Something Wicked this Way Comes

Momentarily I froze, but love is a powerful motivator. Had I been on my own, fear would have taken me, shaking any possibility of resistance from my mind, but with Mary sleeping soundly in the same room as that thing; shielding someone I loved from that wretch was my only thought.

I turned around slowly and as I did so, I could hear it wheezing, gasping, groaning for air. At a quarter turn, I could smell its breath, the stench of death hung in the air, plague-like and foul. Then, I heard another voice. It was not that horror in the darkness, but Mary. She let out a scream which startled and distressed me to my very core. A scream which will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I turned quickly and laid eyes on it, but it wasn't behind me, it was on the bed! It writhed and rasped, wheezing in delight, its bony spine curved with the anguish of countless years protruding through a ragged, torn piece of cloth which hung loosely over its torso, in a vain attempt to appear almost human.

But was it human? Had it once been human? Or was it something so vile, so despicable, so utterly and sorrowfully contemptible that no man or woman could ever attempt to quantify or understand it?

I sprung forward towards it, grabbing, hitting, pulling at that thing with every ounce of my strength, its loose skin slipping through my hands. It squeezed and forced Mary's face into her pillow with glee, as its other limbs arched and contorted, tearing at her nightdress, running its long, starved fingers over her naked body with its sordid caress.

Mary's screams were muffled by the pillow as I began to fear that she was being suffocated.

I shouted, I yelled, I pleaded with that thing to leave her alone, to take me, to do anything it wanted, but that only served to animate the fiend to even greater depths of depravity. It was hurting her, cutting her... my beautiful Mary.

Suddenly it stopped attacking her, but it still kept one of its brittle, gangly, and gaunt yet weighted hands on the back of Mary's head, pushing her face further into her pillow. I had my hands around its putrid neck, trying as best I could to strangle the beast, but my efforts were in vain. Its scrawny frame belied its overpowering strength. I watched in sickly disbelief as it began to run its cadaverous fingers through Mary's hair, slowly, and almost with affection.

I could now here the twisting and cracking of bone, the popping of cartilage, the snapping of tendons.