Jack Bites – Flash Fiction
Jack Bites
By N. M. Sirett©
SPECULATIVE – SUPERNATURAL – When Jack comes, he bites…
700 WORDS – 3-MINUTE READ
JACK BITES
Normally, there’s ice – 2 cubes – clinking against glass.
But now, a Southern Comfort waterfall doesn’t cascade over crackling rocks, glaring auburn – but goes in neat. Magnified through the tumbler are two bright orbs. Sticky, wet, bloodshot.
Fingers grasp the drink. Snaffling it to twitchy lips, a blue mouth. Downing it fast. Liquid-fire quells the chill. Burns the throat. Lasts but five seconds.
Enjoying the sting of it, the mind welcomes another cosy snap, and the hand steadies itself long enough to pour another measure.
Outside, the world crystalises. Blue glitters white. A metallic tinsel-scape.
He is coming.
The hand pours again but with less control. It jerks. And the spirit in the bottle escapes. A little of its warmth spills onto a coaster. Wets the outside rim of the glass.
The tumbler swirls fresh its golden gleam. Again, it empties quick. The last glug is followed by a frigid glitch. The hand suspends. An ear tunes in to the silent deep.
Out there –
Outside.
What is it?
It is a bitter nip. Tightening its callous grip on the land. Nature holds its tongue. A fondant outline of alder trees grows parchment thin. White air fastens tight to the boughs – invisible ribbons in opaque silence.
That beat… a beat of nothing, impregnates the world outside, and burgeons unseen, unheard, yet felt – with a deliberate tempo: accelerando – agitato. How many beats does the heart have left? A metronome counts down, losing time instead of keeping it.
He is coming.
Outside, the lawn sparkles with cold grit. Ice pearls adorn the sugary path leading to the door. Unlocked. Ajar. No time now for another drink.
He comes.
The indent of his tracks harden fast. Caramelising like crème brûlée.
And the mind trips back to a time when that dessert was made with love and shared with a lost love. Alone now, joy is seized in the moment. Like when the lake freezes over and crème brûlée’s skates are still in the cupboard.
The soft and distant tread crescendos. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
He is closer. At the threshold. Breathing his sweet sigh into the doorway.
The midair hand unfreezes. The tumbler topples from its grasp. The crash disturbs the edges of this quiet hour. A mosaic of glassy chaos, as trenchant as the tongue that curses with a rasp, reflects red flame on the stone hearth.
Beyond the lawn the clouds solidify. Stiffening up the sky. The ground toughens to a stopped pulse. And reality constricts. Air is a snake. Squeezing its vista-prey. The world asphyxiates.
Inside, two eyes bulge above a gaping maw at the visitor’s outstretched hand – black as shadow, moving like a puppet on a string.
Bare blue feet are motionless. The same feet that carried their master home and away from the lake. Where the ice caved in, betraying the skater, breaking its promise. Fracturing its freeze. The same feet that shed wet socks and mounted the stool beside the wood burner. Willing the blue toes pink – with no luck. If the eyes could unlock now, they would fall upon the piles of clothes discarded on the doormat, balled up in a sodden heap. A symbol of the fool.
The wood burner burns brightly like an old friend out of touch. As the hand reaches out to…
Who is he – who has come?
Fae? Imp?
Jack?
Oh yes, Jack – making a crude entering, and bringing with him a hyperthermic terror.
Outside, the sky stops. Draws back in on itself. Waits. A niveous static almost surfaces from behind its smoky veneer but doesn’t.
Inside, the wood burner ceases its crimson folly. Retreats into iron-black emptiness and ashen regret. Allowing the carpet to maintain the snowflakes nestled in its fibres. The room has a mirror shine like winter lakes. It’s occupant floats within its mirky hold.
He is here.
He is the chill reeds rising from the lakebed to tether struggling limbs. The liquid-invader that comes a rushing, a gushing – immersive and unstoppable – down the protesting throat.
A tundra stillness resides in his wake. Thermometers plummet.
He vanishes.
Leaving the blue figure to petrify silver-mauve.
He comes with the cold, this imp, this Jack.
And when he comes, he bites.
