Inner Demons

Author's Note -- Yeah, some of Event Horizon was silly, but there were some truly creepy scenes in it. So here we go, an oldie from me, but in my personal opinion, a goodie. I tried to be as frightening as possible, since I consider this to be a horror story. Enjoy.
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The strangest and most frightening things can resurface from a person’s past. Whatever the Event Horizon had become now, it knew how to use the crew’s minds to its advantage. DJ knew that the ship had provoked Doctor Weir, Captain Miller and poor Peters, but as far as he knew, no attempt was made towards himself, awake or asleep.
The British Doctor wandered the halls of the ship, keeping in mind that he was in danger every second of his stay in this miserable hellhole. He tried desperately to squelch any thought of his own past, knowing the Event Horizon could use his memories against him, perhaps even kill him. No matter what, he could never remember, or else he would spell his own doom.
Even without thinking, he realized, the ship could still probe DJ’s mind and dig up long buried nightmares… even make those nightmares a reality. He picked up his pace, eager to be out of harm’s way.
He stopped, however, when he felt something deep inside. The Event Horizon could not possibly be causing such a feeling, not something so physical… but even so, he tried to ignore the worsening discomfort in his stomach.
Then, something very abnormal happened. Something was released from between DJ’s legs. He hardly had time to assess the situation, because now he had a horrible, foul smelling fluid rushing out from his lower cavity, spilling out on the floor in quarts. DJ groaned in pain, staggering and slipping on the now slime-coated floor. His suit was drenched from the waist down and the man could barely walk, his boots useless on the slippery surface, his legs weakening. Falling forward, DJ glanced back at the spreading puddle, and to his utter horror, he saw movement within the thick slime.
DJ’s vision blurred. He lay back as the awful, straw-colored gunk poured out, leaving his body completely wasted of vigor. He heard horrible sounds, unrecognizable at first, but steadily forming words: familiar words, with familiar voices.
The Englishman was taken back to a day he never wanted to relive. His beautiful, beloved Gabriella… how he wished he had not been so cruel. Their argument seemed so asinine and ridiculous now. He never should have gone out that night, drinking himself into a stupor. The alcohol left him completely unaware of his surrounding. When he returned home, he practically passed out. At first, he awoke thinking he had dreamt the whole thing, how his wife was calling out to him, lying on the bed, sobbing in pain. By the time he had sobered up, his discovery was made too late. Gabriella had been in labor for twelve hours, too wracked by pain to get to a phone, and DJ was too drunk to care. As he awoke and found her lying beside him, bereft of life, he remembered that the baby had been too big to be delivered naturally, and needed help. Both Gabriella and the baby were pronounced dead on arrival to hospital. The little boy’s father had been awaiting his first child with such anticipation.
DJ was brought back to consciousness by a pain that shot through his entire body. He cried out at the sensation and realized he could not get up. Looking around, he watched in terror as the floor beneath him rose up and around his arms and legs, pinning him down. The moving thing in the puddle slithered up the walls, towards the ceiling. Pipes attached overhead finally broke loose from their bolts and bent themselves downward, slowly making their way toward the frantic doctor, hued by the writhing slime. Right next to his head, a grouping of thick black wires burst from beneath the floor, wrapping around DJ’s jaws, leaving him unable to speak. With wide eyes, he had no choice but to witness what the monstrous ship was about to do to him.
Several of the pipelines prodded and entwined themselves about DJ’s thighs and waist, while the largest – a ventilation tube – explored between the legs. Sweat poured off of the Englishman’s head and body, his eyes wide as he looked upward, moaning in response to the tube’s wandering aperture. Good Lord… the bloody ship was actually trying to rape him.
Oh God, oh God… he repeated in his mind, struggling underneath the cold metal. He winced as pipelines spread his legs further apart.
Oh, Go—OOOOODDDDDDD!! His scream was subdued through the wire gag, and his eyes squeezed shut at the agony of the tube entering him. Through his penis, through his rectum, through skin and flesh, he had no idea which, and frankly, he did not care. The Event Horizon was raping him and he had no way of calling for help. Even if someone went looking for him, hours could pass before this evil machine could be stopped. Something from within the tube escaped and went further into DJ’s body, and he could only whimper in pain and fear. He could feel every movement of the invader, clawing its way throughout his innards and squirming like a larva burrowing inside a corpse. Tears fell from the man’s blue eyes as he felt the thing’s journey within his body; never before had he felt so violated.
Please stop… he pleaded. Please. God, I’m so sorry, Gabriella.
Then, the insidious creature inside him ceased all movement. Brow wrinkled in fear, agony and confusion, DJ struggled again, desperate to escape, to search for help. But what would happen when he found someone… if he found someone? How would they be able to undo the damage caused, and what the hell did the demonic ship have planned for his body, after what it had done?
Was the tube ejecting air? No… rather something else. DJ started to feel very full, as though he had eaten too much in one sitting. But Event Horizon did not stop there. The doctor felt his skin stretching, and he gave a muffled yell as he lifted his head against the black bindings to inspect what was happening. To his shock, he saw his stomach lift, already apparent in his slightly loose fitting uniform. After another pained moan – inspired by the ship’s intrusive probing – his stomach heaved upward again… however, it did not go back down with each lift. Instead, DJ’s abdomen continued to grow, with every surge of the ventilation tube, sometimes gentle, but more often than not, painful, and he moaned with each thrust, fearfully watching what was happening to his body.
Then, something else moved, something other than the phallic tube. The living being was still alive inside DJ’s body, growing and squirming, pushing, kicking…
Oh, dear Lord in Heaven. Please don’t let this happen.
The man sobbed, looking on powerlessly as the cold floor lifted itself again, yanking on the stretching uniform. The material finally ripped open and the belly continued to grow. If DJ were a woman, he would have looked to be about seven months pregnant.
And the Event Horizon did not even falter. The ship continued its rhythmic motion, oblivious to the stifled wails of its victim. His hands balled into fists, knuckles white and palms awash in sweat, DJ tried to escape again, but the attempt was useless. Even if he could break free from his binds, he would not be able to move now under his own bodily weight. The British doctor now resembled someone who was overdue with triplets, and still he continued to grow. Veins as thick as his fingers spread like roots under the skin of his swollen belly, pulsating as his breath became increasingly difficult, and he panted, a puddle of sweat beneath him mixing with the straw-colored fluid.
DJ could not see past his bloated abdomen now, but if he could see himself, he looked as though he was carrying a ten-year-old child. He knew if this kept up, he would either asphyxiate from the weight against his chest, or burst and hemorrhage to death. But the machine was not going to stop, and the wriggling monstrosities inside him continued to grow…
“DJ!”
The doctor almost thought he had imagined the voice. When he opened his agony stricken eyes and peered past the stretched, taut surface of his stomach, he saw Miller running towards him in utter alarm. Then, everything went black.
“DJ?? Wake up, buddy! Wake up!”
The Englishman’s eyelids fluttered open drowsily and the blurred image of Miller’s face appeared above him. As he faded into consciousness, DJ realized his head was rested against his fellow crewmember’s lap. He sat straight up quite suddenly, unsure of his surroundings, and looked down at his stomach. He felt it in disbelief; his belly was no worse for wear, as though nothing had happened. The hallway was completely the same as when he had entered it.
“It was all so real…”
“What was?”
DJ looked at Miller in surprise. “You didn’t see it?”
“I came around the corner and saw you unconscious. And convulsing too. By the time I got to you, you had stopped. What happened??”
DJ stared at his friend for a moment, in a daze. He then looked down, his head in his trembling hands.
“I hate this fucking place,” he croaked. Miller’s hand was placed reassuringly on his shoulder.
“We all do.”
* * *
Doctor Weir gazed down at DJ with his bloody eye sockets, looking over the barely conscious Englishman with a sadistic expression. In a villainously gleeful manner, he opened the man’s uniform, exposing a thin surgical scar which ran down the length of DJ’s slender torso and stomach. Perfect, he thought, his possessed mind unfolding the most evil thoughts.
DJ tried to open his eyes and beat away the jumbled mess in his head, the tousled noise and the bright flashes of color. The voices had returned, to seal his inevitable doom, whispering in joyful, sinister tones, giggling, snarling.

“I’m afraid your baby cannot be born naturally, doctor.”

“It’s a simple surgical operation.”

“There’s no need to fear. We do this all the time.”

“Just count backwards from one hundred.”

“… now take a deep breath…”

The knife cut through DJ’s skin, along the scar as though following a dotted line. His blue eyes snapped open and he regurgitated the blood from his fresh wounds, feeling the warm wetness seep from his closed lips. For a moment, he saw his precious Gabriella, standing behind Weir, her eyes just as empty and bloodied. She smiled sweetly at her husband and gave his oozing stomach an affectionate caress.

“There, there, my darling… it’ll all be over soon.”

Miller came charging into the infirmary five minutes later, fearing the worst. He stopped in his tracks and almost vomited. The worst had happened. There, suspended from the ceiling by hooks on chains, DJ was sliced open, right down the middle, his organs in a bloody pile on the lab table below. Horror soon changed, however, into rage. Weir and his precious little ship were going to go to Hell for this.
But before he took off to find Event Horizon’s possessed creator, he noticed something on the table of organs… something moving. Out from under the lungs popped two tiny, blood-drenched limbs, pulling a bulblike head and skeletal body upward. The demonic infant was the most unsettling thing Captain Miller had ever seen. It looked at DJ’s lifeless body and jumped up, opening wide jaws and biting into the British doctor’s dangling arm. The thing did not get any further, as Miller’s gun decimated it into tiny chunks. The commander looked at DJ’s peaceful face with dismay, knowing he did not deserve to die, let alone be desecrated anymore by the evil of Event Horizon. With one last salute, he said good bye to his crew member and exited the infirmary, hoping to stop Weir before he destroyed any more lives.

END.