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Short Story: Lights Out Part 8

Janice got up from her chair sometime later and wandered back out to the veranda and looked down into the sooty streets.  Screams had become moans and the sounds of fighting below had become the thudding of the crowds on random cars.  Janice wasn’t paying attention to that anymore, she was looking up at the sky and seeing the stars. She couldn’t see a single constellation she recognized and as she strained to do so she didn’t notice that she wasn’t alone on the the deck.

“It’s not the sky”

Janice nearly lept over the edge in fright.

“It’s some kind of hallucination or something, I know the sky and that’s not it”  a drunken voice called from the shadows near the building, a bare arm carrying a bottle of wine waved at her. “I look up and, and, and I, uh don’t see anything I recognize.  It’s not just two suns; we’re not looking up at the sky around home at all”

Unsteadily, the speaker stepped up out of the shadows and stumbled towards the railings, it was Mr. Sohetta, the office comptroller.  He steadied himself on the railing and looked up at the foreign sky, waving his bottle.

“You see?  No constellations, none of them.  No Big Dipper, no nothing!” he waved his bottle emphaticly at the sky, punctuating his words, “I came out here and looked up, instead of down there at all that mess.  You know I saw people down there eating someone on the hood of a car?  I looked up then and no moon either, no moon and no stars.  It’s hot too?  You know?  Real hot. ”

“So, this isn’t Minnesota? Not Earth?  How the hell did we get here?” Janice was stopped looking at the bottle and turned to lean on the railing.

“Janice, sweetie, we’re in Hell.  This is Hell.  We’re all dead, honey.  That’s what’s going on down there, it’s the devil come for us all.  Good an bad.”  Mr.  Jarvis Sohetta steadied himself then swung the bottle back and tossed it in a high arc into the street, “Janice, we’re all dead and we are in hell for our sins.  Now let’s you and me go find another bottle of wine and wait for the Devil to come get us?”  He put a hand on her wrist and tugged her towards the doors, Janice shrugged him off, “s’your loss Janice.  Not much wine for us sinners, he he.”  He loped unsteadily into the dark offices.

Janice didn’t want to consider what he was saying, then she remembered that her cell phone had worked still after the twin suns were there, only for a minute.  Janice was sure that she wasn’t dead.  Now, though, the bigger question was were was she?

Janice hadn’t comforted herself enough to ignore the real horror that had gone on in the streets and she could still see the glow from fires in the streets,  then something slammed into the deck, scattering some chairs.  A wet splatter slapped her side and face, a dark and wet shape had fallen into the quiet of the deck.

Janice didn’t wait to find out what it was and darted into the office, slamming the doors behind her and locking them, her quick thinking saving her from the gore covered monsters that had slapped down onto the deck fallen from somewhere above.

A bloody horror flung itself against the glass doors, Janice screamed for help barricading the doors.  People dragged over desks and cube materials to close off the deck.  Janice held the doors shut and as they piled a barricade got a good look at the monster on the other side of the door, it was one of the office workers from the 25th horribly mutilated, but clearly a ravening monster.

Jarvis joined her, new bottle in hand.  “So, the Devil has come for us, huh?”

Published inCreative Work