Small

I'm trying my hand at horror again. I had decided that this would center around an adult. The childhood portion would last only a paragraph or two, and then I'd move on.

The story thought differently. I think a good aspect for horror is to have it unknown. Feed the reader only enough information so that they're interested, but keep the biggest reveal secret. What's so scary about the common day? If it can be explained, it loses its power. It stops being something that creeps in the night, and becomes the commonplace.

To hell with that.

It started small.

Objects appeared where I never left them. An action figure on top of the refrigerator, a mug of chocolate milk underneath the cabinets, small things that escaped the even smaller attention span of a child. My parents would laugh about them. "Boys will be boys," Mama would say, and Daddy would chime in, nodding his head in fierce agreement. Their little boy was a hell-raiser, and an inventive one to boot. There'd be no obstacle I couldn't overcome as I grew, the answer to a parent's prayers. They were proud of me.

When did that begin to change?

As I entered the first grade, the incidents graduated with me. Cups and toys stopped their wandering ways, only for more adult considerations to appear. A knife on my Mama's pillow, a crowbar in my Daddy's chair, a popsicle mouse staring from inside the freezer, they all made the circuit through my home. Pride turned to anger, and anger turned to fear. That happy household began to crumble. My protests didn't mean much. "I didn't do it!" I'd plead, "I'm so sorry!" I'd sob. Innocence or admission, neither mattered. I'd always get the belt in the end. After all, my words held all the weight of air.

I should have never told them about the man who stood outside my vision. If I moved too quickly, if I jerked in surprise, he was gone, a phantom slinking back into shadow. But if I sat still, if I summoned the right amount of patience and courage, I could study him from the corner of my eye. He was big and tall, with a broad hat and a long coat, a spot of ink dotting my periphery. Sometimes, if I focused long enough, I would hear him whisper. He would tell me to do things.

I didn't want to listen.

Of course, these flickers in the corner of my eye, those whispers on the wind, were all symptoms of an expansive imagination. Or so the psychologist said. His words were persuasive, and where they weren't, his prescription pad certainly was. Olanzapine, quietapine, lithium, they all were prescribed in short order, special medication for a special boy. 

They didn't make me feel special. They dulled my head, and stopped my dreams, turning a world of colors into stark black and white. My childhood was already waning. The medication delivered the final blow.

Even then, it would have been all worth it if only my parents could have loved me again. 

They smiled, certainly, but the expressions were strained from rehearsal and waning hope. The pride in their eyes had long since faded, gone to that place of lost dreams and crushed ambitions. They offered sweet assurances, but they always rung hollow with hesitation. After all, even I could hear their worried whispers behind closed doors. Ginger had gone missing.

I was the prime suspect. Hadn't the family cat always hated me? She would glare at me with her mean, green eyes, hissing, swatting, and striking whenever I would reach for her. I had the scars to prove her displeasure. Sure, she had been shunned for it the first few years, facing spray bottles and smacks for her efforts, but her suffering wasn't eternal. As my star fell, her's rose. She became my parents' surrogate child, an abnormal vessel to fawn over with normal affections. Hadn't I felt the sting of loneliness? Didn't I hate the cat for taking my place like I had hers' so long ago?

I did. 

That doesn't mean I wanted her to die.

That doesn't mean I killed her. I was wandering through the woods behind our house, zig-zagging through trees and over stumps. I had long since stopped playing. Playing requires energy, spontaneity, joy, things I neither had nor felt. I was a thirty-year-old man in a ten-year-old boy's body, jaded by the world and modern medicine. As I moved through the woods, filled with mild greens and bland browns, a burst of bright red caught my eye. My pulse quickened and I started to run. I knew what had happened before I even arrived.

There was Ginger, her mean, green eyes shut forever. They were replaced by red, equal parts rust and blood on the nails poking out. They went right through her skull and into the tree, pinning her small body against the bark. The limp cat glared impotently at me, with a hate that even death couldn't kill. I shook from my head to my toes. I had never seen a dead thing before, and there it was, in all its terrible glory. 

It's no wonder that he chose that moment to appear. He stood there, watching, waiting, savoring the moment as my small form trembled. I couldn't help but imagine an ugly smile curving along his lips, shaded by the all-encompassing hat. My heart tightened.

"Why are you doing this?!" I screamed. I twisted my head, too quick.

The dark man was gone.

But he left his laughter behind. It rolled through the woods as I reached for Ginger. It snaked between the trees as I pulled desperately at the iron, dried blood and flecks of rust burying themselves under my nails. It pounded through my skull as panic set in, my hands grasping at Ginger's body, pulling, tearing, ripping her from the tree. Her skin tore and then she was in my arms, with bits of Ginger left behind on the bark. I couldn't let my parents see her like that. I couldn't let them think it was me. 

Ginger had to disappear.

I clawed at the earth, tearing chunks of grass and dirt out, inch by inch. There was no ceremony, there were no words, but there were plenty of tears. I wish even one of them had been for Ginger. That day, they were all for me. I was so scared of losing what little I had left because of that dark man. I still had a family, no matter how dysfunctional, but if they saw the cat...

I returned home covered in dirt, just a boy at play. My parents eyed me, but asked no questions. It was better that way, for all of us. I soon curled up in my bed and looked up at the ceiling. He wouldn't stop until everything was ruined. I had to stop him. I just didn't know how. I squeezed my eyes shut and watched the dark that surrounded me.

It had all started out so small.

Why did it have to change?