The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Oh Little Town of Pottsville
by K.R. Morrison

Such a lovely little town. The houses were arranged in neat order, the businesses close enough for convenience but away from the quiet neighborhoods. Only foot traffic here—everything was compact enough for easy access anywhere.

There was only one problem, and it was one that a competent realtor will tell anyone—location. However, the townsfolk made do. Most of the time they weren’t bothered by the sounds whooshing overhead, the squealing as the great beasts swerved away from their skies.

They made do.

But one night, as they gazed toward the heavens, a bright light came upon them. And this time it meant business.

The citizens wasted no time—down they went into the underground caverns. And not a moment too soon.

Walter cursed as his tire hit the pothole. He’d seen it coming, but had been driving too fast to avoid it. He hoped that perhaps he’d avoided damage, but it was immediately apparent that he now had a flat, or worse.

He pulled over, checked his tire, and stomped around to the trunk to retrieve the spare. But just as he was about to root around in the cluttered space, he noticed a strange light out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, that’s strange,” he muttered to himself.

The light was coming from the pothole!

Curious, he went over to check it out, and was astounded at what he saw.

There, inside the pothole, was the remains of a town. It looked like some kids had gotten bored and had put up a play town in the middle of the road.

“Well, don’t that beat all.”

Walter had just uttered those words when, suddenly, he felt a warm, then hot, then stinging sensation all over his body. He gasped at the little lights that were swarming him, then screamed in terror and pain as the first onslaught of very tiny people burrowed into his skin. As he swatted at them in one place, they rapidly regrouped and attacked another area. He ran into the brush along the road, trying to scrape them off on the trees and branches.

But they had gotten in too far. When the first wave hit his heart and internal organs, he knew he was a goner.

The next day, the police took away Walter’s car and started an investigation. But they’d been here before, under similar circumstances.

They all avoided the pothole, the interior of which had rebuilt itself during the night. For if they peered too closely, they would find that the fine clapboard houses were actually constructed of bone, the roads paved with skin, and the tiny curtains in the windows of the meat pie bakery oddly like the bits of clothing they had found scattered throughout the woods.

Fiction © Copyright K.R. Morrison
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.