On Your Shoulder
Featured Post #5
Featured Posts are hand-picked by our volunteer team to showcase the excellent work our community members are doing. In keeping with SmallStack’s mission to lift up small publications, all Featured Post authors have fewer than 500 subscribers. Think of it like staff picks at your favorite indie bookstore.
Today’s Featured Post is by L.L. Ford, author of The Trials of Astra (and other short stories), and was selected by SmallStack volunteer Cheshir. Cheshir writes:
This post is vivid and captivating. A part of me wants to pause and examine the text to get a clearer understanding of everything, but no: I can’t help but keep reading on. There’s a pull in the writing’s simplicity that urges me to run headlong into another world, as dark and shapeless as the figure that haunts Henri. The room for interpretation is what makes this short story so addicting. It makes me want to write.
A SmallStack Featured Post
On Your Shoulder
By L.L. Ford
“Hey”
The voice pierced through Henri's headphones. It didn't come from the glass covered bridge she trekked through. No. It seemed to come from deep inside her. Something in the back of her mind, like an itch that she couldn’t reach, let alone scratch. Inside her skull, it penetrated into the little space of fluid between bone and gray matter.
She paused, contemplating pulling her headphones away from her ears, but she knew the rule:
Don't acknowledge, keep walking.
She turned up the volume and pressed forward through the bridge.
Henri always hated being in the research sector after campus closed. It made her skin crawl. She opened the door on the other side of the glass bridge, took a deep breath, and stepped through the door to the lecture wing. She fought the urge to look behind her and moved forward.
She walked past locked classrooms with flickering blue projectors left on inside.
Turn the volume up and keep walking.
There was a maintenance corridor left open. Down the distant hall crammed with pipes and electrical wiring, a loud groan broke through Henri’s soothing tones. She put her head down, focused on her feet, and pushed forward.
Volume up. Keep walking.
She passed the elevator and she lifted a hand to her face.
Just go.
She knew she just needed to get to the next door. The keycard swipe at the end of the hall was the only thing between her and the research wing. She reached into her purse and fumbled out her keycard. She nearly dropped it, but fought to keep her grip on it. With a shaky hand, she swiped the card through.
The door clicked in affirmation and she pulled it open, yanking it shut behind her. The lock reengaged and Henri cascaded down, sliding onto the floor against the rough brick wall. She ripped her headphones off and stared through the glass door.
The hallway she came from was empty. The lights flickered faintly, but nothing was there. She caught her breath and let out a small laugh of relief. She sighed, gathered her thoughts, and stood up. She walked down the hall. The automatic lights activated as she took each step forward. All the doors were closed except for the one at the very end of the hall. Exactly where she was going.
Henri walked into the old laboratory. She smiled an empty greeting at Lucas, her coworker.
“Everything okay?” Lucas asked as she walked in.
“Peachy.” Henri said as she took her headphones and set them at her desk.
“Get in okay?”
“Yep.” She grabbed a pair of gloves and poked her head into the side room where she had prepped her experiment earlier in the day. “Just need to go get my samples…” She said in a singsong tone as she looked at her set up.
“Sorry I took so long in the room, I know it’s late. I’ll try to be faster next time.” Lucas said from behind her. He had just finished washing his hands and started to pack up his backpack.
“I’m fine. I just need to bring them down for acclimation. I’ll start tomorrow when the sun’s up.”
“Don’t stay too late, okay?” Lucas said, buttoning up his coat. He slung his bag over his shoulder, “And hey, Henri?”
“Hm?” Henri turned around to look at Lucas.
“Don’t take the elevator.”
“Well, I can’t exactly take the cart up the stairs.”
“Carry the cages down then.” Lucas pleaded.
“Lucas. Stop.” Henri blew her hair out of her face, “I’ll be fine. I’ll send the cart up, take the stairs, meet it at the top. Good?” There was a long pause between them. Lucas nodded,
“Well still, don’t get stuck, okay? The emergency button doesn’t work and sector security doesn't exactly get here in a timely manner… it's not safe this late.” Henri nodded. She knew he was just looking out for her, but she didn’t need mothering. She didn’t need Lucas breathing down her neck. She’d done this before, and she’d do it again. “And if you need to talk, I can -”
“I’m good.” Henri dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
Lucas grabbed his cold coffee off his desk and walked out of the lab’s office space, “Have a good night, Henri. Better see you in the morning.”
“Plan for the afternoon.” She grumbled back. He probably didn’t hear her, but it didn’t matter. She had said her peace.
Henri made the finishing touches on the room, grabbed the cart and left, retracing her steps back towards the elevator. When she got to the glass door that separated the research wing from the rest of the building, she took a deep breath in. She caught her reflection in the glass.
Her own tired brown eyes penetrated through her. She stared back, as though she was determined to beat herself in an infinite staring contest. When she was a child she played with her cousin. She remembered they'd say she lost because she blinked, but she never remembered blinking. If her reflection blinked, she wouldn’t see it, and it would never tell her.
What a liar.
She shook herself free of her own gaze and pushed the door open. She walked down the hall to the rickety old elevator. The doors had scorch marks painted over with a fresh coat of messy maroon. The buttons barely ever worked, and the poorly painted doors had left splashes of color on the control panel. Henri hammered the up arrow over and over until she heard the sound of the elevator lurching high above her head. She stepped back and leaned against the wall opposite the elevator.
She reached for her headphones and realized she had left them behind.
No blocking out the world now. Henri sighed. She needed to focus. Get the cages, get back downstairs.
Quick. Easy. Done.
She took a deep breath.
I can do this.
The doors finally lurched open and a garbled ding echoed through the halls. Lights began to flicker, and Henri’s heart began to pound.
One more deep breath.
She stepped forward and pushed the cart into the elevator. She paused.
In the back left corner, something was dripping onto the floor. Henri fought the urge to think too much about it, but she lost.
What was it? At first it looked black, inky almost. Maybe it was leaking oil.
Do elevators need oil?
But then her eyes adjusted. The closer she looked, the more she realized it was a viscous red. Blood? Was it blood? Henri didn’t mind blood - as long as it wasn’t human.
Mystery blood. She felt a little lightheaded. Where was it dripping from?
The puddle on the ground wasn’t just the viscous red though. Dripping onto the floor was coagulated blood mixed with a slimy clear substance.
Clear ooze? What's ooze? How do I define ooze?
It’s not like she could explain this to anyone anyways. They wouldn’t send anyone to deal with it. They never did.
Don’t look at the ceiling. Just walk away, don’t do it.
Henri’s eyes followed the steady drip of the stream of blood.
Resting itself on the ceiling was a vaguely humanoid figure. The creature was covered in charred black skin and pus oozing welts that swelled red. The creature was hairless and shapeless. It crawled across the elevator ceiling towards Henri. Its arms and legs bent as though broken at its joints. Its hands and feet barely functioned to hold it in place. As it moved, it left marks and scratches where bone tore through the poorly painted elevator. The creature crawled its way to Henri and then let its torso hang down until it was eye to eye with its prey.
Henri reached a hand forward, her face blank and disinterested in the elevator. She took a deep breath in, her nose wrinkling against her will at the stench of burnt rotten flesh. Her hand touched the button marked 5 inside the elevator, and took a single step back as the door shut in her face. She turned and jogged away from the elevator, heading to the stairwell behind the nearby door. She went inside and ran up the steps. She passed floor after floor of flickering lights. She could hear the groaning of the slow moving elevator breaking through the thick brick walls.
She finally made it to the fifth floor. As she heaved and struggled to catch her breath, she walked towards the elevator doors and hammered the call button until they opened.
The creature was waiting for her. It was on the wall nearest to Henri. It let out a hiss that spattered saliva and gore across the elevator. It arched over the cart and let out a crazed call that echoed out into the hallway. The creature dropped onto the floor with a thud and began crawling to the cart.
Henri grabbed hold of the cart, keeping both feet out of the elevator, and pressed the close button inside before stepping away. She breathed in slowly, gathered her thoughts and turned away. Incessant banging made her jump, but she told herself it was just the thumping of old broken machinery. She pulled her keycard out and opened the doors to go inside the Animal Care Wing of the sector.
She dawned herself in PPE and pushed the cart down the red lit halls, making her way to the final door on her left. She pushed it open with the cart and walked through rows upon rows of rats. The cart shuddered along the metal grate flooring. The room smelled like rodent. She was fortunate she had a mask on to let some of the stench not seep through. Maybe she’d keep it for the elevator’s rotten stench.
She took off a glove and checked her phone. “Rack 12, Cage… C…19, 20, and… 21 - no 22.” She mumbled as she squinted to look at the dim screen under the red light. Henri reached up and disengaged the latch holding the cage in place. Just as she did, there was a crash down the hall behind her. Henri jumped and the cage began to cascade down to the ground. She knew if it fell, she wouldn’t be able to find them all in the dim red light of the hallway. She dove down with it and caught the cage. The lid stayed on. Henri let out a deep sigh and leaned her back against the rack behind her. The sound of rustling continued from the source of the loud bang. She stared down the hall in curiosity.
Had a rat gotten loose?
Did someone get inside?
Something?
Henri shook the thought away. She’d just go around. She knew if she walked further down the hall to the exit on the other end, it looped back around to the elevator. She finished gathering all her cages in a haste and pushed forward, fighting the urge to look behind her as she heard the persistent shuffling and moaning falling further and further behind her.
Just as she opened the exit door, she heard the entry door snap open with a crack. LED light filtered into the hallway and she imagined all the rats cowering in fear at the fake sunlight ruining their evenings.
Before long, Henri was back at the elevator. She hit the call button as she did before until it opened, then slid the cart in with little issue. The elevator smell wasn’t as pungent with the mask and she didn’t see the strange puddle anymore. Odd. Maybe a custodian came by. Henri turned and jogged to the stairwell.
“Henrietta.”
That voice again. Behind her, right by the elevator. She paused at the stairwell door. The voice was deep and grating. She could feel it like a siren in her mind, grabbing her, pulling her away from her thoughts and into something more. Something that would eat at her, consume her, become her. She shuddered and shook her head.
No headphones to turn up, no fighting this with ignorance. She just had to go.
Henri slammed the doors open to the stairwell and practically threw herself down the stairs in a rush to get to the ground floor. She opened the door and rushed to the elevator. She arrived just as the doors shuttered open. On the other side, her cart had been overturned, the cages scattered. She frantically looked for the rats, trying to find where they could’ve gone. Then she paused.
All the rats were huddled together in a corner.
The creature had dragged itself down the elevator shaft, crawling along the walls and scraping its broken bones down the charred remnants of the building’s interior. It dropped down onto the elevator with a crash that made the elevator shake. As the elevator shuttered to a stop at the bottom, it opened the escape hatch at the top of the elevator and began pouring itself inside of the elevator. The little rodents cowered from the creature’s figure as it bared broken teeth at them. Then, the door opened. Beneath it, Henri struggled picking up the rats, grabbing them by the tail with gloveless hands and hurriedly rushing them into a cage. The creature hung over her, its body contorting to meet her view. When Henri finally looked up from her rats, she froze. The creature brought itself closer, inspecting the microexpressions that twitched and flinched across her face.
Henri backed out of the elevator, pulling the cart along with her. The doors shuttered, attempted to close, then stopped with a few inches of space. Her heart pounded in her chest. Why won’t they just close? She turned with the cart and rushed down the hallway back to the safety of the restricted research wing. The cart bounced along, echoing off the walls as she trotted forward. The sound almost masked the elevator doors wrenching open, but she heard it. She knew.
When she made it to the door, she struggled to fight her keycard out of her pocket. She swiped it several times, the door beeping in defiance. She took a deep breath and swiped the card. The door clicked open, and Henri thundered in, pushing the cart through with her. She heaved for air as she ran to her lab.
She was halfway down the hall before the door slammed shut.
Henri sighed in relief as she stepped into the lab and shut the door behind her. She pushed the cart into the experiment room and put the cages down on a table in the corner. She looked over all her equipment. Everything was ready and in place. She flicked the light off in the room and stepped back into the lab’s office space. She slumped down into her seat and pulled off her mask. She looked across her desk.
She had taken a lot of her personal belongings home in the past couple months. She couldn’t stand them getting any more damaged than they already were. She looked at an old textbook she kept at her desk. It was covered in water damage. She flipped through pages to a weathered section. A chapter on the somatosensory system. She always found TRPV2 to be the most interesting… but instead she shied away from that, focusing on some hair brained concept of gate theory in the limbic system - like that was even possible. It wasn’t her choice, she moved with what she could - where the funding let her go. Where was the fire in that?
Henri closed the textbook and leaned back in her seat.
Before her eyes could close, she heard a bang on the outside of the door. Henri jumped forward, hitting her head off the desk as she stumbled to get up. She rubbed her head and looked towards the door. She wasn’t worried. She knew it was locked, but she was still scared. She felt trapped in the room. She turned to look out the windows, but she forgot the new policy left them tinted and hard to see through.
Henri paused and looked around the room, trying to find anything that could help her. Then, a voice came through the other side,
“Henri, are you in?” It was a gentle voice. A friend. Henri went to the door and opened it. It was her coworker Sandra who worked on the floor above her.
“Hey. Sandy. What’s up?”
“Are you okay? You look a little pale…”
“I’m fine.” Henri feigned a smile. “Just getting ready to head out.”
“Yeah, me too. You wouldn’t believe the procedure Dr. Fenek has me doing. I don’t think he realizes how long it takes, you know? It’s kind of absurd. Man doesn’t know his own research.”
“Yeah. They’re like that.”
“They are!” Sandra laughed, “Hey, we’re all getting brunch tomorrow at 11. You gonna feel up to that?”
“Maybe.” Henri said, she glanced over her shoulder then back to Sandra.
“You sure you’re okay? You know, you can always talk to me if you need to… I know I wasn’t here, but -”
“Sandy, it’s late. I’m tired. I want to go home. I’ve been here all day.”
What a liar.
“Hey, it's all good… I get it.” Sandra smiled and shrugged, “I just… you know, wanted to make sure.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I just need some rest. I’ll text you if I wake up in time to come out with everyone.” Sandra nodded a solemn slow up and down,
“Okay. Get some rest, Henri.” Henri gave a forced smile and shut the door. She heard the receding footsteps of Sandra’s flats and walked back to grab her headphones. She poked her head back into the other room to make sure the lids on the cages were secure, then turned the lights off to the office space and left the lab. She put her headphones back on and turned the volume up, drowning out the white noise of the research wing with 80s rock.
Even as she tried to ignore it, every shifting shadow and change in pressure made her snap to attention, her heart jumping as she quickened her pace down the hall. Henri made it to the door that spilled out into the lecture wing, and trudged through. The sound of the latch disengaging made her heart soar and she had to pause and take a deep breath. She knew she had to walk past the elevator again. She needed all her composure to do it.
Henri felt the ground shudder slightly as the door to the research wing closed behind her. The security of being behind a locked door was over.
Pass the elevator, round the corner, pass the classrooms, through the door, across the bridge, through the main lobby, and out the door into the safety of the cool autumn evening.
But she was still by the research wing door… how could she get through all of that?
One step at a time…
A voice that didn’t quite feel like her own whispered in the back of her mind. Henri took its advice and began walking forward.
She wasn’t here this late often, but she thought that it would be a beautifully peaceful experience had the circumstances been different. Other than the steady hum of a functioning building, there was no one there to bother her - well, mostly. Sandy was the exception.
The walls creaked and groaned under the pressure of the recent renovation. The walls constricted and retracted around her as though the building itself was filled with life. They heaved in and out with each of her deep breaths. If not for how loud the music was, she was sure she’d hear the building’s breathing over her own.
She passed the elevator.
Next it was time to round the corner. Easy enough. She made it to the corner and went around as quickly as she could, leaving the hallway behind her. From the elevator she heard a bang followed by the roar of wrenching metal fighting to hold position. Henri’s breath was caught in her throat, and she fought every urge to sprint down the hall.
Just walk. Everything’s fine, just walk.
“Henri. Please…” That deep guttural voice, speaking through blisters pulled at her mind. Calling to her. Begging her.
The need to run overrode everything inside of her and she broke into a dead sprint. The lights began to flicker, the building felt like it was throbbing, the pain of her feet stepping on each tile was too much to handle. The doors to classrooms swung open, lights strobed all around her. Henri shouldered her way through the doors to the bridge and continued running. Her headphones fell off her head. She left them behind.
She couldn’t stop.
She wouldn’t.
The door opened behind her moments later. The scraping of bone and flesh against the door was her warding song, pushing her further and further in her mad dash to the door on the other side of the bridge.
Henri made it to the door, tugged it open and felt the wind of the unbalanced ventilation slam into her face. She ran through the air and into the main lobby. As she crossed the threshold, she tripped over a chair left in the middle of the room with no table to marry it to. She crumpled to the ground. When she fell, she looked back at the door.
As quickly as the creature could muster, it stalked its way across the bridge towards its prey. It knew she couldn’t hide forever. She couldn’t feign ignorance, she couldn’t pretend things were normal. Henri couldn’t escape what she did. The creature gripped the door and with an otherworldly strength ripped it open. The air blasted into its face as it dragged its shattered body across the threshold, skittering from the bridge to the lobby. Henri lay there, staring at the creature, her legs jumbled up in the chair. It stalked forward as she worked herself free. She turned and sprinted for the exit.
The creature lunged forward, falling over the chair. It bounded forward, scraping across the floor, trying to catch her, but always just out of reach.
Henri burst through the exit. The stars were high in the sky, the crisp air was already cooling her off. Her heart raced, her skin was coated in sweat, her head felt light.
But she was safe.
She turned back around and looked at her reflection in the glass. She stared it down. She watched the eyes across from her blink, a slow meaningless showing from a rotted corpse. Henri grimaced. She stared at the body. The weak, sad, damaged body looking back at her in a lens of her own reflection. The eyes blinked again. Henri nodded in response. She backed away from her reflection. From the corpse.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
About the author
L.L. Ford is a lifelong writer who started out drawing comics on his bedroom walls in crayon then explaining them as his parents stared on disbelief. Now in adulthood, L.L. uses his substack page as his proverbial bedroom wall and his computer as the crayons. Join L.L. Ford as he shares the fantastical and strange things that pop into his mind. From the creatures that blink back in the ethereal beyond to the things that make your brain think of the fantastical, L.L. Ford wants to share it all with anyone who is willing to listen.
The Trials of Astra (and other short stories) is a space with fantastical stories in the sci-fi-fantasy world of Astra AND a collection of horror stories, science discussions about how to utilize science in fiction, and book reviews from the perspective of a writer trying to better oneself!
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Wow. Wow. Wow. Ditto to what Rachel said. This isn't my genre, either, but I was sucked in. The writing was so visceral I felt like I was right there with Henri, experiencing what she was feeling. I was tense the whole time I read that. LOL
This story made me think about fear in a new way. What if fear isn't always something to be conquered or overcome? What if it's a part of us, a shadow that we carry with us, and learning to live with it is the true act of courage?