11 Secret Agent

TITLE: Crawl
GENRE: Horror

She lays a squirming bundle of leaves in the lap of a ragged skeleton she calls Mother. With broken-nailed fingertips she nimbly unties the package, spilling its living contents onto Mother’s thigh bones. Wriggling night-crawlers, limping crickets, cracked bird eggs, half a mouse carcass. Delicacies. She pats Mother on her dusty head, then squeezes back through the open vent cover. It is her turn to hunt, her turn to feed.

The metal vent is cold on her naked skin. It wakes her up, keeps her sharp. She moves easily up the icy vertical chute and onto the cool stone foundation. She grabs the scattering spiders, stuffing them into her mouth as she scrambles along the ground. In the dark spaces her vision is clear, her memory of this path honed to precision over many, many years.

A hollow space in the wooden walls allows her to climb two stories straight up. Her hands and feet grip warm familiar beams. She heaves herself ever upward, her toughened skin impervious to splintered wood and nagging nails. Twenty feet above the ground, she moves a wall eave aside and scampers out onto a tree limb into the night air.

It is a good night to hunt: bright moonlight, soft earth after a summer rain, quiet grass to stalk from. Wriggling worms are pulled easily from their burrows. Sleeping mice are caught unawares, awaking with a snap of their backs. She basks in the moonlight, savoring her kills.

She has no name.