Because I Could

Lee and his Grampa Myles share a rare and deadly secret. Most of the time, they're able to control it. But once, when Grampa was younger, it got away from him. Ever since that day, something has been eating at his insides. Now, Lee faces his own deadly moment. Will he be able to resist the temptation? A short story from our Spectres horror line.

And I never made the mistake of taking the anger of a resident personally. I understood the attitude of the proletariat, and their unabated suspicions toward all branches of government. I just tried to do my song and dance as best I could, take the information down, hand out the paperwork and then boogie on to the next door, letting all of the mercurial attitudes of the ignorant malcontents and the know-nothing peckerwoods roll gently off my little shoulders.
The mailbox at 1512 Faulkner Lane was a rusty one and it hung askew, looking as though it might fall from its post.
Laboring up the driveway with my tattered briefcase, I saw only one vehicle, a '70s rust-bucket up on blocks, without tires. It was an old Chevelle, a monster in its day. A piece of plywood sat under the car to catch fluids which no longer dripped from the undercarriage and hadn't for some time. There were holes in the body around the wheel wells and the back fender was missing. What a shame. So careless to treat a beauty of a hot rod in that way. These were "Hamburger Helper people," as my father used to say.
The house was a rancher with flat white aluminum siding and gutters choked with leaves and branches. It wasn't too bad off on the outside. I'd seen much worse. But it needed a power washing and some other work. The shrubs along the front were scant in some spots, wildly overgrown in others. Very little sunlight was able to penetrate the canopy of trees, and so the house had taken on a green haze of mildew along the foundation. One of the louvers on the front facade had fallen from its place and lay between two overgrown bushes. From an unknown direction came the unmistakable odor of hot garbage.
A claw hammer lay in the center of the cement walkway leading to the front door. When I looked further, I saw that it had been used to pound flat hundreds of beer bottle caps, which were scattered around like tin confetti, some on the sidewalk, others on the grass. The concrete was chipped and marred from the repeated downward blows. I wondered why a child would be allowed to deface the property in such a way and moreover, what parent would abide such behavior.
Standing atop the stoop in my official uniform I rapped three times on the screen door with my knuckles, while inside, a children's television show was turned up rather loud. There was a wind-chime made of flattened forks and spoons hung by a string from the overhang. It danced slightly in the breeze, while two cars drove past the house. Then a tall figure appeared behind the mesh and opened up.
As the door swung past me, I looked up at a man in his twenties, best described as unkempt and awkward. His hair was stringy and greasy, his face bore an off-putting contorted expression. His eyes were far apart, his bladed face angular and emaciated at the cheeks. He'd stuck a wad of tissue paper in one of his nostrils to stem a nosebleed or something. The dirty Marlboro T-shirt he wore was stretched at the collar and frayed.
And he in turn peered down at my four foot tall frame, my short limbs and stubby fingers, in apparent disbelief at the sight of a "little person" in a black suit. That is to say, I am a midget. I've been one all of my life. And as a midget, I'm kind of used to being stared at, looked upon as an oddity. But this was a different kind of eyeballing. I felt something wonky. My hand resting on the iron railing had begun to perspire.
I began to say, "Hi, my name is Ed and I'm from..." when casually, the man reached down at me, arms extended for what I thought was an unwarranted hug. I was caught off guard. Nothing could have been more wrong in all of the universe.
I felt two large hands dig under my armpits, a strong clamping of them around my upper body, and then an overwhelming surge forward pulling me into the kitchen. It didn't make any sense and seemed not to be happening to me, as though it were something which I was watching from a distance and wasn't a part of. I had been swallowed into the house.