Trapped Creatures

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

The aftermath of another prairie thunderstorm had left the eaves dripping, and the house settled once more on its foundation, with a sighing of timber.

It crouched in wait.

***

No one had any idea where the flyers came from, but one day, like shedding snake skin, they hung from telephone poles throughout the town, and just about every business, including Feydra's, had an eye-watering purple announcement in its window.

"Come, spend a night in 2987 Lilac Street! Prize money will be awarded! This Friday, you won't even have to take the day off!"

Below this invitation was a photo of the home in question; printed in grayscale that lacked any contrast. Everything about the image was black, except the windows, where the purple of the flyer pushed through between pixelated gray dots.

An occasional reader of horror novels, Feydra believed the whole 2987 Lilac Street mythos to be a big scam. Hill House was one thing; 2897 Lilac Street was quite another. The names alone implied the marked difference between the two. Hill House sounded isolated and cold, barred by metal gates. 2987 Lilac Street sounded like a place you might get dropped off for an elementary pal's birthday party.

It hadn't been sold since the 70's. Well, that wasn't strictly true, it had sold, but it had not been owned by anyone for more than a span of months (the current record was held by a homeless squatter who remained there for three months, until someone reported a foul odor coming from the building. Upon entering, police discovered his decapitated body sitting upright in front of the fireplace). Strange noises, unknown voices, the aroma of rotting wood and food; these were the most common complaints raised from a long list. These accolades repelled anyone, even the most dedicated paranormal investigators, from laying claim to the house on Lilac street too long.

And yet...

Friday morning came and just about all the residents of the several hundred person town were clustered around the house. Feydra and her parents, neighbors, co-workers, even Lanny Hiyat, who was on oxygen and unable to walk or remember his wife, was there with his caretaker, gumming his mouth together impatiently.

There wasn't much conversation. Mayor Leeds and her husband ordered pizza that never came because there was no one in the pizzerias to make the pies. Feydra's mother kept running her fingers through her daughter's curly brown hair; a nervous tick she had performed since Feydra was a child. Normally, she would have pulled away from her mother, especially as those long, searching fingers snagged another knot and tugged painfully against her scalp. But it felt almost like sacrilege to move.

They were all waiting on the house.

When the door creaked open that evening, to say there was a mad dash would've been an understatement. In the commotion, Feydra was squeezed away from her parents, and now, in the fast falling darkness, she wished they had come with her. Her mother had a jolly laugh, and told plenty of terrible jokes to ensure that it was always brought forth, and her father would have been comforting her, assuring her that there were no monsters in the dark, and perhaps using his beautiful singing voice to lighten the mood.

But it had not played out that way. Feydra had stumbled over the threshold, pressed forth by a teeming mob. She glanced backwards and the mayor was ripping Lanny Hiyat's oxygen mask off, and Lanny was clawing for it and gasping, but his caretaker was not with him anymore. They were shoving people out of their way, and even kicked a teenager who had fallen onto the ground in the face.

Feydra opened her mouth to scream.

And then the door slammed shut and there were only a little over a dozen members of the crowd who had made it inside.

Fists pounded the wooden walls and the door, and some people were screaming and begging and crying.

There were no sounds of that now. It was dark and still.

Throughout the day, other people who had entered with Feydra had dropped away one by one. Few were dramatic about their exits, but one woman had began beating her head against the walls and windows.

"I've got to get out, I have just GOT to get out, let me out, I tell you!"

She must have found the door, because she was no longer throwing herself against the walls in desperate escape attempts.

If one were to look at the inside of the house, they would be pretty unimpressed. This was no gothic castle dripping in cobwebs and disturbing furniture choices: it was just a two-story house. The living room where Feydra and her fellow guests had unrolled their sleeping bags had a lovely fireplace (the same one the homeless man had sat, headless, in front of), the surround made of a mosaic of ceramic tiles, each one painted with a motif of a blue parrot.

A set of glass French doors provided a demarcation between the living room and the dining room and the kitchen lay directly off the dining area. A small foyer, laid with green tiles the color of moss, filled the space in front of the living room, where the front door and large windows lining the walls let pools of moonlight spill across the rooms.

One window held a single candle, which had been lit since Feydra had entered.

Only two other people remained with Feydra at this point. And they would not be quiet so that she could sleep.

"I have never told a scary story in my life. I'm a STEM kid, all numbers and fact."

"I don' have no need to tell scary stories neither, 'sides, I don' like 'em. They give my nightmares."

"Really? Nothing from your days on the farm?"

"Cattle ain't bad like that, only when you gotta clear them of colic or somethin', and even that's just part of the job."

"Hey, Fey? You got any scary stories for us?"

Resignedly, Feydra sat up and faced Stowe.

Stowe had been in Feydra's grade, but she had never really associated with them, despite how well they were getting along with her now. Most people hadn't given Stowe the time of day; being a queer kid growing up in a small Colorado town was not good for making friends. Great for curating scars, as their arms and their need for approval demonstrated. They did not seem to pity themselves, however; they were sparkling and smiling in every moment, and they leaned towards their future with excitement.

Just like now, where they were giddy with expectation of a scary story of some kind, rocking back and forth, a goofy smile on their gently acne-scarred face.

Jacob, sitting beside them, looked much less excited, but seemed more than happy to go along with what Stowe said. He had essentially glued himself to Stowe's side since the morning, and seemed set upon making sure Stowe was happy and enjoying themselves.

He was a farm boy, Jacob was, son of Wyoming ranchers, and eager to be a University of Wyoming Cowboy himself, hopefully before he turned thirty in a few years. His voice was deep and earnest, like he was conducting a sermon, and everything about him had that deep seriousness to it; his build, his steady gaze, his practical attire.

It was amusing to hear his voice shake a little at the prospect of a scary story.

Feydra felt a fondness in her heart for these two strangers. It sure was weird, the people life elected you would meet along your journey.

Perhaps this propelled her to relate the following story.

Of course, some say she was simply a mouthpiece, and the story would have told itself sooner or later.

***

As when one gazes into a mirror and is confronted with an image they have never seen, so too was this world one that shared only the most superficial of similarities with the world we understand as our own. It might temporarily pass a deception check, but very quickly, you would see the seams coming undone.

For example, there was a constant wind. Every day, it howled about the corners of the houses, or occasionally it would whisper and moan, but it never left. Carried in its gusts were small, cutting pieces of ice and sand. Everyone who went outside would return home bleeding from a thousand tiny kisses all over their skin. Children would play outside and return with even their eyes and eyelids leaking trails of red blood.

One had to walk everywhere in this world, which came with its own literal and figurative pitfalls, even outside of the wind. The sidewalk cried out when you walked upon it, begging those who tread on its back and face to take pity on it. But you had to keep walking, for if you hesitated, if you looked down, you would see those who had been swallowed before you, moments before the cement tore itself open and the unfortunate walker would be pulled, struggling, straining, screaming, deep into the press of bodies that came before them.

That was only what people said, of course. The only people who could confirm these rumors were gone.

Adefyr lived in this world of tears and shrieks, and for the most part, they were used to it. They were used to their bedroom filling with water, slowly, through the night, so that when they awoke in a panic, breathing in only water, there were mere inches of oxygen to be found between the ceiling and the hungry waves. They were used to opening the book they longed to finish, only to be confronted with staring eyes on every page, some which were marred in cataracts, some widened in fear, some rolled back in the throes of death. Then they would throw the book down in disgust and the eyes would roll out and hide under their bed. Some nights, the eyes would float together with Adefyr in the water.

Adefyr was indeed used to the terror, to the panic, to the discomfort, that came with being a person existing in their world. They were not used to the feeling of love that could dispel those feelings, perhaps even for a moment.

Or they hadn't been, until they walked in the woods.

For after all, aren't most ghost stories tales of love and loss?

The woods were empty always, and yet not. They backed up against the apartment complex Adefyr lived in, and every day, they grew closer to overtaking the place. Adefyr was paying money to live in a place being consumed by trees, which broke through the windows, branches which grew unwieldy and scraped windows like fingernails under the floorboards

under the floorboards, nails under the floorboards

in the wind, vines which crept through vents and tried to suffocate the residents on the lower floors. Adefyr only had to worry about the water on the fifth floor, but one whole family on the first floor had been strangled by vines in their sleep. Their corpses were paraded by the vines like trophies as they continued their forward progress, but if you slept on the sidewalk, you would be swallowed there, too.

You needed a home to live, even if it consumed you.

That was what filled the woods. This frightened Adefyr in ways that they had a hard time articulating. Perhaps it was because those trees were alive and making progress towards something. There was no goal in Adefyr's life, they earned money by having their fingernails ripped out every two days (when they grew back) to pay the money to either the landlords or the foodlords, who spat in the eggs they served, and smiled awful cheerfully when they served up bread hairy in mold. There was no progress in that.

But one evening, when the apartment was just barely beginning to fill with water, the drip drip dripping enough to make Adefyr claw at their face and tear out their hair and silently scream until their throat hurt and they were out of oxygen and still

drip drip dripping

they prayed to something to stop that noise, which would become that force which would try and drown them and they would not sleep and they would be among the eyes and no one would be seeing anything but more and more water.

Adefyr's arm raised involuntarily. It traveled, as though disconnected from their body, and they craned their neck and followed its progress with their own eyes.

Pointing out the window. Nothing. The arm began to fall.

The woods there. The woods are there. Only the woods are there.

The tree branches scraped and then there was a moment of silence, where all present considered the implications.

Then the face.

The face was white white, fungal white. Its eyes were unfocused, one iris staring over its shoulder, while the other studied the room it was peering into. Its head lolled from side to side, and it had a smile now, but now you looked and it was a baring of teeth, but now it was a smile again, as the oscillation continued.

There was a cracking sound as the head straightened and both eyes faced front.

Smile of too many teeth.

Then the head fell backwards, and the window was only scraping branches again.

Adefyr's hand was on the cold pane of glass. They didn't remember putting it there, and it hadn't been cold until now, and now it was piercing and they pulled their hand back sharply.

It was drip drip dripping again. The water was at their ankles when they stood up and waded through the eyes that foamed about them.

The door screamed upon its hinges when Adefyr opened it, and at the far end of the hall, one of the landlords stirred.

Where be you going at this time of night, creature?

The landlord pulled itself into its full form and crawled forward on all fours. Its long nails, painted with lavish gold and rhinestones, click clacked along the floor. Its breathing was labored and burdened with the smell of lovely food that was not hairy in mold or rancid with rot.

You are up late, creature, should you not be in bed? When will you give me money if you do not sleep for your work?

It crawled about Adefyr's legs, sending spasms up their back. The way the landlord felt was not dissimilar to how blood feels when it is tacky, and trailing with it pieces of hair and scalp and bone. It stuck and clung to Adefyr's skin even when the landlord's form had moved away.

If you be leaving, will you be paying me? Pay? Pay? Paying me before you be leaving?

Its voice was pathetic and gritty with its predator instinct; squeaky, sharp, like the hum of a mosquito in your ear.

Adefyr did not know how much to pay. The landlord sat up on its haunches, rested its hands on Adefyr's shoulders, dug its glorious nails into the soft skin around their clavicle.

Only that which I be owed, that is all I ask, for I do be owed for your existence, don't I now, creature?

Adefyr paid the toll for their existence, then went down the stairs, past the vines and the screams of another strangled soul.

They went into the woods.

The moss under their feet didn't cry out in pain when they gently stepped upon it. It was soft and delicate, and the trees blocked the wind. The air smelled not of metallic blood and sweat, but of thousands of living flowers and rain. Adefyr closed their eyes.

They never closed their eyes in their apartment, except when they were finally sleeping. They never closed their eyes at work, until the pain of their fingernails tearing became too much and they passed into unconciousness.

Yet here, it felt natural, and there was no water coming up to drown them. There were no landlords coming to demand what they were owed, there was no sidewalk eager to pull you down and devour you.

After several seconds only listening to their own breathing and the twittering of songbirds in the trees about them, Adefyr went deeper. The woods only enhanced in beauty; deep, emerald, green leaves on tall trees that reached high into the sky above. The birds sang more. Somewhere, water poured over a waterfall, not dripping but rushing forth, unbridled. Adefyr laughed, which they had never done before, and it came forth as a rusty, creaking sound, but it did not feel out of place in the rows of trees, who creaked in their own comfortable homes in the ground.

The trees parted and there in the middle was a large elm. It had several trunks spurting up like a fountain of gray bark. It hummed gently as though the heart of a machine, and a great knot in its center occasionally let out sighs of leaves as it breathed.

The owner of the face in Adefyr's window collapsed gracefully to the ground, expelled from this knot. White white skin, white like the bark of a stripped tree. It stood up straight and here, with its strange, trailing eyes, it certainly looked like it was smiling. Its whole body swayed delicately, and when it moved, it floated, inches above the soft grass.

Gentle scents of peony and rose came from it, and when it put out a hand to cup Adefyr's tired cheek, its nails were long and twisted like roots and did not dig into Adefyr's skin.

Adefyr had found them, had found them in the woods and both parties were so happy. They skipped about and they danced, and the being from the elm led the dances and spun Adefyr and held their waist with gentle hands, and kissed their lips with honey and bark and all the traces of the woods.

Adefyr could have held the being's hands, could have ran fingers along the wavy curvature of those graceful nails, for eternity, until they too were encased in a knot in a great elm at the heart of it all.

But the sky through the trees was lightening. The boss at the workplace would know if Adefyr was not there to get their fingernails pulled from their beds. There would be no money for the landlords if Adefyr was not there to pour it into their open mouths and to fill their own mouth with the sour milk and cold oatmeal that would be served by the foodlords.

So Adefyr pulled themselves apart from the being of light, which was almost melded into their own skin, and promised to return.

Did the smile become a straight row of hungry teeth?

But they had no time to ponder, for they were flung from the depths of the woods and were then on the hard, yellow grass which the landlords had watered with vinegar so it would die. And the wind now tore into their flesh. It was gusting today, with sharp, sharp fragments of the sky slicing effortlessly through the skin which so recently had been held in the embrace of the being in the elm.

And now Adefyr realized their mistake, for the world was beginning to flood, just as their bedroom had, and they frantically tried to run back into the woods. But the trees were tight together in their ranks, and there was no getting through them, for the vines had wound themselves together into an inpenetrable curtain of green and strangled bodies, which perfumed the air with death.

Up the stairs, past the water that was continuing to drip dip drip in this world and now all around, for it could not be stopped. On the fifth floor, the landlord unfolded its form when Adefyr approached.

Money, money, you bring money?

Adefyr did not, they did not even have time, they had to leave this place which was fast flooding.

Oh but do not fear, creature, that is my friends doing the flooding. For you, we do the flooding, to kill the trees in the woods, for you we do the flooding, to suffocate those vines with their own waters, for you we do the flooding, so won't you please pay us?

And Adefyr looked through the floorboards, weakened with wood rot and splintering into their feet and they saw the landlords on the first floor and they were turning a massive wheel. Massive and gaudy and made with the bodies of the residents from every floor, who choked on the rising water that poured forth into the world. They were all screaming, and the landlords were laughing, which in fact sounded like screaming, as well.

There were sharp nails encasing Adefyr's ankles. The landlord from the fifth floor cracked its neck and its face craned upwards, its eyes were spider-webs of broken red blood vessels, the pupils lost in murky brown irises.

Why do you not pay me? Why do you run away from me? Have I not been the most courteous host? PARASITE!

Maggots fell from a mouth full of teeth that had done nothing but eat delicious food. The small white larvae wormed between Adefyr's toes and up their calves and did they have teeth? And did they whisper words to them as they came?

Scratchy scratchy the world is tearing now with all the scratching. We are all that remains in so scratchy a world.

Adefyr tried to run but the hands were tight on their ankles and they fell and scraped their body across the splintered floor, which made the skin bleed more than it ever had walking in the innocuous wind outside. Please please no!

Closer, closer to the upright water wheel of bodies, which never would walk in the deep woods and hear the birds; only the sounds of their own despair.

The maggots stood by and watched, and perhaps one waved and Adefyr's nails broke off in the wreckage of the floorboards, bleeding more than they ever had at work because now there was something to look forward to. There was the opening in Adefyr's chest that comes when someone realizes that they were missing that which was right in front of them; the realization that perhaps something is unfinished. The iron is on, the stove is still burning, the door is unlocked.

The floor is unlocked and you are falling into it. Heart in throat, screaming bloody through the world that is passing you by on either side.

Adefyr landed on another tenant on the water wheel, both of their spines bursting out of Adefyr's stomach, impaling them with notched nails to hold them in place. And again and again through the flooding apartments they went, fighting to breathe as they had never struggled before in their room among the eyes.

Above them, the floorboards were mended and the light faded to dark.

***

Upon finishing her story, Feydra dropped her head into her hands. She was surprised to feel perspiration on her forehead, sticky and smelly with exertion.

When she looked up, she found that Stowe and Jacob had wrapped into one another like one large, two headed creature. Jacob was trembling so much that his rattling teeth could be heard from where Feydra sat across the room from him.

Stowe gave a shaky thumbs up.

"Wow, great story. You really know how to tell them, don't you? And who else wants to sleep with the lights on tonight?"

"You don' gotta ask me twice, flip them bad boys on."

Jacob's voice was hoarse, his eyes wide.

There was a sighing from the house's foundation as it shifted position. It sounded eerily like a fifth person in the room.

Jacob adhered himself to Stowe's gangly frame, grabbing onto their leg as they got up to turn the weak overhead light on again.

There was a click, then a pop!

Darkness, aside from the fading fire in the fireplace and the flickers of flame from the candle on the window sill.

scratching, nails scratching under the floorboards...

Jacob screamed and it was so so LOUD. The rasping of a set of loud fingernails on wood. Feydra leaped up. She could feel the faint vibrations through her jeans.

"What the FUCK-?!"

"Ok, let's all think about this logically, like a physics problem-!"

"Ain't no logic about a person bein' in the floor!"

"Jacob, hush for a second, maybe we are all just-."

Click click click click

Don't you need to pay meeee? I have been such a PARASITE host to you and you have not paid me?

Click click click

Long long golden nails on a fifth floor hallway.

"No. One. Move."

There was no laughter in Stowe's voice now, there was a one-minded determination in the face of a future that was rapidly disappearing.

Feydra squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to wake up. Where were her mother's nervous fingers, her father's singing?

Her eyes opened.

Still dark. But no more fingernails under the floor.

"...they gone?"

"...shhhh, Jacob, wait a minute."

A branch whacked the window by the front door. Jacob choked, and covered his mouth with his hand.

Drip drip dripping

"Oh no..."

"Ok, people, let's move towards the door, slowly, but like, with a purpose maybe?"

Stowe grabbed Feydra's hand and Feydra was not expecting it and jumped, splashing down into a small puddle of water.

The water continued to rise as the trio waded toward the front door.

"Wait, everyone, wait!"

"Come on now, Stowe, we ain't that far from the door!"

Silence. Stowe's hand was like marble crushing the fine bones in Feydra's fingers.

Drip drip click drip

"...ohhhh...oh nonono

Click click click

Pay me? Pay me? I have so worked to make you exist, pay me?

Click click

Clicliclick cliclickclickclickclickclick

SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH

HUNGER I HAVE SUCH HUNGER! PAY! PAY ME!

***

One of the trio might have screamed.

The candle in the window blew out, and the fire in the fireplace died.

There was no prize money given out.

Perhaps next year, I suppose.

Perhaps, would you be interested in throwing your hat in the ring?

There will be a payment made one way or another, why shouldn't it be you?