The Woman Upstairs

The terror.

The most horrifying aspect of any thriller is that by which you are caught off guard. Seemingly kind and gentle characters that can turn on a dime flashing fangs, or slashing flesh with razor-like claws. Worse yet, a loving and seductively sweet character who walks past a mirror and their reflection reveals the bowels of hell.

And this is the woman upstairs.

Witch.

Menace.

Crazed lunatic.

Urban legend boasts of her. She wanders the second story, perhaps it is believed her ghost escaped from the abandoned psych-ward one town over. A tormented soul who hanged herself with her straight jacket.

Alas, she is real.

The floors squeak beneath her feet as she paces the corridor separating the children's rooms.

She is there to bully.

She is there to make amends.

Wide-eyed, stumbling, her white cotton nightgown covered in the blood of her prey. Her face twitches as she howls. Her back is hunched, foamy drool seeps from the corners of her wretched lips.

Her breath is hot.

Her voice is wicked.

The woman upstairs is the stuff nightmares are made of. M. Night-Shyamalan wakes from drenched sweat sleep, he craves the ability to manifest her horror on the big screen. Stephen King tried once to pen her madness.

He failed.

You must see her believe.

I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror of my daughter's room. She is lunacy personified. And I shuddered when I saw her.

She was indeed wildly demented.

I froze as she stared back at me from the tween's full-length mirror. A mirror decorated with 1st place ribbons, a LMAO sticker, another, faded and peeling Pokémon sticker, and a message is written in hot pink lipstick that read "S Loves H."

Our eyes are locked. Green for green, the color of witches. My eye twitched, so did hers. A wicked smile erupted across her blood covered teeth. I smiled back, and a chill ran up my spine.

I spoke to her.

"Let's finish this."

She threw her head back and cackled. And I spun on my heels and flashed my blood covered fangs. The whimpers from the rooms down the hall didn't faze me. My tween daughter cowered in the corner.
The woman upstairs attacked.

"SPOONS!" She screeched. "WHY ARE ALL THE &$#@ spoons up here!?!?!?!" A mold filled glass on the child's nightstand exploded at the pitch of the beast's scorn, flinging vile slime across the wall and splashing across the terrified girl's young fleshy cheeks.

The mess further encouraged the madness.

The monster climbed the walls hissing and throwing laundry into the hall. The girl timidly tried to reach for a mildewed towel and the creature that roams the upstairs attacked.

Another child, unaware that he would be next stepped in the doorway to investigate. In spite of a deep seeded need to rescue his little sister he left her to have her bones devoured.

Coward.

The carnage is brought on by the residents of the second story. The fools that leave bowls of milk only a few Lucky Charms floating in thick, moldy syrup, on the back of the toilet. The brainless trolls who shove empty bags of Doritos and dirty underwear under their bed only fuel the monster's hate fire.

Cockroaches scatter from their toothbrush holders, thick slime, is that mucus or hair gel? Drips from their mirrors.

The stench the second story citizens create ironically is the same filth that transforms the loving woman from the first floor into a creature of the night on the second.

Ordinary woman into a werewolf.

A flitting butterfly into a bloodsucking vampire.

A Dr. Jekyll into a Mrs. Hyde.

A good witch into a mean $#%&.

Perhaps, there is no excuse to behave the way I do, I mean the way she does. Perhaps. But until you venture up, until you have seen what I have seen, you cannot judge or curse -- the woman upstairs.

Sweet dreams my pretties... sweet dreams.

Check out more of the talented Marcia Furman's Art here.