Issue Three

Charlie ran down the street, bare feet
pounding the sidewalk. She’d stepped
on so many sharp rocks and fragments
of glass that she couldn’t feel anything
but the pain any longer. Her feet felt
slick and she was sure she was leaving
pairs of crimson footsteps in her wake,
bright as runway lights.
Every house she passed was
deserted—no lights, boarded up and
hollow inside. Empty carapace, the guts
and blood having moved onto bigger
and better things. She would find no
help here.
A howling in the distance. They were
gaining on her. Panicking, she turned
toward one of the houses. A tall threestory
thing, very dark and very
inviting. She sprinted toward its rotten
porch after a quick check to make sure
she wasn’t, in fact, trailing any
blood. She ran her feet through the
grass just be sure. Up the wooden
stairs. The door was locked and
boarded up tight. She rattled the knob
just in case. No luck. She tried the front
windows—also locked.
She leapt over the side of the porch and
ran around the perimeter, trying every
window she came across. And then
good fortune came in the form of a
basement window on the back end of
the house. It was open half an inch, like
somebody had recently used it. Howling
behind her, the excited jabber of voices
off in the distance. She dug her fingers
into the opening and shimmied through,
headfirst, into the void.
She landed heavily on the concrete
floor, sprang to her feet and then shut
and locked the window behind her.
She squatted down in the dark, hiding
amongst the molding boxes and spiders,
and waited as the howling and the
voices grew closer. She watched the
shadows of feet pass by the window,
heart pounding so hard that she thought
she might cry out just to get it over
with. ‘I’m in here!’ her mind
screamed. ‘I’m in here! Just come in
and kill me already!’ She closed her
eyes and listened.
They circled the house for close to five
minutes before giving up and moving
on.
Their voices sounded frustrated,
bloodthirsty as they faded away into the
distance.
A long time passed. She waited and
listened, but all she heard was
silence. A cricket began to chirp on the
opposite side of the basement.
Charlie sighed and, exhausted, settled
into herself. She felt her head
droop. Within minutes she’d fallen dead
asleep.
When she awoke, hazy yellow sunlight
was trickling through the windows. She
was still alive.