SNM Horror Magazine

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White Widows

Andrew Black

The trouble began for Donald Ramey when he went to the town planning commission office to file a permit application. He had all the correct forms, in triplicate, and the application fee. What he lacked was the saint-like patience to deal with the other customers in line. Donald was sandwiched between a morbidly obese woman whose profuse sweating left little puddles on the floor and an Asian woman with her infant son, chattering away on a cell phone while her child screamed with all the might his little lungs could muster. Worst of all, Donald had caught sight of a spider web in the corner of the room just above the filing windows, with a big brown recluse lazily crawling about the silken maze. He hated spiders, was a full blown arachnophobic, and just being in the same room with the eight-legged monster made his uncomfortable.

It took nearly an hour before Donald finally got to the slotted window and was able to turn in the paperwork. The office wasn’t air-conditioned and he was sweating through his shirt by the time he got to the front of the line. He tried to put on a convincing smile for the cute clerk behind the glass but she paid no attention to his charms. He nervously glanced up at the web swaying a few feet above him and he tried to relax and ignore the voice in his head telling him to run far away from the little pest.

“Sorry,” the girl behind the counter said after typing in his address. “You can't have a permit.”

“What?” Donald demanded as he looked away from the spider. “Why? All I want to do is build a stupid deck!”

The girl shrugged, “It says here you can't build anything in your back yard because there's already a structure there.”

“No, no, there's some mistake,” Donald replied. Above him, the spider began dangling down on a delicate strand of silk. “There's nothing in my back yard, not even a swing set!”

“According to this, there's a... hmm, what's a B-133? Haven't seen that code before. Oh! It's a bomb shelter.”

“A bomb shelter?” Donald asked, astonished. “There's no bomb shelter there!”

“I’m sorry sir,” she shook her head, “but I can't accept your application. You'll have to remove the structure first, which will also take a permit, but that's form 2074-F, not 3155-S that you used for your deck application. You’ll have to fill out the new forms and submit them. Thank you, next please!”

“Wait a damn minute!” he protested. He didn’t feel the tiny arachnid drop down into his hair. “You need to fix this. This is a mistake!”

“Sorry, sir, but I can't do that. Please step aside, there are others waiting,” the girl responded with a fake smile. The Asian lady behind him stopped her prattling to give Donald an angry glare. He suddenly felt a tingle on his scalp where the hated pest was crawling through his hair.

With a girlish scream, he began furiously brushing the top of his head with his bunched up paperwork, sending the spider flying across the room with the first pass, but Donald didn’t stop slapping himself until everyone in the office was staring.

He sighed then regained his composure, crumpled up all his paperwork and stalked angrily to the office door. His booted foot crushed the skittering spider as he left, but he didn’t notice as he thudded sullenly into the hall.

*

By the time Donald returned home his temper was overflowing. His face was as red as his hair and the angry flush had spread down his arms in Irish blotches. Deidre, his lovely wife, noticed the frustration on his face. “Didn’t go well, I take it?” she asked in a bored voice. She was wearing her yoga clothes that clung tightly to her butt, one of Donald’s favorite outfits, but he wasn’t in the mood to notice.

Deidre had wanted to plant a garden in the back yard, but Donald had vetoed that idea and instead went ahead with his plans for an oversized monstrosity of a deck. He said it was so they could entertain, but she knew that they rarely had friends over and Donald was just competing with Alan Spence next door. The Spences had a two tiered deck with a built-in fire pit. Donald’s plans called for three tiers, a fire pit, a fountain and an outdoor barbecue kitchen. He denied it was a dick measuring contest between him and his neighbor, but Deidre knew better. She knew from personal experience that he couldn’t measure up to Alan in more ways than one.

“Those assholes at the planning office say there’s a bomb shelter under our back yard, so I can’t build anything there,” Donald fumed. “I told them there isn’t anything back there, but they won’t believe me. And here’s the capper – to get them to change their records, I have to excavate the whole yard and prove there’s nothing there! How stupid can you get?”

Deidre didn’t answer that, though she did roll her eyes. “How is that a bomb shelter? There isn’t any door to it.”

Donald held up a rolled set of blueprints. “I think I know.” He spread the plans out on the dining room table. “Back in the 50’s bomb shelters were all the rage. A couple named Ernie and Florence Shucker lived here then. They actually had the house built in the 30s. Anyway, in 1953, Ernie Shucker filed these plans with the city for building a bomb shelter. He was some kind of scientist, an entomologist or something, and I guess he had the money to build one of these things underground. See here on the plans? There’s a corridor leading from the west basement wall to the shelter. I think he filed the blueprints but never actually had the damn thing built, so now I can’t build my deck!”

Deidre looked at the faded house plans. “Huh. Well there is that section of the basement wall we had to have patched up when we moved in.”

“What section of wall?” Donald asked. He didn’t remember there ever being an addition in the basement.

“That section on the west side. We were moving in and you didn’t want to deal with it, so I had to call a guy and have him come in and spackle it. You were too busy decorating your den,” his wife replied, crossing her arms. Oh, she remembered the contractor very well, especially how proficient he was at laying pipes. She smiled to herself at the delicious memory of the handsome man.

Donald’s brow wrinkled in thought. He truly didn’t remember any issues with the basement wall, but he did have to admit he spent a lot of time working on his den. He looked down at the plans and a new idea hatched in his imagination. “Maybe there is a shelter. If there is… ooh, I wonder what’s in there? Maybe we could turn it into, I don’t know, a wine cellar or something. Wouldn’t that be great, our own wine cellar, packed with old bottles! It’s an investment, you know. That’d show the Spences, oh yeah it would. What’s a deck compared to a temperature controlled wine cellar? Hah!”

Deidre sighed and went back to reading her magazine. She saw the mad gleam in Donald’s eye and fifteen years of marriage made her well aware that she wasn’t going to convince him not to tear up the basement. He lumbered off to the garage to gather some tools while she made a mental note to find the contractor’s number -- just in case she needed some more... plumbing work.

*

Two hours later, Donald stood before the western wall of his basement, rubber safety goggles over his eyes, heavy gloves on his hands, and a tool belt loaded down with a hammer, a cordless drill, and assorted devices at his waist. In his hands was a reciprocating saw with a finely serrated concrete cutting blade in its jaws. He examined the patched wall, which had been hidden for years by a metal shelving unit used to store old holiday decorations and assorted junk. Once he had removed the obstruction, it was clear that there was a definite door-like shape in the wall. Roughly four feet wide and as tall as the basement wall itself, the section was plastered over in a heavy coat of sealant.

He flicked the safety switch on the saw and decided to start at the upper left corner of the patched area. Donald pulled the trigger and plunged the humming blade into the thick spackle. It sliced through like a hot knife through butter and he was extremely pleased with himself as he quickly had a mostly straight cut down one side of the wall. He turned to his right and repeated the operation then he sawed along the top. The rapidly oscillating saw chewed through the hardened gray paste with ease.

He couldn’t run the blade along the bottom, but he was sure that was unnecessary. Taking his hammer from the loop on his belt, Donald held a heavy chisel against the top right corner of his newly outlined doorway and struck, breaking a large piece of the spackle free. It fell to the concrete floor and shattered into dust.

It took more than an hour for him to uncover the entire section of wall, but the work wasn’t particularly difficult. He hammered and wedged out pieces, stopping occasionally to sweep the fallen bits of stony plaster into a neat pile. His efforts soon revealed a recessed section of the wall, with a poorly mortared aggregate of odd rough hewn stones in stark contrast to the cinderblock construction of the rest of the foundation.

Excited by his discovery, he rushed to hammer loose the big stones. He found this part of the job was far harder than it seemed and he began using the reciprocating saw to cut chunks of age-blackened mortar from in between the rocks. The saw blade occasionally caught the edge of one of the stones and threw a shower of sparks as it tried in vain to chew into the hard, crunchy granite.

After an hour of sweaty work, Deidre came down the wooden cellar steps with an ice cold beer and a tuna fish sandwich. Donald thanked her with a kiss, but she wasn’t happy with his demolition plans. “What if you cave in part of the house doing this?” she asked nervously.

“Don’t worry about it, this part of the wall isn’t load bearing,” her husband crooned. “There’s no danger at all.” He patted the wall and one of the larger rocks he’d been working on fell onto his booted foot. The heavy stone bounced off the steel toe and did little more than bruise the top of his foot, but he had to stifle the yelp of pain. His wife chuckled anyway.

After finishing lunch and shooing his wife upstairs he returned to his labor. His power drill bored through a thick lump of sandy mortar and he was able to wedge a long screwdriver into place, levering the next rock out. Once a few chunks were loose and others removed, it wasn’t hard to start tearing down the poorly built wall. He yanked away a large hunk of granite and was greeted by the odor of stale, mildewed air. Donald switched on his flashlight and peered through the hole in the wall.

On the other side was a dusty corridor filled with cobwebs. A huge albino spider, almost the size of a silver dollar, skittered towards his face making him jump back in terror. As the white, eight-legged beast disappeared behind some boxes, he tried to shake off the jittery shivers shooting up and down his spine.

He took no chances with the hated arachnid and spent several minutes tracking the spider before ending its life with an old, bent up ski pole. He wondered if he truly wanted to open up the hidden passage if there might be more of those creepy crawlers inside. He scanned around the basement and his eyes lit as he saw the cure for this dilemma. An old bug bomb, purchased two years ago when an infestation of potato bugs had swarmed the house, sat on a dusty shelf over the washing machine.

he grabbed the small, cylindrical device, tore off the warning label, and yanked the plastic cap free, starting the toxic pest eliminator’s reactive chemicals. He tossed the smoking rod through the gap in the wall and quickly replaced the stone plug. The bomb would take at least three hours to do its work, so he neatly piled his tools, swept up the dust and debris from his demolition, and went upstairs to catch an early afternoon nap.

*

A three hour nap turned into four, then an afternoon trip to the grocery store, dinner, and watching half a season of a new sit-com on the digital recorder while Deidre attended yoga class. He didn’t get back to work on the secret doorway until the next morning. He pulled out the loose stone and set it aside. His flashlight beam lanced through the stale air of the passageway and he couldn’t see any of the albino terrors. Satisfied that his pesticide did its job, Donald got back to work tearing away the remaining stone obstruction.

It took a good hour to make a hole large enough for him to really see inside the secret hallway. It was made of concrete blocks, just like the rest of the basement walls with the same cement floor. At the end of the short passage was a corroded metal door with a spoked wheel in its center like the hatches on a submarine. Smiling at his discovery, Donald began smashing free the remaining stones with a heavy sledgehammer he had brought down for the brutish work. A combination of elbow grease and diligence widened the opening and after another hour of pounding, the sweaty man was able to step over the remaining waist high wall into the long forgotten corridor. He saw the curled corpses of dozens of the white spiders littering the floor and the spent cylinder of the bug bomb against the wall not far from the sealed metal door. He saw that there was a shelf running along one wall holding dirty little glass cubes that he assumed were some kind of terrariums. He remembered the man who had built the shelter had been an entomologist, a bug studier, and he wondered if he kept his experiments down here in a secure room.

He grabbed his push broom to sweep up the dead arachnid carcasses and swung the bristly tool about to clean out the cobwebs as well. A large work light stationed at the mouth of a short hallway gave plenty of light as he made his way to the greenish-black door. He examined the hatch as it was definitely an airtight ship’s bulkhead, and he tried to turn the wheel lock. Despite his best efforts, the spoked ring would not budge. He tried jiggling it and could tell that the mechanism wasn’t seized. Something was blocking the movement of the latch. Until he could determine what was responsible for immobilizing the wheel, he couldn’t get into the room beyond.

“Well I'll be a son of a bitch,” Donald cursed in frustration. He considered using the reciprocating saw; he had a metal cutting blade that would probably slice through the restraining bars inside the door if he could locate them. However, that wouldn’t necessarily help, as the locks would still be in place, and worse, the hatch mechanism would be completely destroyed, making it impossible to use again. He already had visions of showing Alan Spence his new wine cellar, the metal door polished and gleaming as he spun the vault wheel open. He didn’t want to take any unnecessary drastic measures if there was another answer.

After wiping away some of the grime from the spoked hub, he saw a small keyhole in the center of it. He grinned. The solution to the puzzling entrance was so obvious. He hopped out of the newly opened passage and sprinted up the steps. “Deidre!” he yelled for his wife. “Honey, do you know if there were any old keys we got when we bought the house?”

Deidre sighed and looked up from her crossword puzzle. “No, just the house keys,” she called out.

“Are you sure?” her quick tempered husband shouted back as he rummaged through the kitchen junk drawer.

With a grunting frustration, the trim woman sat up and took a moment to let her anger dissipate. She practiced a calming yoga breath she learned at the gym from the cute instructor who always gave his lessons shirtless. “Yes, dear, I’m sure,” she replied with a serene tone.

Donald grumbled and halted his haphazard search. “Hey, isn’t Jackie Sloan’s husband a locksmith?”

“Larry? Yes, I think he is.”

Donald opened his cell phone and found Jackie’s number. The Sloans lived a few doors over and Jackie often hosted parties at their house. Donald thought she was hot for a woman about ten years his senior, but he’d never really gotten to know her husband. A quick phone call and a promise of a cold beer lured Larry Slone over to the Ramey’s home.

“So what is this?” Larry asked as he sat his heavy steel toolbox on the concrete floor of the short passage.

Donald grinned, “It’s an old bomb shelter. I’m thinking of turning it into a wine cellar.”

“Oh, like the Spences?” Larry inquired.

“What?!”

“Theirs is temperature controlled and I think Alan said he had about three hundred bottles, including some rare stuff,” the locksmith said as he examined the wheel lock. He opened up his tool kit and took two silvery instruments from the top caddy.

Donald willed the burning red anger to fade from his face. “I didn’t know they had a wine cellar.” He watched the other man at work, seeing deft fingers wiggling the narrow picks in the keyhole. It took Larry no more than a minute to turn the lock cylinder to the right, an audible click registering when the spoked ring was released.

“There you go,” Larry said as he put his tools away and stood. He picked up the heavy case and began to leave.

“Don’t you want to see what’s inside?” Donald asked curiously.

Larry shook his head, “Nope. One, I don’t like knowing other peoples’ business. Two, I hate bugs, especially spiders, and whatever is on the other side of that door is probably filled with the nasty things. I’ll just say bye to your wife and grab that beer you owe me. You have fun playing with the creepy crawlies.”

Donald shivered at the thought of a room full of spiders and watched the locksmith tromp up the steps. He shook his head, telling himself that with the door sealed, nothing, not even spiders, could possibly still be alive in there. He turned to the hatch, thumbed the switch on his flashlight, and spun the wheel mechanism.

It obligingly turned, though not without an earsplitting squeak. With a hardy tug, he opened the bomb shelter door, the rusted and corroded hinges balking only a little. A blast of musty air escaped as the seal was broken for the first time in decades. He swung the door wide and peered into the hidden room.

*

Upstairs, Larry Sloan flirted with Mrs. Ramey. Larry hadn’t had the pleasure of her company yet, but he knew the woman’s reputation and he tried to be obvious with his insinuations as the two chatted. The flirtations were cut short by a strangled cry coming from the basement. The sheer panic in that short, warbling shriek made both Larry and Deidre snap to attention. The shout cut off almost as quickly as it began, leaving a heavy silence.

Larry chuckled nervously to break the pregnant tension. “I bet he saw a spider,” he joked.

The color had drained from Deidre’s face. “Donald?!” she called out. No answer was forthcoming. “Donald, are you okay?!”

Larry glanced nervously at the cellar door. “He’s fine. Just got spooked or something. Maybe he locked himself in that room down there.” He realized his mistake as soon as it flew from his lips.

“Can you go look and see if he did?” Deidre implored. “Donald is dumb enough to lock himself in and we don’t have a key, you know.” She brushed her long blond hair from her face in an obvious coquettish way and crossed her legs to show off her long, toned calves and thighs.

The locksmith frowned for a brief second then let a false smile light his face as he admired the woman’s shapely form. “Sure, sure, I’ll go check on him. No problem at all. You just wait right here.” He grabbed the two picks he’d used earlier from the tool box, not wanting to carry the heavy thing back down the stairs for no reason, and made his way into the cellar.

“Donald? Donald, are you okay?” he called as he nervously descended the open wooden steps. His imagination recalled old horror movies where some sort of monster would grab its victim through such stairs. He hustled down to the concrete floor and looked around for the missing man, cursing the fool for being such a dullard.

Larry thought that he heard something from the half-revealed corridor. It sounded a bit like a wounded dog’s whimper. The bright work lamp shining into the exposed hallway showed nothing peculiar as Larry approached the opening. He did see that the door at the far end was now ajar, but it wasn’t open wide enough for him to peek into the chamber beyond.

He fished out his small pocket light and turned on the brilliant LED beam. There seemed to be something on the floor near the partially open bulkhead, maybe water leaked from some crack in the structure. It was hard to tell with the shadows. He came to the partially excavated entrance and swept his light back and forth. Near the punctured wall the huddled form of Donald shivered with his head in his hands. Larry could see the man’s shoulders quivering as if he were sobbing.

Relieved he had found the idiot, the locksmith focused his light on the crouched figure. “Man, you scared your wife and me. What happened? Did a big hairy spider fall on your head?”

Donald turned toward the light, lowering his hands as he did. Larry saw the terrible visage swim into view and screamed. There was no flesh on Donald’s face, just hideous yellow-white bone and a few strands of gore. He was a living skull, the exposed membranes of his nostrils flaring and his mouth hung open from a lower jaw no longer attached to its mate. The eyes were still in the sockets, the muscles that controlled them contracting as they looked helplessly at the shocked locksmith, and a partially dissolved tongue lolled in the black gulf of his ruined mouth. Donald reached out to Larry, his hands covered in his own blood and viscera.

Larry stumbled backwards, sprawled on his back as he knocked over the work light and sent his little flashlight spinning off behind him. The ghastly skull-face appeared in the stone-lined portal, illuminated by the weak light streaming through the small basement windows. The pleading eyes looked down at the prone man as an arm again reached out for help and the stump of a tongue tried to form words that came out as guttural grunt. Larry scrambled backward, kicking his booted feet to propel him away from the monstrous image looming in the dark passageway. His hand brushed against the cold metal of his flashlight and he instinctively grabbed it and focused its beam on Donald’s cadaverous face.

Something large reached out from behind Donald, an inhuman, albino white appendage, chitinous and covered in sparse, bristly hairs. It grabbed the poor man and hauled him backward away from the rocky aperture. Larry didn’t see the owner of that impossibly large, arachnid-like feeler and he didn’t want to.

Sounds came from inside the lightless passageway, sounds that he immediately recognized as the slurping scrunch of feeding. He felt vomit rise in this throat and as he pulled himself to his feet, he puked out his lunch of hotdogs and cheap beer.

The frightened locksmith tore up the basement steps. He didn’t bother to grab his tool box, didn’t care about the half empty beer he’d left on the counter. He sprinted past a confused Deidre, reaching the front door and slamming it shut behind him.

Deidre peered cautiously at the basement door after Larry made his panicked escape, setting her nerves on end. She timidly descended the old stairs, her eyes darting to and fro for any danger. She saw the fallen work lamp and put it back upright. Only half of the heavy-duty device lit when she flicked the switch, but it was enough to partially illuminate the obscured passage. She tiptoed closer to the opening, glancing fearfully into the tenebrous tunnel beyond. Something moved in the shadows, coming towards her slowly. She thought it might be her husband crawling on hands and knees. When she saw what it really was, her eyes went wide in horror and her screams echoed through the quiet suburban house.

Jackie Sloan called the police an hour later when she found her husband huddled in the shower mumbling about white spiders. A pair of officers entered the Ramey home and called loudly for the occupants. When they received no response the men drew their sidearms and cautiously inspected the house.

They checked the upstairs and downstairs, finding no evidence of the owners. Curiously thick cobwebs covered the attic access, but neither officer bothered to examine the obviously little used space. When the upper floors were cleared, the pair hesitantly investigated the basement.

The uniformed men found a malfunctioning work light. They took long aluminum flashlights from looped holsters on their black leather belts. Inside the dank hallway, their probing lights caught streaks of crimson leading to the unlocked, partially open metal door. They stepped inside the hallway cautiously and approached. The red trail was definitely blood, and both men flicked the safety buttons off on their weapons. One of the officers stood to the side of the bulkhead door, nodding to his partner. He yanked the hatch open and his partner bellowed a warning as he quickly scanned the room beyond for danger.

There was no sign of threat inside, only two desiccated corpses near the door, one of which looked to be missing the skin of his face. As they began searching the bodies for identification, a tiny albino spider dropped onto the shoulder of one, its almost translucent carapace showing a bright crimson core of freshly devoured blood within.

*

Andrew Black is a writer of weird dark fiction specializing in stories set in and around rural Ohio and the Appalachian states. His influences include H.P. Lovecraft, Brian Lumley, Robert Bloch, RA Salvatore and Stephen King.  Andrew lives in central Ohio with his wife and two daughters. He makes an impressive debut appearance here at SNM Mag with his 4th place story. Andrew really delivers with very believable jaded characters. He has no website but readers may comment on the guestbook.

 Andrew Black 

Fear From Above

Quentin Rood

There is something on the roof of my house.

I can hear it moving about.   

Some might say it’s probably a rat or even doves nesting, but....

There is something on the roof of my house.

I’ve never had the guts to get up there and have a look for myself. Something about the way it moves makes me frightful. It doesn’t sound like a squirrel. Or doves nesting. It...slithers, creeping. It sounds....wrong. Evil.

Sometimes I think it might be my imagination. I think that what I hear is only the wind. It almost works, but then....I hear it again. Maybe it is the wind, or a rat, but it doesn’t change the fact that:

There is something in the roof of my house.

I live alone.

Have for almost five years now. No wife. No children. Single bedroom and single bathroom, comfortable living room-dining room combo, small but well equipped kitchen. The perfect bachelor’s house.

The garden is non-existent. Never got a taste for it. Who gives a shit about keeping a few plants alive when one’s own existence is a daily battle? Not me. Green fingers, my ass.

I spend all my solitary hours weaving short stories for a local creep magazine. Stories about alien invasions, werewolves and other assorted scary subjects. The public love it. Why not? In a world where the scariest program on TV is the news, why not escape from it into a make-believe world where things happen that will never happen in real life? Everyone has deep rooted fears of someone else’s nightmare happening to them, so if for a few hours someone can tell you a story of impossible things, why not grab it? Beats the shit out of hearing about another adulterer.

Sitting in my favorite living room chair and listening to the sounds on my roof, I wonder how many of my faithful readers would consider my current predicament scary? Very few, I am sure.

But it scares the shit out of me!

I have gone exploring before. Found two possible ways to enter the roof from the house. One entrance is in the closet in the bedroom, just next to the light fixture. The other is in the bathroom, pushed into one corner as if in some afterthought. The one in the closet is easier to access, but there isn’t much light. If I ever decide to venture to the roof, a fast escape would be my main concern.

Falling off the roof because I missed the ladder, unable to see it, would not do. Therefore, the bathroom, although more difficult to access, would be the better, safer, and an altogether brighter choice.

I have never gone up there. I am afraid. Afraid of what I might find. (And this could only be my horror writer’s imagination of what might find me.)

I have all the facts. I have the access, and the escape route.

And I know.

There is something on the roof of my house.

*

It’s getting worse.

The sounds are becoming louder. Waking me in the middle of the night. Making me raise the volume on the TV to earsplitting levels, anything, to drown out the never ending movement of the thing on my roof.

Luckily, I have no neighbors. The last couple moved out over a year ago, after attempting only one social call and seeing the state of my living room matched the expiring garden. They took one look, saw the complete indifference in my bored stare, and two months later their house was on the market.

Good riddance.

I enjoy the silence and solitude. Used to.

Now I have a resident, a tenant, intent it seems on driving me batty with its insistent scuttling and running.

I will have to get up there and see what it is. I have to. If not, I will go insane.

But I am afraid.

My ex-wife always said I had the spine of an amoeba. Non- existent. Afraid of my own shadow.

And the sad thing is, she’s right.

It seems my personal inability to face anything strenuous has only fueled my ability to write about characters that seem incapable of feeling fear.

All this notwithstanding, it only strengthens my reasons for not climbing into the roof the first time I heard the sounds.

I am a fucking coward.

I admit this.

My wife all but cleaned me out in the divorce, and not once did I speak up and try to defend my honor or belongings.

This despite the fact the divorce was the cause of her infidelity, and not by any fault of mine.

She had cheated on me. Many times, by the sound of things.

Bring in the country songs: she took my house, my car, my life.

Pretty sad. Pretty boring.

The thing on the roof. Now that...is not boring.

But I am afraid to go up there.

I can hear it even now.

There is something on the roof of my house.

And it’s getting bigger.

*

I bought the gun a couple of months ago.

No real reason, just felt I might need it sometime.

Like now.

I will feel better knowing I have it.

It’s a Glock .9mm.

It looks deadly, and as the shop owner had assured me, it is.

Bring it on, beasty. I’ll blow you a new asshole, hehehe.

Pretty gutsy words for a coward, I know.

Maybe one day I’ll actually follow the gun up the ladder and into the black, but for now, it is merely a comforter.

I sit here in my favorite living room chair and listen to the thing make its way across the ceiling.

Aiming carefully, I point the gun in the general direction of the sound.

Bang, bang.

No more noises.

I only wish it were that simple.

*

The time has come.

Last night, I awoke to the sound of something chewing.

Leaping from my bed, gun in hand, I fled to the furthest corner of my bedroom and cowered there.

It sounded like the chewing had come from directly above me.

From the roof.

I spent the rest of the long night in that corner, even though the sound had not returned.

As dawns’ first rays of light started caressing the surrounding hills, and a pool of golden filled my room, I drew myself out of the corner and slowly started walking through the house.

I found a strange patch of broken ceiling in the living room.

It looked like someone or something had broken through the ceiling and started chewing away at the beams in the roof -- and eventually the ceiling.

The hole was about the size of a dinner plate, not much really, but still it filled me with such fear that for the longest time, I could only stand there and stare at it, not moving.

Eventually, some sensory Synapse fired and the dials started turning again. I broke my stare, lowered my head and walked back to my bedroom.   I fell on the bed, gun in hand.

I had never in my life felt so bone-weary.

I stared up at the bedroom ceiling and for the first time a new emotion started to take seed: anger. Anger at whatever had taken up residence in my roof. Anger at the fear that had for the majority of my life ruled my every action, my every word. Anger at my inability to do anything more substantial than pointing an empty gun at the ceiling and making childlike ‘bang-bang’ noises. Anger at my wife for forcing me to this house in the first place.

I had had a house, God damn it! I had been happy there and, despite all the other things that she had taken from me, this seemed to fill me with the most anger.

I sat up on the bed; my gun nearly forgotten in my clenched fist and leered at the roof.

Deciding there and then on an offensive move instead of hiding like some little girl, I swung my feet off the bed and quickly moved to the closet, all traces of drowsiness gone like fine mist.

Fuck the lack of light.

Who needed it?

I thrust the ladder underneath the opening to the roof.

I needed to load my usually unloaded gun and sprinted across to my bedside cabinet, ripped open the drawer, and quickly loaded the gun after releasing the clip and dropping it into my awaiting, sweaty palm.

I rammed the lethally loaded cartridge back into the awaiting maw of the gun butt, released the safety and cocking it, turned back to the ladder.

A small smile played across my lips. I imagined that anyone unfortunate enough to have seen me at that point would have run screaming away from me, crying bloody murder.

The smile more than looked insane, it felt insane too.

Good, I thought, all the more to scare you with grandma.

I carefully pushed the lid of the roof opening up and sideways. It moved easily, and to my great gratification, quietly.

It was indeed dark inside the roof just as I had feared -- and I had no flashlight.

Pausing for a second and after a brief inner deliberation the verdict came back, simple and to the point: Fuck it. I’ll make do without it.

I climbed the few remaining steps of the ladder and carefully poked my head into the dark square of the opening.

Looking above, I could barely make out the roof rafters and crisscrossing arms of the roof supports. I was happy to see that the bright morning light managed to filter through some of the joints of the tiling on the roof, leaving the interior looking like a hazy but not altogether dark wooden cave.

*

I carefully climbed into the roof, placing my bare feet on the wooden support beams and not on the ceiling itself.

Once inside, I sat still and quiet, ears perched for any sounds.

At the moment, the only thing I could hear was my own slow and controlled breathing.

Controlled, even though I had had a brief but very clear image of something rushing in and taking my head clean off just as I poked it into the square opening.

Only in my stories, I thought.

My eyes searched the interior of my surroundings, squinting slightly as they tried their best to dispel the gloom.

For the moment, I only saw a few faint beams of light of the infiltrating sun, dust motes dancing on their faces.

I moved forward mapping out my position in relation to the house below me.

When I reached what I had believed to be the middle of my bedroom, I stopped again and listened.

All the old familiar sounds had remained, joined occasionally in chorus by the creaking of the wood as the rising sun caused it to expand.

Wiping at my brow and the ever increasing flow of perspiration, I had a momentary relapse of my earlier doubt: What if all I had heard in all this time was one particular wooden beam which did more contracting and expanding than its neighbors?

The scuttling and movement may very well have been a mouse or even a rat, coinciding with the beam expanding, making it seem larger and more ominous than it really was. I had never really followed the passage of the sound, always freezing but never really paying attention when I had heard it.

All this sounded very logical and would have convinced most, if not for one particular and upsetting fact: the plate-sized hole in my ceiling in the living room.    

Now what kind of rat could chew its way through layers of wood fiberglass and insulation then eventually the ceiling in the few minutes I had heard it earlier that morning?

Making my way towards the hole in the roof seemed as logical of a decision as any at that point.

Fighting my way through and past a particular dense interlacing of electrical cabling and spider webs, a pool of light against the upper region of the roof caught my eye. Directly below it the cause of the pool was very evident: the hole in the ceiling.

I made my way across and carefully peered into it. Through the hole I could see my coffee table, my TV remote, some of the magazines I have a habit of leaving lying around, even the bottom of my favorite chair.

Looking at all these things filled me with such an overwhelming sense of longing that I nearly burst into tears.

Look how happy they seem, I thought, so innocent, so safe.

So close yet so far, another part of my mind added.

Yes, I thought, so close and yet so far, I agree, so how about I finish what I came here for so I can go join them?

This seemed like a good idea at the time but then another, even more powerful thought joined these: What if you don’t find anything?

This thought was so frightening that for a few seconds I had to tighten my grip on the wooden beam above me and close my eyes.

No, I thought, there is something here, and I’m going to find it. There are only so many places it can hide.

I made my way to the kitchen area.

As I turned, I heard a new sound.

A slippery, wet, dragging sound.

I froze and scanned the area directly in front of me. The limited visibility had now been reduced to zero.  Frantically rubbing my eyes, I stared at the area from which the sound had come.

For the moment, all was quiet.

Except my previously controlled breathing now seemed to be escaping my lips in frantic bursts.

Suddenly, a frightening yet all too possible idea gripped me: what if the thing was flanking me somehow?

Sitting next to the hole in the roof, I was all too visible and for the moment all too blind.

Gripping the gun more tightly, I started making my way back.

I had gone no more than a few feet when I heard the sound.

It sounded like it was coming directly in front of me!

My progress faltered, I swayed and my right foot did a quick little tap dance on the ceiling before lodging itself on a solid crossbeam.

I pointed the gun straight into space and tried not to whimper, but failed.

I searched the dark for anything and came up with nothing.

I heard the sound again, somehow more urgent than before --  and definitely closer.

I nearly screamed like a girl as I suddenly became aware of a shape looming out of the darkness towards me.

In the pale glow resonating from between the roof rafters I saw something which, at first, seemed to be a moving piece of roof insulation, but as it got closer to the hole in the roof, I saw a black mass of moving tissue, like the body of a seal, but without any apparent bone structure.

The wet shape rippled, as if its skin was alive, and slithered closer. Thus far I had been unable to distinguish any kind of face, but as it crossed the hole in the roof, I saw a great gaping hole in the bottom of its body. The hole was filled with what seemed to be about a million razor-sharp teeth, double layered like a sharks’. It became all too evident how the hole in the ceiling in the living room had been dug.

This revelation suddenly seemed to spark some alarm system in my brain as I realized that my being able to see the creature’s teeth clearly meant that it had moved all the way across the hole in the roof. It was mere inches away from taking off my left foot.

I whipped my foot from where I stood as the creature opened its yawning mouth and prepared to feast on me. Sharp waves of revulsion ran their course through my body as I scampered backwards, screaming at the top of my lungs.

My eyes had adjusted to the gloom and I became aware of what were tentacles lashing about from the creature’s mid-section. They seemed to be vibrating, jittering about, and occasionally bouncing off the ceiling, making pattering sounds.

The sound I had mistaken for rats’ feet.

One of these stopped its search of the area roughly above my dining room and quickly whipped itself in my direction. I was just seconds too late to get my right leg out of the way as the thing wrapped itself around my ankle. Screaming even louder than before, I struggled to release its grip. I grabbed it with the hand not holding the gun and tried to pry it loose. Grabbing at something that should have been dead, but somehow wasn’t.

More waves of revulsion set through my body, but somehow I managed not to throw up. Instead, I dug my nails into it and yanked hard at it with all the strength I could muster.

The tentacle had no real power and came away easily. Only then did I become aware of the fact that it had only been used as a diversion. The creature managed to close the distance between us.

Turning my attention back to the main body, I found myself staring into a set of eyes unlike any I had ever seen. They seemed to be a cross between a spider and cockroach with two sets of lots of little eyes grouped together in two larger sets. The rows of jagged teeth yawned at me from below these strange eyes.

For a few seconds, the creature and I stared at each other, like two adversaries sizing each other up before a major battle.

Then it voiced what could only be described as a low growl and lunged at me. Instinctively, I brought my hands up to my face to try and protect it. The mouth of the creature grew to an incredible size and, in so doing, swallowed most of my right arm up to the elbow.

The pain racing through my body as the teeth came together was unlike any pain I had ever suffered in my life; and I prayed to God, I will ever have to suffer again.

I screeched in agony.

Warm lifeblood splashed from my ruined arteries as the teeth cut deep through the skin, washing my face and chest in a warm flood. I knew I had mere seconds before the thing ripped my arm off, and started belting it with my left fist.

Hitting the body was like pounding warm, raw meat, and had no real effect. I tried pulling my arm from its grip and merely succeeded in peeling away the top layers of my flesh, exposing the muscles below.

The thing's jaws started to move across each other like two saws working in opposite directions.

It was trying to saw my arm off, much the same as it had done to create the hole in the roof, I was sure.

Dizziness caused black flowers to explode all across my vision . I was certain I was going to pass out, despite the excruciating pain flaring from my ruined arm.

Passing out would mean dying.

That's when I remembered the gun.

Deadly, as the shop owner had assured me.

I prayed it would be exactly that. I prayed I would have enough strength left in my hand to pull the trigger.

The time for praying had past.

I willed the index finger of my right hand to squeeze the trigger.

The muscles in my right forearm screamed against the razor- like teeth as they contracted to allow my finger to do its deadly work.

Four muffled shots sounded off on the roof and the creature’s mid-section did four little lifts off the floor.

For a moment, its jaws tightened and I was convinced that my arm was going to come off. But then it suddenly relaxed its grip.

Without hesitation, I pulled my arm free.

It was a mess of gore and torn flesh, but at least my hand was still connected to my forearm. Everything was still intact.

And, as if in some kind of bonus, I was still gripping the gun.  

Bracing my feet against a crossbeam, I literally shot myself backwards and away from the creature. At that point falling through the ceiling seemed quite all right, anything to get away from those eyes -- and those teeth!

I came to an abrupt halt against one of the upright support beams and gave the back of my head one hell of a whack. Nighttime suddenly filled my vision as galaxies of stars shot across it, terrifying in their brightness and realism. Shaking my head only increased the agony, so I stopped doing that and instead bit my lower lip in an effort to send the pain somewhere else. This worked, my vision cleared and I felt a small but warm trickle of blood running down my chin. The skin of my lower lip split and I tasted blood as I focused my attention on the creature.

It managed to close the distance between us at an alarming rate and was blocking my escape route. It’s lurching, hulking shape now advancing with the prowess of a cat.

I braced myself for what could only be a mad, hunched-back race across the roof towards the bathroom. My only chance of escape.

In front of me, the creature drew backwards as it prepared to pounce once again.

I saw my opening and took it.

I shot from my position like a sprinter exploding from a starting block; my starter's gun the sound of the creature uttering its guttural growl.

Its jaws closed on the empty space my ass had been hugging mere seconds before and I distinctly heard its teeth snapping together like steel gates crashing.

I registered the sound, but paid it no mind.

Instead, I managed to increase my pace.

I had become aware of two inhibiting factors: one, I still had to find the actual opening, two, opening it from inside the roof might prove slightly more difficult, as I did not have the luxury of pushing it back up this time.         Instead, I would have to drag the thick piece with my fingers.

Keeping these things on one side of my mind, and focusing the other on planting my feet on beams and not ceiling, I fled across the roof.

That's when something bizarre and extraordinary happened: the creature inadvertently helped me.

As I closed the area (which was the corner of the bathroom) occupied by the opening, I felt one of its long tentacles close around my left ankle. It couldn’t quite catch hold, but instead it tripped me up and sent me flying across the ceiling.

What happened next only convinced me that God must indeed love losers, because as I landed, the ceiling disappeared below me and became an approximate imitation of a square.

I fell through the opening and crashed straight through it.

Landing in the bathroom, I managed to tuck myself into some kind of ball and managed to break my fall on my shoulders instead of on my head.

Badly hurt and shaken, but nonetheless still alive and not paralyzed, I lay staring up at the gaping hole that I had created. Pieces of roof still came fluttering down, but of the creature, there was no sign.

I tried sitting up, found myself able to, and attempted standing.

Just as I planted my feet beneath me, I heard the creature.

It was no longer growling.

Now it was all out roaring.

I took a step backwards. As I did so, it also dropped through the hole.

There used to be something on the roof of my house.

Now, there was something right in my house.

*

Staring in disbelief at the hulk filling half my bathroom, the anger which had fuelled my unplanned trip to the rooftop had once again flared in my chest.

Now it was starting to really piss me off.

Bumping and jiving in my roof was one thing, but it had no right, no right, to invade my only real piece of inner privacy.

It turned to face me and growled.

I bared my teeth and growled right back at it.

For a second I believed I saw...something on the face of the creature. Hesitation? Fear? Uncertainty? Whatever it had been, it passed in a second and started to slither towards me.

I clenched my fists and nearly dropped the gun as it twisted in my sweaty, bloody palm.

I pointed the gun at the creature and pulled the trigger.

The blasts from the gun sounded like mini-explosions in my eardrums in the enclosed space of the bathroom. The smell of spent gunpowder burnt at my nostrils, but all these points were moot compared to the exhilaration I felt as large holes appeared in the wet mass the creature called its body.

Pieces of its hide hit the bathroom wall and it started a slow crawl towards the floor.

I kept on pulling the trigger, tugging at it in an exact impression of exactly how not to do it, but felt myself unable to stop.

The creature recoiled as each shot hit it but yet it continued its approach.

I backed away, still firing at it, and when the hammer fell on empty, I turned and ran from the bathroom.

Coming to an abrupt halt in the living room, I realized that I had no idea where I was going, or what I was going to do.

The gun had not only been my primary defense, but also my best. As it had thus far proven, it had been slightly less than effective.

Frantically scanning the room for a secondary weapon, my eyes were involuntarily drawn to the plate sized hole in the ceiling.

I stared at it.

I heard the creature approaching.

I looked at the hole.

And suddenly, I had an idea.

I ran to my bedroom with the speed of an Olympic sprinter, grabbed the shells from the bedside cupboard and made my way back into the living room. The creature was waiting there. It grabbed my right ankle. I fell face-first with a bone rattling crash. The gun and shells flew from my grip, landing under my chair.

Kicking out with my left foot, I connected squarely with the tentacle grasping my ankle. The creature had a firm hold and kicking did nothing to lessen it.

It moved in quickly, this time surely for the kill.

Acting on pure instinct I threw my weight toward the creature, found my feet, and flung myself up and over it.

This insane move worked, and as I came crashing down behind it, I felt the tentacle lose its grip for a second. A second was all I needed as I ripped my foot free of the noose.

The creature roared in anger and I nearly froze as fear gripped my motor controls. Considering the fact that since entering the roof seemingly years ago, I had been gripped in an icy cloak of terror, the fear lost its grip and I resumed my escape, this time running in a wide angle around the creature facing the kitchen.

From the living room, the kitchen joined the living room-dining room combo without the aid of a door, as the breakfast counter serving as the only divider.

All very modern, very bachelor-friendly.

Getting up to get a beer from the fridge? You won’t even miss half a minute of the football game.

I made a short detour to my favorite chair and snatched up the gun and bullets. One tentacle made a feeble attempt to grab my ankle again, but I sidestepped it easily.

Just like a football star! I thought wildly and the giggles turned to hysterical bales of laughter. Finally, I ran, jumped and slid across the breakfast nook counter.

I landed on my ass on the other side, hands tightly gripping its twin inventories of death and unable to break my fall.

Keeping both ears alert for the sound of the creature, I finished reloading the gun and rammed the clip back into the weapon.

Cocking it like a pro, I had a moment of peace as I found myself looking at what would most likely be my final resting place. Certainly, it was the last place I was going to try to destroy the creature.

From the kitchen, there was nowhere to go.

There was no back door leading out to the back yard. I didn’t have anything resembling a back yard anyway, only a small concrete strip a few feet wide, from the back wall of my house to the wall joining me with the pavement of the street leading behind my house. This was supposedly the area you could keep your dumpster in, rolling it around the house every Thursday to be picked up by city sanitation.

My dumpster had never been used.

The living room was littered with years of bachelor-abuse, trash piling up in places nearly to the roof. I had never bothered to throw anything out. This included the fire-extinguisher my ex-wife had thoughtfully presented me as a parting gift.

“If you ever have the guts to use the stove, at least have the decency to put out any fires you may cause in your bumbling attempts,” she said.

A regular mascot for motivation, my ex.

But her attempt at showing a final flickering of care may just have saved my life. This thought filled me with even more anger than ten creatures bombarding my roof with their teeth and tentacles could, and I suddenly found I fairly loathed my ex-wife.

If I came away from this encounter alive, I thought I would tell her so.

Her with her pretty, parted, cheating legs and condescending remarks. Her, and her diamond studded new toy-boy.

Finding a new reason to live again, except for the most obvious, I jumped from behind the breakfast counter and bolted for the cupboard containing the fire-extinguisher.

Just as I did so, I heard the creature crunching its way over a half-empty packet of potato crisps. This packet, I remembered, lay at the joint between the dining room and kitchen where the carpet gave way to the kitchen tiles.

I had but a few seconds.

Not daring a look back, I yanked open the cupboard containing the extinguisher, ripping the door straight off its hinges.

For a few paralyzing seconds, my eyes found empty space filling the cupboard and a conviction filled me: somehow, somewhere sometime, I had gotten rid of the extinguisher.

The one and only thing I had ever discarded.

Then a faint and dusty red body caught my eye, hidden far back in the corner of the empty cabinet.

Reaching in and grabbing it, I heard the creature behind me!

I scurried away from the cupboard, trying to put as much distance between myself and it. When my ass hit the back wall, I became painfully aware of exactly how little distance there really was, but it would have to do.

“Come and get it, bitch,” I whispered between clenched teeth.

Sometime during the course of this disturbing morning, I had decided that this creature could only be female. It seemed to fit. Certainly it had no distinguishing features to assure me of this, I was otherwise convinced. Ruthless and hellbent on destroying me. Yup. Female.

“You should meet my ex-wife. You two would have a ball.”

The creature seemed indifferent to my mocking remarks, but instead continued its slow approach.

I raised the extinguisher slowly.

The creature paid it no attention.

Its mouth widened, showing its teeth.

When it's jaws were at their widest I dared to wait a moment. Then I thrust the extinguisher into its open maw. It swallowed it whole and continued its advance.

I leveled the gun at the creature’s stomach; pulled the trigger.

Bullets tore their way into its body. From this close, most went clean through, leaving a passage of carnage in their wake.

I fired four.

Shots five and six hit nothing but soggy body and then fire erupted in the belly of the creature.

The ensuing concussive wave bellowing from the exploding canister sent me flying through the one and only window set into the back wall of the house.

Glass cut my arms and back to ribbons and as I came to rest on the concrete strip behind my house I had one thought: I’m alive.    

All around me I heard glass shattering down, but also wet, splattering sounds and knew it was the remains of the creature. When it seemed that the worst of it was over, I opened my eyes again and stared into the most beautiful blue sky I had ever seen before.

It seemed to consume the entire world and, as frightening as that may sound, I found it to be the most comforting thought I had ever had.

Staring into that vast expanse of exquisite blue, all my aches and pains seemed to be on another planet. For the moment, my attention was focused on trying to take in the beauty of it all.

I realized tears were slowly, almost carefully, making their way down my face and pooling in my ears, but still I could not move.

Out of the black and into the blue.

I smiled.

I cried.

And sometime later when the approaching sirens became the arriving ones, I closed my eyes and waited for help to arrive.

Smiling slightly I heard the approaching footsteps of a man who tried to convince me that everything was going to be alright.

I tried to tell him that I didn’t need convincing.

I knew that everything was going to be alright.

As they lifted me into the now silent ambulance, and it started making its way into traffic, I smiled against the oxygen mask they had placed over my mouth and thought:

Out of the black and into the blue.

*

Quentin Rood

The Water’s Edge

Amanda Larson

The river was a glacial fed torrent only inviting to the bravest of souls on the hottest of summer days. Jake Fredrick had never considered himself to be a brave man. He sat comfortably on a sun warmed boulder. His sandals were firmly planted on the dry shore some distance from the rushing water while his pale skin worked up a blistering sunburn.

Under his foot he absently rolled one of the millions of polished rocks that outlined the riverbed. The smooth, rounded pebbles surrounded him. He chose to ignore the reminder that he was sitting well within the bounds of the hungry river’s banks.

Annually engorged with spring melt from the mountains, the river swelled and the waters effortlessly swept giant wind fallen trees as if they were matchsticks. During the summer of low snowfall years like this one the river contracted, but scarcely warmed and lost none of its wildness. It remained little more than a tantalizing death trap that promised a cool respite to lure in its overheated victims. This was the most deadly stretch of river in the state. It was also Megan’s favorite spot and it was safe to say that she viewed it in an entirely different light than he did.

Megan, his college sweetheart now turned fiancé, was serenely floating in an inner tube in the middle of the sprawling river. A rope anchored her to the mangled root mass of an ancient, fallen fir. The tree had made its last stand on the cliff above before the power of the river had eventually eaten it away.

Her auburn hair was radiant in the blast of sunlight that pierced through the towering evergreens lining the course of the river. Her sparkling green-tinted eyes and body of a goddess were like the siren’s song, nearly mesmerizing enough to dare him to tread the lethal depths. Yet the mere thought of moving past the water’s edge into the rushing rapids tightened his chest.

Megan noticed his eyes on her and rewarded him with a joyful grin. “Jake, seriously, just put your feet in,” she called to him. “It’s over a hundred degrees out there! You’re going to get heatstroke.”

She had an infectious smile and, at the sight of it, the corner of his lips turned upward. With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes he raised his half-emptied beer bottle towards her and patted the small cooler on the ground beside him.

“I have ice cold beer and the most beautiful view in the world. I think I’ll survive,” he replied.

Megan’s smile turned bashful. She was too far out for him to see but he knew a flush of pink was flooding over her pale freckles. Just the thought of it made him thankful that he had neglected to mention the obvious fact that he would rather die of heatstroke than drown in those waters.

“You have to be freezing,” he added, concern pressing his lips thin. “Come out and grab a beer before you go hypothermic.”

She laughed. “Yeah, because people usually catch hypothermia when the temperatures rival hell.”

Even though she claimed to still be hot, he was sure he had just seen her shiver. While she'd only been in there a few minutes in these waters, it was long enough. Megan had moved out here to go to college and still to this day confused these rivers with the waters of her childhood home back east.

With a shake of his head he downed another swig of beer. It was beyond him how she could be the picture of tranquility bobbing in the flow of the lethal river. There was not enough alcohol in the world to draw him into those waters or any others. That was why he was the laughing stock of his family. His big brother was a certified diver, his kid sister the star of her high school water polo team and their dad an obsessed fly fisherman. For his part Jake lapsed into full-out panic attacks if his feet were unable to touch the bottom of a swimming pool. It was pathetic.

He and Megan had nearly everything in common except for this. She might as well be a mermaid and he avoided getting wet like the plague. During ferry rides she watched excitedly for seals while he tried to take count of the placement of life jackets. Still, he supposed if water was the biggest obstacle they had to overcome in their marriage then it was hard to complain.

“Jake!”

At the sound of Megan’s panicked squeal he rocketed to his feet. The beer bottle slipped forgotten from his grasp shattering in a mess of foam and jagged glass against the rocks.

“Something’s got my leg!” she cried.

In an instant, Jake’s long strides carried him the short distance down the bank to where Megan’s inner tube was tied.

“Hang on, Meg. I’m gonna pull you in.”

The calmness in his tone was forced. In reality, panic coursed uncontrollably through him at the sight of the rushing waters and the fear written across Megan’s usually composed features. His hands latched onto the soaked rope and he started to reel it in. He pulled her in before and never had a problem even in these currents. This time, however, all the yanking he could muster had no effect. Something really did have her and while he hated to think it, with all the debris in these waters, it was far from a shock.

“Hold on. I’m coming.”

“No,” she called back. “Just stay there, Jake. I got it.”

Her words were a lie and the sharp edge of panic in her tone that betrayed her. He’d be damned if he was going to stand around to wait and see what happened. The only problem was him wanting to rescue her and actually being able to do it were two separate issues. He now wished they had not sought out the privacy of this isolated portion of the river.

The chill of the river’s flow attacked his weary legs the moment he stepped in. As he waded out far enough so that the water swelled over his waistline a ragged grasp was ripped from him. His chest seized tight at the shock of frigid water and the overriding panic of being half submerged in it.

He kept a death grip on the rope that was his flimsy support. It took great effort to breathe while the prickling cold bit at his skin. The heavy flow of the current pushed at his body. It conspired to knock him off balance and the uneven river rocks slowed his progress.

Megan screamed. An instant later she nearly slipped from the center of the inner tube. She was left frantically grasping the rubber for support; fingers squeaking precariously over the smooth surface. Adrenaline flooded Jake’s veins. Hand over hand he used the rope to keep himself secure against the will of the currents. The fibers were taught under his raw palms and he feared the strain of whatever was pulling Megan would be enough to snap the line.

By the time he neared her it was impossible to keep his feet steady in the assault of the rushing water. It took him a moment to realize that his 6’1” frame could not reach the rocky bottom. A familiar panic crawled up his gut. He swallowed it down in favor of more practical concerns.

The area was that deep he could not begin to guess how Megan had suddenly become entangled. He could continue no further. Already he was sure he would be unable to return to the river’s dry bank. Despite his family’s pained efforts, he never learned to swim. It would not have mattered if he had. These waters would outdo any pro swimmer.

“I can’t...Megan, you have to grab my hand.”

“I can’t reach.” She screamed again and was barely able to suck in a gulp of air before she was dragged down. Only her hair was left floating in view. An eternity later she resurfaced.

“Jake, oh my God,” she gasped breathlessly, “somebody’s got my leg!”

Somebody? That must have meant something. The thought of submerging his head beneath the rapids petrified him yet the thought of losing Megan gutted him to the core. He struggled to take in more hyperventilating breaths. They were far too rapid and shallow to be effective, but they were all he could muster. Trying his best to stave off his panic, he tipped his legs up and dipped his head down beneath the surface. The brisk current bombarded him, pounding in his ears as the water buffeted him. 

The river was full of silt so thick he could barely see. Moving closer he was just able to make out the blurry silhouette of Megan’s legs through the inner tube. Nothing was holding them. They were just kicking in the open water. 

Jake’s lungs screamed for air and his panicked mind screamed even louder. He floundered and nearly lost which way was up in the cloudy water. Desperately he clung to the rope for some sense of direction. Just as he broke the surface he chocked. He cringed at every splash of rough water that slapped at his face while he struggled to cough the water from his mouth enough to speak.

“Megan, there’s nothing down there.”

By the time the water cleared from his eyes the inner tube rode the rapids without her. His insides twisted in sickening panic. Urgently he searched the riverbank and rocks downstream. There was no sign of Megan. The dread was so encompassing he could not so much as force enough air into his lungs to scream her name.

In the height of his desperation a soft voice murmured over the rapids. He hunted for the source praying that he would find her sitting safely at the side of the river. His heart nearly stopped at what he saw. A watery tunnel of water rose effortlessly above the rapids. It nearly looked human. As impossible as it was, the feminine figure beaconed to him all the same: “Join me, Jake.”

*

It had been a week of hell since Megan had been dragged down beneath the rapids. Part of him still refused to believe it had ever happened. His mind could not accept that the thing she had loved had claimed her life and that he had been useless to save her from it.

This game of what if eventually surrendered to more morbid thoughts. If he had just followed the haunting voice and let go of the rope he wondered if his lungs would have filled with water or if the bone-chilling temperatures would have stopped his heart first. He wondered if either really would have been so bad in comparison.

A few days after she had drowned, Search and Rescue’s cadaver dogs had found her body miles down the river, crammed in the shallows between some boulders. Her head had been battered. The authorities had assured him it was normal, something about the way a human body hung in the water and collided with the rocks. He had tried not to hear most of their words, but could not block out the visual of her stunning beauty being disfigured against the unrelenting boulders.

Aside from performing all the necessary identification, he had avoided looking at her bloated face and even then had only needed to see her distinctive hair that was now matted and dull. He had focused on the discolored marks on her ankle instead. The marks darkened her skin above the butterfly tattoo that still would not let him forget that he was looking at her. The coroner had dismissed the marks. It had just been the tow of the currents the authorities had claimed. They had told him the waters were dangerous.

Talk about preaching to the choir.

He had been on sick leave from work since it happened. This morning the manager called up and threatened to fire him if he failed to get back on the job. The boss had assured him he was replaceable. No shit. It was just a café job to earn a little extra cash while he finished up school with a mountain of student loans he would never pay off.  His former manager was lucky that the conversation had not taken place in person. With his future dead and his sanity lapsing, it was hardly as if Jake had anything to lose.

Rubbing his exhausted eyes, he ignored the incessant ringing of the phone. If it was not a credit card company it would be his mother again, maybe his sister or his buddies from school. They would want to hear that he was okay. He was tired of lying.

Eventually he'd have to pick up the phone to stop someone from dropping in. If his family found him looking as disheveled as he did, he would never get rid of them. At this point even he was unable to stand the stench of himself. Usually showers were no problem, but they had been out of the question since Megan had been swept away.

It was next to impossible to drown in a shower unless the drain clogged. If unconscious, one could easily drown in a puddle. It didn’t take an angry river, but it wasn’t fear that kept him from the shower. Water had not soaked his skin since he followed Megan into the river. He never wanted it to again, but still, he could not avoid it forever.

With a deep breath he stripped off the clothes he had spent the last week in and vowed to burn them. Hesitantly he turned on the water, watching in revulsion as the seemingly innocent liquid poured from the bathtub’s faucet. As he adjusted the water temperature he tried to block out the sound of splashing against the porcelain like rapids over polished rocks. He turned on the showerhead and stepped in. His eyes stared blankly at the mildew in the grout as he lathered in the shampoo. Out of delay tactics, he took the plunge and buried his face in the hot spray, determined to think of nothing at all.

It nearly worked for a minute, if only because the hot water was nothing like the bitter cold of the river. He did not falter until he felt water covering his toes and inching up towards his ankles. His eyes shot open to confirm that the water level in the bathtub was rising. There was no way the drain was clogged. He had just checked it. He always checked it. Anxiously he flicked the bathtub’s drain lever, but it was already open like it should be.

Not caring there was still shampoo suds in his greasy, sandy blond hair he turned off the faucet. At least he tried to. Despite his efforts the steaming water continued to flow uninterrupted. The knob was jammed. Dread built up inside him as he grabbed for the shower curtain.

He barely started to pull it aside when he caught a suspicious movement just out of his view. Reluctantly he looked back over his shoulder. The water that had pooled itself began to flow up at the other end of the tub, swirling in a reverse cyclone.

Jake stumbled back, hitting his head against the shower nozzle and just catching himself against the shower’s slick tiled wall. Instinct told him to run but he was frozen at the sight. The amorphous rising water solidified into the shape of a woman, more solid than the one he’d convinced himself he hadn’t seen in the river. His unsteady legs nearly collapsed from beneath him. 

“Jake, why didn’t you save me?”

The words tore so deeply at him, he lost all ability to breathe. It was her, God help him, it was Megan. She was as translucent as a glass of water and what should have been her lively green eyes were empty, icy orbs, but it was unmistakably her perfect curves shone in the undulating water.

“I tried.” His words were scarcely a whisper and not audible over the pounding hiss of the water that continued to fill the bathtub. He did not even believe his own words. How could he possibly expect her to?

“I’m so lonely,” she said.

It was spoken like a confession. The words echoed in his head more than sounded in his ears. Not that it mattered. The despair in the tone was absolute. His trembling jaw tensed so hard his teeth could have cracked. There was nothing he could say. The lump in his throat was too big to talk around anyway. 

“Come with me,” she pleaded. “Don’t leave me here alone.”

He was unable to force another sound from his clenched throat before the water droplets shattered. Instinctively his arms flew to shield his face but the water splattered harmlessly, running in rivulets down the shower curtain, walls and over his own bare skin. The drain was instantly cleared.

While the water emptied from the bathtub, Jake stood frozen; his eyes fixed on where Megan’s likeness had been standing moments earlier. He was only able to move an unsteady hand to shut off the faucet spray when the water flowed as cold as the river that had taken Megan’s life.

*

Jake’s dreams had been ridden with nightmares. He failed to remember the details of the images but awoke nauseous. When he rolled out of bed the sensation of dread still hung over him so tight it was suffocating. Stubbornly he fought to blink away the vivid memory of Megan lying cold on the coroner’s slab and of the delusion that refused to leave him. The nightmare of her in the shower, made up of the one thing that he truly feared, gripped him tightly. He had taken enough psychology courses to know that Mr. Freud would have a field day with that one. Obviously it was only his mind trying to cope with the survivor’s guilt. While he struggled to convince himself of that he could still hear her words ringing in his head. He could still see her there cold and lost in the depths alone.

Blearily he entered the bathroom; his slate blue eyes casting down to avoid his reflection in the mirror. He leaned heavily against the counter for support. After some wavering he turned on the faucet and splashed cold water against his face. He had no clue why he did it or why he hesitated before shutting off the faucet.

Experimentally he held his hand beneath the running faucet; liquid death slipping through his fingers. He let the numbness of the cold water sink into his flesh. It was just a hollow taste of what she must have felt.

After a moment he realized he was listening for her in the trickling sound of the water. A faint echo. His name being called. A desperate plea. He fought to find any remaining trace of her.

Shaking his head at his foolishness, Jake moved to turn off the faucet. Before he reached the valve the water that poured into the sink changed its course. It twirled like rogue currents, manipulating itself into the unmistakable shape of a hand. In a flash, it clutched his wrist with such force, he was sure the bones would snap. His unrestrained hand struggled to shut off the water, but once again the knob might as well have been welded in place. 

“Join me.”

“Meagan?”

With those familiar words the water splashed limply into the sink. Just as suddenly the knob turned easily cutting off the flow. His heart thundered in his chest. The throbbing in his wrist and the unnaturally icy cold sensation that lingered on it was the only proof that remained. It was hardly enough to verify his sanity.

*

By three in the morning the frustration of pretending to sleep had become too much. Even if he did finally slip into dreams there would be no release. It would only be more of the same. The water would take control and he would be lost in a glacial wave of blackness. He would struggle for air that would never come. Far worse, he would watch Megan die again, watch himself fail her over and over.

Jake sat on the worn couch and turned up the volume on the TV. It was a useless attempt at a distraction. After flipping past the miracle anti-aging cream and a preacher’s empty promises of an eternal life, he settled on the live audience raving about some useless kitchen gadget no one could live without.

His bruised wrist still ached, but the physical pain barely even registered. It was what was absent that was killing him. He had left most of himself in the river. Despite the vacant hole inside him, his brow creased as he caught a glimpse of his wrist in the TV's flickering glow. His head tilted curiously at the sight. It had to be the delirium talking, but the pattern of the darkening bruises mirrored the marks that had marred Megan’s ankles.

Maybe it was the stories his grandpa had told him with when he was little; water demons that drowned children who wandered into the water alone. It was just a cautionary tale, but it stuck with him as a subconscious justification for his growing fears. If he was honest with himself it had been some long fingers he had imagined wrapping around Megan’s ankles, preventing her from surfacing again.

The rogue thought had crossed his mind that a water spirit had flowed from his sink. Given his lack of a love affair with water it was easy to consider, but more likely he was just officially a complete nut case. It was hard to say which option he preferred. Either way he was avoiding plumbing. Whether this was real or he was insane, if he just stayed away from water then nothing could happen. It was a simple enough plan that would at least work until he passed out.

On the coffee table in front of him stood an elegant bottle of top shelf bourbon. It was an engagement gift from his best friend. It would have been Megan’s first taste of a real American whiskey. Now the bottle was half-empty and a knotted dread in his stomach told him it would be the last thing he ever drank. There were worse ways to go.

He tried to hold focus on the kitchen appliance infomercial, but all the cheering about the supposedly revolutionary tomato dicer could not mute the whisper that tugged at his ear. He had been able to write it off as raw nerves until it tickled the edge of his hearing.

Through the television’s reflection on the window he saw rain streaking the glass. It was not a light sprinkle typical of this time of year, but a torrential downpour. His eyes focused on the darkness outside. Finally he saw her, water cascading around her memorable and distinct outline.

“How could you leave me alone?” the hollow voice asked.

The tone was accusatory and he deserved that. He never should have left her. There was no reason to have fought so hard to return to the riverbank after she had been taken. It had been murder to let her go out into those waters alone to begin with. He had always known what they were capable of.

Swallowing his dread, he pushed off the couch and followed the lure of whispers. Without bothering to slip on his shoes he unlocked the deadbolt and crossed the threshold into the cold night. Initially he shrunk back under the eaves to avoid the heavy raindrops. That was until he saw her more solid than ever. He stepped towards her. For a precious moment he could believe she was real. While he wanted to revel in the sight of her, the clarity of her form only let him see the depth of her despair.

“Megan...”

She swept up towards him like an undulating wave, stalling her approach only inches away from him. With the pelting rain soaking through his T-shirt he shivered but stood his ground even as a chilly finger dripped along his jawbone.

“I need you with me.” Her empty eyes flashed up to meet his. “You should have saved me.”

A sickness settled in the pit of his stomach and it was not only the implication of her words. He blamed himself, but Megan never would. In his heart he knew she had realized how much it had taken for him to get as far as he had. Those waters would have been too strong to navigate even if he had been able. He took a startled step back as the realization sunk in.

“You’re not Megan.”

Raindrops bombarding the ground around them were the only sound for an eternal moment. Leisurely her sorrow melted to a knowing smile. It was the sort of dismissing gaze a patronizing person might give a child that repeatedly tried to jam the circle shaped block into the triangle’s hole. He felt like that dense child now.

“Only in appearance,” she admitted innocently. “Water can take any shape though it needs a form. Megan was the model.”

“The bait,” he corrected. Rage twisted his lost features, his tone heavy with disbelief. “You killed her.”

“Merely to draw you in.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better? All the people who have died in that river...”

“Usually they come to me, but you never returned. All water is one. Just a taste and I can find you mortals anywhere.” As she drew in closer her words trickled against his ear like a leaky faucet. “Run as long as you like, but you more than anyone already knows how this ends.”

Every inch and fiber of his being told him to run, but his bare feet remained solidly planted on the cold pavement. The puddle he was standing in began to creep over his feet. By now he could not control the shaking of his muscles as the chill set into his bones. His breath hitched at the sensation of the water sweeping up his legs.

Survival instincts kicked in. Looking for an escape, his eyes traced the source of the water running down the driveway and fueling her shape. It was the rapid flow of dirty water cascading through the downspout from the house’s gutters. Maybe he could divert it, but he couldn’t stop the rain. He could not avoid water forever and even if he could, an empty life of running was no salvation.

Her icy hand caressed along his cheek, stealing the warmth from his flesh. The same petrifying fear from the river was tempered by the promise of being reunited with what he had left there. At the very least it would the release his broken soul craved.

Watery lips washed against his. At first it was like a sip of water as cool and crisp as the river itself. Then her watery mouth claimed his with all the force of the rapids. With a startled gasp he inhaled the water, choking on it as the suffocating moisture replaced the air. It flowed down his throat while the freezing water at his feet simultaneously rushed up over him. As he dropped to his knees he might as well have dropped to the bottom of the river.

He didn’t linger in the dread. The onset of his shock was nearly instantaneous. It was numbing and sedating in comparison to what he had imagined, but of course it never could have been as bad as his lucid nightmares had conjured.

In that final second of consciousness, mindless beyond a point of panic, his only regret was that he had wasted so much of his life in fear of this brief moment.

                                                             *

Amanda Larson makes a strong and impactful debut here at SNM Mag with her story that earned her 2nd Place. We love discovering new dark talent and are proud to say that we are her first...publication, that is! What little we know about her is that she is obsessed with writing, primarily horror and dark fiction, and she simply does it for her love of the craft. Too bad she will be getting paid for it and appearing in our third print anthology. (Amanda now finds herself contemplating her prior statement.) She lives on Whidley Island where she owns a small farm and organic nursery and also works as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator. Here at SNM Mag, she just paints with words and illustrates sympathetic characters with heartfelt emotion.

Amanda Larson

The Elevator

Indy McDaniel

The irony of the elevator being stuck between floors twelve and fourteen was not lost on Jim. Just because the new building didn’t officially have a thirteenth floor didn’t mean it didn’t technically have one. The elevator had apparently decided to stall somewhere between the metaphorical thirteenth and the physical thirteenth floor of the office building. Jim would have expected something like this to happen in the old apartment building he use to live in, but the office was modern, only a few years old. Certainly not old enough to have an elevator just break down between floors. 

Jim couldn’t help the uneasiness he felt at being stuck in a particular spot. Despite trying to convince himself otherwise, Jim was rather superstitious. Glancing over at the only other occupant of the elevator, he wondered if she was also plagued by the mythical beast. If Melody had taken notice of the floors they were stuck between, she wouldn’t have been concerned as she wasn’t overly superstitious. Rather she was claustrophobic. She had been that way ever since she was a kid. She’d been playing in her room and had wound up getting herself stuck under her bed. Her parents had been at work so she’d spent several long hours in the cramped environment. By the time her mother found her, she was sobbing and had soiled her pants. She had to see a therapist just to work up the nerve to go through the play area at McDonald’s.

Over the years, Melody had managed to deal with her phobia and, little by little, overcame it. Now it wasn’t so unbearable to force her to take the stairs over the elevator but being trapped inside was resurrecting her childhood fear with vengeance. All of a sudden, it was like she was four-years-old again, trapped under that immovable bed.

She glanced over at the man standing next to her. She’d seen him before a couple of times. Actually, she was pretty sure she had ridden on this very elevator with him, although usually with others. They’d never spoken. Just two anonymous faces working in the same building; not even for the same company. Now they were trapped here in this damned elevator together. Melody’s mind began to wonder how much air they had. And how long it would take for the maintenance people to break them out.

“I’m Jim,” Jim said, figuring that introductions were a good place to start. Who knew, maybe this whole experience would lead to them going out on that date he’d imagined every time he’d seen her in the elevator. Stranger things had happened, right? He moved to the doors, trying to work them open to no avail.

“Melody,” the blond replied automatically. Her mind was too busy trying to deal with the cramped environment she found herself in to worry about being cordial. Trying to force the doors open proved useless. They seemed to be jammed shut. Jim tried the maintenance phone next but that too was defunct . A deeper twinge of superstition flowed into him as he realized it was dead. They weren’t just trapped, they were cut off.

Jim tried forcing the doors open again, straining hard but only managing to tire himself out. Stepping away, he sat down on the floor of the elevator. “Guess we just wait for the cavalry...” Melody looked at him, becoming more unnerved each moment. Normally, she’d have been out of the elevator and in her office by now. The longer she stayed in there, the worse she felt. Her eyes darted from Jim to the walls, almost positive that they were a bit closer than they had been a minute ago.

“Do you have a cell phone?” She asked, hopefully.

 Jim shook his head no. “Can’t afford one. Although at this point, I’d gladly take the extra bill.” He looked up at her. “You?”

Melody shook her head, her blond hair falling over her eyes for a moment before she brushed her bangs back behind her ears. “Left mine in the car.” She began to pace nervously. “I need to get out of here.”

Jim smirked, looking down at the floor. “Me too. My boss is a real ball-buster. He’ll probably try to shit-can my ass for being late.”

“No, I mean, I really need to get out of here,” Melody shot back, a bit angry at his glib remark. She grabbed the maintenance phone and put it to her ear, hearing nothing but dead silence. She hit the call button several times.

Still nothing.

Frustrated, she threw the phone down.

“Hey!” Jim exclaimed. “That phone’s our only shot at letting someone know we’re in here.”

“What good is it?” Melody shot back, turning swiftly on him. “It’s fucking dead! Just like we’re gonna be if no one finds us!”

“We’re fine. Unless it takes them like a week to find us here and we die of dehydration,” he said, using sarcasm as a way to calm the woman down.

Melody glared at him, even angrier at his calm demeanor than his smart-ass comments.

“What about air? We’ve gotta be running out.”

Jim motioned to the doors. “Just because we can’t force those doors open doesn’t make them air tight. Besides, they have to know the elevator is stuck. Even if we can’t call down to them, they’ll have to send someone up to get the thing open and running again. It’s just gonna take a little time. So why don’t you just relax?”

Turning to the doors, Melody ignored Jim and moved forward. Hooking her fingers into the center seam, she tried to force her arms apart and open it. Clenching her teeth, she pushed hard but it was no use. Releasing the doors she began to pound against them, screaming and hoping that someone on the other side would hear her.

“Would you shut the fuck up?  Christ!” Jim yelled over her, quickly losing patience with her. She was physically attractive, sure, but that didn’t excuse her behavior before it just became downright annoying. He pushed himself back to his feet.

“Screaming’s not gonna do a goddamn thing aside from deafen both of us. So why don’t you sit your ass down and chill the fuck out. Okay?”

Melody stopped pounding on the elevator doors, her eyes narrowing before she turned to him again. “You’re an asshole.”

“So be it, then I’m an asshole,” Jim said, throwing his arms out to his sides in frustration. “Now sit down and relax.” He was feeling relieved that he’d never managed to work up the nerve to ask her out the few times they had been in the elevator together previously. Her personality was grating at best, if not downright belligerent.

Continuing to glare at Jim, Melody finally sat down. But relaxing? Now that was the last thing she’d do while trapped in a small, metallic, rectangular-shaped tomb. Leaning against the far wall, she set her purse on her lap and stared at the closed doors across from her. Jim sat in the corner, apparently content to wait things out despite the superstitious setting.

Melody waited silently for several minutes, squeezing her purse tightly. She was sweating heavily, although the temperature was still a very comfortable seventy-two degrees. She kept her eyes straight ahead but she knew Jim was staring at her. She could feel his eyes burrowing into her. Undressing her in his sick little mind. He wants to rape me, she thought. He knows we’re never getting out of here and he wants one last fuck before we both die of asphyxiation.

Forcing a brief glance in his direction, she saw him looking down at the floor. Probably noticed her eyes shifting and had averted his gaze before she could catch him looking at her. She kept glancing over to him every couple minutes, trying to make sure he wasn’t about to leap at her and tackle her to the floor. In her mind, this had already happened several times. Each fear-induced simulation beckoned worse than the last. Finally, her mind became convinced that Jim didn’t just want to rape her. He wanted to kill her. Of course he did.

After ten minutes of unbearable silence, she noticed his eyes were shut and his breathing had become slow and steady. He’d let his guard down and drifted off to sleep. Now was her chance. Quietly, she opened her purse and began to dig through it. She silently cursed the seemingly unyielding depths of her purse and its ability to consume things. Jim shifted in his sleep and Melody froze, staring hard at him for several long moments. Once she was convinced he was truly asleep, she continued her search. Melody let out a small, victorious, “Ah-ha!” when her fingers finally brushed against what she had been searching for.

She came up with a small switchblade, something her sister had given to her to keep her safe. Up until becoming trapped in an elevator with a smart-ass, deviant rapist, she hadn’t had a need for it, but now she was very glad she had it. Looking over to Jim, setting her purse aside and gripping the switchblade firmly, she thumbed the button on it. The sharp blade flipped out and she steadied herself, knowing that it was kill or be killed in this hellish box in which they’d become trapped.

Without any warning, Melody launched herself at Jim, bringing the knife between them. Jim’s eyes fluttered open as she collided with him, opening his mouth to ask her what the hell she was doing. Then a sharp pain dug into his gut. His words were reduced to a grunt and he looked down, seeing Melody’s hand gripping the handle of a small knife, which was now fully embedded in his stomach.

Looking up from the profusely gaping wound to Melody, his face constricted into an expression of confused pain. She hadn’t expected that look. Her conscience began to wage a small war with her paranoia, but there was no turning back now. She yanked the knife free and jammed it back into him, higher and harder. The narrow blade found its way in between his ribs, puncturing a lung.

He felt a lightheaded, powerless rush of anxiety.

He began to feel pressure in his chest and his pulse racing. Bringing his hands up, he tried to shove the psycho-bitch away from him. Melody wasn’t letting up though. Pulling the knife out, she slammed it forward, again and again. Jim continued to try to fight back or do something to get away from her but the pain in his chest combined with his inability to breathe properly was making him weak. After stabbing him repeatedly a half- dozen times, she yanked the bloody switchblade out of Jim’s chest and slashed it across his throat. It opened up and released a torrent of crimson over his already blood-soaked chest.

Jim gurgled, bringing his hands up to his neck and trying to stop the blood but it was useless. His face was getting paler and now he found it difficult to breathe. Satisfied with her work, Melody moved away from him, bringing her knife with her. Rising to her feet, she watched him finish bleeding out. A large pool of blood was spreading out around him. He looked up at her; his expression asking her why. What had he done to her to warrant this cold inhumane execution of sorts?

A triumphant smirk formed on Melody’s face, responding to him with an as if you don’t know look. Jim’s head fell back; his eyes growing vacant as what remained of his blood continued to spill out of him. Melody felt relief flowing through her as she watched him die. Now she felt safe. Folding the switchblade closed, she placed the blood-covered weapon in her purse and picked it up, sliding the strap over her shoulder. Hearing the elevator kick back on and resume its journey upwards, she turned to face the doors.

It opened to a vacant hallway with marble floors. Just as she exited, she noticed that no one was waiting beyond the doors to hitch a ride, for which she was relieved that she didn’t have to resort to the “victimized act”. She noticed in the hallway mirror that there were blood smatterings all over her face and neck, spotting her white blouse like wet freckles. She then turned and headed down the stairs, making her murderous exit unnoticed.

Never would she feel trapped and helpless under a bed again. No matter what the cost. No matter who had to die in the process. For now, she would get in her new white Lexus in the parking garage, shroud herself behind the tinted windows, change into new clothes, and call in sick for the day.

But first she had to find the guy who operated the security cameras...   

*