FICTION BY KATHLEEN ZAMORA

Kathleen Zamora lives in the San Fernando Valley. She earned a BA and MA in English with a focus in Creative Writing from California State University, Northridge. She enjoys reading and writing Horror, Literary Fiction, Romance, and Weird Fiction. You can follow her writing journey via her Instagram here: @kathleeniswriting. 

THE FLYING THINGS
by Kathleen Zamora

Ed shuffled his feet with his hands tucked deep into his pockets. The wind was strong enough to push him along and pierced his skin through the holes in his jersey. He could see sand spiraling in the air through the glow of the lamp posts as they fluttered on. He had to blink frequently to keep sand from landing in his eyes.

He told his parents he was going to watch the game at Jake’s place and spend the night, but here he was, walking to the beach house as it was nearing sunset. He felt a little guilty. It wasn’t that he was too young to be out late; he was fifteen, after all. It was that it wasn’t safe for anyone of any age to be out after dark. “Horrible Things” happened to those who were the victims, or so they say. Ed wasn’t sure if the rumors were true, or that it actually happened the way they said it did.

And man, were there stories! That the monsters would come flying out from the sky. That they’d swoop down and grab you with vulture-like talons, eat what they want off you then stuff you in their nests. Then the next morning when your neighbors got up for breakfast, they’d see a body, twisted and contorted in a nest upon a lamp post or someone’s roof, spotted by a kid who caught sight of a birds nest and climbed it to see if there were any eggs but would end up finding a pair of arms and a few bloody eyeballs.

And then there was that story…but he didn’t remember it. His mother liked to remind him that when he was five, his older brother disobeyed them and snuck out after dark. The following morning a nest was perched on the cover of the porch swing, and when Ed climbed on it for his routine morning swing, a pair of eyeballs fell onto his lap.

Ed doesn’t remember it that way.

His dad said he was probably too traumatized. Ed himself thought that his brother had just decided to run away and had sarcastically painted some quail eggs to look like eyeballs, a sort of last fuck you to their parents and their unbelievably strict town rules. Either way, Ed wasn’t buying it.

His best friends didn’t believe it either. Especially Jake, who claimed he had stayed out from sunset to sunrise one night when he was eight and nothing happened except a seagull circled down to steal his chocolate bar.

Still, his brother had disappeared. It was on all the local news and his parents weren’t the same afterward. But Ed felt in his heart that his brother was out there somewhere and needed to be found.

*****

Jake was the one who convinced Ed to meet down at the beach house. After dark, he had said, to prove all their parents wrong. 

The beach house was more of a beach shack. A sloping porch leading up to four dirty walls and a roof, sturdy enough to keep those inside safe, yet run-down enough that no one would bother to check here for them. It made it a clever place for them to drink, smoke, sleep—whatever it was they decided to do. They had made it their own over the years, starting with Ed’s brother, who brought the couch Cris was currently sitting on, as well as the bare mattress in the corner in which Jake always called dibs.

Jake said that when they survive, the three of them could ditch town and go find Ed’s brother. They’d all live together in a cozy apartment, start a band, meet girls. All that sort of thing, and never have to be afraid of the dark. That sounded great to Ed, who only ever wanted to be free. He agreed right away.

Cris was the one that was less sure, even though at seventeen, he was the oldest of the three. He had always been afraid of the dark, even before he knew about the Flying Things, though his fears had always been childish things: a mummy in his closet, a gnome he swore winked at him, a smiling face that awaited him in the bathroom but disappeared once he flipped on the lights. They only got worse when he heard about the Flying Things.

Particularly when Cris heard about Ed’s brother.

He lived in the house right across from Ed and told others that he had heard Ed’s mom’s screams, and heard his own mother’s screams when she went across the street to check on her. Cris told anyone who would listen that he saw it himself that morning while he looked out from his second-story window.

What was in the nest was not the eyes in Ed’s lap, but Ed’s brother’s eyeless head connected only to a spine sticking out the nest, mouth frozen open mid-scream, and an arm and leg sticking out on opposite sides of the nest. He never told Ed what he had seen. In fact, Cris eventually convinced himself that it was a bad dream and he had never really seen what he had seen.

“Cris,” Jake said, “What’s eatin’ ya, man? You got nothin’ to worry about.”

“Yeah,” Cris said, cradling his stolen beer, his leg in an anxious bounce. “I know.”

Ed finally showed up and knocked on the door, “It’s me, man, open up.”

“Eddie boy!” Jake called, opening the door and pulling him into a half hug. “You made it! Tonight’s the night, man! We’re gonna show ‘em. We’ll be out of this town in no time.”

“I hear you,” Ed said. “Now back off, it’s freezing out there.”

“You both are a bunch’a babies,” Jake scoffed. “We have to go out there, man! If we stay cooped up in here it’ll be just like we were home. Grab a beer and follow me.”

Ed put his cigarette out and Cris got up from his seat. They both followed Jake outside.

*****

Jake walked with his friends a half a mile down the beach, sitting on the sand a couple hundred feet from the pier. They finished off the beers and watched the sun set and the moon rise behind the ocean. Cris let out a deep breath in apparent relief when no Flying Things shot out the sky the second it got dark. They sat in silence for the longest, flinching at the crash of ocean waves or the occasional seagull’s caw, but no Flying Things came. Jake noticed that Cris still looked nervous.

“See? What’d I tell ya?” Jake said with fake confidence. “No monsters.”

“Not a single one,” Ed agreed, shaking his head in disbelief.

“They could still come,” Cris said. “My mom says sometimes they wait; they like to sneak up on people.”

“All right, Buzzkill,” Jake said, nudging Cris. “I gotta take a leak.”

Jake got up and stumbled down toward the pier. He had taken his shoes off earlier. The wet sand stuck to his toes and though it was freezing out, the sand was warm. When he reached the bottom of the pier he unzipped his pants, relieving his bladder simultaneously while leaning on a nearby pillar. He closed his eyes and sighed in relief.

He sniffed through the cold air and thought he smelled something funny, almost rotten or sour. This wasn’t too suspicious to him considering people often threw trash under here, or used the bathroom like himself. He shrugged it off.

That’s when he heard it.

Was it an infant’s cry, or a bird’s chirp? He looked up, and perched on the railing of the pier was a huge nest. Jake froze in astonishment and fear, his heart dropping to his stomach as he realized what he was looking at. The Flying Things! They were real!

It was one of the creature’s nests with four baby Flying Thing heads poking out and chirping for food. They looked like they had just hatched, with scaly, ivy skin topped with a layer of mucus. Their faces were gargoyle-like, angry and evil, with open beaks protruding from the nose that had three layers of razor-like teeth.

Instinctively Jake understood that they were born with the ability to kill.

Their heads turned to him and started chirping louder, an ear-piercing sound that made him flinch. He wondered if they could smell him, if his fear—the goosebumps down his arms and the cold sweat that appeared on his forehead—made him an even more delectable treat to crave.

That thought kicked him into gear. He yelped and jumped back, zipping his pants closed, and began to run back to the guys.

Ed, who had lain back on the sand, noticed it first, “Oh, shit!”

“What?” Cris asked, then followed Ed’s line of sight.

A hole had opened up in the sky just above Jake as he was running. And a large Flying Thing had come out of it, heading right down to him. Cris and Ed froze in fear.

“Run!” Jake yelled to them, “I found a nest! Run!” That was when he realized they weren’t staring at him, but up at the sky.

He looked up just as the huge Flying Thing swooped down and snatched him from the beach. Its face snarled menacingly as its talons pierced the flesh of his shoulders. Its large scaly wings thrashed the ocean air as it lifted him up into the sky.

He screamed in pain, writhed in its grasp. Down on the sand, Cris and Ed could only watch as the creature captured their friend, guilt in their stomach as he screamed for help.

The Flying Thing reversed course, finding its way back to its nest. Jake could hear the baby Flying Things screech in excitement as he was dropped into the nest, and at once, the babies started eating.

Jake tried to push them away, but they bit at his fingers, his flesh coming easy off his bones. He tried to leave the nest but they climbed on top of him, their weight heavy as cement.

Their beaks pierced through his chest, their teeth strong enough to break his ribs, pulled them apart with sweet ease. Jake’s own screams were unfamiliar to him as they left his throat, frantic and bestial.

Cris and Ed jumped up from the sand.

“We got to run!” Cris shouted as he grabbed Ed’s arm and tried to pull him away but Ed wouldn’t budge, so Cris left him. Ed had to think fast, he grabbed a beer bottle and chucked it as far as he could, his throwing arm coming in handy, as it collided with the huge Flying thing. It snapped its head towards him and started toward him, letting out a sheer squeal. As it did, another hole in the sky opened up and four more Flying Things started towards him. That’s when he ran.

“There’s more!” Ed called out to Cris, who kept slipping on sand every couple of feet. “Keep running!”

Ed’s legs kicked into gear and he started running faster than he ever did before. He could hear the flapping of the creature’s wings as they got closer. He caught up with Cris in no time, just a few feet behind him, when Cris stopped abruptly, almost toppled over.

“What are you doing?” Ed yelled coming up behind him, “They’re coming! Go!”

“Around!” Cris replied, but Ed had already reached him, slammed his body into his and caused Cris to fall forward into a deep sandpit. Ed caught himself just in time. He watched as Cris fell deep and collided with the floor of the pit. Ed heard something crack and Cris scream.

“Cris, climb up,” Ed said, falling to his knees and reaching a hand down into the pit. “Jump Cris, something, c’mon man!”

“My leg’s shattered, man,” Cris said, trying to stand, reaching his arm towards Ed. “I can’t reach you, lean forward, please man, those Things are coming!”

One of the Flying Things swooped down and nicked Ed’s ear, he flinched and covered his head as the thing flew back up and sent another one down. This one pecked at his back, slicing his jersey and covering the white fabric with blood. The Flying Things were circling above them now, ready to charge down in unison.

“I’m sorry, Cris,” Ed said, looking down at him. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” He got up and ran around the pit just as all five of the Flying Things dove down into the pit. He heard Cris’s cry for help, heard his flesh rip open as those Things pierced him with their razor sharp jaws, heard a popping sound as he imagined them plucking out his eyes. He glanced back and saw them start to leave the pit, Flying up holding a different limb in each jaw.

A huge one came up out of the pit, crunching and swallowing some indistinguishable piece of his friend’s body while staring right at him, then started after him a final time.

Ed ran faster…he was almost off the sand, so close to the beach house! He could make it!

He thought of his friends when they were all little, playing in the sand at this very beach, soaking in the hot sun. He thought of his brother, sitting on the porch of the beach house with a girl, watching over them. He felt a gush of air as a Flying Thing took a bite from his back.

He imagined the four of them jumping into a car at dawn, instruments in the trunk, leaving this seaside town, a warm apartment awaiting them in a city far away.

He reached for the doorknob of the beach house and closed his eyes as the huge Flying Thing’s jaw came down on his head and consumed that dream forever.