Crawl by Aaron Redfern (e book reader android .TXT) 📕

living room and you are running past the loveseat and through the entryway and it is behind you it is shoving its way through the narrow door it is coming.

You take hold of the knob, throwing your weight against the door as you turn and shove into it with all your weight.

The door is locked. You remember now.

It is coming across the room, its legs clicking. The beam of light is trained on you and your own shadow is cast against the door, leering back at you.

You throw back the bolt, you force your whole body against the wood, and the door is open. A mass of winged bodies hits you as the creatures outside pour in, hurtling toward the light, careening off of you, their wings beating against you, and the beam of light is darting all around, confused.

You are racing through the grass, across the pitifully small patch of ground where the light is cast on the grass from inside of the house, and then you are in the darkness, and every voice inside your head is screaming in unison.

Mike shouts your name from somewhere behind. You can just hear his steps through the enormity of all the other sound, crashing through the grass. He is running too, trying to find you, but you do not stop.

Things rush through the air past your head. Something hits your chest and bounces off, and for a brief, horrible instant there are wings against your lips and inside your mouth, but then it is gone and you keep running, running, running.

He calls your name again, his voice carrying over the bone-marimbas and the thrums and the high keening wails. And then, ahead of you, something enormous springs into motion. It is close, and suddenly all you can hear is a chopping roar, like the blades of a helicopter, passing over your head so close that you think you could almost reach out and touch it. A rush of air strikes you, so powerful that it almost throws you off your feet. And then it is past you, shooting toward the house.

You do not stop running. Something inside you has broken apart, and all the screaming voices are pounding against the inside of your head, trying to break free as though you are too slow and without you they can outrun everything that is happening.

Behind you, where you last heard Mike’s voice, the enormous thing comes crashing down. There is a tearing of earth, a sound almost as huge as its wingbeats, as all of its legs punch into the ground at once, tearing up clods of dirt and grass as it skids to a halt. Mike’s voice begins to make another sound, high and wordless, but then you hear a monstrous tearing. And then nothing more, or else the rest is lost in the other sounds of the night.

You are racing over the grass. You know that they are everywhere and you will never get away from them, but something keeps you in motion, as though your feet will take off from the ground and you will fly up into the stars. Something hits you again, and you can feel its legs digging into your shoulder. You grab hold of its body, which writhes and wriggles against you, and you tear it free and hurl it away with all your strength.

You are in utter darkness, surrounded by sound, the air blowing against you and around you, and you are racing forward--

Your entire body siezes up in shock as something icy cold wraps around your lower legs. You let out a strangled sob as you realize that you are in the water, that you have driven headlong into a great, deep pool of water. Your momentum carries you a few steps farther, and you are up to your thighs in it.

A part of you, very small and muffled, pleads with you to turn back, but you know that it is already too late. You can feel the water sloshing lightly around your legs, then becoming a wash and then a surge as it is displaced by the impossibly huge body rising up from the deep. Instead, you take another step forward as the biggest goddamned bug in the universe pushes up through the surface of the pool with a cataclysmic upheaval of water, and with a cry of confusion and despair, you throw out your arms to meet it as though in an embrace.
Imprint

Text: Aaron Redfern
Images: Pixel Art by Aaron Redfern
Publication Date: 11-19-2012

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