Comfort

Baby, I know you’re a little freaked out after the movie, and that’s natural, it was kind of a freaky movie. With hindsight, a midnight showing of a horror film might not have been the best idea. But, and I can’t stress this enough, you don’t need to be nervous.

Don’t worry; everything will be terrifying from now on.

We’ll get home, fix a snack, make a pot of tea, convince ourselves that the irregular thumping on the walls is just the sound of pipes settling, and head to bed. You’ll wake up in a cold sweat after something pulls sharply on your left leg, turn over and see me, fast asleep, muttering in something that sounds suspiciously like Latin being spoken backward, head to the bathroom, squeeze your eyes shut when the walls start dripping blood and, when you finally suppress your unvoiced scream and open them again, you’ll convince yourself it was your own sleep-addled brain playing tricks on you.

And by the time you get back to bed, the whispering at the back of your mind telling you that you’re all alone and that nobody will save you will be something you’re so used to that you can almost ignore it.

Almost.

By morning, of course, the baby-headed spiders will be nearly done their hive in the closet. But you’ll wear a t-shirt, so you won’t realize it’s there until three or four days from now. Which will be two or three days after you’ve killed me with an axe, believing that I’ve been replaced with a perfect replicant that hungers for human blood.

Which, by the way, will not be the case. It will actually be me that you kill. Still, the bloodthirsty replicant will continue going to work in my place, so you’ll never be questioned about my absence. Not that the police would have much time to question you even if they did realize that the real me was dead, chopped up and hidden in the hallway linen closet.

Because, like I said, three or four days from now, you’ll open the closet to find a button-up blouse, and realize that the baby-headed spiders have long since occupied it, and moreover that they’ve been breeding freely. And, finally freed from their confinement, the first thing they’ll do will be to…

…well, I don’t want to give away EVERYTHING that will happen. After all, what is life without surprises, right? Sufficed to say, it won’t be pretty, and you aren’t likely to make it out of the room. But, if you do manage to make it to the door, get past the ghost twins and find your way down the endless echoing hallway and out of the suddenly abandoned building, don’t take any pleasure from it. The only thing your unlikely survival would mean is that you get to see what happens to the world around you once the plague of baby-headed spiders is released upon the unsuspecting city.

And that might be the worst part of it all.

No, wait, the coming of the Hungry Ones. Had I mentioned they were coming? No? That’s my bad, they are, I’ve invited them and they assure me they’re coming. And that’ll definitely be the worst part of it all, that part will be really bad.

So, you see, your life going forward will be an endless nightmare. You will know no peace, no moment of respite, for the rest of your potentially very short existence.

From here on in, everything will be terrifying.

I’ve already arranged it all.

And that’s why, you see, there’s no need to worry…