The Vents

What really lies beneath the floorboards?

 

The adults don’t listen to the soft scratching sounds they make. They don’t even seem to see the long fingernails that snake up through the floor and hide in the shadows. I try to tell them what I see and hear. They assure me monsters aren’t real and they certainly don't thrive beneath my bed. They’re right about that. These monsters don’t live underneath the bed… that’s just stupid, they could be seen under the bed. That’s the first place to check for a monster!

      No, these creatures live beneath the floorboards. When the house is dark and quiet, you can hear them reaching up through the vents and cracks of the floor with their horridly long nails dragging across the boards. Once when I was home alone I watched a small mouse venture too close to a floor vent. Slowly, I heard a clicking noise and watched as five long slender nails slowly writhed up from the slits of the orifice. The creature’s sharp claws towered over the rodent and then suddenly clashed down upon its body at once, violently pinning the mouse and pulling it down beneath the depths of the floor through the vent. I don’t know how long the monster has been feeding on rodents. It may have gotten fatter, it might  be yearning for a different type of prey? Something bigger than mice?

      When it’s getting dark, and the house sits quiet, and you can hear a few barely audible clicks and ticks of scavenging claws on the floorboards never let your feet touch the floor… and  never, ever venture too close to the vents.  

Reviews

[Rudy Menjivar]

If there were monsters under the floor boards, would we smell their stench? Interesting, little story.

[Franklin...]

Whoa, maybe it's just that I read this in the dark, but this gave me the creeps. This is like something you tell your kids to keep them in bed at night. Right now I'm glad I don't have floorboards, and particularly vents, in my house. haha.
You did a wonderful job of giving the reader just enough description of, well, whatever it is, to give their imagination a basis from which to fill in their own personalized monster.
I just read it again. Brrr.

[Anatomical Apocalypse]

that's sick