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Short Story S:4 Post: 3 - "Gotcha!"

     It was the way the wind blew in that told her something was wrong.
     Lying there in her bed, the cats asleep in their various play boxes on the floor, the tv casting a soft light--its screen saver slowly bouncing around, the summer air pushed violently through her opened window--past heavy curtains--and rushed along her exposed skin--the force of it whistling in the still of night.
     Her breath hitched and her skin prickled with goosebumps, the atmosphere around her suddenly charged with foreboding. Ears straining in the darkness, heart thumping hard between her breastbone and the mattress beneath, she listened to the trees rustling outside--garbage cans clanging against their restraints--not a single car passing down the streets.
     She felt isolated and hyper aware.
     This was the kind of moment one expected a rapping to occur on their door--having never heard someone, or something, approaching moments prior.
     Or the type of glaring--instinctual--psychic impression that a monstrous vessel was about to break the midnight skyline with a flash of lightening and a warning thunder--making you tingle with alien static. 
     But neither occurred.
     Instead, the wind howled and circled in again, rattling the window panes, dancing with the curtains like a jerky marionette on strings. She could smell rain on its breath, the slight taste of coal as a train echoed in the distance. It stroked her hair, tugged on the thin sheet covering her, and sighed into the tiny bedroom.

     Then it laughed.

     Not the deep rumbling kind, or the soft seductive come-hither.
     No.
     It chuckled playfully, like a mischievous child.
     The hairs on her body stood as the haunting laughter drifted around her.
     Was it in the apartment with her? Outside? Or somewhere in between?
     She was afraid to move from her current position facing the wall beside her--back turned to the window. It felt wiser, safer, to remain ignorant of what was occurring around her.
     
     So she believed.

     It was mistake.
     A ghastly one--she terrifyingly realized--as dark smoke began to seep into existence in the space between the wall and her, twisting, arching into a densely forming shadow. In the seconds it took for a shape to form, she knew it was too late to escape.
     Hands as cold as ice slammed into her back--sharp fingers wrapping tightly around her spine, pinning her painfully down into the mattress. 
     The sheets started to stick as blood gushed from her, lungs deflating, throat gurgling while it filled with fluid. Still conscious, still horrifically aware, she felt the grotesque creature kneel onto the bending frame of the bed, continuing to push down on her, and pressed its wet lips to her ear.
     Darkness swallowing her vision, breath spluttering from her open mouth, she chilled at the last words she ever heard rasped against her in childish glee.
     "Gotcha!"






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