Cookies And Cream

Night Hunt

Selasie couldn't quite muffle her screams when she finally caught up with what was happening. 

She had been slowly drifting in and out of sleep, like she did all the time before she actually gave in to sleep. It's what her had taught her. What she had taught her son. 

There was a monster out there. It prowled at night searching for its prey. Those who had the misfortune to be awake at ungodly hours. It'd come for you even if you were under your bed.  Everyone knew that.

It hadn't been around long, that she knew. Probably a little before she was born. She knows because her mother spoke only about the hatred she felt for the killer. How the baby she was soon to be expecting was the only thing stopping her from scouring for the disgusting killer. That was a while before her mother was gone too; before a lot of people were gone as well; a while before they realised what it was. That it was not a serial killer the police was too incompetent to catch. A while before it hit that the offender wasn't clearly human. Too late it seemed. 

Her mother had taught her to sleep thinking it could trick the killer, not knowing that the thing doing the killings had a sort of sense more dark than mere trickery could avoid. But somehow, somehow it seemed to work. And though the disappearances had reduced significantly, there was still times when people went missing: the few lonely ones who felt like they had nothing more to live for; you could tell when  they strolled about even as the sun was setting and the midnight killer was still around. The few who happened to slip up and forget that they had to sleep, probably to cry one last time, but the monster doesn't see the difference between a mourning person and someone trying to die because in the end, they were gone too.

To say the monster had them all torn up is a bit of an understatement. Sure enough, it had forced the populace of this small town to come together, even at the price they have to pay. In the end, it is a small secret of theirs as a town. 

They are so close, Selasie finds love, with a police officer, even in all this madness, and she knows it's crazy when they have a small wedding later and a child sometime after. 

It's hard work: having  a baby who could all but wake the entire town in the middle of the night and have them all massacred and still know only innocence. Somehow though, they manage to do it. Raise a perfectly totally day-owl kind of child. The only thing in her mind being the need to protect her son, her child.

The need to protect her son grows all the more when she received the news one hot, summer afternoon that her husband iwas dead. Slipped suddenly and immediately passed out and passed on apparently. The funeral was a short affair. Very little tears were lost. 

It's that same need to protect her son that makes her hear the obvious struggle coming from his room. 

No

She doesn't want to believe it is what she thinks it is, but it's hard not to given the time of the night it is. Hurriedly, she's out of the bed and slung her husband's AK47 over her shoulder, silent even in her speed.

She's late she can see. Her son is struggling, held suspended by long tentacle-like appendages of the monster all the while it's making it's exit. And the monster itself is a disgustingly horrific creature. Even from behind where she sees her son's eyes widen slowly. She sees him struggle against the tentacle that wants to force itself into his mouth to choke him? gag him? She doesn't know and she doesn't want to wait to know.

Like he's urging her on, to hurry, her son calls to her, desperate  before the tentacle gets shoved into his mouth.

She has had enough though and fires with no aim in the general direction of the head of the creature. 

It hits it, and it looked like it might turn and come for her too. But seizes, shakes violently and darts out through the open window. She rushes to the window, but it's like it has slinked into the darkness and blended with it, just like, she thinks, a creature of darkness would do. 

And though she felt useless for the fact that it still has her son, she puts her ear to the phone she's holding and tells the police officer on the phone to send her farewells to the police department and to let them know that though they can catch up in the morning,---- 

The vile creature had left bend a trail of a blood of sorts and the drag of human feet

---- she has a son to find.

She's out before she ends the call, fully loaded and not in the least bit scared. It was a night hunt after all.