Stories Not Quite Scary Enough To Tell In The Dark, But Still Nearly Chilling

The Un

Gilly swam in brown goo. Why couldn't she find the surface? It was all around her, pulling down from some dark abyss. Something had her by the ankles, by the wrists. Her head ached but she couldn't reach up to stop it. Couldn't touch her own face. Like the drip of saline into an iv it pulled at her consciousness down, down, down, fighting against the pain in her head, in her face, in her leg. Her eyelids fluttered open for a moment and she looked down to see herself strapped to some kind of gurney. Four dark figures, one on each corner of her birth walked silently through a moonlit field. She saw them for a moment, tall and black, the moonlight glinting off of their hoods and masks. Then the brown goo was back again pulling her down, down, down to blackness.

Consciousness hit her next like a conspiracy theory that just came true. Her whole body rigid, convulsing, fighting at the straps keeping her down. Her head throbbed, the pain in her leg shooting neon red sparks through her body. Lying in a pool of cold sweat she forced herself to breath slowly, to let the oxygen do its job.

It was still night, but not too dark to see the rafters above her. Small logs ran the length of the ceiling. The low red glow of dying coals gave just enough light to make out the interior of a cabin. A very small cabin. From the corner of the room a black robe rose from a chair and exited through a door that slapped shut on creaking hinges.

Her thoughts came in flashes. The camping trip with college friends, the fire, the beer. She hadn't drunk any, she wasn't that stupid not with a chemistry final the next morning. Sure coming all the way out here was reckless, but it had been so long since she'd seen anyone without a mask. It wasn't like she didn't know these people, hadn't spent every day with most them for the last four months. They had all been tested. They were all clean. For one stupid night she had just wanted to get away from the tests and the hand sanitizer, the cement, and the smog. To feel dirt on her sandals and smell pine that didn't come from a can. The party had gone late, too late to make it home in time, she had taken a shortcut through the mountains. She had enough fuel, she'd double checked. She peed twice before she left so she wouldn't have to stop. Just drive, don't stop, no matter what they do, no matter what they try and show you don't look, don't stop,don't read the signs on the highway. She had been doing so well and then the deer, or something, yes it had been a deer, nothing else would have veered back into her headlights like a homing missile with such suicidal stupidity.

The door opened again and a smaller figure entered holding what looked like... a bowl of soup? Gilly panicked. She'd heard of horror stories like this. How they tried to comfort you, tried to help you with their stupid ignorant hands not knowing that they were spreading death and disease with every breath.

"You're awake! We were so worried. I've brought you soup."

The figure sat next to her. Her bare hands pulled back a hood to reveal the face of a woman with kind features, maybe in her mid fifties.

Gilly tried to hold her breath, tried to breath into her collar, but it was no use. The woman's breath, her very smell was all over Gilly now.

"I'm going to let go the restraints, you've been thrashing in your sleep,we fastened you in to keep you from hurting you leg. It was a nasty break, though not as nasty as the one you gave that moose." She laughed. "Poetic justice that you should be eating him now. You're lucky to be alive young lady."

Game meat? Moose of all things? This was wild protein, there was no way to know if it had been properly sanitized, properly formed, properly cooked, she could be consuming free radicals, carcinogens, or worse,blood! Gilly didn't move, didn't breath as the straps were unfettered one by one. Easing her broken leg onto the floor the woman helped Gilly sit up.

"You've been asleep for days. You must be famished young lady. Well don't worry, I never saw a girl yet that my stew couldn't fatten up."

Days? Gilly's eyes welled. Days? That meant weeks of isolation, testing, prodding, reeducation before they let her back inside the walls, if they ever let her back at all. The greasy taste of meat broth filled her mouth as the tears ran down her cheeks.

"No dear don't you worry. We haven't had an outbreak here for a good ten years. You keep your hands washed, you'll probably not even catch cold."

And then she said it, the word that had been the boogeyman of Gilly's childhood terrors.

"I know they tell some tall tales out there in the big city, but I think you'll find most of us are just like you, even if we are un-vaccinated."