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Hurry Back

by Mr.RMA

Mr.RMA #flashchallenge
Just another random story of mine from Fiction Class, but spooky and stuff...mwah hah hah...
A man returns home from a trip along with his friend, only to realize something is terribly amiss.
“Do you really have to go so fast? We’re not that late!” Buck screamed over to his pal as they zoomed down the road in the dead of the night, the dim headlights of the vehicle being their only illumination.

“You know how the wife is, Buck. On time is late and early is on time…and by that logic I haven’t come home on time for going-on five years now. It’s about time I fixed that,” Clark stoically replied, keeping his eyes on the two oval-like spots in front of him that were his only guide in this dark path. “Sorry I dragged you into this. I should ‘a told you while I was flying in that I tend to rush a little when it comes to these things,” he added, feeling some remorse over the whole thing.

Buck was a rather timid man, pale-skinned, frail, and short in stature, someone that you could just feel like you needed to be gentle around, just from his appearance alone. Clark by contrast was bulky, large, gritty, someone you more than expected to be on some professional football team instead of in an accounting job. It was an odd duo of opposites they comprised, but they had been friends for many years all the same, and judging from the look in Buck’s eyes at Clark’s response he had heard stuff like this plenty of times before. If he hadn’t, he likely wouldn’t have so willingly let Clark take the wheel on the way back, especially since it was Buck’s car in the first place. The road eventually started guiding them into a more forested environment, with overhanging branches threatening to fall down on them at any moment.

“You two are happy with each other, right? I mean, from how you talk about her, sometimes I’m not so sure… Not that it’s my business of course…”

“You’re right; it’s not your business,” Clark muttered. It was blatantly obvious that he didn’t want to talk about, and when Clark didn’t want to talk about something, no person in their right mind would try and insist otherwise. He didn’t take kindly to insistences like that.

“Okay, I’ll drop it. Sorry I brought it up at all,” Buck replied, looking away, out the window, where the lights of a single house right around the bend shined brightly; small beacons indicating Clark’s place.

“Alrighty, let’s hope the beast ain’t too vicious today,” Clark mumbled, suddenly sounding like the timid one of the two as they drove towards the curb of the street right beside the house. The wife wasn’t there, but he could’ve sworn he saw a pair of glowing eyes glaring at him from the front window…

“That’s odd...” he said quietly, having a tendency to think aloud when something puzzled him. He looked over to his friend, expecting to see a more noticeable reaction out of him, but there was hardly the slightest sense of worry on the man’s face, beyond his usual expression, which had something of a permanent look of anxiety lined on it. “Did you see something in the window there?” he still felt inclined to ask, though he knew for a fact what the answer was as Buck raised an eyebrow in reaction.

“I…don’t think so? I wasn’t really looking very hard to be honest with you, but, it’s probably just your wife, don’t you think?”

“Could be, but I’m nigh on positive I saw something looking back at us. All I managed to catch was the eyes though. They were lightin’ up and everything. The wife doesn’t know a trick like that as far as I can tell,” Clark said, gradually beginning to feel an uncharacteristic sense of discomfort. Those little oblong orbs glaring at him were like matching wisps of flames, no whites, no irises, just two bright red spheres with deep black pupils at their centers. How he managed to recall the sight so vividly in his head when it had only been there for less than a second was beyond him, but it was there, burnt into his memory, like an image burnt into a television screen.

“Well…you’ve had a long day, Clark, haven’t you? You’re probably just seeing things. Once you get some dinner and some rest, I’m sure you’ll feel a lot better,” Buck said as assuredly as he could, though Clark figured that was a ruse in itself. After all, their usual roles were being reversed here; Clark had always been the one to calm Buck, not the other way around. It was always something rather banal and easily remedied as well; the quality of a weekly schedule, where to get lunch, which report to start first, simple things like that. At one glance this was just like any of those things, provided he was in fact seeing things after a tiresome business trip. What if that wasn’t the case though? What on earth could have such a glare that managed to spook him to such a degree that he couldn’t even get out of the car, and what was it doing in his house? Too many questions already, and Clark was starting to feel his veins shivering like a plucked guitar chord at the thought of what was waiting for them, if anything at all.

There was a particularly long silence that ended up getting excruciating before Clark finally spoke up and broke it. “Well, no way to figure out what the hell it is without goin’ inside. Thanks for droppin’ me off, Buck. I’ll let you know if I found anything tomorrow I guess,” he said as he opened the car door and hesitantly strode his way towards the entrance of the house. Clark’s home was actually rather impressive where size was concerned; There was a large garage that could comfortably hold two cars, and that covered hardly a quarter of the building. The rest was a spacious structure of brick and plaster, offering a plethora of hiding spaces…

“W-wait, hold up, Clark! I uh…I’ll go in with you,” Buck stammered as he too got out of the vehicle and scurried to catch up to his friend. They were at the front door, and both of them were hesitant to reach for the knob. Clark eventually resorted to ringing the doorbell, hoping that the wife would answer it and prove this whole thing as just a ridiculous panic attack. Much to his dismay, no one showed up.

“Must not be home yet,” Buck murmured. Clark nodded silently in response before his hands both balled up into fists.

“Okay, enough of this shit, let’s just get the hell inside and figure this out,” he finally said, grabbing at the knob and swinging the door open, immediately dashing into the unlit, dark confines of the foyer with Buck in tow.

Not a single light was on in the entire house, and this was in itself an oddity to Clark. They had always kept at least one light on in the kitchen during the evening, in case either of them needed anything in the middle of the night, but now even that light was gone. His mind quickly went on the defensive to explain the phenomenon. Maybe the bulb had simply died out, that was a reasonable thought, but his fear at this point was making him doubt it was anything as simple as that.

Slipping back towards the wall beside the door, he felt around for the light switch to the foyer. His fingers came to a halt as they passed over the small piece of plastic jutting out of the flat surface, at once flipping it upward to illuminate the room. Everything was as it should have been; there was a wooden table with a glass center in the back of the room, with four picture frames held atop it. Each one featured an image of a particularly more youthful (and happy) Clark and his wife together in a seasonal environment, one for each of the four. Judging by the amount of dust that had covered up each photo, it had been quite some time since they had been paid any real attention to.

Aside from the table, there were three different doorways leading to the left, right and back of the house, as well as a flight of stairs that led to the second floor. As both Clark and Buck anxiously looked around for anything particularly unusual, Clark ended up freezing in place as his eyes passed by the back entrance…where the eyes were once again staring at him. With the closed distance between them, they seemed to be glaring at him with greater intensity and he felt as if they were beckoning him to get closer; daring him to figure out what they were planning on doing once he did so. He eventually gained enough control back in his arms to grab at Buck and point over in the direction of the wisp-like spheres, but as soon as the other man turned his attention to that doorway, they had managed to disappear once more.

“It was there, Buck, I swear to god...” Clark said, feeling himself shivering at the very thought that this was just something he was hallucinating. He expected his friend to make that claim himself, but Buck didn’t say a word. Clark figured he knew exactly why; he was probably trying to rationalize the fact that he had seen the same thing twice…the same exact thing. Honestly, he was starting to doubt his sanity just a bit himself. What could have brought this on? Was he just finally letting his stress at work and at home get to him? He felt his muscles tense up like a bunch of wound up springs, ready to bounce at the mere sight of alarm.

“Clark…just, take a few deep breaths, alright? There’s a…good chance that this is all just a trick of the light. Why don’t we just go and turn the lights on in there as well? That way, if there is something else in here, it won’t have anywhere to hide.” Buck was continuing to sound supportive, and Clark was believing his sincerity with every passing moment. At this point he wasn’t just frightened about the potential of these eyes being real, but for his own mental stability if they weren’t. He was well aware of how much he had been working intensely during that trip, Buck had called him several times to discuss a report he had been struggling with, having mentioned he had already pulled a few all-nighters over it. That lack of sleep was terribly unhealthy, and it could do things to a man’s head.

That look of indecisiveness was starting to haunt him nearly as much as those eyes were. “I’m not crazy, Buck…I know what I saw. I didn’t just make this shit up,” he said, his tone stern but wobbly. He didn’t like being labeled a liar, and he especially didn’t appreciate it when people told him he was wrong. He had gotten enough of that from his wife every night. Every argument, every fight; they would all come back to him with each new confrontation, building his rage further and further. He didn’t want to take that rage out on Buck, he knew the other man was unsettled enough by all this as it was, and he had still followed him into the house all the same.

“I didn’t say you were making it up, Clark…J-just, keep calm. Let’s just both go over there, alright?” Buck said, giving him an encouraging pat on the back as they both cautiously proceeded forward, towards the doorway that led to the house’s kitchen, switching on the light immediately. Clark’s kitchen was not too unique in regards to its design. It carried the standard sort of modern style that most of its kind tended to have in this day and age, with chrome appliances and a slick, granite counter right in the center. There was one particularly unsettling feature to the room however; a large knife rack lined one of the walls. Clark’s wife was quite avid about her cutlery, and she would always be sure to put each one back in its proper place. Of course, much to Clark’s dismay, one of the knives had to be missing from the rack this evening, and it just so happened to be the largest butcher knife in the selection.

The sight of the blade’s absence just brought Clark’s stress levels up that much higher, to a point where he felt like he could feel himself beginning to transform. His hair was getting more and more unkempt as he habitually ran a hand through it, his felt his eyes begin to sink in, and he was certain those dark black outlines were there too. Those sleepless nights were beginning to show themselves in far more noticeable ways now.

Clark silently went over and grabbed one of the knives from the rack himself, but Buck didn’t do the same; he seemed less inclined to arm himself all of a sudden. Both men turned back for the foyer, with Clark suddenly making his way upstairs towards the second floor. He thought he had heard the faint sounds of whispering up there…the sound of something feminine…His wife perhaps? By now, she would be the most comforting thing he could find. Buck followed him up remaining ever silent, and both made their way towards the master bedroom, where the voice seemed to be coming from. Clark looked over to Buck once it seemed clear enough he was truly hearing it, and this time, Buck looked over to him with a knowing glance. He wasn’t sure if he should have been relieved by that or not…

The sound got more and more audible as they passed by the mattress. One side of the bed had its sheets ruffled, as if someone had just gotten out recently. The voice was most definitely saying something as they neared the large bathroom connected to the bedroom… “Hurry back…” it seemed to be saying, now in a harsh, throaty sound, but still, the same voice, all the same. Clark knew that voice…he had heard it sound just like this before. He had sometimes gotten the notion that she had something inhuman about her…

“You were lying back there, huh?” Buck suddenly spoke up, causing Clark to whirl around, startled, though Buck didn’t seem to jump at all from the reaction.

“What?” Clark asked, having no idea what his colleague was implying.

“You were lying about your marriage. You don’t really feel the way you used to, do you?” Buck said, his voice sounding strangely condescending. Clark felt his hands ball up into fists, clearly angered, but he didn’t say a word in response. Perhaps he was simply too unsettled with the present situation, or the fact that Buck had brought this up without seemingly any reason… or maybe he was more unsettled by the fact that the answer to that question was plainly obvious, and had been for a long time, to both him and her.

“Stay here…” Clark grumbled as he forcibly shook these new thoughts out of his head, gripping his knife tightly as he went to open the door to the shower. Buck seemed to stay put without hesitation, not at all out of fear. His face had gone nearly expressionless at this point, he even seemed a bit sick, but Clark couldn’t concern himself with that at the moment. He swung open the door, just as the voice gave a loud, blood-curdling shriek.

What he found behind the door was his wife in the shower, naked, the knife in hand, covered in crimson blood, still fresh…she was still bleeding heavily, the knife wounds all along her body, with most of them situated near her chest. Clark dropped his knife in shock, staring at the lifeless form for a few moments before he realized he was still hearing the voice…Only this time it was behind him. He turned around with a jolt, but just as he did, he felt something cold rub against his throat…he felt his wife’s bloodied hand warp around his waist as he stared right at Buck, who seemed to give him a menacing, toothy grin as he took hold of the other knife…with bright, glowing eyes to match… “You’re late again, dear…” his wife whispered into his ear…

---

“You sure you have this right? We have to be precise,” a voice asked sternly through the speaker of the smartphone in Buck’s hand. The man merely leaned back and chuckled at the question, quite confident with the arrangements he had placed.

“I assure you, I’ve got the whole thing figured out. We didn’t spend all those years working this bastard over for nothing after all. You and I know him far too well for there to be any surprises here. I can tell you without a shred of doubt that we’re gonna have the offering all nice and ready for the boss this evening.”

“You’d damn well better be sure then. You’re the host this time, so it’s your neck, not mine,” the feminine voice replied, not completely convinced yet.

“Stop being so antsy, you know my track record, just get yourself set up. Remember, grab the biggest knife,” Buck said, quickly hanging up as he saw his target rushing over to him. The sinister smirk on his face faded to a far more innocent smile as he got out of the vehicle and gave a wave over to his ‘friend’. “Hey, Clark! Welcome home!” he said, Clark merely giving a brief wave of his own before jumping into the driver seat.

“Sorry, I didn’t ask yet. You don’t mind if I drive though right? I’m in a rush here, as usual,” Clark muttered, though Buck simply gave a knowing nod as he took the passenger seat beside him.

“It’s fine, Clark, I understand,” he said as he handed the keys over, Clark jamming them in the ignition before he was stopped by the vibrating of his phone in his pocket. Taking the phone out, he groaned at the sight of the text on the screen.

“There she goes again, ‘hurry back’. She already sent me that two times while I was on the plane. That’s three strikes already. Better buckle up,” Clark said as they sped down the highway. Buck chuckled a little to himself at this. Exactly the same as always; this was going to be the easiest job yet.
Dwayna DragonFire likes this.
Tags:
  1. Green Dragon
    Green Dragon
    OH GOD. . . Nightmare time.
    Oct 25, 2014