by Jess Earl
Tomorrow comes and the thing behind my headboard scuttles along the drywall, scales chipping paint as it stretches a claw from the shadows above my pillowed head, only to retreat as I open my eyes.
“Good morning,” it creaks in the floorboards of the house, “I’ve been waiting for you”.
I brush the sandman’s gifts from the seams of my eyes and drag my fingers through the ragged nest my hair has become in the night.
“I was crawling through the strands.” The sheets at the farthest corner of my bed rustle with hundreds of legs skittering underneath as exoskeletons brush threads and mandibles snap.
I peel the empty sheets off my form and stand from the bed, ignoring the drool pooling by my heel as yellowed canines inch to clamp into the sinewy flesh of my ankle. I walk to the closet and set my hand on the brass knob, knowing it’s already inside, crouching in the dark, brandishing a gleaming, silver butcher’s knife. A sigh and then the closet is open and illuminated with a flick of a switch. The light bounces off the wooden boards of the bare floor, the dark veins coursing through the fiber. Shirts and jackets sag from their plastic, white coat hangers as pants rest on a shelf of drawers containing other cotton articles.
“You cannot will me away,” the thing in my drawer chitters as it drags a forked tongue around venomous fangs.
“I know your name,” I say, pulling open the drawer and robotically removing socks and underwear that I fashion to myself. I pick up a pair of pants and grab a shirt while barely missing the red-black ooze settled between the folds of fabric. I button the fresh shirt and pants and insert my feet into my shoes, the linings void of the spines that the thing laid in them. Keys tinkle in my hand as I leave the room and walk to the kitchen.
The thing hunches beyond the marble island, hunched over with nails prying into the grout of the tile floor. “That won’t save you.”
I walk around the table to open the cabinet it’s hidden behind and remove the frying pan it was wielding to smash my face in with. I pull the pan and place it on the stovetop.
“There’s gas in the air,” the thing chides as I turn the dial to spark a flame for my breakfast. A mechanical click fills the air and the blue fire circle dances with life.
I turn to the fridge and set my hand on the handle. The metal is cool to the touch and my lungs seize with the contact. The thing raises its talons, ready to claw my eyes out once the barrier is removed between us. “Don’t you get tired?” I ask, laying my forehead against the chill.
“I am eternal.”
“You’re annoying.”
I open the door and pull two eggs from their pulp container. I turn back to the stove, resealing the cold away, and crack the shells on the pan. I pull apart the brittle white casing and the yolk pours out rather than the gelatinous eyeballs the thing placed inside. I take a fork from another drawer the thing has inserted itself into, pinchers targeting fingers. I cut the heat, add a dash of salt and pepper, and shove the eggs onto a plate from the cabinet hiding the thousands of needles coating the thing’s back. I scoop the eggs the thing poisoned into my mouth and throw the dishes in the sink where the thing’s tentacles press under the drain cover.
I move to the door leading to the garage and pull out my keys. My mind stutters and my chest constricts, pinning my lungs into place. Blood pulses through the arteries in my brain, hot and wet, with the staccato rhythm of my heart. The thing is waiting on the other side of the door, licking its lips, tasting the salt of my skin in the air. I anchor my swaying body on the door, vertigo painting itself at the edges of my vision. I close my eyes and fight the bile crawling up my seizing throat and I shakily draw breath, hold, then force it out. I take another. Trapping the air is the easiest part; everything else takes effort that seeps from me.
“I know your name.”
Chuckles of thousands of voices, each a different pitch, tone, and beat, lay over one another in a cacophony that blasts white into my eyelids. “Knowledge can’t contain me. We walk this world in tandem.” Metal, stone, flesh, and nail grate against each other in a roar of laughter that rises and crests through my mind. I shrink away from the assault, take a breath, two, square my shoulders and move my hand to the knob.
“Let’s go see it then.”
“Let’s.”
I open the door and slap the button to engage the creaking motor that raises the garage door that hides the hulking thing with knuckles pressing into the concrete. The driveway is empty, and I move towards my car. I unlock the vehicle with the press of the key and avoid looking at the thing slinking out from under my seat as I back into an empty driveway. One last infrared signal to secure the house later, I’m driving down the street heading to the grocery store.
Every turn brings cars too close, painted lines the only thing separating several tons of high-speed metal from colliding. The thing whispers to each driver nearby to turn their wheel and steer into me. It crawls underneath the pavement, waiting to dig a gaping hole in the ground to swallow me whole. It whispers to the pedestrians at streetlights, daring them to run out before I can hit the brakes.
After five minutes of sweat and white knuckles on leather, I park just outside the automatic store doors. My hands tremble as I fumble to open the car door and step out. “You won’t last,” it croons from the back seat.
I slam the car door shut in response and push off to continue my journey. The glass doors slide open welcoming me to a vast complex of towering shelving units stockpiled with commodities of all make, color, and need. Carts stand in wait at the side but I storm past them. I can’t fill a cart; it takes too much time and too much exposure. I pick up a basket, steel my nerves and look into the storm.
The people perusing the aisles all stop and turn to me, their faces stretched with smiles too wide to be friendly. Every set of eyes is black with a predator’s calculation, daring me to meet the challenge. The store is silent as a ringing builds within my skull. The thing has taken over each person, watching, waiting for me to get too close, to engage. It has given them knives and guns and bombs and everything necessary to rain hell upon me, to end my existence.
With clammy hands, I throw the basket back into the stack, the plastic clatter breaking the frozen image, and turn back to the doors, stiffening my knees to prevent myself from fleeing. The thing cackles with a thousand voices; they come from the vessels it’s possessed. I hit asphalt and sprint to my car, lungs pulsing erratically and vision white. My fingers slip on the keys, dropping them, and the metallic scrape of their crash grates against my teeth. I snatch them back up and unlock the car, throwing myself into the seat, the door banging shut, and find a lifeline in the steering wheel clenched far too tight. Sweat percolates across my flushed skin, staining the wheel where my forehead rests.
“I know your name. I know your name. I know your name,” I pant, breaths far too shallow to grasp enough oxygen to clear the buzz in my brain. “I know your name.” The thing is in the back seat again, cresting its massive, writhing head over my shoulder to whisper in my ear.
“I am the survival of man. I am the instinct ingrained in your bones. I am your ancestors’ only hope to see the dawn and your only companion against death, for only I see where it lies.”
“I know your name.”
“It holds no power over me.”
Tears splash onto my collar as I lay back in the seat, smash my hand on the wheel, and find peace in the lightning that spreads through the skin. I turn on the ignition and begin the agonizing drive back home.
“Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow it will.”
Category: Featured, Short Story, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU Student