Black & Birch (working title) By Benjamin D. D’Amico

The stillness of the moment would have taken a conscious soul aback, had any conscious soul been present to witness it. The curtains stood still, like fluted, stone columns bordering the open window. There were no crickets or cicadas outside, nor cars nor raccoons. This was the witching hour, and the world was bewitched. The only suggestion that the scene on display wasn’t a photograph was the slow meandering of the crystal moonlight across the wall opposite the window. And, perhaps, the ever-so-subtle twitching of Benjamin’s foot – paired at times with a faint cooing sound from behind his closed lips. The blissful peace of the moment was truly wasted…

There was a pause. Whatever it was that lay hidden within the blackness of the hallway, was waiting for something – a sign, or a signal, or perhaps the perfect moment. The sound of an approaching car waxed and waned, slowly rolling past the open window, and then the brush of a rolled newspaper landing somewhere in the bushes below. The click-clicking of knives on the floor boards began in the hallway. The bedroom door softly oscillated back and forth in the slipstream as a wispy mass of white and black – mangled black hair, pasty skin and tattered rags – whisked its way along the floor, through the doorway…

An eruption of nauseating noise gripped the quiet morning by the throat and shook it with wild rage. The beast’s eyes shot to the alarm clock on the nightstand, as it screeched in terrifying pulses, and then back at Benjamin’s sleeping – no, now painfully awake – face. Benjamin’s eyes glared down at the beast – the yet unsprung trap – that lay below him, his eyes wide with horror. So many words and thoughts came rushing into his skull, yet only one could he manage to successfully mutter in time. A pitiful, stifled, “No!” The huntress lunged upwards at him, knives extended. With another shrieking, “No!” Benjamin rolled onto…

Benjamin caught and returned her glare as he sat up on the side of the bed. “I’m up.” He looked down at his hand as he rubbed it. A tidy row of little, dark gray spots lined both sides of it. He pulled up his shirt to observe his ribs. Again, he found five dark discolorations on the surface of his skin, these ones larger. Dropping his shirt and returning to his right hand, he rubbed the marks, and then as he watched, they slowly began to vanish, his skin returning to its normal color. Still seated on the side of the bed, he rubbed his eyes with both hands,…

Regaining his footing, Ben took the dangling towel from the fist. With a voice far manlier and more imposing than any that Ben could muster, the disembodied voice reiterated his own thoughts to him, “All ruined, you stupid! Now need go buy. Gah!” And with that, the fist again shot back through the hole in the closet door. Instead of re-emerging this time, it patched the hole that it had originally made in the door with a piece of wood of perfect size, color and shape – pounding it into place with the same wood-splitting slam as when the hole had been made. Benjamin stumbled momentarily, rubbed his jaw and…

He didn’t bother looking in the mirror. There’d be plenty of time to deal with that later. He simply brushed his teeth, picked up his shorts and t-shirt, and tightened the towel around his waist. Before opening the bathroom door, with his hand on the door knob, he inhaled deeply through his mouth, and exhaled. Time to begin. No sooner than he opened the door did his grandfather’s grandfather clock let out its first strike of the day, 7 am. “Shit. SHIT!” He must have fallen asleep in the shower after all. How hadn’t the water gotten cold? What time did he get in the shower to begin with? There…