Serial Vlogger Part Thirty-Seven

A horror story in tiny slices

The storm embraced Lenore. The stone in the claw necklace glowed as the wind whipped her around. Lightning shot down, hitting the stone, surging through her, filling her with more energy. She trembled and twitched. She gasped, but this time, she wasn’t driving an ice cream truck. This time, she was walking.

And continued to walk.

The wind swirled around her, lifting her hair, lifting her hospital gown. The thunder boomed. She couldn’t see where she was going as the rain slammed down so hard and fast. Her feet sloshed through the wet sidewalks, the sudden strong rain creating small floods.

“Free…” Lenore thought. “Free…”

Her mind was a swirl of energy, the word free spinning over and over as if it was the first and last word of her existence.

She was lifted into the air by the wind, spun around, and flung. She scrambled and clawed at the air as she flew. She passed over cars, houses, roads; she flew far from the hospital.

And she wasn’t afraid.

She was doing what she was supposed to do.

Despite the swirling and flailing, beneath her fear and pain, she had a sense she was being guided. She was being called. Even if she didn’t know or understand in this moment, she was aware that she had a duty to perform.

She wasn’t afraid as the wind swirled her around above the city. Her amulet swung from her neck as she held her arms out. The amulet glowed, the claw holding it triumphantly.

She was sucked into the blackest of clouds, and she couldn’t see anything at all anymore. Fear rose in her as she tumbled through thick storm clouds that rumbled with thunder and burst into brightness with lightning.

“No!” she called out. “No!”

Just as her wonderment turned to panic, there was a shift. She saw the eye, the huge eye that stared at her, and then blinked.

She screamed as she tumbled closer towards it. She clawed at the air, seeking purchase in the swirling turbulence, but no matter how far she reached, she was met with only emptiness. She spun closer to the eye.

“No,” she cried. “Leave me alone!”

Branches and dirt, twigs and bottles whipped by, the rain stinging her as it poured down. In a final summersault, she was impossibly close to the eye. She covered her head with her arms, curled up like a hedgehog hurtling through space. Rolling through debris and rain as she swooped.

More thunder boomed. Another sizzle crack of lightning. Another clap of thunder.

Suddenly, she was spit out of the darkness. She wasn’t sure what else it would be called but darkness. She was flung towards the ground roughly, but not rough enough that she was hurt. She fell from the sky, swirling in the dark clouds. As she approached the ground, she saw she was near the lake, near her home.

Screaming faces stared up at her, wet, panic, many arms upstretched to catch her.

She landed in the grasp of the strangers, who screamed and cried in the storm, yet set her gently on the ground. Lenore lay down, exhausted, her hospital gown outstretched, the crowd around her checking her pulse, mesmerized at the sky, screaming at the eye that continued to stare down at them all.

Flesh Failure was originally published by Samhain Horror. It’s now available as print or ebook!