A Creature Scorned, by T.J. King

The night was calm. The sky speckled with stars as Tara slipped out of her car.  It was a routine night of work, much like every other. Show up, log in, and try to stay awake until Alex relieved her at seven a.m. or seven fifteen in Alex time. Tara assumed that he did it to piss her off. He still resented that she got the supervisor position when his buddy got fired. That’s his problem, she thought. She wiped her access card, punched in her code, and opened the door to boredom.
As usual, Alex was chomping at the bit to leave when she walked in. The lazy prick left early every night and never failed to leave behind a mess. The desk was always littered with candy wrappers and the leftovers from his lunch. True to form, he brushed past her as soon as she stepped into the camera room. He mumbled something about ‘glitches’ and ‘stupid false alarms’. The high tech lab had a myriad of cameras and motion detectors set to swing into action at precisely 1800hrs every night when the last of the staff left.  What exactly they did there, Tara didn’t know. They paid her well enough to not really care. Nothing ever happened on the twelve hour shifts anyway. 
Tara settled in to read Alex’s vague reports and noticed the printouts pointing to repeated alarms.  Beside each, Alex had noted “all clear”.  Yeah, she thought. Like the lazy bastard really checked them out. She gave the cameras a once over and just as she was about to document nothing to report, the alarm for level 2—section 1 sounded.  Since it was a motion sensor, Tara quickly checked the camera and saw nothing. She grabbed her gear, deciding that a visual inspection was in order.  Before she got out of her chair, the alarm for level two, section two went off.  That time, she saw the snowy, white noise appear on the screen. 
“Wow! That’s not right!”  She said. 
After notating both alarms, she hurried to the lower level. Cautiously, she approached section one’s antechamber and listened at the door.  They were designed with peepholes but they only worked from within the antechambers. Hearing nothing, Tara swiped her card, punched in the code and slowly opened the door.  There was nothing there.  The same thing greeted her in section two.  Sighing, she returned to the camera room. 
Over the next six hours, everything was quiet.  Then, the silence was again broken. Both alarms were set off at once.
“Aw, for fuck sake, why now? Why can’t you wait until Numb Nuts gets here at seven?”
Again, she trudged down to the lower level, expecting nothing, and grumbling, “Oh sure, state of the art security… my ass.”
Without bothering to listen at the door first, she opened the chamber and hurried in. The door slammed shut behind her and she was assaulted with the worst smell she had ever experienced.  It was like a combination of rotten eggs, corn chips, and two month old gym bag. She had to will her stomach not share her partially digested lunch with the floor.
Strangely, the alarm was no longer blaring, it cut off with her access to the fresh air of the stairwell.  Deciding she didn’t need to check section 2, Tara turned to open the door and escape the rancid odour.
“Screw this,” she said. “He can check this out at seven!”
It was at that moment that she heard the noise; a scraping followed by a rustling. Pausing, she looked over her left shoulder to try and pinpoint the direction it was coming from. She stood frozen in place, listening, but the noise didn’t return. She place her hand back on the door knob and turned it, but before she could push the door open a gravelly voice that sounded like one of her mother’s two packs a day smoker bingo buddies croaked out “Hey pretty girl, come here.”
“What the fuck!” Tara yelled out as she swung around, hands fumbling for her pepper spray.
“Yes, I’m talking to you. Come here. I need help.”
Every fibre of Tara’s being told her to run, but her morals stopped her; someone needed help. She turned back to the second antechamber and tried to look through the peephole, then remembered that it only worked from the inside. Fighting to ignore the smell, Tara asked, “Are you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?”
“I need help,” the voice rasped. “I need to get out of here now!”
“Tell me what happened, “Tara said “Are there leaks in there? What’s that smell?’
“Help me” it wailed. “Please help me…”
“I'll be right back” Tara said “I’m going to go call for help...”
“No!” It screamed. “Help me!”
Tara knew that her phone was useless in the lower levels and that she’d have to get through the first antechamber to push the emergency button…unless she went into chamber two.
“Reach up on the wall to the right of the door and hit the emerg...”
“I can’t reach....” it moaned
Heart pounding and sweat running down her neck, Tara made the decision to go into the second chamber. She took a deep breath as she readied herself, which only let her taste how horrendous the stench was. She swiped her card, punched in the code and slowly pulled the door open.
She managed to get the door a quarter of the way open before it was blown out of her hand. She threw herself against the wall and dropped to a crouch as the heavy, metal door slammed into the opposite wall, nearly crashing through it. A large, flaming projectile flew through the air, passing exactly where her head would’ve been had she not crouched. Her eyes followed its path as it sored across the room, slammed into the outer wall, and slumped down to the floor, seeming to unravel.
An inhuman entity rested across the room from her. The smell that followed it inside the room could only be described as a product from Lucifer himself after a hard night of consuming substandard barrel wash and pickled eggs. It looked at Tara, lime green and black mucous splattered the floor from its flattened, bulbous nose. It sneezed and shot a mucous wad of phlegm far enough to grace Tara’s pant legs with an unwanted memento.
Its right eye looked out at her from under a jagged and scarred lid.  The white pupil glinted in the fluorescent lighting. Below its snotty, pockmarked nose was a mouth boasting the sharpest, most jagged and crooked teeth imaginable. Drool strings hung from both sides of its monstrosity of a mouth.  It was naked except for the thick, black, coarse hair that separated the blisters that threatened to burst forth their white and bloody pus at any moment.
“Ahhhh, thank you child” it hissed, stroking its chin with dagger like claws as it pondered. “How shall I repay you? The last one tapped on the window and made fun of me, then walked away, leaving me to suffer. Not a very nice guy, that one… not at all.”
Tara felt rage well up inside her.  Alex had known? She knew that he resented her, but this? It was beyond what she could believe. He couldn’t have known…could he?
“They won’t be doing those things to me again. The lights...they hurt....the needles...oh how they burn! They will all pay!”
Tara thought fast.
"Wait,” She said. “You want out of here, right?  And… and you don’t know how to thank me, right?”
The creature grimaced.
 “Yes, that’s right. I’m still deciding how to repay you.” It stepped closer to Tara, who took a step back and raised her palms out in front of her.
“You… um… still need me to get out that door.”
The creature looked at her suspiciously, glanced at the main entrance to the room, and then looked back at Tara, squinting.
“Yes,” it said, taking another step toward Tara. “I’ll make you a deal. If you open the door for me, I’ll just kill you. I won’t eat you. How’s that sound?”
It took another step toward her, licking its lips. A new long, thread of drool was forming at the thought of eating her flesh.
Tara continued to back away from the creature. She knew that whatever she did, it would have to be soon.
“I need to put my code in with my card to let you out,” she said.
She reached down toward her key card and the creature warned, “No tricks girl, or ill eat you alive.”
“No… no, I’m just getting my card” Tara lied
“Come closer,” the creature said. “The light hurts. I can’t see you properly”
Tara saw her chance...she flipped on her mag-light and directed its powerful beam directly into the beasts eye. It howled like it was mortally wounded and threw itself onto the floor, rolling from side to side as if it was on fire. Tara leapt over it, swiped her card and punched in her code. As soon as the panel flashed green, she ripped the door open and ran out, taking the light off the beast. She slammed the door just as the creature hit it with all of its might.
“You Bitch!” The creature shouted as it slammed into the door over and over. “You tricked me!
Tara ignored the creature’s tantrum and made her way back up the stairs. She ran into the security office and picked dialed 9...1… and then hung up the receiver.
***
Alex arrived to work precisely 15 minutes after his shift was scheduled to begin. Without looking at him, Tara pulled on her coat, collected her purse and headed for the door.
“Wait,” he said. “It shows here on your report that there were multiple alarms last night…the last one was only twenty minutes ago. Did you go down to check that one?”
Tara lowered her eyes to the floor.
“Come’ on, Alex,” she said. You know the deal. You do what I tell you to, not the other way around.”
He tensed up in his chair as if he was about to say something snide, but relaxed almost immediately.
“Roger that, boss,” he said, offering her a mock salute. “I’ll take care of it.”
Tara looked at her watch and saw that it was twenty after the hour. A ten minute head start should be good enough, she thought. She walked out the door, but turned back around and poked her head inside again.
“Don’t make an extra trip out of it,” she said. “Check it out during your next patrol.”
He saluted her again without bothering to turn around. Tara closed the door and made her way to her car. When she sat down behind the wheel, she was smiling.