Don’t Scream

by Angela Yuriko Smith

“Stupid film.”

Rhoda pushed her way through the jabbering crowd in the lobby. Women fanned themselves in mock fright. Rhoda knew it was all part of the femme fatale act, and she hated it. Women made themselves victims acting like so. She wasn’t like that. As she passed out of the theater, the ticket boy smiled at her.

“Did you enjoy the film?” he asked.

“No,” she said, enjoying how his smile frayed at the corners. “It was a waste of my sixty-eight cents, and that Percepto! was about as terrifying as…you.”

She stomped out of the lobby, and let the glass and brass door catch in the wind. A few theater patrons glanced her way, but all they saw was a woman in a hurry. She imagined they might even think she was frightened, like those simpering high school girls who pretended to faint in the back so they could plead innocent when their boyfriends copped a feel. Bimbos, all of them.

She had come to the theater on a promise. The newspapers had reported sheer terror. Women in theaters all over the country had been taken away in stretchers. Rhoda wanted to experience that. She wanted to feel terror and be overcome. She wanted to prove to herself she could feel…something. Anything was better than nothing.

But no. As it did with roller coasters, haunted houses, and sex, her pulse maintained its efficient thrum. No adrenaline, no gasps of shock. She’d seen all the doctors, both for her body and mind. Her diagnosis was that she was fine with an overactive imagination. Secretly, Rhoda thought she may have no soul. She might have worried, but then that would at least be something as well. Her walk home was uneventful, like her life.

She unlocked her front door and went into an empty house. She lived alone, partly because she found people so annoying and partly because the feeling was mutual. Her purse she hung neatly on the hook, her shoes she slipped off and placed in the closet. Her coat was never tossed on a chair, but carefully hung, facing left with the rest. She may have no soul, but Rhoda was not a slob.

In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of milk and recounted the film’s ham-fisted acting. Vincent Price was okay, but the rest of the cast seemed to think screaming the loudest should make them a star. Regardless of their volume, they were all awful. Except Vincent Price, of course.

She washed her glass, dried it, and put it in the rack. On a whim, she opened the drawer and slid out her butcher knife. She used it only when deboning a bird, which she rarely did living alone, so it was quite new.

She held it up and looked into her eyes peering from the stainless steel. There was no light there, no life. Like a corpse, she often thought of her reflection. What would happen if she were to plunge the blade into her chest? Perhaps if she deboned herself, she might unearth some emotion. Instead, she returned the knife to the drawer.

The front door slammed. She didn’t jump or yelp in surprise. That would be silly. She must have left the door ajar, and the wind caught it. She went down the hall to draw the chain and was confused to find it already drawn.

Rhoda was certain she’d heard the front door slam, but here it was chained. She was momentarily confused. She must have heard the neighbor’s door instead. Perhaps they had a burglar. She imagined Mrs. Steiner being chopped into pieces a mere twenty feet away and then sighed. Nothing. Rhoda was an emotionless wasteland.

She went to her bedroom and flipped on the light. In the middle of her bed was her butcher knife, the nearly new one she used to debone chicken every now and then. “Well,” she said out loud to no one. “I swear I left you in the kitchen.” She walked across the room, picked up the knife, and started down the hall to return it. It didn’t make sense that there would be a butcher knife in her bed. Perhaps there was a burglar in her house, she thought, but why leave her knife in the bed?

Behind her came a scrabble of nails across the floor. She paused, listening. She heard the sound again. Claws scratching against her polished wood floor. Suddenly, it all made sense. “Of course,” she said. “The door did blow shut, but a stray cat must have gotten in before it did. Come on, you. Not in my house.”

She switched on the living room lamp and saw something scuttle behind her couch. It hadn’t looked quite like a cat, but regardless of the species, it was an animal and needed to go. Rhoda didn’t tolerate animals, especially in her house. She set the knife on her side table, gripped one end of the couch, and slid it away from the wall. A scuttle and a flash of movement at the other end meant the cat was out. She looked behind the couch to make sure before pushing it back in place.

Rhoda paused. She could feel something. Her pulse seemed to have quickened ever so slightly, and she was aware of her heart beating. She held her breath, trying to determine if this was fear. She hoped for just a moment…and then it was gone. Of course, her heart rate had given a little jump. She had just moved a couch. First, she’d wasted sixty-eight cents on a terrible film, and now she had a cat to deal with. This was a terrible night.

The knife on the side table was gone.

She looked down at the polished surface and her own face stared up at her from the glossy, wooden grain. Indistinct lines, smudges for eyes…and then, with a sudden thunk, the knife was embedded in the walnut, sunk right in the middle of her indistinct forehead.

That did it.

“Absolutely not! No animal is going to destroy my house.” There was an odd tenseness at the base of her spine, something she’d never experienced. It was strange and different and…delightful. But so subtle. Rhoda needed more to determine if this was real.

She gripped the knife and pulled it free from the wood. The splintered wound was unrepairable. Her lovely table, once her grandmother’s table…ruined. Her face flushed and she felt heat rising from her skin. This was it—she was having an emotion, and it was just as she’d imagined it. Anger was the key! All this time, she’d just needed a cat. Glass shattered in the dining room.

“Mangy animal!”

The electricity at the base of her spine intensified as if a copper wire ran up her back, searing her skin until she thought her own flesh might be lightly cooking. It was just like in the film she’d just seen. Briefly, Rhoda wondered if this was all a result of her hyperactive imagination and getting her sixty-eight cents worth after all.

Something came out of­ the shadows in the hall. Dozens of fleshy stumps, each ending in a barb, scratched across her lovely floor. It was bad creature-tronics; some sort of rubber puppet animated in her house. Her spine seized up under her skin, tiny vertebrates jarring together like misshapen beads on a cord.

The impossible Hollywood atrocity scuttled toward her. Rhoda wondered if she was in danger. Her spine was an agony of fire. She’d never felt pain like this. Actually, she could never recall feeling pain at all. It was disorienting, powerful…something. She dropped to her knees, knife clattering to the floor.

I should save myself, she thought. I should scream and drive The Tingler away.

Tiny claws caught in the tweed of her skirt, snagging the fabric. Paralyzed by the lightning in her back, she fell forward, her own weight helping the creature pull her down. Her head thumped to the floor, and the monster clambered over her prostate body, rooting at the hem of her blouse, seeking access to the pillar of fire that was now her spine.

I should save myself, she thought again. I should scream and drive The Tingler away.

But this…this was something. An agony of pain was tearing her ordered world into fragments, shattering her mind. As galaxies exploded behind her eyes, she finally felt her soul, just for a microsecond, before it burst into a supernova of silence.

Her eyes open, she watched her tidy living room recede to nothing. There was no light there, no life. Like a corpse. Her final thought was of her reflection.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angela Yuriko Smith is an American poet, author, and publisher with over 20 years of experience in newspaper journalism. She is a Bram Stoker Awards® Finalist, HWA Mentor of the Year for 2020 and publisher of Space and Time, a magazine dedicated to fantasy, horror and science fiction since 1966. Join the community at spaceandtime.net or visit Angela at angelayurikosmith.com