as if inside our skulls, instead of the brain, we felt a fish, floating, attracted by the Moon.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Lamia

Ahh! I was just going through my monster project from comp lit and couldn't find this story on here! Did I forget it?
This is the Lamia story from my comp lit class...

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For three weeks Adam had seen the ghost lingering in the back corner of his closet. She wasn’t a particularly threatening ghost, but still Adam would call his parents every night to come upstairs and tuck him in and turn on the nightlight.

“Adam, you’re a big boy now, aren’t you? Does my big first grader really need me doing this every night?” his mother would coo before kissing him goodnight. Adam would shrug and try not to look at the closet door.

Around midnight the door would slowly creak open, sometimes waking Adam up. On the nights it did, he would glance over at the source of the noise to see a woman hunched in the closet. She was fairly young, with long, tangled hair. Adam couldn’t tell much else about her, because she was always balled up into a fetal position and rocking back and forth. Adam was torn between being afraid and pitying her. She was obviously distressed, but he was too scared of the ghost and he didn’t dare approach or try talking to her.

After almost a month of this, Adam awoke to a new sight. The ghost was no longer in his closet. Instead, she was sitting in the shadow between the closet and the dresser, much closer to his bed, still rocking back and forth rhythmically. Adam barely managed to keep from crying out. He shut his eyes as tightly as possible, willing himself to sleep.

Adam hadn’t been able to sleep, and while his mother was pouring the orange juice he nodded off at the breakfast table. Annoyed, his father looked up the newspaper—he’d been reading an article about the bloody murder of a local high school girl driving home from a concert—and raised an eyebrow. His mother was furious. She knew “the ghost lady” keeping him awake all night was just another way of saying “playing videogames.” Adam was sent to bed early that night to prove a point, and locked in his room to prevent him from sneaking back downstairs to his Playstation.

Adam was petrified. He mimed sleep for a couple hours, and when the soft creak of the closet door pierced the silence, he opened his eyes. Adam didn’t even have time to scream before a soft, cold something covered his mouth. The woman was kneeling beside his bed, hand over his mouth, other hand brought in a hush motion to her lips. She was very beautiful. Her tangled hair fell in mossy curtains around his face and he saw that she was crying.

“Why are you crying?” he whispered when she lifted her hand. “Are you sad?”

She said nothing; she opened her mouth, moving her lips in what appeared to be the motions of speech, though she made no sounds. She closed her mouth, shaking her head. She continued to cry, dripping fat clammy tears onto Adam’s cheeks. She bent forward, kissing his forehead.

“You don’t have to be sad,” he whispered, “I’ll be your friend. You seem like a nice ghost. Let’s be friends.”

She only cried harder, bending down to kiss his cheek and then his neck. Adam turned slightly to look at her. She raised her head from his neck and he saw his own blood spilling from her mouth, running down her face. Adam screamed once and then the house was silent.

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