The Deranged Variety: A horror short

A Free Creature Horror Short by L.A. Detwiler

Looking for a spooky read? I've got a quick short story for you below. It's a creature horror set in a dystopian world, perfect for fans of A Quiet Place or Bird Box. Give it a read, and let me know what you think in the comments!

The Deranged Variety
L.A. Detwiler
Copyright 2024

The cool metal shocked her already frigid hands as she pointed the gun toward the blackness and willed her breathing to slow. Fog veiled the woods, but it wouldn’t be enough to shield her. Her heart thumped so wildly it would certainly betray her position. Hair falling into her eyes, she whipped her head back and leaned against the tree, commanding her body to still, trying to recall what her yoga teacher would have told her in what was certainly a different lifetime. 

She wasn’t the likely one to survive, but she had no choice. Sometimes statistics had to be shoved aside for what must be. That was that. She adjusted her finger on the trigger.

Footsteps quaked the forest floor in the distance. Too close. Her chest plummeted. The horrors of reality weren’t lost on her. Here one minute, eviscerated the next. Flashes of the victims she’d watched die pounded into her skull. There should be peace in the quick finality of it all, but the realities of death terrified her since she was a little girl, comfortable under her crocheted pink blanket perfumed by that familiar laundry detergent and the lingering perfume of her mother. Like some pink-dusted harbinger, the thought of disappearing into the thick blackness of non-existence plagued her long before the world had ended. 

How things had changed since just…what? A few months ago?...when death’s embrace beckoned her like a siren’s harrowing song. She dared to glance at her wrists now, the scars of that person she once was resonating deeply in the darkness. She gripped the gun tighter. It would be of no use, the weapon simply something to grasp onto in a futile attempt to keep hope flickering.

Footsteps slinked closer. Was it her imagination, or did they sound lighter? That flame of possibility sparked once more. She hated herself for it.

And then, a roar of footsteps, one right after the other. She sank tighter against the tree, her full back smooched up against the bark, the gun clutched to her heaving chest as she closed her eyes. There it was, the truth of her facade. She was masquerading as a brave soldier when, in reality, she was the weakened victim. She always had been, the voice whispered to her.

Hands grabbed her in the blackness, and she squealed. A hand covered her mouth.

“It’s me,” he whisper-shouted, and she opened her eyes, staring into his disturbingly familiar stare. His chest rose and fell as he heaved for air, his hands warm against her clammy skin. He was alive. So was she.

He claimed the gun from her shaking grip, turning quickly from her to peruse the area, a necessary skill in the new reality. She didn’t say a word, partially in tacit compliance of their desperate game of cat and mouse, partially because she didn’t know what to say. He was there, her savior, emerging from the wreckage of their terrified escape. Yet her quavering heart didn’t slow or soften. Terror clutched on, sinking its bloodsoaked fangs into her flesh deeper.

“Have you seen it?” he murmured, so low she thought she imagined it. But she’d adapted to this kind of quiet now. In just two months, it was crazy how readily the human body and spirit could adjust to the transformed reality they were forced into. She shook her head. 

“Maybe we did lose it,” he said, still scanning. Life had become a constant, weary scanning.

“Or it’s toying with us,” she replied, a horrifying reality no one had dared to believe in the early days. They’d been told the unidentified creatures that had infiltrated the world were mindless, dangerous in their stupidity. Now, the survivors, though, had come to understand differently. There was a protocol to the beings’ way of hunting, to their mind games. It was more sinister than the radios could have ever relayed before they all went completely silent two weeks ago. 

They were on their own now, survivors few and far between…which was the way they had to prefer it now. No one could trust anyone, and it was ironic he was back. Because she’d never been able to trust him, even before the Arrival. Now…

“We need to move,” he mouthed to her, and she nodded. The woods were a double-edged sword, paradoxically giving them cover but also exposing them to its preyful stare. He pulled on her hand, the gun still aimed forward as he panned the darkness. She followed behind him, the sweaty smell of him a recognized musk, as it had been for so many years.

She let him lead her, as she once had all those years ago, their college romance turning into a torrid trip to the altar. Back then, the only darkness lurking was the danger of their flame burning out, of the realities of life beating them down. 

Not of being eviscerated by vile monsters. 

Slowly, silently, they pushed on to an unknown destination. She stepped cautiously, rigidly, trying to obliterate every crunching leaf or twig, trying to anticipate the loud parts of the forest floor. 

The fog cleared and the densely packed trees opened up, a relief and a new terror. Exposed in the open, the creature was certainly waiting to pounce. Any second…

He stopped in front of her, and she leaned against his back, strong and muscular, as she’d remembered it. As she’d sometimes fantasized about in those months after he’d left. Damp with sweat, the fabric of his shirt clung to him. So did she.

He pointed toward the distance, and she peered around him to see a dilapidated barn structure. He looked to her, but she shook her head. Too dangerous. There could be others in there, one of the roving bands of real soldiers who had been tipped toward immoral mores. But she glanced behind her, the unknown of the blackened forest another danger. There wasn’t anywhere safe. Every choice was a deliberate risk.

He leaned close, his breath caressing her neck, her ear. “We have no choice. We can’t stay out here, and we need to rest.”

He was right, of course, although she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. They hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t eaten in almost as many. Her mind was leaning toward hallucinatory. Still, she shuddered to imagine the mortal beings in that barn who could be waiting to strip them of their belongings, of their flesh, or worse. Intuition failed her, for she didn’t know which way to go.

And then, as she was prepared to provide evidence for the case to him, a roaring squeal behind them and pounding footsteps made the decision. He yanked her forward, toward the barn, the only refuge available. 

Legs burning as she ran for her life, him in front, she could think of nothing. If these were her final moments, she would die with a blank mind, a thought unsettling in itself. Gulping air, she kept her sights on the barn as it grew closer and closer. But the running footsteps behind them continued on, the rebel yell of the creature shredding any semblance of reassurance in her heart. Her head rattled with its yell, and she sweated through her clothes as she ran, thinking of the searing pain of being shredded in its hideous maw if it caught her.

On they ran, the moon shining down on the path. They were getting closer. Somehow, although she knew it probably could have reached them by now if it wanted, it did not. It spared them, goosebumps raising on her arms at the thought. If she were alone, she would probably stop and surrender, let her body be devoured so her mind could finally be at peace. But he pulled her forward, the unlikely savior who had once shattered her heart now saving it. Life had a funny way of turning, and so did death.

They reached the door of the barn, and he flung it backward, not having time to scan the area for peril because it was already on their heels, a hideous thief. He flung her inside the darkness, closing the door behind them. He glanced around in the darkness, and she did the same. It didn’t seem like there was anyone or anything inside. Luck greeted them for once.

They didn’t celebrate the victory, though. Instead, he ushered her to help him move a table and a few boards in front of the door in a haphazard security attempt. Nothing other than a ten-foot cement wall would stop the creature from getting in as they’d learned in the past few months. The sheer size and power of the monsters made it all the more difficult to survive. Still, human’s folly was indeed the penchant for naive hope even in the face of unrelenting circumstances.

Footsteps circled the barn. A pounding on the battered, broken wall in the back jolted her. She crumpled down on a hay bale, needing to catch her breath even if it was her last. He didn’t rest though, standing at the ready with the gun in his hand, circling to the sound of footsteps as if he would save them. As if he could save them. She stared into the inky blackness, watching him prowl as the monster’s footsteps stomped about the perimeter of the barn. They were hostages in a circle of torture. 

Her breathing ragged, she stayed down, thinking of all those they’d lost. Flashes of her neighbors, of Amanda, of her beloved Great Dane played like a rippling movie of nightmarish terror. She squeezed her fists, wanting in some ways to live and in some ways for it all to be over. 

Footsteps circled. He circled. And then, a clattering of footsteps that faded quickly. All was quiet. She exhaled a breath she didn’t have. He waited a long moment before lowering the gun and his wariness. He walked over to her, taking a seat on the hay bale beside her as he scanned the barn for lurking danger.

They sat in silence like that for a while, just the two of them. Once, that sentiment would have been comforting. Now, it was a hideous nightmare worse than the world ending. She pulled her knees to her chest as he set the gun down for a moment beside him, resting his head in his hands, leaning on his knees and taking a breath. She let him have that peace, that moment to himself because there were few moments like this. Even he deserved that. 

But in the quiet, her mind always wandered to times she didn’t like to face. Sometimes, it was easier being on the run from the monsters than facing the truths in her mind. In a way, the end of the world had cradled her in its deafening embrace. Before the Arrival, she’d been alone in her crumbling world like a sickening, depressed ballad that played on repeat. Now, everyone was hanging by a thread, if at all. She thought it said a lot about her that she was comforted by that. Torture loves not company but other sufferers.

He sat back up then, rejuvenated from the few moments of quiet apparently. He glanced over at her, their eyes adjusted to the darkness. He spun the silver ring on his left hand, their wedding ring. She hadn’t asked when he’d put it back on, life too precarious for nonsensical discussions like rings and vows and the before. He looked at her then, deeply, his ring still spinning. The darkness was suffocation but smoother now.

“I didn’t love her. Not like you.” The words were the loudest he’d uttered in the past months, and she hated him for it.

“Let’s not do this,” she said, her voice cracking. Survival had to be their focus. She didn’t have capacity to reslash that wound, not with the monsters lurking.

“I came for you. When it fell apart, I came back for you. Doesn’t that say it all? Doesn’t it count for something?” he asked like a desperate puppy, begging for a chance to fetch once more.

She wanted it to be enough, if she were honest with herself. Underneath the shaking hands and trauma, she wished it could be enough, that they could walk into the forsaken landscape hand in hand. But it wasn’t. The burning rage in her chest told her that. Even in this place, under these circumstances, it hadn’t changed. At the end of the world, with just the two of them, she couldn’t forget how he had ended her world long before the Arrival. He’d stood in that mausoleum of a house and told her their marriage was over, that he loved someone else. That didn’t just dissipate when the world did, she’d come to understand.

The five years they’d been together were tarnished with that one sentence, that one confession, that had smacked her innocent face and gutted her, innards spilling onto that once spotless floor as she crawled deep inside herself and prayed to bleed out.

She would have paid money in those early days for him to come back, for him to beg to fetch her. There was a time, she wasn’t proud to say, she would’ve welcomed him back like the prodigal son, like the second half of her heart. But not now. Not after all the time. He walked through fire and hell to get back to her when the arrival happened, yet somehow, she was different now. Somehow, it wasn’t enough.

A violent wail echoed outside of the barn, and every hair on her body came to attention. She bit her lip, her breathing intensifying as he also came to attention, the gun snatched from the hay bale as he leaped to his feet. They snapped back to the present, where frivolous topics like matters of the heart no longer had a place. He didn’t have to tell her to be still, to be quiet, for she was frozen in fear.

The footsteps banged outside, and then there was a pounding against the siding of the barn. The wail continued, an agony-riddled wail that suggested death, but it wasn’t the creature’s death it warned off. It was their imminent end the wailing foreshadowed.

She stood to her feet, trembling. They were trapped, no way out that mattered. And just as he’d turned to her to say something—what, she didn’t hear—the back wall of the barn came crashing down. He shot off a couple rounds from the revolver, but it was no use. The monster was upon them then before they could even run, the length of the barn child’s play when it wanted to devour.

She shrieked as she watched it grab him with one of its disgusting paws, the long claws digging into Sean as it picked him up, staring at him with its hideous face and open jaw. The gun fell to the ground beneath his feet. He screamed out in pain, blood dripping from his body. 

She scrambled to the gun, the monster still toying with Sean in its grip as it wailed and screamed. She got her shaking hands on the revolver and pointed it up toward the creature. Sean’s wails reverberated, singing to her heart and grappling with everything that had happened in her mind.

She could run for the barn door, try to get away. But she heard his agony, and knew what she had to do.

He’d saved her. He’d also ruined her. And so, she held the gun up and aimed. 

She shot him as he looked at her, his dark, familiar eyes horrified but recognizing the truth now. His wailing stopped, and the beast devoured him, turning its sights to her as she slowly backed away.

They were one in the same perhaps. In the end, they were all monsters of deranged varieties. 

She watched it shred his flesh, the man she once loved long ago. Her back finally reached the barn wall. Her back smooched against it, she locked eyes with the creature. Her chest didn’t heave, and her hands were steady as she dropped the gun by her side.

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