I know, I haven’t been keeping up with my storymatic prompts as promised! But here’s a new haphazardly thrown together one!
The cards were “teller of secrets” and “what was that sound?”
Andrea considered herself a little bit of a real life gossip girl, or maybe a real life Harriet the Spy. It was less of a blog and more of a social media account. And mostly it was pictures – she was just adept enough at stalking and snooping that she always managed to grab the best pics to really get the rumor mill running. It wasn’t a big town, they only had the one high school, but her follower list included nearly every resident of their city excepting the people that didn’t have social media. No one knew it was her, and it made her feel a little important every time people talked about it. She reveled in it, sometimes wishing she could reveal herself, but she knew it was best to never divulge the truth to anyone – she had told so many of her fellow student’s secrets, and everyone would hate her.
Andrea was currently in the middle of looking into a really fun story she had picked up on – of the most popular couple in school, it was possible the girl was cheating. It might not even be true, but if Andrea could capture an image that suggested it was… and if it did turn out to be true, all the better.
She was hanging out under the bleachers, half listening to the game and half listening to the girl in question talk to her best friend. But something kept catching her attention. It was almost like a creaking noise. She had heard it a few times and brushed it off as the shifting of the bleachers under the weight of the spectators. But the sound grew louder, loud enough to scare her. She studied the way the bleachers shifted above her and concluded they weren’t the source of the noise.
But what was it? Ever curious, she followed the sound. At first it got fainter, so she turned back, playing a strange game of hot and cold as she attempted to narrow down where it was coming from. She finally found an especially dark corner, the creaking so fast and persistent that it sounded like a strange purr. She squinted, trying to see if she could spot what was making the noise.
Something in the shadows shifted, turning. Bright glowing yellow eyes stared at her out of the darkness. The creaking stopped. Andrea drew in a deep breath, but before she could utter a single sound, it had jumped forward – she only had the nightmare visage of teeth glinting in the dim lights, inside of a mouth that came down to cover her head completely.
For a moment she thought the blackness was death, but then she realized she was still there, alive, somewhere in that darkness. She felt the sudden burning sensation where the many teeth dug through her clothes and into her skin, and she tried to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to struggle but she was held firmly in place. A large, slimy tongue ran over her face, and she felt something like an intense burning pressure within her head…
The sensation ended suddenly, the humid atmosphere of the creature’s gaping maw withdrawing, and Andrea found herself gasping in a whole lung full of clean, crisp night air. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She twisted her head, trying to see where the creature was, but the whole of her vision was still a deep black. The world was strangely quiet. She ran blindly…
****
“What do you think happened?” Andrea’s mother was distraught, looking at her daughter where she lay in the hospital bed.
The doctor shook his head. “We have no clue. The damage is extensive – her eyes are gone, and all the internal organs of the ear are melted, damaged beyond repair. Her vocal chords are severed. The teeth marks make it look like an animal attack, but the residue left in the eye sockets and the ear canal almost suggests an acid was used. It almost looks like it was done on purpose. Do you know if anyone would have had a grudge against your daughter?”
Andrea’s mother shook her head, staring absently into space, hardly able to comprehend. “Andrea doesn’t bother anyone. She keeps mostly to herself. What kind of monster would do this to a girl?”
mehryment 