I decided to go back to this story written back in 2020 and give it an update and add a fresh spin. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did writing them! Here’s my December 2 Dismember Gifts to you!
IT GROWLS FROM THE CORNER
My eyes open instantly to pitch darkness. My heart races, pumped with an instinctual fear. I clutch the sheets of the bed, my breath caught tight in my throat.
I wait. Listening. There was something. A sound. A noise.
Nothing.
It takes me a moment to even realize where I am. Then it comes back slowly in bits. I was in my late cousin Richard’s farmhouse. He left it to me and several days before, I had moved in, with hopes of renovating the small ranch house.
Two days into the renovations.
The lights were off, the windows shuttered. The dead farmland was blanketed with its night shawl. The only light source came from a light pole next to the battered barn in the back of the house. A ring of ash trees encircled most of the property.
Air was stale and still filled the room. Soft light rays filtered down from one partially open window in the living room and dust floated aimlessly in its illumination.
“Hello?” I whisper, my lips dry, my cotton tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.
“Hello?” I venture once more, praying I don’t get a response.
Seconds bleed into minutes, minutes grow into moments. Nothing responds. Time lapses.
One bizarre note caught my attention. I don’t hear anything. No crickets, no late-night songbirds, no distant cars on the I-77 highway. Even the wind is holding its breath. What the hell?
However, I do ease my grip on the sheets and sigh in relief. Maybe it was a nightmare with the last fragments waking me. I can’t quite yet laugh at myself and the fear that seized me.
New place, new sounds. Just a case of heebie-jeebies.
I raise onto my elbows.
Hissssss.
The sound pierces me. It came straight out of the corner, draped in deep shadows. A low rumbling growl follows the hiss. A distinct scrape of claws on the wood floorboards makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I freeze up all over again, my breath locked in my chest.
My eyes strain to make out a form in the dark. Nothing. It’s like a gaping hole torn into the bedroom space, swallowing up the entire corner.
It’s close. I should be able to see whatever the thing is! Dammit, why can’t I see it? I can’t run. The corner is near the doorway.
What is it? A mountain lion? A rabid wolf? A feral stray dog? What is in my house?
No more noises, no more clues to what it is.
I don’t try to speak again to it. It’s obvious it isn’t human so there’s no real point. My mind floods with bad ideas, desperate ploys, nothing that will get me away.
Moments again drag out. I pull my legs slowly up, curling my form into a better-shielded form. Another growl, deep in its chest protests my movement.
Eyes, silvery and large open up. The space between the eyes at least five inches apart. Then heat and a bitter stench of foul breath wafts over me. Whatever is staring at me, just opened its jaws. I think I can hear the bare sounds of panting.
I brace my hands at my sides against the bed and raise with my back pressed to the wall. Standing seems like my only viable option. It gives me half a chance if this thing rushes me.
Again, from inside the shadows, the unseen beast doesn’t like my movement and it hisses violently, pawing aggressively at the floor. I hear its claws, I see its eyes, smell its breath, but yet there’s no form, nothing in the corner!
At the end of the bed, I left another window open for the summer breezes. A thin metal screen is the only thing on the window. Do I dare plunge through it before this thing is upon me?
It somehow senses my thoughts, and it shifts subtly, the shadows moving with it. Now a couple feet closer to the end of the bed, it sits midway between the door, the end of the bed, and the window.
This tells me one thing. It’s intelligent, but it is also waiting on me to make my move. Yet I feel I have already lost this game of strategy before I even woke up.
I try to summon my dwindling courage. Sweat streams down my neck and chest. I bend slightly, coiling my leg muscles.
The beast stands! I still can’t make out any form, but the shadow grows taller and towers over me, the “head” touching the dusty ceiling. Oh god!
It makes no other move. The ball has come back into my court. My plan for the open window has been shattered.
“Wh- What are you? What do you want?” My voice shakes as violently as my body.
s h e l t e r
The voice carries across to me but speeds through me like a gunshot. It gores my senses and I reel in sudden dizziness and nausea. My legs give out and I collapse in a heap by the pillows.
Shelter? What does that mean?
“I don’t understand.” I moan. “You want to stay in the house?”
It’s useless to try and escape. My fate is in this thing’s claws. There’s no choice but to listen to its demands.
I watch in pure terror as it slowly strides across the room, the floorboards creaking under its weight. Shadows stretching and wrapping around my neck and over my screaming mouth.
Lifted in the air as a smothering sensation wracks me, a burning agony doubles me over in its grasp, and a lightning icy claw rakes across my back.
Tumbling from its hold, I hit the bed, and then tumble to the floor with the words,
w e s h e l t e r h e r e
searing into my brain.
Hours later, as sunlight drifts in and warms my exposed legs and feet. My eyes open and stare up at the room’s dust-covered ceiling fan. A hunger, a need, a blood-thirsty craving howls inside me. My head rises and I study the far wall.
s e r v e
Etched into the faded green wallpaper are symbols, plans, and demands. None that I understand or want to comprehend.
Inside, it reads the words. It knows its purpose.
s h e l t e r a n d s e r v e
It growls again from the dark corners of my tattered soul.
Here is the second victim’s story. Keep in mind, these people are not connected. The demons…well, maybe.
IT GROWLS FROM THE CORNER II
I leaned over and slowly turned the faucet, watching the tepid water pouring into the tub. I sat for a moment absorbed in my thoughts. My world had taken a major hit and nosedived. It all happened right here. Somehow, he turned my own home into a nightmare!
Unable to stop myself, I focused on the cuts and bruises on my hands and arms. A nasty laceration on the top of my left wrist was especially worrisome. It was jagged and deep, held together by twenty-some stitches. A jarring flash image of Jeff’s knife crossed my mind. It had been serrated. One of those hunting knives he collected.
I gasped despite myself as an ugly thought bubbled up. What if it was the knife that I bought him for Christmas two years ago? Would he have done that? I couldn’t recall what the gift had looked like. Before that night, I would have never thought he could be that cruel. Now, I couldn’t honestly profess that I really knew Jeff Huntington.
My hand hesitated as I reached for the shower control lever. First, I glanced at the floor and then stood, pulled off two long white towels from the rack, and laid them out on the gray linoleum. I would never shower behind a curtain again. The bloody and torn-up shower liner from before remained untouched from where it had been wadded up and thrown into the corner by the sink.
Son-of-a-bitch has robbed me of that too. I once cherished long hot showers. Never again. That was exactly how that night had started.
I had driven home after 3 pm from my waitress job at the truck stop, dropped everything, and jumped right into the shower. My uniform always reeked of Anthony’s greasy food and the hated smell coated my skin. It was a habit, the first thing I did every night.
Jeff knew that.
I never heard him come into the bathroom. He must have hidden somewhere in the house. When we broke up three weeks ago, I had demanded the key back, but he obviously made a copy.
Right after the lights went out in the bathroom, he started swinging his aluminum baseball bat. He caught me square on the right side with his first swing. It broke two ribs. However, he didn’t stop with one swing. I was soaking wet, bleeding, screaming, and crying as he carried me out and into the bedroom. There he had already fastened nylon rope to the bed frame. More beating rendered me semi-conscious. I was barely aware when Jeff bound my hands and feet.
Up to that point, Jeff had not said a single word. He shook me to a somewhat lucid state. “You did all this,” he said with a sneer. His voice was terse, his jaw clenched. “You brought all of this on, you understand? It isn’t up for debate. No arguing. You just don’t have the right to call it quits. I am the man! Okay? You are the woman! I will say when and if you can leave. Got that? And Teresa, you aren’t leaving ME!”
He brutally raped me for hours in between breaks to pound his fists into my stomach or cut my body with his blade.
If my two co-workers, Barbara and Shawn, hadn’t come by to take me out dancing as usual on Friday nights, he probably would have killed me. The police believed the coward fled unseen out the backdoor. I was completely knocked out at that point and bleeding badly. It was early in the morning when I woke up days later in the hospital ICU bed.
Unable to realistically stall any longer, I forced myself to take my first shower since his assault. Maybe baths will be more to my taste in the future? I gingerly stepped into the hot water and rotated the shower lever. The water did feel good as I had only had sponge baths for most of my hospital stay. But it was still too fresh. An open wound not scabbed over. Even with the curtain missing I felt my heart race. I grew anxious, too frightened to close my eyes. Every door and window was locked and secured. I made sure every light in the house was on and all the drapes pulled tightly closed.
He was still out there hiding somewhere in the city. They hadn’t found him yet. Hell, he could still be hiding here waiting to finish his baseball practice and end my life once and for all.
I stopped the shower and grabbed another towel to dry off. Right then I craved – needed – a strong drink. I will never feel safe again.
As I entered the doorway, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My right eye remained puffed up like a large plum. Three lines of stitches marred my left cheek and the bridge of my nose. My bare skin was exposed in patches where he cut chunks of my red hair from my scalp. Two of my front teeth were missing. Now I knew why they refused to let me go to the hospital floor bathroom. My personal unit’s room’s mirror had been removed. I hadn’t even noticed.
“Ohhh. Ohhhh. God, what did you do to me?” I barely recognized myself.
I spent hours weeping into my pillows before I passed out from exhaustion and the meds the hospital had given me.
***
Someone said something. Calling me?
I rolled over onto my back, wincing from sudden sharp pain. The broken ribs were not letting me off that easily and punished me for forgetting them. My breath came out shaky and plumed in the frigid air of the bedroom.
Huh? It’s summer!
I shot a look at the window in the southern corner of the bedroom. It was dark outside, and only the streetlights glowed through the beige curtains. The room was pitch black. The hall light was off as well. My hands gripped the sheets in a surge of panic.
Is he back?
A low growl wafted through the room. An ominous patch of pure darkness occupied the corner opposite the window. The patch completely blotted all of the room’s features. Something inside it smelled almost like rotting garbage or old meat. It was truly rank, and I couldn’t help but gag. Yet, I couldn’t compel myself to move. A pair of silvery eyes opened slowly inside the black patch in the corner. They didn’t move, only stared intently and deliberately.
Oh god, what do I do now? I can’t fight him off… Wait! Is that Jeff? What is that?
My frantic thoughts raced, but my body remained locked and rigid under the sheets.
“Wh-wh-who?” The words slipped out from chapped and split lips.
No reply. No movement. Nothing.
I waited several long and drawn-out minutes.
“I see you,” I stated. This time with no stammer, but the fright still had its grip on my heart. “What do you want?”
The patch grew larger. I heard sharp claws scrape against the tiles of the bedroom floor. It made a full exhale of fetid breath before it leaped into the air and landed deftly upon my chest. This shadow beast pinned me to the bed. Razor-sharp points of its claws poking into the pajama top I wore. It was heavy but not unbearable. The patch was now child-size and perched on my trembling body. A dark, blurry face, lean and elongated like a goat with two big watery eyes peered down at me. The creature tilted its head to one side. Wide, black antlers clicked against the wall.
“Are you tired, Teresa?” it asked. The voice was slightly nasal but had a smooth humanlike tone and resonance.
“Wh-what?” I replied, again stammering uncontrollably.
“Tired of always being beaten, put upon. Broken. Your whole life you have lived under someone’s thumb. First Daddy. Then Uncle Ron after your parents died. Later, you let one loser after another take piece after piece of Teresa Rianne Baylor. Did Jeff take the last bit of you? Are you dead after all?”
The haunting words dug deep, shredding my spirit and soul. Tears poured down my sliced cheeks.
“Are you there?” It inquired.
“Yes. Yes to all your questions.”
“Good. Yes. There you are.” It leaned down between furry haunches that I briefly glimpsed in the shadowy patch. The goat face was merely inches from mine. Wisps of black fur on its chin tickled my neck. “Is there enough of you left to finally make a stand? Make them pay. Make them know who they really are dealing with?”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“You will never be powerless again. You don’t have to feel pain like that.”
I nodded. Then whispered, “How?”
“Give me shelter.”
“You want to stay here?” I was lost in the direction of the conversation.
A low rumbling growl from deep within the beast’s chest evolved into a chuckle. “No, no, not this shit hole.” A bony, pale gray index finger came down and pointed to my forehead. “Shelter.” There was a tangible electricity to the spoken word. I could almost feel the weight of it drop onto my chest from its mouth.
Is this a nightmare? It can’t be real!
Oh, girl, I am very real. Its voice rang out inside my skull.
“Please! Please don’t hurt me,” I wailed. This was all too much, too sudden after the terror that Jeff had put me through.
STOP! It demanded. Its dead-cold finger with a nail, black as oil and crusted with gore, pressed into my skin.
My words stopped short, my mouth closed, and I gazed in awestruck wonder up at the demonic face.
“Shelter me and you will never walk alone again. Never be weak again. You will face the world fearlessly. SHELTER ME. SERVE ME NOW. I WILL THEN STOP HIM AND THE OTHERS…FOREVER…
A simple smile formed on my busted lips. I felt a part of myself return. A flicker of life was restored.
A dark calm passed through my ravaged body as my master smiled a toothy, frothy grin.
***
A loud series of snores vibrated through the trailer, even shaking the walls with their powerful volume. I found the fat pig passed out, slouched onto his left side in a broken recliner. Beer cans were crumpled at his feet, a discarded bag of Doritos lay on the floor and only a muted television set on a crate lit up the room.
Jeff was back home, carefree with all charges dropped. The investigation died since they couldn’t find me. Some even suspected Jeff had found me first and I was rotting somewhere in a shallow grave. Or some think it was a ploy by me to get attention or a smear campaign because Jeff is such an upright citizen. Either way, there was no one to testify and no one to accuse him. The police apologized and sent him on his way scot-free. Without a doubt, they were fearing he was going to sue their asses for false arrest.
That was all fine. I didn’t want the police to keep Jeff. He was all alone now.
The air thickened as the temperature dropped. Jeff’s snores subsided some when he hugged his arms across his wide chest and shivered. All but the light from the television darkened, snuffed out under a blanket of silence. A rotating fan standing next to the doorway cruised to a stop.
Jeff didn’t hear the soft whine coming from Cooper, his aged beagle, as he slinked out of the room. His tail was tucked between his legs in resignation and fear.
An infinite patch of darkness swallowed even more light from the room and the shadow expanded above the television set.
Jeff woke up with a start. Tangled fragments of a nightmare drifted away as he blinked himself awake. I plagued his dreams.
His eyes focused on an old rerun of the Password game show. The colors from the screen had bled away, now only stark blacks and whites were visible. The people were also distorted, their heads elongated as their arms stretched in odd angles. My visit was distorting reality, bending the rules.
“What the Hell?” he murmured, fascinated yet seemingly repulsed by the surreal sight.
I let out a soft hiss that broke his concentration, and he noticed then the patch of utter darkness above the set for the first time. The patch had settled and now appeared crouching on top of his television. It was time for me to enter.
I showed my two slender hands and altered them to an abnormal length. His eyes bulged at the sight. Then my thin fingers slowly inched their way down. My new blood red nails made tiny clicking sounds on the glass of the screen until they reached the crate. My hands were still pale and feminine, but I kept the cuts and bruises he made. They crisscrossed and wrapped about my limbs. That long laceration that twisted around the wrist especially caught his attention.
Jeff reflexively sat up and pulled his legs away from the crate. He trembled now with fear more than from the chill.
My soft laughter at the sight of him drowned out his disbelief. “Oh, God. Teresa?”
“Mmm-hmmm. Baby, I’m home. I’m hurt. It doesn’t look like you missed me.” My distorted voice was high-pitched and purposefully mocking
His hands scrambled and plucked a long knife that was sheathed at his belt. He waved it before him. “I will mess you up! Don’t get near me!”
I laughed even louder at his silly show of being a threat. He was about to see who he really was up against. I expanded the patch more and manifested. I was taller and slender than I was before. A lot of me had changed!
I slid down and flowed out toward him like watery smoke as the television blinked dead without a sound. His entire trailer was dark and dense as a tomb.
“You did all this,” I said. “You brought all of this on, you understand? It isn’t up for debate. No arguing. You just don’t have the right to call it quits tonight. I am in control now, little man. You are my bitch! I will say when and if you live. Got that? And Jeff, you will never be leaving me!”
I erupted in more malicious gales of laughter as my hand slashed out impossibly fast. The strike flayed open his right cheek. The skin and flesh slipped down and folded over exposing teeth and upper jawbone.
It was the first of Jeff’s bloodcurdling screams, but not the last he was going to give to me.
The last screams came when I squeezed my fingers into his skull and plucked out his eyes one by one and then laid them perfectly on top of the television facing the door.
I left him alive for now. When the police found him he was blind, castrated, amputated, and mute. Lying in a pool of his own blood. I did leave him with his hearing intact so that he could hear the whispers of pity and the placating lies that they told him and all would be okay as he was rushed to the hospital.
The same one that saved my life.
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