Its skin—what’s left of it—is stretched tight over bone in some places and sagging in others like wax left near a flame. Gray-green and shiny with rot. Maggots squirm in a divot where its belly should be. Its ribs poke through its chest, but not like a starving man. More like the bones are trying to escape the meat.
The head—orheads—are fused. Two faces. One stacked atop the other, mouths stretching too wide, twitching, grinning. Chittering. Gibbering. The upper face is eyeless, jaw hanging open like it’s mid-scream. The bottom one has one eye, clouded, and lips that whisper too fast for me to understand.
The sound. Oh god, thesound.
Clicking, scraping, muttering in a voice like shattered teeth and rusted gears. It talks in tongues no human mouth should know. My ears burn. My skull thrums like a tuning fork left on a dying note. Something behind my eyes starts toslip—like my brain wants to curl in on itself and hide.
Its claws are the worst part.
Long. Curved. Thick as crowbars and tipped in blackened bone. They twitch with anticipation, flexing and scraping the floor like it’s testing how fast it can tear me apart.
I scream.
Not a cute scream. Not a movie scream. A real one. Raw. Ugly. It tears from my chest like it wants to save me by sheer volume.
The thing twitches.
Then it lunges.
I scream again and bolt.
My shoes slip on the polished tile, but momentum—and raw, teeth-clenching terror—gets me moving. My breath rasps in my throat as I sprint past the reading nook, past the magazine racks, past the stupid little rubber plant I keep forgetting to water. Behind me, thethingskitters forward, claws clacking on the floor like a dozen steak knives tumbling over marble.
I don’t look back.
Ican’t.
My brain is screamingrunin every language it’s ever known, even the dead ones I learned for fun in college. Latin. French. Panic. The universal tongue.
I aim for the front doors. The keys are still in my back pocket. If I can get to them, get the lock turned, but no.
The monster beats me there.
It movestoo fast, jerking across the space like something half-remembered in a dream, limbs bending in wrong directions, faces gibbering nonsense so loud it drowns out my pulse. It slams down in front of the exit and lets out a noise that sounds like someone vomiting gravel and fury.
I backpedal, stumbling over my own feet, heart battering my ribs.
My eyes land on the wall.
The fire extinguisher.
“Shit. Okay. Yeah. That’ll do.”
I dive for it. Yank it from the holder so hard the plastic case shatters. The red canister is heavier than I expect, cold againstmy palms, and the pin’s stuck. I wrench it free with my teeth like an action hero who’s also deeply, deeply done with this evening.
The monster twitches.
I squeeze the handle.
A cloud of icy white bursts out, hissing like a furious cat. I aim it straight for the thing’s chest, sweeping the foam up into its shriveled, melting face.
The result isinstant.
The creature rears back with a wet shriek that rips through the walls. Its skin bubbles and cracks under the freezing blast. The two heads scream in unison, one high and chittering, the other guttural and growling like it's gargling molten tar. It claws at the foam like it’s acid.
“Yeah! You don’t like cold? How aboutthis, you Dollar Store Freddy Krueger?!”
I unload the entire can.
