Page 61 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

construction. While he retained his hat, his otherworldly
eyes were lightless and inactive, apparently sleeping beneath
thin sheets of pale flesh. He appeared to be resting, but if I
understood these creatures at all, the possessing entity was
merely away somewhere, tending the wicked business of
harrowing.
I waited for the creature to revisit its vehicle of flesh and
bone, hoping my vengeance could reach beyond its stolen
body. More specifically, I hoped my sisters were able to bleed
a nightmare. I waited with the patience of stone until finally
a glow began seeping from behind the barriers of flesh and
blood. I hunched down behind the bed, not wanting the eyes
of the thing to gaze fully upon me, lest I return to the deeper
nightmare throbbing under the city. The creature began to
stir, rising from the bed and into the air, borne aloft upon
strange winds that never left the creature’s side. I followed
the light of its eyes to where it discolored the bed upon
which I’d been reposed, to be filled with others of its kind.
I lunged, my arms rushing beneath the creature’s delicate
neck, squeezing with all my strength. My sister slid into the
nightmare’s back, only whispering distance from its heart.
In a singsong voice of scarcely restrained laughter, my
sister’s words glided into the open air. “I wonder what color
you will turn my radiant teeth, my light-eyed friend, after
I’ve chewed you down to the echoes of your last scream!”
The thing spasmed as if electrocuted, its eyes becoming
twin suns of cold blue light. Anything they shone upon
became liquescent in appearance, indefinite. I could still
hear my sister’s laughter, dimmed somewhat by layers of
intervening tissue. Ever-so-slowly, she moved closer to a
killing depth. Somewhere on the other side of the creature’s
flesh, I could detect a living nightmare frantically attempting
to flee its sinking ship. It raced toward an exit, hoping to
attain the freedom lurking just beyond sleeping skin before
its stolen host became its tomb. My sister corkscrewed into
the creature’s heart, freeing the death that lived within,
64 | Mark Anzalone