"Emerson," I whisper. "Emm—"

  I can't look.

  I can't move.

  My baby.

  A crash from inside makes me flinch and I nearly retch at that last thought. Stooping down, I snatch the damned thing up off the pavers and jog quickly back into the kitchen. "No-o-o, no, Emmie, we're not playing with your blocks right now! Come on, let's clean that up. Dinner is almost ready."

  About the Author

  Deidre J Owen is a versatile writer who takes delight in exploring many different genres of fiction, including speculative fiction, children's fiction, humor, horror, sci-fi, and Christian themes. She has a number of published children's books as well as several Mannison Minibooks published with Mannison Press, including The White Mannequin's Game (2019), The Salted Cabin (2019), I Actually Dreamed This Crazy Nonsense (2019) and Overworked: A Legal Fiction with Ronald Linson (2019). She also contributed a short story, "They Belong to Her," to the anthology Little Girl Lost: Thirteen Tales of Youth Disrupted (2019). Deidre is currently loving life with her family in Lithia, Florida, as a writer, indie publisher, and work-from-home mother. Learn more about her work at www.deidrejowen.com.

  Smashwords profile here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/deidrejowen

  6. Baby

  Benjamin Michael Greene

  He'd been watching it for two days; ever since they'd brought that devil home. Its scent made him nervous, and the strange way it twitched—imperceptible to the people—when they set it down, convinced him that whatever this was, it was wrong. The people kept it with them at first; close to their bodies, never leaving it alone. It stayed nearly completely still when they held it and when they kept it in their bed. It didn't blink, it didn't growl, and its tiny chest didn't betray any respiration. Perfectly still that monster remained; looking out at the world with its grimace.

  But that was all set to change.

  It happened on Monday. Baby, the vigilant cat, lay on the bed while the people showered and got dressed and drank that foul smelling drink they loved so much.

  "You should take him to work," the Female said, holding the doll out to the Male.

  "Not a chance," he laughed.

  "Why?"

  "It's a fuzzy werewolf, hun."

  "So?"

  "It doesn't exactly exude corporate professionalism, and I'm having a hard enough time convincing Darryl to give me a raise as it is, without being seen as the class clown."

  The Female looked the doll in the face, then raised her eyes to the Male, smirking. Rushing forward, she pushed the werewolf doll into his face, contorting her voice into something Baby assumed was supposed to be scary.

  "C'mon, Theo, please bring me to work!" She added ridiculous growling noises in between each attack. Both of the people were laughing, while Baby watched from the comfort of the master bed; content to stay away from the monster.

  But then, in the middle of the playing, the monster attacked.

  Baby didn't see it exactly; there was too much movement to witness clearly, but as the Female was lunging forward, doll in hand, for another assault on the Male, Baby could have sworn he saw the werewolf open its mouth. Baby was too shocked to do anything other than watch, and sure enough, as the doll was pushed into his face, the Male yelled and backed away, holding onto his cheek.

  The Female's laughter ceased immediately and she dropped the doll, rushing forward to check on the Male.

  "Oh, honey! Are you okay?" the Female cooed. Baby slunk to the edge of the mattress to keep an eye on the monster where it lay on the floor.

  The Female followed the Male into the joint bathroom, where he was leaning over the sink eyeing his cheek in the mirror. A small ruby crescent punctuated his pale cheek; a bead of deep red ran down to his chin, where it wavered a moment, then fell into the basin.

  "I'm so sorry," the Female said, rubbing his back. "It must've been my finger nail that caught your cheek."

  The Male waved away her apologies, assuring her he was fine. He asked her where the bandages and antiseptic ointment were, and both of them started hunting through the many drawers and cabinets of the master bath. Baby, however, refused to take his eyes away from the doll.

  He dropped from the bed, his gaze locked, never leaving the miniature werewolf. He approached the doll carefully, sniffing the air around it; muscles tense and ready to carry him away at the first sign of trouble.

  The people talked some more, and there was the occasional moan from the Male while he was tending to the cut on his face. It didn't take long for them to finish up, though, and the Male ran out the front door to go to work.

  And then the front door slammed shut, leaving the Female and Baby alone with the monster. The Female left the bedroom after scratching the top of Baby's head, muttering something about needing more coffee, but the cat remained still, eyes unblinking, breaths shallow and searching, nerves on edge and ready to—

  There!

  Baby jumped back from the monster, batting at the air with his declawed mittens. He hissed, then with a great leap, jumped over the monster and out the door of the bedroom to hide by the Female. She paid him no mind, and didn't notice the panic in his eyes. He wanted to tell her—was desperate to tell her—but how could he? How could he tell her that the doll with the blood on its plushy muzzle licked its lips and laughed?

  When Baby wasn't meowing his warnings about the doll to his roommate from his perch atop the kitchen counter that day, he was rubbing back and forth on her leg, looking up at her, then dashing towards the bedroom where the doll was, before dashing back to her and rubbing against her leg some more. Her patience quickly exhausted, the Female tossed Baby onto their gated deck. It was a third floor apartment, so escaping through the wide grates was never an option.

  Thus stranded—imprisoned—on the deck, Baby gave up pawing at the glass door and curled into a ball in a ray of sunlight, waiting to be let in.

  When he was finally let back inside, the Male was home and the Sun was well on its way to setting. Baby slunk along the floor, eyes wide, darting to the bedroom to see if the doll was still there.

  Peeking inside, a new flutter of panic gripped his stomach. The doll was gone. The only trace it had been there was a few flecks of blood on the carpet so small Baby was sure his roommates wouldn't notice them.

  He chanced walking into the unlit room, searching the corners for any sign that the monster was there, lurking about, waiting for the next moment to strike. No matter where he looked, though, the tiny plushy monster was nowhere to be found.

  But wait! He hadn't searched everywhere, had he? His eyes narrowed on the soft, blanketed mattress of the people's bed. Taking a steadying breath, Baby shimmied his butt, then leapt onto the top of the bed.

  He never had a chance to properly find his footing before something small and dark tackled him. Baby was able to retain his position atop the bed, but was otherwise pushed off balance onto his back.

  Small growls punctuated by high pitched giggling filled Baby's ears as he struggled with the little monster. He hissed and yowled while large tufts of his hair were ripped out. A claw swiped near his eye, prompting it to shut, before another claw jabbed into his ear. Baby yowled and batted about, kicking with his back claws and relishing the feel of his claws sinking into cloth, tearing as he kicked.

  The people rushed in moments after Baby had started screaming, and after flipping on the overhead lights, the cat was being lifted from the bed, held at arm's length.

  "What the hell is going on?" the Male yelled. "What's wrong with you?" This last question was directed solely at Baby, who was still moaning, still hissing, and still writhing about. The Male finally dropped Baby to the floor, and—realizing he was free of his attacker—dashed from the room, stopping only to look back at the people. The Female was picking tufts of cat fur from the top of the mattress, while posing question after question to the Male, who only shook his head and rubbed his face.

  The monster was in the Female's hand, hanging down by her waist. It smiled and gnashed its teeth, then pointed at Baby.

  Baby ran into one of the guest rooms and didn't come out the rest of the night.

  The people lost the werewolf doll soon after.

  "Must've forgotten it outside," was the consensus. There was a collective shrugging of shoulders and a small joint sigh, but then life went on. Or rather, life changed.

  There was no stopping, no relenting of the horrible events that plagued that apartment. And it wasn't long before the people were targeted as well. Though, unlike Baby, they never saw the monster behind the attacks.

  Baby lost weight in the passing days. He refused to eat, and drank only enough water to keep himself alive. Otherwise, he'd hide on the top of the high kitchen cabinets and stay there, day and night. If the door to the deck was ever opened, he'd rush down and eagerly sit outside. But as the haunting of the apartment continued, the people thought less and less of their once-adored feline, until he went altogether forgotten.

  The monster had been busy.

  Electronics were broken; their screens smashed so thoroughly that there was no hope of repair, their cases so completely obliterated that every chip inside was reduced to confetti. Clothing was shredded, bedding cut up and turned inside out. Walls were routinely scratched up, graffitied with terrifying demonic symbols that rendered both people too scared to enter certain rooms.

  The apartment managers didn't believe the couple, and even accused them of doing these things to get out of their lease early. And so, no repairs were made, no freedom offered. Still, the hauntings continued.

  The day the people moved out was when they finally saw what Baby had seen.

  It wasn't yet three in the morning when the Female bolted upright in bed. Something was wrong. It was a sharp pinching at her neck. No, wait. Not pinching; it felt like burning. Groggily, she reached over and slapped the Male and tried to let him know something was wrong, but the words wouldn't come out. In fact, no air came out. Panic shocked her system, and her fingers went to her throat. Her skin was bowed in, forming fat lips around the cord that was digging into her throat. Pressure was building in her face, and colored splotches were crowding her vision. In a panic, she pummeled the Male with her hands, and he finally turned over.

  "What the hell?" he asked. She continued hitting with one hand, and with the other she was digging at the cord, trying to loosen it. The Male turned on the flashlight app on his phone. "What is going—Jesus!" He launched himself onto the Female, circling behind her. "What the fuck!?"

  The Female's scratching at her throat was weakening quickly, and a high pitched whine was filling her ears, but through the fog of a quickly approaching death, she thought she heard a high pitched laugh.

  All at once, the cord came loose, and pulling it out from where it had cut into her skin, the Female fell forward onto the ruined bed and gasped for air. Her relief was short lived however, because the screams of the Male filled the bedroom.

  "It's alive!" he yelled. "Jesus Christ, it's alive!" The Female turned around and saw the Male kicking and batting at the tiny werewolf doll they'd gotten those weeks before.

  "Get out!" she yelled, still gasping. Dressed only in a bra and underwear, she ran to the kitchen counter and grabbed the Male's wallet and keys. He joined her a moment later, blood streaming down his face.

  "Go!" he yelled, landing a kick squarely on the doll. It went flying into the living room couch, giving them enough time to unlock the front door and rush out, slamming it shut and locking it from the outside. The doll rushed to the front door snarling and laughing, clawing at the paint and howling in its high pitched voice while the people clomped down the stairs, leaving the apartment forever.

  It wasn't until much later that they realized what they'd left behind.

  The doll remembered, though.

  Its laughter died down, and its howling subsided. The tiny werewolf doll turned around from where he stood at the front door and looked out into the dark apartment.

  "Here, kitty kitty," he laughed.

  About the Author

  Benjamin Michael Greene is a proud book hoarder, constantly on the hunt for new titles to add to his collection. His short story "Remembering, Almost" was published in the Mannison Press anthology Little Girl Lost: Thirteen Tales of Youth Disrupted (2019) under the pseudonym Ashleigh Hatter. Father of three amazing children and caretaker for an ever growing number of furry and scaly beasts, Benjamin loves watching "Murder, She Wrote" with his beautiful wife and vacationing in the mountains.

  Smashwords profile here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BenjaminMichaelGreene

  7. The Deal

  Connor Kuntz

  "That's all I have to do?" Alan shifted forward in his chair, as if leaning closer would change what he just heard.

  "Correct, Alan," Mr. Crane confirmed as he flipped through the pages of Evelyn's will. "That's all there is to it. Your grandmother left explicit instructions here that you are left the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. Only to be received if you take the doll with you."

  Alan knew which doll it was. How could he forget? It was the strangest thing he had ever seen. Normally, dolls were made of cloth or porcelain, but this one was a grotesque combination of the two. The doll was naked, always had been as long as Alan could remember. The torso was milk-white porcelain, with four hideously lumpy cloth arms and legs as black as night that felt like they were stuffed with steel wool. On the end of each limb were tiny porcelain hands and feet, fingers splayed like the doll was waving goodbye while you ran away in fear. The head creeped Alan out the most, sent shivers down his spine; it was the reason he would always turn the doll to face the wall while he was at his grandmother's house. The head was devoid of hair, home to a twisted smile and a pair of badly glued eyelashes that sat askew just above the eyes. The eyes themselves were lidless, two grey marbles set unevenly apart. As a child, Alan scared himself many times by thinking there was something moving behind those pearls of smoke.

  As he pictured it in his mind, the doll materialized from behind Mr. Crane's desk. Alan leaned back with unease, but he pushed the feeling away and focused on the money that sat in front of him instead.

  "This is life changing money, Alan. If I were you I wouldn't hesitate to accept the deal. What's with this doll anyway? The rest of her collection was donated to the church, why offer you this one?" Mr. Crane realized that his tone had become unprofessional. He instantly collected himself and added, "If you don't mind me asking."

  Alan paused for a moment and thought about his grandmother, about the things she used to say or make him do that he didn't like. How she used to punish only him when his cousins caused trouble. He felt that she didn't like him at all, but as Alan grew up he realized that there really was no answer as to why. He shrugged the question off.

  Evelyn had just been a mean old lady.

  "There's no question that this money would go a long way." Alan stared down at the doll and imagined what he could do with the money. Pay off his debts; maybe go on a much-needed vacation. He could always just take the money and ditch the doll somewhere. Problem solved. Alan bit his lip, exhaled, and decided. "Do I need to sign anything?"

  Fifteen minutes later Alan got into his car and tossed the horrid doll onto his passenger seat. The doll landed face down and bounced, slamming into the door handle with an audible crack. Alan cursed the fragility of porcelain and hoped there was no mess to clean up. He grabbed the doll, turned it over. He was met with a razor thin crack along the lips that extended halfway up each cheek. The crack combined with the creepy smile made the mouth look like it was slightly open, ready to curse his name in his grandmother's voice like a ventriloquist dummy from Hell. Alan dropped the doll back onto the seat without regard for further damage. He patted his front pocket where his cheque sat and ripped out of the parking lot.

  Alan stood with the door to his bedroom closet open. Sitting on the top shelf amongst the clothes he never wore was the doll. The eerie, twisted grin and lifeless eyes made Alan shiver in the warmth of his apartment. With a shake of his head he turned the doll around like he had done when he was a child and closed the door.

  He walked around his apartment for the rest of the day with his cheque in hand. A smile erupted on his face as he fantasized about what he was going to do with his newfound riches.

  Upstairs, the doll sat lifeless in its gloomy prison, the only movement—dust motes dancing in the air and tiny, darting shapes behind grey eyes.

  The next morning Alan woke up and got ready for work. He opened the closet to grab his clothes and saw the doll in the same spot as he left it. It's not like it would move, right? He laughed at himself for such silliness, but instead of grabbing a shirt and a pair of pants, he grabbed the doll, just to make sure that nothing changed and it was still the same ugly thing it was yesterday, that it didn't grow fangs and sentience overnight.

  He turned it over.

  Nothing had changed. It was still the same old thing—the last remnants of his mean, dead grandmother.

  Except, there was something different. The belly protruded slightly. It wasn't the flat torso he remembered from his youth, and he swore it wasn't as pronounced yesterday when he got the damned thing. He chalked it up to misremembering along with excitement about the money and returned the doll to its spot; its black, limp arms flopped as he placed it on the shelf, hands and feet clinking as porcelain met the wooden shelf. He grabbed his clothes and shut the door.