These Stories

The Gloom

Gloom everywhere-sudden knock-shouts-a young child crying-silence. These were the sounds and feelings I experienced as I hid in the cupboard of my little sisters room. Suddenly there was a loud bang against the door startling me. A thin ray of light crept through the hole the object made in the wood. I peered through the opening heart pounding in my ears, breath shallow and shaky. What I saw would scar me forever.

There in a heap beyond the hole in the cupboard door lay my father. Laying still as the fallen leaves of autumn. His skin seemed taught against his face as if all the moisture had been sucked out him. A movement by the wrecked wall of sisters room caught my attention. I repositioned myself as quietly as possible to get a better view of what was holding my sister over its wide, hanging unlatched jaws.

My helpless sister flayed and yelped as the monster drew a shadowy apparition of her from her body. She became the same dry skeleton my father was as the monster dropped her to the floor in a dishevelled mound. The demon that took my father and sister from me let out a guttural growl and turned achingly slowly toward the cupboard. As its eyes locked with mine, I swallowed a yelp and stared with naked terror at the beast.

Its eyes glowed like the low embers of a dying fire. There was hunger and rage within them that sent shivers racing down my spine. The demon stirred from its motionless stance and advanced toward my hiding place. It treaded over my sister but then stopped and eyed me cautiously. Then proceeded again. When the distance closed between it and the cupboard it steadily shifted my father to the right to stoop in front of the opening I peered through.

As it lowered itself to the hole, I held back a scream that had slowly been building throughout the advance of the beast. A flicker of curiosity and amusement shone in its eyes but as quickly as it appeared it was replaced with a ravenous hunger only a starving animal would have. I was curled up against the floor of my sisters cupboard which had once been my only place for safety, contemplating how this would be my last resting place.

**Don't wait up for more stories, it'll be a while again. Thank you for reading anyway. Hope this brightned your world of imagination.