The 22 Magazine Vol 2/II Sign & Symbol

bleached bone which shone dimly in the dark.

“I’m going to kill it do you hear me,” he cried over his shoulder. “I’m going to find something sharp and kill it before it eats one more soul!”

“What are you getting so mad for?” she calmly shouted in reply. “It won’t hurt you.”

A spear appeared from somewhere, probably from the basement where the family heirlooms rotted. The fishing and ship captain side of the family perhaps; all rough drinking men of the northern seas, spearing fish, and sinking the planet over. The husband had never gone fishing in his life.

He came back to the darkened living room but the couch was empty. His mother, he supposed, was now “playing” with the creature.

The silhouette of his wife sat in the chair staring out the window. Her needles had gone silent.

“I wonder what’s out there,” she said to herself, hands resting in her lap. “It’s hard to tell in the dark with the streetlights not working. Sometimes I think they’re all gone.”

“Where is it,” he asked “the box. Where did my mother go?”

She made a weary motion. “I moved it to the kitchen. They’re resting.”

“In eternity more like.” With his spear in hand, he made his way through the reeling dark passage to the kitchen.

The giant box was on the floor next to the refrigerator. He kicked it and it shifted. The monster was in there wanting to come out, hungry, wanting something new to do in the husband’s house.

What did she want from him, what did any of them want? Did she want him to be fearless like the men on TV? They don’t tell you that it’s stupid to be fearless. He sobbed and fell screaming onto the box, punching at it, breaking through the soft lettering, tearing at the heavy staples.

A vaporous blast, the stench of decomposition, hit him full in the face.

Something huge emerged, sliding across the floor heavily. He couldn’t make it out in the dark.

The husband raised his spear and brought it down hard into the beast, thick and wet. He tugged and heard a soft pop. On the pointed end, the bulb of a beastly eye glowed. It was blue like his wife’s eyes.

He poked around some more in the dark but heard only the tap of linoleum.

He wandered back through the shadowed halls to the overstuffed chair by the living room window but his wife was gone. The knitting things were gone too, and for that matter the couch and all the other furniture had disappeared. Strings were loose on the wall where pictures had once hung.

“I had to kill it,” he said out loud. “Before it destroyed everyone in the house.”

The sound of his voice died in the carpet.

111