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Literature Text
After reaching the exit, Jane stopped and looked back. She couldn't believe what Nina had said, but as much as it got to her, she tried to be reasonable in her head. Yes, the girl was completely ignorant, but she was just naive. She never had any experience. She was just reaffirming the nonsense she read up online. None of it was real, and Jane knew it.
But why did Nina feel like she had to confront Jane about it? She wanted to slam her fists into the door, but looking around again, she caught eyes of other patrons watching her and her table, where Clarisse and Nina still sat.
It seemed as she had already caused a scene with all the yelling.
Ashamed and confused on what to do, Jane's feet guided her back, but not to the table.
She moved nearer to the bar, not making eye contact with anyone. She felt eyes stare at her, and voices mutter about her, but she tried to block them out, and focus on something else. Anything else.
Just as she tried to find a distraction, an announcement by the club's DJ brought her attention over to a stage she had now just noticed. The DJ, wearing a tacky white suit and speaking in an obnoxious game-show host manner, addressed the crowd.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I like to thank you all for attending 'Scarface' and Movie Gangsters' Night here at Octavio's. Are we all having a good time?" Followed by the subsequent mild cheers and applause from the few half-intoxicated patrons.
"Then please put your hands together for the man himself; straight from the jungles of Caracas, Venezuela, your entertainment for the evening, Octavio!"
After the light applause from the crowd, the DJ bowed and walked backwards offstage, and after his exit, the stage was graced with the appearance of Octavio himself.
The overweight performer, wearing a large papier-mâché clown mask with a crumbled fedora hat, blue blazer and over-sized brown pants with suspenders, stumbled onto the stage in a comedic fashion. His face was a rather uncanny human caricature, with a long nose, large ears and an egg-shaped cranium, with white-and-blue eyes that were large and lifeless, and seemed to be looking upward.
A song began to play; 'Strangers In The Night' by Frank Sinatra, and Octavio began to waltz around on stage.
Jane was perplexed by this display of "entertainment", and felt oddly obliged to just stand there by the bar and watch for a while, until the thought of still being watched by the crowd snapped her back to reality. She still couldn't shake the feeling of having all eyes focused on her rather than the strange clown. What Nina had said to her was still eating at the back of her mind. She felt sick to her stomach.
Darting past several people and around the back passageway right from the stage, she rushed into the bathroom and grabbed the edge of the sink, lurching forward as she felt the urge to retch up over it. Nothing came out, but the ache was still there.
After a few seconds of dry hurling, Jane splashed some water onto her face, taking the time to look into the mirror, at the reflection she had come to hate.
She looked at her sickly white skin, leathery and worn, stretched over her skull like a hideous death mask. She gently removed one of her black contacts, so she could take a look at her eyes. Her real eyes.
Pale, bloodshot and warped, her eyes began to burn in the oxygen once they were uncovered by the lenses, building up tears that trickled down her scarred cheeks. Jane wiped them away, continuing to look at her face with resentment, but also a morbid, almost saddening curiosity she could never quite understand herself. She had tried to wrap her head around how her skin came to be like this. Being almost burnt alive was bad enough, and she had seen far worse injuries and scars in the news and television, but it was the ghostly white colour that both fascinated her and disgusted her the most.
She looked closer at her eyes, trying to decipher where her irises met with the whites of her eyes, but there was no clear contrast between the two; they were merged as a warped pale blotch around both of her shrunken, deformed pupils.
She still found it a miracle she could still see at all, but the light hurt her without the contacts in, even when she wasn't directly looking at it.
But what Jane hated most of all is that she could never again see colours.
Not one speck of colour in her sight. If she remembered hard enough, she could remember in her mind what each colour looked like. But now, everything was grey to her.
She couldn't turn away from her reflection. She couldn't stop staring at the monstrous pale, beady-eyed face staring right back at her.
"Jane? Are you in here?"
A voice from behind her made Jane jump, and brought her back into consciousness. She quickly placed the contacts back into her eyes.
"Sweetie?" came Clarisse's soft voice from behind her. "Are you okay?"
She walked up to Jane till she was standing by her side, gently leaning on Jane's arm as she looked at Jane's reflection.
"Listen, I'm really sorry for what happened. Nina never meant to say any of those things. She was just really excited to meet you, as was I."
She waited for a response, but Jane didn't say anything, just stared into the mirror. Clarisse decided to continue, her smile grew more concerned as she explained to Jane;
"See, Nina has had a little bit of trouble herself. She never meant to say those things to you, she just gets a little carried away sometimes. And only yesterday, she discovered her boyfriend cheating on her. It broke her heart."
Jane shook her head.
"That's no excuse for what she said."
Clarisse sighed.
"I know, honey. But you must understand that...she does have problems herself."
She smiled and laid a comforting hand on Jane's shoulder.
"We really are excited to see you. And I really do believe she just got over excited. I don't think she truly knows how to express herself."
Jane clenched her fist and closed her eyes, not out of anger for Nina, but a growing anger for herself. Her first night in over twelve years of actually meeting with people, and already she screws it up. Clarisse, sensing Jane's heavy distress at the entire ordeal, gently takes her in an embrace, giving her a reassuring hug.
Jane hugged back, feeling compelled to do so by Clarisse kindness. Her mouth formed a small smile, in her moment of comfort, trying to dash away her previous hateful thoughts.
After a while, Clarisse suddenly became more jovial and leaped back from Jane, grinning.
"I know! Let me take you back to Nina so you two can clear things up, okay? I talked to her a little as well, and I think everything is fine. And who knows.." She winked and gave Jane a playful little nudge. "..perhaps we can fine you a cute guy for the night, huh?"
Jane smiled at the charming gesture, but shrugged.
"Nah, it's fine. But...sure. I'll talk to Nina again."
With a sweet smile, Clarisse gave Jane one last hug, before walking back to the bathroom door to leave her alone, as she assumed Jane would need a little more time to calm down.
Before she left through the door, Jane quickly called her back.
"Hey, Clarisse?"
"Yah-huh?" Clarisse chirped back.
"Erm..thanks. I guess I just got a little pissed off back there and, well...you saw how I handled it."
She smiled apologetically at Clarisse, who nodded and smiled back.
"It's fine, honey. I'll just let you have a little space in here, okay? Just come back to the table whenever you're ready."
With a little wave goodbye, she gently closed the door behind her. Jane heard Clarisse on the other side telling another woman that her friend (Jane) was in the bathroom and needed some time to herself. Jane chuckled to herself at hearing this, grateful to hear someone call her 'friend', and tried to mentally psyche herself up, telling herself she will go back to the table and start the entire meeting over again on a much nicer note.
The woman from outside drunkenly stumbled into the bathroom, staggering into the nearest cubicle as Jane shook her head and smiled at the ridiculousness of the woman.
She took a heavy breath and stared back at the mirror. "Okay, Jane. You're gonna go back out there and handle everything. You can do this. You can.."
"..."
Out of the corner of Jane's eye, she saw the furthest cubicle door open just very slightly.
Jane turned a little to look. After a while, she was sure it was nothing.
She turned back to the mirror.
And in that split second her head turned, she swore that at that very moment she caught a glimpse of a face staring right back at her from the small crack between the the cubicle and it's door.
Before Jane could dart back around to call out to whoever was watching her, the lights all flickered out at once, before dying out completely, leaving Jane in total darkness.
Jane stood absolutely still, slowly turning away from the mirror. The dark would not usually scare her, but in the back of her mind she knew that in this case something far more sinister was going on. That face she saw within the toilet cubicle had gotten her on edge, and she slowly raised her arms out in front of her body in a feeble attempt of defence for the foreboding unknown force Jane was convinced was in the bathroom her her.
She balled her hands into fists, trying to control her now heavy breathing. She didn't want whoever, or whatever was in the room with her to know she was feeling afraid.
She decided to call out, hoping that at least the woman in the nearby cubicle would hear and answer her.
"I-Is anyone there?"
No answer came.
Not even from the woman in the stall.
Jane had to calm her breathing, as she could feel her lungs writhing up and down inside her chest and her heart pounding profusely, almost painfully within her as Jane tried to frantically look all around the room for any sign of sudden movement, or any movement at all.
But nothing happened. Nothing moved. And all she could hear was her own heavy breathing and her heart pounding inside her body like a beating drum.
She took a step, slowly inching forward. She kept looking all around, as if frantically glancing at one end of the pitch-black room to the other would somehow help her sight adjust to the darkness faster.
She called out again.
"H-hey, lady? Are you still in there?"
She stepped closer to where she guessed the cubicle would be.
"Is...is anyone in here?"
She began to reach out further with her outstretched hand.
"Is anyone-..."
She jumped back when her hand brushed against something smooth.
It took a few seconds for her to realise it was just the cubicle door, and she breathed a slight sigh of relief.
She gently tapped on the door. But the door was unlocked, and creaked open, the sound seemed to echo all around Jane in the darkness.
And immediately, an overwhelmingly horrid stench caused Jane to stumble back in disgust.
However, the smell was odd to her, given the circumstances.
Whereas Jane would have expected the smell of either vomit, faeces or even blood, the scent was instead that of, from what Jane could fathom in her mind, damp rotting leaves.
Jane looked all around again. Her eyes were slowly getting use to the dark, but she still couldn't make out anything discernible inside the open cubicle, aside from the putrid smell.
Jane could see the door to exit the bathroom. She was about to make a blind dash for it, when the thought of escaping back out to the bar made her listen out for something that, during her panic moments before, she had not noticed before;
Jane could not hear a single sound.
No music, no chatter; outside the bathroom was completely silent, save for a slow, rhythmic hum of extractor fans and a generator that she assumed was near the stage.
But other than that, no sign of life could be heard outside of the bathroom.
At that very moment, Jane was alone.
But was she?
She turned her attention back to the cubicle at the farthest end of the bathroom, where she saw the face.
"H-hello?" she called out towards the cubicle.
Jane waited for an answer.
She only had to wait for a second until she heard a soft, muffled whisper from inside the stall.
"H-hello."
Jane shuddered at the sound of the ghostly whisper. She knew it wasn't the woman that had entered a while ago.
She backed up to where the door exiting the bathroom was, not taking her eyes away from the far end cubicle.
She pushed against the wall, feeling for the door, until her hand came over the handle. She grabbed hold of it tightly.
She had only just begun to pull it open, when the door from the far cubicle swung clean open with a smack against the wall.
Jane did not waste another second to haul herself out of the bathroom door and bolt out of there, heading back to the main complex.
And as she feared, the club was completely empty, and just as dark as the bathroom.
Only the lights of the dance-floor still running and flashing as usual, but aside from that, Jane couldn't make out any other source of light. She ran to the wall, frantically feeling along for a light switch. She eventually found one, but it nothing happened, no matter how many times she flipped it on and off again. She pounded the wall with frustration and trepidation, until she decided to run to the main doors to escape the club altogether.
Perhaps this was all some elaborate prank.
Jane tried to reassure herself with this thought, that perhaps this was a typical "pranking the newcomer" routine that Jane had heard of happening to a few outsiders to rural towns such as this. Though these incidences were very rare and very far-fetched, Jane hoped that this was one of these times, and that this was all one big practical joke set up by Clarisse and Nina.
She reached the doors and pushed, but they wouldn't budge. She pounded on them, cursing and hitting the door until her hands throbbed from the pain.
The doors weren't just locked, but they seemed sealed up completely, as if fused together to form a solid metal wall.
There was no escape. No light. Nowhere to run.
And from the darkness, in the dead silence, in the farthest side of the building, she heard the bathroom door swing open.
But why did Nina feel like she had to confront Jane about it? She wanted to slam her fists into the door, but looking around again, she caught eyes of other patrons watching her and her table, where Clarisse and Nina still sat.
It seemed as she had already caused a scene with all the yelling.
Ashamed and confused on what to do, Jane's feet guided her back, but not to the table.
She moved nearer to the bar, not making eye contact with anyone. She felt eyes stare at her, and voices mutter about her, but she tried to block them out, and focus on something else. Anything else.
Just as she tried to find a distraction, an announcement by the club's DJ brought her attention over to a stage she had now just noticed. The DJ, wearing a tacky white suit and speaking in an obnoxious game-show host manner, addressed the crowd.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I like to thank you all for attending 'Scarface' and Movie Gangsters' Night here at Octavio's. Are we all having a good time?" Followed by the subsequent mild cheers and applause from the few half-intoxicated patrons.
"Then please put your hands together for the man himself; straight from the jungles of Caracas, Venezuela, your entertainment for the evening, Octavio!"
After the light applause from the crowd, the DJ bowed and walked backwards offstage, and after his exit, the stage was graced with the appearance of Octavio himself.
The overweight performer, wearing a large papier-mâché clown mask with a crumbled fedora hat, blue blazer and over-sized brown pants with suspenders, stumbled onto the stage in a comedic fashion. His face was a rather uncanny human caricature, with a long nose, large ears and an egg-shaped cranium, with white-and-blue eyes that were large and lifeless, and seemed to be looking upward.
A song began to play; 'Strangers In The Night' by Frank Sinatra, and Octavio began to waltz around on stage.
Jane was perplexed by this display of "entertainment", and felt oddly obliged to just stand there by the bar and watch for a while, until the thought of still being watched by the crowd snapped her back to reality. She still couldn't shake the feeling of having all eyes focused on her rather than the strange clown. What Nina had said to her was still eating at the back of her mind. She felt sick to her stomach.
Darting past several people and around the back passageway right from the stage, she rushed into the bathroom and grabbed the edge of the sink, lurching forward as she felt the urge to retch up over it. Nothing came out, but the ache was still there.
After a few seconds of dry hurling, Jane splashed some water onto her face, taking the time to look into the mirror, at the reflection she had come to hate.
She looked at her sickly white skin, leathery and worn, stretched over her skull like a hideous death mask. She gently removed one of her black contacts, so she could take a look at her eyes. Her real eyes.
Pale, bloodshot and warped, her eyes began to burn in the oxygen once they were uncovered by the lenses, building up tears that trickled down her scarred cheeks. Jane wiped them away, continuing to look at her face with resentment, but also a morbid, almost saddening curiosity she could never quite understand herself. She had tried to wrap her head around how her skin came to be like this. Being almost burnt alive was bad enough, and she had seen far worse injuries and scars in the news and television, but it was the ghostly white colour that both fascinated her and disgusted her the most.
She looked closer at her eyes, trying to decipher where her irises met with the whites of her eyes, but there was no clear contrast between the two; they were merged as a warped pale blotch around both of her shrunken, deformed pupils.
She still found it a miracle she could still see at all, but the light hurt her without the contacts in, even when she wasn't directly looking at it.
But what Jane hated most of all is that she could never again see colours.
Not one speck of colour in her sight. If she remembered hard enough, she could remember in her mind what each colour looked like. But now, everything was grey to her.
She couldn't turn away from her reflection. She couldn't stop staring at the monstrous pale, beady-eyed face staring right back at her.
"Jane? Are you in here?"
A voice from behind her made Jane jump, and brought her back into consciousness. She quickly placed the contacts back into her eyes.
"Sweetie?" came Clarisse's soft voice from behind her. "Are you okay?"
She walked up to Jane till she was standing by her side, gently leaning on Jane's arm as she looked at Jane's reflection.
"Listen, I'm really sorry for what happened. Nina never meant to say any of those things. She was just really excited to meet you, as was I."
She waited for a response, but Jane didn't say anything, just stared into the mirror. Clarisse decided to continue, her smile grew more concerned as she explained to Jane;
"See, Nina has had a little bit of trouble herself. She never meant to say those things to you, she just gets a little carried away sometimes. And only yesterday, she discovered her boyfriend cheating on her. It broke her heart."
Jane shook her head.
"That's no excuse for what she said."
Clarisse sighed.
"I know, honey. But you must understand that...she does have problems herself."
She smiled and laid a comforting hand on Jane's shoulder.
"We really are excited to see you. And I really do believe she just got over excited. I don't think she truly knows how to express herself."
Jane clenched her fist and closed her eyes, not out of anger for Nina, but a growing anger for herself. Her first night in over twelve years of actually meeting with people, and already she screws it up. Clarisse, sensing Jane's heavy distress at the entire ordeal, gently takes her in an embrace, giving her a reassuring hug.
Jane hugged back, feeling compelled to do so by Clarisse kindness. Her mouth formed a small smile, in her moment of comfort, trying to dash away her previous hateful thoughts.
After a while, Clarisse suddenly became more jovial and leaped back from Jane, grinning.
"I know! Let me take you back to Nina so you two can clear things up, okay? I talked to her a little as well, and I think everything is fine. And who knows.." She winked and gave Jane a playful little nudge. "..perhaps we can fine you a cute guy for the night, huh?"
Jane smiled at the charming gesture, but shrugged.
"Nah, it's fine. But...sure. I'll talk to Nina again."
With a sweet smile, Clarisse gave Jane one last hug, before walking back to the bathroom door to leave her alone, as she assumed Jane would need a little more time to calm down.
Before she left through the door, Jane quickly called her back.
"Hey, Clarisse?"
"Yah-huh?" Clarisse chirped back.
"Erm..thanks. I guess I just got a little pissed off back there and, well...you saw how I handled it."
She smiled apologetically at Clarisse, who nodded and smiled back.
"It's fine, honey. I'll just let you have a little space in here, okay? Just come back to the table whenever you're ready."
With a little wave goodbye, she gently closed the door behind her. Jane heard Clarisse on the other side telling another woman that her friend (Jane) was in the bathroom and needed some time to herself. Jane chuckled to herself at hearing this, grateful to hear someone call her 'friend', and tried to mentally psyche herself up, telling herself she will go back to the table and start the entire meeting over again on a much nicer note.
The woman from outside drunkenly stumbled into the bathroom, staggering into the nearest cubicle as Jane shook her head and smiled at the ridiculousness of the woman.
She took a heavy breath and stared back at the mirror. "Okay, Jane. You're gonna go back out there and handle everything. You can do this. You can.."
"..."
Out of the corner of Jane's eye, she saw the furthest cubicle door open just very slightly.
Jane turned a little to look. After a while, she was sure it was nothing.
She turned back to the mirror.
And in that split second her head turned, she swore that at that very moment she caught a glimpse of a face staring right back at her from the small crack between the the cubicle and it's door.
Before Jane could dart back around to call out to whoever was watching her, the lights all flickered out at once, before dying out completely, leaving Jane in total darkness.
Jane stood absolutely still, slowly turning away from the mirror. The dark would not usually scare her, but in the back of her mind she knew that in this case something far more sinister was going on. That face she saw within the toilet cubicle had gotten her on edge, and she slowly raised her arms out in front of her body in a feeble attempt of defence for the foreboding unknown force Jane was convinced was in the bathroom her her.
She balled her hands into fists, trying to control her now heavy breathing. She didn't want whoever, or whatever was in the room with her to know she was feeling afraid.
She decided to call out, hoping that at least the woman in the nearby cubicle would hear and answer her.
"I-Is anyone there?"
No answer came.
Not even from the woman in the stall.
Jane had to calm her breathing, as she could feel her lungs writhing up and down inside her chest and her heart pounding profusely, almost painfully within her as Jane tried to frantically look all around the room for any sign of sudden movement, or any movement at all.
But nothing happened. Nothing moved. And all she could hear was her own heavy breathing and her heart pounding inside her body like a beating drum.
She took a step, slowly inching forward. She kept looking all around, as if frantically glancing at one end of the pitch-black room to the other would somehow help her sight adjust to the darkness faster.
She called out again.
"H-hey, lady? Are you still in there?"
She stepped closer to where she guessed the cubicle would be.
"Is...is anyone in here?"
She began to reach out further with her outstretched hand.
"Is anyone-..."
She jumped back when her hand brushed against something smooth.
It took a few seconds for her to realise it was just the cubicle door, and she breathed a slight sigh of relief.
She gently tapped on the door. But the door was unlocked, and creaked open, the sound seemed to echo all around Jane in the darkness.
And immediately, an overwhelmingly horrid stench caused Jane to stumble back in disgust.
However, the smell was odd to her, given the circumstances.
Whereas Jane would have expected the smell of either vomit, faeces or even blood, the scent was instead that of, from what Jane could fathom in her mind, damp rotting leaves.
Jane looked all around again. Her eyes were slowly getting use to the dark, but she still couldn't make out anything discernible inside the open cubicle, aside from the putrid smell.
Jane could see the door to exit the bathroom. She was about to make a blind dash for it, when the thought of escaping back out to the bar made her listen out for something that, during her panic moments before, she had not noticed before;
Jane could not hear a single sound.
No music, no chatter; outside the bathroom was completely silent, save for a slow, rhythmic hum of extractor fans and a generator that she assumed was near the stage.
But other than that, no sign of life could be heard outside of the bathroom.
At that very moment, Jane was alone.
But was she?
She turned her attention back to the cubicle at the farthest end of the bathroom, where she saw the face.
"H-hello?" she called out towards the cubicle.
Jane waited for an answer.
She only had to wait for a second until she heard a soft, muffled whisper from inside the stall.
"H-hello."
Jane shuddered at the sound of the ghostly whisper. She knew it wasn't the woman that had entered a while ago.
She backed up to where the door exiting the bathroom was, not taking her eyes away from the far end cubicle.
She pushed against the wall, feeling for the door, until her hand came over the handle. She grabbed hold of it tightly.
She had only just begun to pull it open, when the door from the far cubicle swung clean open with a smack against the wall.
Jane did not waste another second to haul herself out of the bathroom door and bolt out of there, heading back to the main complex.
And as she feared, the club was completely empty, and just as dark as the bathroom.
Only the lights of the dance-floor still running and flashing as usual, but aside from that, Jane couldn't make out any other source of light. She ran to the wall, frantically feeling along for a light switch. She eventually found one, but it nothing happened, no matter how many times she flipped it on and off again. She pounded the wall with frustration and trepidation, until she decided to run to the main doors to escape the club altogether.
Perhaps this was all some elaborate prank.
Jane tried to reassure herself with this thought, that perhaps this was a typical "pranking the newcomer" routine that Jane had heard of happening to a few outsiders to rural towns such as this. Though these incidences were very rare and very far-fetched, Jane hoped that this was one of these times, and that this was all one big practical joke set up by Clarisse and Nina.
She reached the doors and pushed, but they wouldn't budge. She pounded on them, cursing and hitting the door until her hands throbbed from the pain.
The doors weren't just locked, but they seemed sealed up completely, as if fused together to form a solid metal wall.
There was no escape. No light. Nowhere to run.
And from the darkness, in the dead silence, in the farthest side of the building, she heard the bathroom door swing open.
Almost immediately after that, the club was soon flooded with a familiar song playing softly over the stage speakers; 'Strangers In The Night'.
Jane slowly turned, her heart beating ever faster, and she caught a glimpse of a faint silhouette on the far side of the room, slowly approaching the dance-floor. The shadowy figure moved in greatly exaggerated steps, and looked as though it was taking large steps from side to side in a swaying motion, yet was also moving forward with every step, getting nearer to Jane.
Jane then realised the figure was dancing. Waltzing towards her.
In the faint lights of the dance-floor, Jane could make out more features.
It was Octavio.
In a strange waltzing motion, he was inching his way towards Jane's direction. His blue eyes facing upward, but the whites of the clown's eyes were now pitch black. Jane had noticed that the eyes were different. And the closer Octavio got, she noticed a thick, oozing residue leaking out of the eyes.
But that wasn't what disturbed her the most.
What really disturbed her was the fact she could see the colour of the liquid.
It was yellow, and was brightly luminescent in the light. Jane could see it clearly.
The liquid was in fact yellow as Jane could somehow see, and it emitted the familiar scent of rotting leaves, that Jane could smell as Octavio drew closer and closer, his blank, expressionless face leering at her from only a few feet away.
Acting on frightened impulse, Jane bent down to the floor, looking for any object to utilise as a weapon. She found a glass bottle. She hurled it at the creature. The bottle didn't break on impact, but hurt Octavio enough to send him reeling back a few steps.
Jane noticed how the as soon as the bottle made impact with his head, the song skipped and made a shrill static noise, like the tuning of frequencies on a analogue radio.
Jane took the chance to dash past the creature, now in the centre of the dance-floor, before Octavio could regain composure.
She fled into a dark corridor, leading back stage to the manager's office, as she heard the song start up again. Searching for a door at the end of the hallway, she came across one leading into the office. Oddly enough, it was unlocked.
She pushed open the door, slammed it shut and turned the handle to lock it.
The room was just as dark as the rest of the building. There were no other doors and no windows. Jane was becoming more and more confused as she frantically searched for the desk. She bumped into it, and felt along the bottom for any kind of switch of a drawer. Her hand skimmed over what felt like a button, which Jane pressed.
She hoped it would turn on the lights. But instead, a wall of surveillance monitors switched on behind her.
Somewhat startled by this, Jane spun round to look at the monitors. Nothing showed up on any of the screens, all were pitch black aside from the faint glow from the screen itself.
All except for the one showing the dance-floor.
There, in the corner of the room nearest to the camera, stood Octavio, completely motionless and staring directly at the camera.
Staring directly at Jane.
After a few minutes of nothing but the ghostly clown staring into the camera, a radio somewhere in the office where Jane was began to emit a harsh white noise, causing Jane to cry out in pain as she covered her ears, until the withe noise began to 'tune' back into the Frank Sinatra song. Jane looked around for the source of the music, but couldn't figure out where it would be coming from. Her attention was brought back to the monitors when she saw Octavio moving again.
He was 'dance-walking' over to the hallway on the stage's left, the same hallway Jane had gone down. Jane knew it was coming back for her. She again began searching in the darkness for a weapon, along to walls for a fire extinguisher, in the desk drawers for a gun;
she didn't find a gun, but instead found an extendable nightstick. She grabbed it and flicked out the bludgeoning end.
Jane smiled to herself, gathering a little courage after finding a viable weapon.
"This'll do for now."
She waited behind the desk for the monstrous clown to break down the door and lunged at her. Her head darted back from the door to the screens behind her. The clown was moving slowly down the hallway, taking it's sweet time as it seemed to dance happily along it's merry way. But then halfway down, it stop.
Jane prepared herself, expecting the clown to suddenly break into a sprint and rush at the door.
But instead, Octavio turned to the right, and began to slowly move down back towards the bathrooms.
Jane was puzzled, but continued to watch him on the screens.
He headed back to the women's bathroom. He placed his hand up on the door, and gave a slight turn of his head, before slowly snapping his head round to an impossible angle to stare back into the camera Jane was now observing.
The sound of his cracking neck was audible though the camera, further perplexing Jane as she looked on repulsed.
Octavio, somehow, seemed to sense Jane's disgust, and placed his white gloved hand over his mouth, and jiggled his shoulders, in a mimed action suggesting he was laughing. He then moved his hand away and pointed to the door in a very cartoonish fashion, before giving the camera (Jane) an 'okay' signal with his hand. He then pushed open the door with great exaggerated force, and elegantly glided inside. To which the door behind him slammed shut.
Audible screams of a young woman echoed from within the bathroom, along with the sounds of liquids spilling onto the floor.
Jane acted fast upon hearing the heart-wrenching screams of someone being attacked by the creature.
Her first instinct was to help her.
She unlocked the door, nightstick in hand, and ran towards the bathroom. The door was still shut, and the screaming was louder than ever, only now it sounded gurgled and distorted.
'How could I have left that woman in there?', Jane thought to herself as she desperately tried kicking down the door.
'I should have gotten her out of there when I had the chance!'
The door finally gave in and swung open, only for the deafening screaming to immediately stop. Nevertheless, Jane headed in, ready for the creature to lunge at her from the shadows. She went to the first cubicle, the one where the drunken woman had only entered moments ago before this whole nightmare began.
She opened the door, at to which the overhead light decided to flicker back to life.
Much to Jane's horror to what the light revealed to her.
The woman lay upright on the seat, head draped back against the tank, half naked and covered in gashes and bruises along her legs. Her mouth was full of the same thick, yellow, chunky liquid that Jane had saw leaking from the clown's eye sockets, and the liquid was trailing down the poor woman's mouth, staining her clothes and neck.
She had been drowned in it.
The stench was unbearable. Jane could only glance at it before vomiting into the sink.
To which, after she had looked back up into the mirror, all of the lights had turned on, and music began to play.
She steadied her nightstick in her hand and looked around
She heard noises from outside. Voices.
It sounded like a whole crowd of people.
She panicked, but then her mind stopped racing with thoughts of even more creatures when she realised something.
The club was back to normal. Or was it?
She looked back at the cubicle. She could still smell something from it. However this time it definitely smelled like vomit. Holding her nose and mouth, she pushed open the door. Nothing was behind it, save for the toilet and a few specks of puke that stained the toilet bowl.
Jane closed the door, incredibly confused.
What the hell just happened? Did she just dream the whole ordeal up? Jane looked down at the nightstick.
Well, if she had, how did she get this?
Jane approached the door, opening it slightly to look around.
The club was indeed filled back up with people. The lights were all back on, the music was back to playing it's '80's retro' tunes, and all the patrons seemed to have no acknowledgement of anything out of the ordinary happening.
Jane stared at the crowd for a while. Her mind was trying to come to terms on what was happening, or rather, had happened.
After a while, she had to come to the conclusion that it was all fantasy. Everything involving the clown and the dead woman was just some sort of hallucination.
But the dream was so vivid to her. So real.
Perhaps someone had drugged her?
That may explain how she somehow managed to acquire a nightstick. Perhaps she simply wandered across it in her half-conscious stumblings?
But the ambiguity of this situation was beginning to make her feel ill once more.
She decided just to head back to the table where Clarisse and Nina was.
Except, upon returning to the table, she saw that Nina was absent. And as an instinctive notion told Jane to look back up at the stage, she saw that Nina wasn't the only one.
Octavio was not there either.
How long was she in the bathroom for?
Another more sinister thought crossed over her mind. What if Nina had fallen prey to the clown?
Clarisse caught sight of Jane's anxious expression as she sat back down.
"Jane, you looked so flustered. Are you okay?"
Jane looked abck at Nina's empty chair, then back to Clarisse.
"Nina....where's.."
"Oh, Nina left. I'm so sorry, Jane. She got a little impatient, you see, but she did want to apolog-"
"Where's the clown?" Jane interrupted, much to Clarisse's bewilderment of such an odd question
"Pardon? Where's the what?"
"Where's the damn clown? The one that was up on stage dancing? The one that was chasing me?"
Jane's frantic and agitated look concerned Clarisse, as was the nature of what she was asking her.
She gently placed her hands on Jane's, that were tightly clasping the table cloth and trembling with unease. Clarisse gently held her hands and patted them, trying her best to reassure Jane as she looked into her eyes.
"Sweetie.
There was no clown.
The stage had been empty the whole night."
Jane's eyes widened. She stared back in utter disbelief.
"I...I have to go. See ya."
Quick as a flash, Jane got up, and as casually as she could hurried to the exit of the club, vowing in her mind never to go back inside there again.
Jane slowly turned, her heart beating ever faster, and she caught a glimpse of a faint silhouette on the far side of the room, slowly approaching the dance-floor. The shadowy figure moved in greatly exaggerated steps, and looked as though it was taking large steps from side to side in a swaying motion, yet was also moving forward with every step, getting nearer to Jane.
Jane then realised the figure was dancing. Waltzing towards her.
In the faint lights of the dance-floor, Jane could make out more features.
It was Octavio.
In a strange waltzing motion, he was inching his way towards Jane's direction. His blue eyes facing upward, but the whites of the clown's eyes were now pitch black. Jane had noticed that the eyes were different. And the closer Octavio got, she noticed a thick, oozing residue leaking out of the eyes.
But that wasn't what disturbed her the most.
What really disturbed her was the fact she could see the colour of the liquid.
It was yellow, and was brightly luminescent in the light. Jane could see it clearly.
The liquid was in fact yellow as Jane could somehow see, and it emitted the familiar scent of rotting leaves, that Jane could smell as Octavio drew closer and closer, his blank, expressionless face leering at her from only a few feet away.
Acting on frightened impulse, Jane bent down to the floor, looking for any object to utilise as a weapon. She found a glass bottle. She hurled it at the creature. The bottle didn't break on impact, but hurt Octavio enough to send him reeling back a few steps.
Jane noticed how the as soon as the bottle made impact with his head, the song skipped and made a shrill static noise, like the tuning of frequencies on a analogue radio.
Jane took the chance to dash past the creature, now in the centre of the dance-floor, before Octavio could regain composure.
She fled into a dark corridor, leading back stage to the manager's office, as she heard the song start up again. Searching for a door at the end of the hallway, she came across one leading into the office. Oddly enough, it was unlocked.
She pushed open the door, slammed it shut and turned the handle to lock it.
The room was just as dark as the rest of the building. There were no other doors and no windows. Jane was becoming more and more confused as she frantically searched for the desk. She bumped into it, and felt along the bottom for any kind of switch of a drawer. Her hand skimmed over what felt like a button, which Jane pressed.
She hoped it would turn on the lights. But instead, a wall of surveillance monitors switched on behind her.
Somewhat startled by this, Jane spun round to look at the monitors. Nothing showed up on any of the screens, all were pitch black aside from the faint glow from the screen itself.
All except for the one showing the dance-floor.
There, in the corner of the room nearest to the camera, stood Octavio, completely motionless and staring directly at the camera.
Staring directly at Jane.
After a few minutes of nothing but the ghostly clown staring into the camera, a radio somewhere in the office where Jane was began to emit a harsh white noise, causing Jane to cry out in pain as she covered her ears, until the withe noise began to 'tune' back into the Frank Sinatra song. Jane looked around for the source of the music, but couldn't figure out where it would be coming from. Her attention was brought back to the monitors when she saw Octavio moving again.
He was 'dance-walking' over to the hallway on the stage's left, the same hallway Jane had gone down. Jane knew it was coming back for her. She again began searching in the darkness for a weapon, along to walls for a fire extinguisher, in the desk drawers for a gun;
she didn't find a gun, but instead found an extendable nightstick. She grabbed it and flicked out the bludgeoning end.
Jane smiled to herself, gathering a little courage after finding a viable weapon.
"This'll do for now."
She waited behind the desk for the monstrous clown to break down the door and lunged at her. Her head darted back from the door to the screens behind her. The clown was moving slowly down the hallway, taking it's sweet time as it seemed to dance happily along it's merry way. But then halfway down, it stop.
Jane prepared herself, expecting the clown to suddenly break into a sprint and rush at the door.
But instead, Octavio turned to the right, and began to slowly move down back towards the bathrooms.
Jane was puzzled, but continued to watch him on the screens.
He headed back to the women's bathroom. He placed his hand up on the door, and gave a slight turn of his head, before slowly snapping his head round to an impossible angle to stare back into the camera Jane was now observing.
The sound of his cracking neck was audible though the camera, further perplexing Jane as she looked on repulsed.
Octavio, somehow, seemed to sense Jane's disgust, and placed his white gloved hand over his mouth, and jiggled his shoulders, in a mimed action suggesting he was laughing. He then moved his hand away and pointed to the door in a very cartoonish fashion, before giving the camera (Jane) an 'okay' signal with his hand. He then pushed open the door with great exaggerated force, and elegantly glided inside. To which the door behind him slammed shut.
Audible screams of a young woman echoed from within the bathroom, along with the sounds of liquids spilling onto the floor.
Jane acted fast upon hearing the heart-wrenching screams of someone being attacked by the creature.
Her first instinct was to help her.
She unlocked the door, nightstick in hand, and ran towards the bathroom. The door was still shut, and the screaming was louder than ever, only now it sounded gurgled and distorted.
'How could I have left that woman in there?', Jane thought to herself as she desperately tried kicking down the door.
'I should have gotten her out of there when I had the chance!'
The door finally gave in and swung open, only for the deafening screaming to immediately stop. Nevertheless, Jane headed in, ready for the creature to lunge at her from the shadows. She went to the first cubicle, the one where the drunken woman had only entered moments ago before this whole nightmare began.
She opened the door, at to which the overhead light decided to flicker back to life.
Much to Jane's horror to what the light revealed to her.
The woman lay upright on the seat, head draped back against the tank, half naked and covered in gashes and bruises along her legs. Her mouth was full of the same thick, yellow, chunky liquid that Jane had saw leaking from the clown's eye sockets, and the liquid was trailing down the poor woman's mouth, staining her clothes and neck.
She had been drowned in it.
The stench was unbearable. Jane could only glance at it before vomiting into the sink.
To which, after she had looked back up into the mirror, all of the lights had turned on, and music began to play.
She steadied her nightstick in her hand and looked around
She heard noises from outside. Voices.
It sounded like a whole crowd of people.
She panicked, but then her mind stopped racing with thoughts of even more creatures when she realised something.
The club was back to normal. Or was it?
She looked back at the cubicle. She could still smell something from it. However this time it definitely smelled like vomit. Holding her nose and mouth, she pushed open the door. Nothing was behind it, save for the toilet and a few specks of puke that stained the toilet bowl.
Jane closed the door, incredibly confused.
What the hell just happened? Did she just dream the whole ordeal up? Jane looked down at the nightstick.
Well, if she had, how did she get this?
Jane approached the door, opening it slightly to look around.
The club was indeed filled back up with people. The lights were all back on, the music was back to playing it's '80's retro' tunes, and all the patrons seemed to have no acknowledgement of anything out of the ordinary happening.
Jane stared at the crowd for a while. Her mind was trying to come to terms on what was happening, or rather, had happened.
After a while, she had to come to the conclusion that it was all fantasy. Everything involving the clown and the dead woman was just some sort of hallucination.
But the dream was so vivid to her. So real.
Perhaps someone had drugged her?
That may explain how she somehow managed to acquire a nightstick. Perhaps she simply wandered across it in her half-conscious stumblings?
But the ambiguity of this situation was beginning to make her feel ill once more.
She decided just to head back to the table where Clarisse and Nina was.
Except, upon returning to the table, she saw that Nina was absent. And as an instinctive notion told Jane to look back up at the stage, she saw that Nina wasn't the only one.
Octavio was not there either.
How long was she in the bathroom for?
Another more sinister thought crossed over her mind. What if Nina had fallen prey to the clown?
Clarisse caught sight of Jane's anxious expression as she sat back down.
"Jane, you looked so flustered. Are you okay?"
Jane looked abck at Nina's empty chair, then back to Clarisse.
"Nina....where's.."
"Oh, Nina left. I'm so sorry, Jane. She got a little impatient, you see, but she did want to apolog-"
"Where's the clown?" Jane interrupted, much to Clarisse's bewilderment of such an odd question
"Pardon? Where's the what?"
"Where's the damn clown? The one that was up on stage dancing? The one that was chasing me?"
Jane's frantic and agitated look concerned Clarisse, as was the nature of what she was asking her.
She gently placed her hands on Jane's, that were tightly clasping the table cloth and trembling with unease. Clarisse gently held her hands and patted them, trying her best to reassure Jane as she looked into her eyes.
"Sweetie.
There was no clown.
The stage had been empty the whole night."
Jane's eyes widened. She stared back in utter disbelief.
"I...I have to go. See ya."
Quick as a flash, Jane got up, and as casually as she could hurried to the exit of the club, vowing in her mind never to go back inside there again.
Comments14
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Yo!
Logical fallacy. How does Jane know what colors the girls are wearing if all she can see are grays?
'She waited for a response, but Jane didn't say anything, just stared into the mirror. Clarisse decided to continue, her smile grew more concerning as she explained to Jane.' Concerned, not concerning.
...This is a terrifying and confusing section. I am not down with the clown. At all. Like, run in the opposite direction, this is the train to nopeville.
Logical fallacy. How does Jane know what colors the girls are wearing if all she can see are grays?
'She waited for a response, but Jane didn't say anything, just stared into the mirror. Clarisse decided to continue, her smile grew more concerning as she explained to Jane.' Concerned, not concerning.
...This is a terrifying and confusing section. I am not down with the clown. At all. Like, run in the opposite direction, this is the train to nopeville.