Okay, I don't usually post stories on my blog, BUT, I need YOUR (yes your) help to win the cute little thing found at Michelle Simkins blog, here: http://twe.ly/wxob -- It'll sit right between my signed copy of TERMINAL and my crystal skull. So, please go to this site and vote for my story (if you like it). PLEASE! Thank you. Now, enjoy the story (it's free):
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COMPLICATIONS
If he need sit any longer, they’d better find him a cot. Damn his ass hurt—and just what the hell could take so long? An animal bite sure as hell shouldn’t take all evening.
The shadows, deeper now, seemed to mock Jake. The sun, pleasant and bright on their arrival, threatened to sink below the tree-line. And the tiny waiting room—the one with an even tinier TV and a fricken pop machine too loud to hear the TV anyway—offered little to preserve the small bit of sunlight.
“Yer gonna need to be patient,” the cranky old nurse had said, early on. “There’s been a small complication…nothin’ to worry yourself about.” And Jake wondered why the old crone hadn’t retired yet—and why the hell she kept itching at her ass cheek. Instead of staring at her cigarette-wrinkled-upper-lip and her thinning gray hair, maybe he should’ve asked her what kind of complication his girlfriend had. But he didn’t—and he hadn’t seen a soul since. Not one damn white-smocked nurse.
For the tenth time, Jake wadded up a Snicker’s wrapper and tried to hit the ridiculously small trash can.
The wrapper missed, lilted off the side of the can and careened toward the white-tiled hallway.
When he went to retrieve the stray, Jake stared at the white and red emergency-room door. Nobody had come or gone from it in over an hour. Sure, a small town, Jake got that, but an hour? Just maybe nobody else decided to get hurt or sick today, but he found that highly convenient.
Jake paced and tried to sneak nonchalant glances through the small square window. The window, hard to see through to begin with, harbored a set of smudges which rendered seeing through it nearly impossible. And just what the hell was that white shit in the corner of the window? Had it been there before? Jack didn’t think so. He eyeballed it from where he stood and couldn’t decide if it consisted of cotton or something else—yarn maybe.
He crept closer. Ice spiders wriggled their way up his spine, his neck, and then finally his scalp came alive with the little electric pulses. “What the fuck?” he whispered to nobody.
The door swung open easy enough. A cool breeze hissed out past Jake like an unsealed vacuum. And then the stench hit him—something like mildew and blood. He expected to see moths flutter about in the musty din.
But all remained quiet—calm before a storm.
Bits of what looked like material, tiny chunks of yarn, lay strewn across the floor of the emergency-room and disappeared behind the lone examination table like a trail of bread crumbs.
Jake crept closer, following the trail, the stench building in his nostrils. He thought briefly about plugging his nose, but the smell, pleasant now, soothed his frayed nerves, lulled him like the gentle swing of a rocking horse.
And then a quiet moan brought Jake back from his burgeoning nirvana. The soft gasp sounded weak yet alive, satisfied somehow, like dead leaves settling after a fall rainstorm, or earthworms sucking back into the sanctity of their holes, damp and natural—guttural.
Then a scraping noise—a shoe on tile. More soft moans cascaded. This time Jake thought he noticed a note of pleasure in the breathy rasp. “Hello?”
A sigh, then, “Here…right here behind the table. No hurry.”
Jake noticed a white shoe sticking out from behind. It rocked back and forth in a rhythmic motion. He walked over slowly, curious, but not wanting to interrupt anyone’s good time. Better not be his girlfriend down there with one of them fancy-pants docs!
More sighs.
With a bit more calm than he felt, Jake leaned over—and stared. “What the hell?” Down below, on the cold floor, the old crone of a nurse lay there fingering a gash in her throat like it was her clitoris. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
The nurse glanced up with a dreamy look. “I suspect I’m dying…but…but what a way to go…”
“Who did this to you?” Jake felt a chill in his belly.
“Not a who, dear,” she moaned.
“What?”
“Exactly—a what,” she muttered, still preoccupied with the bloody hole in her neck. Blood pooled below her on the white tile, soaking into her hair like an old mop.
“Okay—okay, what did this to you?” he asked. “And where’s my girlfriend!”
“The most darling little thing you ever saw!”
Then Jake noticed the little pieces of green yarn all over the old crone’s neck. “What was it?”
The nurse stuck her finger a bit deeper into the wound, blood spilling quicker to the floor. “You’ll see. And you’ll be all the better for it—right through there.” She pointed toward a solid steel door. “You’ll probably find your girl in there too, although I’d wager she ain’t yours no more. No way you can compete with that cozy little bundle.”
Jake, without hesitation, scared now, raced to the door and pulled it open. Before him on the floor, between an office chair and an old metal desk, his girlfriend lay naked on the tile. On top of her belly, some kind of knit creature, a stuffed rabbit, jumped up and down.
The rabbit, no a bunny, he was sure it was a bunny and not a rabbit, appeared to be made of yarn. One yarn eyeball hung down out of its socket, looking like one of those snappers the kids used to play with. Red stuffing bled out of the thing’s right ear, left paw, and neck.
His girlfriend, bleeding profusely where the bunny had taken a bite out of her inner thigh, squealed. “Oh, Jake, can we take it home?”
Jake stared, nodded, then shrugged. Why the fuck not? The thing was cute as hell.
The bunny leaped off Jake’s girl and stood before him. It opened its mouth and hissed softly, arms spread wide, “Come…Zombunny wants to love you!"
