Bill was happy. As he walked through his small salt-box framed house, he was thinking that things were really starting to look up. This evening he had a date. For the first time since the unexpected death of his wife, Bill was happy and looking forward to something. Alma had passed away years ago and aside from grocery shopping and occasional drinks with his bud Jim, he didn't...

Standing in front of the dressing table mirror in his tighty-whities, Bill looked dejectedly down at his stomach noticing how only the tips of his toes were visible beyond the convex bowl of his belly. He wondered just how this had occurred. It seemed not too long ago when both feet were visible almost to the ankles and he had an unobstructed view of his 'fellows'. What the...

The tube had said to apply and then allow to dry for at least 30 minutes. Since it was only 3:00 and he'd arranged to pick Trudy up in time for the early show, leaving time for drinks afterward he hoped, he had a cool 3 hours to kill. "Time for a quick sandwich and maybe a beer to bolster my courage," Bill thought to himself. Giving himself one last cursory glance into the...

Bill's mind rolled over known items, trying to pull them together into something it could understand and thus mentally file. This new and entirely unparalleled information could only be categorized as a fucked up cross between a giant spider, a saber tooth tiger and the giant octopus from It Came From Beneath the Sea. As his mind attempted to take in the reality of ...

Bouncing off his refrigerator Bill fell to the floor at the same time the monster burst through the door. It over shot him, actually scuttling over his right foot and into his kitchen. Dumbfounded he watched it savagely smash against the cabinets and begin to turn. He had hesitated at first, but adrenalin was thankfully in control now. His brain bypassed his consciousness...

As he ran heaving, he realized that although the street was oddly empty, there was a lot going on just out of eyesight. Dogs let out high-pitched, screaming cries of terror, sirens wailed, people shouted unintelligible words and somewhere off to his right a gun shot pounded the air. Bill thought of his arsenal, sitting snugly in his gun cabinet; well oiled, stocked with ammo...

Bill slammed into the door of the small utility shed in the back yard of goofy Francis Hanloran's house. He frantically tried to slide the door back on its track but in his haste, got it wedged slightly and it would only open about a foot. But, running on fear, another adrenalin burst drove him through the small canted doorway, stopping him for only a split second as his belly...

Bill spun his body and instinctively shoved himself against the doors, as far away from what was probably some new Hell now locked in the shed with him. It was then he made out the blocky head and jug ears of old retarded Roland raising above the front end of the yard tractor parked in the back of the shed. "Wanna go for beahs now," Roland declared, rubbing the side of his...

Crystal and Roland sensed something going on in the mind of the newest resident of the shed. They sat in almost suspended animation trying to figure out the ramifications and intent of the newest arrival, Crystal was anyway. What was rolling around in Roland's head was anybody's guess. They remained an odd triangle of emotional distress for a full minute, eyes darting from each...

Crystal, seeing his concentrated stare, looked in the same direction. They both noticed a sickly-pink flesh-colored appendage licking at the corner of the shed through a small break in the metal. It must have gotten enough of a purchase, because the sheet-metal started to bend back. Roland, realizing he was missing something since everyone seemed to be staring at the floor...

Roland's cognitive world consisted of very few elements. So few, in fact, that in Roland's world there really were only five creatures: people (and it was irrelevant whether he knew them or not, they were all just people), dogs, cats, his favorite horses and then bugs. So, after the first reaction of fear to the yelling, screaming and banging around, Roland sat frozen trying to...

Giggling now, sounding just like the naughty boy he knew he was, Roland came up behind the beast unnoticed and gave it a good shot of the insecticide. The creature let out a screech that made all the others sound like the birdsong and it began to spin; arms, legs and tentacles flaying about, huge teeth gnashing. A thin tendril of smoke began to raise out of the creature...

It was then that he realized just how badly he'd been cut. Bill understood now how Jim's body had gotten into the state he'd found it in. The creature's talon had cut through the heavy flesh of his thigh like a scalpel, opening up a wound so deep he could see fat oozing out of the top. It must have only gotten a glancing blow off his arm, because all it left there was a...

"I'm thinking we treat these ugly fuckers like we would any pest. Look around for any kind of bug killer. I'm sure Francis' got a shit-ton of it around, as psycho as he was about his yard." The past tense he used to describe his neighbor left him with a fleeting sense of sadness. But he quickly dismissed his emotional turn, both because he didn't have time for such maudlin...

"Yea, it's a military maneuver. You surround an enemy on all four, well in this case three, sides in order to massacre them. If we can get them to funnel in through the door, we'll be able to kill them quickly. I'm figuring if we can get rid of those right around us, we can get into the Hanloran house, get more supplies and figure out where to go from there. Make sense?" he replied.

The first thing Bill did was rummage in Francis' drawers to find a replacement for his less than functional (and flattering) outfit. Decked out in a cotton button-down shirt and a pair of jeans, a bit snug for his liking but a hell of a sight better than pea-green stretch pants, he set his companions to quietly cleaning themselves up and getting something to eat. It's amazing, the...