by Erik McHatton
(500 words)
Three days ago, it was Henkel. Today, Rosha. Only Sheena, Malcor, and I remain.
We huddle together, we three, shaded in our tent, unsafe within our village’s walls, holding only terror between us. It will come for each of us, of this we are sure, but in what order we cannot say. It displays no patterns.
Rosha’s screams hang in the air, stretched beyond reason. It plays her like an instrument in the square. We have learned not to look. We have no desire to see the striated ruins of another companion flicked about with playful abandon.
We listen to the wails of our Rosha and wait until the time when we go to retrieve whatever pieces of her are left.
Soon, it will away again, returning when it pleases, assuredly by surprise. It will climb over the walls like they never mattered and skitter back into the borderlands to its nest or burrow, leaving us to our grief and fear.
We hear it depart, its nails gouging grooves into the stone walls, and we go to the center of the square to the pile that once was Rosha. It is unrecognizable as her. Hair and bone, muscle and intestine create a slurry which is crammed into my arms by my brethren so that I may carry it back to our tent. It feels like piled clothes, dangling down and beating against my legs as I walk.
We must honor her before it returns, make useful what we can reclaim.
As we enter the tent, Malcor starts the fire as Sheena lays a sheet flat on the ground onto which I gently place Rosha’s remains. While Malcor steadies a pot over the flame, Sheena assists me with the sifting. We pick out the bits and pieces which are unpalatable or indigestible, and once we are finished, Malcor takes what good meat we could salvage and transfers it to the pot. The air soon smells of fried pork, and what herbs we still have left to us. We are so hungry.
Sheena digs a small hole in the back of the tent next to Henkel’s marker, and bids me bring over the gristle and clothes. I lower them into the tiny grave. Sheena covers it over, unchecked tears streaming down her cheeks. I envy her. I wish I could have cried that way for Henkel.
Soon, Malcor joins us, and we pray.
Moving to our pallets, Sheena and I wait to be served by Malcor, and he brings the steaming pot to each of us in turn, slopping steaming Rosha onto our plates. He eats from the pot.
As we settle in for our meal—the only one we will have until it returns—we do not look at one another, our shame too great to allow it. We fork our Rosha over our teeth and listen to the howls of the creature in the distance as it settles down to sleep.
Soon, so will we, our bellies filled just the same.
END
Erik McHatton’s passion for horror literature began in grade school and can be credited to an early fascination with the “Terrific Triples” horror collections of Helen Hoke. In those books, he plumbed the depraved depths of Poe, Lovecraft, Dunsany, Bloch, Bradbury and more and was forever after put under the spell of those masters.