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  To her complete shock, the crow had attacked her violently a few minutes later. She knew by the way that the crow continued to peck at her eyes that it was attacking her in a sentient manner. The thought that she might have been insane never even danced into her head. She managed to kill the crow, snapping its weak neck between her fingers before she let it drop to the ground, grinding its bones underneath her shoe.

  Sarah turned on the stereo before she left the basement, letting it play an endless loop of the classical music of Handel. She let her hands dance delicately to its rhythms as she walked back up the stairs.

  She shrieked, her rage blasting through the house like fiery wind, when she saw the squirrel skitter rapidly across the doorway. Howling, she ran up the stairs, her eyes bulging. George was nowhere to be seen.

  Frantically, she had torn up her house for signs of the creature. An hour later, Sarah was weeping as she pulled clothes from her closet in frustration. The thought that the little creature was inside her home and free made her terrified. She was clawing at her face angrily and wailing when she heard the doorbell ring.

  Sarah stopped breathing, her eyes turning to the side of her head as if she could hear visually. The doorbell rang again, echoing through the house eerily. She shook with rage when her animals began to carry on furiously from the basement. Moving quickly, she ran to the mirror to fix herself. Her dark hair was disheveled, sticking out of her head in snake-like strands. Her glasses were so crooked that they were practically sideways on her face. The left lens had a splotch of blood on it. She fixed herself as best she could and adjusted her glasses, almost screaming in panic when the doorbell rang a third time.

  “Who is it?” she asked into the door, trying to keep her voice as normal as possible, but the tremor was unmistakable. Using her finger, she wiped a smudge of blood from the lens of her glasses. The animals continued to chatter noisily from below.

  “It’s the police, Miss Hunter. Can I speak to you for a moment please?” The voice was deep and accusatory. She hadn’t even opened the door and already she felt weak with fear. Simon’s body was only one room away.

  She opened the door slowly. “I’m busy at the moment, officer.”

  “It will only take a few second, miss,” the officer said politely. “Can I come in?”

  Sarah quickly stepped outside, closing the door behind her. “Oh goodness no! I haven’t cleaned today and I’m embarrassed.” The officer’s thick mustache barely hid the fact that he was young. His blond hair stuck out from underneath his hat in little tufts.

  The officer scrutinized her quietly. The only sound that could be heard was the wailing of the animals like lost souls. “Okay, Miss. Have you seen this teenager?” The officer held a photograph to the light. It was Simon.

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, fighting to control the panic in her voice. “Should I have?”

  “He was last seen in this area,” the officer said sadly. “I’m just going from door to door and hoping someone has seen him. I am sure you know there are over thirty people missing in the last two years and everyone is fearful that he may join those missing. If you see or hear anything at all, will you please contact us? His name is Simon Parks.”

  “I sure will, officer,” she said, relieved that he seemed to be leaving. Sarah was about to turn around and go back inside the house when a loud crash reverberated through the front door.

  The officer cocked an eyebrow. “And that was …?”

  Sarah smiled weakly, knowing full well that she was not being very convincing. “I have cats. They fight a lot.”

  He nodded casually. “You mind if I take a peek, Miss Hunter?”

  The grisly image of Simon’s body in the living room with a steak knife buried deep into his chest bled messily into her brain. “I’m very busy, officer.”

  “It will only take a minute.”

  Sarah fingered the knife she held in the pocket of her dress and frowned. “Okay, but this better only take a minute. I don’t have time for this sort of thing.” She placed her damp fingers on the doorknob and turned it. For a brief second, she saw the squirrel scurry up the stairs where it vanished in the darkness.

  Simon the kitten was sitting on the table where the lamp had turned over. With a strange mewling sound falling from his furry lips, he stood up on two legs, giving him the appearance of a tiny, furry child. Lifting his paw in the air, he pointed toward the living room and his corpse. He leapt to the carpet, where he stood up again and repeated his previous movement. The officer seemed genuinely astonished.

  Sarah used the moment to plunge the knife into the back of his neck, flinching as a spray of hot blood splattered into the side of her face. “You fucker,” she spat, stabbing the officer repeatedly in the back, her teeth clenched in rage. She left the knife embedded in his back and stood up, wiping her hand over her blood-covered face. The right lens of her glasses was covered in red, giving the illusion that the world around her was splashed in crimson. She looked at herself in the hallway mirror and smiled crookedly. Reaching down to the corpse, Sarah removed the knife from the officer’s flesh. His fingers were still twitching within the puddle of his blood. Moving like a predator, she walked down the hallway in search of the traitorous Simon.

  She knew that her luck had finally burned out. Half of the neighborhood had probably witnessed the police officer enter her house. She would destroy her pets first and then flee.

  “Where are you, you seditious little fuck?” she whispered as she entered the living room, the dripping knife held before her menacingly. Gideon was crouched on the floor, his back arched. He hissed at the couch and then stared up at Sarah. She giggled and threw the couch aside.

  Simon backed into the wall, his mouth open under his wide eyes.

  She swung the knife down savagely as the kitten scampered away. It ran through the basement door and disappeared down the dimly lit steps, Gideon in hot pursuit. Sarah snorted with grim satisfaction; there was no way out of the basement. For the briefest of moments, she considered letting Gideon toy with Simon. After all, he hadn’t had a toy to play with since a certain mouse a few months ago. She decided it would be best to finish Simon before he could create more havoc. It was bad enough that George was still creeping around the house.

  Her foot had just hit the first step when George rushed across the carpet, leapt into the air, and slammed squarely into the center of her back. Losing her balance, she plummeted down the wooden stairs, screaming as she fell. She hit the concrete floor violently, still shrieking where she lay.

  Sarah opened her eyes and saw her shoulder staring back at her at an unnatural angle. Moaning, she struggled to move her arms and legs, eyes narrowing as they adjusted to the dimly lit basement. She did not know it, but Gideon had been crushed underneath her body like a broken insect. George scurried over to her face and stood up defiantly. Sarah could swear that the squirrel was grinning ferociously, his eyes shining psychotically in the fluorescent light.

  The squirrel climbed up to the first cage and slid the lock to the side with ease. Oliver moved into the light of the open doorway, his eyes dancing insanely. He leapt to the floor and crawled toward her face, his long teeth drooling with sticky saliva. George continued to scurry around the room, opening cages.

  Oliver hissed and bit down into her eyebrow, ripping her flesh away hungrily. Sarah screamed and tried to slam her face into the rat, succeeding only to smash the side of her head into the concrete floor. He chomped into her bottom lip and tore a thick piece away savagely, exposing her blood-covered teeth. A tomcat harboring the soul of a man named Franklin Pope began to munch fervently on her right ear, his teeth snapping into her cartilage. A small Dachshund began rip fiercely on her cheek, spraying blood into her nose. Oliver moved over to her eye, gnawing viciously on her eyelid as her head twisted around in spastic agony. Within moments, the animals had covered her paralyzed body in one writhing mass of fur and tiny legs.

  When the authorities found her body several days later
, little was left but her broken skeleton. George watched the police remove the body from a tree branch near the front door. If someone had looked up, they would almost suspect that the squirrel was grinning. And he was.

  Other eBooks from David Whitman

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  Doppelgängers, hitmen, zombies, a reality-manipulating demon, a profanity-shouting severed head, and a knife-wielding Betty Page lookalike all mix together in madness and mayhem when parallel dimensions crash together. Join British gangster Tim Machen as he descends into madness when the space time continuum breaks down on a routine hit at a secluded Victorian mansion in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated and genre-bending Deadfellas.

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  “A Better World” : A man, after a sexual encounter with the graveyard ghost of his dead lover, inherits an extremely unusual infant.

  “A Momentary Thing” : In this surreal and violent TWILIGHT ZONE homage, two strangers find themselves trapped in an elevator that opens up into a violent alternate reality.

  “Except for Ophelia” : Ian and Ophelia, two supernatural creatures, find themselves hunted down by the local townsfolk after a visit to a carnival turns into a blood-splattered fight for survival.

  “Family Plotting” : Fred enlists the help of his estranged and twisted mafia family to help him hide the body of a woman he has accidentally killed. Could this opportunity be used to finally do away with Dad?

  “Undenied” : In this story, inspired by Bradbury’s SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, two twelve year old boys try to discover why a mysterious man visits his wife’s mausoleum every evening. What they find out will change their lives forever.

  “Feeling Alive” : Two serial killers team up on the night of the supposed Apocalypse.

  “They All Dream About Them Here” : A man finds himself the cell-mate of a mentally challenged prisoner named Rabbit. Only Rabbit seems to know why dreams and reality have somehow merged together.

  “Rosahella’s Footprints” : Edward Covington follows his dead daughter’s spectral footprints through the snow and into the wilderness.

  “Some Of Us Are Looking at the Stars" : A soldier is sent to an obscure outpost in deep space with orders to kill his now insane war friend Sydney Vale in this science fiction retelling of APOCALYPSE NOW and HEART OF DARKNESS.

  “The Dark Reality of Bannen Wilde” : A woman encounters a frightening being on a subway train that has the ability to travel into different worlds.

  “Standing Betwixt Worlds in Delightful Agony” : A disfigured self-mutilator believes he can see threatening creatures from another world by causing himself pain in this tale of modern trepanning.

  “Feeling Katherine” : A serial killer falls in love with his victim in this surreal and blood splattered horror tale.

  “With Quiet Violence” : On a getaway into the Pennsylvania woods, a man finds the frozen body of his dead little girl standing in snow outside his cabin door.

  Harlan

  Harlan is about a suicidal, death-obsessed teenager by the name of Harlan Sexton. Turning himself into a ticking bomb, he has decided to kill himself at the end of the school year unless his closest friend Julian can find a way to change his mind. And that's just the beginning--the tension is amped up by the return of his abusive redneck father, a town serial killer stalking his female classmates, and an all out violent war between Harlan and a jock bully from school. If John Hughes had directed a movie inspired by the Columbine tragedy it would be this book.