The crying, the pounding, the growling, the constant scratching at their bedroom door; she's almost broken through.
The magician smiled as the boy’s expression changed to fear: his head grew heavy and snapped back with a crack, the sound of loose change spilling out behind the boy like a slot machine.
Everything around me knew it was behind me before I did.
The last image the fly had was the mother spider, with her babies swarming on her back, sink her fangs into him; the liquifying about to begin.
I’ve lost track of how many hours, maybe days now, that I’ve been falling, and somehow the pitch blackness keeps getting darker.
That pause is what I think about most now, every night, listening to what’s left of her roam around downstairs; that one small pause before he said “As you wish.”
The next day when I looked at it, she was gone; a bloody hand print on the inside of the glass, my face in the photo grinning maniacally.
Now here I am, waiting my turn, listening to my brother scream as she carves triangular eyes into him; my sister shrieking as a candle scalds her insides.
When I got home from work the next day, I found what was left of her laying on the kitchen floor; our triplets still picking at her bones.
Now, everyone who was supposed to die in that minute…we need to take care of them ourselves.