A Collection Of Short Stories

Trick Or Eat

I followed the stench of rotting flesh down the dark alley, the metallic tang of blood carried in the cool draft. I didn't know what to expect, but I could feel deep in my gut that something is terribly off.
My best friend and I had gone Trick Or Treating last night—it was then when we beheld the gothic house beside me now. That was the last time I saw him.
I half managed to get out of the man's grip who had pulled me inside, but I was hesitant to find help as I witnessed my friend struggling against his captor, get knocked out by a cloth prssed over his mouth and nose.
The police didn't listen to me when I recounted the events, less than five minutes after it had happened. With adrenaline pumping through your veins, running comes easy. But what do you do when you get thrown out of the station with a warning to never prank the police station? It was Halloween, afterall.
So here I am now, one day later and armed with a metal pipe. I know I shouldn't be walking into danger like this, at least, not without someone else knowing, but I knew I had to do this. I couldn't just leave my friend behind.
The alley stretched on forever and I grow more anxious as I crept down the alley, sweaty hands loosening my grip on the pipe. I almost tripped over something on the ground and I held my breath as I nimbly rebalanced myself. I pulled out my phone to see what the object was and recoiled at what I saw, the metal pipe clanging to the ground.
"I thought I smelt a child down there," slithered a voice both old and young. No, that couldn't be what I had saw. That was not my best friend's arm on the ground in front of me. His arm was still attached to his body, not hacked off at the elbow. That could be anyone's arm. Even if it looked exactly like my friend's arm—an arm I knew as if it were my own.
I got up and clutched the metal pipe tighter as the voice chuckled from the other end of the alley. I decided to continue on my endless journey in search of my friend and not because the voice drew me closer and closer.
"Most people don't come back here," the voice said, and from this distance I could tell it was female. "Then again, none really escape. Your would-have-been captor suffered some ... Rather delicious consequences because of his mistake." What did she mean by 'delicious'?
"You're so kind and brave to come back for your friend. I was suprised when you made it past his arm." A pop, then a sudden crack filled the night air followed by loud slurping. What was this woman doing?
Light spilt onto the ground from behind the house—her house. I turned a corner and stood behind a hunched figure, the object in front of them blocked by crates. The stench was at its worst here and flies buzzed around us.
"Turn around," I said to the figure, gripping the pipe tight, ready to strike.
"As you wish," the old woman turned and smiled. I didn't know where to look first—at her red-stained teeth and mouth, the blood that spilt down her chin, or the intestines in her hands. She arranged them around her neck as if she were wearing a scarf. "Your friend is really nice."
Hesitantly, I moved closer to the woman.
Bad move.
My friend's stomach was torn open, guts spilling out of the gaping hole and his legs discarded by his cooling corpse. "Why are you doing this? Why him?"
"'Why,' you ask? Because I'm hungry, that's why," the woman replied as she turned back towards my friend. She reached inside his stomach and moved her hand around in search of something. Seconds later she pulled out his heart and examines it. Smelled it. Ate it.
"Because you were hungry?" I spat out. Anger and rage bubbled jnside me, barely controlled. "You have a house, you have a life—you have everything you could ever want, and yet you choose to eat my friend?!" I exploded and swung the pipe into the side of her head; a crack heard over the metallic ringing of the pipe. The old woman clutched the side of her head and hissed at me.
"Fool," she said, spitting blood.
"Why my friend of all people?" I slammed that pipe into her head again, and continued to do so as I screamed, "He was kind! Smart! Caring! Beautiful!" Each compliment was blow to her head. The old woman laid motionless; blood oozed from the crack in her skull. This still wasn't enough for me. I lifted the bloodied pipe, screaming, swinging down over and over and over, beating her skull into a mixture of bone, blood and brain. My throat was raw by the end of it all.
Anger and rage spent, fierce sorrow and despair swooped in to replace them. Slow, so slow, I fell to the ground beside my friend. I didn't attempt to piece him back together—I just sat there, tears washing my face clean of the old woman's blood. He was never coming back, and in a way, neither was I.