The last of the little piggies

Regret. Regret was the proper word for his emotion right now. Trying to keep the door closed, his back against the large, antique closet and his hands wrapped around it. He shocks forward with each bang at the door. It almost looks like he is hurling. “I will never poke a dead animal again” his mind keeps saying. “I will never, ever let my curiosity get the best of me. If I survive this I will never poke a dead animal again, oh please stop”.

The beast was still banging and clawing at the door. In movies the monster tries a couple of times to get in and in movies it can go two ways: One, the monster smashes its head or claws through the door and rips the door out of its way. Two, it stops banging and finds another surprising way in, catching the victim totally off-guard. But this wasn’t a monster from a movie; it was real. So real it had ripped Bill’s head of his neck with no effort at all. So real it had crushed Rich’s body just by standing on it. Oh, the sound his intestines and bones made when it pushed its weight slowly on top of Richard. Ben could still hear it, even through the banging and clawing on the door. He had been standing here for, what felt like, hours, but in reality it was more like minutes. Sweat is rolling from his temples and forehead to his chin. His eyes squeezed shut and trying with all his remaining strength to keep that closet in front of that door.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

This is the end. How could it not be? In this small bedroom there are only two ways to get out: The small window, in which even Ben’s kid brother would have trouble with, trying to climb through. Adding up the seconds he needed to get over there and open it, that escape plan was a no-go. And there, of course, was the door, which needs no further explanation.

The beast growls, screams, bangs and claws. Within a couple minutes, maybe seconds, it will come in. It will use the strength it had used when it ripped Bill’s head off. Maybe Ben could just do a step forward and let it come in. It was going to come in sooner or later anyway.

Thoughts flash through his mind; memories of the night, last words he had his friends hear saying. “Run you! Don’t wait-“ Richard had said before his voice ended in an abrupt and hoarse sound. He sees the beast stepping on Richard again and again. Like a short clip from a film that keeps repeating itself. How it had looked at him, daring, provoking. Like it was saying: “What are you going to do about this Ben? Huh? Are you scared yet? Imagine the things I could do to you”. That was what the steel-blue, almost white eyes had told him. It’s mouth hold back in a permanently, horrifying grin and its tongue hanging from the side of it. Ben had just stood there. His eyes unimaginably big and his mouth shaped into a big O-shape. He had looked right into the eyes of the beast and got almost hypnotized by it. And in a blink of an eye he had snapped out of it, turned around and ran up the stairs. It wasn’t quite running though. It was more like he had jumped up the stairs; taking three steps at a time. Upstairs he had run into the nearest door he saw and had closed it behind him. He had taken two steps back from it and imagined how easy it would be for such a monster to just smash through it. He had looked around and had seen the closet. His first thought was to climb into it and pray the beast would not find him, but he had immediately realised that would have been suicide. His next thought was to push it in front of the door and he had almost waited too long before he did it, because the second the closet was in front of the door the first bang had sounded and the door actually had opened a few inches because the closet wasn’t completely sealing the doorway yet.

Now he is standing here. Clutching the last barrier between him and certain death. And the creature still banging and smashing at the door. His mind is blocking all rational thoughts; only the macabre bits and pieces of film of his dying friends flashing through it. Stopped only by the explosive sounds of the bangs on the door for milliseconds. ´This is how the three little pigs must have felt when the Big Bad Wolf knocked on their door” He thinks. “And I am in the wooden house. In my version two pigs are already eaten and the last one is trapped. I will never get a chance to get to the brick house.

But then, suddenly, his phone rings in his pocket. The typical Nokia-tune filling the devastating emptiness of the intervals between the bangs. And as if the monster was listening to the tune, the bangs stopped for a moment. But only for a moment, because now it started banging faster and even harder than before. Ben knows it won’t be of much help to tell whoever was calling him that he is holding on to a closet for dear life because a giant beast is trying to tear him apart, but he feels he desperately wants to pick up his phone. Maybe the caller could send for help. Maybe Ben just might have some strength left in him to hold on for a moment longer. He lets go of the closet, but clutches right to it again. It is too risky to let go of it. Risky yes, but right now it is the only chance he has to get out of here alive.

Bang! Bang!

Bang! Bang!

It does not seem the beast is going to give up any-time soon. He has got to think of something. In the room there is only a bed, a Victorian-age chair standing in the corner and of course this blessed and yet cursed closet. The phone is still ringing. He does not feel the vibration of it. This is it Ben, it is now or never.

Ben lets go of the closet with his left hand and shoots it to his pocket. Like a cowboy from the Wild West in a gun drawing duel.

Bang!

The left door of the closet swings open

Bang!

Ben pushes his back against the closet with all his might, still reaching for the phone

Bang!

The door swings shut

Bang!

Got it!

Bang!

Then something unexpected happened: The whole closet came forward, but not only forward, it seemed like it was tumbling over. The door swung open again, and Ben – not getting enough time to answer his phone- could think of only one thing to do before he got crushed under the weight of the closet and the beast standing on top of it. He rolled himself in a surprisingly delicate movement into the closet.

There sounded a loud Bang! again but this time it was not the Big Bad Wolf knocking on the door. The closet door shut when it thundered down on the floor. Ben punched himself in the nose because he was cramped in the closet like a boxer without any room to move. His knuckles against his mouth. But he does not make a sound while warm blood flows from his nose to his knuckles.

He hears the beast smash through the door and growl. He hears pieces of wood splintering and flying around the room. He hears the beast rip the door out, like Ben knew it was going to do, and throw it behind it. It comes in slowly, grunting. Ben hears it breathing; the heavy, moist draws and puffs of its breath. It puts a foot on the closet. Ben hears the wood squeaking beneath its weight, but not on Ben’s side. It looks around, Ben can feel it. The monster lifts its foot off the back of the closet. It walks towards the bed. The small thuds of its feet sounding through the wood of the closet.

Suddenly, an ear-deafening growl sounds through the room. A large object flies against the wall and bounces on the floor like a coin that has stopped rolling but using the last of its momentum to spin on its edges. Ben’s hands are wet and sticky from a mixture of blood, sweat and moist of his breath. Another thunderous growl fills the room, this time more agitated. So loud, in fact, that the Ben can hear the small window shake.

Silence. Is the beast still here? Is it perhaps looking out the window to search for possible tracks in the snow? Ben doesn’t know. He only knows that he likes the growling better than this agonizing silence. He has the phone still in his hands, but he is too scared to use it. Who would react to the text he would send out? No one.

Bang! The beast smashes through the closet, missing Ben by an inch. Bang! The other claw hits the other side of the closet. Ben could no longer hold back the scream that has been building up this entire time. In the small acoustic of the closet his scream seems louder than the growl of the beast had been just a moment before. The closet is being lifted up and in a second he feels it, with him still in it, soaring through the air. It hits the wall, but unlike the bed, it smashes right through it. The closet bounces on its side and slides forward through the hallway. He sees the stairs flashing by and when the closet would stop Ben knew what he had to do. Get out of that thing and run. Run to the stairs, run down the stairs, run passed his killed friends, run out the door, run out into the forest, run from this nightmare.

So that’s what he did. As soon as the closet stopped sliding, Ben got out through the fresh hole that the beast had just punched in. He ran, jumped, ducked; Whatever he had to do to get out of here fast. On the way throwing as much things on the floor as he could. Closets, chairs, tables. He almost stepped on his friend Richard, but he just missed him, with the help of a small sound that sounded very much like “AAAH!” He got to the door, he got to the porch and ran into the forest.

He ran through the wilderness. Through the snow. The snow! How could he be this stupid! The beast would see where he went. He had just given himself to the beast on a silver platter. Maybe if he could just run fast enough. Maybe if he…

He suddenly couldn’t move anymore. He was in a sudden grip, not from the outside but from the inside. Through the inside. He felt three objects piercing through him. Ben tried to breathe but he found out that he couldn’t. Life was flowing out of him fast. He looked down to see what it was and saw three long, sharp nails like spears coming out of his stomach. He reached to it in a instinctive attempt to do something about it, but he couldn’t.

The beast draws his claws back, letting Ben fall down face-first in the snow. The last thing Ben hears before his lights go out, is the long and sharp howl of the beast, echoing through the forest.