Dillon stared in horror at the arm that he had just pulled from the river. At first, he had thought that it was a fish. Then, he had assumed that it was a turtle since there was none of the usual thrashing that a fish would do. But instead, an arm....a human arm....had broken the surface of the water.
The first thing that Dillon thought was, “Where is the rest of the body?”
Then he thought, “Oh my God! There must be a dead body down there in the river somewhere.”
He had seen movies and shows on television about people being murdered, their dead bodies being dumped in out of the way places. But he had never thought that anything like that could happen in Breathitt County. He tried to think if anyone had gone missing lately. He couldn’t recall. But his mind was in overdrive at the moment. He had to get out of here and get help.
And then, the unthinkable began to happen. The arm began to twitch and move! Dillon let out a yelp of horror and leaped back. What in the world? Was he seeing things?
But no, there was no mistaking it. The arm was starting to move....starting to crawl. It slowly was turning toward him. Its fingers were digging into the soft sand of the creek bank as it clutched its way toward his feet. Dillon could hear the fingernails scraping in the dirt....brushing against rocks.
Without thinking anything except a sense of revulsion, Dillon started to run away. Then, he thought better. Turning, he took two steps toward the crawling dead flesh and gave it a mighty kick. The hand tried to snatch at his foot, but he was too quick for it. He connected solidly with the arm and sent it flying into the air. With a loud splash, it landed back in the water.
His heart was beating so loudly that his head was throbbing. He grabbed up his stuff except for his fishing pole. He didn’t want to ever touch that fishing pole again. Making his way into the undergrowth, he was once again enveloped in a rich, green world full of pollen. He ran. He was full of mad energy that charged his legs with one simple command....run! Faster and faster, he ran up the hill toward the road. He just wanted to get away from the horror that lay behind him.
With a loud cry, he burst from the weeds and almost ran into the path of an oncoming coal truck. With a yelp, he sprang back as the truck rumbled past with a loud honking of its horn. Even the threat of near death didn’t register immediately with Dillon. He kept replaying the scene over and over in his head. The arm....the dead human arm....it had been moving....crawling. He kept seeing it. He kept hearing it. It was coming toward him.
Had he only been seeing things? He didn’t want to stick around to find out. He began to run. His backpack was slapping wildly into his back as he ran. He could hear the rest of his Mountain Dew sloshing around in the bottle, but he didn’t care. His breath came in sharp rasps, but he kept up the mad pace...fueled by fear.
He ran back that way he had come when suddenly he stopped in the road. Something was moving in the weeds beside the road! For a second, he thought that it might be the arm....coming after him again. But he knew that it couldn’t be. He had kicked the thing into the river. It moved to slowly to get this far up the road ahead of him. It couldn’t be the arm. But he found that his feet wouldn’t move any closer to the rustling weeds. Something was tickling the back of his mind. He didn’t want to see what was there....but he had no choice.
Just at that moment, something broke free of the weeds and wandered shakily out into the road. As Dillon’s eyes grew wide, the creature let out a pitiful screech that once might have been a meow. It was the cat. The dead cat! But how could that be? One of its eyes was rolled back in its head and blood continued to trickle out of its nostrils. It moved slowly and with irregular jerks since its back was obviously broken. Of course, since it was dead, it shouldn’t be moving at all.
Dillon found that he couldn’t scream...couldn’t move. With another yowl that sounded like a demon screaming from the very depths of hell itself, the cat began to move toward him.
Until next week.....class dismissed!
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