Chills.
Being a bartender puts you in some strange situations sometimes. But I’ve never had someone waiting for me when I left. Unfortunately, the thing that sent chills up my neck wasn’t that a man had waited for me, no, it was the fact that the only other thing in the alley was a dog.
It was very still, too still, watching me with pools of black eyes. Smiling. I shivered and started walking faster to round the corner, having to walk past the creepy dog to do so.
The sound of bones cracking made my shoulders tense and the first thrums of terror began to burn, but I didn’t dare turn around. I knew something, hopefully not that terrifying dog was behind me. Clutching my bag tighter, I picked up my pace and every couple minutes I heard that chill-inducing crack again, but after a while it disappeared. I’d convinced myself it had just been my imagination by the time I’d gotten home and closed the door.
Imagination or not, the creeps made me hungry so I quickly rushed to the kitchen, turning on perhaps every light possible as I went (And I swear I wasn’t being irrational), when as I opened the fridge I heard that terrifying crack again.
I wanted to scream in terror, but instead I grabbed weakly at a knife on the counter with trembling hands, keeping the fridge open, too scared to close the door when the crack of bone sounded again, much closer.
The urge to cry overwhelmed me and silent tears poured down my cheek as the hallway light to the kitchen flickered out, the air chilled, and the sound of someone’s name rushed to my ears.
“Becky.”
Another mind-numbing sharp sound of bone snapping and crunching. I couldn’t bear it anymore. I slammed the door to the fridge shut and swung the knife in front of me, eyes wide as my heart made a painful, adrenaline-filled tattoo of pulses.
Nothing.
A choked sob of relief burned my throat until the hallway light came back on suddenly, and I couldn’t help the scream that rushed to surface.
That horrible, horrible dog stood there, but it was all wrong. Those black pools of eyes were chilling white now, and the dog had snapped its very neck to look at me even though its body was positioned in a way that said it should be facing away from me. It didn’t move, didn’t breathe. But I was sobbing and shaking, because the dog was bleeding from its mouth, and that horrible face twisted in the completely wrong direction, it occurred to me that every single bone breaking snap I had heard had been that horrible dog realigning its neck to the opposite direction it should be.
It smiled, and that neck snapped again so it could c**k its head to look at the knife. Then my wrist snapped backwards, and every bone in my body began to fracture.
Before I died, I heard once more, a voice that was not my own.
“Becky’s almost home.”