MELINDA

He put his wrinkled hands over his eyes.
The monstrosity that was his daughter leered at him from the foot of his bed. He gasped a horrible gurgling sound as his eyes bulged out of his head in horror. A hand with sharp, razor like claws crawled onto the covers…and then the other one fell hard against his covered feet.
“Leave me alone! Please!” He shrieked in terror into the face of the evil that gloomed over him. The monster just grinned, showing the blood stained teeth. My God…this cannot be her… his thoughts raced to a time when things were simpler. A time when all was right in the world but this was not that time.
I am here for a sacrifice…daddy… don’t you want to play? He could hear the thoughts of this hideous thing. They were connected…somehow.
On August 21st 1954, Matthew Hamlin and his wife Sarah welcomed into the world, their daughter, Melinda. So much was right with the world then. The time went slow. The world was different than the world that we are used to today. No road rage, no internet, nothing but time…time to make things right…time for happiness, no matter how short lived it was going to be. Sarah noticed right away that something was amiss. Something about this creation was not right. Matthew knew it too. How are we going to face our friends? Matthew thought. In sheer horror they looked upon their baby.
This baby has no eyes…
She has no ears…
She has one hell of a grin though…and her nose…so long…
It was their baby none the less. Sarah was determined to love the child and to bond with it whatever it was. The baby, on the other hand, had a different agenda in mind. Two weeks after they brought her home, Sarah was killed in her sleep by it. The thing crawled into the bed in between Sarah and Matthew and bit into her mother’s neck and sucked the blood like a tick that went too long without feeding. Matthew threw the child up against the wall and the creature broke its neck and died. In fear, Matthew threw the carcass down into their root cellar and forgot about it. Or at least he tried. He buried Sarah out by the oak tree where they stood just two years before and took their vows. That day was a joyous one indeed.
Sarah was lovely in her white gown.
Now this day was not the day he wanted to contend with. Sarah’s body was so shriveled up that she looked like a raisin in the sun. Tears streamed down Matthew’s face as he shoveled dirt upon his wife’s body. It would be the last time he would see her. His thoughts went to the evil that was lying…decaying in the cool, filthy, musty air of his root cellar. That night as he tried to fall asleep, he could hear a sound, it was the sound of weeping. It got louder and louder until it filled his head. Melinda was alive. Each night was the same. The same weeping and the same restlessness. During the day the weeping would be replaced by laughter. Laughter that was ever so slight but just enough that it pierced the eardrum. On the night of September 3rd 1954, Melinda decided to come out of the floor. She was waiting for him. Only she wasn’t the strange looking little baby with the wide toothed grin. She was the purest form of evil that Matthew could ever imagine and she was waiting for him in his bedroom.
Daddy…daddy…the thing called out into the darkness with its thick, graveled voice. The mere thought of it caused Matthew to piss his pants. He couldn’t go to bed yet…not while that thing waited for him. While Matthew took a long walk down the road from his property, the thing crawled back underneath the floorboards. Soon the weeping began again. After walking for a while, Matthew started the journey back to the house. He noticed something near the oak tree that made his skin crawl. His eyes adjusted to the darkness to find that evil thing clawing and digging at the ground where he had buried Sarah. Mommy…mommy, it whispered into the cool night air. Melinda’s voice gurgled and growled as she dug her way into the grave. Upon finding Sarah’s body, the creature tore into it like a sick cat clawing at the scared little mouse before eating it and started to devour it. Matthew vomited at the sight of it…the gnashing of teeth…the cracking of bones…the ripping of skin. Quickly turning around to see the horror on Matthew’s face, Melinda crawled out of the grave, rotten teeth still chewing her mother’s flesh. She glared at her father as she started to hobble towards him. Matthew ran inside the house, locking the door. All the while he could hear her call out to him from the other side…daddy…daddy. He put his hands to his ears and tried to ignore the grinding voice of the monster. Matthew finally lurked away from the door and ran into his bedroom that he had shared with his wife Sarah. Melinda made her way inside, her claw like fingers scraping paint off of the walls. She knew where the bedroom was and she made her way there, hobbling.
Matthew’s eyes grew wide as he looked upon the monstrosity. He felt a sense of disgust and pity as he backed himself into the corner of the room. The thing that was supposedly his daughter, grinned at him, got on all four and started to crawl towards him, wet spots became increasingly apparent as she was drooling on the floor. Matthew screamed…and screamed…and screamed. The creature slinked away, frightened at the noise. Why would you scream daddy? Why would you cry at the sight of me? THAT MAKES ME ANGRY…DADDY!! It was angry…angry enough to cause some damage. Melinda rose up and struck at Matthew, tearing away the skin from his chest. Blood splattered across the bed; Matthew managed a final crawl up into the bed.
He was bleeding profusely from his chest now. A puddle of blood encircled him and he reached for Melinda as she loomed over him, tears flowing from his eyes. Matthew remembered the day that she came into the world. He didn’t want her then…he didn’t want her now. His eyes blurred as they tried to focus on what stood over him. He closed them tight. It wasn’t until later that he did open them up; a scream tried to leave his lips but failed. She was still in his bedroom, her mouth filled with his flesh. It managed to gurgle out a throaty, “daddy…I love you”…as it chomped and crushed into the meat with its stained teeth.