Bite

Going With a Stranger

The day I left my home forever—the home I had grown up in, with roses around the picket fence--I had gotten into the pickup truck with my neighbor from down the street. He was about forty years old, rather unassuming and unattractive, and I never saw my parents again.

I know what you're thinking, and I would've thought the same thing. I didn't know him very well, and you learn as a kid to NEVER get in a car with an adult, especially the ones you "kind of" know. But I had a choice. I made the choice.

My neighbor Rayford pulled up in a truck with tires screeching. He opened the passenger door from the inside and shouted, "Get in!"

I turned and looked back at the house. Even though I had run as quickly as possible out of its front door, even now I hesitated.

"Rachel!" he shouted.

I looked at him with tears brimming in my eyes. I took a step for the car.

"Rachel, god damnit, NOW," he shouted again.

I heard a soft sound from behind me, a mewling kind of breathing. The front door to my house was opening. My mother's sensitive, often clasped hands were around the doorframe, slowly pulling herself outside like one might hoist themselves from a pool.

She was standing on the porch now, shaking. Her neck, bent to the left at an unnatural, broken angle, allowed her head to loll too loosely from side to side as she gaped, observing me with the glaring eye of a predator.

A bubble of blood broke at the corner of her mouth. When she reached up to wipe the streaming read away, her hand came back with red smears. Part of her wrist seemed entirely worn off. The flesh was rotting already.

Suddenly, with a ferocious growl, she took a step towards me. Her head swung as if it were about to tumble right off her shoulders. She held her hands out for me, the same arms that were always held out to me—to embrace me, to hold me close, to comfort me, to whisper, "Goodnight. I love you"—and her fingers twitched with the ache to hold me again, and bury her mouth in my neck with snapping jaws and a flicking tongue that wanted to taste flesh.

I couldn't think. I whirled and jumped into the truck, slamming the door and locking it. Rayford pressed his foot to the gas, and with a squealing fishtail, we sped out of the neighborhood. I watched my mother hold her stumpy fingers to the sky and open her mouth in a feral scream.