Tag: Horror

I could only hear the groans of the building. Whatever those things were they had given up trying to get to me. It had been four days. Four days of them pounding on the doors, hitting the walls, crawling over each of the boarded up windows but I had stuck it out. I guess that’s why the rest of the town had emptied out. They couldn’t handle it. I’ll admit there were times I almost opened the front door too, if for nothing else than to end the noise.

Nat had called them zombies but I don’t know if that was right. Zombies looked like decaying corpses right? These were different. They were dead, but not dead. Like something else was riding them. Some were bleeding, yeah, but they never seemed to stop. Just an endless spout of blood trailing in the streets.

That had been the first sign when we came into town, the streaks of blood. Nat, Otto, and me had come back from the campsite over on Dayton Point. We’d only been gone a week but the radio had stopped picking up signals not long after we got to the camp. Otto said it was the ridges but they had never blocked the signal before. We had to deal with seven days of DJ Nat on his god forsaken Apple. But the signal didn’t come back after we left the park. Didn’t see another vehicle either until we got near town and all of those were abandoned. Then we saw the streaks.

It looked like Mah Kali. I still think it had been her, at least before it became that. It was walking along the streets near the cinema, bare naked but covered in lesions. Otto had hooted at the nude flesh but screamed when he saw the blood pouring from her legs. We stopped, thinking the woman had been injured. She might have been but help isn’t what she wanted from us.

She killed Otto. It was so fast. He jumped from the truck and ran to her, touching her shoulder to halt her walking. She spun on him and sank her teeth into his neck before we had even got out of the truck. Nat said she had fangs, but I didn’t see them. I just pull my rifle and opened up on her. On it. Didn’t matter. It screamed at us and ran on all fours away, grabbing the side of the cinema’s building and hoisting itself over the roof.

Otto didn’t have a chance. Nat had checked him while I chased that thing off.

“She bit his head off,” he had said. Near as I could tell, he was right. “What are you doing?”

“Calling the police,” I said. I had pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911 but there was never a ring. Just a hiss that seemed to be getting louder.

“Paul?” Nat said.

“Hold on. Trying to figure out what the heck is going on with this thing.”

“Paulie!” Nat said, slapping my arm.

“What?” I said and looked up. He pointed to the cinema’s roof and I felt cold streak down to my jewels.

Whatever that thing was that looked like Mah Kali, there was more of it. I don’t mean more people that were injured and stripped like her. I mean her. There were at least seven of them, all looking like seventy-year-old ladies out of their skivvies with strong as a buck looking muscles bulging from their arms. Some were missing large sections of skin but they didn’t seem to mind. They looked at us with a hunger no living thing should have. I’ve been stalked by a cougar before. I’d rather have a pack of those staring at me than whatever these things were.

We ran. We ran as hard and as fast as we could. I don’t know if they got Nat. So many buildings were boarded up, I just looked for the first one I could find that had a front door that wasn’t blocked. That’s how I ended up in this place. They had found me quick enough, and started in on every door and window. I didn’t check the name on the outside but whoever the home belonged to had boarded her up quite well. I was safe, thankful for that, for now.

Four days later and they stopped banging. My phone still isn’t working but it’s still charged. Shouldn’t be. Normally I’d hook it to the flashlight crank back in my truck but it’s still kicking nearly a week since it’s last charge. Power in the house still working too, and there’s food. Waters an issue though. There was a full tub of tap water, but now anything coming through the pipes is black as tar. I don’t want to risk it.

I don’t know what to do. I can stay here till the water or food runs out, and then dehydrate or starve to death. Or I can leave. Maybe try to get back to my truck and drive out of here. I wish I knew if Nat was alive but part of me knows he isn’t. Part of me wishes I wasn’t either.

Maybe that’s why I’m stood in front of this door. Cause I want to die. Cause I’m gonna risk a run. I think I knew where I was in town, and that I could find my truck. I just had to hope those women didn’t find me first.

Today’s story is a bit inspired by concepts of stories like Silent Hill, Night of the Living Dead, and other horror pieces like that. I don’t particularly care for writing about “normal” zombies only because those have been done to death (pun intended). But I do dig the weird style of undead you get in things like Silent Hill or other horror games where the dead don’t follow a set of rules. Instead supernatural or psychotic themes play over the monsters. Something about that makes them seem more terrifying than just the dead rising and hunting the living, because when you know something just wants to kill you can almost understand the thinking of such a monster. When you don’t know what it wants, or how it plans on getting it, that fear of the unknown is far more terrifying.

Today’s story is inspired by Going Place by BoFeng

“I forgot my shoes,” Eric said. We had slide through the door with the wolves at our back. Jennifer was right. They can’t cross over. I don’t even know if they can see the doors. We didn’t wait to check as I slammed the panel behind us as quickly as we were over.

“I need my shoes,” Eric said in a low tone. The boy was distant, unsure, and I couldn’t really blame him. We had found him four doors ago, wandering here and there in mute confusion. Jennifer asked if we could leave him but Kathy had already started to approach him. It was good we did. He’d been the one who noticed the wolves before any of us although I wish he’d have more tack than to scream about them.

We had been in the water. I had already bathed and was sitting on the dock. Kathy, a mother before she ended up here, hadn’t been shy about getting Eric cleaned up. He had seemed oblivious to the nudity but I felt weird about it and Jennifer wasn’t even comfortable with me or Kathy around when she undressed. Kathy just took care of him with a mother’s hand.

He had screamed when he saw the wolves, and it had been enough warning for me and Jennifer to gather up Kathy’s and Eric’s things. She pulled Eric to the side of the water and started to get on her cloths while I shoved Eric’s shirt over his head. We had already known where the door was and so we bolted straight to it. Between the lake and the strange world hoping frame the two of them finished getting dressed, except for the pair of shoes Eric dropped.

“I think, I think we’re okay,” Jennifer said. She had the spear in hand again, holding it towards where the door had been. We each knew a little about how they worked. Whenever someone opened a door on one world, it appeared in the destination. Before then, there’s no sign of the exit. We had learned that one when Bradly tried to hunt us. He almost had, with that spear.

I paused a second while I thought about Oscar. Most of what we knew had come from him. Originally an old professor before this place, he had seen so much and been through everything before getting dumped here. He sacrificed himself against Bradly. Bradly had stabbed him, but Oscar still managed to get close enough to cut the mad boy with a knife. After the fight we found Bradly unconscious by another door, bleeding horribly from the wound. Jennifer used her own spear to gut him. I think that’s when she went cold.

“I need my shoes,” Eric said again.

“Shut up,” Jennifer spat. “Shut up about your damn shoes. Why the hell did you scream about the wolves? We could have gotten away faster if you had just come on shore first.”

“Are you joking?” Kathy said.

“What?” Jennifer asked.

“I said are you joking? You really think anyone would have kept quiet about seeing wolves bigger than a linebacker?”

“Especially an invalid,” I said.

“Don’t you dare,” Kathy said, pointing a finger at me. “He just needs attention.”

“He’s just going to get us killed,” Jennifer said. “He’ll just pull hunters onto us instead of being one. Why don’t we just take his essence now and be done with it?”

Kathy and I both stared in horror at her.

“I didn’t mean that,” Jennifer said. She let the spear’s tip lower down to the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“We don’t do that.” My words were deliberate and hard. “Never. I don’t care what the maesters want with us. I don’t care what they’re doing with us. We don’t kill unless we have to. Only for defense.”

“Oscar killed,” Jennifer said. “Not often but you know he did.”

I did. Of course I did. I had been the one to touch him first when he was down. When he died. His essence and the sixteen boys and girls he killed entered me. Jennifer had Bradly and the boys he killed, but only because he didn’t kill girl. “I like them; I like you,” he had said when he held the three of us at the end of his spear before the fight. The essence made us stronger, faster, keener. We could see things and experience them at a pace I had never experienced in my fifty-four years. Even when I was a developing teen, as the body I was in now expressed, I could never move like I do now.

I looked to Eric, “Eric. How did you see the wolves?”

“Shoes.”

“Right, new shoes. We’ll get you some new ones. I’d give you mine but your feet are too big for mine or any of the others.”

Eric looked down at my feet and nodded.

“Too small. Need to find new shoes.”

“I don’t know how he saw them,” Kathy said. “When he started screaming I had thought the soap had gotten into his eyes.” She rubbed her shoulder. “But he seemed to know. Just like how Oscar was nervous when Bradly was following us. Before we knew.”

“But I’ve got Oscar’s danger sense,” I said. “I didn’t feel a thing until I knew about them.”

“Maybe the beasts can take essence too,” Kathy said.

“And maybe his innate gift is, what? Ultra-danger sense?” Jennifer said. She had the spear back up but was looking around the forest we had found ourselves in.

“Well, I mean think about Oscar and me,” Kathy said. “I can see the other side of a closed door. Oscar could too but not as well. And Bradly could summon a weapon, but Jennifer, yours is far more impress of a weapon. Maybe if it’s your native gift.”

“It’s stronger. That makes sense,” I said. “Okay Eric, tell me, what do you see around us? Any shoes?”

Eric looked about the forest, and nodded.

“A bunch of shoes. Three pairs big enough for me. One pair your size, Izzy.”

“Three pairs? Four? Wait, is he saying we’re surrounded?” Jennifer asked just as my danger sense started to kick in.

Trying out some longer pieces. Not quite breaking out of Flash Fiction but getting closer.