[Fiction] Night Terror

[z-Carver]

"Claws"

Horace Wolbowiski hated cats. Hated was the wrong word, really. He feared cats. Not the great cats, with their long, muscular bodies and their majestic gravitas. No, he feared the common domestic house cat. Their too-large eyes seem to bore into his body; he could feel them watching him. Their ears were pointed like little devil horns on top of their heads. They were always skulking about like little ninjas: silent and presumably deadly. He'd never heard of a cat killing and eating someone, but he knew they were capable of it. He just knew it.

And so this was hell for him.

The room was large and spacious, with opulant furnishings and garish decorations. That alone might have been enough to make Horace uneasy, but what really did the trick was the cats. There were at least one hundred of the evil creatures in this room, shedding and lounging over everything. Big ones, small ones, old ones, deceptively cute young ones - they filled all areas of the room like a fuzzy flood.

Horace had pulled a chair into the corner, displacing several of the beasts in a vain attempt to seize the area for his own. Even after kicking several of them away, others continually came back for whatever dire purpose cats seek human victims. He was beginning to believe that he might have at least secured himself a bit of breathing room when the sea of fur parted to let through a new cat.

She was different from the others; beyond the unusual, shimmering red and green coat, she was also a bit bigger than the others, and she carried far more menace than any of them. Despite being "just" a house cat, she walked like a lion, and Horace felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth. Flashing gray eyes drew his attention to her again and again, until his vision was full of spinning blades and striped fur.

"Hello, Horace," she said, and he let a squeak escape his lips in surprise. She smiled, a hungry, predatory gaze, and crouched. "I've come for your soul." As the omnious words began to register, she pounced.

He screamed and fell backwards, the wall that had been shielding his back suddenly gone. Paws far larger than any house cat's slammed into his chest and legs, riding him down to the ground as the chair snapped from the weight. The tiger-sized house cat pinning him roared, a terrible noise that sounded like the pits of Hell opening.

Horace screamed and screamed, and the cat roared louder than before. Pain lanced through his chest as claws sank into flesh and bone. The cat stopped roaring; her head dipped down to his chest and lapped at the thick red blood oozing out.

Her victim didn't notice; Horace's agony rose, become unbearable and smashed into him like a thousand-ton hammer. Horace woke up screaming into the middle of a heart attack.

* * *

Jael cursed as the dream distengrated, leaving her in the back of Carver's mind again. She noted with a touch of relief that Willa and Harry were still going at it. She didn't bother being jealous; tomorrow night was her turn, and their distraction allowed her to play in other's dreams.

With the taste of blood lingering in her memory, Carver's killer lay back with a smile and waited for her turn to play. Whether it was with Harry or with some hapless sleeper, she would have her fun.

And no one could find her, or stop her.

[z-Carver]

"Sharps"

Nathan McCain was afraid of needles. He always had been, and knew that he always would be. His earliest memory was getting a tetanus shot when he was three; he was already in pain from the cut on his hand, and the image of the huge needle descending toward his arm. It had ensured that Nate would always be terrified of any needle.

Sometimes he dreamed about that first petrifying experience: the white walls of the hospital; his own mother holding him in a steel grip; the nurse cooing softly as she inched toward his arm with the needle. “It’s ok, honey,” she murmured in a voice that was strangely hungry and not at all comforting. Three-year-old Nate – yet somehow also adult Nate – glanced up at the nurse, his face twisting with fear. Her silver-gray eyes sparkled as she continued to lower the needle toward his arm with agonizing slowness.

Suddenly, she stopped with a dark smile. “Why, look at this,” she said, holding up the syringe and looking at the murky, putrid liquid in the barrel. “This is the wrong liquid. We need to get something else.”

She turned away with a flip of her red and green hair, her hips swaying pleasantly as she turned back to the medicine cabinet. The perspective changed suddenly; Nate was flat on his back, restrained hand and foot. The nurse strutted back over to him, her strange, pupil-less eyes glittering at him. Her hand was behind her back, a sight which filled Nate with trepidation.

She slid over him on the bed, her incredible body straddling him. Nate was helpless to stop the hard-on that was rising, and she wiggled against him slightly. “Mmm, someone’s a bad boy… hot for Nurse, are we?”

“Please… I’m sorry,” Nate said, feeling the blush that rolled up his cheeks. “I have a girlfriend. I didn’t mean… it’s an automatic thing.”

“Well, we have a shot to fix that,” the nurse said, grinning. She withdrew her hand from behind her back, and all of the fingers on her hand now ended in a glittering syringe.

Nate screamed and bucked against her, but her legs squeezed tight around his body as her needled hand stroked down his chest. “Please, no!” he shrieked, but she just laughed and shook her hand. For a second, he thought the needles were gone, but now her lower arm was one long syringe, with a needle as big as his finger.

“Time for your medicine!” the nurse laughed, plunging the needle into his heart. Nate couldn’t even scream anymore; instead, a death rattle echoed in his throat as his chest was violated. The empty syringe drew out a portion of blood; with a smile, the ‘nurse’ brought the needle to her lips and began to lap at the blood that was slowly oozing back out of the metal length. Nate slid into blackness, his last sight that of the woman straddling his fading hard-on and lapping at his blood.

* * *

Jael hummed to herself as she slipped back into the back of Carver’s mind, sated and at what passed for peace to her. Willa and Harry were doing their usual gentle, sweet love-making in the forefront of Carver’s mind; idly, Jael wondered what Willa did on Jael’s nights with Harry. It didn’t really matter to the sadist, though, and she didn’t let it take away from her pleasure.

Though she had something more interesting to consider then her post-nightmare bliss; the ending of that dream had been very strange. It hadn’t ended like she was used to; instead of a sudden snap to wakefulness, there had been a slow loss of the dream. Almost like if he had died.

Jael’s eyes widened suddenly. He had died! She had killed him in his sleep!

Softly, she began to laugh. Maybe there was something to the theory that a node was the ultimate in wish fulfillment. She had certainly gotten the one thing she had wanted: the chance to kill again.