It’s A Strange Night to Be Alive

Bizarchives favorite Arbogast returns with a flash fiction story

Here, in this very short tale, Bizarchives veteran ARBOGAST recounts one strange encounter way out in the unknown hinterlands.

Deep, bitter December frost made invisible icicles out of the air. A small dusting of snow made the world a funereal white—white like a death’s head, white like a burial shroud. No sane soul stirred in the after-midnight darkness.

And yet, standing underneath a single floodlight, was a man. A black knit cap clung close to his scalp. A black peacoat gave him the vague outline of a sailor despite the sea being a thousand miles away. A pair of black leather gloves and stained blue jeans made him look like a killer. But the man did not move to strike; he produced no gun or knife. He merely stood still in the pale floodlight outside of the home’s garage. A keen eye would have noticed that something was missing: no ghost’s fog of vapor left his lungs.

After an hour of the man’s standing and staring, the homeowner finally stirred. He was drawn not by the strange visitor’s presence, but rather by the pedestrian pain of insomnia. The exhausted husband and father checked on his sleeping wife first. He found her soundlessly dreaming. His children—nine-year-old Rebecca and ten-year-old Peyton—were a different matter. Rebecca sucked her thumb with glee. He pulled the thumb out gently. He did not want such a filthy habit to last into adulthood. As for Peyton, he kept rolling around in his sheets, leaving behind a fabric cyclone.

“I am responsible for a band of monsters,” the man thought to himself. A smirk followed. The homeowner congratulated himself for making so many good decisions. He then walked downstairs, opened the front door, and inhaled the cold night air. A thoroughgoing sense of calm pervaded his bones and kept him warm. The homeowner enjoyed his small, quiet life wherein the worst thing was a thumb sucking daughter.

“It’s a strange night to be alive.”

The homeowner turned towards his garage and gasped in horror at the presence of the stranger.

“What?”

“It’s a strange night to be alive,” the man repeated.

“Who are you? Get away from my house right now, or I’ll call the police.” When the stranger refused to move, the homeowner barraged him with expletives. The stranger did not smile, did not curse, and did not threaten. He just reminded the homeowner that it was a strange night to be alive.

“Why do keep saying that?” the homeowner screamed.

The stranger looked him the eyes for the first time. He also slowly dipped his head. “It’s a strange night to be alive…when everything should be dead.”

The homeowner followed the stranger’s gaze. Both men looked at the crawling, squirming, and oozing pit that once had been the stranger’s stomach. A motely army of discolored intestines and viscera moved with blind fury, overlapping each other with wet slaps. The organs appeared to be eating one another.

The homeowner covered his mouth to scream. There were tears in the fabric of small, quiet world. The stranger just stood and stared into the void.