The Abyss Writes Back Page #2

• Fiction
• Horror
• Short story
• Fantasy

								


The figure laughed, a deep, rattling growl. “Don’t you? I’ve bared my soul to you, Marshall. And now you’ll give me what I need.”

He stepped closer with a predatory grace, and in his gloved hand, the blade gleamed, casting a shadow across Marshall’s face.

“Stay back!” Marshall raised the pen stand, trembling.

The man moved with lethal speed. Marshall’s makeshift weapon clattered to the floor as an elbow slammed into his temple. Sparks danced behind his eyelids, and the world tilted.

Gloved fingers twisted in his hair, yanking his head back. Up close, Marshall could smell him—a sickening mix of sweat, stale smoke, and something sweet, like rotting fruit.

“Shhh,” the masked man cooed. “Hush now. This is all so new, so raw. To see your words made flesh… it’s overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“Please,” Marshall gasped. “You don’t have to… I can help you. Therapy, treatment…”

The knife pressed harder, a cold, unforgiving kiss against his throat. “Oh, Marshall,” the man giggled, a demented lilt to his voice. “You already have. You taught me to embrace the beast within. Now, it’s your turn.”

The last thing Marshall felt was the blade’s sharp sting, followed by a wave of warmth as his blood spilled. As oblivion crept over him, one final thought flickered in his mind:

I stared into the abyss… and it stared back. Heaven help us all.
________________________________________

Detective Shane Malloy had always hated pretentious artsy types. He loathed their pontifications on the human condition, their naive justifications for wallowing in depravity as if it somehow elevated them. As if rolling around in filth made you a philosopher.

Now, he stood in what had been Marshall Briggs’ study, a scene of pure carnage. A charnel house that looked like it had been painted by Jackson Pollock himself, only in shades of blood and shadow. The stench was thick and metallic, clawing its way into his nose no matter how shallowly he breathed.

“Detective, you’ll want to see this.” Officer Reeves gestured him over, her face drawn, eyes slightly averted. She held up a blood-smeared manuscript with gloved hands.

Malloy took a deep breath, though he instantly regretted it. “What’ve you got?”

“Briggs’s final work. Something about a vigilante who… well, preys on the worst of society.”

Malloy shook his head, glancing around the room, taking in the sight of torn pages and splintered furniture, the broken glass, and a cracked laptop screen. “So he was a method writer, then.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Reeves muttered grimly. “Have a look at the last page.”

She opened to the last page, where, scrawled in a mad rush of crimson, were three words: Nathaniel Cross lives.

An icy trickle of dread slithered down Malloy’s spine. Briggs’ creation, his darkest fantasy, had somehow leapt from the page into reality. The entire room, the violence, the visceral horror of it all—it was as if Nathaniel Cross himself had stepped out of the story to enact his gruesome justice on his creator.

The detective glanced back down at the manuscript in his hands, the words smeared but still legible. He’d need to read it, he knew, to understand what exactly had happened here. To know what kind of story could drive a man to slaughter in such a calculated, ritualistic manner.

Malloy glanced around again, noting details he had previously missed: scattered scraps of paper with half-finished thoughts and scribbled lines. Some contained chilling passages from Eye for an Eye, phrases that Marshall must have wrestled with, perhaps in his darker hours.

Despite himself, Malloy’s hand tightened on the manuscript. He’d come across cases before where violent literature had been found at crime scenes, often dismissed as coincidence or as fuel for already-twisted minds. But this felt different, as though the book itself were alive, vibrating with some sinister energy that couldn’t be ignored.

He slipped the manuscript into an evidence bag, only to find himself reluctantly glancing back toward it. The first few sentences of the novel had imprinted themselves in his mind. A vigilante, unrestrained, a prophet of brutality. The text itself felt like a virus, infecting him with a dangerous curiosity. Just a story, he told himself. Nothing more.
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