Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26112985-20150821003552

I recently completed five new micropastas. Any reviews would be highly appreciated.

The micropastas are as follows...

Text Messages

My daughter and I always used to text each other before we went to bed. One night I got a message that chilled me to the bone.

My phone let out a sharp chirp right before I was about to go to fall asleep, and I picked it up to see the message Audrey had sent me. The text read “Dad, please, you have to help me. I am writing this under the covers with the brightness and volume turned off on my phone. There is someone in my room with me and I am scared to death. He’s sitting in the chair at the end of my bed and looking at me. I think he wants to hurt me.”

I texted with one hand while pushing a shell into the shotgun I kept under my bed with the other. My message read “Don’t worry, daddy’s coming.”

I crept out of my bed and into the hall, gun in hand. With my daughter’s door in sight I rushed at it and broke it open with a single kick. There was something sitting in the chair at the end of my daughter’s bed. I could see the outline of a person in the pale moonlight.

I unloaded my single shell onto the person sitting in the chair with a loud blast that reverberated off the walls before flicking on the light to observe the intruder who I had just shot.

But there was no intruder.

There was only my daughter, tied down to the chair with copper wire and a gag in her mouth. Not the mention the visible head wound that my four ten had inflicted. Her phone lay on the sill of her bedroom window, which was wide open.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Impact","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"">The Foreboding

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I keep having the same dream every night. It’s a reoccurring nightmare that I just can’t seem to push out of my head.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">At about four in the morning I always wake up drenched in a cold sweat. Sometimes I am screaming. But as hard as I try, I can never seem to remember exactly what it was I was dreaming about. All I can recall are the smallest details. The emotion of dread, the feeling of a jerk in my stomach, and gripping something in front of me very tightly in the dream before I awaken.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I think it might be some kind of a warning… a premonition of something that is to go terribly wrong, but what? What could it possibly be?

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">Paranoia has taken over my mind and body. Everywhere I go I live in constant fear that someone or something is hunting me down. This tension reaches a peak one day when I am driving home from work.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I noticed that the car behind me took the same turn as I did. Initially thinking that we must be going in the same direction, I did nothing. Then we made the same turn again, and again. I felt the fear well up from deep within and I began to accelerate. When we made the same turn once more I began to ten to twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, constantly looking behind me and at the rearview mirror.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">It was too late to see the little kid on the bike as he swerved in front of my car.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">When I slam on the breaks felt a sudden jerk in my stomach, and my hand grips the steering column tightly as the kid takes a full body hit to my car and makes it partially under the first set of tires.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Impact","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"">A Special Night

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I have always been terrified at even the notion of somebody breaking into my house and potentially threatening my family. It has actually become my biggest fear.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I received the word that my house was going to be targeted for a burglary on this particular special night, and I know that I have to do what I must. I have to protect the people that I love. This is something that I need to face.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I sit in the living room, hidden behind the couch, with a pair of scissors in my hand that were being used only yesterday to curl ribbons, waiting for my attacker to come. Suddenly, the lamp on the opposite side of the room flicks on and I flinch. My heart begins to pound, and I grip the scissors tightly, my moment is coming, I know it. I spring out into the open and sure enough, a man looks at me from not ten feet away.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">He almost looked guilty, as if he had been caught doing something bad. He was carrying a large sack in his hand that was bulging noticeably.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">With a manic cry of fury I rushed at this man, no this threat. He shouts in his terror, saying something that is incoherent through his large white beard. The blade of the scissors plunges into his stomach. I wrench them out and blood spews from the wound that I have just created.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">As the man drops to the floor his fake beard falls off. I look into the face of a man I know all too well.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">Now I understand why my parents were always so insistent that Santa Claus was a good and even holy being, despite my constant and suspicious fear of his being an imposter and burglar.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">My own father was Santa Claus the whole time.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Impact","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"">3:21 AM

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif""> “Every night at 3:21 AM a man hangs himself at the foot of my bed. I don’t know who he is or what he is doing in my house, and its scaring the hell out of me. I can’t sleep and I don’t know how to deal with this problem. No matter what I try the man is always there, every night. I wake up and see him standing on my bedpost, with a noose around his neck. As soon as I scream, he jumps backwards and hangs there. Then, at 3:22 AM, his body disappears. I need you to help me, just sleep in my room for one night, I’m positive he won’t appear if I have someone with me.”

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I knew my friend and neighbor Louis could not possibly be telling the truth, this was only a fabrication of his own mind. I sent him out of my house with a couple of recommendations for good therapists in our area.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">A week later, I was shocked to learn that Louis had committed suicide by means of hanging himself at the foot of his bed. I attended his funeral and paid my respects to his family before leaving with regret… perhaps I should’ve helped him with his silly task, even if it was ridiculous it might’ve stopped him from killing himself.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">It took a long while for me to fall asleep that night, and when I did, I was awakened shortly afterwards by a noise in my bedroom. I opened my eyes blearily, and the first thing I saw was my digital clock, which read 3:21 AM.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">I swiveled my head around, and Louis was standing over me on the bedpost, with a noose around his neck. I let out a scream of terror before he lets himself fall backwards, and he hangs there for a full minute for the first of many times to come.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif""> The Bed

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">Joh <span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'TimesNewRoman',serif;">n  <span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'TimesNewRoman',serif;">didn’t want to buy a new b <span style="font-family:'TimesNewRoman',serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:115%;">ed. Why should he, when he had a perfectly good one hidden away in his storage room?

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">The smell of must was almost overwhelming, but that was easily fixed. What really made John so uncomfortable was that fact that his mother had died on this very mattress. He felt a shiver crawl down his spine, but he grinned in spite of himself. His mother was probably turning over in her grave right about now, considering the fact that her last words to him were “Rot in hell you piece of shit.”

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">The first night he lay down in that bed he felt something against his leg just before he fell asleep. It was a gentle prickling sensation, as if someone were running their fingers against his sleeping form. He shifted slightly before falling into a deep rest.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">When John woke up the next morning he felt terribly ill. He hypothesized that he had probably come down with the flu and spent the entire day indoors, feeling miserable for himself.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">That next night, the same thing happened as before. He could momentarily feel something touching against his leg. This time when it happened, he started awake. Upon turning the light on he discovered that there was nobody there. He felt a chill pass over him as he pondered the possibility that his mother’s ghost was coming back to haunt him. His head was swimming in his sickness, so he opted for rest rather than investigation, and went back to sleep.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">The night after that, his symptoms had only grown worse, and he decided that he would call a doctor tomorrow after one more day of rest. He collapsed onto his bed, weary from his illness, and within minutes, he was snoring.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">That’s when thousands of Black Widow Spiders crept out from the hole in the mattress where they had made their home. Their large, black, hairy bodies crawled over John’s. A couple of them slipped into his slightly open mouth, where it was warm and wet. He would be dead soon. They had been biting him in his sleep for days now, and their poison was ever so potent and fast. When he did die, they would have a little feast amongst themselves, and their bodies would grow ever fatter.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "TimesNewRoman","serif"">My thanks to anyone who has the kindness to review! <ac_metadata title="Five new micropastas! They are short! Please review if you have the time!"> </ac_metadata>