4)

The blue goo turned into a mirror like surface as it coated the Mirror before the Replicate began to look like me again. My actual reflection filled out along the Fetch’s skin nearly as fast as I could shovel it on with only one good arm. The blue stuff lying around and on the dead Nightmares wouldn’t last once the sun came up, even sealed up in an opaque jar. Nightmares just weren't meant for the daytime.

Some people had tried drinking the stuff. What that did was give another Nightmare a chance to come to our world, this time forming its body inside of someone rather than next to them. Considering their size, doing so made a bit of a mess.

I wish I hadn't mentioned the idea. It had only been an idle thought, not something I seriously meant as a suggestion. Why the hell wouldn't you test it on an animal first?

When I checked, the rats just got violently ill. My guess would be, they didn't have enough of a mind for a Nightmare to engage with, but they still started killing off all the stray animals starting on the second day. Animals could always spot them, even the ones that looked human, and they freaked the hell out.

Suzy fed some cats and even had some stick around her house. They stayed the hell away from mine.

As my Duplicate rolled over and asked me to do its other side I felt a presence somewhere out in the darkness looking my way. With a nervous step to the right in case someone or something was lining up a shot at me. Then I peered out into the darkness.

For a moment I thought I saw the gleam of another set of eyes reflecting oddly square looking blue dots at me, but then there was nothing.

Glancing down at the now fully healed up Duplicate, I saw it poking at its arm that showed my wound.

I gave it something useful to do. “Something’s still out there, but I can’t feel it how close it is with Big Daddies messing things up. Keep watch." Suzy's Nightmare being still semi awake made it impossible to feel the presence of anything else, and would until daybreak put it fully down.

The Fetch nodded and crawled into the remains of the cage to get the club for me, it needed me to keep it handy for its use. It could pick up something real to fight with, but the duplicates of what I was holding hurt other Nightmare more.

Back inside my house I pulled off my heavy magazine for armor jacket with a wince and poured some water over my blood soaked tee shirt before peeling it away.

The Greyhound’s long sharp teeth had sunk through the copy of Time and into my arm pretty deep, but it hadn't been able to move its jaws around in the narrow hole in the cage well enough to rip the bite open. It was painful as hell, but the risk of infection was the real danger.

Scrubbing it down with soap and then squirting in dollar store antibiotics was not fun. Two overlapping gauze pads on top and one under my arm got held on with several loops of surgical tape completely sealing off the wound for the night. In the morning I would leave it exposed to the air in the hope that it would start to scab over.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Heading into the kitchen to toss the bandage wrappers, I saw the busted out deadbolt on the back door.

I began squeezing the tip of my thumb and index finger on my left hand. What I felt, the Fetch felt. So me and it had worked out several signals. The thumb and index finger meant something was about to jump me.

Tossing out the papers in the kitchen trash can, I then walked over to the sink and poured myself a glass of tepid water from the pitcher on the counter. Tipping it back to drink I looked into the glass of the kitchen sink window which showed my reflection from the light coming in from solar garden lights hanging up in the living room window.

The reflection also showed me a dark mirror image of the room behind me, the figure standing at the door to the back hall, and the knife in its hand.

Its face showed me an evil grin on a red devil's face. The mask had rectangular eye slits, or at least it had been a mask in the movie it was from. The Devil Killer was from the slasher film Hounds of Hell.

Why such a cheesy low budget horror film had inspired a Nightmare I didn’t know. Probably from a kid that shouldn’t have been watching such a film.

I whipped around with the heavy ceramic pitcher in the hand of my unhurt arm, posed with it held up to throw, and saw no one else in the room.

“Oh right, you’re a jump scare killer aren’t you.”

Keeping my back to the counter, I slipped along it to put my back to the refrigerator and the securely boarded up kitchen window, keeping my eyes on the open portion of the room in front of me.

Unless it had somehow gotten the two value pack of Ramen noodles off the fridge and was perched up there, it would have to cross the room to get to me.

Of course, I had left the damned spiked club leaning up against the far side of the kitchen sink when I slid over, leaving me armed only with the water pitcher.

In order to reach over for the club with my good arm, I would have to set the pitcher down leaving me unarmed, the perfect time for Devil Face to appear.

Nope. A heavy ceramic pitcher more than half full of water wasn't going to just tickle if I put it upside of someone's head. I was just fine keeping a hold of it for now.

I saw some motion outside the kitchen window, and the backdoor moved a little. Rubbing my nose, I hoped that it was the Fetch outside getting the “Get ready to move.” Signal.

Looking over at the club, I reached over to set down the pitcher… and dove to the ground in the other direction, toward the stove.

Devil Face fell face down next to me as it tried to leap from the top of the fridge toward my back, it let out a giggle and turned its face to look at me as we lay down side by side on the floor. "What a clever little dead boy…"

Then the back door slammed over and the Fetch was down on its knees next to the other Nightmare, slamming a blue ceramic pitcher onto Devil Face's head with both hands. The serial killer Nightmare let out a sound that was something like a "Gagurk." and started to try to get up to its hands and knees, only to take another slam to the head from the pitcher which should have broken on the first hit, but stubbornly remained as intake as the one in my hand.

Scrambling up to my knees, I threw myself over the top of Devil Face back to pin him down.

It still had its knife in its hand, but it choose to stab at the Mirror's leg instead of mine. I heard the sound of glass cracking and the Duplicate grunted at its wounds, but it keep steadily beating Devil Face's head. "Just." Thump. "Die." Thump. "Already." Snap.

Something broke inside of Devil Face's head. The Fetch looked at me, I looked at the Fetch, then it continued to beat in Devil Face's skull.

Almost immediately it began struggling again and kept it up long after its head was nearly flattened. Only after the blue goo burst from its eyes and mouth did it stop moving. Even then that only made the Fetch grab the club from the floor where it had ended up next to the back door and handed it to me so that it could grab its own club from out of the air. Then it give the other Nightmare a few more good hits to the elbow and knees until they bent at the wrong angles.

"Alright slugger, I think you got it." I pointed to the cracked glass patterns on its right leg. "You might want to top yourself off from this guy before we drag him outside. No sense wasting free healing.”

Meanwhile, I wanted to figure out what it had done with my Ramen Noodles.