Read Online The Lovely Shadow by Cory Hiles - Free Book Online Page B

“dark”, the two Snoopies
quit pumping their fists and instead held their paws out in front
of themselves, slightly apart. Between their paws, the air looked
as if it was beginning to swirl and darken, and condense. The
darkness condensed more and more until there was what appeared to
be a solid ball of dark, the size of an eight-ball, hovering in mid
air, and spinning lazily between each of their paws.
    All three beasts began chanting again, but
this time their chant was “DARK, DARK, DARK.”
    They all took one more step towards me and
were now only about two feet from me. I shrank back from them as
far as I could, into the stone wall.
    The two Snoopy’s raised their paws above
their heads, the levitating balls of dark travelling with them, and
then thrust them forward, releasing the balls of dark to slam on
each side of me against the stone wall I was trying to melt
into.
    The balls of dark made a muffled thump as
they shattered against the wall, and darkness began to run down the
wall as if it was made of fluid. The darkness began to spread out
across the wall, growing bigger every second, absorbing the light
around it like a black hole, and I knew intuitively that if I
touched that darkness, I’d be drawn into it and trapped in it
forever.
    I started to scramble away from the wall, but
the mother-beast slithered forward and swung all four Playboy
wielding tentacles down on me, striking me with the magazines in
four places at once, and knocking me backwards into the dark.
    I half expected to hit the wall, but was not
really surprised when I felt no resistance where the wall should
have been, and instead felt as if I were tumbling into a pit. The
inky darkness began to pour over me with a physical weight like
water as I tumbled downwards. I was screaming as I fell, but over
the sounds of my own screaming I could hear three voices
chanting;
    “POISON, POISON, POISON” echoed through the
darkness from somewhere above me.
    When the darkness finally engulfed me fully
and no more light could be seen in any direction, I quit screaming.
When I quit screaming, the dream ended and I slept through the rest
of the night without dreaming.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 8
    I woke up the following morning sometime
after sunrise. Grey light was filtering down to my bed area from
the bright golden stripe at the bottom of the door above my head. I
needed to pee again, but decided to empty the washing machine
first. For one, I wasn’t sure how many more washings in a row the
towels that were in it could handle before disintegrating, and for
two, I was still mostly naked.
    The dryer was empty, which was nice, since it
made quick work of unloading the washer. With the clothes moved, I
hopped up on my stool and did my business. I decided not to start
the washer for just one little pee session, but decided instead
that I would wait for bedtime to do. That way I could fall asleep
to the noise of the washer rather than the imagined noises of the
monsters in the shadows.
    I closed the lid and hopped down. When I
landed on the floor I winced. My body was still pretty sore from
where my mother had beat on me, and even more sore where I’d beat
myself falling on the stairs. The fingers that had been dislocated
on my right handed were still swollen and sore, but they were
immeasurably better than they had been prior to resetting them.
    I surveyed the parts of my little prison that
I could see in the gloom and tried to figure out what to do. I
figured I’d try the door on the off chance that my mother had
unlocked it during the night.
    I made my way carefully up the steps and
tried the door…locked. I had suspected it would be. I tried
knocking a few times, but there was no response. In frustration I
kicked the bottom of the door and stubbed my toe.
    “Damn it, ouch!” I hollered out loud, while
silently thinking ‘well, that was brilliant, you dummy, wanna try
it again?’
    I briefly considered hollering out for my
mother to see if I could play on