Always Free Fiction: The Scrabbling, the Scratching, the Clicking and Scraping, Ep 1
"They are inside..."
Hello, folks!
Glad to see some familiar faces back for more Always Free Fiction.
This week’s story is from the latest collection, They All Bleed: Ten NoSleep Stories, Volume Two. You know, if you don’t feel like waiting each week, you can get the first two collections right now. That’s 20 stories all at your fingertips. 20!
All The Monsters: Ten NoSleep Stories, Volume One
They All Bleed: Ten NoSleep Stories, Volume Two
Grab a copy and get your horror on! Oh, and rate/review! It means a TON for sales and visibility.
Or, if you don’t want to skip ahead, you can continue reading and savor that sweet, sweet anticipation as you wait for the next episode to drop.
You do you!
I’ll get out of your way now and let you have some scary fun.
Enjoy!
The Scrabbling, the Scratching, the Clicking and Scraping
Episode 1:
The scrabbling, the scratching, the clicking and scraping.
All day. All night.
“We have white beans,” Victor says as he stands in front of the pantry. He sighs. “Do we have to listen to this?”
“It’s Rachmaninoff,” I say as I carefully mince the last two cloves of garlic. “I find it soothing.”
“It’s old,” Victor responds.
“It’s genius.”
“It’s depressing,” Victor says. “Jesus, Tyler, put on Elvis or something. Let’s lighten things up if this is going to be…”
He trails off, leaving our fate unsaid.
“Dad?” Michael calls from the dining room. “Where are the long candles?”
“In the sideboard! Third drawer down on the left!” I shout from my place at the kitchen counter.
I haven’t cooked like this in over a year. Not since the things outside the brownstone first appeared. The scrabbling things. The scratching things. The clicking and scraping things.
Victor doesn’t wait for my assent. He switches the music from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number Three to Elvis’s Greatest Hits.
I don’t get mad. Tonight is not about getting mad.
I continue mincing the garlic, then join Victor at the pantry when I’m finished.
“Staring won’t fill it up,” I say, and reach past him for the last can of white beans. I snag kale greens, pickled onions, and fire-roasted diced tomatoes.
They are all the last cans. Everything I’m cooking tonight is the last.
The last of everything. The last of us.
I chuckle.
“What?” Victor asks.
“Just thinking of when Michael would play video games,” I say. “I’d sit and watch him for hours. Just us up in his room while his mom graded papers downstairs and his sister texted endlessly with her friends.”
Victor sighs. It’s his defining feature. That and hijacking the Bluetooth speaker.
“Melissa didn’t like video games,” he says. “She preferred all of those YA fantasy books. Girls with powers and dragons and evil dukes and good dukes and-.”
“Sexy dukes,” Michael says as he walks into the kitchen. “All of those books were just teenage magic porn.”
“Gee, Mike, Thanks,” Victor says. “That’s what I want my last memories of my daughter to be.”
We all go silent as the heaviness of what Victor has said hits us.
But the things outside do not go silent. They never go silent.
They continue to scrabble, scratch, click, and scrape.
I look at my son and see him struggling not to clap his hands over his ears. The kid has been a trooper. I honestly don’t know how he’s made it this long.
I don’t know how any of us have made it this long.
Victor turns up the volume from his phone, and the sound of Elvis Presley singing about rocking in a jailhouse fills the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Michael says finally when the King’s voice semi-drowns out the noises of the things. “I didn’t mean to-.”
“It’s alright, kid,” Victor interrupts, still staring at the pantry, which is now truly and completely empty after I removed all of the food.
Food. Is that what this has all been about?
They came for the wildlife first, so no one noticed right away.
The things.
Sure, the Forest Service noticed, but all it took was that one news network to mock them as government radicals bent on destroying America with their freak science and hippie dippy ways. They literally called the United States Forest Service “hippie dippy”. Soon it was on t-shirts and signs, and bumper stickers.
“Smokey Bear is a hippie!”
“Only you can prevent hippies!”
“Go live with the buffalo, hippies!”
They were mocking government employees who were literally dressed in brown and green uniforms. Definitely not tie-dye-wearing hippies.
Not that those didn’t come out to counter-protest.
For months, the clash of cultures was brutal and raw.
But I think even in those early days, we all knew something was terribly wrong. All of us knew. Even the ones mocking the dangers that were directly in front of us.
“What’s this?” Victor asks as he bends down and reaches his arm all the way into the pantry’s bottom shelf. He pulls out a small tin. “Anchovies?”
“Gimme!” I nearly shout and hold out my hand.
“Anchovies?” Michael says, leaning against the useless because it’s empty fridge, his back shifting all of the photos and business cards, and drawings pinned there with magnets. “Gross.”
“Oh, you’re gonna love this,” I say. “Umami.”
“I thought you were making Italian,” Michael says. “Umami sounds Japanese.”
“It is,” Victor says. “It pretty much means savory on steroids.”
“Exactly,” I say.
“Melissa and Amanda loved anchovies,” Victor says quietly. “I never did. But I’ll eat them tonight.”
Michael and I nod. We let him have his moment. His memories.
Once the things devoured the wildlife and left the forests silent except for their own scrabbling, scratching, clicking, and scraping, they moved into the rural areas. The backwoods and the country.
The few folks still living in areas like that, the ones that hadn’t listened and evacuated to the cities, well… They fought hard, let’s put it that way. The nation’s communications infrastructure was still up and running, so we all watched as individuals and families battled against the encroaching hordes of things.
That’s when we found out they had a preference.
Of course, the Forest Service had been shouting out the knowledge for months. But no one was listening to the “hippies”. Even when the military stepped in and started giving orders, folks didn’t listen. The military was now corrupted by politics and controlled by the rich, according to that news network.
Everyone found out the hard way what the things’ preferences were.
They came for the women and girls first.
Scientists across the globe tried to explain it. From hormones to even the impossibility of chromosomal detection, experts and pundits posited their theories. But the truth was, no one had any idea what was going on. All they knew was that it was isolated to the United States.
And so we were cut off.
All traffic in and out of the country, from airplanes to cargo ships, stopped overnight.
We were left to fight and fail alone.
“That’s all, folks!” Victor announces suddenly, making Michael jump as he turns from the pantry.
I nick my finger on the edge of the white bean can, but keep it to myself. I wipe the blood on my apron and continue prepping dinner.
“The cupboard is bare,” Victor says, turning from the pantry to point at the last bottle of wine sitting on the counter. “Is that for drinking or cooking?”
“Cooking first,” I say.
A board above us creaks and snaps. We look up at the kitchen ceiling and freeze.
If they’ve gotten in, we’ll know.
But the sound of thousands and thousands of chitinous legs doesn’t echo down from the second floor. We’re still safe. For now.
I can at least finish dinner.
A pot on the stove starts to boil, and I remove the lid to salt the water for the pasta. That’ll go in last.
The blue flame comes to life as I twist the knob and place my largest saucepan on the burner. I dump in way too much olive oil, but who cares, right? Let’s get greasy.
I scrape the minced garlic into the olive oil, and it sizzles immediately. I stir for a few seconds, then dump the contents of the cans into the saucepan to join the garlic and olive oil. I add plenty of salt.
“Can you hand me the oregano?” I ask Victor.
“Huh?” he replies.
“You’re leaning in front of the spice rack,” I say.
Victor pushes off of the counter and glances over his shoulder. He snags the bottle of oregano and tosses it to me. “Here ya go.”
The things attacked the women and girls with a ferocity that was terrifying. Mothers, daughters, sisters, friends. They were taken and eaten alive. Even if the communications infrastructure hadn’t already started to crumble, I don’t think anyone would have been live-streaming what was happening to our country.
We didn’t need to see other families and communities get ripped apart. We were watching it happen right here at home.
Another creak, then snap. I suppress the urge to look up at the ceiling.
“How soon until dinner?” Victor asks. What he’s really asking is, “Will we have time to eat before they get in?”
“Fifteen minutes,” I say, and grab the last handful of dried pasta and toss it into the boiling water. “Maybe twenty.”
Neither Michael nor Victor responds. They’re calculating in their heads. I am too.
It’s going to be cutting it close.
I pour in a healthy amount of the wine into the saucepan, then hold the bottle out behind me, my eyes focused on dinner. I feel the bottle taken from my grip.
“Thanks,” Victor says.
I can hear him swig directly from the bottle.
“Glasses are up there,” I say and cock my head toward a side cabinet.
“So formal,” Victor says with a laugh. Or a cry. It’s hard to tell these days.
He gets down three wine glasses, and I don’t say anything. Michael is only a teenager, but it’s not like that shit matters anymore.
We also learned in those early weeks that while the things may prefer the women and girls, they will devour anything once their preferred meals are exhausted. Like Michael and Victor with the anchovies that I dice and throw into the saucepan. You eat what you have in front of you.
After the rural areas were overtaken and wiped clean of humanity, the things went for the farmlands.
Millions of acres of crops were destroyed in a matter of days. Then livestock. Then the women and girls. Then the men.
And that was that for middle America. The Breadbasket was empty of all life except for the things. Not even the birds made it. They couldn’t stay in the air forever, so the ones that didn’t overcome their fear and fly into the cities were quickly devoured when they grew desperate and landed to try to find food.
One of the last human DJs who had locked himself inside his radio station out in the middle of nowhere had announced that the silence would have been welcome if the world was actually silent. Then he took his microphone outside for all of us to hear the scrabbling, the scratching, the clicking and scraping.
Then there was a gunshot, and the outside world truly went silent. Except for the scrabbling, the scratching, the clicking and scraping, of course.
I turned off the radio and haven’t turned it back on since. There’s no point.
Creak. Snap.
“How’s dinner coming?” Victor asks, more than a little panic in his voice.
“It’ll be ready,” I say. “Relax.”
We all burst out laughing after a silent beat.
“Good one, Dad,” Michael says. “Relax…”
Victor’s wife and daughter were on the way home the day the things overwhelmed the National Guard and breached the fortifications. Thousands of men and women fought bravely that day, but it was all for nothing. They should have been allowed to go home to their loved ones. No matter how many flamethrowers or explosives they threw at the things, it just wasn’t enough.
I remember Victor pounding on my front door, begging for us to open up. His family had been missing for five days. The things had just arrived in our neighborhood, so for him to leave his brownstone next door and risk coming to ours was madness.
My wife opened the door and hurried him in.
“The capital just fell,” he said, breathless.
He showed us his phone. I’d given up on any news a week earlier, so my phone was in my bedside table drawer.
There was an emergency alert stating that the President and Congress had retreated to secure locations and that this would be the last alert.
For once, the politicians didn’t lie. It turned out to actually be the last alert.
“Smells good, Dad,” Michael says as he tries to dip a spoon into the saucepan. I playfully smack his hand away.
“You have to wait,” I say, and add more salt as well as some fresh cracked pepper. “It’ll be done soon.”
Victor’s stomach growls. “Sorry,” he says.
“All good,” I say as mine responds in kind.
It’s been, I don’t know how many days since we’ve eaten anything remotely like a full meal. We wanted to make what was left in the pantry last. For what? I don’t know. Rescue isn’t coming. I guess it’s just human instinct to try to survive for as long as possible.
That is, until instinct says that being eaten by those things may not be the way you want to go out. It’s a funny mental switch when it happens. You go from desperate to stay alive at all costs to resigned that your day has come and life will be over soon.
Creak and snap.
Scrabble, scratch, click and scrape.
The sounds above us, all around us, intensify.
“Dad…” Michael whispers.
“I know, “ I say, and taste the sauce. I add just a little more salt.
Five more days is how long we lasted as a family.
Victor had joined us, and he was a big help as we secured our brownstone from the things. But all we got was those five days.
I remember hearing whispering late at night. We’d fortified the upstairs thoroughly, cutting it off from the first floor as a line of defense. It was easier to lock down one floor than to lock down two. It wasn’t like we needed two floors anymore.
Except that was exactly where I was hearing the whispers coming from.
The scrabbling, scratching, clicking and scraping hadn’t reached our brownstone yet.
I threw off my sleeping bag and made my way around Michael and Victor’s sleeping forms to the base of the stairs. While the entire landing above had been boarded off, there was one board that looked loose. I glanced back at the living room and could easily see that my wife’s and my daughter’s sleeping bags were empty.
“Jen?” I called out as quietly as possible.
The whispering above stopped.
I climbed the stairs.
“Jen? Tami?” I whispered.
No response.
My daughter had made it home from college only hours before the country was locked down. She hadn’t even had a chance to unpack her bag before the sirens started. None of us knew our city had emergency sirens, so the sound was shocking.
That was the last day the military drove up and down the city streets to distribute supplies and give instructions on what we were all expected to do.
The supplies were generous. Crates and crates of water and canned goods. Jars of dried herbs. Even produce staples like onions, garlic, and dried peppers. Anything that could last and wouldn’t rot immediately. The supplies filled an entire wall of our brownstone, stacked from floor to ceiling.
While the supplies were extensive, the instructions were simple.
Stay inside.
Lock ourselves in, board up all doors and windows, and sit tight while we wait for further instructions.
As I said, it all fell apart quickly, so those further instructions never came.
“Holy shit, that smells good,” Michael says.
“Thanks,” I say, and check the pasta. Almost done. Still a little undercooked. I like al dente, but crunchy pasta isn’t how I want to enjoy this last meal. I stir the noodles and go back to tweaking the sauce.
“Don’t mess with it too much,” Victor says. “Simple is always good.”
When I reached the top of the stairs that night, I tried to pry the board away enough for me to crawl past. But before I could slide my fingers in there, the board was pulled tight, and I heard hammer and nails secure it in place. I pounded my fists on the board.
“Jen! Tami!” I shouted.
“Dad?” Michael called from the bottom of the stairs. “What’s going on?”
“Come on, kid,” Victor said and tried to steer Michael back to the living room. Victor knew what was happening even though I was still in denial. “Let your dad handle it.”
Michael, being a teenage boy, pulled away from Victor and bounded up the stairs.
“What is going on? Where’s Mom?” he asked me, suddenly in my face. “Where’s Tami?”
The whispers on the other side of the fortifications became quiet sobs.
“We love you” are the last words we heard from them.
Then there was the wrenching of boards followed by more hammering.
Michael’s eyes were wide with terror and grief.
“No!” he screamed, and I had to physically restrain him, or he would have torn those boards apart with his bare hands.
It took Victor’s help to get him downstairs.
Michael managed to get away from us, and he bolted to the front door. But we caught up and pulled him back to the living room before he could undo all the work we’d done to keep what was outside from getting inside.
Five minutes later, we heard my wife and daughter’s far-off cries of pain and fear. Then silence.
“They did it for us,” Victor said.
Michael shouted at him for what felt like forever. Then he tired out and crawled into his sleeping bag. I should have gone to him then. I should have wrapped my arms around him and held him as he cried and cried and cried.
But I was numb.
My wife and daughter did what they did so that the things would stay away from our brownstone. I get it. I do. The love those two showed us by leaving the house and sacrificing themselves has kept me going for these last few weeks. But, to be honest, I would have rather they stayed with us even if it meant bringing those things to us sooner. We gained extra weeks, but without my wife and daughter, were those weeks even worth it?
I understand what they did and why. I just don’t agree.
“That’s that,” Victor says as he pours the final drops of wine into our glasses. “How’s it looking?”
“Dinner is done,” I say and turn off the burners. The kitchen smells amazing.
There’s a creak, a snap, then a crash. Glass breaks above us, and we all look at the kitchen ceiling.
None of us says what we know has happened. A board has been breached. A window has been broken.
The things are inside.
That was extremely good stuff!
Thank you, Jake!