It was grotesque to the extreme.
Ramona tried to follow it with her light and it scuttled across the floor, to the left, then the right, then she lost it and felt it slide between her ankles with a hideous weight. Oh, Christ. Something told her that such a horror needed to be destroyed, that letting it survive was almost a sin… but she didn’t know if she was up to it. The idea of getting close to it made a hot, liquid madness run in her mind.
She heard a squeaking noise.
She swung the light around.
It was jumping up and down on the bedsprings, flying five or six feet in the air and then coming back down to repeat it again. It was malformed, lumpy, and squirming like a fetal rat. It leaped off the bed and waited there like it wanted her to try it, too. Ramona was simultaneously filled with horror and pity. She put the light right in its face and it squealed like it had been scalded. It did not like the light as she supposed things like it never did. Its face was wrinkled and deeply seamed, its eyes rolling blank gray balls. When it squealed, its jaws yawned wide and she saw it had two teeth. Each long, sharp, and tusk-like. One on the bottom jaw and one on the upper. Both were stained pink from what it had chewed through to be born. She likened them to the egg teeth of baby birds.
It hid from the light, turning its back to her and she saw protuberant, knobby bones straining against membranous flesh. It was shivering. As she stepped closer to it, gripping the Ray-O-Vac like a club now, it skidded across the floor, making that same eeeee, eeeee, eeeeeeee sort of sound that was tinny and strident.
Ramona went after it and it leaped through the air straight at her face.
She dodged it, but just barely. Even so, its flesh brushed against her cheek and it felt cold and slimy like a dead carp. It struck the wall, but did not fall. It hung there, claws embedded in the plaster. It was breathing very heavily now. As she stepped closer to it, it squeaked and trembled like it was frightened and a glop of pink jelly dropped from its hindquarters as if it had shit itself out of fear.
This was too much.
She was going to leave. Maybe that was wrong and maybe it was even unethical somehow, but she couldn’t take any more of this. Her revulsion for the thing was simply too great and if it touched her again, she was going to really lose it.
It craned its head around and looked at her, flashing her a grin of juicy pink gums, its two spike-like incisors looking lethal, the sort of things made for tearing out jugulars. Its doll eyes watched her, shining and reflective, filled with a naïve idiocy that made her heart ache even as goose bumps broke out over the backs of her arms. She couldn’t get past the idea that it was really not a living thing at all, but some horrible prop or loathsome toy.
It thumped its knees against the wall repeatedly. It wanted her to come after it again. It wanted her to try and catch it. Play, it was all just play… yet, she had seen its teeth and claws and they were the sort of things that could play you right to death.
“Eeeeeee?” it squeaked.
“No,” she said. “No play. I don’t have time”
It snapped its teeth at her, drumming itself against the wall. It made a hissing sound like a snake. Long ribbons of drool hung from its mouth. “Eeeeeeee!” it squeaked again, but this time there was a definite note of anger and impatience in the shrilling little voice.
Nearly mad with terror, the flashlight shaking in her hand, Ramona began backing away toward the door. The hellish little moppet watched her with gleaming eyes. It began climbing up the wall, digging in its claws, leaving gaping holes in the plaster.
“EEEEEEE!” it shrieked at her. “EEEEEEE!”
She wanted to toss the flashlight and cover her ears with her hands because the sound it made completely unnerved her and made a scream loosen in her throat. Sweat ran down her face and the trusty Ray-O-Vac jiggled in her hand. It was up near the ceiling now, hanging there like some mutant simian horror. It closed its mouth and puckered its swollen lips into something like a suckering kiss. Maybe she had lost her mind, but she almost sensed that it had a certain affection for her. It hung by one claw-hand now, swinging back and forth.
I don’t have a mommy now, Ramona. I want you to be my mommy and my playmate and at night I’ll curl up next to you and I’ll never let go. And when I’m hungry, I’ll fasten my mouth to your tit and suck the blood right out of you. You can scream all you want, but once I get my teeth in, you’ll never pry me loose!
Those words ran through her head, all inflected with that piercing elfin voice. Fuck this. She went for the door. She couldn’t take it anymore. The light splashed over Soo-Lee’s gutted corpse and this time she did scream.
The little beast got very excited. It mimicked her scream with a perfectly awful “EEEEEEEEE!” and jumped up at the ceiling, again digging its claws in and crossing it quickly like a kid on the monkey bars. Ramona dashed for the door and it slammed shut in her face. She felt claws like the thorns of rose stems tear open her cheek and she fell back, swinging at the little monster with her light. But it was too fast, it dodged away into the darkness and she swung around in a drunken circle with the light, trying to find it. A blur swept past her face with a hot rancid wind and she cried out.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” she shouted.
But that only delighted the creature and it squealed right back at her, bounding across the floor and nearly knocking the legs out from under her. When she thought she had found it with the light, it was suddenly somewhere else, making her spin around wildly, trying to pinpoint it as a crazy sort of vertigo whirled in her head.
Breathless, dizzy, her face wet with sweat, she saw it on the ceiling, then the walls, then she lost it completely right before its dead weight dropped onto her shoulder and she felt its hot breath against her neck. She dropped the light and reached up to grab it, seizing it in her fists. Its flesh seemed to crawl under her hands and waves of disgust swept through her.
“NO!” she cried as it pressed its monstrous, bloated face into her own, grinning with child-like glee, its carnivore fangs darting out and nipping the end of her nose.
Cold sweat flooded her body and she went absolutely feral with panic and rage. She peeled it from her and threw it as hard as she could, hearing it strike the wall with a meaty slap. She grabbed up the flashlight and put the beam on it. It was squatted there on the floor, making a perfectly frightful mewling sort of sound. Its head was wet with what had to be blood and she soon saw why. She had injured it. Maybe it was alive, but it was still a degenerate hybrid of human tissue and mannequin and its skin was more like a shell. Its head had cracked open like that of a baby doll upon impact with the wall, a piece of its cranium lay at its feet.
Its gray eyes glistened as it looked at her. Its mouth opened and let out an angry roar. Bleeding and broken, it was now an animal and it would fight to survive. It launched itself at her and she knocked it aside with the flashlight. It barely hit the floor before she was kicking and stomping it with everything she had, determined to destroy it. Painfully, mewling, it skittered across the floor, damaged and cracked open, trailing bleeding springs and fleshy stuffing, clockwork gears and a smear of tissue.
“Eeeeeeee,” it squeaked in a perfectly pitiful little voice. “Eeeeeeeee-eeee…”
As Ramona watched, filled with revulsion and remorse, it half-crawled and half-hopped over toward the corpse of its mother. It gripped the splayed thighs, trying to force itself back up into her where, perhaps, it saw safety and security from the big bad world. The slopping sound and gushing fluids as it tried to tunnel into Soo-Lee were too much.