Listen, I don't know if anyone is left out there, but I wanted to let the world know I was here. That I existed if nothing else. If anyone survives this nightmare.
It's been hours since the screaming stopped. Perhaps IT has sated its hunger for a while. No way for me to get out of my house now. When the house collapsed, something blocked the door. Perhaps a rafter. And the only other way out leads to IT.
There's just me now, and my cell phone. No one answers when I call 911. Just an automated system repeating the same emergency message. I think they're gone. Same for the fire department. For everyone. I'm using my phone to record this message in case anyone comes. Maybe my words will help them fight IT.
I didn't know what happened. Oh, I know the sequence of events. How we put up my pop-up pool too soon in the season, and then the spring storms came. How the pool turned green afterwards, but we thought we could put chemicals in and fix that. Maybe we waited too long. Maybe the rain carried this nightmare. Maybe IT was simply the result of all the poisons man has dumped into the environment. But the green cloud in the water fed on the chemicals. The pool began to bubble. Even then we thought we could simply drain the water. Send our problem down the sewer and start over. Maybe that would have worked, but we were busy. We didn't drain the pool. We ignored the problem. Waiting for the weekend.
How foolish we were.
It took me too long to understand. I noticed when we didn't get mail for a couple of days. The yappy dog next door stopped yapping at all hours of the night. One day the doorbell rang. When I answered it, there were only a few scattered religious pamphlets. But I didn't put it together.
Not until last night when I looked out the patio door and saw the pool was glowing. And then IT stretched forth a slimy tentacle and flowed forth to hunt.
I called the police. Naturally they didn't believe me, but they came, probably intending to arrest me for using 911 for a prank call. They rolled up, lights flashing, and walked to the door. I watched from the kitchen window. I yelled at them to run. I pleaded with them. But they just shook their heads at me.
One of the policeman told me to calm down. Those were his last words. IT flowed over the roof, engulfing them whole. I heard a couple of shots. Then silence. But IT didn't go back to the pool this time. ITs hungry aroused, IT swept through the neighborhood and then the town. I listened to the frantic reports until the radio went dead.
IT was huge now. A monster beyond a pool boy's imagination. I packed a few things, planning to run toward the north. Far north when the cold climate might hold IT off until scientists and pool service technicians could devise a plan to stop this horror.
That's when I heard IT returning. IT flowed over my house. I listened to the roof creak and the boards break and the windows shatter until the house collapsed under ITs immense weight.
I crawled to my living room to where the patio door once stood. Through a little crack, I could see IT pulsating, crouching over the popup pool which somehow still stood. I saw what IT was doing in that pool. I stuffed my hand into my mouth to keep me from screaming.
I crawled back here, to this little alcove in my entranceway, huddled against the unmoving door.
I don't know what will happen now. If the army can stop IT. Even if they even can. But they need to hurry and drop the atomic bomb or whatever they're going to do.
Because what IT was doing back there in my backyard ... the horror I saw ... small blobs dropping from ITS body ... IT's reproducing. Making copies. Soon there will be hundreds ... thousands of IT. And THEY will all be hungry. Oh so hungry.
Wait ... I hear something ... I hear ... oh no ... oh no ...
(Copyright 2011 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. No copying without express written permission from the author.)
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4 comments:
We need to talk -- ARGH!
Time to get out of the house for a while, buddy.
Sorry, Joel. But you had a good life. Right?
Wendy, if you knew how much of this story was true, you'd be worried about my pool, too! :)
Those pamphlets weren't Mormon, were they??? I'm so glad my son is a missionary in Indiana--and I hope IT isn't going that direction!
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