His life flipped in front of him as if it were pages in a book. He saw himself as a kid; he saw when he broke his arm after lying to the other kids in the apartment building about being able to ride a skateboard; he saw his first kiss with Lisa Cox when he was fourteen; he saw himself losing his virginity during an embarrassing performance in the backseat of a Ford Tempo; he saw his son being born; he saw himself taking his son out of the apartment he once shared with his family after finding the bruises on his back.
I’m sorry, Adam…poor Adam.
He wondered how long it would take his son to forget him. Adam was too young to understand. How soon would it be before another father figure swooped in and started doing all the things with Adam that he wouldn’t get to? Ted felt a deep tugging of sorrow, knowing he would miss everything.
All this came and went in a flutter of congested images and thoughts. Then it was gone, leaving him as his life drained through the slit in his throat.
Debbie
Randy’s screams stopped nearly as soon as they began. Still straddling Shaun, his penis recoiling inside of her as if on a track that was being wound back, she whipped her head from side to side. “My God, what’s happening to him?” she said.
Shaun gripped her under the arms, lifted her and tossed her beside him. Her bare rump landed on the cool linen of the cushion covers. She felt Shaun’s seed trickle out of her, down her inner thighs. Usually this was a feeling that she kind of enjoyed, a warming sensation that slightly tickled her with the consolation of knowing where it had come from. Right now it felt sickly and gross, a feeling of abandonment and morose.
She pulled her smooth legs to her chest, hugging them. She looked at Shaun over the humps of her knees. He jumped to his feet, holding his pants up in one hand as he shuffled across the floor. Turning to face her, he was about to speak when something crashed through the window behind him. It hit the back of his head with a dull thwack and landed on the floor, bouncing away.
Debbie screamed, hugging her legs tighter, her fingers scraping her high socks.
Shaun released his pants. They fell around his shins. Swaying forward and back, he reached up and rubbed his head. He brought his fingers down, coated in blood. Seeing this, Shaun groaned. His eyes rolled back. All Debbie could see were their whites before he collapsed forward.
Heading straight for the coffee table.
It exploded under him when he landed.
“Shaun!” Debbie dropped to her knees on the floor, crawled to him. Without any kind of padding for her knees, the hardwood floor hurt her as she leaned over Shaun. Slivers from the coffee table poked her skin.
His hair was matted with blood. She could see a flap was torn from his head, opening over soft pink meat.
“No… Baby?” she whispered.
She gingerly placed a hand on his shoulder, shaking him lightly. He didn’t stir, but she could tell he was breathing. Sitting up, she looked around in a mad rush, pigtails slinging. Her eyes landed on the object that had hit him, a few feet away.
A rock.
Two more crashed through the window, bouncing across the floor when they landed. One hit beside her hand, throwing wood scrapings across her fingers. Screaming, Debbie scrambled back. Her buttocks burned as it grated across the floor. Her back bumped the couch. Her hand landed in the pile her pants and panties made.
As a hailstorm of rocks smashed through the windows, Debbie shoved her legs into the pants. She didn’t bother with buttoning them. Not yet. She wanted her shoes, which she found on the floor beside the couch. She grabbed them, then crawled across the dirty floor as rocks crashed through the windows. Glass sprinkled across her back. Rocks whistled past, rustling her hair.
The fire in the fireplace was burning down, taking the luminosity with it. A golden smear remained on the floor but was dimming fast. The smell of smoke filled the room.
Reaching the wall where the windows were, she raised her head enough for her eyes to peer over the sill. A scream tickled the back of her throat. She felt the skin around her eyes stretch to painful heights.
It was hard to fathom what she was seeing. No way could it be real. This was too damn strange, almost comedic. She might laugh if it weren’t so frightening.
Dusk had muffled the area in shadows. In the murky light, she could see a gathering of tiny humanoid things had set up a firing range in the grass. Y-shaped branches had been stabbed into the ground, with a rubber strap wrapped around each arm to form a slingshot. Three of the critters put a softball-sized rock in the stretchy sling and together pulled it back taut.
Then they let it go.
Debbie realized it was coming straight at her face right before the window shattered. She managed to duck down. Glass showered her. She felt the wind of the rock flying over her head. It punched into the recliner’s padding; stuffing feathered out.
Debbie looked at Shaun sprawled across the smashed table. His bare ass stuck up, the dying fire throwing dusky jitters across his skin.
Please, Shaun, wake up and tell me what to do!
She felt clueless and trapped and incompetent. This wasn’t the kind of situation she could logically react to since it lacked all means of rationality. To put it bluntly, it was totally fucked up, and she didn’t know what to do. She doubted even Shaun would know what to do. Maybe he was lucky. Maybe she should let one of the rocks take her away from all this, at least for a while.
The center window exploded inward. The sudden disturbance made her shriek and shrink down to the floor. In the spray of glass, she saw the pale shapes of creatures swinging in on dark lines that trailed out behind them.
The glass made clinking sounds across the floor; mixed in with that were the soft thumps of small feet landing. She heard their pitter-patter as they ran around. It reminded her of Ted’s son during family get-togethers. He was four and never seemed to stop running. Though, his constant movement wasn’t accompanied by the whispery snarls she heard in here with her.
She saw the dark travels of little figures hurrying around Shaun. The fire popped as it found a piece of wood it hadn’t blackened yet. The flame grew, spreading a dim smolder through the shadows of the room.
Debbie didn’t think they’d noticed her yet. From where she sat, she was still cloaked heavily in darkness. Most of the light seemed to pool in the middle of the room where Shaun was.
Shaun moved.
Shaun?
At first, she thought it was the creatures bumping his body. But when his head rose slightly and tilted, she realized he was coming around. She wished he wouldn’t. Earlier would have been better. She’d really needed him then. Still do. But now she would rather he remain unconscious. She had a good idea he didn’t want to be cognizant of what was happening.
And neither did she, for that matter.
“Wha…” His voice sounded thick and confused. Drunk. “…is this?”
His head bobbed as he tried to look around. He looked at one of the creatures.
From where Debbie was, she saw a triangle of gray spread across the darkness in a grinning rack of pointed teeth.
“The fuck…?” said Shaun.
Debbie saw the bladed weapon rise. Saw where the tip of the blade was pointed when it plunged and chopped into the dark valley between his buttocks.
The inebriated state consuming Shaun shattered. Screaming, his back arched, his head leaned back as he howled.
Tears poured from Debbie’s eyes. She’d never heard him make such pitiful sounds before. He sounded like a cub with its paw caught in a trap.
Moist rustling sounds combined with Shaun’s earsplitting shrieks. The creature that had shoved its blade into his anus pulled the plump slope of a buttock to the side. Stretching him. A different creature shoved its arms inside the dark gap.
Shaun’s cries rose in pitch and intensity. His feet kicked at the floor, squeaking as they slipped on th
e hardwood.
Go help him! Don’t just sit here! Help him!
Deep down, she knew there was nothing she could do. And if she tried, it would only bring this sadistic attention onto her.
I’m such a bitch…selfish…
A fucking coward, she realized, was what she truly was. All this time she’d devoted her life to helping others fight, survive, teaching them to conquer a situation, no matter how hellacious.
And she’d hid while her future husband was slaughtered, secretly praying for them to be too distracted by Shaun to realize she was even there.
Shaun’s cries pulled her back to him. She saw tiny feet sticking out from between his buttocks, stubby bases pedaling, working deeper. Soon it was just ankles and feet, twitching. Then they vanished completely into the shadowy folds of Shaun’s anus.
Shaun’s cries became gargled. Then his breath snagged. His body twitched, jerked. Then his head dropped to the floor with a solid knock.
And though she’d tried all this time to remain quiet, the scream she’d kept lodged in her throat tore out of her with such ferocity something tore loose. She felt it flapping in the back of her throat as an unbroken shriek drowned out the disgusting sloshing sounds of Shaun’s violation.
The creatures stopped what they were doing. Heads turned to her. Shaun’s buttocks trembled and a head poked out from between them. Stringy filaments clung to its face. Its grinning mouth was streaked in blood with little bits of flesh stuck between them.
Randy
The girl kissed all over his face, pecking his cheeks, mouth and the tip of his nose. She wouldn’t stop. He tried to push her away and that seemed to only make her approach even more desperate. To make it worse, she moaned whenever her lips touched him, exaggerated and fake, as if she were imitating what she’d seen others do.
“Stop!” he said.
“No.” Peck. “I don’t have…” peck, “…much time.” Peck. Peck. Peck.
Her lips pressed hard against his, mashing his mouth against his teeth. Her forceful affection pushed against the crown on his front tooth.
“Why are you doing this?”
She crawled on top of him, dodging the knife that stuck up from his thigh. The dead creature inside his pants felt cold and slimy against his leg. Its blood made his skin tacky, gluing his pants to him.
The girl sat in his lap, swinging her legs out. He had to reach under her thighs to keep her from falling. “I can’t help it,” she said. Her mouth found his neck and started kissing there.
It tickled where her lips touched him, cool and soft. He flinched, lowering his head against the bushy mane of her hair. He smelled a combination of manure and chopped wood. Her lips left tiny wet trails along the side of his neck.
She giggled as he tried to squirm away from her. This was so bizarre. First the tiny creature, that he assumed was a true-life Haunchy, and now this lust-crazed, feral girl. He felt as if he’d walked into somebody’s weird fantasy. One thing he knew for certain was it was wrong and needed to stop.
Scooped in his arms, he lifted her. The girl squealed as if she were on a fun ride. But the delighted cry turned startled when he tossed her. Her rump hit the dirt floor in front of him, legs flying up, burlap skirt falling back on her legs. He quickly turned away before catching a glimpse of something he didn’t want to see.
He heard her moving around and slowly looked back, ready to avert his gaze if needed.
She sat forward, her legs bent, adjusting the skirt with her hands to cover herself. “What’d you do that for?” she asked through a whine. It sounded as if she might cry.
“What the hell are you doing down here? Who are you?” He looked down at his leg, gripped the knife and pulled it out of the bloodied hump in his pants. It made a sound like a head of lettuce being chopped. He set the knife beside him, then leaned back and started fumbling with his pants.
The girl watched him, her eyes growing wide and nervous. Behind that, though, was a hint of excitement. He realized she was wondering if he was going to pull his pants down. And he planned on it, just not for her benefit.
Unzipping his pants, he pulled the flaps out and reached in.
The girl licked her lips.
“Look over there, please,” he said.
“I already saw it, you know…”
Randy felt himself shrink inside. “What?” She saw it? “When?”
“Last night…when you were asleep…”
Randy recalled how he’d slept naked, like he always did. Clothes clung to him and made him sweat all night, which resulted in many restless nights. “You were in my room?”
Nodding, the girl brushed her lower lip across the edges of her teeth.
“Why?”
“I wanted to…”
He waited for her to continue, but she offered nothing else. Her confession numbed his mind. Instead of interrogating her for information, he decided not to bother. Plus he was worried what else he might learn.
Sticking his hand down his pants, he touched a sticky substance. He grabbed it and pulled the tiny creature out. Grimacing, he studied its hideous head. Shaped like a rotten apple, the face was withered and pruned. Its hands were tiny and tipped with claws that matched its sharp teeth.
And her teeth.
Randy glanced at the girl and saw her nibbling at her lip with her own dagger dentures. The tips broke the skin, making it bleed. Then he looked back to the creature’s shriveled face. Having enough, he tossed it away.
As he reached for his pants, planning to zip them up, the girl sprang herself forward. She gripped his forearms and tried to push his hands away. “What are you…?”
Her face flew up to his, her lips assaulting him once more. Her teeth pricked his lip and now his blood mixed with hers. From the way she held his hands, he had nothing to keep himself upright, so he fell back. She was on him then, climbing on top, planting her knees in the dirt on each side of his hips.
“Kiss me back,” she said. Peck. Peck. “Please!”
Her head moved back down to his neck.
She pinned his arms above his head. The strength in this girl was both astonishing and terrifying. Randy kicked his legs in the dirt, thrusting upward, trying to buck her off of him, but she remained on top.
And laughed as if having a fun time.
Randy began to scream again, the combination of their blood spilling into his mouth.
She pulled one of his arms to her bare leg. “Touch me!”
This time it was an order and not a request. He obliged, delicately placing his hand on the smooth yet slightly tough skin of her thigh. She moaned as he started to rub.
Looking down at him, her wild hair hung around her head like tangled mesh. He saw threads of web clinging to the auburn locks, little bits of forest debris stuck inside. Behind the dirty face and mussed hair was a pretty girl. He knew she had once been a lovely and innocent person. How she’d become the monster she was now, Randy had no idea. But he knew if he didn’t humor her and do what she wanted, she would kill him. The hate in her eyes proved that.
Uncomfortable with touching her thigh, he lowered his hand to the bend in her leg. His elbow bumped something as he angled his arm to avoid as much of her as possible. He thought he might know what he’d nudged.
The girl lowered her head, bringing her eyes closer. She gazed into his eyes, searching his. She was so curious about him, he could tell that much. How she studied him, as if she’d never seen another human before, was almost sweet. Almost. Really it just terrified him even more.
“Will you kiss me?” she asked. “A real one?”
Randy gulped. Nodded.
The girl smiled, unveiling those vicious teeth. Randy hid his repulsion as she slowly brought her head down, brushing her lips across his. This time he kissed her back.
She moaned in surprise. Her body tensed, as if she
didn’t know what to do. Her hands reached out, fingers extended and wiggling as she squirmed on top of him.
She jerked rigidly when Randy punched her knife into her side.
Grunting, her hot breaths puffed inside his mouth. He could taste the fetid stench on his tongue like poison. She pulled her head away from his lips, leaned back and peered at him in shock. “Yuh-you…”
She looked down, her eyes widening when she saw the knife extended from her side like a lever. Raising her head, her face showed her confusion over his disloyalty.
Then she gnashed her teeth. She snarled. Her face lunged at his. Randy jerked his head to the side, avoiding her clacking mouth. Missing his cheek, her face angled lower and she bit down on his neck. There was a wet chomp as her teeth sank into his flesh.
Now it was Randy who was shocked. Yelling, he slapped at her head but missed each time. He put his hands flat on her shoulders and tried to push. He felt the section of his neck stretch as she moved back. If he kept this up, she’d rip the side of his neck out, and he’d bleed to death.
Releasing her shoulders, he reached around her arm. His fingers groped for the knife. Finding the hilt, they curled around it and twisted. The blade made nasty sloshing sounds as it dug around inside.
The girl cried out, her mouth opening. She pulled away from Randy, crawling backward to get off of him. Beyond his feet, she looked down at the knife and groaned. She squeezed the handle, wrenching it out. A quick spurt of blood followed.
Clutching his neck, Randy watched her, expecting any moment for her to come at him again. She didn’t. She put her hands on the dirt floor and shoved herself up on all fours. Then she shoved again, getting to her feet.
She stood over him, the knife in her hand, her blood smeared across the tarnished blade. Her hand jerked, making Randy gasp. It jerked again, as did her arm. Her body starting to shake.
The Lurking Season Page 23