shock, was just for that.
It was made to kill.
Then kill it, you idiot!
Kill that inhumane beast that is about to devour your daughter!
But he could not move a finger, he was paralyzed with terror.
When was the last time he had squeezed a trigger? Shoot, you jerk, empty that fucking magazine on the birthday gift you stole in the house of that witch!
The scream of the wife, who had appeared at the door, shook him out of the stupor in which he had fallen, and even his brain restarted deciphering what he had in front of his eyes.
He could only see the small feet and part of the left arm of Silvia. The rest was crushed by the weight of the giant being, foaming its appetite like a rabid dog. Some kind of cocker from Hell, with fifteen-inches floppy ears, and feet with claws longer and thicker than the beak of an eagle. The whiteness of its hair had not changed, as well as the stain on its head, now as big as a tablecloth.
"Call the police!" the inspector cried to his wife, who ran to the nearest telephone.
Will you shoot, you stupid dickhead? You are the police!
The inspector shot...
but towards the ceiling, raining shards of plaster that made him instantly white-haired.
Or was it the effect of fear?
"Daaaaaad!" Silvia’s scream seemed to come from inside a well.
"Daaaaaad! Heeeeelp!"
The deformed rabbit replied with a bark.
The inspector pulled the trigger five times consecutively, and the same number of gashes opened up on the mantle of the creature. Very dark blood flowed out of them. The animal fell on its side, allowing the girl to fling herself out of the bed and into her father's outstretched arms. They looked into one another’s eyes, then turned at once to the bed.
"Dad, the monster is gone! It was a nightmare," Silvia said.
The inspector didn’t say a word, his eyes on the little rabbit, now with more holes than a colander, sticking out from under the pillow.
In the distance they heard police sirens approaching rapidly.
"Mooooom," Silvia groaned, clinging to the legs of the woman who had reappeared in the doorway, as white as a corpse.
"It's all over, here comes the police, now they’ll take care of it." Her voice cracked suddenly. "What have you done to your leg?" she asked in alarm, seeing the pants of the pyjamas all dyed red.
The inspector had not heard a single word. His head was a cyclone of spinning thoughts.
Monsters. Of course he believed in them. Murderers, rapists, ruthless criminals. How many monsters had he slammed behind bars? This was something else, something that had nothing to do with man, something that went beyond the rage and madness against which he used to fight. He looked at the window.
Full moon.
It again, the only clue that joined those nights of blood and horror.
The inspector turned to his wife. She seemed to have aged twenty years.
"You have to call an ambulance," the woman said. "Silvia was bitten."
"It's just a scratch" the girl minimized. "It's nothing, it doesn’t hurt."
The pyjamas, raised to the knee, showed the flesh of the thigh, cut by a wound not longer than two inches. Blood was dripping down the ankle, staining the floor.
"Come to mom’s bathroom. We must disinfect it," Paola said to Silvia, taking her in her arms. "And you call the ambulance, she needs stitches!" she ordered to her husband.
The inspector did not move a muscle. The police sirens went silent. Soon, the agents would enter the house, his house, as if he were a common criminal, and what would they find? A rabbit as riddled with holes as an old sock.
They would ask questions to which likely answers had to follow. Many questions and many answers. Why had he shoot? Had he tried to kill his daughter? What had happened to the beast he had seen? They would question everyone, but as usual no one would care to hear what the most important witness had to say. The friend of the shadows, the sister of death, the mother of monsters. The smartest, the most clever. Because it knows the secret, the secret of silence. She's always so quiet, her mouth well stitched.
No one asks questions to those who cannot speak.
Isn’t it true, inspector? It whispered from above.
Brembati looked up, and for a moment he was under the impression that the moon winked at him. He shivered, but it was just a dark cloud that passed quickly over its pitted face.
The AUTHOR
Filip Fromell was born in Switzerland and lives in Rome, where he writes novels and screenplays for cinema.
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The editor
Employee, writer and translator in his spare time, the author has always been an avid reader and writer since he has no memory. Since 2008 he has devoted himself with greater commitment to this activity by giving life to the world of Anthuar in which this story is set.
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