The Creature

This is an assignment from one of my writing classes at Northern Michigan University.  It was originally unnamed, I think out of haste for turning it in.  Upon going over it again, I think an apt title, as any, should have something to do with a key part of the story.  This isn't always the case but is probably a good rule of thumb to go by here.  I may change it later if I think of a better name but for now, enjoy the story as:

The Creature

by 

Teddy Izzo

10/26/10

It had now been two hours.  Everything he had slaved over up until this point was now going to pay off.  Allan peered down the mansion’s stairs in wait for the creature to ascend them.  Everything was in place.  The trap was set.  Somehow he had managed to construct the thing without the monster finding him but none of that mattered now.  Allan crouched down near the wall and waited and listened.  For twenty minutes he waited and listened.  After ten of them, he began to get nervous.

            The bait was nearly perfect, he thought.  Perhaps I didn’t use enough.  No, no.  I took careful precaution.  He assured himself that everything was in its proper place.  After all, it had to be.  He had made sure it was.   He wiped the sweat from his brow. The second ten minutes past.

            This can’t be!  Where is the horrible thing?  Just then, he felt something drip down his neck.  He spun around.  IT WAS BEHIND HIM!  The creature that he had been waiting and listening for, for over a half hour plus the hour on top of that, the very thing that he had been watching for, was watching HIM!

            How long, wondered Allan as his body quivered.  How long has it been watching me?  It must have been watching me construct the trap.  The whole time it must have been watching me.  Of course it was.  It always watches me.  It’s always there.

            He distanced himself from it for a moment, long enough to take in the full sight of the beast.  It was horrible to look at.  He could scarcely bare to glance at it and yet he couldn’t take his eyes away.  He hurriedly backed up to increase the distance between them but it followed.  And then, Allan’s world fell beneath him.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Red and blue lights flashed through the front doorway as they made their circles on top of the county sheriff’s car outside.  Just inside was the sheriff himself accompanied by a couple of uniforms and the county coroner.  The coroner was knelt down next to a body on the floor at the base of the stairs.

            “What’s the damage,” asked the sheriff.

            “A dozen broken ribs, his left shoulder is dislocated and he’s bleeding out of his ear.”

            “Well he took quite a tumble.  That’s a staircase and a half there.” 

            “It is but that’s not what he died from.  Fright was what killed him.  These are merely the injuries he sustained on the way down.

            “I wonder what scared him so much.”

            “Who knows?” As he said that, a fourth officer came down the stairs wearing a deputy’s badge and joined them.  The sheriff looked at him and asked, “Find anything of interest?”

            “Not much,” replied the deputy.  “There’s some rig up there.  Looks like a trap of some kind.”

            “Anything else?”

            “There’s nothing else up there but a leaky water pipe high on the wall.”  The deputy stuffed his fists in his jacket pockets in dramatic resolution.

 “Heck of a way to go,” said the coroner looking up the staircase.

“Agreed,” replied the sheriff.  “Come on boys, let’s go.”

At that, the two uniforms moved the body on a gurney and brought him out to an ambulance waiting outside, with the rest following behind.