by Cherron Riser, Ashley Nicole Davis, Tara Ann Moore, & Taylor Lexus Brown
Part of Luke Davies was tilled up in a farmer's field, but they weren't really sure if his missing limbs were from the kidnappers or farm machinery until they sent off for the medical examiner from the larger city a few hours away. It wasn't the machinery, they determined.
A week after he disappeared, some hobos found Jackie Lantern's head in the park. I thought Jackie's discovery was part of some twisted joke.
Before the disappearances began, my town was picturesque. It was small and quiet where everybody knew everybody else. Little houses sat neatly on manicured lawns, spaced perfectly apart with kids playing in front. Now they were boarded up, dark and desolate, staring out at lawns that were unkempt.
I remembered in those early days, before I was taken, the way the town felt. The air was heavy and dense, the way it felt when the heavy fogs would roll through the streets. Everyone was on high alert. No one spoke anymore when they met on the street when leaving the grocery store, their children in tow and never letting them out of sight. Children weren't allowed to play outside or sleep in their rooms alone. The school was empty from missing students and students whose parents wouldn't let them leave their homes. My parents never tried to keep me from my schooling, but I still didn't go.
I went to the local arcade and played the old video games there. The machines were all plastered with missing posters, each one showing a different kid smiling out from the sheet of paper. No adults were ever killed or taken. They thought one was: Mrs. Hickerson was an old lady who lived on my street. One day, she stopped collecting her mail and wouldn't answer her door. Everyone loved her. She was one of those old ladies who made cookies for the neighborhood kids and welcomed newcomers with pies. We feared the worst but she was found at the bus stop a few days later, confused and lost. That was the deciding factor on who the victims were.
The police were helpless. They had no leads, they had no evidence, and they had no time. It took mere moments for the children to vanish. Some kids would walk behind a tree or a bush on the way to a neighbor's house and never come out from behind it, their parents watching in disbelief and horror, unable to do anything. Many, like myself, were taken from their homes and some even from their parents' beds, the unlucky mothers and fathers not stirring until morning when their baby was gone without a trace.
I was one of the lucky ones, escaping with most of my extremities and only half-blind. The others who got “lucky” were blind, dumb, or just too mentally incapacitated to be asked about our captors. One girl went mad and wound up committing suicide in such a way you would have to be insane to even try. I’ll call her Sarah. I'm sure her family would want her name withheld for obvious reasons. Sure, she seemed fine. She went back to school; she couldn't talk anymore, but what was that compared to being alive? But, I suppose I should explain.
She was in my chemistry class. It was Monday, and she had been back nearly a month. She was back in school at her own request and seemed to be accepting her new role in school; no longer one of the popular girls, she had carved out a new niche as a devoted student in the sciences. Her once pretty face was ruined, her cheeks scarred in a permanent grin from ear to ear, and her tongue was gone as well. On the news, the doctors said, “It was a miracle she didn't drown in her own blood.” Seeing her, I would have preferred the drowning. The three of us, “The Returned” as we were called, were grouped together with one of the other students. His extreme discomfort at being so close to us was obvious.
We were working on dehydrating sugar with acid. It’s a simple experiment that forces the sugar out of the beaker in a black tube, smells awful, and does nothing else. Hooray for science. Each group was given two things: a beaker with damp sugar and a beaker with 200 milligrams of sulfuric acid. Our partner, the one who was totally intact, turned just in time to see this poor deranged girl downing the entire beaker of sulfuric acid.
Fun fact: sulfuric acid is more corrosive than nitric acid.
The acid made quick work of dissolving its way out of her throat. The skin around the exit wounds was white as the blood was boiled out and black as the chemical singed the tissues. The pungent smell permeated the area, and the three of us backed away from her to avoid being splashed. She was still screaming—well, not screaming, more like a high-pitched gurgling—when our chemistry teacher, a small man with a bushy white mustache, rushed over in a vain attempt to save her. He suffered severe burns on his hands and had to be rushed to the hospital to be treated. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late.
I would be lying if I said I couldn't have stopped her.
When I came back, my parents were less than thrilled. They'd been hoping I was gone for good. Sure, they smiled big for the paparazzi that flocked to our door in droves like I was some kind of movie star. They even managed to squeeze out a few tears before pulling me into a group hug and collapsing us to our knees on our doorstep where desperate reporters with microphones and cameras waited in hopes of being the first to cover the story. Even the mayor came one day to shake my hand and tell me how brave I was for sharing my tale.
My face was plastered everywhere. Like that was exactly what I wanted to see: my new face as a before and after photo. I could be a poster child for radiation poisoning, for one of those articles about cannibals marring their victims, for the work of some accomplished plastic surgeon if the photos were reversed. The newspapers proudly chronicled every word I said; all the pictures of me showcased my new disfigurements with my parents in the background, my mother sobbing on my father's shoulder. With all their antics, as soon as the cameras were gone and my fame had dissipated like a cloud of dust, I was once again absent from their thoughts.
Home sweet home.
At first, I had actually hoped it was because I looked repugnant. My left eye was gone, leaving only a raw, empty socket, scarred around the edges. My right arm was gone as well, ripped from my body by one of the monsters. My face was mangled from the grazing of their nails as they beat me one day. I looked like I was suffering from some mysterious disease that was causing me to rot in place. But, as time passed, I realized that in their eyes, I was still among the missing. Or the dead.
It was tough. I had to learn how to do everything with my left hand. Even things as simple as eating had been lost to me since I was previously right-handed. Anyone who says there's no such thing as phantom limb can go straight to hell. My missing arm would nightly ache with dull throbs all through my body, and even now I tried to pick up pencils with my right hand. It wasn’t all in my head; it was real pain. My recovery had been long and arduous. I tired more easily now and I felt like a patient in my seventies.
When my eye healed over and was no longer a scabby pock in my face, I was fitted with a glass eye. It, of course, didn’t move like my real one, but the color was a perfect match. As long as I didn’t dart my eyes too quickly, or too far, it wasn’t too noticeable. But little things did wonders to make a destitute creature feel like a person again. I was given back my mask that allowed me to blend in with the crowd.
But on to more important events. This chronicle of such a strange time in my life will not be some four-hundred-page pity party. When the authorities first started to question me about the abduction, they wouldn't look at me; I think it was out of pity. I hated that. I hated it more than the distant, sidelong glances from my parents for coming back. I hated it more than the contemptuous glares from the parents whose children probably wouldn't come back. Eventually, I was called to the station for interrogations. I almost laughed. The police in my town would never be able to stop them. At first, I resisted, and I told them only that they were no match for the beasts who took us. The police retaliated by locking me into a seclusion room with no windows. I was blindfolded in front of a camera for hours at a time with no food or water. They treated me like I was the killer or an accomplice. Me, who had lost an eye and an arm to them. Sometimes, they would enter the room or tell me over a speaker about a friend or a classmate who was found along the riverbank.
I just laughed.
After the first week in solitary confinement, I began to ramble. Unbeknownst to me, I was being recorded as I spoke to myself. Often, in my urge to hear something, anything, I would start talking to myself. I revealed gross—in both meanings of the word—details. Some, I imagine, made the officers laugh. Some I know made them shirk and shudder, maybe even run from their little observation room to vomit.
It was during one of these sessions, when I could hear the rasping of my own voice, that I realized something very funny about my captivation by the beings. I had an epiphany that no matter what, I couldn't dredge up the knowledge of where the monsters were, how I got there, or how I got away. All I remembered was my internment and my fellow captives—one of whom was the chief interrogator's son—and how all of my fellow captives had fallen and were exsanguinated within moments of their capture and carried lifeless and weightless to the clearing where we were kept like cattle.
There were nine of us at that point, arranged in points around the center. They only took children and teenagers. None older than seventeen years old. The youngest, Josh, was eight when I got there. A week later, he was found strung up from a light pole outside the bank where his grandmother worked. He looked like he had been dead for years but had not been missing more than a week. I began to think the creatures fed on youth.
They looked like humans but there was something ... off. Their eyes were not quite normal, and their mouths had more teeth than they should have. They just didn't look right. Looking back, I realized that so much was inhuman. They seemed to possess no gender aside from when speaking. Their limbs, which were abnormally long and thin, twisted at odd angles, giving them the ability to reach easily behind their own backs, and hung nearly to their knees. The fingers that sat at the end of each narrow hand were bony, making them look fragile, as if a small amount of pressure would crush the bones within. This was not the case. Yellow, elongated nails adorned each fingertip. The surfaces were dirty and caked with dried blood in the cracks of the enamel.
The leader had introduced himself and the others and had even given their names; I guessed they knew there was no fear of them being caught. His name was Deidrich and he spoke with a thick Russian accent. The female, Grace, was rarely around. I suspected she was in charge of choosing us. The last one, Julian, black haired and gray eyed, was a monster in his own right. He was the beast who took my eye on my first day in the clearing. He came upon me that night and plucked it from its socket with a quick flick of his index finger. The pain was unbearable. It was a wonder I wasn't heard howling from town. Or maybe I wasn't actually screaming out loud.
Grace was guarding us one night, and I called her a monster. She was weightless as she overtook the clearing, easily twenty feet in diameter, in mere moments and slapped me hard across each cheek, her nails clawing me. Those talons left the deep gashes in my face. I didn't speak for the rest of my time there. They were all cruel, that was obvious. Julian, however, never spoke. He only acted. He also took my arm from me when I had tried to help a fallen captive. I could only hope she was already dead when he crushed her skull under his boot. Deidrich and Grace looked away as soon as he reached for me. He first grabbed my right arm as though he meant to twist it and teach me a lesson. With another soundless move, he had his foot on my ribs. One more move and my arm was ripped free. Thinking back on it ... the sound of the crack was worse than actually feeling it.
I didn’t know how long I lay in the puddle of mud that grew around me as my blood pooled from the open wound, but I kept my one eye on Julian. He still held my arm. I watched silently as he put it to his lips and drank with a slurping noise. The piece of flesh seemed to mummify in front of me. When he finished, he tossed it at me and laughed. It was a deranged laughter that felt wild in its tone, high and airy then deep and dark and again light without rhythm. I passed out soon after.
When my eyes opened, I was lying in a hospital bed too weak to move. The generic white lights and cold air sunk into my very bones. My doctor, an older man with salt and pepper hair, walked in and went to shake my hand before he stopped. He told me that the only thing that kept me from bleeding out and dying was mud that caked on my wound as I lay there. I wished it wouldn't have, but I didn't dare tell him that.
I told the police all of this in a taped session, in a locked room, in a police station. I didn't tell them that I wished my captors would come back and finish the job. As I wrote this now from my bedroom, the same one I was kidnapped from before, somehow, I didn’t feel like I would be around much longer. My wounds itched, my veins burned, and I was growing increasingly nauseated with everything I tasted. Maybe that bite was starting to affect me.
About the Authors
Cherron Riser
Cherron Riser is a multi-genre author that writes in romance, paranormal, fantasy, and sci-fi for both adults and young adults. When not hard at work on her next novel, she can be found with a good read in hand or trying to convince her puppy that she is in fact a dog and not a person. She is a wife and mother to two girls. Her family is unabashedly geeky and enjoys sharing a good board game or role-playing game. Cherron is happy to spend time at conventions enjoying books and the geek life with friends, family, and fans.
Taylor Lexus Brown
Taylor was born in a small town to parents who were by all accounts, normal. That all changed, however, when she chose to follow Master Yoda into the swamp. When her training was completed, she attended school at the prestigious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She is a makeup artist and costumer who has already worked on two films and multiple plays in her hometown of Dothan, Alabama. She enjoys tea parties and long walks in the cemetery. Her influences are drawn from Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King and other icons in the horror industry.
Ashley Nicole Davis
Ashley Nicole Davis grew up in Headland, AL. She began acting at 17 and was a co-founder of the Featured Players theater troupe until 2013. Ashley discovered her love of writing in high school where she spent much of her class time writing instead of doing her work. She majored in English literature at Wallace community college in 2002. Ashley currently lives in Enterprise, AL with her husband Adam and son David.
Tara Ann Moore
Tara Ann Moore is a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two amazing children. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, she was raised in eight different states, but ultimately calls Alabama her home. She has been writing poetry, monologues, and lyrics for fifteen years. This is her first work of fiction.