The Horrible Thing That Slipped Through My Window One Night
Good thing I just got done pissing, he thought absently. Mom would kill me if I ruined these new sheets.
The hand was terrible beyond telling. It looked human - at least as though it had been human at one time - but that didn't make any prettier. The skin was a rotted, pale-white (the color of a dead frog's stomach), and it was stretched to the point where it was translucent. Hundreds of pale veins and arteries were visible as the moist, sagging skin stuck to the window. They looked like earthworms nesting in silk. Cuts and tears that should've been bleeding, but weren't, lined the palm and fingers where the soft skin had pulled at the shingles, and some of the cuts were deep enough to make the surrounding skin hang in flaps. It was the hand of a decomposing corpse.
For a few moments, it was still; it was simply planted there, seeming to beg Tom to let it inside. Then there was a sound like a plunger being yanked furiously from a toilet bowl as the hand withdrew, and Tom could see dirty little strips of flesh hanging where it had stuck. A grimy arm (not just a hand, but the whole arm) came down making that disgusting thump, and it dragged it's owner into view. At first only the profile of the thing's head was visible. It was bald, save for a few long hairs hanging from its big, round scalp, and its cheeks were the same translucent-white that its hand had been. Tom couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed to be grinning.
When the face turned, his thought was confirmed; the thing's mouth was chiseled into an awful, toothless grin, its thick elastic lips stretched back to reveal pale-orange gums. No tongue was visible, but Tom felt sure there was a lively one lurking somewhere inside its mouth all the same. It was horrible, that grin, and it wasn't because it made this defiled corpse appear sinister or intelligent, but because it made it look happy. It made it look excited.
The hand was terrible beyond telling. It looked human - at least as though it had been human at one time - but that didn't make any prettier. The skin was a rotted, pale-white (the color of a dead frog's stomach), and it was stretched to the point where it was translucent. Hundreds of pale veins and arteries were visible as the moist, sagging skin stuck to the window. They looked like earthworms nesting in silk. Cuts and tears that should've been bleeding, but weren't, lined the palm and fingers where the soft skin had pulled at the shingles, and some of the cuts were deep enough to make the surrounding skin hang in flaps. It was the hand of a decomposing corpse.
For a few moments, it was still; it was simply planted there, seeming to beg Tom to let it inside. Then there was a sound like a plunger being yanked furiously from a toilet bowl as the hand withdrew, and Tom could see dirty little strips of flesh hanging where it had stuck. A grimy arm (not just a hand, but the whole arm) came down making that disgusting thump, and it dragged it's owner into view. At first only the profile of the thing's head was visible. It was bald, save for a few long hairs hanging from its big, round scalp, and its cheeks were the same translucent-white that its hand had been. Tom couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed to be grinning.
When the face turned, his thought was confirmed; the thing's mouth was chiseled into an awful, toothless grin, its thick elastic lips stretched back to reveal pale-orange gums. No tongue was visible, but Tom felt sure there was a lively one lurking somewhere inside its mouth all the same. It was horrible, that grin, and it wasn't because it made this defiled corpse appear sinister or intelligent, but because it made it look happy. It made it look excited.