I love this one too.
After she tore her daughter away from the Grizzly that was aggressive enough to maul an innocent 6 year old, Elizabeth retreated to the edge of the cliff with her critically injured child in her arms searching for any refuge only to hear the disquieting sound of the ground giving way beneath them.
This is one of my favourites so far.
The door creaked and rattled–there was something big and really dangerous testing it from the other side.
Looking around the room she slowly realized that they all thought he was wonderful, an absolute saint for putting up with such a clumsy, disheveled and eternally exhausted wife.
Hands tight around his daughters throat, he envied her release from this insufferable life and knew that she would forgive him in the next.
He pressed the pistol to his brow and squeezed the trigger hard, the resulting empty click filling him with far more dread than all the terrible howls and cackles from outside.
When, purely by chance, he noticed the absence of the tiny scar under his jaw, he realised it wasn’t a mirror after all.
Nobody ever saw him again; just those last words desperately scrawled on a wall, “im possessed by a demon from satan, help”
Absolute best one yet. Bravo for scaring the hell out of me.
“She’s gone, son,” I whispered, unholstering my gun, “Go downstairs. You know what happens next.”
She feels air hitting the back of her neck as she rinses the soap off of her face–she looks into the mirror as she opens her eyes, and behind her stands a raggedy-clothed, blood-covered, unknown man with his head tilted slightly downwards.
As he felt his muscles tighten involuntarily, Tom realized that the rednecks had been right all along; aliens really did have a thing for anal probing.
When she saw which implement the hooded figure had chosen from the bag she realized that even if she healed she would never be the same again, assuming that she lived through what was about to come.
While peeing and looking out the bathroom window, he saw his burly neighbor’s short male lover putting on a show; a performance art dance in that house’s bay window… naked… masturbating wildly with one hand… and picking his nose crudely with the other… in a celebration of Art.
And then the disconnected doorbell rang.
With every crunch, his smile grew wider.
The nerves that carry pain are not deep; we’re going to play together for a long time.
I don’t love you anymore.
As the blood poured out of my throat, my last coherent thought was. “Christ, that lion has awful breath, and I’m going to be part of that smell.”