had been left there to die. She had never thought anything like what happened to her could happen. She’d never thought she’d get more then a cold from working with the public. She was proved wrong as she felt blood leaving her arm. She was weak and she knew she had to push herself to save what was left of her. She was completely isolated and knew she could only depend on herself. Her head was throbbing with pain. She opened her mouth to scream from the pain and blood splattered from her mouth onto the floor.
She felt around with her hands ahead of her and suddenly she felt a step. She dragged her body up each stair. Pain exploded through her hips as they dragged across the stairs, she was able to hold the upper part of her body up. Her arms could barely support her as she struggled to drag her body slowly up each step. She groaned as she reached the top. A woman rushed over to her, “Oh my God! Look at you! I’m calling the hospital.” She yelled as she pulled out a cell phone.
Emily could see the woman, she could see her clearly and it appeared she could see Emily’s injuries. The woman stood in the blackness of Emily’s limited vision. She was a beautiful woman, with the looks of a supermodel. She had brunette hair and brown eyes that glistened. She appeared truly worried about Emily, a stranger to her, just as the Mexican man had been a stranger to Emily. Emily knew the necklace had chosen the woman, but Emily did not dare to touch her.
The beautiful woman reached a pale hand out to touch her and Emily moved away. “Don’t touch me,” was all she managed as the woman appeared confused. “Sickness,” she mumbled and the woman appeared to understand that it would spread. She stayed by Emily’s side as she waited for medical help. The woman looked around her at the people passing her, wondering why they weren’t stopping to help. She was unaware of the fact that only she could see the true state of Emily’s health.