Nightmares
By Brendon Meynell
Copyright © 2016 Brendon Meynell
Electronic Edition
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ISBN: 978 1 945175 26 8
Published by Primedia eLaunch LLC
Acknowledgements
To my wonderful and supportive family who have been there for me through everything. Your love and support will never be forgotten and is never taken for granted.
I would also like to acknowledge the crucial, fundamental and outstanding support of the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for their continued push amongst the wider horror community to showcase Australian and New Zealand-based Horror Writers.
Your relentless works in the past, and vision for the future is refreshing and gives us all hope that more people will appreciate the hard work and toils that as authors in an almost forgotten genre in our region go through.
Steve Dillon (AHWA President) and Cameron Trost both stand out members of the AHWA have been tremendous and outstanding characters whose countless hours of work not only on the association itself but in their own private endeavours to enhance the Horror Genre in the region have encouraged me to continue my writing, aiming to get better with each and every story/book that I write and so hope this little mention shows how much I, and the wider Australian Horror Genre appreciates your work.
Finally, I would be absolutely nowhere, with no ideas, and with no filter if it wasn’t for my beautiful wife to be and children. One day hopefully this will all be worth it, and the countless nights of non-stop horror movies will prove worth it.
Behind Evil Eyes
I stood, staring, I had seen him before and yet here he was again looking at me with a blank expression, no tell tale signs as to what he was expecting or what he wanted from me.
Every day I had seen him, watching from a distance, everywhere I went he seemed to be there, watching my every move, the look of being very calculating as if a Private Investigator taking notes – but he seemed more sinister and obtrusive to be hired to follow me.
I had had enough of his constant watching and decided that today would be the day I got to the bottom of it all. Who was he? Why was he here? And most importantly why was he just watching my every move.
He looked at me, as usual just watching my every move, analysing me. Even though it was obvious that I watching him he made absolutely no attempt to disguise his actions, to avert his attention, or to look busy.
I concentrated on his very careful, almost robotic like moves, it made me wonder was he a robot? One of the highly talked about but rarely seen government agency known as the Men in Black? He just didn’t seem to fit the bill further adding to the overall hysteria I was beginning to feel deep inside.
Wanting him to know that I meant business, and that I was not taking a step backward I looked him straight in the eyes – I was a little taken a back with what I saw – eyes staring back at me, no emotion in them, it looked like pure evil.
I remember growing up and many ‘spiritual’ people talking about the eyes being the ‘Windows to the Soul’ something I had never previously thought about, or seen – although to be honest I had never really looked at another’ eyes the same way I was looking at these eyes who were now returning my stare.
The piercing blue eyes that were looking deep into mine had no emotion, looked like a lost soul, as if someone or something had gone behind the strong façade that confronted every person who had come across this menacing character and sucked all the life out of him.
Looking into these eyes it was like looking at death, as if the will to go on had been extinguished, that those who had once meant the world to him were no longer there for him, that the voices that played in his head had finally got the better of him.
I began to feel pity for the poor soul that stood before me, the feeling of resentment, of intrigue that had filled me earlier was now a mere distant memory. Although I still wanted to know why he was staring at me, the thought and idea of how his life must be upset me.
Deep down inside I knew that everything I had thought about up to this moment was just a series of small voices in my head, and that I wouldn’t really know what the truth was unless I spoke to him.
I wasn’t sure who this guy was, what he wanted, or even how he would react if I started to walk towards him, but the lost soul look on his face sparked the little voice in my head to give me the boost I needed.
“Just walk towards him, find out what is going on and put to an end all of the questions.” The voice told me.
Gathering all the courage up that I could inside me, I decided that it was time to find out, taking one last deep breath I took a step towards him.
That is when the chair I was standing on fell away from me, smashing the mirror into thousands of pieces, the man I was once looking at and questioning in my head all of a sudden gone shattered into shards of glass on the floor, the rope around my neck tightening… I never did find out why the Man in the Mirror was looking at me the way he was, but something now tells me that he is now at peace.
Stalker on the Roads
Sandra had just finished a twelve-hour shift at her job. She was an insurance assessor which meant many long days of reviewing applications for insurance payouts. Yet like many she hated her job, it was simply just a means to pay the bills, keep her electricity on, food in the pantry and a roof over her head.
It took just a couple of minutes for her to save the file on her computer, despite being one of the biggest insurance companies in Australia the company she worked for couldn’t afford updated computer systems and were stuck with old, out-dated and inferior systems that felt as though it took half the day to do the most basic of tasks.
As she clicked the buttons on her computer system to shut her computer down for the night she stood and pulled her coat from the back of her chair, placing her arms through the sleeves and slowly buttoning it up.
She pulled her handbag from under her desk and ensured she had everything she needed, taking one last look around her desk to ensure there wasn’t anything she would be leaving behind that couldn’t wait to be collected in the morning.
Finally, the chimes on her computer informed her that the computer was finally shutting down. It was company policy that no-one could leave the work stations until the system was completely shut off, this policy was brought into place about twelve months earlier when someone broke into the office and changed the outcome of various insurance claims costing the company millions and really damaging their hard-earned standing in the public eye.
Sandra had always been confused about what ‘standing’ the company bosses were talking about considering they were an insurance company meaning they were right up there with the most hated right alongside Lawyers and Used Car Salesmen.
It was a lonely job for Sandra, she had her cases that she worked on, while everyone else on her floor in the same roles had their own cases to go through. There was no consultation between them, the branch manager the only person on the entire level of the building in which anyone had any form of continued contact with.
However, on this evening, for some reason, her latest case seemed to take her a while to review and make a final determination on the merits and outcome of the case, everyone else in her office building had already left, some even hours before she had even been close to closing her computer system down for the night.
She made her way down the elevator where the lone company security guard sat with his feet up on the desk, a bag of chips in one hand, crumbs over his once white shirt from the handfuls of chips he was placing in his mouth, the other holding a can of coke with a straw protruding from the top of the can.
On the surveillance screens he had his favourite television show ‘The Amazing Race’ blasting as if he was sitting in the middle row of the local cinema, he hardly battered an eye-lid as the elevator doors opened and Sandra walked out offering him a kind-hearted smile and bidding him good night.
Pulling her keys from her handbag as she made her way into near deserted car park, she glanced around in an effort to remember exactly where she had parked her car. It took a few