She whipped around, the scream still ringing in her ears. “Rachel? Rachel?”
The room fell silent. Her legs knocked against tables and chairs in the darkness. “Rachel? Rachel! Where are you? Please! Rachel!” Her stomach lurched and twisted. She abandoned all caution, all discretion, desperate to find her sister. Something soft caught her foot. She stepped back and cast the light from her phone towards the object.
Rachel’s severed face stared up from the floor, her body nowhere to be found.
The gun rang out.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Four shots tore through her chest. All five feet, seven inches of her crumpled to the ground. Blood soaked the moonlit shore as the lake lapped at her flesh. The boy stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, gun still trained on the fallen woman, breath caught in his throat.
“It’s over.” He exhaled.
“Is . . . it?”
Her body convulsed, bones snapping out of place, limbs twisting and elongating. She rose like water and held him in two fathomless pools. Her jaw popped and jerked, unhinging itself, mouth stretching unnaturally wide revealing row upon row of jagged teeth. The dead woman bellowed a scream so primal the boy collapsed to his knees, sobbing.
“No need to cry, boy.” Her voice was like a skittering swarm of roaches. Her laugh like an electric guitar. She towered over the child and whispered, “Now, come to mommy.”
He is neither kind nor jolly. Every year he enters the homes of especially unruly children and snatches them up, leaving behind no trace or memory that they had ever existed. By night’s end, with his sack full of naughty children, he slinks back to his lair to gorge himself. When the last child is devoured, bones and all, he falls into a deep sleep for another year, with none of us the wiser.
Until now.
Dividing flesh from spirit
Requires precise incisions.
Quick and defined strokes
Setting souls free,
Though—
More often than not,
Most, I admit,
Go quite unwillingly.
Knocking, Tapping
Against the wall,
Skittering, creeping
Down the hall.
Scratching, scraping
Beneath the bed,
Laughing, screaming
They woke up dead.
Void Engineer 