I rode my bicycle as fast as I could.  I was desperate and terribly afraid.  When I left the scene of the accident, the young woman was bleeding profusely.  I didn’t want to think about how long she might have to live.  I pumped and pumped on the pedals to get up one hill.  I continued pedaling even when I was going downhill.  At one point, I nearly missed making a sharp curve in the road.  At another, I had to cut a curve sharply because I was going too fast and nearly ran into an oncoming car.  How bad it would have been if I was in an accident.  Who, then, would get into town in time to alert the emergency crews?  That poor woman was lying there, dying.  I didn’t know any other way to help her except to pedal, faster, and faster until I could hardly breathe.   At last I saw the fire station.  I didn’t slow down when I approached it and had to skid to a stop.  I nearly fell of the bicycle but managed to stay upright and uninjured.
The fire men immediately radioed the police and then they jumped into several emergency vehicles.  They told me to get in and come with them so that I could show them where the accident had occurred.  This seemed unusual.  "Would I be covered by insurance," I thought.  I mean, I wasn't a town employee or anything.   When we got to the accident location, there was nobody there.  There was no blood on the road.  The woman had vanished along with her car. For a few moments, I was stunned. I kept looking and pointing to the spot where the woman had lain even though there was no trace of her now.  When I turned around to plead with the firemen to believe me, they had vanished too.  I got on my bicycle and pedaled as fast as I could in the opposite direction from town.  I didn’t stop until I reached the railway track.  It was the beginning of the visions, which later became an obsession with me.  I have never been back to the little town of Bigger since that day.

~ Bob Zaboo

My spellchecker doesn’t like the word slitherers and this was supposed to be a scary story about them so I’ll have to write it using some other word that my spellchecker does like; although, I don’t know why I should be constricted to the words my spellchecker knows except that I have this unrelenting desire to spell things correctly even when they mean less to me than the conspicuous lack of lenience when it comes to spelling.  Hey, but that is what this story is about: disturbingly dark and sinister creatures slithered out from under pajamas thrown on the floor after a man and woman initiated a scintillatingly romantic encounter only to end in slumber and snoring.

So, out from under crumpled up garments, hastily tossed in the passion of foreplay, came these hideously demented and demonic creature resembling rats but with no legs and tails that were twice as long as regular rats.  It did not immediately register with the sleeping couple that these horrifically devious devils reeked of blood and urine and all sorts of other noxious smells.  It was too late.  One of the creatures crawled up the overhanging bedspread, slithered for a while under the blankets up alongside the woman’s naked leg, and then climbed up onto her belly.  It smiled as it approached her navel and penetrated her abdomen just as she awoke with a silent scream.  Here eyes opened wide with the excruciating pain.  She had a horrifying realization that she was no longer human but had been invaded by the notorious slather.  The second creature did the same thing to the man.  This, of course, was the genesis of the slathering changelings.

~ Bob Zaboo

"How many times," thought the flinterbinger, "must I see this kind of thing?  I’m a simple creature with the need for simple creature comforts.  I don’t need a lot of paper because I have no bum to wipe and I don’t need a lot of television commercials because I don’t have any money with which to buy a single solitary item.  I need the sun, a bit of pollen to whiff as it floats by in a mild breeze.  That is especially nice when it comes up the valley from the ocean."  "I’ve never tried to understand," the flinterbinger continued to mused, "why that feels so good, but it does.  I’ve never even tried to figure out what I think even though I do occasionally partake in that activity—when there is nothing else to do.  Of course there is usually something else to do.  One of my favorite pastimes is to look directly into the sun as it passes over.  That can take quite a few hours and I can do that every day that the sun is not blocked by all that white stuff.  I could have just as easily done this in the ocean itself but my ancestors decided long before I was around that the water was getting too crowded.  Little did they know how crowded the land would get, but that was many, many years ago and I blame them not for making that choice.  Still, it is nice to whiff the pollens that have come by way of the sea."

~ Bob Zaboo

The trees had no say in this at all.  They had been wondering what all the noise was, but, because they were unable to actually leave the spot where they were planted, were unable to look just beyond the knoll to see what was happening.  They could sense something was wrong—terribly wrong.  The tallest of them tried to peer above the ridge but was unable to see anything except the unusual swaying of the topmost branches of all of the trees on the other side.  One by one, the crown of each tree shook, then leaned to one side, then disappeared entirely.  Then the foreign noise would start again.  The tall one could not think what this sight might imply.  It had been going on for days.  First, the noise was all that was heard.  When it started, the action was much too far away to even summon much attention from this sector of trees.  It kept getting closer until, at last the tall one could get a small glimpse of the destruction.  Destruction it was.  There was no doubt about that.  Although trees cannot scream, they certainly give off vibrations.  The vibrations coming from all of the trees that were in the area where the noise, strange shaking, and motion were coming from were of pure fear followed by nothing.  The trees in this sector had never experienced other trees sending messages containing nothing.  It was loathsome and horrifying.  If only it could be understood.  If only something could be done to prevent that noise from coming their way.  They were just trees.  What could they do?  Although they didn’t know it, there was nothing they could do.  They were doomed to local extinction.  This was an extinction that they could not fathom.  Interestingly, the creatures causing these phenomena could not understand the implications either.  Neither the trees nor the noise making creatures knew that, in the not too distant future, both species would cease to exist.  The entire planet would be occupied by non-thinking, non-feeling organisms or perhaps by nothing at all.

~ Bob Zaboo

Breathlessly, and oh so quietly, she entered the bedroom from the bathroom wearing nothing but a steamy towel.  Slowly, she let it slip from her curvaceous body revealing what he had desired for all this time.  Her hair was wet from the shower and droplets of water still clung to her shapely legs.  Glistening in the reflected light from the bathroom they seemed to send out a signal to him.  Drink me.  This is all that was in his mind.  He wanted her.  Other than the routine and meaningless thoughts that are necessary to get from day to day and stay alive, this is all he had thought about for these past two years.  Now, as she slowly crawled onto the bed and folded back the sheets she took him in her hands and he stroked her damp hair.

 Then she vanished.  He was alone.  He was in the dingy room of the motel he had found on the side of the highway.  A non-descript establishment.  She is the only thing he wanted.   Always, especially when he finally dozed off, laying on the welcoming bed after driving for miles, with the neon lights flickering out beyond the flimsy curtains, he dreamed of her.  No, he imagined her.  She became alive only for the lingering time between wakefulness and sleep.   But, as always, she was never there when he opened his eyes.  Where was she? Where could she possibly be?  Did she even exist?  She must because he always dreamed of her.  How could someone so precious to him not exist?  It was the last thing he thought about before drifting off to sleep again.  She did not return to him.  He slept restlessly but did not dream for the rest of the night.
 
~ Bob Zaboo