Differing Perspectives

        The four of them were having a grand old time hanging out in Harold’s kitchen.  They were enjoying some fine root beer because Harold wouldn’t allow anything harder; the guy was straighter than an arrow.  They were playing strip poker for the same reason.  Every straight arrow enjoyed the idea of disrobed females, and Harold was no exception.

         Bill was knocking back the root beer at a crazy rate, shocking the rest of them with his ability to hold the carbonated tooth rot.  A short, fun-loving guy who was about to graduate high school fit for the Marines and not much else, Bill was the type of guy everyone like to have around.  He never got very worked up, would stay laid back in the face of everything but someone talking shit about his family.

         Cindy was there with Bill.  This girl wasn’t very much to look at, but had some of the sharpest wits in school.  You entered into a debate or cap war at your own risk, and everybody knew it.  Opposites much really attract, since Bill adored his homely but brilliant girl, and doted on her in every way the two of them could think of.

         Alice was Harold’s date, and had been for a few years now.  No one, including themselves, was really sure what the attraction was, but it was there and it was strong.  If there was a moment not spent gazing into each other’s eyes, it was because one of them was absent.  They had the habit of spontaneously kissing, and allowing their kissing to spiral out of control.  More than once Bill had been forced to split the two of them before too much clothing came off.

         The four of them had been friends pretty much since the dawn of time, and it had been a tradition since Freshman year to hang out together on Friday nights.  Bill wasn’t pondering such deep bonds of friendship after his sixth root beer in twenty minutes; he was merely pondering how badly he had to piss even before the first hand.

         Harold waved a hand towards the hallway door.  “You know where it’s at.”  Harold had more important things to worry about than Bill’s bladder, such as the full house that was about to win the shirts off both girls’ back… literally.

         Bill did indeed know where the lavatory was, and made his way towards the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the rest of the hallway.  Off of this hallway, one found the rest of the house, including the all-important master bath.  Bill pushed open the door as he had tens of thousands of times since he was ten years old, and froze in mid-step so comically that it would have earned a laugh from the others had they been watching.

         The young man paled, skipped backwards a pace and let the door swing shut.  He threw a glance towards the girls and Harold, finding them still bent on the hand.  Bill hesitated a moment, then shrugged, walked outside, and pissed on the rosebushes just outside the door.

         Once he returned, Bill found that Harold’s full house—fives over threes—had indeed won both Alice’s and Cindy’s blouses.  Sparing them hardly a glance, Bill suggested, “You ladies might just wanna put those shirts back on and take a look down that hallway.”

         Harold’s head snapped around, more than a little irritated.  “What the hell are you talking about?  I won that fair and square.  And do you realize what my mother would do if she found out you pissed on her rosebushes?”

         Bill patted Harold’s shoulder.  “Then don’t tell her.  And seriously, go open that door a little and take a peek.”

         Squinting up at Bill, who managed to be just a little taller than Harold when sitting, Harold sighed.  He then stood up, walked over to the door, and tapped it open.  His eyes shot open wide, and let the door swing shut again.

         “Spiders, about three feet wide, spitting venom?”  Bill asked helpfully.

         “Close… you know that movie, where you got that leper running around infecting people?”

         “Oooo, nasty stuff.”

         Alice, who ignored the advice to put her shirt back on, stormed over.  “What the fuck are you two talking about?”  Without waiting for an answer, she swing the door open wide.  She turned to face Bill before it was closed again.  “I thought that was a hallway, not an ICU.”

         Harold raised an eyebrow.  “ICU’s scare you?”

         Alice, who’d inched her way to Bill, scowled.  “After you watch four or five people in your family die in them, sure they’re gonna scare you.”

         Harold threw an arm around Cindy’s nearly bare shoulders and shot her a look.  “Care to see?”

         Cindy nodded cheerfully.  “You betcha.  I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”  She inched her way up to the door, popped it open just a few inches, and then turned around.  “That dead guy, the one missing his head and an arm… he part of the new décor?”

         Choking back a laugh in spite of himself, Harold shook his head. 

         Someone must have made a signal, because they all moved back to the table at the same time.  Each of them kept at least one eye on the door, waiting for it to pop open.  After they’d sat just a moment or two, Harold took a little initiative.  “So…correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve got four different horror movies playing in my hallway.”

         The other three nodded.  “Yep, that’s about the way it looks,” Bill added.

         “And I can’t speak for any of you, but that thing I saw just happened to be the tippy top of my biggest fear list.”

         Again, there were nods of agreement.  Alice said, “Personally, I think we need to get Stephen King or someone on the phone… we need a professional.”

         They all chuckled, then it was Bill’s turn to break the silence.  “Next obvious question:  Did anybody spike the root beer?”

         Four more laughs.  The fear each of them had tasted when looking through the doorway was gone, dispelled by the fluorescent lighting and bad jokes.  Harold cleared his throat.  “So, if what’s in there, isn’t some sort of changing group hallucination, then… it’s gotta be real, somehow.”

         Alice shook her head.  “Bullshit.  Unless it’s some sort of movie projection those AV dipshits are putting on to scare us, it ain’t real.  See, it hasn’t come out after us yet.”

         At the words “movie projection,” Cindy’s face lit up.  Harold noticed, and also noticed she didn’t offer whatever theory had just leapt into her head.  Deciding they weren’t going to get anything done sitting here cracking jokes, Harold stood up.  “Since we all saw something different, it’d be interesting to see what happens when we all look in, don’t you think?”

         Murmurs, nods, and then the three of them stood up.  Goosebumps started to form on Cindy’s bare stomach, and Harold decided it really didn’t’ matter what a girl’s face looked like when she wasn’t wearing clothes.

         They gathered around the door, eyeing each other and clearly waiting for someone else to open the door.  A full three or four minutes after first setting up position, Alice reached out and kicked the door with a dainty foot hidden in a pink sock.  Four breaths were inhaled, and then held.

         When the door swung all the way open, the hallway appeared empty.  Letting go of his breath and stepping forward, Bill held open the door to let everyone get a better look.  “Well I’ll be goddamned.”

         They all looked everywhere, and didn’t’ see one thing unusual.  It was Cindy who ventured into the hallway first, and before too long she pointed at the flowery wallpaper in triumph.  “That’s it!  There’s our little bastard!”

         The others gathered behind her, peering over her pale bare shoulders at what looked like a huge cockroach with a neon paintjob.  “Waaaaait a second,” Harold muttered.  “You’re trying to tell me… what?”  Harold shrugged, glancing at Alice.  “I had a train of thought there, but it went right over the cliff.”

         Cindy scratched at a breast absently as she peered at the bug.  “That little shit is some kind of shape-shifter.  We just sorta… blew its circuits when we looked together.  Couldn’t process all our fears, so it… picked some common one, and hopes it’d be good enough?”

         “Weird.”  Bill glared at the bug, very uninterested in discussing it, very interested in his nearly topless girlfriend.  “When do we squish that little fucker with a shovel?”

         Harold gave Alice’s back a quick rub and then stepped behind Bill.  “Right now.”

         After all, there was no point in letting some nasty shape-shifter go running around.  Who knew what kids could get scared by such a little demon?

         And more importantly, it WAS a bug.  And the girls weren’t about to get any more naked with a bug that size running around, Harold could tell.  And the naked girls were really the point, weren’t they?