tiny frights volume 3 issue 2, Halloween 2024

Wildfire blackened my lungs as I jolted to life. I tried to throw up but something was already up. Thick, wiry fibers forced their way out of my mouth, snaking deeper into the darkness.

I was dragged down the ship's narrow corridors. The reason we'd come so far to the edge of the world came back to me in disjointed fragments. The walls were folding in, familiar but wrong, wrong in a way I couldn't explain, like a childhood home. The wrongness made my skin tingle. I reached the end, fumbling, feeling for the switch, the strands curling up in a tight knot in the middle of the room.

"He's this way..." a voice down the hall and footsteps.

"Found him like this this morning."

"How long has he been here?"

"Long enough."

"The experiment did this?"

"The nanobodies? No."

"Poor soul—nobody gives a shit about Jack."

"He has no family?"

"None."

They didn't notice me. They didn't notice the strands, either, or the silver threadlings that twisted from their own smiles, disappearing into the shadows.

I went over to him and saw him clearly—he was me. A bloated, rotting, decaying corpse of myself. My stomach panged, but somehow I was relieved to see myself laid out on the floor like that.

They had lied. I cared for Jack. We were kin. I bent down and plucked the strands from our lips, one by one.

Jack may be dead, but we still live. Somehow, we still live.

In the land of the midnight sun, the full moon is just a faint ornament hanging in the blue and purple canvas of a twilight sky. Laura had come here knowing that the sun would not truly set or rise and that there would be an endless dusk in which she might see the shimmering auroras snake their way across the sky. In her excitement, she had forgotten what that might mean for the wolf within.

A phantom moon does not bring about the change. It is not just the fullness of her that triggered the change that writhes beneath the skin of her acolytes, but her power. The moon might be full but it is not night, not truly, and it weakens her rays. Both of them are stuck in the inbetween; the moon does not dominate the sky, and so the wolf cannot dominate her.

She spends the hours of the full moon crouched on all fours, half changed. Her bones splinter into her flesh. Tufts of fur like porcupine quills have half-emerged across her frosty skin, and teeth like razors cut her lips and cheeks. Lymph oozes from her pores, her sight is blurry, her half-formed muzzle is assaulted by the scents of her own agony.

She cannot change, cannot heal; she has to wait for the moon to wane. In the meantime, she is paralyzed by pain, unable to run or hunt.

All she can do is howl.

Sometimes the switch for the room you're in is outside of the room you're in. You wish you'd known this before you entered into the dark, feeling along the walls for something, anything, that might illuminate the space.

Sometimes the room you're in has another switch, one you find in your stumbling, and relieved, you flip it on. And sometimes, someone else, in another room somewhere, is flooded with a light so bright their eyes burn. They crawl to their feet, thinking, thank God.

They see their hands for the first time in the light, their feet, the shape of the room that was once dark and vast and lonely.

But your light does not come on, and so you switch it off, and they are left in darkness.

A musty, sweet smell infects every corner of the antique store, where I snap photos. It's all I can do to keep from getting nauseas, from hitting the floor and never recovering. The last photo I take is from the outside, looking in, where the display case holds an assortment of scalloped lamps, dishes, and a grandfather clock. When I examine the shot, I see the surrounding houses reflected in the glass, between the objects in the display case—and among the objects, the ghosts of their owners, weaving in and out. But if I look between the shadows, I see another shape taking form, and he's beckoning me to return, so I do.

Inside Wonderland Antiques, I hold my breath and search among the old record players and vintage gowns, soiled with acrid air and dust clouds. Whispers fill my head, and when I turn, I see him. His skin shimmers. He says he'll take me away. I believe him and follow him into the recesses of the store, where my world goes dark, and the next one is mothballs and rot. We fold ourselves into the creases of a dress and cling tightly together as we're carried off to the Victorian house down the street, where someone thinks she'll dance at a party in a vintage gown, but we'll be there, too, knitted to the fabric, shadows and dust, dearly beloved, to have and to hold, from this day forward.

I'll throw out my son. And to think that he was so precious as a kid; soft even, maybe a bit too much. Easy to mould, but hard to make him retain shape. Now he's hardened into a pathetic specimen. Perhaps I spoiled him too much. He even stinks of spoiled eggs now. He used to be so pure. Pristine baby smell, enough to forgive all the soiled diapers. Then came the stench of puberty. Now his once-pure skin is soiled by scars and tattoos. Trashy. I'll throw his body out with the rest of the garbage, piece by piece.

Dozens of yellow-slit eyes peer out of the crevice before me. I don't move, don't breathe. In the distance, hunting hounds yap.

Men shout their glee and I tremble. I should run, but there's nowhere the men and their hounds won't find me. Nowhere except down. Down among the monsters, among the unknown.

Smoke curls from the crevice, carrying the scent of carrion as the first man appears at the top of the hill. His gaze roves over me, hungry. His companions join him.

They can't have me. So I slip down into the dark earth, where they cannot follow.

Fuzzy Mittens perched on top of the bookshelf in the corner of the living room. Her gaze intent on the empty corner, and her back turned toward the family.

In the past, whenever anyone walked into the room, she'd swivel her head toward the newcomer and then meow. Now, as if lost in prayer, she sat silent without even flicking her ear back to listen.

My parents laughed it off saying she put herself in timeout for some unknown mischief. Dad even fussed at her to do better in the future, but as I walked by, I bowed my head. Later, I left extra treats up there, hoping that if anything ever came out of that corner it would remember my reverence.

Every night she pulled the curtains, covering the windows tightly. She put a blanket under the door so not even the dimmest light could get in. She slept in complete blackness.

She wasn't afraid of the dark, but of the thin line between light and shadow, which spawned eerie shapes.

The new beautiful nurse puts the blood pressure cuff on my arm. Sensing my anxiety, she holds my hand as the machine starts squeezing me. I look into her eyes and am instantly aroused. But then my worst fear comes true: the cuff doesn't let go. It keeps going, squeezing tighter and tighter. I try to get it off, clawing at it with my other hand, but she grabs that one too and holds it in a death grip. The cuff is stuck to me and squeezing tighter and tighter and I'm screaming and screaming and then there's blood everywhere and I'm staring at the place where my arm used to be...

He can easily spot the unbelievers, those who secretly doubted him, too stunned to conceal their surprise as they gradually rise to their feet, straightening their gowns and tuxedos. From the stage he watches the ballroom slowly come back to life. Silent, save for the intermittent crunch of glass from shattered flutes.

Seventy-three souls. The recently deceased, the newly revived, one and the same. The foul combination of champagne and cyanide still on their tongues. He checks his watch: half past midnight, just as prophesied. One by one they turn to face him. His smiling, beautiful children, reborn. "Happy New Year," he says. Now comes the fun part.

When needlepoint stars pierce the night sky, knitting sparkles like badges to a velvet vest, the doorbells on all the streets ring—and no one's on the front step. A prank they all say, but when I open, I see Kelly, the Girl Scout determined to make a sale. I believe I'm the only one who sees her.

I remember her from the news: ambitious, but sweet, kind—a model student—no time for boyfriends or "any of that stuff" as her parents had put it in the interviews. She'd been at a sleepover, slipped out the door in uniform, to sell cookies. While the others slept, a slasher sliced all the girls' throats. Because of the rules. They'd been drinking, talking about their escapades with their boyfriends, but Kelly hadn't done any of those things—and the rules state she should survive, but the slasher cut her throat, too. She had left a trail of cookie crumbs so someone else could find her, and they did—but too late.

Still, she thinks she's a final girl, roaming the neighborhood with her cookie-box stash. And I want her to believe. So when I see her, I reach for a phantom box, leave my money on the step, to put her soul to rest because there's nothing she could have done—no badge she could have sewn to her vest to keep the blade away.

The vampires seized the diver in the depths, racing him to the surface, forcing nitrogen to bubble agonizingly into his bloodstream. They then all enjoyed a fizzy drink.

I lock arms with the people around me. Guards stand between us and the wheat fields where corpses work. They're slow but steady, never in need of rest or sustenance. The perfect laborers, according to those who profit. Voiceless victims, to those of us who stand against their exploitation.

My mother's body is over there, somewhere. The Lord of the estate, a merchant, paid the government pennies for her but she was never the government's to sell.

I can't help but gasp when I spot her. Her figure is hunched, each step a struggle. Her usually vibrant hair is thin and dull. Skin flakes from her blotchy and gray flesh.

"Mama," I shout. She doesn't react. Merchants claim the dead are mindless. Still, others shout for their loved ones. I try again. "Mama!"

She turns, head tilted. I scream for her, with the love I have for her and the anger I have for them, begging her to remember.

She takes a lurching step towards me.

She still remembers. My eyes burn at the scent of rot and my throat stings, but I don't stop calling. Her pace picks up, gaze meeting mine.

The pilot counts down from ten. Not that we need him to. Again, at zero, we shield our eyes as the blinding white flash illuminates the darkened cabin of our plane. Again, we turn our collective gaze. Watch the mushroom cloud bloom up, up, up until it's higher than we are.

The fifth time we went through this I noticed other fireballs in the distance. So it was a coordinated attack, I thought. Not that we could do anything about it. The hundredth time, it started to look kind of beautiful.

We don't bother trying to land anymore. The pilot says next time we're just going to fly straight into it. See if that does anything. It's worth a shot. I close my eyes and the pilot starts counting down from ten.

In 2002, Nintendo published their one-two punch of Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion. Fusion was published for the Game Boy Advance, and it joined me on family road trips. It was on one of those night drives through the Utah desert, sitting in the back seat, that Metroid Fusion gave me a scare that has stayed with me for over twenty years.

In Metroid Fusion, you play as bounty hunter Samus Aran, fighting an invasion of parasites onboard a space station. At the start of the game, Samus is recovering from a parasitic infection which has left her weakened and without her armor. The same parasite has stolen Samus' armor and begins using it to wreak havoc. On a space station where almost every living thing is out to kill you, this parasitic shadow of Samus, the SA-X, is the biggest threat. In the event the SA-X finds you, the in-game advisor suggests only that you run and hide.

Later in the game, you cross a long corridor. There is a small crawlspace beneath the floor, and you transform into Samus' morph-ball form to fit inside. Just as you've wedged yourself into this space, the SA-X enters on the floor above. The shaft you're in is a dead end, and the SA-X blocks the only way out. The SA-X drops a Power Bomb, a devastating weapon that vaporizes most of the floor above you, and your hiding spot. You are left with just enough overhang to conceal your morph-ball form. Move an inch, and it will see you. This handful of pixels is all that is protecting you from certain death at the hands of your murderous clone.

On those family road trips, riding to the next hotel in Richfield or Las Vegas, I held my breath and didn't dare move in the back seat, waiting for the SA-X to leave. As far as I'm concerned, the jump scare is easy; game design that makes you feel truly helpless, that makes you thankful for those few pixels of cover, is rarely achieved.

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