Collection of Shorts

The Calico

He woke up cold last night, his blankets having fallen off - or perhaps having been kicked off - to the floor below. Three in the morning is never a nice time to be awake in the first place, in the dead of night when it's dark as pitch and deathly silent; even less so in early January, where the temperature is steadily thirty below - but he was. Fully awake, though frozen to the core, and on high alert, his skin prickling with every creak the old house gave; it had belonged to his great-grandparents, now his through inheritance, and it had all the character of an antique and more to spare. He sat up, eyes wide though sight was futile in the darkness, listening to the creaks - were they footsteps, or simply the groaning of floorboards much past their prime? - and the slow, steady breaths of his parents, audible through the thin interior walls. He startled for a moment, when he realized he could hear a third set of breaths, uneven and ragged, then calmed somewhat when he recalled they were his own.

He reached down to the floor, feeling around for his bedding, and tugged the heavy comforter back onto himself, shivering from the chill that yet hung on it from the cool floor, then in a moment froze, ears cocked, listening. Scratches came from beneath his bed, like claws sharpening themselves before an attack. Pushing himself against the wall, he held his breath as slowly, oh, so slowly, he covered his face and arms with the blanket he still held; what you can't see can't see you, he remembered someone - who was it? - saying, and if he was very quiet perhaps he would be spared.

No such luck. The scratching, the gouging, continued, louder and louder, resounding with his heartbeat until one was indistinguishable from the other - then silence, deathly silence save for the pounding of his heart.

The old house gave a mighty groan as it settled once more, and in its wake he heard something stalk across the floor in his room, padding as though it didn't want to be heard, the tiptoe steps of something altogether inhuman. The steps circled his room, and then when he listened he could hear the clacking of claws against the hardwood, probably some five or six centimeters long from their sound - and ah! they approached. It - the creature - whatever it was - could hear his heartbeat, he was sure of it; someone halfway round the world could track him with it, so hard was it beating, and now this thing was in his room, coming ever nearer. Nearer, nearer, nearer - and oh, he wished someone other than himself and this thing were awake, but he could still hear the drone of his parents' breaths as they slept, deaf to the horrors of the night who were certainly plotting his untimely death - and it crept nearer still!

He began to envision the form his death would take: would he be eaten alive, be made into a boy sandwich? He recalled suddenly that he hadn't eaten all of his vegetables at supper - indeed, he hadn't eaten any of them - and had instead slipped them beneath the table to his mutt (affectionately called Mongrel, because he was a shelter dog and no one really knew his pedigree - if he had one at all - or even who his parents were). He searched his mind for what his mother had told him about the bogeyman, who despises the scent of all vegetables (thus why young children must eat all their own, to ward off through scent the vile bogeyman) but loves the taste of sweets and children - had he removed the stash of chocolate he had smuggled into his room a week before? He couldn't recall - he had, he hoped; and he swore upon his crossed heart that he would never hide his vegetables again if only he would survive tonight, if only, if only, if only he could live.

Or perhaps, he thought, he would be kidnapped - what if the creature was an alien, here to abduct him for experiments on humanity? Once they had finished their examination - he hoped they wouldn't use needles as they were still his greatest fear - would they return him to Earth? Or would they cast him into the bleak darkness of outer space, alone for the rest of his life?

Maybe the creature was a zombie, and he would be its first victim in the pending apocalypse. He couldn't quite decide if that would be cool or not, being undead, but he supposed the initial pain of dying (although he hadn't ever died before, he imagined it hurt) would quite cancel out any fun being a zombie might be.