A scratching noise reaches my ears. In a flash, I cross the few steps to my darkened bedroom. When I enter, my small room somehow feels bigger than usual.
"Shadow?" I whisper. "Is that you?" Excitement and anticipation rushes over my scalp in waves of tingles, making it difficult to think. I swallow hard, listening, watching the bed.
But the longer I watch, the more it all feels wrong, and my anticipation turns into a stomach-churning disquiet. The only thing I hear is the loud, smacking sounds of the cat from the other room.
"Shadow?" I call again, my voice shaking even as I back away from the bed.
With a smack, a blood-red hand grasps the underside edge of the bed.
I gasp and stumble. I slam back into the wall so hard, pain radiates through my bony shoulders.
A second crimson hand materializes, then in horrifying sluggishness, a face emerges. A creature comes into view, its face devoid of eyes but lined with thin, razor-sharp teeth permanently bared in a lipless grin. Massive horns jut forward from its skull, three times the size of Shadow’s.
DefinitelynotShadow.
The creature unfolds itself from under the bed, long spider legs clicking on the wood floor, raising it up over eight feet. Or maybe they are the legs of a crab? A torso with two human arms sticking out makes it all the more unsettling. My breath catches somewhere in my lungs as my eyes bulge from my face, even as I try to make myself as small as possible in the corner. It’s blocking the doorway to the kitchen and the front door beyond that.
Click click.
Click click click.
Half the clicks come from the massive spider legs and the other higher pitched ones come from its throat, or maybe its teeth?
I feel the second its focus locks in on me. I don’t move, I don’t even breathe, hoping against hope the fact it has no eyes will keep it from seeing me.
The creature explodes forward in a mass of scuttles. The scream doesn’t get past my throat as it grabs me. One had closes around my jugular and the other around my hip, then it turns me sideways as if I were a cob of corn. I fight and squirm in its strong grasp, but it has me suspended in a tight hold.
It backs up toward the bed, back legs folding away under the edge, taking me with it.
"Shadow," I cry out in a strangled voice.
A million possibilities fly through my mind.
Is this what had Shadow afraid?
Did this creature come from where Shadow does?
Am I going to die?
An icy drip churns in my stomach.
I’m going to die.
Lick Me Up
The blood-red monster with long spindly crab legs, no eyes and frightening grin holds me tight in the air as it scuttles backward under my bed, taking me with it.
My body thrashes in a desperate attempt to break free, but the monster’s grip is unbreakable. With a sinking feeling, I realize I can’t stop it. I am being dragged down by this monstrous force into the unknown depths below.
Bright hot fear hits me as I steel myself for the unimaginable horrors to come.
With an angry hiss and meow, the black cat leaps onto my captor’s face, clawing and biting like a bloodthirsty animal.
I hit the ground. My elbow cracks painfully against the floor.
As I scramble to get away, the red monster’s legs thrash wildly, its sharp tips slicing through my skin. Blood coats my skin and clothes in sticky warmth.
Darkness sweeps through the room, blasting out from under the bed. A swell of shadow rises even as the red-clawed demon throws the cat across the room. I bite back a scream as I watch the cat fly. It miraculously lands on its feet, sending the monster a parting hiss before it scrams out of the bedroom.
