A Fig for All the Devils by C.S. Fritz

Author:C.S. Fritz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror
Publisher: Albatross Book Co.
Published: 2022-05-04T16:59:52+00:00

“is it the sea you hear in me,

its dissatisfactions?

or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?”

- sylvia plath

ch. 28

jess walked through her front door, propping it open with her elbows as the brown paper bags holding the groceries were beginning to burst. Usually the house was quiet, as her father was off preaching at another church, and her mother-bed-ridden. Only today the house was quite loud. A low ringing sound reverberated from upstairs as if someone was vacuuming or leaving a car idling. Jess quickly put the groceries on the counter and went up to investigate. From room to room, she searched for the source of the sound, only to discover the strange buzzing was coming from her mother’s bedroom. Jess opened the door, mostly to keep from frightening herself, but then she saw it.

A large black moth.

There it roosted, directly across her mother’s face, its long hairy legs like knives pushing her mother’s lips and tongue around as if performing surgery. Jess could hear her mother’s saliva mixing and thrashing from the insect’s scurrying within her only to then be drowned out by her own shriek.

***

The sound of distant waves, the swells of the breaking, and singing birds high in the heavens-it was all Sonny could hear, with the occasional splash of foamy salt water against his bare ankles.

This isn’t the woodshed, he thought, standing on the black shoreline, his Converse soaked and covered in grey sea sludge. The entire beachhead was dimly lit by the flaming moon above.

Then his fear returned to the forefront and promptly reminded him of his purpose…Fill this hourglass with sand.

Sonny loosened its top, squatted, and began to scoop the silvery sand in with his hands. Then he waited.

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

His hourglass was full of sand, and he stood there waiting for some magical transportation back to the real world. Knowing full well that there had to be more than this, but also hoping there wasn’t. Waiting in the water, Sonny saw a spark of light flicker a few feet off shore, like pearly fish scales. Its glistening quickly intensifying, Sonny decided to wade over as quietly as possible to make sure his presence stayed unknown, and pulled out from the black sea a worn watch.

His father’s watch.

Why in the world is my father’s watch here?!

Sonny could taste his own beating heart as it pounded high into his throat.

The smell.

The same smell from the Tillamook coast where he awoke that morning. The stench was so sour, Sonny instantly began to wretch into the ocean, and soon his own puke was swelling and mixing around his ankles with the tide. He pulled his shirt over his nose and tried to find where the sea met the shore. His footfalls were louder now as he needed to pick up speed to find a way out, back to fresh air. After a few minutes of running in the ankle-high water he stopped, realizing it was pointless, the stench was everywhere he went, enveloping his senses. He stood still in the wake, but the sound of treading water didn’t.

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