The passage below is an excerpt from the story Darkfire, from Dark Trails: A Collection of Horror Short Stories from the Visionary Mind of Dexter Holland.
A shadow passes over me.
A Thing leaps over the desk, landing in mid stride right in front of me. He doesn’t even bother to look back. Neither does the next one, or the next.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and none of them will see me
The next one trips on the desk and lands on me.
It lashes out spastically, flailing all four limbs like a neurotic caged monkey as it struggles to get back onto its feet. It is shrieking, more in anger or frustration than pain. It finally gets up onto two feet and only now seems to notice me. It stops moving and for a moment time stops.
A Thing leaps over the desk, landing in mid stride right in front of me. He doesn’t even bother to look back. Neither does the next one, or the next.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and none of them will see me
The next one trips on the desk and lands on me.
It lashes out spastically, flailing all four limbs like a neurotic caged monkey as it struggles to get back onto its feet. It is shrieking, more in anger or frustration than pain. It finally gets up onto two feet and only now seems to notice me. It stops moving and for a moment time stops.
It stares at me with a pair of loathsome inky eyes.
I stare back.
It looks like a human, yet completely alien at the same time. Something about it seems inherently…malignant. Like a tumor this is something that should never exist.
A demon’s attempt at humanity
Every muscle sticks out, every sinew completely visible, as if its skin is paper thin. The skin itself looks rotted. It is a dark blackish blue, like a bad bruise, but all over its body. A waving black tentacle sticks out from the back of each forearm.
As it looks at me the tentacles pick up and wave in my direction, sniffing me, searching.
I feel nauseous.
All the repulsive nature of the body barely compares to the distorted expression of its face.
On one side the cheek bone sticks out through the skin, bleached white as if it had been uncovered for awhile. It is a stark contrast to the black of the skin There is no nose.
The eyes
The eyes are completely black. No pupils, no whiteness, just black balls in the sockets. Yet I can tell they are looking at me, searching me.
This thing is not an animal. I can tell it is contemplating me behind those voids of eyes. The veins in the face glow like blue fire through the skin.
I stare back.
It looks like a human, yet completely alien at the same time. Something about it seems inherently…malignant. Like a tumor this is something that should never exist.
A demon’s attempt at humanity
Every muscle sticks out, every sinew completely visible, as if its skin is paper thin. The skin itself looks rotted. It is a dark blackish blue, like a bad bruise, but all over its body. A waving black tentacle sticks out from the back of each forearm.
As it looks at me the tentacles pick up and wave in my direction, sniffing me, searching.
I feel nauseous.
All the repulsive nature of the body barely compares to the distorted expression of its face.
On one side the cheek bone sticks out through the skin, bleached white as if it had been uncovered for awhile. It is a stark contrast to the black of the skin There is no nose.
The eyes
The eyes are completely black. No pupils, no whiteness, just black balls in the sockets. Yet I can tell they are looking at me, searching me.
This thing is not an animal. I can tell it is contemplating me behind those voids of eyes. The veins in the face glow like blue fire through the skin.
Buy the e-book on Kindle to read more, along with more short stories of dark fiction.
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