This was another one of my "What ifs" for a tiny story. I grew up a horror fan but over the years I've become a big fan of, simply, the strange. I like oddball little tales that are horror-like but some would consider not full on horror. A lot of my writing resembles this style, these strange little horror ideas. My wife and I love horror, though she tends to like it straight with nothing else mixed in and I think horror's great for mixing with other things, and Friday the 13th is practically a holiday in our house lol. So I figured I'd put two stories up today.
One Man’s Bizarre Night
By Christopher Michael Carter
“To hell with this, I’m out!” Kenneth’s last words in the argument ring clear as he grabs his keys and storms out of the house. Aileen throws her hands up, “Fine. Whatever!”
His drinking prior to the fight doesn’t help matters and certainly doesn’t help him find his truck’s door handle. Kenneth’s blurry vision sees at least two key holes which results in him keying his own vehicle. But once in the driver’s seat he’s ready to get out of Aileen’s presence & air all together. …And so he speeds off into the night.
“What does she want me to do!? I can’t do everything!” His hands grip the steering wheel hard, his knuckles clouded white. His eyes veer from the road to the glove box; knowing very well what he had left in it from their last blow up gives him a sense of X-Ray vision. He opens it up to reveal a small bottle of whiskey, three fourths full.
A smile cracks his face from its serious shell. Trying to keep up with the lines on the road, he unscrews the bottle’s cap and takes the much needed swig. It burns going down; that good burn. Kenneth wipes the excess from his chin and places the bottle between his legs.
“Shit!” He yells, slamming his fists on the steering wheel. He continues to drink & his anger grows with every drink. The fight continues though they’re apart. Aileen sits at home crying on the phone to her parents while Kenneth stews in his anger hurdling down the road in his pickup truck.
The man’s teeth grinds & his vision blurs more so. The lines in the road are interrupted by an apparent deer crossing up ahead. And in an instant, being mad at Aileen is the last thing on his mind.
The headlights shine upon what appeared to be a child; a boy crossing the road. His eyes widen & he tries to swerve but it’s too late. The sound is a loud, thunderous clatter against the truck. Kenneth slams his breaks, skidding the tires. The dust brought up from the dirt road surround the area. His heart races but he’s without breath. Reaching down to the floorboard where the bottle had fallen, it runs through his head what just happened. Before getting out to investigate, another drink is taken.
The squeak of the opening driver door echoes in the night. He stumbles out, still breathing slow and not fully. In the flashing lights of the black truck Kenneth sees the shirtless back of the boy, as he lay face down in blood. A million & one thoughts fight one another to get to the forefront of his mind but they all bottleneck.
“Aw, why!?” He buries his face in his hands before slamming the door and kicking it. “Why, damn you!?” The drunken man attempts to calm himself, thinking over what his game plan is going to be and not having to think of the repercussions of killing a child while driving drunk.
“Alright. Alright.” He says to himself taking a deep breath. Kenneth peeks around in the bed of his pickup and finds a roll of tarp. He faces the mistake he’s made but in a look at the full body of the boy Dave drops the tarp. His first look was correct, the boy was shirtless. But the man had not seen the kid’s lower half. What he saw couldn’t have been right, he thought.
By the tail lights, his victim is revealed. Kenneth rubs his eyes & adjusts to the night to make sure what he has seen is accurate. He crouches down to speculate & investigate further. The child’s lower body is been covered in a thin layer of fur. Upon closer inspection the body’s knees are reversed, opposite of what it normally would be for a human child or a human in general. Dave’s hand runs down the thing’s leg, just along the outside, barely grazing the fur, until it reaches the end; a hoof where a foot should be.
“What the…?” Wide eyed, he falls to his behind up against the truck. “Oh, Jesus, what’s going on? Oh no. Please. Why? Damn it.” Kenneth cries into his hands & pulls his hair. “DAMN IT! DAMN IT!” He yells to himself while punching himself in the side of the head. He takes a deep breath and stands up. After looking around, he realizes that there are no houses around. ‘Where the hell could it have come from?’ He thinks to himself. The…thing is naked and the man checks it out again seeing it from its little hooves up. The fur tapers off at the waist and its upper torso is bare and white. The ‘boy’ looks like he couldn’t be older than ten years of age. Tears stream down Kenneth’s face, shaken.
Moving up to the child’s head, he finds two small curved horns just above its temples. “What in the hell…?” The driver is in a state of perpetual confusion and shock which the alcohol isn’t helping. He turns it over on its back to see the innocence in the child’s face. Its hair, short and dark, looks just like your average little boy’s haircut, but this is no average little boy. Kenneth’s heart skips a beat or so looking at this. He shakes his head aggressively trying to shake off the strong feeling of guilt to assess the situation.
“Okay, what am I going to do?” He asks himself wiping the tears off of his face. He looks around to find the situation is exactly what he thought; he’s in the middle of the deserted dirt road late at night. He decides to ditch the tarp and just remove his victim from the street.
He picks up the lifeless body as you would if you were taking a sick child to bed. Kenneth takes a deep breath and starts moving towards the woods. He moves down and up the ditch and into the dark wooded area. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real…” He continues to tell himself on his trek. Deep amongst the trees, it’s blacker than the coffee he’ll be needing the next morning and he stops in a clearing. He lays the boy down gently on the ground and stands back up straight while looking down at the bizarre tragedy. He can feel eyes on him. ‘There’s more.’ He thinks. He can sense that he isn’t alone and the feeling that he’s surrounded grows with sounds of sticks and twigs breaking as if being trampled on.
“I’m sorry.” He says through his breaking voice. “I’m so sorry.” He cautiously walks into the darkness breathing slowly, not knowing what to expect. Moving through the dark woods he hears faint whispering and indistinct chatter from all around him and slow galloping sounds that are picking up the pace. Kenneth wipes his eyes before running back to his truck; the only one out on the road tonight. His heart races as he feels he’s being chased. Upon opening the driver’s side door he sees his bottle of whiskey and the perception of his bottled friend seems to have changed. He takes the bottle from the truck and hurls it into the field beside him.
After quite the sobering experience he hops back in his truck and decides to go home. Any problems with his significant other seem minuscule at this point. He keeps his eyes peeled the rest of the way home, driving as safe as he can, considering.
He gets home and Aileen is asleep in their darkened bedroom. He goes into their bathroom and strips down to his undershirt and boxers, throwing his jeans and shirt into the hamper. The man takes a good long look at himself in the mirror and sighs before washing his hands. He dips his face down into the sink and splashes water on his face repeatedly. Looking back up at himself in the mirror he speaks again, “Nobody knows. It’s not even real. You just had too much to drink, is all. You hit a stray dog; a coyote. Get some sleep.”
He leaves the bathroom, shutting off the light on his way out, and heads into his bedroom. He lies down, curling up with his wife; apparently both of them have calmed down. His wife is a heavy sleeper and a light snorer. The man tries to sleep but keeps fighting off the guilt; a barrage of thoughts of what he’d done and the thing he’d witnessed. He leans over to kiss Aileen on her sleeping head before reclining back to his pillow. His eyes finally get heavy and he drifts…
Through a hazy cloud of dust he speeds down the old dirt road into the pitch black night. She materializes out of thin air right before the truck’s headlights. He tries to slam on his breaks upon seeing her in his lights but can’t make it in time and by the time he stops the damage is already done. He’s hesitant to get out of the truck and when he does he looks down to see his wife, Aileen, mangled beneath the rear wheel reaching up for him.
The image breaks and Kenneth awakens from his nightmare. He gasps, short of breath. Aileen is still asleep. He catches his breath just as he hears a clatter from outside. His brows furrow and he gets up from his bed quietly before heading to the window as the noises are more apparent; closer. With both hands he opens the curtains to see his front yard completely littered with lingering live goats. They’re casually standing around the yard, eating grass, and moseying around. Kenneth is confused watching this. He looks around to the rest of the visible neighborhood to see his yard is the only one currently inhabited by goats.
In an instant every individual animal on the lawn stop what they’re doing and look up directly at Kenneth. His head jerks back upon seeing such an ominous sight. He rubs his eyes and looks again as the yard of goats continue to stare at him with animalistic intensity. They slowly disappear, vanishing before his eyes, one by one. He watches, stunned, as a voice breaks his concentration, “Babe, what are you doing?” It’s his wife, still irritated. “Are you still drunk?” She asks to which he replies dryly, “No.”
“You’re acting weird. What’s going on out there?” She looks with him to see a blank yard lit by moonlight.
Kenneth’s body turns back towards her and their room while his eyes never leave the yard, “Nothing. Let’s go back to bed...”
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