The Seed

I was cleaning my room today

and found a small pouch I didn't remember having

It was brown, made of a thin leather, and it had a black drawstring across its mouth.

I poked a finger inside, widening the opening, then carefully tipped the sachet onto its side, bouncing the edge on my palm to dislodge anything hidden within its depths.

Out rolled a small object that I at first took to be a pebble. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be some sort of grey seed.

I was about to throw it into my nearby trashbin when my curiousity struck.

Turning the seed over in my hands, I pondered what to do with it. Planting it seemed like the best idea, so I walked to the bathroom to get a small cup and some water.

The soil I scavenged from the bottom of my running shoes, which had been confined in my closet for the winter.

I knew the ground outside was too hard to obtain even a mote of soil from, so I had to settle for the secondhand dirt scraped from the treads of my Reeboks.

Tipping the dirt into the cup, I pressed my pinky finger in, making a hole just wide enough to admit the small seed.

As I tipped the seed in, an odd smell wafted into my nose. I sniffed, drawing a deep breath, trying to discern the scent from all the others in my room. It was acrid, like burning newspapers. It smelled like ashes.

The dirt quickly collapsed over the seed, burying it, and the scent of ashes.

I tipped a bit of water onto the surface of the dirt. It hung there, poised on the brown earth, the surface tension maintaining a round, bubble-like droplet.

Then it was sucked into the pores of the soil, as if something below had greedily drank it down.

I left to bring a bag of garbage to the garage

When I returned, rubbing my arms from the cold, the cup was gone.

At first, I thought I had left it somewhere, and that my mind had been distracted by the mess littering my bedroom floor

but then I noticed the thin ring of water on my desk where the cup had sat.

Upon closer inspection, I also noticed small tracks of water leading off the edge of the desk, like tiny footprints.

I tried to follow the thin droplets, but the carpet below had guzzled them up, leaving only a slight moistness in the material.

My door had been closed, so chances were that the cup was still in the room. I tried to pretend a draft had blown the cup off the desk, leaving a stream of water where it had tipped, but my window had been locked and shuttered. Even the blinds were down, and in a sudden grip of fear I tugged them open.

Light streamed into the room, but it only served to lengthen the shadows.

The lamp on my desk suddenly threw a threatening projection onto the wall. The plastic models on my bookshelf no longer looked like robots but demonic figurines.

Even my stuffed animals leered at me from their basket, their faces in eerie half-light.

I heard a quick scuffle from under my bed.

Cautiously, I reached for my Louisville Slugger, the wooden baseball bat I keep by the head of my pillow.

Slowly, I dropped to my knees. The unmade blankets dropped down to touch the floor. I reached a hand out to steady myself as I placed my head close to the ground.

With my other hand, I pinched a section of the blanket, ready to lift the curtain hiding whatever lay in wait under my bed.

With a cry, I pulled the blankets aside. Light streamed in, illuminating every dark corner. A jagged shadow lay huddled in the corner, sharp edges cast against the wall. I poked at it with the end of the baseball bat. It didn`t move, but made an odd clinking noise.

Using the bat, I manouvered the pieces into view. Shards of porcelain met my fingers as I reached out to scoop them up. The cup was shattered into 8 uneven pieces, each stained with dirt and a little water, which mingled into mud under my nails.

There was an odd red fluid that stained a few of the shards. I sniffed it carefully. It smelled like copper and iron.

I listened carefully. The silence enveloped me.

There wasn't a sound, other than the frantic beating of my heart.

I realized I had forgotten to breathe. I gasped once.

Twice.

Then something moved under the bedsheets, right in front of my eyes.

I grabbed the bat and swung. But whatever it was, it was fast, and dodged the crack by inches. It shuffled around under the bedspread, as I smacked the bed again and again, panting heavily.

I stopped to take a breath, and as I did, the lump under the sheets stopped too, as if it had read my mind.

A quiet tearing sound came from the rounded lump. A soft riiiiip that nevertheless penetrated the silence like a gunshot.

A hole appeared in my quilt. I spotted a thin claw, like that of a lizard, and a scaly, yellow eye. It blinked twice, then vanished.

The lump began to move again, this time towards the side of the bed where it met the wall. There was a thin crack there, between the frame and the wall, in which it would be able to slip and escape. I wasn't about to let that happen.

With the bat, I hammered away ferociously, blocking its movements with each swing. It seemed disorientated, moving in circles, trying to dodge my blows.

Eventually, it tried to make a break for it. The lump moved in a straight line for the edge, in a desperate gamble to reach the safety of the wall before I could take another swing.

The bat was too slow. Quickly, I scanned the room, and spotted my guitar binder on the desk next to me, within arm's reach. A binder filled with over 300 pages of tablature, as thick as a phone book.

I picked it up, hefted it onto my shoulder, and threw.

The book landed with pinpoint accuracy. I almost could hear a faint yelp, then the cracking of bones as the binder thudded, with grim finality, on the lump. It stopped moving.

Afraid of what I might find, I gripped the bat tightly in my left hand. With my right, I peeled the blankets back.

There was nothing there. Just a grey and black pile of ashes, and a thin trickle of smoke rising from them.

I picked up the entire bedsheet by the corners, avoiding the small mountain of ashes. Wrapping the cloth together, I bundled it into the garbage bag, then took the bag outside into the garage, pinching it by the corners.

I packed the bag, complete with the bundled bedsheets, into a metal bucket. Then I doused the entire thing with a generous amount of gasoline.

I brought the entire thing into my driveway. Standing a safe distance away, I tossed a match in.

I watched until the entire thing burned away. All that was left were ashes.

Feeling relieved, I returned to my room. The mess seemed less troublesome now, and I quickly disposed of anything unusual right away. My curiosity would not get the better of me again.

I tucked myself in that night, yawning from tension and nervousness. Closing my eyes, I put my hands behind my head, underneath my pillow.

And I felt something.

Hard. Round. Like a seed.

And another one.

And another one.

As I rolled them in my hands, realization dawning on me, I heard a thin crack. And another.

Then something cold touched my hand.