Simulacrum Part 2
It was always just nearly normal but never completely there
This is Part 2 of my short story “Simulacrum.” Find Part 1 linked below.
He woke three days later in the hospital with Mom next to his bed and Lena lying on the fold-out, music blaring from her headphones. His body felt like the piggy bank he filled with change last summer before shattering it with Dad’s hammer and collecting the funds. He tried to speak but words would not come, and then his mother fell upon him, fairly smothering him with tears and kisses and nearly squeezing his guts plumb out.
Three weeks of physical therapy passed in slow agony before the doctors released him to go home. Questions about Dad were ignored by Mom and Lena. Later, through hints and slips of the tongue, he learned Dad disappeared after the crash. Search and rescue teams found a pile of his clothes covered in some sort of mucus several miles back the way they had come. Whenever Danny asked after his father, Mom refused to look at him, and he wondered if she’d seen something after the crash. Finally, she forbade him from asking altogether. Dad was just gone.
And then he wasn’t.
****
He tip-toed into the bedroom, slow and steady, and eased open the nightstand. His hands shook like mad as he pulled out his grandfather’s old snub-nosed .38. Avery didn’t know about it, and she wasn’t going to be happy once she found out. Truth be told, Dan didn’t care much for firearms either. But for the two weeks since Lena’s funeral, this looming shadow over his life seemed large enough to smother him and everything he cared about. He could deal with being smothered, he thought, but he’d be damned if he let it eat his family, too.
The afternoon of the funeral, this terrible feeling of constriction sent him digging through the attic where he’d stored boxes of familial hand-me-downs. He found the gun with Pop’s stuff from World War Two. He had no clue how to clean the revolver and was not entirely sure it would shoot, but he took it down to a pawn shop and bought a box of ammunition and a cleaning kit.
Even after all these years, he wasn’t sure exactly what the thing was (hopefully, lead hurt it), but he felt certain that he understood what it did. Somehow it copied people, killed them, and assumed their lives. But Dan interrupted the process with his dad. Lucky me, huh? Since then, it had come after his family, one at a time when they were alone. Now it was his turn. The cycle he set in motion nearly two decades earlier would end tonight, one way or another.
Do not screw this up, he thought.
He started out, glancing at Avery—hopefully not for the last time. A tense moment passed when he nearly bumbled into the chest of drawers on the way out, but at the last second, he managed to side-step. He didn’t want her freaking out prematurely. It would be bad enough when he fired the gun.
In the foyer, he fumbled the door open as the monster limped up the walk. The porch light framed it perfectly against the night. Its head dangled on its chest at the end of a rubbery, lifeless neck. Its left leg dragged behind as it moved in a weird, rolling gait. Twelve fingers instead of ten stretched much farther than they should have, each tipped with a wicked talon. Black, gray, and blonde hair quilted its lolling head.
A conglomeration of half-made things.
Dan grimaced, fighting the urge to puke, raised the revolver and fired.
****
When Danny was twelve, he and Lena arrived home from school to find the front door ajar. Danny froze solidly as an ice sculpture on the stoop and stared wide-eyed at the open door.
Lena walked into him. “Watch it, weirdo. What are you even doing? It’s hot out and Jordan’s coming over and…” She rattled off the words with the rapid-fire pace of a machine gun in one of those Rambo movies Danny had finally talked Mom into letting him watch.
He pointed and whispered. “Look. Something’s wrong.” Mom never left the door open. In fact, she always fussed at him for doing that, for letting the cool air out.
“Oh shit. You’re right.”
Danny flinched and shushed her. When she didn’t reply, he turned and what he saw took him completely by surprise. Lena, tough, know-it-all, always quick with a comeback, looked as frightened as he felt. He knew what he had to do but didn’t know if he could. “You wait here, and I’ll check it out.”
She frowned. “No freaking way. You’re not leaving me out here. Besides, I’m the oldest, and I’m in charge.” She brushed past him, opened the door wider, and stepped inside.
Relief washed over him, and a little shame, too. Lena was right. She was big and tough. Surely, she could handle whatever was inside. And he would be right there beside her to help. Still, taking that first step was a struggle reminiscent of climbing from the SUV four and a half years earlier. Eventually, he found himself capable of following her inside.
The door opened onto a small foyer that looked the same as when they left for school that morning. Three feet in, the house opened on both sides; on the right, the kitchen, and on the left, the living room and dining area. Brother and sister entered their home, looked right and then left, and gaped in horror.
The living room was in shambles. Flat screen shattered, tables and the couch overturned. Mom kept family photographs framed on the opposite wall. Most of the pictures lay on the floor, glass shattered. Among the broken frames was their mother with a jagged chasm splitting her neck, lying on a black spot of carpet that had been wholly blue that morning.
Lena’s voice hitched, and she took a trio of baby steps forward. “What. The. Oh fuck.” She screamed and whirled, slamming into Danny on her way outside. She jerked the door closed behind her.
The force of Lena’s shoulder shoved Danny into the wall and to the floor. Pain shot up from his tailbone, and the back of his head bounced off the wall. He slumped there, dizzy and confused and screaming. Even though he couldn’t see his mother from where he lay, he could not unsee what was done to her. He shrieked and didn’t stop.
The door flew open, and Lena leaned inside, screaming something he couldn’t hear. She snatched a handful of his T-shirt and dragged him out of the house.
****
With an explosion worthy of a cannon, the .38 fired. The power of the blast nearly jerked the handgun from his grasp—the gun’s kick took him off guard, and the bullet missed wide. The creature seemed unbothered by being shot at. What little hope he had held onto sank some at seeing it so unfazed. “Shit.” He squeezed the trigger again, but no matter how he focused he was too frightened to hold the heavy firearm steady. He fired three more times in quick succession, twice seeing splatters of blood fly off the monster’s chest. It did not seem to matter. Halfway to the porch, the thing in the yard gave a shriek somewhere between a wolf’s howl and the metal-on-metal grinding of a car crash. Then it loped across the remaining feet of walkway and up the front steps.
Dan had emptied the cylinder to no effect. All five shots were useless, and now it was on him.
He dropped into a crouch; his knuckles corpse-white against the gunmetal. Coming face to face with the abomination once again, and after so much time and death, infuriated him. Magma bubbled through his veins. “Get it over with then,” he said, and rushed to meet the creature.
It reared up, arching its neck like a King Cobra, staring into Dan’s face. The jaws snapped open and shut. Blackened gums. Jagged teeth.
Dan took an involuntary step back, then with a silent war cry swung the revolver overhand like a stone. He might as well have popped it with a rubber band for all the reaction he received.
Teeth snapped. Spittle flew. And before Dan could brace himself, he was slammed onto his back on the porch. Boards rattling beneath him. His brain rattled inside his skull.
It was on top, pinning him to the porch. Dan fought, kicked, and screamed, used all his strength to wiggle free, but the creature proved amazingly strong. No matter how he bucked, he couldn’t loosen its hold.
The grotesque head at the end of that cobra’s neck drew close. The face seemed to rearrange itself with a series of clicks and pops. The brow lifted, grew bushy and dark. The nose elongated as the cheekbones twisted and pressed out against flesh. Blinking, Dan recognized a funhouse mirror version of his own goddamn face.
The shifting slowed. The creature grinned down at him. Fire exploded in his chest, and blood filled his mouth and blood throat, and he vomited gore all over himself. He tried to lift his head to see what it was doing to him, but it hurt too much. Reality grew fuzzy.
A horrible scream rang out from inside the house and brought him partially back to consciousness. He wondered how long the monster had worked at him, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that new scream, and the person who loosed it.
His vision was blurry, his body numb, but he could just make out Avery’s form, bloated with child yet still the loveliest person in the world. She couldn’t be here. Not right now. She had to run. He had to help her. Get up and fight this thing as long as he could. Give her time to escape. Give her…
Fight…
But he did not move. He couldn’t. He felt warm, cold, and nothing simultaneously. He lay there as the shadows shifted and the thing rose.
“Danny. Danny!”
He tried to tell her to run. But he just lay there as the monster shook its head, neck now an almost acceptable length. Dan thought, no matter what, it was always just nearly normal but never completely there.
Run…
Avery…
He felt himself fading fast. Is this what Dad felt so long ago? His mother? Much more recently, his sister?
“Here we go again,” the creature said in almost Dan’s voice as it crossed the threshold into his home.
He heard Avery scream once more before the darkness fell over him.
Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think, and if you liked this story check out more of my work!
Really fantastic work! Chilling!
Wow you really nailed it. Had me hooked immediately. Great Job