Richard Stetson saw only a brief flicker of crimson light burst from across the road before the man was gone. The stranger had been tall, shrouded under a side of the neighbor’s garage and he vanished in the blink of an eye. The sight of this ominous figure startled Rich who had just gotten home and was walking towards his front door. An internal sensor must have gone off in his brain (like when you can sense yourself being watched but you can’t really explain how or why you know) which alerted him to turn at just the right moment.
After several minutes of staring out into the distance Rich shrugged his shoulders and entered the house.
I must have imagined it, Rich thought to himself. The flash was just the glare of a car’s headlights as it turned a corner.
But there had been no car.
Well, none that I could see. Besides, I’m tired. Who cares?
Rich dropped his briefcase onto the kitchen table. The case made a hollow thud. He flicked on the lights to reveal a living room as cold and sterile as a hospital room and walked over to his bar. It was well stocked with all of his favorite companions. He poured himself a glass with ice and whiskey then took a long sip that warmed his belly and washed him in a wave of quick comfort. Those unsettling thoughts of a vanishing man were drowned out by the alluring effects of the liquor.
He strode past the framed pictures of his ex wife and three daughters. The three girls had all grown up since that picture was taken and lived far away from him.
The lights in the living room were dim but bright enough to make a discernible reflection on the television screen that looked back at Rich. He grunted as he stooped to pick up the controller from under his recliner. The screen sparked to life with one seamless flick of his wrist.
Rich felt at home with all the pretty and handsome faces that were pushing their products, even if they had no long-term value to the average American consumer. This was the condescending and sex-induced world that Rich was used to. He co-created a hefty blip of broadcasting royalty and was the executive producer of one of the most successful shows at the time. It had garnered such high ratings and critical acclaim that Rich was liable to never again go without liquor or the occasional call-girl to keep him company. With that kind of success he’d be set for as long as his health would allow, or just as long as Everyman remained in the public’s consumptive eye.
Rich surfed the channels.
After some time he felt he could no longer ignore the lingering feeling that something was wrong.
As Rich turned from the television screen he noticed for the first time the eerie silence that had fallen over the entire house. Only then, as he stood up, did he see the hooded figure that towered over the back of his chair. The sight made sweat break out on Rich’s oily face. He scrambled out from under the figure’s shadow and moved without a second thought for his Blackberry. Rich’s finger’s were just inches away from the phone when it shot up from where it lay by an invisible force that then shot it downward so fast at Rich’s forehead that he could hear it make a sickening crack against his skull and felt the shattered pieces of the phone trickle about him. He writhed in pain and felt cold drops of blood trail down from the bridge of his nose.
A shaking cry escaped Rich’s mouth. The thing behind him laughed as it advanced on him with a ferocity that made Rich feel like a kitten trapped in the jaws of a shark. His body was heaved up off the floor then he felt himself being thrown across the room and come crashing into the television screen. It shattered against the weight of his elbow. Glass shards pierced his flesh and he screamed out in agony. His cries were lost in the loud maniacal laughter of the hooded figure that had kneeled before him. Rich staggered from the shattered screen and was hit by the awful stench coming from the figure. It was then that Rich looked down at his own mangled arm and was sickened. A thick shard of glass was jutting from his bicep letting blood flow freely from its depths as though liberating it from the confines of his body. In the reflection of the glass fragment Rich caught a glimpse of his attacker’s decomposed fingers reaching out for him and he was too slow to stop it from taking hold of that glass-starred arm and raised him up into the air.
Rich heard the glass crunching under its terrible grip and for a moment he wished that he could succumb to that growing wave of lingering unconsciousness. He welcomed it now, oh how he longed to be anywhere but there.
The bony backside of a hand struck his cheek and what drowsiness had been coursing through him was replaced by a massive throbbing pain that was more than anything he had ever imagined he could withstand.
Rich’s voice came out in a stuttering whisper. “Who are you? What do you want?”
There was a long silence that followed. His assailant stopped laughing and stared out of its hood. Rich saw through his remaining good eye that there were glowing bright red eyes staring back at him with a hatred that made his body tremble and his bowels let loose without any sign of restraint.
Rich screamed for help but this proved to be a bad idea.
The figure flung him one last time. His body crashed against the wall and he slumped to the floor in a broken and bloody heap. The pain was indescribable. It came to him in one constant pulsing wave. Rich wanted it to end.
“How does it feel? Wanting death? Hahahaha. So pathetic.”
“Why?”
“You!” Its voice shook the entire room. “Do you think that I haven’t been watching you?”
“Why me?”
“I saw it all. You killed her…She was your daughter! You smothered her in her crib just because she wouldn’t stop crying. You had the mother lie to the police and then you killed her too. You disgusting waste! Then there’s the call girls you killed, the money you stole, the lives that you ruined. For what?”
Rich was speechless. He gave no response save for a belabored grunt and coughed up more blood than he knew that he had.
“You earned all of this! Now you can join me in the realm of infinite nightmares.”
These words sank into Rich like cold knives. The figure snapped its bony fingers with a deafening crack then the living room thinned away to reveal a vast starry landscape scarred with deep cracks. Ghastly hands reached out from below. Rich gasped as he managed to sit up on his trembling knees. He was no longer home. He was not even sure if he was on Earth any more.
“Welcome,” a thick serpentine voice hissed at Rich in the shrouded distance. The massive creature unfurled its wings and towered over Rich. He looked up at its terrible frame and fell to the floor, insane with terror. Rich’s screams echoed all throughout the desert world, lost against the billions of other constant screams.
FLAVIO HUITRON 