Ghoul Hunting (Friday Flash)

The night is moonless.

Sean’s breath hangs frosty in front of him as he pants, breaking out in goosebumps as he presses his back to a cold gravestone.

There is a susurrus of sound, and then Mary is crouched next to him, her hair pulled back from her face, a sawed-off shotgun in her white-knuckled grip.

“Do you see anything?” Sean asks, his voice quiet.  Mary glares at him and shakes her head sharply.  With her free hand she points to the clip above her ear, her eyes narrowed in anger.  Sean grimaces in apology.

Sorry, he says through the telegrapher, I’m out of practice.

Of course they’re out there, Mary says, even her mental voice coming out clipped.  She turns her back to Sean and peers around the gravestone.  Four in shooting distance, who knows how many more over the next hill.

Is this it, then? Sean asks, putting his hands on Mary’s back to try to see around the grave with her. Did we find the nest?

Probably, she says. There’s only one way to be sure…

With a tight exhalation of breath, Mary moves the shotgun until it is against her chest and rolls from behind their grave to the shadow of the neighboring mausoleum.  Sean gasps, a short choked sound then scrambles for the pistol in his shoulder-holster. 

Around the edge of the grave, the ghouls are moving, their feet barely touching the ground as they dart around stones, slip over branches… The only time they make even a little bit of noise is when they go underground, the sound of their unnaturally long fingers pulling at the dirt the only thing that can alert you to their presence.

They’re not like the zombie’s he’s hunted before. Zombies are slow. Stupid. Easy to kill.  And the biggest difference about zombies? You can hear them coming.

If you hear a ghoul coming up through the dirt behind you, it’s already too late.

Sean! Mary hisses through the telegrapher, and he locks his knees to keep from jumping and alerting the ghouls to their position.

What?! He says, shifting the pistol to his other hand to unsnap the knife at his thigh.

They’ve stopped moving, Mary says, her mental voice tight and controlled.  When he looks over, her eyes are huge, the cat-slit irises open as wide as possible.

What do we do? He asks, tightening his grip on the pistol.

Try not to die, Mary says, deadly serious.

There is literally no sound in the cemetery now. The trees are not rustling, the grass is not moving. The night birds that usually dog their footsteps all through the night are silent.

Sean risks peeking his head around the edge of the gravestone he is crouched behind and is greeted with nothing – just the dark on dark shadows of the clouds that are passing over in a breeze that cannot be felt on the ground.

Sun up is three hours away, Mary says finally.  There is a sound like a shot and Sean tries not to jump as he watches Mary open the barrel, check her ammunition then close it again. Apparently she has decided that silence is no longer necessary.  With trembling fingers, he checks his own gun, loosens the strap around his knife, pushes his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead.  Mary nods at him and stands, her finger against the trigger.

In the distance, the low howl of a ghoul is joined by another. Another. Two more. Six. A dozen. Behind him, Sean can hear the unmistakable sound of rock and dirt being scrabbled at by long, demonic fingers.

Sean stands and backs up until he feels his heels press against Mary’s. She is barefoot in the graveyard, her neon toenail polish completely at odds with the rest of her utilitarian outfit.

“When the sun comes up, I’m buying you pancakes,” Sean says out loud.  Mary pulls the clip from her ear and puts it in the breast pocket of her vest.

“If the sun comes up,” she says.

The ghouls’ howling escalates until it is the only thing Sean can here.  They are all around them now and through the gloom he can see them, their long arms trailing against the ground, mouths gaping open, needle-sharp teeth as long as his forearm. 

Mary raises the shotgun to her shoulder.

The leading ghoul charges.

Performing surgery on my car. Except for the car it's like waking up on the surgery table and there's a guy in a suit holding your heart and he says "i'm actually a business man, not a surgeon. Don't worry though, I'll get this brain back in"

"We're gonna have a business! We're gonna train carrier parrots!" "We're gonna have a business. We're gonna lose carrier parrots." - Me & Darren

Hush - FridayFlash 10/15

Sometimes people just don’t wake up.  Sylvia tells herself this as she stumbles down the hall, scissors slipping from her fingers.  Sometimes people just sleep and sleep and there’s nothing to stop it.  She turns the corner, her socks sliding against the cold floors.  She takes the steps six at a time, short hops that leave her breath shaking from her and her hands stretched against the railings.

Behind her, the stairwell fills with a static-y shhhhhhhh, white noise sweeping up the walls, stalking her steps as she staggers through the door to the second floor.

The scissors in her hands are stuck there, slivers of plastic sticking to their sides, heralds of what she has done. No one will notice, she says. Sometimes people sleep.

Shhhhhhhhh

When she accepted the job, the oppurtunity, Sylvia was thrilled.  It was a paying job, it had great benefits, it was fun. The pamphlet had big bold letters emblazoned on the cover: “Help Insomniacs” it pronounced. “Good people helping Good people get a Good night’s rest.”

It looked fun.  It looked interesting.  

It wasn’t.

They gave her the scissors in a red plastic bag - an innocuous gift presented with a grin. “These are your tools,” they grinned.

When she took them out, they glowed, brilliant red light bursting from the pin that held the blades together.  Sylvia cocked her head and asked for an explanation.

“Don’t worry,” they laughed, “it’ll make sense soon.”

Shhhhhhhhhh

Sylvia slips, crashing to the ground with a stifled scream as her shin hits a stool on her way down.  She does not search behind her. She knows what sweeps after her with a horrible swiftness.

Shhhhhhhhh

They directed her to a hospital, her first time out on the job.  The mark’s name was Roger Richards and he was trying to rest on the sixth floor in the sleep ward.

“Go in, find him. They’ll know what to do,” they told her, motioning to the scissors with hands encased in red plastic.

“What? The scissors?” Sylvia asked, confusion obvious in her gaze.

“They’ll know,” they hissed.

Shhhhhhhh

Silence reigns behind her.  Sylvia cannot hear the slide of her socks against the floor, the strained wheezing of her breath as she swings around the second landing and sprints for the next stairwell.

The sick sit up in their beds, mouths stretched wide in silent screams as Syliva strides past them, trailing the soundlessness behind her.

The scissors in her hand start to tremble, shaking as they strain to escape.

Shhhhhhhh

Sylvia did not figure out what was going on until the fifth time she was given an assignment.  The first victims had sighed and settled deeper into their beds, sleeping peacefully, smiling.  Sylvia had smiled to herself and slipped out of the room, pocketing the scissors and jauntily going home.

The third time, as the scissors did their work, the alarms in the room went off.

A cacophony of noise came crashing into the quiet that accompanied the careful work of the scissors.  The alarm clanged above her head, calling into the halls of the hospital that there was a code, a code.  The pounding of feet came next, nurses and doctors careening around corners, stethoscopes around necks, voices all together asking what had happened.

Sylvia stood there, the scissors slipping from her limp hand, and saw the monitors display nothing. A straight line. Eternal sleep.

She threw the scissors in the nearest trash can, trembling as she walked home in a daze.

When she woke the next morning, the scissors were slipped into her fingers.

Shhhhhhhh

Sylvia shouts, the sound a whisper in the Silence.  

“Stop!” she says, her voice stretching the sibilants.  The static swirls around her, a hiss that has ambient sounds seeping into the floors.  “Stop,” she says, a whisper, a small sound that sinks to the floor.

The not-sound hangs in the air, swirling around her, steeping her in silence.  

“Sssssleeeeeppp...” the static hisses.

Sylvia’s breath stops in her throat.

“No,” she sobs, the sound a slight ripple in the silence.  The static is all around her, sliding through her skin, settling in her soul.

“Ssssseventhhh,” it hisses.  “Sssssleeeeeeppp.”

Sylvia’s eyes are heavy, the scissor slippery in her hand.  She tries to speak and is stopped by the slime of silence streaming down her throat.

She slips to the floor, the scissors shining in their red curse-light.

Shhhhhhhh

Sky Painters

The morning light was weaker than that of the early afternoon.

Marcus didn’t know what to do about that.  He’d painted it just as strongly as he usually drew the afternoon, but the color just seemed to bleed away down the horizon.

With a sigh, he let his arm drop to his side.  The paintbrush in his hand dragged an arc of yellow-gold across the clouds and spattered against a tree that was stretching too close to the sky.

“Oops,” he said, his voice bouncing across the valley to ring like thunder. 

“You could try just going for quality instead of quantity,” said a voice that hovered around his right shoulder.

“Shush, you,” Marcus said, putting the paintbrush behind his ear and switching paint buckets.  “It’s all about the truth of the color.”

“Morning is more about subtlety,” the voice said.  It sighed.  “But what do I know, right?  I’m just the guy who paints the eclipses…”

“Oh shut up, Nick,” Marcus snapped, dabbing at the clouds with a violent pink that bled away into a pastel color as Marcus watched.  “Oh my God I don’t get it! Why won’t the colors stay?!”

“It’s like I said, dude.  Quality.  Try just doing like a subtle pink edge and then getting the orange glow off Sol’s entrance just right.” Nick shifted on the cloud he was sitting on so his feet dangled off the edge.

“She’s not going to notice unless I paint bold colors.”

“Oh, it’s about her, huh?”  Nick laughed and jumped off the cloud which scuttled away to join the rest of its family across the sky.  “What happened to artistry and ‘I’m just in it for the color’?”  Marcus just stared at the horizon, his paintbrush dripping.  Nick sighed and put his hand on Marcus’ shoulder. “You’re running out of time, dude.  You asked for this transfer, make it count.”

“Fine,” Marcus said.  “Stand back.”

Reaching down to his left side, Marcus took the entire bucket of blue and splashed it into the sky above the clouds.  He rubbed most of it out with his shirtsleeve, fading it back to the night that was still being painted in behind him.  Against the horizon, he added a faint blush of pink then a light lilac color.  Nick stepped back and hummed contentedly in his throat.

“By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Nick said with a laugh.

“Shh,” Marcus said, his frown tempered by the smile on his lips.  “And now…” he whispered, seemingly to himself, “time to see if it works.”

Marcus dabbed at where Sol would emerge with a faint orange, the light yellow, and a speck of a neon green that had Nick wrinkling his brow before he smiled and clapped Marcus on the back.

“You’re done, Marcus.  That’s awesome.  Let’s see it in action.”

“Right,” Marcus said, stepping back and surveying his handiwork with a grin.  “We can stand over there,” he said, pointing at the tree he had splattered.

The two moved to the hilltop and watched as Sol stepped daintily over the ridge, first her fiery hair coming into view, and then her blazing eyes.  As her shoulders slipped over the horizon, Marcus smiled and waved at her.  Sol narrowed her eyes in confusion then smiled at them and danced over the rest of the hill.

“Marcus!” she said, her voice bright and full of life, “you painted my entrance today?”

“Yeah,” Marcus said with a smile, his face paint-spattered and happy. “Sonya and I switched.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said as she stepped up onto the clouds that hovered around her feet, “thank you!”

“You wanna, maybe, hang out later?” Marcus said as Nick elbowed him in the side.

Sol blushed and ducked behind a cloud then came out again, sitting cross-legged at eye-level and nodded.

“I’d like that,” she said, “maybe after my shift is done?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Marcus said, bending to pick up his paints.  He slid his paintbrush behind his ear and waved as Sol turned her face to the vault of the sky and kept climbing.

Nick pumped his fist into the air behind him and did a little dance.

“Awesome, dude! Awesome!  You’ve got a date with Sol!”

“Yeah,” Marcus said, with a grin. “Yeah, I do.”

“I told you she liked morning best.”