Deep down in the cellar where the spiders and to-be vintage booze sit dormant I beckoned a response calling out in a tone of voice which concealed none of the fear I was feeling at the time. It trembled as I met the midway of my words, "Is anyone down there?" and to no surprise of my own there was no response. Behind me I hear a whisper,
"Radley..."
I have to answer, my volume hardly audible.
"What, Jack, what? What is it?"
"There's no way in hell I'm going down there."
"Why the hell not?"
"Are you deaf?"
"Kind of...what did you hear?"
"There's something walking down there with slow, heavy steps."
To that effect the universe synchronized itself with the information shared and to us it came to be true as we both heard some muffled growl down there and before long something with four legs went spinning over my head from the maw of the darkness onto Jack. All sorts of screaming and fussing as this thing's 'beak' as it were protruded out and made savage attempts to get humping his skull, digging these stilleto legs into his chest and back. The entire time I'm sitting there pulling a trigger and trying to pull a stuck shell from the receiver. By the time I get this done he's already broken one of its legs and setting the shotgun for a moment within its mouth I pulled the trigger and Jack falls to his knees screaming, holding his ears. Suddenly I feel some sort of remorse, then shrug it off and kick him on to his chest after ripping the first claw therefrom. Once prone I pulled the other two claws from his body and soon after he started seizing, at that point I didn't even know what to do so I just stood there watching him convulse. I didn't know Jack well, for that I was thankful.
We'd come out here not long ago, committing sins against the Trinity of the Lord God Almighty, attempting in vain to summon the assistance of Hermes, to be closely followed by Tyr the Northern god of war. From them we would seek wisdom and assistance against our otherworldly foes but alas it wasn't meant to be. Our divination and initiations had been interrupted several times and at this point, ruining the ritual by ambushing our compound on the coast and bombing us with canisters, there was no contacting them. A bond likely to never been rebuilt. Had we stayed, perhaps then it'd be different. But we didn't.
I stepped down the hall far from Jack and as he convulsed, choking on white bile, I took a shot at his head and sighed, morbidly grateful that I'd gotten away from the mess that comes with a shotgun shell to the head. I felt terrible, but I knew it was best to digress so I went my merry way back outside and got in the rusting 1990 Ford Escort that awaited me in the drive way, a helicopter's glide bellowed from the distance and wasting no time I burned off onto the road and I sang going along,
"At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without you --" pausing to swig from a flask, "--by my side. But then I spent so many nights, just thinkin' how ya done me wrong AND I GREW STRONG, I LEARNED HOW TO GET ALONG AND SO YOU'RE BACK" and the swaying of shoulders, the loosening neck sending my head left to right in recoils from a vehemently Caucasian dance, "FROM OUTER SPACE, I JUST WALKED IN HERE TO SEE YOU THERE WITHOUT THAT LOOK UPON YO FACE! I SHOULDA CHANGED THAT FUCKIN' LOCK, I SHOULDA MADE YOU LEAVE YO KEY IF I HAD KNOWN FOR JUST ONE SECOND YOU'D BE BACK TO BOTHER ME! OH NOW GO! WALK OUT THA DOOR! JUST TURN AROUND NOW, CUS YOU'RE NOT WELCOME ANYMORE!, WEREN'T YOU THE ONE WHO TRIED TO BREAK ME WITH DESIRE" and to this I shake my fist, palm facing me, an expression of angry conviction across my face, "DID YOU THINK I'D CRUMBLE, DID YOU THINK I'D LAY DOWN AND DIE?! OH NO, NOT I!" and then I realize I'm doing seventy at the turnpike of a cliff. "Oh shit this might be ironi--" and around this car I'm tossed upon impact, thrown about the interior to feel zero gravity before being knocked out by impact and killed by subsequent drowning.
O ye survivors, silence eternal for the desecration of Gloria Gaynor's works.