THE MIMIC
Mike Ramon
© 2012 Miguel Ramon
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Kim Vargo made a left onto Madison St., the street where she and her family had lived since Caleb--her oldest son--was born. It was just past 8 o’clock, and the streetlamps along Madison fought against the inky blackness of night, throwing little yellow pools on the pavement, still wet from a light shower that had just passed. Yawning, she rolled smoothly along until she could see the orange rectangle of light that marked the spot she called home. She pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, then began collecting her things--her purse, some paperwork--making sure not to forget anything. As she looked up she saw the curtain in the living room window move aside, and Sean--her husband--peeking out. He smiled, gave her a little wave, and disappeared; the curtain swung back into place; a smile played across Kim’s lips.
She opened the door and dropped one leg onto the ground; as she was about to swing her other leg out of the car her cellphone rang. She thought about not answering it until she was inside the house, but changed her mind and went digging in her purse for the phone. Having found it, she peeked at the display and what she saw there caused one eyebrow to shoot up in mild bemusement--the name SEAN beamed up at her from the phone. She looked up at the now-vacant window and wondered to herself why on God’s green Earth he was calling her when he knew she would be in the house in just a moment. She pushed the RECEIVE button and put the phone to her ear.
“What is it, Sean?” she asked.
“Hey, are you home yet?” he asked in turn.
For a second she didn’t know how to answer the question; he had just seen her with his own two eyes.
“Yes, of course, but why---“
“I just wanted to let you know that me and the kids will be home about twenty minutes,” Sean said. “I brought them out for a late snack.”
A cold feeling spread within her chest. Once again she looked at the window, that rectangle of light looking out from the living room.
“Sean, where are you?” she asked quietly.
“We’re at McDonald’s. We’ll be leaving here in just a minute. Listen, I’ve gotta go honey, I have to deal with a situation here. Patrick, give her back the toy or else---“
The phone went dead, leaving Sean’s threat to their unruliest child unfinished. Kim slipped the phone back into her purse and sat frozen in place for a moment, in a haze of confusion. She looked up at the front door of the house as someone (who was certainly not her husband) opened it from inside. The door opened just a crack and then stopped; it was an invitation to come on already, come inside and see what’s waiting for you.
Kim slowly drew her leg back into the car before pulling the door shut, doing her best not to make too much noise. She slipped they keys back into the ignition and turned it; the engine came back to life with a low rumble. With her eyes still on the open door of the house she shifted into reverse and pressed lightly on the gas pedal. The car creeped slowly back out onto the street. As she began to turn the wheel the front door of her house flew all the way open and Sean-who-was-not-Sean appeared in the doorway. He was visibly breathing heavily and he bared his teeth at her. What she saw then were a set of sharp teeth that reminded her of a great white shark. Incredulity overcame her for a moment, and she sat there in the car, with her foot on the break, staring at the Sean-thing standing in the doorway of her home, backlit by light from the living room lamp, staring at her with a gaping maw and hate in its eyes.
The Sean-thing broke into a run then, coming at her fast. She shifted into drive and stomped on the pedal. The back tires screeched and smoked as they spun in place for a moment, trying to gain traction on the wet street. Then she was off, speeding down Madison and away from her house. She looked up at the rearview mirror and saw the Sean-thing chasing after her, falling farther behind with each passing second.
She made a right turn onto Carver St. , and then another turn, and another. After a series of random turns (careful not to turn around in a circle and head back the way she had come), and when she was no longer certain exactly where she was, she slowed down to a sane speed and reached over to her purse. She reached in and picked out her cell; she thought about dialing as she drove, but remembered every dire warning she had ever given Sean about the dangers of doing just that, and so pulled over and parked on the side of the street. She checked the mirror to make sure that no one--or nothing--was behind her. Satisfied that danger was not closing in from behind, she turned her attention back to the cellphone.
Gripping the cell tightly she debated with herself. Her first instinct was to call 911, but for some reason she thought that informing the dispatcher that she needed help because something with a set of wickedly sharp teeth, and that looked like her husband--but was not her husband--was chasing after her, and could they please send some help (the Ghostbusters, perhaps?) didn’t seem like a good idea. Her next thought was to call Sean--but would that conversation go any better than the one she would have with a 911 dispatcher?
Well, hell, I have to call somebody, she thought.
She scrolled to her husband’s name in her contact list and pressed SEND. The line rang once, twice; after the fourth ring the recording picked up:
“Hey, this is Sean, leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as---”
She ended the call.
“Damn it, Sean,” she hissed.
Kim understood that most likely he hadn’t answered her call because he was on the road with the kids, heading back home, and that she had told him too many times to recount not to answer the phone while driving, but even so it pissed her off. She felt that he should have known by some (possibly imperceptible) tone of the ring that this call was different, more urgent, an emergency. Why couldn’t people just do the right thing when you needed them to?
And then her breath caught in her throat. He was probably on the road with the kids, headed home. Home, where the Sean-thing might be lying in wait for someone to come back, to come into the house. Those teeth….
“Oh shit!” she spoke aloud to herself.
She shifted back into drive and drove to the next cross street, stopping to look up at the street name to gauge where she was. The sign read Lexington Ave. She referenced the map in her head of the neighborhoods surrounding the street where she and her family lived until she was certain that she knew where she was on that map. Lexington--she could make it home about five minutes if she ignored the speed limit.
Kim turned left onto Reed, followed it for three blocks, and then made another left onto Cardinal. She continued on in this way, following that mental map. As she was speeding along a lonely stretch of Hartford St. she gasped as something heavy clunked on the roof of the car. She eased off of the gas pedal a bit as she stared up, wondering what in the hell could have fallen on her car.
There was a loud crash as something struck the windshield. Kim screamed out and hit the brakes. The Sean-thing came briefly into view as it was thrown forward, off of her car, and then it disappeared as it fell out of her sightline. For a moment Kim sat stunned into inaction, but the moment of confusion didn’t last long. She hit the gas, intending to run the damn thing over. She screamed again as the Sean-thing jumped back up into view, landing on the hood of the car. It slammed one meaty fist through the windshield, and then used both of its hands to pull at the glass and widen the hole. Glass fragments fell in a shower around her legs and feet. In shock Kim pressed down even ha
rder on the accelerator, and the speedometer ticked passed sixty, then seventy.
The hole in the windshield was about the size of a bowling ball now. The Sean-thing tried to fit its head through the hole, but couldn’t quite make it. It put its face up to the hole then and bared its teeth at her, letting out something that she could only think of as a growl; she could smell the thing’s putrid breath, a cross between rancid meat and an outhouse. Her eyes watered with the stench of it.
She took her foot off of the gas, tapped the brakes lightly until the car lost some of its speed, and then stamped on the brakes. The Sean-thing was again thrown free of the car. It had been thrown far enough so that Kim could see it lying there on the ground in the glare of her headlights. There was no sign of movement. Then she saw a slight twitch, so small that she wasn’t completely sure that she hadn’t imagined it. She shifted into reverse and started to back away from the wretched thing. As she backed up the Sean-thing sprang up quickly, as if it hadn’t just been thrown from a moving vehicle, and turned toward her. It broke into a run, and Kim pressed harder on the gas pedal. Still the Sean-thing came on, running faster than any man, impossibly closing the distance between them.
Kim’s mind was pulled in two directions: one part of her knew that she should be looking back to see where she was going, but another part was loathe to take her eyes off of the creature for even one second. Caught between these two courses of action, she lost control of the car. The wheel slipped out of her grip and the car jerked to the right. She got her hands back on the wheel and hit the brakes, but not soon enough--there was a sudden jolt as the car backed into a tall oak tree.
“What the…?”
She looked around the interior of the car in a daze. The fragments off glass that had been knocked out of the windshield had been tossed about on impact, and some of them were now resting in her lap. Her mind cleared enough for her to remember the situation she was in, and she turned her attention to the world outside the car. The Sean-thing was nowhere in sight.
Her cellphone rang then. She searched for her purse, but couldn’t see it anywhere. The chirping sounded like it was coming up from below her. She reached down and snaked one hand beneath her seat, searching blindly for the handbag. Her hand touched on something and she grabbed it and dragged it out from under the seat. It was indeed her purse, and the cell chirped again from within it. She looked at the display--it read SEAN. She hit RECEIVE.
“Sean, you have to help me!”
“Kim, are you there? Where are you, babe?”
“Sean, something is after me, please---“
“Hello? Kim? I can’t hear you. We’re home now, and the kids are about to hit the sack. Are you almost home?”
“Sean, listen carefully. You have to call the pol---“
The window beside her exploded as the Sean-thing reached in and grabbed her. She let out a guttural scream from deep within her as it pulled her out through the space where a window used to be. She was thrown to the ground so hard that her teeth clacked together painfully.
“Sean, help me!” she screamed.
The last thing she saw were those horrible teeth, set in a face that looked like her husband’s. The night was filled with an ear-shattering scream, and then the scream was cut off, returning a gentle silence to the evening. But the silence didn’t last long; a voice could be heard from within the battered car.
“Kim? I can’t hear you; you’re gonna have to call me back. Or better yet, just get home, okay? The kids want you to kiss them goodnight. Love ya.”