Kthaahthikha
One man, a word-processor, and too much free time.
02 July, 2005
So then it hit me - coming out of the wood-work like a splinter from an explosion. This great mess of animant viscera swirling around on the floor like a spasticated octopus. One of the tendrils latched onto my leg - tried to drag me screaming down into that drooling, pustulent jaw. Fuck that. I grabbed a hold of thedoor-jamb and tried to drag myself back up out of the cellar.The damn thing just held-on, half a tonne of predacious offal keening at a frequency built to gride. I grit my teeth and screamed - cut my throat roar on notes of shattered glass. The damn thing held-on but I heard someone coming.
Daphne came into the hallway. She must have seen me hanging out of the door, eyes wide and a grimace plastered across my dial.
'What the fuck's going on?' she said.
'Grab the mattock and get back here!' I yelled at her, then just kept screaming till she complied.
By now it had started to consume my legs. The denim had sloughed off my jeans and the skin was starting to tingle. It was like having my leg in a baby's mouth. I Kept pulling but the damn thing wasn't going to budge. My grip began to slacken and my shoulders began to creak.
Daphne showed-up with the mattock and sliced-off a few of the pseudopods. I puled myself free and lurched into the hallway, nursing the raw mess of skin and trying to apply pressure to the gash she'd put in my leg.
'Sorry,' she said. I shut the cellar door thought.
'How long does it usually take us to get to town?' I asked.
'Ten minutes,' she said. The limit was 80 kilometers.
'That think can get there in an hour,' I said. 'Grab the matches from the kitchen.'
I jogged outside and managed to find the half-sack of fertiliser and the jerry-can. The one was in the shed, the other in the boot of the car. I headed back in. I could hear the door starting to splinter.
'What the hell do you think you're doing?' cried Daphne.
'We've got to kill it,' I said. 'Don't worry, the cellar runs out under the garden.' I opened the door and through the ripped paper sack into the face of the beast. It keened at me and began to squeal when the petrl got in its maw. I let some trickle down the steps and backed-away, Daphen fending-off the pseudopods.
'Gimme the matches.' We ran a trail up the hall a way with the petrol, then I dropped a match on the damp. Diesel won't catch like that, but hi-octane premium unleaded sure as hell will.
The cellar door blew through the loungeroom wall and the ground shook. The garden bahind the cellar began to cave in upon itself in big, broad cracks - like an earthquake. I know because I could see it through the shards of the east window.
'Is it dead?' Daphne asked. We investigated.
In the middle of the cellar floor, covered in damp dirt and concrete, sat the beast, its front-half blown backwards through its stomach.
'Well,' said Daphne, 'that went well'.
And then it ate her face.
I just watched The Thing and read a few David Cronenberg plot-summaries, and I'm mulling-over ideas. I don't want to rip-off the aforementioned movie too-much, but since it's a direct rip-off of 'Ten Little Niggers', I don't know why I shouldn't. Still, good movie.
Tom Meade, 1:14 am
