"The Beholden" - Alien sci fi horror short story

“The Beholden”

Harsh invasive light moved from left to right as I looked out the gap in the door, creating shadows that ran the opposite way as it passed through the slats in the linen cupboard I was hiding in.

The towels were soft but at the same time scratchy meaning they were getting close to being at the end of their life.

 “What the hell and I thinking about towels for” I said softly to myself. The smell of detergent and fabric softener strong on my senses, as I dared to peer out between one of the lose slats to see what was going on. Only a millimeter or two but I could still make out shapes.

Oh shit! They are coming again. This is the third night in a row, what the hell am I supposed to do? I’m a fifteen year old girl in her jammies for god sake, GOD! Where are you now? I thought this sort of stuff was all made up bull, crap, as my friends would say.

 I had to endure dads Carl Sagan DVD’s about the crop circles, alien technology and markings within the cosmos and all that guff, only to now end up being one of the unwilling believers. 

Shit Mum! Where are you going, “Dad stop her” I said to myself but then saw him following right behind her.

Noise, coming from my bedroom, oh god it’s looking for me, quiet gotta be quiet, if he hears me thinking I’m stuffed. Oh no Jeremy, not Jeremy he’s only seven leave him alone. I started to cry and my eyes filled with the warm salty fluid as I watched my little brother march slowly past the door. My tears had made a silent trial to my top lip that was now securely shut by my bottom teeth. I tasted my own fear as I watched them walk slowly to the front door and out into the never yet again.

More noise, again from my room, doors slamming, my mattress and sheets now a mess on the floor, I can hear my clothes being thrown all over my room, Shhhhhh be quiet, it stopped, Christ its searching the house, oh shit it’s looking for me, I can hear it chattering like an old typewriter clanging out letters and then a faint gurgle in reply, oh shit there is two of them looking for me.

 I snuck another look, lights moving, and horrible greenish yellow lights that if you look at for too long the rays hurt the back of your eyes as it bores into your frontal lobe.

My hand slowly moved to my side so I can try and move back further into the closet but there is no room, knitting needles mums’ old aluminium knitting needles are now under my palm the cool metal feels somewhat comforting as I think of that old red sweater she made me when I was six, I loved that damn thing.

The door flew open and all I could see was what passed as a head, it was huge, bulbous and grey in colour with the slight hint of a violet or purple hue to it, right in front of me. It had slightly humanoid features just like the shows dad made me watch and a small slit where the mouth was, but only slight unremarkable holes that sat under folds of skin for a nasal cavity.

It had a look of despair on its somewhat aquatic looking face and then what I suppose passes as excitement or the Aha face you get when you find someone hiding.

 I’m frozen; my spine cold as ice, abject fear has me and then thank Christ the human survival instinct kicked in flee or fight, my right hand grasped those knitting needles and before I even realized it they were sticking out of the things huge left eye and it’s expression soon changed to one of pain and horror as it stumbled on backward facing knees. I saw my window of opportunity and took it.

I’m running as fast as my jelly legs can carry me, the front is covered, the back door, run, run, oh shit it’s locked.

Hide!

 No RUN! I can hear them clattering behind me looking talking.

The laundry window is open, run, the windows open half way get out, freedom, run, oh shit!

I hear Screams! My screams

So cold so very cold, Oh shit not again, tears now were streaming down my face getting in my ears. I’m awake and  on a cold, I think metallic table, naked, trapped, held in place by some force I can’t explain, they are looking at me three of them tall strange looking things wearing something that could be a tight fitting suit, maybe, an almost organic thing that looks like a syringe in one of the things so called clawed hands, oh Jesus get away from there, that’s not for anyone, pain or is this hell, I can feel the warmth as I start to piss myself.

Oh dear god, mum, dad someone I scream as they insert something into me, it’s cold and it’s moving, oh god its moving! Tears were now a constant stream almost creating a furrow down my face.

I black out.

My room is in that not cold not warm, tepid state and the morning light was dappled as it often was when you just see the sun rays pierce through the new mornings clouds.

 My stomach hurts and I think I need to puke, I got up and slowly made my way to the toilet at the end of the hall, ah that’s not right, I look down blood, I only just finished two weeks ago! I thought to myself.

“Mum can you get me some pads please?” A flash as I went cold something hit me in my mind’s eye a figure, cold, nasty. I felt my abdomen as the pain inside threatened to double me over as it hit me again.

I placed the palm of my right hand on the area just above my pubic bone, I had a flash of pain and my body trembled with blood that had turned ice cold as a new fear hit me.

It was then I felt it move inside me!

Copyright - Graeme Hawke 2014

"Smoke & Mirrors" - a little tale for you to enjoy

“Smoke and Mirrors”

Samuel T Witherspoon looked deeply at his own reflection in the old bathroom cabinet mirror, it was uninviting, and a cold feeling that crept over him as he reached for the bathroom cabinet door and with the deft movement of darts player, grabbed the small round handle and opened it with grace and poise. He was sick of being a no-one, one of a thousand faces in a crowd, he tried to stand out he really did but tonight was the last straw. He lost it and now he would have to pay the ultimate penalty.

His price for the lives he took would be his own worthless and empty existence; he knew he had the balls to do it, he just didn’t know how he would go about it. He popped the top of the bottle marked Pain relief and thought to himself “well I am in pain I suppose” as he downed ten of the potent hallucinogenic prescription only pills his now deceased father used when his trick knees played up.

He was a Vietnam veteran of two terms and he often delighted in telling his young son of how he made those gooks pay! Well now he was gutted and a steaming pile of meat in his favourite lounge chair and his mother a smile from ear to ear from the wound he had inflicted with her best carving knife.

The blood now washed off his hands and stained the pristine white porcelain bowel an eerie red tinge. The revolver on the side of the bath was loaded with all six chambers full and ready for action. He finished washing his hands and glanced knowingly at the weapon with an understanding his father had used it in anger during his time at war and he thought about the death it had inflicted; only now it would be his own hand that steadied the barrel and pulled the trigger.

You would never have thought a twenty four year old could be so bitter and twisted about his life, nothing really stood out to him now, as to why he turned out bad, he was a good boy who did his chores, loved his mother and got on with his father, but the beatings when he was drunk, well that was just part of the war. That’s what mum had said! Maybe I did resent them deep down, him for hitting me and mum, and her for letting it happen for so long. Ah well not for much longer, the cops will be here soon and I have to be gone before they break the door down. “I wonder should I wait until they are at the door so it’s all dramatic and stuff and when it’s on the CI channel as a special it will be all dramatic, I wonder who they will use to play me.” I said out aloud to myself now holding the pistol on my hand, the Colt single action a great weighted piece and I knew it would make a mess of my brain.

I looked into the old mirror and could see in the corners a slight silver lustre it must be old I thought again as I studied the etching in the corner “REFICUL EMEVOL” written in a circle and what seemed to be a five pointed star in the middle. I wonder how old this is, I remarked to myself in my own thoughts then drifting off to a documentary about a journalist who was the first to ever trek into the head-hunters villages in the mountains of Borneo. He tried to take their photographs with an old Kodak instant camera and they beheaded him and the child he snapped as they believed the device captured the person’s reflection, thus their soul or essence with it.

“Fuck it” I pulled the trigger!

I watched as time almost stopped in my still functioning mind and saw the hammer of the pistol hit the pin sending a flash and the projectile along the spiral path towards the spot just above my ear. It penetrated firstly stretching the skin then breaking it in a shower of powder and led. I felt nothing at all, although I saw everything, it was both unsettling and amazing all at once the damage to my head was slight except for the powder burns around the entry wound and a whole the size of a penny.

My vision started to falter like a flickering TV and I noticed the left side of my head started to bulge and then burst out with force and a whole the size of a grapefruit was where my ear should have been on the other side, viscous matter and fluids, brain matter and blood one can assume, flew out mixed with white bone fragments, my vision left me and existence stopped.

To the outside world it would have been instantaneous, trigger and death, but in the world that is between realities my soul, the essence of what was me was captured in that special mirror.

My eyes opened and my first thought was that I blacked out for a second or I didn’t pull the trigger and I had dreamt the whole thing, but I was nothing I felt nothing, not hot nor cold nor weight or gravity, I just was. I peered at the mirror and I saw a ruined body on the floor, it had shed itself of all vital fluids and the face although mine was subsequently demolished by the power of the forty four calibre slug.

I could hear in tangles of garbled waves and I closed my eyes to concentrate but it didn’t help much. I took a step back or at least I thought I did and I was looking through a dark veil as the light muted around me.

The police had broken through the bathroom door and were screaming and yelling but although my body was now a dead meat sack, I was gone, and I caught sight of what was going on as they moved in one by one to view the prone corpse of a killer.

I looked up and as I did I caught the eye of a police man who looked in at me and then it hit me I was in a dimensional space behind the mirror. An existence I had no idea how I became to be in let alone hold my life experience and thoughts.

The police officer looked deeper into the mirror exploring the spay pattern and vita on the glass. I leaned forward melding with his own reflection moving instinctively as he did matching his every move. He then frowned and I screamed and bared my incorporeal teeth at him and he jumped back from the mirror in fright.

“Bob you ok” An older policeman asked as Officer Tanner regained his composure.

“Yep I think so Jack I just spooked myself is all”. Bob answered knowing in his own mind he didn’t believe it, he saw something come at him in that reflection that wasn’t his making, and it scared him.

“Jack I’m gonna get some fresh air if that’s ok?” he asked.

 And as he left I noticed that from inside the mirror world the name etched on the bottom corner actually read ‘LOVEME LUCIFER’. At that moment something happened and I started to move back from the mirror I was created in and I moved to a mirror in another house somewhere in the world. Again the same words etched into the mirror, and then at will I could move from mirror to mirror almost in an instant.

I could see others like me floating around in the shadows and dull light reflected inward from thousands of mirrored gateways. They all kept their distance and as such so did I, I had no idea why this was but no matter how hard I tried to get close or converse with the others like me, I was repelled like two positive ends of a magnet.

I would soon learn why and as I travelled and traversed the never that was the mirrors I honed my abilities finding newly created, others like me and also those who must have been in this place for a millennia, warped and twisted, almost animalistic in the so called vision I had of them.

Then as quick as I changed mirrors once again I found myself in front of a mirror with a young boy of about eight or nine brushing his teeth and spitting the remainders in the sink then looking up to check if any of the chalky white substance was still on his lips.

That’s when it happened; I found a crack I could use!

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright - Graeme Hawke 2014

Your Time to Die - A short story to start or finish your day with.

“Your time to Die”

The night was fading away as the first streams of the sun’s rays peeked over the horizon to herald in the start of a new day. In the distance the sound of waves crashing upon the shore, an almost soothing sound to an almost defeated man, a lost man with little knowledge of what had happened to him over the last eight hours.

Paul Harris sat on the low rock wall at the edge of the car park nestled high above the water below, the trees around the cleared parking area rustled softly with a new morning breeze that cooled his hot and aching skin as it blew in off the open seas below.

The cuts and abrasions he surveyed on his exposed arms were nothing compared to the gaping wound in his left thigh and his lower right abdomen, a makeshift tourniquet made from the shirt he was wearing the previous night tied a tight as possible soaked in his precious life’s blood dripping above the leg wound.

As he coughed Paul wiped away a small drool of blood as it bubbled in his throat, leaving him with a metallic, coppery taste that had basically been the main stay of the last eight hours.

“What the hell happened to my life” he whispered softly to himself and he closed his over tired eyes, dragged in a deep breath, as his left hand searched his pockets for a cigarette.

Paul found the cancerous stick and shakily placed the enclosed tobacco and filter in his dry and crusty lips. Using his trusty Zippo he watched the flame dance for a few seconds then dropped the lighter back in his pocket, inhaled deeply and coughed out smoke and with it blood infested spittle.

“Linda what did we do, what happened” he said to himself again as he thought of his beautiful wife, thirty six never had children and her body was still as good as any twenty year old.

He delved inside his memories and thought back to the previous evening, the fun before they even left the house, the drive to the bar, the plans they had for a quiet night away in a ritzy hotel, room service, hot showers, steamy lingering love making.

That was the plan they had been looking forward to for the last three months, it started ok and the sex was fantastic but what was to happen in the wake of their enjoyment was not ever part of the plan.

 A solitary tear run down his face as his mind drifted back to the image of his wife, as he exhaled and coughed again spitting a congealed blob of blood to the ground, he wiped the vitreous fluid away once more as he remembered the last time his eyes drank in her visage.

Her body ruined, all but destroyed and why, what benefit did it serve anyone, she was a beautiful woman who never hurt anyone, he sobbed loudly now and the sun’s rays were oddly comforting him in a blanket of unseen warmth as he allowed his head to drop down between his open knees.

The fight he put up just too still be alive at six o’clock on this beautiful yet torturous morning was almost all too much for him.

“Lisa , I’m sorry I wish it was me and not you” he sobbed softly as a shadow engulfed him and blocked out the warm morning rays of invigorating light, that almost made him feel some small sense of normality  for all of a fleeting few seconds.

“I can accommodate that for you” the voice said, and as he looked up his neck opened and spilled his tongue out of his throat with a rush of what blood there was left in his body. The meaty appendage flopped out like a grotesque meat tie on a blood red shirt.

His last image was that of a shadow outlined by the sun’s rays and a voice that made his skin crawl.

“Die”!

Copyright -  Graeme Hawke

Darkness - A Chapter from my Short story Look behind you.

This is a chapter from one of my Short stories called "Look Behind you" it tells the story of a killer born through abuse.

Darkness

The darkness was thick, like an enveloping blanket of deadly fog, with a hint of eucalyptus and dead socks. My feet are tucked up under close to my bottom as I hug my knees gently rocking back and forward, careful not to make a sound.

“Are you ready to come out yet you little bastard?” my stepmother yelled through the thin plywood of the closet door.

I stifled a cry of surprise and fear, as she kicked the door to scare me. A flood of salty rain flowed down my cheeks, and I could feel the watery snot in my nose start to build up and then cascade down my top lip.

“Well are you done with your answering back or do I have to leave you in there all night again?”  She bellowed.

I felt quietly around the bottom of the closet and let my fingers find and dig into an old fur coat; all that was left of my real mothers’ possessions, after this alien threw all her clothes away.

The old coat had an odd stale smell as well as a faint reminder of my real mothers’ old perfume. I loved it because it was warm and soft like hugging a big fluffy dog, and I let myself slip into a state of unawareness like I always did, when the woman who was not my mother proceeded to down glass after glass of cheap wine and then use me as her tormented play thing.

With yet another “BANG” on the door, the reality of my situation flooded back with a flurry, and the now fantasy of my life when mum was alive and home to look after me seemed like a distant past, even though I think it was only two years ago.

When your fourteen years old it’s hard to remember stuff in relation to time, but I do know one thing, and that’s that I hate my life now.  This supposed mother I have now is a sponge! That’s what my auntie calls her; she stays home while dad works two jobs. A lazy no good whore is another of my favourite sayings that my auntie uses, coz swearing is cool.

LIGHT! Bright and bountiful poured into my senses through my eyes as the door screamed open and the sanctuary of my pure dark world was smashed to pieces within my mind, my real mother drifted away with the darkness back into that special place in my heart, just as the back of the whores hand hit my left cheek.

“Get your mother fucking arse out of that closet now young man” she slurred at me, wine glass positioned securely in her other hand.

“Your father is not coming home for two days, so you better buck up sunshine! or we are going to have some real issues you and me, and you can stay in there until he gets home, you can shit and piss yourself for all I care!” she snarled at me and I could smell the sour wine and tobacco on her breath.

I crawled out of my warm dark sanctuary into the blazing incandescent light holding my face where she hit me, then when clear of her I ran to the toilet to clean myself up. As I ran past her she kicked me in the arse and said “hurry up if you want something to eat! Or you can starve”

I cleaned up and watched as she placed a plate of cold slop in front of me and sat there drinking and smoking as I put the first mouthful to my lips. It was disgusting, and tasted like boiled cardboard and had the consistency of lumpy porridge.

I couldn’t help it my face turned into a grimace before I could stop it and she slapped the plate away from me. The china hit the cold linoleum floor and shattered into hundreds or small shards that skidded across the slick floor. The glop that was meant to be my dinner was stuck like glue to the filthy un-swept floor.

“you can fucking starve then” she said as she hit me again and again, open hands slapped my face and shoulders, I lifted my hands up to stop the onslaught but the barrage of abuse and physical violence kept coming at me.

That’s when it happened!

I remember holding the old style plastic handled fork in my hand, the weight of that old piece of cutlery felt both warm and weighty in my enclosed fist.

The world came to a complete standstill, I could hear my own heart beating in my head and my world became clear and known to me all at the same time.

 The barrage of abuse and the slaps just kept coming at me, but I was in a different place now, I was at peace, I found my thoughts drifting to the fact that I could never be this happy again as long as I lived. I opened my eyes to see my savoir; the one single piece of human detritus that I never expected would aide in my salvation.

My father was being led by his penis and all she was good for was the sex which kept me awake at nights when he was home. This horrible woman was a leach on society and a drain on my father’s wallet, let alone his ball sacks.

As the orchestra of violence was playing out to my physical self, the flood of adrenaline that was boiling in my blood stream to counter my pain and fear gave me the serenity I needed as my left hand grabbed her right wrist hard and fast.

My puffy eyes now replaced with a serine look of wonderment, wide with hate and abhorrence they looked straight into her soul. She stopped and I detected fear as she saw the evil intent in my powder blue eyes, it was in the next instant that she saw a smile form on my lips just as the fork entered the space between the sides of her lower jaw and penetrated thru her tongue and into the soft pallet lodging itself there so hard I could not pull it out.

She stepped backward making a moaning noise similar to that when she has dads cock deep in her mouth.  I smiled and wiped the blood away from the side of my mouth as I watched her stumble as she bled out for the back door.

Silently I chased her and snatched her night gown in my left hand which made her stumble and as she turned to look back at me she slipped on her own blood like a lipstick smear against a mirror. The next few seconds still play out in my mind when I masturbate.

Her pretty bloated face turned from mine in horror as she realized it was going to be a hard fall. Her arms outstretched hit the edge of the kitchen table and spun her almost horizontal to the floor. I remember thinking what a mess she was making as items flew off the table and surrounding bench tops with her flailing almost silently because of the fork that pinned whore mouth almost closed.

Whump! She hit the floor finally and I watched as that beautiful old fork contact the linoleum covered cement floor taking all the weight of her fall, and then the penetrated her brain.

It was at that turning point, that one singular moment that I was reborn; I had a purpose and a new found passion. I knew I had all night to enjoy myself so I made a turkey and cheese sandwich, poured a big class of Pepsi Max, and settled in for a fun filled night of reality TV.

The only problem I had, continually walking over her body with fluids and shit leaking out of every orifice. it made it a tad more difficult to stand, but a good spray of Glen 20 disinfectant fixed it somewhat.

I finished my meal and carved the word “WHORE” into her forehead with a pen knife I had for scouts for fun, packed my back pack with clean cloths, water, biscuits, chocolate and left a note for my poor father saying how sorry I was that I had to leave.

I explained that his so called wife had beaten, and abused me and that I was sorry about the terrible accident that befell her. I knew deep down he would never forgive me, but I ended the note with a thank you telling him not to worry as I was reborn with the help of GOD.

Graeme Hawke   Copyright 2011 GH

Carnal Knowledge - A small start chapter

“Carnal Knowledge”

The tiny silver dew drops slid across the golden Orb spiders’ web like liquid mercury flowing down an invisible pipe, the insect an eight legged plumber orchestrating the flow of each drop as it deftly walks across the silken truss. All this beauty is caught as the morning suns warming ray’s glide seamlessly through the glade of trees, and the almost dance like movement of the attached leaves creating a ballet of shadows in its wake, almost inducing strobe light unease.

The silent scream that would never be heard from the now mortis glistening blue lips of the naked corpse sitting under the giant oak tree, a damning edifice of evil and defilement in this most beautiful of resting places.

Ugly shades of blue and grey mottled skin defaced the magnificent shades of autumn greens and subtle browns, with a trail of foliage destruction formed by the murderous tyres of a vehicle that so callously dumped the lifeless mannequin in its final resting place.  Wounds and damage to the body were instantly evident by the movement of insects, in and out of both natural and unnatural orifices. The coagulated dark red-black of blood and excreta now a haven for flies and crawling creatures from far away all doing their jobs to remove all traces of the expired physical biological form.

The fingers clawed into the shape of a leafless tree branch reaching for an unknown assailant, and mousy blond hair that mirrored that of a scurrying wood-nymph with twigs and leaves strewn at random to offer a hint of camouflage as she ran the forest floor. The twisted visage of the mouth agape with multiple invaders moving in and out seemed to take on voice as a silence shattering scream escaped the vocal cords of seventeen year old camper Tracy Livingston, that voided the surrounding area of any and all bird and wild life.

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"Undead Me" at Barnes & Noble

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