Free The Lovely Shadow by Cory Hiles Page B

screaming and
crawling as fast as I could. There was no way in Hell I was going
to mess with whatever evil beast was in my pants until I was safely
in the light.
    I reached the light in a matter of seconds
and immediately started beating at my leg with both hands. It hurt
my right hand something fierce, but in my terror I didn’t care, I
just kept slapping myself.
    I beat myself silly for about five seconds or
so before I saw a small grey mouse flee out of my pants leg and
scurry across the floor, back into the darkness. I was still
screaming and slapping myself, even though I now knew what it was
that had tormented me. Eventually my screams turned into a kind of
sobbing laugh, and though I was still slapping my leg, there was no
real force left in the blows.
    It was a tiny little mouse that had scared me
half to death. The idea struck me funny for some reason, and that
was what turned my screams into laughter. I think the fear and
shock was what caused me to cry while I was laughing.
    Once I had settled down a bit, but before I
could stop and think about what it could have been that scratched
my hand and ran up my pants, I crawled back into the darkness as
quickly as I dared and felt around until I found my bucket
again.
    I dragged the bucket over by the washing
machine, just to the limit of dim visibility, and tried to hurry up
and get my pants undone. My bowels were threatening mutiny against
me at this point and the need to hurry was pressing, to say the
least.
    I got the pants down in time and squatted
over my bucket and did my business. Although I thought that I had
been clever up to this point, I realized as soon as I had done my
dirty deed that I had not thought this process through completely.
I had nothing to wipe with.
    I thought for a second and remembered the
dryer full of towels. So I shuffled over there with my feet as far
apart as I could get them with my pants around my ankles. I made it
to the dryer without incident and dug around until I found a small
washcloth in with the bigger towels.
    I used the cloth to clean myself and got my
pants back up. Then I wondered what I should do with the cloth. I
didn’t want to throw it in the washing machine just yet because I
still needed to get water out of there and the idea of doing that
with a poop soiled rag at the bottom of the tub struck me as just a
little bit gross.
    I likewise didn’t want to leave it on the
floor for fear of accidentally stepping on it in the dark, not to
mention that I didn’t want my dark world to smell like an outhouse
if I could help it.
    I sighed…I was going to have to go back into
the dark on a guerilla raid for more supplies. I needed the picnic
basket that I knew was back there. I also wanted to find some
canning jars I could use to stockpile water, and hopefully a lid
for my potty bucket.
    I stood there staring into the darkness for
some time, telling myself that there were no unspeakable monsters
lurking in the dark, but my courage kept being usurped by the
memory of the horror that hid in the dark, just out of sight, in my
dream.
    “Don’t be an idiot, Johnny.” I said aloud.
“You’ve been back there before and the worst thing you ran into was
a tiny mouse.”
    My voice sounded strange to me in the quiet
darkness, and my imagination immediately began trying to convince
me that something in the dark was going to answer my not so
convictive argument.
    Wanting desperately to not hear that response
from the dark, I kept talking out loud.
    “There you go again, Johnny; being stupid.
There is nothing back there but mice, and maybe a bug or two.”
    As soon as I said the word ‘bug’, I knew I’d
done a great disservice to my bravery. At once my memory brought
forth an image of flesh eating beetles I’d once seen on a nature
show; Dermestid beetles, they were called.
    There was nothing inherently wicked in their
appearance, they looked like any normal, run-of-the-mill beetle;
small, black, maybe a half inch long, with a