Drips



It was a Saturday night and as per usual, my parents were out. They went out every Saturday night, which left me alone with my sister, Megan, and my dog, Dog.

I looked at the clock, realising it was about 7:50 and, as my stomach reminded me, I hadn't eaten today. "Megan! What's for dinner?!" I called down the hallway.

I hear her footsteps walking up the stairs and before long she was at my door. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Hmm... Chinese please!" I said excitedly.

"Okay, I'll be back in about 10 minutes with the food. Just make sure you feed Dog while I'm out." she replies as she walks down the stairs, picks up the keys to the car, and leaves. But when I think about it, I never did hear the car start. With nothing to do except wait, I fell asleep easily.

I awoke to the sound of a tap dripping noisily, and my stomach grumbling. I had been asleep for 3 hours at least, and Megan wasn't home yet. My train of thought was lost to the dripping sound, as it became louder and more frequent. Drip drip drip. I tried to fall asleep again, but the tap was getting louder and louder. Drip Drip Drip Drip. I walked to the bathroom to turn off the tap making all the noise, to find all the taps were off and the sink was dry, but I could still hear it, and now that I think about it, the sound was coming from somewhere downstairs. DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP.

I walked slowly down the stairs, and the noise got louder as I did so. I followed my ears, and to this day I regret that I ever heard anything. That I ever heard that noise. That I ever even lived in that house. As I walked into the lounge room, I found my sister, mother and father all hanging from the ceiling by ropes made of, now that I think about it, a material the exact colour of Dog's fur.

All I could do was scream as the thick, deep red blood dripped from the torn apart bodies, one of my sisters legs just hanging on by string of grey, decaying skin. Then the smell hits me. The smell of rotting flesh crawls all over my body, clinging to me like a diving suit, making me wonder just how long they had been hanging there.

That's when the memory starts to get hazy. I remember my family's lifeless bodies and their eyeless sockets, the blood dripping from the deep knife wounds that scaled up and down their torsos. But that's when I was greeted by...I still don't know what it was.

But it had exactly the same bloody, ripped up features as my family, except that when it saw me, it smiled such a cruel, menacing smile that I knew immediately who was behind my parents’ murder. And it didn't speak to me as such, it spoke to my mind, saying

"I just want to make them like me. I want to make them ALL like me."

I remember it as clearly as that every time, like it was just yesterday. I ran from the beast, and I've never stopped, never looked back.

But just remember, if you ever hear a dripping noise, GET OUT. Even if your family's in the house, don't go and get them, they're most likely dead already. In fact, that's probably them dripping right now.