Weasel

Elizabeth sat in the tub and listened to the soothing sound of running water. She often took baths in the late-night-early-morning hours. She had intense insomnia and the only thing that helped her sleep was the sound of running bath water. So she would sneak out of bed at around three in the morning, when her husband and son were asleep, and take an hour-long or two-long bath with the lights off.

She was just starting to drift off when she was rudely awoken by a splash of water in her nose. Startled, she sat up and tried to blow the water out of her nose. It didn't work. The bath was getting ready to overflow, so she kicked the faucet off with her foot and pulled the plug for a few seconds so she could lie down again.

When the sound of the water stopped, she heard another familiar sound. (No! No!) She shoved the plug back into the drain. She listened carefully and realized that the sound wasn't what she had thought it was. It was the faint sound of a door opening.

She started to call out for her son George, thinking it must be him, but then she had a moment of paranoia. What if it was an intruder? She held perfectly still so that, if it was an intruder, he wouldn't know anyone was awake. It was better for him to just take what he needed and leave. She knew she would have to get out of the bath eventually, but as long as she heard the noises, she wasn't going to move.

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Daniel crept up the stairs of a medium-sized house; the big ones always had too much security. He opened the first door he saw as slowly as he could. He thought he heard something like a splashing noise and waited for a few minutes until he was sure nobody was awake, then turned on the light to a room cluttered with toys. He looked for any kind of computer or technological item and smiled when he saw an open laptop sitting on the desk at the other side of the room.

Suddenly, the power went out. He hadn't noticed until that moment that his flashlight was gone. He must have dropped it earlier. (You idiot!)

He was now in the middle of a trap- there were so many toys all over the floor that he was sure to step on something, and if that didn't wake someone up, the first thing he tripped over definitely would.

He cleverly slipped off his shoes so he could feel around with his toes and figure out where it was safe to step. He took only about two steps per minute. He gingerly pointed his left foot and stuck it out in front of him.

A tinkling music-box song went off and scared him for a moment, but it wasn't very loud, so he didn't worry.

"HERE I AM!" Elmo's voice yelled from the toy. (Holy s**t!) He jumped, almost tripping. He had to catch his breath. Stupid toy!

After he collected himself, he slowly started towards the desk again. But he swore he heard something whispering. He dismissed it as his imagination. Then he heard a slow, cranking sound. The jack-in-the-box started playing again. He spun around. How did it do that? He took a step and ran into something at knee-level, tripping himself. He fell forward and caught himself with his hands. (Oh no! What if I woke someone up? It's not worth it, I'll just go somewhere else.)

He slowly turned and tip-toed over to the door, almost tripping over his shoes. The jack-in-the-box started playing again.

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Elizabeth heard a thud. It almost had to be George or her husband, Franklin. No robber could be so clumsy. But still, she was too afraid to leave. The severity or her paranoia, she felt, was ridiculous.

The bath water was getting cold. Under normal circumstances, if she had been in the bath long enough for the water to be cold, she would run a little hot water to warm herself up, and then get out. She knew there was no intruder in her house. With the logical part of her she knew. She knew that she got scared in the middle of the night a lot and it was usually nothing but the voices in her head. Nothing but the imaginary monsters in the corners of the room.

Yet she was still scared of these monsters enough to remain in the uncomfortable water. She would sleep naked on the bathroom floor if she had to. Anything, as long as she felt safe.

But she didn't feel safe. That was the problem. She wouldn't feel safe unless she got out of the bath and saw that nothing was there. So she cautiously stepped out of the tub and flicked on the light. It didn't come on. She tried again, but it still didn't work. (Great! The power's out. So much for feeling safe!) She was too afraid at this point to leave the bathroom, because if there was someone there, which there wasn't, but if there was, she wouldn't see them. And they could attack her from any direction without her knowing. And even though there was no one there, the possibility alone made her retreat back to the tub.

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Daniel put his shoes back on and reached for the doorknob. It wouldn't turn. He jostled it, panicked, suddenly forgetting about getting caught. It didn't budge. There was a deep sinking feeling in his stomach. Someone knew he was there, and locked him in. There was no point in crying for help, because they already knew he was stuck. The police were probably on their way right now.

He decided the best thing to do would be to break the window and run as fast as he could. He started towards where he remember the window to be and stopped. He thought he heard something. That stupid jack-in-the-box was playing again, but there was something else- it was barely audible, and he strained to make out what it was. It sounded like whispering.

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Elizabeth tried to keep her mind off of the supposed intruder, but when she wasn't thinking about that, her thoughts automatically went to the strange things she imagined. She didn't see or hear these things now, but she realized that everything in her life could somehow be connected to them.

She tried to just go to sleep, even in the tub. She would simply tell her husband she had accidentally fallen asleep while taking a bath. But every time she closed her eyes, she remembered her dream from the night before.

She had dreamed, on more occasions than one, that her house was infested with strange bugs. They had long legs, stripes, and a transparent horn filled with yellow venom. If you stepped on one, it's horn dug into your foot like a sharp thorn, injecting you with the venom and killing you almost instantly. The horn then filled up with your blood, turning it red.

She had imagined that she saw these creatures sometimes when she was awake, but they always had yellow horns and lurked underneath furniture, doing nothing more than startling her, since she had done research on these creatures and they were clearly nonexistent. The internet had never heard of them, so they had to have been conjured up by her own mind.

She stopped trying to sleep and curled her goosebump-covered body into a ball. She suddenly thought of her son, George. Was he okay?

Of course he is. Why wouldn't he be? Nobody's here.

She remembered why she had adopted the two-year-old. The fact that she had never been able to have children when she was younger was part of the reason. However, loneliness had less to do with it than she had thought.

She had occasionally been visited by the voice of a young boy, who she assumed was dead. He talked mostly about innocent things, like toys and cars. He was by far the most pleasant of her "friends". Then he began visiting her more and more frequently. He started discussing more depressing topics when he saw her, such as his death and the death of his parents.

She thought she might have been hearing this boy because she was lonely and wanted her own child. That was what had made her think of adoption. Of course, she was very glad she decided to adopt George. But loneliness was not the reason for his visits, she decided, because he still visited her, though not as often. About as much as he used to, before he started talking about scary things and bad things.

The worst of all of her "friends" were the monkeys. The monkeys she saw had bald red heads, fur-covered bodies, and were about the size of a human. She didn't know why these were the worst; they never attacked or caused her any harm, they just stared at her from behind curtains. They were exactly what she imagined the devil would look like. There was only one thing that scared her more than the monkeys, but she didn't want to think about that.

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Daniel could suddenly interpret the vague whispers. It sounded like the voice of a young boy. The voice whisper-sang, "All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. The monkey thought it all was fun..." Both the voice and the jack-in-the-box stopped before Elmo could emerge. He would have been less disturbed if the muppet had popped out and screamed.

It started up again. He had to be imagining it. At least the voice. But someone had locked him in that room, and it was a child's playroom. It could be possible that there had been a child there that he hadn't noticed before. He waited, frightened, for the arrival of Elmo. (Please don't stop again. Please don't.)

"All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. The monkey thought it all was fun."

He closed his eyes tight, but nothing happened. The refrain again. Only this time, something was different. A slight change in the lyrics. He didn't notice it at first, but the subtlety of it gave him chills. Instead of singing "the monkey chased the weasel", the child now sang, "the monkeys chase the weasel". He shuddered. Now there was a slow, steady thumping noise accompanying the song. He would have thought it was his own heartbeat, but his was much faster.

Suddenly, the streetlights came on, shining dim light through the window. Just enough light for stretched silhouettes to appear along the walls. He saw no child, but he saw the crank on the jack-in-the-box spin as the music and singing became increasingly faster and louder. He ran towards the window in terror, but after only one step, he fell on his face. His shoelaces had been tied together.

Now that he was on the ground, a jumprope snaked across the floor and wrapped around his arms. In total shock, he didn't fight it off. It quickly bound his wrists and ankles together.

He writhed around trying to stand, as the light from the window flickered. The heartbeat sound grew faster along with the music, and the rope tightened, digging into his skin. He closed his eyes and tried hard to snap himself out of whatever he was in.

"The monkeys chase the weasel."

It was impossible to drown out the now chaotic music. He could hardly understand the words anymore. Then, the jumprope and shoelaces began to untie themselves, and he had a horrible feeling that he was was about to be the weasel.

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Elizabeth suddenly thought she felt some other presence in the room. Without turning her head, she pulled the shower curtain closed. She didn't see anything, but she knew just what it was. It was the only thing worse than the monkeys. The thing that she only ever saw glimpses of. Even though hardly saw it, she could feel it. It was a forceful thing that rarely took shape. The thing that sometimes took over her reflection.

She was suddenly no longer concerned with the alleged break-in. She couldn't let herself see that thing in full. She didn't want to hear it either, so she ran the hot water again, which calmed her a bit and warmed her a lot.

Drowning out her fear with the sound of running water, she began to drift off again. She woke up in time to stop the tub from overflowing, then sank into the comforting warm water and closed her eyes.

She woke up. The thing left. Not just disappeared, but actually left. Like it was going to another room or something. She had a moment of horror and thought, (What if it hurts Franklin? Or George?) Then she thought, (Oh, don't be silly. It's never even hurt you, how could it hurt anyone else? It's your monster, it doesn't exist for anyone else!) She slipped back into the water, relaxing. But she still had a slight uneasiness about the thing. She couldn't put it into words, but she thought something was off.

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"All around the mulberry bush, the monkeys chase the weasel. The monkeys thought it all was fun."

The jack-in-the-box finally sprung open, and five or six hideous monkey-things jumped out, with horrid grins on their terrifying, human-like red faces. He realized that the heart beats he was hearing were theirs. This had to be a nightmare. He jumped up and ran to the window, trying to open it. It was bolted down. He tried to break it, but it wouldn't break. He spun around and the him-sized monkeys were surrounding him with those demented, sharp-toothed smiles.

He shoved through them, knocking a couple of them down. At least he was stronger than them. He darted to the small closet at the end of the room and shut himself in. But he could feel and hear them shaking the bifold doors. They ripped them off the wall.

He sprang out of the closet and ran to the door again. Then to the windows. The monkeys chased the weasel around and around the room as the awful music kept playing, and he felt like a small child running in circles. They chased him to wear him out. Finally, he couldn't run anymore. He leaned against the wall, terrified and panting.

The monkeys closed in on him. One sat on him, pinning him down. They yanked on his nose, his ears, and his hair all at once. He yelled, "STOP!" as forcefully as he could, but it only made the monkeys laugh, showing their knife-sharp teeth.

They continued pulling. One monkey suddenly had a demonic grin on his face. It squeezed his testicles as hard as it could. He groaned in agony. The other monkeys laughed now, and took off his shoes. They broke his toes, and one bit his pinky two completely off.

Another dug a claw into Daniel's eye, until he could no longer see, and he felt a hot mix of tears and blood leak down his face. The one sitting on him began to strangle him. He gasped and choked. He couldn't fight it off; the other monkeys had his hands.

Just when he thought they were going to strangle him to death, all of the monkeys stopped. They looked up at the ceiling in terror. He guarded himself, then tried to see what they were looking at, but he saw nothing with his one working eye. They all ran and shrunk back into the jack-in-the-box. He could hear their hearts speeding up as the music finally stopped, still playing in his head.

He swallowed. Whatever had scared those monkeys was in the room with him. A strange, suffocating presence filled the room. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that it was something worse than anything he had ever encountered before. He couldn't see it or hear it, but he could feel it getting closer to him.

He snapped out of his daze and realized that it was real. This was really happening. He stood up and went into something like a strong panic. He had never felt so much fear and anxiety before. The strange presence closed in on him, and he couldn't move. The realization struck him that the police would not be coming, and that something much worse than police was in the room with him. He passed out from fear and pain, landing on something sharp.

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Elizabeth heard a loud thud from the other room, like somebody jumping or falling. She sat up. The light came on in the bathroom, and the door opened by itself. The most massive death-bug she had ever seen was on her wall. She shuttered. This one did scare her. Then she heard the little boy's voice.

"Elizabeth, I'm scared! There's a strange man in your house! I don't know why he's here!"

"Of course you're scared, voice. Because I'm scared. And you're me. Well, kind of." She was surprised at herself. She didn't usually talk to the boy.

"I'm not you," he said. "I'm me. You're you. How can I be you?"

"I made you up. I imagined you."

"You did? I don't get it." Just then, the huge bug ran out of the open door. "Elizabeth," the boy said, "this is a dangerous place to live. A very dangerous place. There are death-bugs and monkeys and...well...me. And now something else came in your house that's the scariest thing of all." He sounded different. His voice was the same, but he was talking like an adult now. Like they were on the same level.

The light turned off and the door closed. The boy had left.

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Franklin woke up after hearing a loud thud, and saw that his wife was not in bed. "Elizabeth?" he called. No response. He put on his glasses and fearfully rolled out of bed. He had been married to Elizabeth for thirty-six years and if anything happened to her, it would be the end of his world. He made his way upstairs, where he had heard the loud noise.

As he climbed the steps, he began to sweat. He wasn't out of shape for his age, so this was unusual. He always sweated a little while he was asleep, especially his feet, but this was ridiculous. He wasn't asleep, and with every stair he climbed, his face grew hotter and he became dizzier.

By the time he got close the top, he felt like he was in an oven, and he was queasy. He could barely stand, but there were only three more steps to go, and he was concerned about his wife.

Three. He leaned forward, as the pain in his stomach was getting intense. (It'll be okay. Elizabeth will take me to the hospital. I hope I'm not having a heart attack, this is horrible!)

Two. Suddenly, he can no longer breathe. The heat turns to chills. He gasps for breath. (I just have to get to Elizabeth and everything will be okay.)

One. He realizes he's not alone. His knees quiver and give out. He falls backwards down the stairs, hitting his head on the floor and cracking open his skull. He lies unconscious, bleeding to death.

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Elizabeth heard her name called. It sounded like Franklin. She suddenly realized something that she had never thought possible before. The things that she saw were real. Imaginary boys can't open doors and turn on lights. Imaginary intruders can't wake up husbands. If they were real, then they could really hurt her. And they could really hurt Franklin and George, too. She heard what sounded like stomping, followed by a loud thump.

Almost too terrified to move, she forced herself out of the tub, naked and vulnerable to any creature that might choose to kill her. She quietly shivered towards the door. She opened it slowly and screamed. The giant death-bug was back. And its horn was red.

She ran down the hall, afraid of what she would see. She stopped dead at the top of the stairs. Her husband lay on the floor, a pool of blood surrounding his head.

"FRANKLIN!" she sobbed, and ran down to him. She shook him, and he groaned. He was alive! She ran into the kitchen to grab the phone and called 911.

While she was waiting for the ambulance to arrive, something chilling occurred to her. If Franklin was alive, then who stepped on the bug? She ran to George's room and saw him lying in bed. She scooped him up and he said, "Mommy?"

"Oh, thank God!" she cried.

"What's happening?"

"We're going to go help Daddy." She ran down the stairs, with George clinging to her, starting to fall asleep again. "And after that, I think we're going to find a new house," she said more to herself than to him. They would pack up their things after she talked to Franklin and stay with family until they could sell the house. Even if the monsters didn't harm her, she couldn't endanger her family.

As she pulled out of the driveway, she heard the little boy say, "Goodbye," and for the first and last time, she saw him. He didn't look scary or gross, like she thought a ghost would. He looked like any other little boy, standing in the driveway waving to her.

She smiled. "Goodbye."