Free Fan Fears: A collection of fear based stories by Michael Bray Page B

one on his back and also quite dead. All the flesh was missing from his face, leaving a bloody, grinning skull behind, the eyes missing. Mike stared, unable to figure out what had happened when the woman made a sound. He looked at her and saw her moving, a barely audible moan escaping from her.
    "We've got a live one in here, get a stretcher!" Mike called to the men at his back. With no thought for his own safety, he started to crawl into the hole, when something stopped him. He stared at the woman and watched as she opened her mouth and kept opening it so that it was impossibly wide. As Mike watched, something crawled out. It was a rat, the biggest rat he had ever seen. It pushed against the stretched edges of the woman's mouth, its fur slick and bloody. The rat clambered out of the woman's mouth and stood on her chest. Mike looked at the woman; the one he had wrongly assumed was alive but was quite dead. He realized then that it wasn't her that was moving, but the rat. It looked at Mike, and Mike stared back. The rat then hopped off the woman's chest and ran across the edge of the ledge, leaving bloody footprints in its wake. Mike could only watch as it scurried down the wall to the lower chamber and paused by a hole in the wall. It looked up at him, and Mike was sure there was some kind of intelligence in its eyes. The rat let out a single shrill squeal, then squeezed itself through the hole, pushing the excess blood out of its fur and leaving a rim on the edge of the hole. It reminded Mike of when he was painting his kitchen and he removed the excess paint from the brush on the edge of the tine. He watched until the rat had gone, unable to breathe, unable to think.
    "How many alive in there?" one of the men said from behind him.
    He looked around the room again, then at the bloody smear on the edge of the hole.
    "None. False alarm. Everyone in here is dead. I'm coming out."
    Mike started to crawl backward away from the hole, letting his men help him out. On his way, he pulled the concrete slab back into place and sealed off the chamber again. He didn't want anything that was in there to get out.
    FEAR SUBMITTED: RATS / BEING BURIED ALIVE
     

 
    FAN FEAR FOUR:
    EXHIBIT
    (Submitted by Naomi Avery)
     
    ****
    This was a theme that I had a lot of potential avenues to follow based on the subject matter. A lot of these were what I consider to be ‘safe’ options, and not really what I was looking to write. A completely incidental conversation about something else with my wife sparked an idea that was just too appealing not to try. This is one of those stories which don’t always have to have a reason for happening, it is simply intended to be taken at face value. The explanation isn’t always the key to a good story. Sometimes you have to go it and just accept that every now and again, weird things just happen. This is one of those stories.
     
    ***
     
     
    The pain was intense but fading, the last remaining moments of something that had been much, much worse. The last thing she could recall was being in the garden hanging washing. It was a nice day, the skies were blue, the breeze fresh with late spring threatening to bleed into summer, then something had happened. 
    A light, a flash in the sky, an explosion but without sound. She recalled the blue crest of sky behind the garden fence and then....nothing.
    Now she was on the floor in her living room. Everything felt fine apart from a headache, which still pulsed in her skull like a throbbing toothache. Naomi Avery lifted her head and looked around. She was still in her house and seemed to be in one piece apart from the headache. What she couldn't figure out was how she got back into the house. She scanned the room. Everything was how she had left it. Television. Furniture, photographs of her children. Her mobile phone was on the table. Outside, she could see the sky, still that gorgeous shade of spring blue. Using the chair to push herself to her feet, Naomi stood.