Free Asylum - 13 Tales of Terror by Matt Drabble

grinned “But just the one, I’m not allowed,” she said rubbing her stomach, “At least for the next nine months,” she laughed and flew into his arms.

    He awoke later that night as gentle hands prodded and probed him; he was shaken from a deep sleep and suddenly sat bolt upright. “What is it?” He panted, “Is it the baby?”
    “No relax, everything is fine, it’s just time.”
    “Time for what?” He asked half listening, just relieved that her health wasn’t in danger.
    “He said that I can tell you now.”
    “Who said? Tell me what?” He snapped grumpily, “You’re not making any sense.”
    “No, not that way,” she said. “That won’t work, we’d never get enough and how am I supposed to get hold of that much anyway?”
    Duncan suddenly heard his wife holding a conversation without him, “Prim,” he said fearfully, “Who are you talking to?”
    “Huh?” She said turning to him.
    “Oh God, is it him?” He whispered terrified, “It is, isn’t it, but how is this even possible?”
    She turned to him as though talking to a child, “How do you think genius?” she said cruelly, “He’s inside me now, inside our baby.”
    “No,” he stated firmly as he began rocking forward on the bed, his knees drawn up to his chest in primal comfort.
    “Yes, only this time we are going to do things properly,” she said, with a voice that wasn’t quite her own.
    Duncan looked deeply into his wife’s eyes and couldn’t find her there; her once cute and pleasant face was now harsh and cold.
    “Now I’m in much deeper than I could ever get with you Duncan,” the voice said, “No more battling, no more bargaining, no more compromise,” it laughed deeply and hollow. “Now I wear the pants,” it said looking down at the feminine form, “Well of sorts.”
    “And when the baby’s born?” Duncan asked, his mind shot and his heart broken.
    “I’ll rip my way out of this bitch and tear the guts right out of her,” the voice spat.

    When the police broke down the door after some twenty minutes - after being alerted by neighbors who had heard the screams - they found Duncan Murray sitting in a pool of blood and gore. The first officer through the door was young and new to the force and he had promptly emptied his stomach contents over the crime scene. His older and more experienced partner had led the younger man outside to maintain a perimeter and seal the scene. The older officer was a sergeant and had seen much in his twenty year career, but even he had found the scene too disturbing and had taken early retirement not long after. He found himself having to secretly visit a psychiatrist after the events of that evening. He’d had to pay for it out of his own pocket, as it wasn’t the done thing on the force to admit that you needed such help. He had seen a lot of brutality in his time, as well as his fair share of bodies that had suffered varying degrees of sadistic violence. It wasn’t just the murdered woman that stayed with him, and it wasn’t just the blood or the violence that woke him in cold sweats for the rest of his days.
    The coroner had told him a couple of days later that the poor woman had been pregnant. The man, Duncan Murray, the husband and father no less, had torn that woman’s body apart. He had ripped her stomach to shreds, cleaving the organs free and discarding them across the floor. Until the day he died he would remember that man’s distant monotonous voice.
    “He’s in here somewhere,” the man had said looking up with pleading eyes that were quite mad. He was holding handfuls of bloody gore that were once the insides of his wife.
    “He’s in here somewhere.”

5.
    BLACKWATER HEIGHTS
     
    “Jesus Christ!” Martin exclaimed when they were both standing safely outside of Duncan’s room.
    “Right,” Jimmy chuckled with a crackle of life in his eyes.
    “I think I read about that guy in the papers. I think it was just reported as just a guy that went nuts and