Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #22 January 2016 | Page 19

pushing the door open. Hargrove entered the room. He
had expected a bedroom. Or, maybe a pommel horse
and a fifty gallon drum of petroleum jelly.
Instead, it was empty. The walls, floor and
ceiling were covered in blue tiles. He could make out
some blood stains on the grout. Not a good sign, he
thought.
He spun around. Drusilla was blocking the
doorway. Her face began to melt, the flesh peeling
away to reveal a void beneath, a black maw lined with
teeth. She slowly moved towards him.
“What the fuck?” Hargrove said, as he backed
away from the advancing horror.
A voice like the squeal of boiling cats leaked
out from the toothy darkness. “I saw your intent.
If you are successful, Project Habitrail will not get
funding. My husband promised me a trip to Paris with
the bonus he’ll get from Yoyodyne. And I want to go
shopping on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. But I do
have something for you…the Many Tentacled One
brings you the gift of eternal death.”

Fist, fist, fist, he thought.
A ball of mental energy exploded from
Hargrove’s mind and slammed into Drusilla’s. The
increasingly tentacled woman dropped to her knees,
staggered by the explosion in her mind. A howl
escaped from the void, the sound of a six-year-old girl
getting the wrong doll for Christmas. Hargrove dashed
out of the room and headed for the stairs. At the
landing, the door-goon was waiting, hand in his jacket,
pulling a gun out of its shoulder holster. Hargrove ran
down half the flight of stairs, then leapt at the goon.
He hit him square in the chest, knocking him to the
floor. Hargrove silently thanked his department’s
necromancers for resurrecting Bruce Lee as a selfdefence instructor.
The Senator emerged from the parlour.
“What’s going on?”
“Sorry, sir, have to go. See you tomorrow at
the hearing.”

Okay, time to go, Hargrove thought. He
reached into his coat pocket for the teleport control.
“Screw you, she-bitch.”

He didn’t want to break stride, so he aimed
for the foyer window. He jumped, tucked, and burst
through it. Even as he was rolling to a stop on the
driveway, Lieutenant Grossman had pulled his car out
and was revving the engine.

He pressed the “activate” button. Nothing.
Teleport jammer, he mentally exclaimed.

Hargrove dashed across the driveway, yanked
open the back door and dove in.

If a creature with nothing but a toothy black
void for a face could smile,