#FridayFlash: Eellen

Eellen by Louise Dragon


Her nights twisted into the fevered nightmare of a creature she hated but couldn't help being.


Eyes opened to a different day . . . sunlight and sparkle from a high basement window moved Ellen’s mind out of the murky shadows and into a bright new realm. The cycle now broken, seven bloody years moved into the background . . . begging to be forgotten.


Ellen looked at her pale white hands – like lumps of dead fish. She viewed color beginning to bloom into a smooth pinkness. She was becoming whole again. All that work . . . all the sacrifices -- just to spend these short bursts of life as human as possible.


The tall woman limped into her underground bathroom to gaze into the mirror. She reached out and ran a large pink hand over the surface of the cool glass. She watched as her scrambled features rearranged. Liver-colored gills on the sides of her neck healed over into smooth pink flesh. Ropes of salmon-colored appendages softened into glistening blonde hair on a football shaped head that grew rounder as Ellen watched her reflection. Glittering black stones recessed in caves of lumpy fish-white flesh peeped out and softened into warm brown eyes. Needle sharp fangs gradually smoothed over to even white teeth that fit into her now normal sized human mouth.


Looking down, Ellen saw her flippers had separated back into five toes on each foot and this time when she moved to walk, the limp was gone.


The naked blonde woman stepped into the shower and adjusted the needle-like spray to soft warmth that spread throughout her body. She soaped and shampooed but always imagined a lingering seaweed-ocean odor like decaying fish emanating from her talented pores no matter how thoroughly she washed the new pink body.


Ellen dressed in a loose flowing caftan of soft silk, tied back her blond tresses with a silk ribbon and pressed the code numbers into her underground security system keypad. A large metal door hissed quietly open letting her into a normal looking Louisiana cellar complete with trickling ground water and mild mildew scents. She climbed the stairs and proceeded to check out her small beach house. The cleaning service had done well and the house still looked lived-in, warm, and inviting. She stood briefly on the back porch and gazed across Crowley Cove at the secret biology lab where she had once worked as an aspiring marine biologist. She shook her head sadly and moved back inside.


Ellen made a few phone calls with her new rich, throaty voice. She knew she had a mere seven days to work and needed to continue with the façade of running this house at least as well as she had in her past life.


After her mundane chores, Ellen scratched a new note and a check for the cleaning service and headed back down to her underground lab.


She had seven days to break the cycle or she was doomed to spend another seven nightmare years as an underwater predator of the most hideous proportions.


Ellen knew there were hundreds of varieties of anguilliformes, divided into many families and generations.


Absently she passed the naturally occurring underwater cave access that she had discovered by accident years ago in the basement of her then new home. Her lab smelled of ocean salts and brine and was comprised of a huge concrete square with worktables in the center and various aquarium tanks bubbling across the three walls surrounding the underwater cave access.


Ellen proceeded to extract blood samples from the eel species in her tanks and compare the results with her own blood. She had to find blood from a generation of the culprit that had bitten her fourteen years and fourteen days ago in this very room and she had seven days and seven nights to get it right.


Her boggled mind was on the verge of remembering just what those people across the cove had been doing to the sea creatures in this area before her accident.


Had they been making the creatures more aggressive for some reason? Or had they just been looking for a new acne cure? Ellen’s mind could no longer remember. She only remembered the bite from the infected animal, the sudden anger, and then blinding hunger that sent her careening through the waters in search of . . . death. Killing and tearing had become her world. Eating and swallowing chunks of raw flesh that was still alive in her narrow cavernous mouth – the thought was almost pleasant and she found herself wiggling a little on her stool . . . anticipating the change.


WAIT! She still had six more days . . . unless.


Ellen glanced up at the clock and noticed she was on the seventh hour of humanity.


Could it be?


Was the process accelerating?


Her brain kept interrupting her human thoughts and injecting her mind with visions of killing – visions of blood, warm and salty in her cold mouth.


Numbing cold, rubbery skin, gaping gills, killing and eating. Once again life became simple for Ellen as she soared through the waters of Crowley Cove.
End

Author's Note: The first paragraph of this story (although somewhat modified) is courtesy of #storystarters, a Twitter Application.

#FridayFlash: Eellen

#fridayflash: Undercover Garden

Undercover Garden
By
Louise Dragon


She bent, peering at the odd bloom that had appeared overnight in her prized garden. It burst open expelling its venom.


Sally, stunned, carefully extracted the dozen or so tiny dart-like seeds from her neck and right cheek. She collected them gingerly in her palm, careful not to lose any of the precious pods.


She felt really strange. Routine carried her from task to task, but her mind was literally miles away. Her thoughts seemed to tick inside her brain like check marks on a to-do list.


A soothing soft voice droned in Sally’s mind. The voice called her simply “Gardener.”


She received instructions from the voice. Her mind dubbed the voice as “Maraud” for some unknown reason.


Maraud directed the Gardener to plant the unique seeds in special little pots of soil obtained from the belly of a cave, which branched into Sally’s prized back yard garden.


Sally had always feared the dark recesses of that cave, but that day she entered without alarm and placed her small pots of soil onto thirteen natural looking little alcoves jutting from the walls of the cave.


As the last pot sank onto its resting place, a blue light shot from the rocky wall beneath it and struck another pot on the opposite wall. The blue light zigzagged back and forth between the pots until a cobweb of filmy blue strands hung across the cave walls. The light blinked out from the strands leaving iridescent filament crisscrossed over the interior surfaces of the cave.


Sally watched without fear as a bat woke from its ceiling resting spot and attempted to swoop through the cave filaments. It stuck to the thin pearly fibers and struggled to get free.


A small multi-legged creature about the size of a golf ball scuttled from one of Sally’s flowerpots. It grasped the struggling bat with powerful looking tweezer-like claws and inserted a thick gray straw-like appendage into the struggling animal’s chest. The bat gave one final high-pitched chitter then fell limply against the weird beast from the pot. The voice of Maraud called the creature Guardian as soft tones soothed the fear centers of Sally’s brain until she was able to watch the Guardian suck all life from the bat turning its small body into a dried black husk that wafted silently to the cave floor.

~*~

Sally’s back yard garden of beautiful and unusual plants is a unique showplace in the Arkansas foothills.


Sally works her garden with the abandonment of a gardening fanatic careful that not one weed should mar her treasured showplace.


The cave opening is camouflaged with colorful flowering shrubs and vines that carry with them a haunting fragrance like peppermint and cherries.


Sometimes, when dogs or children approach the cave opening wanting more of the delicious fragrance, Sally rubs the right side of her face trying to remember why she should shoo the visitors away. At times like this, Maraud’s voice intercedes and sooths away her worries.


Sally’s the Gardener. Her job is to keep her garden a perfect showplace and attract visitors (food?).


It is not her job to wonder how big the Guardians have grown with all of the food they’ve consumed recently.


At night when she’s asleep, however, she dreams that Maraud visits and plants more seeds. He looks like a smiling Greek god with curly hair and beautiful white teeth, but sometimes the mask slips a little during his efforts.


Sally’s mind tries to grasp the look of the hideous being know as Maraud but the insectile alien contours of the face above her softens into its smiling human version before she can fully grasp the concept of what’s happening. Soothing tones then smooth away her terror. The soothing tones that lately seem to end in an almost angry insectile buzz.


Somewhere, deep in the cortex of Sally’s mind, a tiny nugget of her former self wonders if the new buzzing voice belongs to Maraud or the fetus she’s carrying.


A numbing trill kicks away that little nugget and reminds her that Gardeners were put on the earth to garden and nurture. She must leave the thinking and wondering to the Marauders.

End

Note from the Author: The first paragraph of this story is courtesy of #storystarters, a Twitter Application.

Related in Time: Secrets of an Ozark Cave

#fridayflash: Undercover Garden

#fridayflash: Wrenge

Lightening slashed open the raging black clouds. Thunder shook the rocky ground. She stood facing the wind and opened her wings. She was alive for the first time.
***
Wayne Michaels, murmured in his sleep. In his dreams, he again struck the fatal blow. He watched his wife tumble, in slow motion, down the stairs for the last time. Her mouth formed a round O of surprise; her reaching hands scrabbled for a hold. While he slept, Wayne clutched his hands behind his back. Clutched them tightly as he had on that night as his wife bounced from wall to stairs. Each thump echoed in his brain.

He could have saved her!

If he had only reached out one hand instead of stubbornly hiding his palms like a bad boy caught in the cookie jar.

But Elizabeth crashed to the bottom with one final thud.

From his place at the top of the stairs Wayne heard her gasp out her last breath: saw her chest rise once before she became motionless forever. Her once beautiful face locked into an angry mask of death so hideous Wayne had to look away.

In his nightmare, Wayne’s eyes moved from the fresh corpse to the window where the late afternoon sun swept golden rays across the carpet.

But the day darkened abruptly.

Chills gripped Wayne.

His thudding heartbeat gnashed and grated likes machinery.

“I’m coming,” a tiny voice grated in his ear. “I’m coming for you, Wayne.”

Wayne needed to wake up now. But as he turned toward the window again, a huge dark shadow swept by . . .

Jerked awake by something he couldn’t quite remember, Wayne Michaels shivered in the cool night air. Harsh grinding sounds plagued his ears. It took him a moment realize that his teeth were grating against each other. While he slept, he had kicked off the quilt and could feel goose bumps bubbling on his naked flesh. Rubbing his aching jaw, Wayne reached about on the floor. His hand encountered something soft just as a dark shadow blotted out what little light had been in the room. Shivering with fear that he couldn’t explain Wayne snapped on the bedside lamp. Yanking the quilt from the floor, he wrapped his chilled body and huddled miserably in the big empty bed, still rubbing his jaw. He hadn’t had a problem with grinding his teeth at night since he had been a child. He really hated sleeping alone. Damn Elizabeth. Why did she have to be so weak?

He left the light on for the rest of the night.

***

Two days later, Wayne paced, stopped, opened the window, snapped on the television, lounged briefly in his recliner, and then jumped up and paced some more.

Glancing at his watch every five minutes, Wayne’s restlessness carried him past the six o’clock news and into the sitcoms. Comedy escapades did little to lighten Wayne’s mood. But, by the time the sun slid behind Mount Mariah, Wayne was nodding in his chair. Thirty minutes later, while Wayne’s soft snores and rigorously grinding teeth punctuated the quick responses of a new TV rescue show, a huge dark shadow filled the softly lit living room and then floated away.

Wayne mumbled in his precarious slumber. The shadow swooped again as the Wrenge soared closer in the indigo sky looking for a landing site.

The porch roof next door, with rough shingles for good footing, gave the Wrenge a perfectly unobstructed position. Stationing herself where her shadow cast a visible stain on the Michael’s living room carpet, the Wrenge folded her great wings protectively around herself and dozed peacefully in the cool autumn air.

Twisting and moaning in his uneasy slumber, Wayne suddenly bolted into consciousness. He sensed, rather than saw, the shadowy mark by the window. Shivering from the cold, rancid night air wafting through the open window Wayne felt his testicles tightening and the little hairs on the back of his neck stiffening. An incredible rush of aloneness swept him and a dull ache in his chest reminded him to breathe. Eerie music wafted softly from the television. The remote lay three yards in front of him, on the coffee table. He longed to reach over and switch off that dreadful music but his limbs were numb with inexplicable fear and refused to cooperate.

His jaw felt like he had been kicked in the face by a horse.

The room was dark.

Bluish light from the television did little to dispel the suffocating blackness that seemed to swell with each breath.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the murk they were drawn to the grayish patch of carpet just ahead. It looked more like a deep hole than a shadow. The oval shape yawned and stretched like a giant mouth ready to take a bite.

As Wayne worked to steady his breathing and try to rationalize his fear—

(Just your guilty conscience at work)

The ever darkening shadow began to boil and twitch. Its edges rolled inward, like a waterfall of ink, while the center bubbled and frothed like liquid tar.

(Just a dream—the music, the stench—just my guilty conscience at work. I’ll wake up soon.)

From the center of the churning darkness a delicate form rose. Faintly iridescent, it sucked in light as it glowed dark blue, violet, finally pale pink. Wayne heard a sucking-pop as the pink shape moved out of its inky pool.

The features stabilized into Elizabeth’s face.

(Now I know this is a dream.)

Daintily, Elizabeth’s pink, naked body stepped forward. Her smiling face was beautiful, unlined and glowing—her body soft and round.

She looks just as she did on our honeymoon, Wayne thought. His limbs felt heavy and his jaw throbbed. The television fell silent but he sensed it watching him with its single blue eye.
Elizabeth’s rosebud lips parted.

“Blood,” she whispered raising a graceful arm and pointing to Wayne.

Electrified by the sudden sound, Wayne’s teeth involuntarily clamped shut: biting down hard on his tongue. The salty taste of blood gagged him as his eyes filled with tears and blurred his vision. Inert limbs suddenly reanimated—flinging him out of the chair.

He was face to face with his dead wife’s wraith.

Elizabeth’s pointing finger dabbed briefly at the trickle of blood on Wayne’s lip. Her touch was icy and damp like a slug inching across his mouth.

Sweat seeped from Wayne’s pores.

A mottled purple tongue flicked from her mouth as the Elizabeth-thing licked his blood from her finger.

Wayne felt her fetid breath on his neck—smelled the stink of decay, and, although he caught only a brief glimpse, he was sure he had seen festering wormholes and writhing maggots on her dank purple tongue.

He could feel his gorge rising and clamped his teeth together. Fresh pain throbbed in his torn tongue and aching jaw. The salty taste of his own blood and the pain in his mouth brought anger.  This was when the reality of Wayne’s situation blossomed in his brain.

(Who in the hell does she think she is . . .)?

Wayne’s arm came up. Hand clenched into a fist. “Listen you . . .”

“Bone,” the Elizabeth-thing whispered as she reached out a small pink hand and tore off Wayne’s upraised arm at the shoulder.

For a dream the pain was awfully fierce, Wayne thought.

The cauliflower knob of bone on the end of the severed arm that Elizabeth was clutching looked dreadfully real. So did the bloody empty socket on his right shoulder.

In a swooning haze, Wayne heard the raucous grating of his own teeth—smelled the sickening odor of his blood and felt the sting of tears in his eyes.

With primal fear he watched Elizabeth peel back the flesh from his severed arm and tear out the bone. It gleamed with a pink hue as Elizabeth’s small hands stripped flesh away. Again his neck and chin were washed in the revolting stink of her breath as her rosebud mouth yawned exceptionally wide and chomped blackened teeth onto the nub of bone. The bone broke with a distinct cracking sound leaving a sharp-looking, splintered fragment in Elizabeth’s hands: hands spattered with droplets of maroon blood and orange bits of flesh and broken blood vessels.

“Tears,” it whispered, touching Wayne’s cheeks and lapping gory fingers with that worm-riddled tongue.

Fear mushroomed from Wayne’s broken body when he saw that rosebud mouth moving toward him.

(She’s going to kiss me.)

His scream was swallowed by the cavernous mouth clamping over his lips. A jolt, like electricity, coursed through his body as the bone splinter pierced his heart. With the last of his comprehension, Wayne felt his soul, or his essence—perhaps it was his tumultuous fear, sucked from his body like a modified abortion.

“Fears,” the Elizabeth-metamorphosis whispered as she stepped back from the dead husk of Wayne Michaels and reentered the roiling shadow.

Rejuvenated, the Wrenge drifted silently across the indigo skies over Memphis.
End

Author's note: The first two sentences of my #fridayflash story: Wrenge, are courtesy of #storystarters – a Twitter Application.

#fridayflash: Wrenge