Morning

By lip_music (our ace new contributor)

There was something in the room – Gaz knew it before he even opened his eyes. While his body slumbered, some dark guard of the mind remained pointedly awake, seizing on a change in the outside world. Through a scuttling, or perhaps some foreign smell, a presence had been declared.

Ash from the mattress had transferred to his face. He rose, propping himself up on the crook of one elbow, his fingers brushing the damp patch where he’d dribbled in the night. He picked grit from his eyes and sniffed. The noise brought a stop to the movement in the corner.

A rat. It sat on its haunches and breathed, grey fur puffing in and out.

The rodents made him think of Runcorn, back in the day. Grandad had gone to war with them, laying down poison and cramming traps by the stairs. Sometimes he’d come in to show Gaz his successes – little bodies dangling by their tails, pinched between his yellowed fingers.

‘They’re like the Darkies!’ he used to say. ‘Leave them be and they’ll take it all. Won’t leave us a crumb.’

Grandad was lucky to cop the Big C when he did. If the bombs hadn’t got him, he’d have had a heart attack when he saw the size of these bastards. A few weeks after the drop, Gaz had watched a pair of them take down a dog. They’d gone for the legs first, and it was several long minutes before the whimpering stopped. In a world ripe with horrors, it was a scene that had stayed with him for days. He consoled himself with the thought that it was likely to remain a one-off experience: he hadn’t seen a dog in months now.

He knelt up to the windowsill. The street was calm as always, a slow wind forming ripples in the charcoal dunes. Gaz scanned for footprints but found nothing. There was no disappointment in this; it was a daily habit, and little more. A faint chill crept through the crack in the glass, the sliver-like hole that had filled him with dread when first discovered. It amused him to think of it, the depth of his fear over something so small.

His attention wandered back to the room. The rat was still there, looking at him as if awaiting the start of a conversation. Gaz stared back, slowly reaching down to lift the bottom of his shirt.

He flexed. His tendril snapped across the room, the barb impaling the rat through the meat of its stomach. The rat struggled, but in seconds he had pulled it back and into the fleshy hole in the side of his belly. Gaz felt the rat wriggling inside him, then something snapped tight, and all was still.

He was filled with a sense of bland satisfaction. It had seemed so much stranger, so much more real the first time it happened.

He look back at the window. He wondered if it would rain.

short story
horror
morning