Page 182 - The Houseguest

madness as an individual expedition, but who’s to say one cannot share the journey? Now I began to wonder if watching her go mentally over the edge would add pleasure to my plan. Though I’ve enjoyed the challenges, I hadn’t planned on all the twists and turns Ravenge would bring.
So now my mind went into warp drive designing ways to test her mental fortitude in addition to her physical endurance. To begin, I went back into her room and turned the faucet on to drip. I knew the sound of the irritating repeating rhythm would be amplified when the quiet of the night arrived. Drifting back into the archives of my childhood, I remembered a few things that pushed me to the edges of fear and anxiety.
One of those was my disdain for insects, specifically crickets. Just the thought of them today brought shivers through my body. Carrying a mason jar, I walked into the backyard to search for any cousin of the cricket, though I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to actually catch them for the jar. Walking slowly and methodically through the grass and sand lawn, common to houses near the beach, I recalled the small sand crabs that would enthrall little Katie. She would capture and release them as I tried to hide my fear of the lonesome creatures long enough for her to delight in their nervous antics.
Sand crabs feed on the microscopic plankton of wet sand left behind by breaking waves. They move quickly and erratically, so Katie and I had to devise a perfect plan to catch them. When the water receded, the crab would begin digging, thus creating bubbles. That is where we would scoop the sand, often containing one of the vile miniature beasts that
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The Houseguest by Linda Ellis www.LindaEllis.life