All Hope Lost (2 page)

“Naughty, naughty, you will
have to be punished for that” the final man spoke so quietly, like a whisper.
He was now behind me. “No, please” I begged, “I will be good, I’ll enjoy it, I
promise!”

“Oh, I know you will” he
replied and snickered. “Let’s widen you up a bit more shall we? I’m a big boy
after all.”

I suck in my breath as he glides the flat edge of what
feels like a knife, down my behind then along my sex. He flicks the knife as it
reaches an edge, and he starts to slice, slowly, agonisingly, opening me up.

My breath catches again as I
try to let out the loudest scream I had left. The knife twists and he pushes it
inside me, shredding me apart from the inside out. My mouth opens in a silent
O, my body convulsing, warm blood spilling from between my legs. Sucking in
air, I couldn’t breathe, shuddering profusely the blackness surrounds me. I no
longer feel the pain.

My name is Sharon Hartman, and today, I died.

I opened my eyes to be welcomed by the underside of my
kitchen table, the morning light glaring through my kitchen window.  My
brows furrowed in confusion as I looked about. I spied a small cobweb wrapped
up around the inner corner of a table leg.
I really must clean under here
,
I thought absently. As I slid out from my resting place, I realised that
something was not quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I
stood up slowly facing the kitchen sink, trying to remember and turned around.
There, I was met with a body sprawled out on the table, blood pooling on the
kitchen floor around her feet. As I stood there, stock still, memories of being
attacked came forth.
SHIT.... shit, shit, shit, shit!
I covered my face
in despair as I realised it was me on the table.
Hang on, Sharon. It might
not be me; after all, I’m standing here!
Slowly, I reached over to pull
back the matt of tangled hair sprawled across the woman’s face.  It was
then that I realised I had no sensation of feeling at all.  Lifting a
little hair back off the face before me confirmed my fear.
I’m dead! I’m
fucking dead! THOSE BASTARDS!
Rage flew through me, the hair on my dead
body lifted on an invisible wind, my kitchen curtains wafting behind me. Pacing
the kitchen in what little space I had I tried to think, but was promptly
interrupted by my doorbell jingle.

The corridor leading from my
kitchen went straight to my front door. My living room was to the left just
before you reached my front door, and stairs heading up were to my right, that
led to the two reasonable sized bedrooms and small bathroom. Slowly I crept to
the door. The bell jingled again, and the door knocked upon.

“Sharon, you in?” a familiar
voice spoke. I peered through the window to see a woman, about 5’5”, short
blonde hair to her jawline, blue eyes, curves in all the right places but not
skinny; my friend Samantha, or Sam for short.  She starts to walk away.
No,
please stay with me Sam, I’m scared.
I grabbed hold of the front door
handle and turned it, the wind blowing it open slowly. Sam turned around.

“Sharon?” she walked back to
my door. “Took your time didn’t you?” I stood before her, Sam not seeing me but
staring down the corridor to my kitchen. “Sharon?” Sam stepped into my house,
walking straight through me, slowly towards my kitchen, my body in full view.
My spectral form shimmered in response to her passing and she hugged herself,
shivering. As she reached my body, she stood a moment paralysed. “Oh god, Sharon….”
Tears started to fall down her pale cheeks as she took in the surroundings,
then spotting the pool of blood congealing on the floor. “Shit Sharon, who the
fuck did this to you?!” she exclaimed in anger. I followed her as she rushed
into my living area and grabbed the phone, promptly dialling the emergency
line. Her tears were still flowing as she was asked to stay on the line, sirens
sounding in the distance and getting closer as the minutes crept slowly by,

My front door was still open,
swinging on its hinges in the gusty wind when the paramedics arrived, quickly
followed by two police cars. The ensuing orderly chaos went on for hours,
people toing and froing, Sam being questioned by police in the living room,
paramedics organising my body for removal. It all seemed very surreal. Yet here
I was; a ghost.
What was I supposed to do now? Wasn’t there somewhere I
needed to move on to, like an afterlife, or was this it?
I sighed a ghostly
sigh, causing a chill to stir through the hallway as I watched. A crowd had
started to form outside the house, my elderly neighbour was there crossing her
heart in a silent prayer, my noisy neighbour the other side was leaning on my
wall, fag in mouth, music still booming through her open windows and doors.
God
I hate her, the shit she put me through these past couple of years, and here I
am dead. How unfair is that?

My neighbour from hell and I
had been fighting it out the past two years since she was moved in by the local
council. Her name is Shelby. Early twenties, two young kids, a mouth to make
your mother blush, and doesn’t go out to work. She has a partner, don’t know if
he is the dad to the kids, but he works and lives elsewhere. The kids are
fobbed off to him every weekend, so she gets to have parties, have lots of
friends over who are just as awful, drinking, drugs (you can smell the cannabis
from a mile away) and shouting and screaming all weekend long. She also decides
that parties are ok to have during the week too, so quite often I would spend
weeks trying to catch sleep at odd hours of the day and falling asleep at work
(which is one of the reasons I was made redundant).

When I could sleep I would
wake up late, and end up late for my job. My mental state went downhill rapidly
because of the abuse from her lack of consideration to anyone else living near
her. She thought she had the right to do what she wanted. The council and
Environmental Health sent her warnings about breaking her tenancy agreement and
her behaviour, but nothing ever came of it. So long as she had her rent paid by
the government, she could stay; she could do no wrong. In fact it came down to
me being the one harassing her because of all my complaints. In the end, she
had an ASBO stuck on her, but it made no difference, she carried on as normal.
The lack of support from the council here was disgusting.

That’s where Sam came in. She
was my support when I needed it. She lived across the road, but she was also
feeling the strain of the anti-social assholes that lived around here. She was
there when I became suicidal, when thoughts of murdering my neighbour got too
much, when I couldn’t take it anymore.
I’m so sorry Sam. You had a lot to
deal with yourself, not just with me, but now this. I guess my prayers were
answered, and I got away from all this crap, but what about you? How can you
stay here now this has happened?

The past week or so was so bad; I lost my job due to my
mental state. I would come in to work late, tired, upset, ended up sleeping on
the job, and ultimately ended up short tempered and rude to my colleagues and
customers.

               
Employers don’t want you if you have a problem and that’s a fact. Did I get
help? No. I was forced to go on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills to
control my mood swings and panic attacks, was sent to see a Cognitive
Behavioural Therapist which had little impact on my outlook as I had no control
over what my neighbour could do and when. I ended up hating my life, which
drove me to the suicide attempts. Even then, the bitch next door wasn’t evicted.
And now I was dead. I doubted this would make any difference to her being
moved, as it wasn’t her who had raped and killed me, but hey, at least the
council wouldn’t have to hear me moaning and complaining about living next door
to the bitch from hell anymore.

I fumed at the injustice of it all. The victims always
lose it seems.

                Lost in my own turmoil, time had
seemed to move on without letting me know. The police and paramedics had
departed (excuse the pun), Sam was outside chatting with the crowd and I was
still dead.
What to do know then?
I mused. I searched about my home,
spying my PC tucked in the corner.  I reached down to the power button,
and the machine lit up, fans whirring, the monitor flickering.
Hmm, it never
used to flicker like that.
I stepped away from the screen. The flickering
stopped so I moved towards it again, and it started to flicker.
Interesting.
I stood beneath the ceiling light and waved a ghostly arm beneath it, and
it started to flicker on and off.
Very interesting, I
thought.
My
ethereal state must have an effect on electricity, plus although I’m a ghost I
can still manipulate and touch objects but with no feeling.
I gazed at my
hands, realising then, that I could see through them faintly. I was even
translucent to myself. I sat back in front of the PC, and logged myself in,
opening up my blog page and the community forum I was part of.  I vaguely
wondered what it would be like to see all this happening here, but not seeing
anyone to make things happen.
Freaky!

I quickly logged into the
forum and went through the stories of other people dealing with anti-social
behaviour and noisy neighbours. They had been a lifeline to me on many
occasions, but what should I write here now? I can’t just say, “hi all, afraid
I’m dead so you won’t be hearing from me anymore.” That felt a bit morbid and
like a cruel joke someone would write. I decided to leave it blank and see who
was online.

Realm of Torment

A few users popped up at the
bottom of the screen and so I clicked on one. It was Torment. He was having a
tough time right now but not from human neighbours, but from noise coming from
some sort of industrial site or so we believed. I wondered about going to see
him and experiencing what he had to live with day in day out, twenty-four
seven. I nodded to myself. I could manipulate things, even electricity. I
concentrated about going to his home. Maybe I could just appear there, like
being teleported!
Beam me up Scotty!
Nothing happened.
Ok, too good
to be true.
I tapped my fingers on the desk, but no noise was heard. I
touched the monitor, my fingers lit up with tiny sparks as they touched the
screen, and I pushed them inside. My spirit form was sucked into the PC,
suddenly feeling alive with the surrounding electrical pulses. I searched the
web for Torments’ messages pinging back and forth across the unseen void and
found it. I reached out to it and shot forwards along its pathway. A matter of
seconds was all it felt like and I appeared suddenly in a crackle of sparks, in
a lightly decorated living room.

Nice,
I thought as I
patted myself down from head to toe to make sure nothing was left behind.
There’s
some perks to this whole ghost malarkey, it seems,
I chuckled to myself. A
moment later I felt it. The house felt like it was vibrating, and a strange
humming noise was resonating just behind the thuds and booms of some sort of
working machinery. I looked about and saw a man, sitting at his PC with
headphones on.  The noise was eerie, and I could understand now how bad
this could be, my ghostly form felt like it was being shaken violently in the
tiniest of movements, goodness knows what it would be doing to a physical body.
Whatever it was it couldn’t be good. I hovered behind ‘Torment’ as he continued
typing on the community forum. He shivered as I got too close and cold breath
emanated from his lips before him. He typed all his reactions about the noise
on the site, and then added a quick note about the sudden temperature drop. I
moved away from him and wandered outside via his backdoor.
Maybe I could
help him?
I pondered. I felt about for the noise and vibrations and grabbed
onto them, feet lifting from the ground I hovered around the strange noise
which appeared to be coming from everywhere. I needed to find the source I
knew, but how?

As I floated about, moving one
way then another, I could sense a slight rise in vibration from one direction.
Follow
the loudest source, Sharon.
I swept along the unseen force, following the
loudest noise I could find, it becoming deafening as I neared the source. The
landscape was blurry as I moved fast through the air, until the noise became so
loud I had to stop. Below me was some sort of quarry, the machinery drilling
into the ground, pistons whirring, and somewhere that horrible vibrating was continuing.
I floated lower, getting a good look. Men were working the grounds within huge
machines, wearing ear defenders.
I must stop this, it is driving my friend
crazy and god knows about the other wildlife here. But how?
I hovered a
moment as the idea formed in my mind.
I can manipulate electricity, but can
I disrupt it?
I thought. I knew of things like EM Pulses, but could I
manage that, and how? I understood that my form interrupted the signals of the
electricity if I got too close, but I had yet to actually stop it completely. I
focused on what I was about to do, reaching out to as much energy as I could
muster across the site, and then I screamed. Not just any scream but a full
blown exploding scream. My form ripped outwards with a popping noise, the shock
wave emanating around me, and shutting down all the noisy machinery in the
vicinity. I sucked back together and felt suddenly overwhelmed, the current I
came on was fried, so I slowly floated my way back to Torment’s house. Inside,
Torment was updating the forum regarding the absence of noise, and how odd it
seemed to suddenly stop. Smiling to myself I faded into the PC and grabbed the
line back home. Seconds later I appeared with a pop back in my living room. I
felt so drained I felt like sleeping. Closing my eyes, I disappeared.