2BS – Leftovers

sockets around her eyes were sinkholes and her grey eyes drowned helplessly in them. Her face hung loose on her bones like a mask one size too big.

I’d always thought the house was abandoned. All the times I’d played at the park near my house I’d never seen anyone enter to leave. From the outside it was a simple brick building with boards or plastic covering most of the windows. Dead grass and weeds made up the lawn. But even with seeing the old woman sitting in the decrepit armchair, I still wasn’t sure that anyone lived here. The crusty furniture and scattered knick knacks on the floor were my first clue. The second was that the old lady hadn’t responded at all since I had come into the house.

I took cautious steps towards her. The floorboards creaked, protesting my footfalls. At any moment I could plunge into a horrid basement filled with eight-legged terrors. A breeze blew the front door the rest of the way open and it banged against a fallen hat rack. I nearly screamed but the woman in the chair didn’t even flinch. Pages from a brittle magazine fell off an end table and fell to the floor.

“Hello?”

I stood right in front of her, waving my hand. Dare I touch her? What if she crumbled to dust and she got all over me. What if I accidentally breathed her inside me?

“I’m looking for my baseball. It went through a window. It didn’t break any glass, it just tore the plastic covering.”

Nothing. She just sat there, eyes open, mouth open just a little bit. I couldn’t tell if she breathed or not.

I reached out to touch her but stopped a few inches short of her pale, spotted hand. She stared right through my chest, her eyes weren’t focused on anything. I looked at them for signs of life. They were so dull, but they looked real, they were even a little moist it seemed. As I stared I could have sworn they moved and I clamped my mouth shut and gasped through my nose instead of shouting. The odor of mold and dust stuck in my nose, no smell on anything living. I stepped back. If she didn’t know I was there, I should just get my baseball and leave. Maybe she slept with her eyes open. I didn’t want to turn my back to her, but I did, and every nerve along my spine turned to ice. Ignoring it I walked to the next room where my baseball had to be. Was she a ghost? An apparition? In any case, I felt sure my back would be damaged by frostbite.

Inside the kitchen, rubbish lay strew all about. A table lay broken like a squashed insect and old stains of food lay splattered around it. Several cabinet doors hung open on broken hinges. A stark black refrigerator loomed in the corner like a glowering monolith. I heard its low electric hum. I had to wonder that if food filled its inside, how did a blind lady manage walking through the rubble to get to it? As I traversed random bits of chairs and broken jars I almost tripped over a pile of shattered plates. I looked around and it appeared that no dish had been left unbroken. The other room just looked to have fallen apart. This room looked like it had been destroyed.

I saw my baseball between the fridge and a cabinet. I reached to get it, but couldn’t quite reach. I changed my stance to lean in, braced against the fridge. When I put my hand on the fridge’s door, I heard voices inside my head. They sounded distant, I couldn’t understand any words. I pulled my hand away, and they stopped. Figuring the voices were a product of my imagination, I leaned in again, but the voices came back. This time they were closer. I pulled my hand away again. In an effort to retain my sanity, I joked with myself that there was just a casserole inside that needed to be tossed out a few months back. I laughed a bit inside, but I had a feeling deep inside like thick, bitter soup. There couldn’t be anything too horrible in an old lady’s fridge, right? I had to know. I had to know there was nothing strange inside. It would haunt me forever if my only memory was those voices, and not the laughable memory I’d have when I found there was only a half empty bottle of mayonnaise inside. I opened the fridge.

I recoiled as a nauseous odour pushed me backwards. I slammed the door but it bounced back open and something inside clattered as it fell. Black and green goo slid from large, round white things on the wire racks and ran down onto the floor. It surged towards me. I scrambled backwards, stepping on loose silverware and slipped and fell backwards. I put my hands down to help break the fall and one hand slid under a cabinet. Splinters cut my hand and one slid under my fingernail. I howled in pain. I managed to get up jest before the creeping black and green horror touched my feet. I turned to run only to find the old lady standing right in front of me. She just stood, staring ahead just as blank as before, unmoving. How long had she been there? I hesitated for just a second, deciding if I could risk turning away from her to see if the goo indeed crawled towards me. Not chancing a look, I moved around the old lady, stepping onto the broken table. I lost balance and automatically reached out and grabbed the old woman’s shoulder. Her head whipped to stare at my hand. Then she shot a glance at the goo. Then she glared into my eyes and screamed.

I leaped away and fell, banging my elbow hard on the ground. I heard a slopping sound right near my head. I rolled towards the exit and my eyes fell on the lady. She stared at me, a look of horror and disgust on her face and rage in her eyes.

“Get out of my house!”

Black, rotten teeth fell from her mouth. Something writhed in the darkness of her maw. The whole room felt pressurized. The tear in the plastic over the window tore open even more and everything in the room shuddered. I scrambled to get up but fell again as my hurt elbow gave way.

“Get out!”

Bits of broken wood and ceramic swirled about the room, nicking and gashing me. I felt blood ooze down my arms and down my back. Some of the goo sailed past me and screeched as it splattered on the wall. I crawled towards the exit, keeping my head down to protect my face. The oppressive pressure surged through the room again and the torn plastic blew completely out the window.

“Now they’re going to spoil!”

The sloshing sound got louder along with a new sound of slurping. I heard what had to have been the terrible woman swallowing. Every ounce of sense in my body told me to just run, but the sheer horror I felt forced me to turn and look. I vomited and fled. I don’t remember standing or running. I just remember coming to my senses a mile away covered in sweat and bile. I dry heaved, remembering the last thing I had seen.

The old lady, the creature, the whatever she was, sat on the floor scooping up hand fulls of the goo and it dripped off her fingers into her mouth. Each drop was a glob that wriggled and quivered as it fell. Dribbles ran down her leathery cheeks and chin. She licked them off with an inhumanly long tongue. She picked up one of the white things that fell from the fridge, a human skull. She licked out some of the inside through an eye hole then scooped out more goo with her hand, sucking the dripping, oozing globs off her fingertips. On each glob swirled a terrified, screaming, human face.

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And thats all I have to say about that.

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