They're Coming for You

The're Coming For You

Short story

Mr Bliss came home from work early one Monday afternoon.
It was a big mistake.
He'd had a headache,and his secretary,after offering him various patent medicines,complete with their manufacturer's slogans,had said "Why don't you take the rest of the day off, Mr Bliss?"

Everyone called him Mr Bliss. The others in the office were Dave or Dan or Charlie , but he has Mr.Bliss. He like it that way.Sometimes he taught that even his wife should call him Me Bliss.
Instead,she was calling on God
Her voice came from on high.
From upstairs. In the bedroom. She didn't seem to be pain, but Mr Bliss could remedy that.
She wasn't alone; someone was grunting in harmony with her cries to the creator. Mr Bliss was bitter about this.
Without even waiting to hang up his overcoat, he tiptoed into the kitchen, and plucked from its magnetic rack one of the Japanese knives his wife had ordered after watching a television commercial.
They were designed for cutting things into small pieces, and they were guaranteed for life , however long that happened to be.
Mr. Bliss would see to it that his wife had no cause for complaint.
He turned away from rack,paused for a sigh, then went back and selected another knife. The first was fie the one who wanted to meet Gos, and the second for the one who was making those animal noises.
After a moments reflection,he decided to use the back stairs.
They were more secretive,somehow,and Mr Bliss intended to have a big secret just as soon as he could get organized.
He had an erection for the first time in weeks and his headache was gone.
He moved as quickly and carefully as he could,sliding across the check board linoleum and taking the back stairs two at a time in slow,painful,thigh-straining stretches. He knew there was a step which creaked,couldn't recall which one it was, and knew he would step on it anyway .
That hardly mattered.
The groans and wails were reaching a crescendo ,and Mr Bills suspected that not even a brass band behind him could have distracted the people above him from their business. They were about to achieve something,and he wanted very much to be there before they did.
The bedroom took up the entire top floor of the house. It had been a whim of his to flatter his young bride with a spacious a spawning ground as his salary would allow; the tastefully wooden St Aires crept up the back.
Mr. Bliss creaked at the appointed spot,cursed quietly and opened the door.
His wife's eyes,rolled back in her head,were like wet marble.
Her lips fluttered as she blew damp hair from her face. The beautiful breasts that has persuaded him to marry her were covered his sweet,and not all of it was hers.
Mr Bliss didnt even recognize the man ;he was nobody. The milkman?? A cencus taker? He was plump,and he needed a hair cut. It was all very discouraging. Cockolding by an Adonis would at least have been understandable, but this was a personal affront.
Mr Bliss dropped one knife to the floor, gasped the other in both hands , and slammed its point into the pudgy interloper at the spot where spine meets skull.
It worked at once. The man gave one more grunt and toppled over the backwards, blade grinding against bone as head and handle hit the floor.
Mr Bliss was there, baffled and bedranggled, spread-eagled naked against sopping sheets.
Mr Bliss picked up the other knife.
He pulled her up by the haie and stabbed het in the face.
She blubbered blood. Madly but methodically, he shoved the sharp steel into every place where he thought she'd like it least.
Most of his experiments were successful.
She died unhappily.
The last expression she was able to muster was a mixture of pain,repoach,and resignation that thrilled him more than anything she'd shown him since their wedding night.
He wasn't done with her yet. She had never been sob submissive .
It was late that nighr before he put down the knife and put on hus clothes.
Mr Bliss had made a terrible mess. Cleaning up was always a chore, as she had so frequently reminded him, but he was equal to the task. The worst part was that he had stabbed the water bed, but atleast the flood had dilutwd some of the blood.
He buried them in separaye sections of the flower garden and showed up late for work.
This was an unprecedented event. The quizzical eyebrows of his colleagues got on his nerves.
For some reason he didnt feel like going home that nght. He went to a motel instead. He watched television. He was a movie about someine killing several other people, but it didnt amuse him as much as hed hoped. He felt that it was in bad taste.
He left the DO NOT DISTURB sign in the doorknob of his room each day ;he did not wish to be distureb. Still, the unmade bed to which he returned each night began to bother him. It reminded him of home.
After a few days, Mr Bliss was ashamed to go to the office. He was still wearing the same clothes hed left home in, and he was convenced that his colleagues passionately as he did.
Then he had two days of peace in his motel room, huddling under the covers in the dark and watching people kill each ither un a phosphorescent gliw, but on sunday night he looked at his socks and knew he would have to go back to the house.
He wasnt happy about this.
When he opwned the front door, it reminded him of his last entance. He felt that the stage was set. Still, all he had to do was go upstairs and get some clothes. He could be gone in a matter Of minutes. He knew where everything was.
He used the front stairs. The carpeting made them quieter , and somehow he felt the need for stealth. Anyway, he didnt like the ones in the back anymore.
Half way up the stairs, he noticed two paintings of roses that his wife had put there. He took them down. This was his houae now, and the picturws had always vaguely annoyed him. Unfortunately, the blank spaces he left on the wall bothered him too.
He didnt know what to do with the paintings, so he carried them up into tge bedroom. There seemed to be no way to get rid of them. He was afraod this miggt be an omen, and for a second considered the idwa for burying them in the garden. This made him laugh,but he didnt like the sound of it. He decided not to do it again.
Mr Bliss stoos in the middle of the bedroom and looked around it critically. Hed made quite a near job of it.
He was just opening a dresser drawer when he heared a thump form below. He stared at his underwear.
A scaped folled tge thump, and then the sound of something bumping up yhe stairs.
He didnt wonder what it was, not even for an instant. He closed his underwear drawer and turned around. His left eyelid twitched; he could feel it. He was walking without thinkung toward the front stairs when he heard the door below them open. Just little sound, A bolt slipping a latch. Suddenly, the inside of his head felt as big the bedroom.
He knew they were coming for him,one each side. What could he do? He ran around the room, slamming into each wall finding it solid. Then he took up a post beside the bed and put a hand over his mouth. A giggle spilled between his fingers, and itmade him angry, for this was a proud moment.
They were coming for him.
Whatever became of him(no more job, no more television), he had inspirwd a miracle. The dwad had come back to life to punish him. How many men could say as much? Come clump,come thump,come slithering sounds! This was a triumph.
He stepped back against the wall to get a better view. As both doors opened his eyes flucked back and forth.
His tongue followed ,lucking his lips. He experinced an ecstacy of terror.
The stranger,of course, he used the back stairs.
He had tried to forget what a mess he had made of them, especially his wife. And now they were even worse.
And yet,as she dragged herself across the floor, there was something in her oale flesh,spotted with purple where the blood had settled and striped with rust where the blood had spilled, that called to him ad it had before. Her skin was clumped with ricj brown earth. She needs a bath, he thought, and he began to snort with laughter that would soon be uncontrollable. Her lover, approaching from the other sude, was hardly marked. There had been no wish to punish him, only to make him stop. Still, single blow on the TV knife had several his spine, and his head lurched unpleasantly. The odd disappointment Mr Bliss had felt in the mans flabbinwsa intensified. After six days in the ground, what crawled toward him was possitively puffy.
Mr Bliss tried to choke back his chuckels till his eyes watered and snot shot from his nose. Even as his end approached,he saw their impossible lust for vengeance as his ultimate vindication.
Yet his feet were not as willing to die as he was; they backed iver the carpet toward the closest door.

His wife looked up at him, as well as she could. The eyes in her sockets seemed shrivelled, like inquisitive prunes.
A part of her where he had cut too deeply and too often dropped quietly to the floor.
Her lover shuffled forward in hands and knees, leaving some sort of a trail behind him.
Mr Bliss pulled the gleaming brass bed around to make a barricade.
He stepped back into the closet. The smell of her perfume and of her sex inveloped him. He was enveloped in her gowns.
His wife reached the bed first, and gasped the fresh linen with the few fingers she had left. She hauled herself up. Stains smeared the sheets. This was certainly the time to slam the closet door, but he wanted to watch. He was positively fascinated.
She squirmed on the pillows,arms failings,then collapsed on her back. There were gurgles. Could she be ready dead at last?
No
It didn't really matter. Her lover crawled over the counterpane. Mr Bliss wanted to go to the bathroom, but the way was blocked.
He cringed when his wife's lover(who was this creeping corpse,anyway?) Stretched out fat fingers, but instead of clawing for revenge they fell on what had been the breasts of the body beneath him. They began to move gently.
Mr Bliss blushed as the ritual began. He heard sounds that had embarrassed him even when the meat was live:liquid lurchings,ghastly groans,and supernatural screams.
He shut himself in the closet. What was at work on the bed did not even design to notice him. He was buried in silk and polyester.
It was worse than he had feared. It was unbearable.
They hadn't come for him at all.
They had come for each other.

The End