I don't know if this is the place for short stories, but I didn't see one Sub, so if there is and I totally missed it (very plausable) please tell me so I can move this.
The door clicked shut and she lay still, in the dark, listening to the footsteps growing fainter and fainter. Throwing the covers off from around her, she leaped out of her bed, scrambling for the door. Gently, gently she turned the large, brass doorknob. Slowly, she cracked the door open, peering out into the hallway, watching the blurry silhouette march away. Her eyes were wide, deep as if trying to draw in all of the the fleeting light that she could before it disappeared and was replaced with the Dark. The silhouette reached the end of the hall, raised its arm, and the light dissipated.
She let out a squeak of fear and shut the door sharply. And so she stood, quietly in the middle of the room, gnawing on her lip, trying with all her might to hold, in her mind, that last, fading image of the light, pushing back against the Dark that had rushed in to fill the void. It pressed in on her sending a cold chill down her spine, caressing her damp hair with icy nails.
As the took a step back, towards her large bed, a floorboard creaked. She started, peering about wildly into the inky Black with wide, frightened eyes. Was...was that her? or was it Something Else, hiding, lurking in the shadows. Watching her. She pinched her eyes shut, whipping her head back and forth, wet strands of hair stinging her face. She froze. She could smell it, feel it's fetid, moist breath, hear it panting. It...it was at her door! With a muffled cry she dove onto her bed, pulling the blankets over her head to hide from Sight, holding her breath in sheer, abject terror, unadulterated terror. Her tongue tasted like copper, like she'd been sucking on a penny.
She fumbled for the small pocket flashlight she kept hidden in the drawer of her bedside table. Twisting it on, she shone the weak beam around her room. Wherever the light landed the Dark shrank back. That hiss, was it just her imagination?
The beam flickered, the last of the battery's power being sucked dry. She gripped it tightly, willing the light to be strong. In some ways, the pale light was worse than the suffocating Dark. It did not fully dispel the cloud, but it did threw the Terrors that lucked within into stark relief. A large, dark, semi-transparent wing stretched out from a dark hole of nothingness across the room. It rippled, heaving with the breaths of the monstrosity It was attached to. A hidden, faceless, fearful entity. She swung the light away and let out a small, pained moan as it landed on a demonic face. A deranged smile on a blood dripping lips, bloodshot eyes and pasty skin in stark contrast to the fiery blaze around it. She tried to move the light off of it, turn away, hide it back in the Shadows, but the eyes petrified her. She couldn't move! The face, the face. The face was growing larger, getting closer! The evil Thing's smile stretched across her vision as the flashlight's light dimmed, growing weaker, slowly dying. And still the Face came closer and closer with the Dark. And she knew, It would devour her whole...
*************************************************
The next day was like any other. Julie awoke in a ball under her covers. She could hear Winston, the family's cocker spaniel, yapping downstairs as her parents made breakfast. She pulled a skirt and outfit from her closet, pushing past the dress she'd worn as a flower girl at her brother's wedding (it was now hanging on the wall by the closet), dressed, said goodbye to Jeremy, her happy clown doll that sat on the bookshelf, no longer possessed by the demons that came with the night and the Dark, and she skipped downstairs to eat before her mother drove her to kindergarten.
She would spend the rest of the day happily, an exuberant child. For all appearances, she appeared to have never been the fearful, crippled little girl from the night before, almost as if she had forgotten about the Dark. But she hadn't. And the Dark hadn't forgotten her. It was waiting, waiting for night to fall again, waiting for the lights to got out.
Waiting for Julie.
~~Note: If you would want to vote for this please go to this link okays!!
http://www.gaiaonline.com/arena/writing/fiction/vote/?entry_id=101998755#title ~~
Reply
