From the Mouths of Babes
09 Apr 2021Today’s prompt: “Wisdom you learned from your child”
You make a circuit of the house, making sure all the doors and windows are locked, and closing the blinds. You settle down onto the couch with a drink and a good book.
A small voice clears its throat. With hesitation, you lower your book.
Standing before you is a drowned girl. Her long, wet hair is plastered to her shoulders and the sides of her face, and her dress sticks to her legs.
“There is no escape,” she says.
You hear a knock at your front door. You aren’t expecting anyone at this time of night. You peek through the peephole and see a large crowd of men and women in dark hooded robes. They’re chanting. Something something Cthulhu something something fhtagn. Great.
You steal as quietly as possible to the back door and peer through the blinds. More people in robes. This can’t be good.
The knock comes more insistently now. You run into the cellar and bolt the door from inside. You hear loud thuds against the front door, like a battering ram.
You turn on the cellar light, a bare light bulb, and give a sharp little cry when you see a hanged boy. Part of the noose still dangles from his neck, though you can still see around it the red line where it bit into his throat.
“There is no escape,” he says.
The battering ram thuds and thuds and is soon accompanied by splintering sounds. And if the front door won’t hold, this one won’t either.
You grab the edge of a shelf full of old paint, pesticides, and cleaning supplies that look like they would only make the surface you were cleaning more dirty while giving off hella toxic fumes. You pull the shelf away from the wall, and fumble among your keys for the one that will open the door that was hidden behind the shelf. You turn on your flashlight phone and follow the tunnel.
The tunnel opens out into a boarded up structure. Between your flashlight and a patch of streetlight let in by a broken window only partially covered by boards, you can see the motorcycle. Right next to it are a shotgun and an aluminum frame backpack. You know without checking that the backpack is filled with MREs, shotgun shells, and several bottles of water. Your grandfather prepared you for this day.
He did not prepare you for the charred corpse of a burned child to be standing next to the bike, its blackened skin puffed and flaking.
“There is no escape,” the child says.
You cautiously approach the bike and pick up the backpack. The burned child does not move. You cinch the shotgun to the backpack with straps and put the backpack on. The child still does not move. Unnerved, you move the motorcycle away from the child.
There are tons of figures in hooded robes, and there are probably more around this building, but they were all on foot. Outrun them on the motorcycle, then ambush them with the gun if you have to – that’s your best bet.
This structure has double doors held shut by a two-by-four slotted into two brackets. You pull out the two-by-four and the door swing ever so slightly out. You hold your breath, but you don’t hear anything. Good. You peek through the gap between the doors. There are figures in robes milling about out there, but they don’t seem to be paying much attention.
You hop onto the motorcycle and start it. Against all probability, it starts like a dream despite its age and the layer of dust on it. You hear a hubbub of voices outside and drive the motorcycle straight for the doors.
You burst out of the building every bit as dramatically as you could have hoped. You’re afraid the motorcycle will tip over when you hit the doors, but they swing wide when the tire brushes against one and your arm strikes out against the other. You speed between the arrayed cultists and out into the night air.
You drive and drive and drive until you hit a well-lit intersection filled with dead children, each with bite marks. “There is no escape,” the children say.
And then, the ground quaking with his every step, behind them arrives Dread Cthulhu himself.