AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oh god…what if it’s a snake?
“I can’t tell from here, but I think it might be a—”
“A what?”
“Oh shit, I think it’s a rat.”
That suggestion sends me into a blind panic as I cover myself from head to toe in sofa throws. I am a cozy mummy.
Wade gingerly rises from the sofa and peers between the branches.
“Yeah, it’s got ratty eyes,” he says.
Peeking out from my fuzzy sarcophagus, I squint at the staring orange eyes. Nope, not a rat. “I’m from New York, and I’m telling you right now that is not a rat. The eyes are too far apart.” The thought of a city rat sends an ominous shiver down my spine.
Wade carefully approaches the tree. “Stay back.”
Yeah…not a problem, buddy.
“Don’t worry, little guy. I won’t hurt you,” he says, reaching his hand up through the tree’s bottom branches.
It’s hard to tell precisely what the animal is. Wade spreads them apart and reaches in toward the trunk. Just what the heck does he think he’s going to do?
Suddenly, the animal moves. It scrambles violently, causing the tree to sway and branches to dance under the creature’s weight.
“Shit!” Wade barks.
The creature springs from the tree in the opposite direction, sending ornaments crashing, light strings flailing, and pine needles spraying.
“Oh no! What is it?” I squawk. “Please don’t be a bat. Please don’t be a bat. Please don’t be a bat!”
“It’s not a bat,” Wade barks.
I climb onto the back of the sofa, recoiling in horror, using two sofa cushions as full body shields.
Wade picks up the fireplace poker. The thing chatters its teeth like something out of a horror movie.
“You scared it! It’s going to attack now!”
“Not if it knows what’s good for it!”
This is a side I’ve never seen of Wade before. Would he really go after a squirrel? Or a poor little raccoon? “Don’t hurt it!” I shriek.
The thing hunkers to the floor as it scampers across the room, hissing while its weird little claws scramble for purchase on the wood plank floor. Its silhouette seems to show its back covered in prominent, bumpy ridges, bringing to mind some sort of miniature dinosaur.
I might pass out. Why did I leave New York? Why?!
What kind of ridged tree animal hisses and has creepy little pointy claws, for Pete’s sake?
Not wanting to wake the others, I swallow the scream I’d like to scream, but the build-up of panic has me gesturing and pointing wildly at the thing, whatever it is, hunched in the corner of the room, its beady eyes leering.
In the firelight and what remains of the tree lights, I can make out a white face, dark eyes, and a pointy pink nose. It’s so ugly that my toes curl where they’re perched on the back of the sofa.
“It should have thought of that before it hitched a ride to our cabin,” Wade growls.
The more I stare at the thing, the more its weird, ghostly pale face and grayish body reveal itself.
Wade flicks on the overhead light. Finally, one of us has a good idea.
