What The Window Let In

He leers at me from above. Antlers, arms and a bright threatening smile. His fingers grip and grab at nothing.

I cannot move. I can see a hint of my ceiling light through the antlers and bone. His skin pulls and stretches over his form like a mesh dress that’s two sizes too small. Bone pokes out in places where the skin could give way no more. 

He looms but only stares. He moves neither closer nor further from me and makes no sound. I don’t either. Not because I don’t wish to. I can’t.

The sound of tapping tiptoes its way into my senses. 

That branch my landlord refuses to trim. It’s windy tonight. Has been for a few days. Yesterday the wind brought me a storm. The rain keeps me up sometimes. But it does keep him away. 

He is gone, and I’m sitting up. My fingers move when I ask them now. 

A time later I drift off to the tapping of the branch and the rush of wind through drafty windows.

Staying with a friend

We unroll our sleeping bags content to stay up into the night wrapped in gossip and whispers.

A steady thump thump thump drifts down from the ceiling. Camilla goes up to investigate. 

She does not return.

The whispers begin again. Quieter this time.

A bowl of marbles is spilled above—the tumbling and rolling of hundreds of bits of glass echo through the room. 

Should we go and look? The attic light is still off from when Camilla flicked the switch. Was it Camilla who turned the light off?

We form a line. James in the front Vick in the middle and I take up the rear. One by one we climb the ladder. James flicks on the light as he is the first one up.

The attic is empty. No marbles. No, Camilla. There are clawing noises coming from the other end. We move still in formation. 

The light flicks out. James and Vick scold me. They think I flicked the switch.

I did not. I tell them as much, and then I feel it.

Fingers grip me. A hand wraps around my ankle. Two more around both of my wrists. More and more grip my arms, legs, and shoulders.

I can’t scream. I open my mouth and nothing. 

Marbles skitter over the floors. I feel them roll and hit my shoes. 

One step backward and then two. I need to leave. The lights are on downstairs. The hands can’t follow me there. 

I stumble as I scramble to make it to the attic opening and I fall through—the dark abyss above me. No sounds echo in my ears except the roll of marbles.

One marble falls through the opening behind me and lands on the floor. It’s bright blue, just like Vick's eyes.

I go to sleep on the couch with the lights on, and I wake up in my bed.

The Box

It's dark. Pitch black and I am enveloped by a rumbling sensation. Walls surround me on all sides centimeters away from my touch. Im trapped in a tiny box, and no matter how I push and shove at the walls they don't budge. Music vibrates through the tiny space. A stage? Am I under a stage? Voices sing along to a performance of some kind. So many people are so close, but none can hear me. Hundreds of living bodies mere feet away, and none were going to free me.

The box was getting smaller. It was so dark.