Horror in Grayscales

Horror in Grayscales

  Heath Amodio

  Copyright 2014 by Heath Amodio

  My life exists in shades of gray. That's not to say that I choose to live in a world without extremes, but rather that I'm color blind and mean it quite literally. The knowledge of this fact should prevent one from holding me responsible for failing to recognize that the people walking down the center of our street were quite dead. Said situation occurred on the twentieth of December long after the sun had drifted to sleep. We, my parents-as they liked to refer to themselves ever since they adopted me almost a year ago-and I, lived in a small town on the border of New York and Pennsylvania called Matamoras. I can assure you dead people didn't normally stroll through our neighborhood. My parents tucked me into bed, retired to their own for the evening, and were deep asleep when I heard a noise outside. Luckily I, being of an extremely protective nature, was a light sleeper. I'd hate to think of that night's alternative outcome if I were not.

  I crept from my bed and across the freezing hardwood floor into the living room. My height prevented me from seeing outside so I quietly climbed onto the leather couch that ran perpendicular to the closest window. It was a move which would've gotten me yelled at had my parents been awake, but I had no choice; something was outside that dark winter night. The street was illuminated by the light post on the corner, which usually never worked. It covered the street in a dull white spotlight that made the lawns on either side appear jet black. The light stretched out the shadows of everything caught in its eerie glow. Several people walked down the street, shuffling their feet as if too lazy to lift them off the ground. They didn't alarm me at first. I was young and naive, but even I knew I hadn't seen every shape and size a person could grow into. There were two men and a woman. They trudged along several feet apart from one another. Their clothes looked torn and ragged. All three appeared to be emaciated with hair that looked filthy and matted. Still, despite the way they dragged their feet unnaturally across the pavement, they did not fill me with unease. What finally sent a shiver of fear rushing through me was when the woman's arm fell off at the elbow. She just kept going like it was no big deal. She didn’t even look back at it. Not once. Even I knew that wasn't supposed to happen.

  A pair of headlights cut through the dark and lit up the back of the three strangers. The car turned right and pulled into the front driveway of our house. Our upstairs neighbor climbed out of his beat up Honda, ran up the front steps, and burst through the front door. He stomped up the stairs, beating them as if they'd insulted his mother. He stormed into his apartment like he did every time he came home. His footfalls sounded as if he'd crash through the ceiling any second. Part of me hoped his racket would wake my parents, but I wasn't that lucky. A loud groan drew my attention back to the window in time to see the three people turn and head towards the neighbor's front door.

  Backing away from the window, I watched as the three strangers rounded the front of the house. The strangers pounded on the front door. Our neighbor rumbled back down the stairs. He cursed the whole way down and ripped the door open.

  "The hell do you want? Who are you?" said the neighbor in a voice that was muffled by the walls of our apartment.

  There was no answer from the strange visitors. A sudden scream made my hair stand on edge. The scream was cut short before it gained enough volume to wake my parents. It horrified me to my very core. My heart felt as if it had frozen mid-beat, and a gasp of air was lodged in my throat as the sounds of a struggle carried through the thin walls. It sounded as if they'd overpowered our neighbor and were tearing him apart. As horrible as it was, I felt relieved that they killed him quickly. I didn't have to hear him scream, and they chose to bypass us. The thought that he deserved it-that he brought the attack on himself with his inconsiderate ruckus-flashed through my head. I shook it away. As true as it was, even he didn't deserve whatever had happened.

  The disgusting sound of flesh being torn from bone slowly died away. I was able to calm my nerves just in time to have them rattled anew when the three strangers appeared outside my living room window again. This time they walked across our yard and headed directly for the ramp that led to our door. Leaping from the couch, I ran to the center of the living room. My parents slept soundly to my right and our neighbor’s killers approached from my left.

  Should I wake them? I thought.

  I'd been yelled at so many times for waking them in the past that I hesitated. False alarms, such as the postman or the neighbor dropping off misdelivered mail, earned me time out on the sun-porch more than a few times and I wasn't looking forward to that again. It was freezing out. I could hear the trespassers on the ramp. They dragged their feet up the incline and stood outside the sun-porch doors. The strangers ripped through the screen door like a child through wrapping paper. They crashed through the outer door, which consisted of mostly glass, and clambered over one another to enter the sun-porch. Looking back into the apartment, I realized my parents were still oblivious to the danger that approached. My body shook with a mixture of fear and anger as the rancid stench of the intruders hit me like a fist to the nose. The sheer reek of them caused me to gag as my eyes began to water. One of the men was at the inner door.

  The door was made of thick wood with a window that started about half-way up the door and continued to the top of the frame. The intruder peered through the white curtain and I could tell there was something seriously wrong with him. His eyes appeared lifeless and his jaw hung at a strange angle. I didn't like the look of him and a low growl began to build at the back of my throat. I wanted him to leave, to take his two friends and go back wherever they had come from. They had other plans.

  The stranger slammed his arm through the kitchen door's window and glass flew across the linoleum floor. It shattered into dozens of shards and spread across the floor like chips of ice. I heard my mother gasp a few rooms away. The man with the dead eyes continued to pound through our kitchen door and I knew I had to act. I couldn't let them hurt my family so I used the only weapon I had handy, my teeth. The very next time the stranger reached through I wrapped my teeth around his wrist and yanked with every ounce of strength I could muster. His hand snapped clean off at the wrist and I dropped it in surprise. His flesh left a rotten grimy taste in my mouth. He kept coming. I backed away from the door and did the only thing I could think of. I threw my head back and howled for the whole world to hear.

  My father ran into the kitchen with his baseball bat in hand, swung it at the first man's head, and caved it in like a vandalized pumpkin. The man crumbled to the floor. Blood and brains poured onto the floor in congealed clumps. The reek of it made my stomach lurch.

  The woman came next. Her one good arm reached through the broken window. Her nails were jagged little razorblades that dug into the door's soft frame. She pulled herself into the kitchen. My father's first swing took her other arm off at the shoulder and his second caved her face in. Even with her face smashed beyond recognition, the woman kept on coming. She crashed to the floor head first and used her legs to push herself towards my father. Her nose had been completely obliterated. Her jaw hung from one side, held on by the slightest piece of dead flesh. It resembled the stringy fat of a raw steak. The bottom half of her face swung back and forth like a pendulum as she wormed her way across the floor. Her tongue, exposed without her bottom teeth, darted around wildly in her mouth. My father advanced on her again. He unleashed a well placed swing that demolished the rest of the woman's head with the sound of split wood. She flew back out to the sun-porch and crashed to the floor in a heap.

  Adrenaline coursed through me as I watched my father defend us. I jumped through the broken window, narrowly missed the shards of glass that remained, and tackled the
third stranger. His body felt waterlogged. Holding him down was like trying to flatten a water balloon. He grabbed at my throat and tried to pull me towards his gaping mouth. His teeth snapped together with a hollow wooden sound as he struggled to bite me. After what seemed like an eternity, my father opened the door and rushed out to finish him off with his Louisville slugger. The barrel of the bat connected with the final intruder's skull. The booming crack echoed throughout the house.

  Glass suddenly shattered somewhere deep in our apartment. My mother screamed out, and my father rushed back inside. He closed the door behind him, barricading me on the sun-porch. They moved out of my view, deeper into the house, and I started to freak out. I ran and threw myself against the door. It didn't budge. I tried again and again until my shoulder started to kill me. The pain was severe and shot through my entire body. I couldn't bring myself to try the door again. Inside the house my mother screamed.

  "Get away from her," yelled my father.

  "Henry!" yelled my mother. "Please, Stephen, stop this," she said.

  Stephen was the name of the upstairs neighbor. I figured he was dead or unconscious to say the least. He must've broken through the front window that looked out over the front porch, but why? He and my parents were far from friends, but he had no reason to attack them. Looking up at the door's broken window, I stared at the broken glass that gleamed from the frame. I'd barely cleared it when I leapt through it the first time. If it nicked my leg on the way back through I'd be crippled and might even bleed to death.

  "No!" yelled my father.

  The strained fear in his voice made my mind up. I backed up, took a deep breath, and rushed at the door. I pushed off the red ceramic tiles with every bit of strength my legs could afford. My chest cleared the glass without incident, but I hadn't lifted my legs high enough. The glass sliced me down the full length of my left leg. It hurt like hell. When I landed on the kitchen floor I found it almost impossible to put weight on the leg. Thankfully the cut wasn't too deep, but every time I pressed my foot to the floor unbearable agony shot up my back.

  "Mary!" yelled my father.

  Our upstairs neighbor stood behind my mother with his arms wrapped around her chest. She managed to get one arm up between them, and used it to hold his head back. Stephen was biting at her neck with a mouth full of black gums. There was a gaping hole in his neck, where something had bitten a chunk out of him. Tendons and muscles hung through like rotted black worms. His eyes were solid white. There was nothing left within them.

  My father had swung the bat at our neighbor and buried it in his head. Apparently he'd missed anything vital because Stephen didn't relinquish his hold on my mother. The worst part was that the bat was stuck in his skull. Try as he might, my father couldn't pull it free. Stephen's mouth was within a hair of my mother's neck when I finally forced myself to move. All at once the pain was gone at the site of his teeth so close to her neck. Instincts took over and pushed any thoughts of pain down deep. I got my feet under me, ignored the weak feel of my left leg, and ran at our neighbor. I sunk my teeth deep into his leg, piercing his pants. I could feel his bone beneath the muscles as I tore at his calf.

  Stephen didn’t react to my attack. It was like I didn’t even exist to him. His focus rested solely on my mother and he meant to have her throat for dinner. My father gave up on his bat. He stepped forward and grabbed Stephen by what was left of his throat. Screaming, he squeezed our neighbor's neck. His fingers disappeared within the gelatin like flesh.

  I swung my entire body back and forth, refusing to let go of Stephen’s leg until my mother was free. There was a disgusting snap as his shin splintered within my mouth. The bone jutted through his skin and stabbed at my tongue. I did not relax my jaw. Instead I bit down harder. I was determined to tear his leg off if I had to. Fortunately it didn’t come to that. Between my father and me, we managed to pull and push Stephen off of my mother. He crashed back onto the floor with my father on top of him. I leapt back, prepared to renew my attack if necessary. My father didn’t need my help. He finished him off by punching him over and over again until all that remained was a pile of wet dog food where our neighbor’s head had been.

  The next thing I knew my mom had her arms around me. She was crying.

  "Good girl. You're such a good girl, Bella," she said through the tears.

  Daddy stepped over to me and started massaging my head.

  "She's one brave little girl," he said.

  My happiness balanced on the edge of euphoria despite the taste of rotted flesh in my mouth. I couldn't stop wagging my tail and my tongue hung down past my chin as I smiled. I guess I'd done well, but all I was worried about was where my treat was and who was going to take me out? I really had to pee.

  The End