Ashley's Fiction Gumbo Page 2
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Home Invasion
Dr. Jaclyn Hines huddles over the microscope with only it’s light illuminating the room as she studies a specimen she smuggled from work. The specimen is part of a meteor rock found outside of town. As the she observes the slide, heat from the light causes the specimen to fume. Unaware of the fumes, she watches as the specimen swells in size. “This is amazing,” she mumbles to herself. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Observing closer, she hears a blood-curdling scream. She breaks her fixation and snaps her head towards the door. Her vision blurs as she tries to focus, when another scream strikes her ears. The screams are coming from her ten-year-old daughter Caroline’s upstairs. Dr. Hines scrabbles to her feet but struggles to keep her balance. She makes her way stumbling through the darkened room towards the stairs. Everything around her is in a haze as if she is traveling at warp speed, but her legs her heavy like trying to run in mud. Dizzy and disoriented she tramples up the stairs tripping on the top step. Falling to the floor, she fells a sharp pain in her hands. Dr. Hines looks down the hallway as her daughter screams become louder and more vivid. The door seems a mile away down a dark tunnel, with only a flickering glow from behind the door illuminating the passageway. She struggles to her feet snapping from her dream-like state to find herself standing in front of her daughters door as if teleported through time.
“Mom! Mom,” Caroline screams. “He is trying to get me!” Jaclyn tries to open the door, but she cannot. Her daughter screams louder with terror as Jaclyn throws her shoulder into the door breaking the sill of the door. She scans the room for her child, spotting her tucked in the far corner of the room. She sprints to her daughter’s safety. “Mom,” she exhales. “He was scratching at the door!”
“Who Caroline?”
“The monster! He was trying to eat me,” she exclaims out of breath. Jaclyn scans the room and sees nothing but the flashing television box playing a gory monster movie.
“Caroline, there’s no one in here,” she demands. “You must have had a nightmare.”
“No Mom, I could see his feet under the door.”
“Monsters don’t exist Caroline,” she scolds as she ushers Caroline back to bed. Caroline climbs into her bed and Jaclyn tucks her in tight noticing the blood on her hands from her fall. Standing from the bed Jaclyn and departs the room turning off the television as she leaves. As Dr. Hines closes the door, she notices scratches around the doorknob. She immediately turns around and rescans the room finding nothing.
Dr. Hines continues to search through the house finding nothing out of place. Entering the kitchen she flips on the light as something from the counter leaps out at her. Startled she trips backwards against the wall. “Damn cat,” she gasps. She grabs a knife from he cutting block and returns to her daughter’s room. Taking a deep breath, she eases the door open and notices her daughter laying in bed the same as she left her. Exhaling a sigh of relief, he goes in and sits on the bed beside Caroline.
“Mom,” she asks opening her eyes.
“Yes baby,” she answers. “ I’m going to put this next to your bed, so you feel safe.”
“Okay Mom, but…”
“Just in case,” she whispers giving her a wink and a kiss.
As she returns to her lab, a pungent odor of rotting flesh and garbage attacks her nostrils. She notices smoke coming from the slide on her microscope. Dashing over and discarding the slide in the trash, the smell turns her stomach and she instantly becomes nauseous. Choking back vomit, she heads to her bedroom to lie down. While in her bed she clutches her stomach as she tosses and turns in pain. Submitting to the pain, she leans over and throws up her dinner. Feeling a presence over her, she looks up with wide-eyes of horror and lets out a howling scream.
Caroline sits up in her bed clutching her blanket. Caroline grabs the knife, tiptoes over, and opens her broken door. She stares down the dark and uninviting hallway. Her mother door swings open and someone steps out into the black hallway. “Mom,” she calls out. The figure snaps its head around towards
Caroline, but it is not her mother. It charges towards her and leaps back into her bedroom slamming the door. Sliding the larger console television behind the door, he punches the power button turning it on. A woman’s face resembling her mother fills the screen of the TV. The eyes of the woman stare at her piercing her soul, as the creature slams in the door cracking it open. Caroline watches in horror as the creature slips it’s green leather hand with jagged fingernails though the opening. She screams. The creature nudges the door. She hides. The creature hits the door again unplugging the television and throwing the room into complete darkness.
The room is dark but Caroline can still see as the monster creeps its way into the room. It takes it bloody hand and whips back the blankets as Caroline let’s out a scream. It turns and snarls at her with its large yellow eyes and long sharp teeth. Leaping over her bed at her, Caroline closes her eyes and extends the knife as the creature impales itself through the chest. The monster goes limp and falls to the floor. Caroline opens her eyes and observes the monster dying and withering in the form of her mother. Caroline runs to her mother clutching at the knife that stands tall in her breast. “Mom, I’m so sorry,” she wales.
“It’s okay baby,” she says with her last breaths. “The monster is dead now.”