Haunted MTL Original – Algea Reid – Tyler R. Martin
“Algea Reid” by Tyler R. Martin
“She’s cutting my fucking throat!” he shouted as I walked into the room.
The man was quite an interesting sight. Tall, skinny, brown hair, blue eyes, strong jaw, hadn’t shaved in days, and the perpetual jitterers of a man truly frightened to his core. The officer who escorted me in told me his name was Travis McCurry and that he was just another run of the mill wackjob adamantly admitting to a crime which probably hasn’t taken place, at least not by Travis. However he was an interesting wackjob, the officer told me, so apparently worthy of some psychoanalysis.
“Who fucked him up?” I asked the officer as I had watched Travis through mirrored glass.
The officer, a fat, squat, bald little man in his late thirties, just chuckled, “you’ll have to ask him, Doc, ‘cause we surely didn’t believe it.”
“Wasn’t you guys?” I inquired.
“No man,” said the officer, “he came in like that.”
“She’s cutting my fucking throat.”
“Who?”
“The woman I killed a year ago.”
I sat down across from Travis McCurry. He wasn’t handcuffed but he was beaten to a bloody pulp. Two black eyes, nose still dripping blood, swelling on his cheekbones, split lips, top and bottom, his neck looked as if someone had already cut it, deeply, but it had already begun healing and was knitting together cleanly. Additionally, he had two large patches of dried blood on his shirt, one on each pectoral. He sat uncomfortably in a graywhite chair in a graywhite room with a graywhite table. A pale florescent light flickered on the ceiling and glimmered just slightly on the mirrored glass behind which the officers watched us.
“Killed?” I inquire.
He looked exapersated and utterly exhausted. “You’re the third cop I’ve told this too! Is this a joke to you?”
“I’m not a police officer, Travis,” I replied, paused, then quickly added, “is it ok to call you Travis?”
He took a deep breath and leaned back in the wooden chair, “its fine….but if you’re not a cop what are you?”
I introduced myself as a clinical psychiatrist that the police employ from time to time to sus out various confusing situations and talk to people in certain predicaments where police are inadequate.
Travis stared at me for a moment, then stood up and, in dramatic fashion, took off his bloody shirt and threw it on the floor.
His nipples, still bleeding, had been cleanly sliced off leaving two dark-red oozing patches on his chest.
“Sus that out…they literally rotted off me, before my very eyes, decayed and turned to dust over just a few months….the doctors couldn’t explain it, and once it got this bad they tell me there’s no way a sharp instrument hadn’t done this….they thought I did it to myself! Tried to commit me! And look at my fucking throat, man! I’m days away, hours, minutes maybe! ”
I took a deep breath in an effort to retain my composure.
“….do you wanna tell me what happened?…”
“Already told them…”
“Yes, but they don’t believe you…try me.”
“Look, that’s what happens next, after the nipples, I swear, she’s gonna cut my throat!”
Hysterics were setting in. I instruct him to take a deep breath and he does.
He was calming down, tired now, having exerted himself.
“Tell me what happened, Travis.”
He exhaled, sighing audibility to demonstrate his displeasure, gathered his thoughts and began.
“The night I buried her I started to feel it…gentle at first, just a light stinging on my ass cheeks, then, over the next few weeks it got more and more intense, a slapping, like someone was smacking my ass. Within a month or so the red ass graduated to these…inexplicable…bumps and bruises…”
He pointed to large, severe and obviously fresh scrapes and bruises all over his torso and face.
“…these have been here for six months.” he looked me sternly in the eye, “and they fucking hurt, worse every day.”
“Then my nipples….a burning at first, like a paper cut, then it started to feel like someone was slicing them off…I went to the doctor, stitches, cauterizations, referral after referral…”
“No results?” I ask calmly, to break the silence.
“No,” he replied after a moment. “It just kept getting worse, my face has looked like this for months… months! It looks like I got my ass kicked yesterday but I haven’t gotten my ass kicked in years, not like this anyway…
“Then my neck started, a little sting at first, then the same feeling I had in my nipples: a slow deliberate slicing that gets worse every minute, every second of everyday, deeper and deeper into my throat…and you don’t believe a word of it…”
I leaned across the table slowly and made eye contact.
“I believe that you believe it, Travis.”
“But?” he returned eye contact in a confrontational manner.
I choose my words carefully, “…but…I think it would be quite difficult for a dead woman to do this to you…”
He stayed silent, looking down at his lap, eyes welling with tears.
“What do you want us to do, Travis? How can we protect you?”
He looked up, “I don’t know, I feel like this will stop if I confess and…I don’t know, am punished, if justice is served or something… maybe if I tell what I did to her it won’t happen to me…I don’t know! It’s a year now and I’m out of options…”
Long gone now was the man yelling at me just a few minutes ago. Now he had broken down, looking beaten and without hope. At that moment nothing remained of his spirit…I pitied him, pitied him more than I have pitied any man in a very long time.
I stood up and placed my hand comfortingly on Travis’ shoulder. “Tell me her name.”
“Algea….Algea Reid, I still have her school I.D, I tried to show them but…..why do you ask?”
“Well,” I explained, “I’m going to ask the police to search her name up, and if your story about killing her checks out, and she’s missing or had been found dead then you’ll get to make your confession, I’ll talk to the police, you have my word.”
He said nothing but I noticed a very faint glimmer of hope in his bloodshot eyes.
I patted him on the shoulder once more and exited.
“Run that name please.”
“Already on it,” one officer replied.
I poured myself a steaming cup of coffee, black with just a bit of sugar.
“What had he done to that girl?” I wondered aloud.
I had recognized no guilt in his eyes, only fear, only self-preservation. It was an intense fear, a bone rattling fear, the fear of a man facing the abyss of death…but a fear not based on guilt.
Only someone who feels guilty would self-mulatate in his position, he doesn’t qualify, screams a voice in my head
“Got her!” I heard an officer shout victoriously behind me, startling me.
I sip my coffee and turn around to hear.
“I guess Mr. Crazy’s story sorta checks out,” he began to read from the printout, “Algea Reid…white, female 21, attending Huntington Nursing school, goes missing from her birthday party on January 28th…hell!….exactly one year ago today!”
“Happy birthday, Algea!” another officer rudley interjects. Everyone laughs.
“…goes to bar “the Nite Owl” with friends celebrating her 21st birthday, leaves with older man in mid thirties, described as tall, well dressed and handsome by her friends…who apparently recognised little else through their vodka goggles…”
There was a brief pause, then the officer looked up from the printout with a perplexed expression, “I don’t know, Sergeant Baxter, should I get a statement from him?”
“A bit late for that,” I say cutting off Sergeant Baxter’s reply as I look through the mirrored glass.
The officers crowd around me to see the brutal site.
Travis McCurry’s throat had been cut, deeply, and he had bled to death, likely in a matter of minutes, on a cold concrete floor, bruised and battered, in a pool of his own blood…alone in the room…
Hello! My name is Tyler R. Martin. I’m a 22 year old U.S Army veteran of the Iraq conflict and am now a full time writer/poet. I run a poetry blog called Bourbon, Cigarettes and Syllables at bourboncigarettesandsyllables.com. Please enjoy my submissions and thank you in advance for taking the time to read my work!
Tripped out… in case you just couldn’t get enough of Everything Everywhere All at Once and the return of the infinite bagel with EVERYTHING on it…
Artwork description: kaleidoscopic image of pink hairy horror (This is actually a fink fuzzy frond plant not unlike a Cockscomb but with longer thinner flowering feelers rather than the fuller protuberances you see on a full-bodied Cockscomb plant. I have no idea what it was, but it was very odd so I had to snap a photo.)
Image text reads: Mixing Magic Mushrooms & Peyote Just remember: once you open that Pandora’s box, you’re never going to get the pink hairy tarantulas back in it…
Artwork description: kaleidoscopic sunflower backlit by the sun with text and rainbow eye overlay
Image text reads: Eye See You Eye See All (in circle text so you can start and end reading wherever). In an ideal context this would be printed in the bottom of your tea mug or on a record that can slowly spin.
For more crazy tripped out fun, check out Weird Al’s post on Craig’s List…
I had heard tale that The Elves dwell in these woods. Many underestimate The Elves; they have a fondness of heart for Tolkienesque Middle Earth fantasy stories and tales where Elves are the most highly civilized, virtuous and intelligent. They forget that those are just myths, save for The Elves being cunning. Remember that the Pied Piper was an Elf, and the children he took were not destined for such a glorious fate.
My sister lost her firstborn to The Elves. She hadn’t noticed the Changeling until it was too late. Her baby had already long since been stolen away. She was so distraught she refused to eat or speak. She locked herself in her room. Or my family locked her into it as she succumbed to the madness. Such are the ways of the family, for all of our protection. We never question but follow as expected, as a means of self-preservation. It has kept us all alive.
But I couldn’t get the sinking feeling out of my stomach; the grief became too overwhelming. That is why I came here. I know I will not be able to rescue the child, nor my sister. But I seek to avenge their meaningless deaths. To ensure that it doesn’t happen again. My family will never act. I am tired of the Village Elders just shrugging these things off in hushed whispers and badly shrouded secrets. It happens time and again. We are all expendable. They never do anything.
So here I am, in the Elven wood. Alone. As soon as my family figures out that I’m here, they will disown me. They probably already have. Again, it is for our own protection. I’ll be just another casualty of The Elves. Everything is so structured, so regimented. Anyone who dares act in opposition to the rules vanishes. We are all so afraid.
I lay in wait. It’s just a matter of time before the portal appears. The Elves use the portals to travel across time and space. They appear where and when they wish. But this time, I will go through first. I know not what is on the other side, just that the portals allow only one to traverse in each direction. We will trade places, if only for a moment until another portal forms. Hopefully that will be enough time.
The trees shift and morph. Falling leaves drift slower and slower towards the ground. There is a stillness that I cannot fully express. My breath hangs heavy in the silent air. There is no sound, no smell, no taste. It is time. The hairs on the back of my neck and arms rise. I can sense the opening forming. There is an uncanny familiarity in this moment, as if I have been here before.
As soon as the portal opens, I dash through. But something isn’t right. No one came through from the other side. Or did they? I cannot tell. I am alone, in limbo between states of existence. The world spins around me. I can feel the drift. Is this what death feels like? Cold unbroken silence? I feel distant eyes upon me everywhere, all around me, in the trees, the clouds, pinpoints of light that shimmer through.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe this is all according to plan. But who was orchestrating the exchange? My idea was only half formed in those passing pensive moments I am able to think for myself, few and far between. My family, the Village Elders… no one allows time for freeform thought. I hadn’t considered what would happen after the portal exchange. I never really got past step one.
A voice greets me from the trees. It is hauntingly familiar but seems only a distant memory.
“I’ve been expecting you.”
The world slowly comes into focus. Clarity restored, the leaves circle me in an embrace. My sister emerges, her dark eyes smiling. She cradles the baby in her arms.
“You made it. You escaped,” she sings.
“I didn’t see anyone,” I retort, skeptical. I hadn’t recalled having seen any Elves, dark nightmarish fiends that they are, wild, unkempt, uncouth. Savage beasts like Pan or Krampus. Is this an illusion? My sister seems so lifelike, so much herself. She is the joyful young mother I had known her to be. Filled with love and laughter. Light dances about her, and she shimmers.
“Not in passing,” my sister clarifies. “You have been living among them your whole life. I had done so as well until the baby was stolen. My heart broke; I had to follow after. That was when I learned the Truth.”
“Why do you think we are so sheltered? Why are we forbidden to do anything? They do so to protect us from the Truth about who and what we are,” she continued. “We’ve spent our lives evading that which we truly know ourselves to be. We were the stolen ones, not the other way around…”
I notice that the portal I came through is still open, reinforcing my idea that no one had passed through the other way. It is as if the portal was opened specifically to call me through. My sister extends her hand, beckoning me to join her. There is a gleam in her eye I cannot pinpoint. She seems happy, but something still isn’t quite right. I’m still uncertain why I am here, in this time and place, as if destined to be present in this moment, in this decision.
The Village has fallen away to the woods. There are no breadcrumb trails to follow home. The idea of home itself seems distant like yet another illusion. Nothing makes sense anymore. I am unsure whether I am coming or going. Two paths lay open before me. Which shall I take?
The trees are full of Elven magicks… Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
I have been getting ready for a jewelry show in February and thought I’d share some of the fun eye candy necklaces I’ve been working on. Do they thwart or attract the Evil Eye? I think that depends largely on the wearer’s intentions… Each is hand-beaded and features a spooky printed eyeball pendant as its focus.
And the piece de resistance… A RAINBOW Evil Eye necklace with magnesite stone skulls! I love these happy little deadheads – they are just too spoopy… I have seen these beads ranging in size from very small to huge and I love all of them.
I love using eyes in art in weird and unusual contexts in my art. They have so much presence and symbolism. They also bring a sort of surreal atmosphere to any artwork, which bears just a hint of spookiness regardless of context.
Other artworks & graphics by myself that prominently feature eyes have appeared here on Haunted MTL in Insomnia, Indecision, Illuminati, Carriage Factory art installation, The Watchers, The Red Key, and Shaman Sticks.
You can check out some of my Hauntings jewelry on Haunted MTL here, and more jewelry is featured on my website here.
