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Welcome to Ladies' Night Fright!
She wouldn’t live through this; many shadows emerged from the lit room and gathered with shuffling sounds around her on the concrete floor. AND THEY GREW. NIGHTSTALKER: IN THE CREEPING DARKNESS By Chris Goebel They had drugged her at the bar. She’d gone to the ladies’ room, left her Pina Colada unattended, returned to a smiling stranger inviting a cool, long drink. These places made her nervous—small town bars on major highways—that, and a skirt she couldn’t pull lower down her legs to be less whorelike. Nina hated wearing a new miniskirt and discovering it was four inches shorter in the wearing than it had been in the trying on: in that skirt, sitting down had stirred lust in every male within two hundred feet. Beauty cursed. Nina had experienced the fear of men wanting her, but this… You weren’t supposed to wake up on your birthday in total darkness, knowing you’d been drugged—worse, knowing you’d erred on the side of stupidity. Ignorance. Creepy fucking feelings. No sensation in your arms or legs—or anywhere else for that matter (and those parts did matter)—only a roaring scream in your head. Get the hell out of here. Move your damn ass, stupid! They’re coming to get you. This was Friday the 13th, only she was the ignoramus challenging Jason to attack. No light no sound no movement no wind no hope no future no nothing. You can’t shut out pitch black fear by closing your eyes and Nina could do nothing but wait—closing her eyes, then squinting them open. If the attacker came, she needed to know. No, she didn’t need to freakin’ know! Let the rampage be done. Finish the madness. She could almost pierce the darkness to see her bound hands and ankles. Now she was a quadriplegic without a wheelchair or device. A dove without wings as the stealthy cat creeps. A body in space, awaiting unmentionable torture. The door would open; light would shine in and blind her. She couldn’t move. He’d remove his pants, lower himself to her, slap her around—his sweat would shower her with neverending grief and guilt—no one would believe she hadn’t consented. The drug would be out of her system in hours. Fucking asshole finish me now, you shiteating, yellow slime sucking, perverted specimen of subhuman, shrunken gonad bullying cowardice! Peon! Nina’s head pounded. She wanted to vomit or she had already—or maybe she had and would soon. This was worse than trying every drink at Pat O’Brien’s in The man at the bar was a fuzzy memory. Nausea attacked like high sea waves. Light. Shadow. Mist. Mist? The cool vapor entered the room before the shapes. She wouldn’t live through this; many shadows emerged from the lit room and gathered with shuffling sounds around her on the concrete floor. AND THEY GREW. They seemed twelve feet tall, wore capes that swept the floor. Large, angular heads. Not … human. Alien rape? Would some alien child pop out of her belly and start eating her family? Talk. Beg! No words came and the shadows shuffled closer, their huge faces a few inches shy of fuzziness. Nina tried to tighten her knees, was too afraid to look down and see if it worked; hope drained out of her like urine. There was no freakin’ way she was gonna be gangbanged by aliens and not defend herself! Then one touched her temple and though she closed her eyes, heat radiated from the thing’s finger into her brain and she knew what it wanted. Her mind! Nina tried to move her head but nothing happened. As the alien worked her brain, the memory returned. She saw the picture as if she were outside of herself. She had gone to the bathroom, entered the stall, closed the door. When she’d pulled down her skirt to sit on the toilet, the alien—fully visible in his tangerine hue—had pierced the back of her neck with its jagged, clawlike appendage. Like a Brown Recluse bite, the chemical going in numbed the area. No wonder why she hated freakin’ spiders! The pain was yet to come. She would still go have the drink. The end of the drink had progressed to sexual madness on the stranger’s motorcycle while driving down the highway. Damn that skirt! The motorcycle dissolved—along with the driver. The previous momentum had thrust her to the street and the last thing she felt besides numbness was her skin scraping the pavement. Like tarantulas in the desert, the aliens had come for her. Like prey, she remained etherized. But this one wasn’t taking liquid substance from her. It wanted something in her mind. Thoughts and memories raced before her eyes, a million conscious and subconscious memories (So her boyfriend had slept with her friend while she’d been sleeping! So she had been adopted! Wait! Adopted?). The math problem she’d solved last week, the discovery of an extinct bird, accidentally killing a butterfly. Learning to sew, to cook, to make love. At once, the stabbing sensation awoke in her, the stifling realization arrived. How could anyone feel this pain and live? Her body writhed while her eyes widened with acute terror. She recognized the face of her first love, her first kiss—the inexplicable honeyed sweetness of human innocence and love. “Nina, will you go steady with me?” And that was what the alien wanted. As much as Nina knew what thought he viewed, she felt his desire to swipe this memory. She vomited, but the alien didn’t stop. She vomited again, until the dry heaves overtook her. Ice picks pricked at her skull. Vices gripped her brain. “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin,” she whispered, then again, louder. “NOT BY THE HAIR ON MY CHIINY CHIN CHIN.” Then it was Disney and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Then it was the Pythagorean Theorem. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Wait, but she’d never studied that before. The aliens shuffled around her. Since sensation was returning, she kicked at what she hoped was a crotch. No movement. Great, either no balls or iron balls. The Laws of the Universe Complete. The equation for Entry in Concentric Universes. This had to be something she knew somehow. She tried pulling back her thoughts, but pictures and mathematical equations flashed by her eyes. The aliens got closer yet; the mist intensified. No scent, just wetness. Maybe they would rape her yet. Headache. Body ache. Scraped skin. The extracting appendage. Her head would explode and she recalled something in a mind apart from her own, separate from the one the alien examined. She had been beaten senseless as a child. A second mind evolved, a second conscience, a second being. Now that being awoke and saw the examination of Nina’s mind and laughed. They had attacked the wrong consciousness. Without her help, Nina would die. But Sostena knew what to deliver. Without much effort, she circumvented the alien’s mind probe into her own mind. Nina was now safe and if anyone died, it would be Sostena—but this mind knew no fear. In fact, Sostena’s brain possessed the one thing that could erase horror out of the corners of her mind. She shot the wave of depression and hopelessness into the alien, injecting him with the wavering dryness of years of abuse. Beatings, crying, screaming, invasion, betrayal, lack of compassion, fright, death, lack of love, horrid loneliness. The Nightstalker withdrew, the vapor immediately drying around them as the aliens dissipated, the ropes dissolved, the room disappeared. The motorcycle reappeared with the mysterious lover from the bar. She stopped in mid thrust. “I don’t think I know you,” Sostena whispered as she got off the motorcycle. Unlike Nina, she didn’t tug at her skirt as she dismounted. She couldn’t figure out why short skits embarrassed Nina. They had damn nice legs. © Copyright, Chris Goebel
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