He tried to move a step, but the inhuman form moved in the center of those upright fingers, moved several powerful tentacles that almost rubbed Richard's face. An abominable form was there and began to move toward Richard. Given his profession, as a writer, seeing him more clearly, he recognized him as a creature as described by his favorite author, H. P. Lovecraft, in the Myths of Cthulhu. And suddenly, his blood froze. It would be a product of his mind, he thought once more, but the abominable being leaned on several of its tentacles, and the last thing Richard saw as he screamed in panic was gleaming yellowish eyes over a protruding mouth with hundreds or perhaps thousands of sharp teeth and Collapsed in a pestilent trachea. An intense pain ran through his body as the beast embraced him, and then he knew that it was neither a nightmare, nor the damn pills, nor alcohol. When he vomited blood from the fact that he was already bursting inside, he knew that this was all reality. Damn bogeyman, he said.
11
In the morning, and after a long week of rain and clouds, the sun appeared. The first rays of it entered through the window of the room. There was a twisted body and a cluster of bones poking out of the rigid flesh. Downstairs, in the living room, the typewriter was where the first day took place, with the blank sheet still on it. The rays of the sun illuminated her. Now Richard, if it had been a dream, could write the first words "Sometimes, sleep."
Of the abominable being now, nothing was known until the next tenant...
They Are Amongst Us
“Yes. They are among us,” the warden said quietly as he circled the table with his short steps and the sound of his boots as he hit the solid stone floor. We do not see them, but they are there. It is what happens to a family of good that suffer the consequences of being next to them.
The guests moved their long necks in the direction of the caretaker who was constantly moving around the table and caressing the soft red silk tablecloth with his fingers. The warden gave at least three turns to the table, and those necks moved their heads like clock hands, staring at the plump, small man.
“I do not want to interrupt the story but I have to tell you that it is about beings or someone unknown that is next to us and that at any moment can suck us through the mirror, the window or what men call the box silly...”
And that's how he began to tell the story before the silent silence of those attendants who did not move even one iota when the warden began to report...
1
When Ellen felt the extreme pain in one of her feet she woke up suddenly and fixed her gaze on his leg, which, although it could not be seen, did not distinguish between the penumbra nothing that made him think that there was something there, next to the bed . With one hand she turned on the night-light, and when she realized that there was really nothing down there, she was deeply relieved. But now he had an ankle pain. He drew his foot along the edge of the bed and noticed something astounding. He had bruised that part of his foot, as if something or someone had been gripping him with great force. At first he was frightened, but more could think. Peter, at his side, was still asleep and, worse still, snoring like a beast. He had only to wait a little time to get into the sleep line again and turn off the night-light and go back to sleep. This time without any mishaps.
2
The next morning, the purple felt less and it did not hurt as much, so it went almost unnoticed for Ellen and did not tell Peter anything, which rose as usual to go straight to the shower before breakfast.
"How did you sleep, honey?" Peter asked her, kissing her afterwards.
"Good," she said. He no longer remembered the pain in his ankle.
"Well, we have one more day!"
"And what do you say, how the days go by..."
“What day is today? Wednesday?”
"Thurrrrrsday," she smiled. How well you live! She moved away from him to the coffee pot and added. It shows that you work well.
"Yes, I cannot complain," he replied, taking a seat at the table.
The fact is that one more day of routine had breakfast together and Peter went to work, while Ellen would stay at home and do the housework. And almost pissed off he would wait until well after night to return from work. Unfortunately, they had no children, an attempt at in vitro fertilization technique, "one of many attempts", left KO forever. Test failed.
3
After spending most of the day alone, Ellen decided it was time to watch some TV. So he lay down on the couch and switched on the DishNet receiver to start doing the sport of thumb, zapping. They had an inhalation composed of a parabola with a LNB "receiving head" of two downspouts. In this way, they had a Dishnet receiver in the room and another in the living room. Dishnet is a satellite payment platform with good reception in the United States, especially if you do not get cable television. She watched television an hour and a half or so until Peter came home and, as usual, Ellen asked, "What do you want for dinner today?" One day without more. A monotonous day like the others and that night something strange happened again, apart from making love, a rare thing lately.
4
Again, the sharp pain in the ankle, this time in the other leg, and when he wanted to turn on the lamp of the bedside table this was not enough, because his body was between the floor and the bed. She had simply been dragged beneath the sheets. He straightened up in bed and, full of sweat, reached the night-light and lit it. There was nothing there except Peter snoring, lying on the other side of the bed. He looked down at his two ankles. He had a bruise on each of them, but this time they marked, in one of them, what would be two fingers. He looked around the room with his eyes almost lost in fear and saw nothing. Awakening Peter would be an idiocy, due to his heavy sleep and step in emergency measures at night. So she clung to her anxiety attack, trying to appease her fear.
And then he noticed something. The plasma TV was on, with the dark, black screen, with a "NO SIGNAL" message in the center of it.
5
The next day Ellen, sobbing, told her husband what was happening to her on the nights of a while and showed her ankles, but Peter was not too credible, in fact he did not believe in certain things and Drove more towards a home accident.
"Oh! Ellen, you've sprained yourself. Shall I take you to the doctor?”
“Don’t!” She jerked away from him, flapping her hands.
"Come on baby, will not you really think you believe all this...?"
“It does not matter! You can go to work. It doesn’t matter.”
And he left without more. The thing did not promise in marriage.
6
They stopped talking for a few days and, fortunately, Ellen did not do anything like that during that time, except every time she woke up she saw the plasma television turned on in the morning. Both of them, the room and the living room. With the message "NO SIGNAL" in the center. Since she did not speak to her husband, she did not want to say anything to him, so that time passed and even that became trivial for her.
The decoders were state-of-the-art and also dawned and sometimes updated only for channel changes or reorganization of the system's EPG service, among other things. And maybe that made the TVs turn on, because when I turned it off and then turned it on again, I noticed how everything went right and there was an image. Things of modern technology, he thought without giving more importance than the expense of light.
But one night something frightening, horrible happened.
7
That night Ellen stayed awake, in fact when her husband Peter began to snore, she got dressed again. And when she was watching the plasma TV sitting on the bed, she saw, suddenly, how it was lit, and let the same message always be seen. For days, nothing had happened, but she had a premonition that night, a feeling of déjà vu. Something especially strange had to happen this time. His heart was screaming for him to leave and warn Peter. But he did not, because his brain ordered with curiosity, "I want to see what happens," and besides, Peter would treat her crazy.
Suddenly, bright beams jumped from the TV screen. Lig
htning that took shape as of arms, with claws like spatulas. They were transparent, but they were immensely large. She, in silence, continued to observe what was happening. Now there was a swollen head, with no features, no eyes, no mouth, but the protrusions of these behind the transparent shaggy skin of that, if it could be defined as such. He advanced through the television screen without it moving. It was like an inert, weightless body. And Ellen was starting to have a panic attack. But she sat there on the bed, at an infinite end of her. Behind the first being came another. They moved their heads from side to side and they seemed to smell the room as if they did not really see. One of them thrust both long, powerful arms under the covers this time to Peter. He gripped his ankles tightly and pulled himself hard. Peter did not wake up this time, but when the other inert body helped him, Peter opened his eyes furtively and looked down at his feet and stared in horror at the appearance of those inanimate beings without expression and who had slipped through the parabolic, from the Decoder to the TV. They dragged Peter to the television until it blurred into him. Peter did not exclaim or shout, in fact he did not have time. Ellen, horrified and soundless, saw her husband's body disappear, but not before becoming a transparent, bluish body at the same time, where you could see the inside of the human body. They simply took him away. Everything happened so fast and simple that it seemed like a dream.
But it was not a dream. Ellen managed to turn on the table lamp and saw the "NO SIGNAL" message on the TV again. As if nothing had happened. They took him and not her.
The aliens are amongst us.
Fletcher’s Death
"What did the story look like?" He was standing by the fireplace and listening to the guests, from the edge of the fireplace. There was only the crackling of the wood consumed by kisses from the flames.
"If you have not had enough." He looked at all his guests with a distant look. I have another, more scary story to tell.
Outside a wolf howled in the snowstorm, in pain.
"Fletcher knew them all," the watchman said, shaving his beard. He was sick of this miserable life and had to give him a solution to his immediate future. It was death. That way he would end his painful life of shit. And Walter, who was in his own circumstances, unwittingly became his executioner. After crushing Fletcher's skull at his request, he would turn himself in to the police. They would condemn him for murder and with one shot would have killed two birds with one stone. Life in prison would end their problems. It's the only way to survive guys. What do you think? The watchman crossed his fingers and began to play with them, perhaps, waiting for a response from the guests. No one asked a single question. Not a grunt. Nothing. The watchman continued to tell stories with a storm of a thousand demons outside and the guests would just listen to each of their stories, that warm night, inside the room. His bald shine again under the flickering light of the torches and put his shiny boot back on the table, with an air of spontaneous delirium. He watched his guests, before his lips told the whole story...
1
He gripped the stone with both hands, weighed a little, and must have let out a snort as he lifted it to the chest, then dropped it on Fletcher's head. He bellowed a howl of the intense impact he received, but not strong enough to snatch his life.
"If you do not do well, I'll suffer enough," Fletcher explained as the blood covered her already part of her face.
"I know, but it hurts me to do it," snapped the other, who was just Walter.
"Then do it already, damn it!"
Walter took the stone again and lifted it, not without a new effort, this time aimed well at the head, specifically at the temple. But by the time he released the stone he stepped aside so as not to look at the disaster that was happening there. This time he was right. A heartbreaking scream that must have been heard for hundreds of yards, almost a kilometer, ended the life of Fletcher, who now had his temple completely sunken and an eye out of place due to the pressure. A deadly cranioencephalic fracture.
Walter had fulfilled his part of the bargain, now he was turning himself in to the police.
2
Walter had been one more type of the United States of America with the right to eat every day and sleep under a roof, "although not all but ninety percent of Americans", and enjoy American football from time to time With a couple of cans of cold beers in the stomach. He had a wife and children and even a good car, a Mustang. It would not be the best, but had a car, for God's sake. Until the ninja crisis seized the world and left him in his underwear. His wife died of breast cancer and the children were given for adoption to the paternal grandparents, because, by then, Walter had pawned not only the car, but even the cooler that cooled the beers. He had lost everything and began to swell that part of men and women who live in the street, since in his work they had not paid for him and as a result he was not entitled to any kind of subsidy. Now he was really fucked. No family, no money and no future, among many other things. In fact, with nothing. Until he met Fletcher in the street, where else. One more beggar, with a face of suffering marked on the skin as sculpted the passage of time in the fucking street, fed up with that life and with the body full of sores. Trying to get a few pence a day to reach the dollar and get drunk to think of nothing.
"Are you new here?" Fletcher asked, looking at him with indignant eyes.
"What do you think, have you seen me before?"
“Don’t. It was just a way to start a conversation.”
"We're all the same here, are not we?"
“Don't believe, you have to be very careful with some. There is too much madness loose in these streets of life,” and he laughed jokingly as he showed a single protruding tooth that peeped through the corners of sun-kissed lips.
The fact is that they chatted a good time and congenial enough to be the first day. Fletcher offered him some beer and Walter drank it, almost without a breath. In the street, you you’re your manners. Thirst, hunger, sleep. Everything is magnified when you are outside. Out there, without anyone doing anything for you, you see how everything sinks around you and in it, like a vortex storm that sucks it all.
3
They chatted daily like two children who have just met and Walter told him what had happened to him in his past life as "rich" among the poor, and Fletcher listened to him smiling almost all the time. To tell the truth, he liked the things he told him, at least that was how he felt a respite and, beyond dreams, lived something that could not be imagined before. Normal people you saw on the street walking and giving a look of contempt while you asked for a coin could suddenly be seen in the same place. That satisfied him enormously, because here the coin had two identical faces.
"But, after so much happiness, came the misfortune," Walter said, paused and continued. My wife got cancer and everything fell apart; Yes, I had my children, but it was not the same, because I knew that I would lose it in a short space of time. I had the cancer very advanced. I went crazy.
"That's a bitch," Fletcher said as he sipped his beer. They had managed to get together to buy a few cans that day, a hot summer day that led them to retire to the rubbish so they could talk quietly. Only the squawking of the gulls fluttering could annoy them.
"More than a bitch," Walter said, taking a sip of beer as well. Everything fell apart. In a pity, he left me alone, so I decided to drink, I lost my job because of the crisis and I continued to drink more, neglecting my children, until they were snatched from me...
“Another bitch. From having everything to having nothing. A scratch on his lips. But he was not happy at all.”
“It is clear that we are nothing and that God has abandoned us.”
"Come, Walter, drink some more, it'll do you good."
They continued to chat for a long time, and Fletcher told him his story, far more horrible than that of Walter, more suffering, more "disgusting," more outrageous, but at least he was accustomed to living on the street a whole life and knew his secrets to Survive, but Walter went from being a good citizen to being nothing. That was
a much worse blow, so Fletcher reflected.
"You know, Walter?" She stared into his eyes. I have the solution for all this.
“You?”
"One of us must die," he interrupted as he grabbed the beer can in one hand, it was hot, but it did not matter.
“What are you saying?” Walter asked with wide, expressive eyes.
"That one of us must die, and that's me." Look at me, I am sick, I have little left, hopefully I will overcome this autumn and then zas! To the ditch. If you kill me, you will go to jail and have food and shelter to shelter you.
"You're crazy, Fletcher!"
"No, he's going. I'm giving you a chance. It is absurd to continue both suffering. If I miss, there will be a plate for you. Think about it, Walter.
Walter did not answer, he was right, but he was not going to do that. It was a brutality, for a moment he thought of the beer and the drunkenness of the two of them right now.
"Come on Walter, you choose or choose life for you, and you see that it's crap now."
They were several days without talking about the subject, in fact they were not spoken. Only glances crossed and Walter, even, had caught a little fear. It is as if, suddenly, he no longer trusted him, as if for some reason he had gone mad and would kill himself. But it was not like this. The proposal was still standing.
4
And the time came. The decisive day. Fletcher, with an impressive cough, reminded him of the plan again. He told her that he did not want to die alone and sick, that it was better to do things like this, so he would go to heaven helping another partner, giving him a chance. At least for once in life, I would do things right.
"Do not. That's not doing things right, are you crazy?"
"Tell me what you really want the most," Walter insisted, looking at the tanned eyes of the poor man.
“I swear. Do it, please," he begged.
Walter looked up to heaven and asked forgiveness of the God "in whom he did not really believe," because of the decision made.
The Warden of the Castle Page 9
