Gruesome Cargo
by
Nickolaus Pacione

 

   Cycles telling from them in the descending sleep becoming the circle of the dream that takes one into a darkness they cannot begin to fathom. I close my eyes and what follows into the dream, the thoughts taken from them. A hell described, waiting from them in the places becoming from the beginning. From a low growl one can see the eyes looking back at them. Within a room drawn in the mind and horrors that are the reminders of what has resemblance to museum, with exhibits of a macabre nature. That I find myself within the dream, and the setting of a dream being a medical examiner's museum. A macabre place of skulls within the walls staring back at me in one form or another. If the dead had eyes, what would be in their point of view. That from the dream I saw them whispering, though I was not able to hear what they were saying. Though wandering around I felt the medical abnormalities staring as they had eyes and a mind of their own. I was walking in the place barefoot, almost if I lived within the place. The question bring about the mind within the dreams and what the dead would say if they spoke.

   "Hello, who's there?" I called out, "all of these whispers and they are not speaking back."

   No answer. All I heard after asking was the silence; a silence that no one was quite able to describe but it was a dead calm. In a darkness seen in broad daylight one saw skulls conjoined at various places. From one of the glass walls was a statue that stared back, a skinless being sitting on a horse without its flesh. The lifeless figure showing its veins and muscle tissue, its veins glisten in the light of the sun behind its box of glass. How one can describe it as a nightmare brought to life; ways that it stands there looking back with exposed eyes and teeth with the lifeless smile. It stood there motionless for several hundred years. Within a macabre stare of this statue, a horror in the mind grown to realize how it became what it was. Though I felt the eyes of the thing looking at me when I was walking the floors of the museum. The sound of one's own breathing within a desolate place is one that has a ghostly tone to it -- though one cannot really put to words as I stood there looking in the glass at the ghoulish figure staring back at me.

   "Hello, who's there," I asked with a frantic tone to my voice, "who is doing all the whispering? Can someone tell me who is in here, or am I the only person around here?" A howl from the vast hallways of the wind are what can be heard the loudest while the exhibits stare back at me, staring as they have a life of their own. The sound of my own footsteps got louder as I walked around in the place, looking on as each skull had a soul and a life of their own. In them that I descend further into the exhibit, my feet touch into places which are cold to the touch. A dead cold, in senses told from them of knowing that I find myself describing the contents of Edgar Allan Poe's basement. Though no telling, I could still see my body upstairs; sound asleep. One could not begin to say of the time this was when I stared to dream, but what becomes within the patterns and the words when they are writing themselves out into a plot. I still see the particular sculpture as it still seems it has a life of its know behind that macabre display [the whispers that tell of what horrors remain. They are there as a reminder of the illness that lives inside the memory.] In the exhibit of skulls, one sees what remains from the memory -- the question if they leave behind a soul, known to them as the dream plays itself out.

   In the looking on that I see, from the atmospheric surroundings of skulls and macabre sculptures coming from horse skulls and oddities of a medical origin. In those origins, the dreams are what subside in the dark corners of the mind. Of them I see myself asleep, but not able to respond to anything around me though the echo of my own voice was the only thing that can be heard. From them in the question of exhibits are able to talk, and what would they be able to say. When they see from the eyes that are not my own, and even from the dream they see from the point of view how I see them. Time as it walks with a life of its own while one is looking within the exhibits of ones own nightmare; wandering from the psyche of one and into the depths of a shadow -- of another. I make note from this as one wanders the halls of the place, an exhibit from the pages as they are written to the memory; and in that memory become the etching burned into the mind. Haunted by the image of the macabre looking sculpture, though words enough cannot be the description to what was there within the mind of this. From them no one was barely able to tell, that if I was either asleep or awake but the dream continues to play out into a macabre plot.

   Awaking from this within the dream becomes as I heard my own voice echoing in the halls, within exhibits that become from pages described as chapters of a bizarre horror novel. In the darkness within broad daylight they stir, as behind the glass they have a lifeless presence. In the time ticking within the dream no one knows how long a dream would last but within the dream cycle the time seemed to tick as 24 hours. From these places; one looks in a darkness that cannot be seen from the eyes awakened. Though it seems that I was awake but yet I saw my body asleep. Drugged, the question comes to mind when one begins to dream -- from them in the way the detail draws into a macabre picture that cannot be defined by words alone. Even while I slept, I felt something watching me and it had eyes that stared into the horror from a perspective that appeared to be my own. Though it would be from the silence I heard the nameless whispers. In the silence they are incoherent, but yet they grow louder in the dark. [Louder than a toll of the bell, when the wind howls against the glass.]

   Even when one slept, the eyes from that sculpture looked back as they were still alive. The question coming from time becomes the origin of the sculpture, when it was done and how it still reminds within nightmares of the living psyche. Of when that dream is seen the image of death being a figure that is not of a skeleton but that of exposed muscle tissue and blood vessels, though there was no life from the remains. Their eyes continued to look at me as they had a life of their own. An eerie calm becomes the thing that is heard in the room and a silence that is left to nothing.

   "Can anyone hear me? Anyone around?" I asked again without response. My voice drowned within a hall of echoes. They are still looking at me from those eyes and within the glass, though they are not alive they almost seem to have a soul of their own. Silence. It was a dead silence within a macabre exhibit. Stirring into the eyes of the mind, looking around as a demon within the passages of eternity -- the eyes that see among the echoes and the darkness beneath the halls. From the illusion drawn into the dust before the eyes, in the places that one begins to find the words to describe but unable to. Drugged, as it seems when one sees the dream playing itself out within a macabre exhibit. The statue of a grotesque figure skinned with a pair of eyes staring back as they were still much alive. From them in the known perspective, looking into the eyes which the horror known in the recent memory. The voices within the halls coming from points that cannot be described but all that was there within the glass; told in the eyes from echoes heard from voices when they are screaming. From all that is closed from eyes to see, in horrors gathering from years past into a museum of gruesome cargo. In a dream as it becomes burned into the mind about the museum, the telling of them within the mind as one falls asleep -- as what greets them, the dream. From them that gather in the wind, as it howls. In the madness dwelling from the piece of mind, one hears them whispering without end.

   The sculpture looked back in the glass, though the appearance of the thing had some form of life to it though it didn't have an existence of its own. From the given account that has to be said, within the narrative as they are gathered in the mind from the information--within a museum of gruesome cargo. The display in madness within the mind looking into the silence seen within the pattern of a nightmare as it is written into the journal of the mind. That from my perspective that I would see them as they stare back, appearing as they have a life of their own. Beneath the details as they are penned into the mind from the dreams, the telling of them within a gruesome cargo. Of them looking back upon the eyes of the waking, one sees the horror within the walls. In a dream as one could not quite awaken from, it becomes from the narrated pages; in them within the hours that fade from death and memory. Beneath a mind as it is written from a twisted dream; and within the twisted dream echoes the museum of gruesome cargo. In the memories carried from the past, and the time begins to paint a picture within the exhibit of skulls.

   I find myself without a voice in them, as they look a back -- their voices grow louder but they speak without a sound. From them as I see the perspective of them within the glass, the told from the echoes stirring in a darkness. A darkness that no one was able to really see or understand unless it was from in them; waiting for them to awaken from the dream only to realize that they are still dreaming and what greets them are the gruesome cargo. The eyes of abomination as it stares within the etchings of the human soul.

 

©2004 Nickolaus Pacione

Nickolaus Pacione is the author of multiple short stories on various websites, he runs the website Writings From The Grave and writes for sites FictionPress.com and AuthorsDen. He's been published on mockfear.com, templeofdagon.com, GothicUnderworld.com. His journal at diary-x is the only webjournal to get the HorrorFind.com freaken scary award. He sites H.P. Lovecraft, Rod Serling, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, and Frank Perretti as influences of what he does. He co-runs Web of Horror on yahoogroups and runs a message board of his own creation for writers of the old style of horror. He's devoted out for the younger talents in the horror genre.

Nickolaus A. Pacione
Mental Illiness: This Is A Gothic Writers Struggle

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