MicroHorror

The scream brought Jonathon flying in through the front door and down the hallway. Another scream. It had come from the lounge room. He burst into the sparsely furnished room and noticed it immediately. Blood. Everywhere blood. His heart pounded its way into his mouth. His stomach turned. This was not going to be the heroic rescue he had imagined.

“You gotta help me!” Sean had screamed on the other end of the mobile phone. “They’re here! They’re in the house!”

Jonathon hadn’t believed him. Creatures. Monsters. A product of his depression, or at least the drugs he was taking for it. The man was going mad. There were no such things as monsters and he had said as much, though the terror in his best friend’s voice had been real enough.

Then he saw Sean, sitting on a wooden chair near the back of the room.

“Are you all right?” he asked, almost slipping in the pools of red liquid that were growing on the floorboards.

“Keep away!” bellowed Sean. “Keep the fuck away or they’ll get you too.”

Jonathon felt a flutter of panic. He scanned the room, his eyes darting from corner to corner, and up at the ceiling.

“But there’s no one here,” he replied. “There’s nothing to be fright….”

And then right before his eyes something invisible bit into Sean’s arm, tearing the flesh off the bone and provoking in him such a scream that Jonathon felt his body flood with adrenalin.

“What can I do?!” Jonathon cried. “Tell me what to do!”

His friend twisted in the chair as though he were bound to it, but Jonathon could see no bonds, nothing tethering him to his seat of torture.

And then another bite, smaller but followed rapidly by a second bite of the same size. A jet of crimson shot into the air, arcing before falling in tiny dots to the floorboards below. Sean was fading fast. His bottom jaw had fallen open allowing a low, continuous moan to escape his cracked and bloody lips. His eyes were shut.

Jonathon stepped closer. He was only a meter away from Sean. If he reached out he could almost touch him on the shoulder. He felt something brush past him, the hint of a breeze caressing his face before it contorted into a mask of terror as he witnessed a large chunk of Sean’s shoulder disappear.

He was trembling now. He could see his hand shaking like a leaf in a storm. Tears filled his eyes and spilled down over his cheeks, though he barely noticed them.

“I’m coming, mate,” he sobbed. “Hang in there.”

He placed a comforting hand on Sean’s other shoulder, the one still intact, and suddenly his world was alive with creatures from another place, creatures with red eyes and gnashing teeth, black scales and multitudes of horns. One had bat-like wings growing from the back of its neck. Another slithered on a double tail, rearing up to rip one of Sean’s cheeks off. A great feathered beast with four legs and curled tusks bit into Sean’s leg and severed it completely at the knee.

With the last of his energy Sean reached up and placed his hand on Jonathon’s.

Jonathon jumped but when he looked down at what remained of his friend’s face he could see that he was trying to say something. He leaned down to better hear.

“Now do you believe me?” Sean whispered before exhaling the last breath he would ever take.

A dark shadow loomed over them both. Instinctively, Jonathon stepped back, removing his hand from the shoulder just as the creatures were swallowed up by the daylight trickling in through the front window and just as something bit Sean’s head completely off.

Jonathon turned and slipped in the slick of blood. Scrambling to his feet and making for the door, he looked over his shoulder, sobbing.

“I do believe you, mate. I do believe you now.”