HALLOWEEN WEEK 2025 CONTEST
Runner-up
BY KENNETH N. MARGOLIN
Copyright is held by the author.
AS JACOB sat on a rock to watch the sunset, by the wetlands near the deep woods outside of his northern Montana township, the creature approached. It had sauntered out of the trees, moved along the edge of the wetlands, and now sat facing him. Jacob had taken the overgrown, narrow trail outside of town, two miles to this spot. He grew up here and knew the trail and the forest well. He was at ease in the wilds. Though wildlife was plentiful in the woods, Jacob had never seen the likes of this beast. He guessed him to be some mix of wolf and wild dog. The creature had muscular haunches, a large head and powerful jaws. His coat was dark grey, his eyes jet black. Jacob looked into his eyes and had to jerk his gaze away. He felt drawn toward a chasm within a chasm within a chasm, to a soulless place. There were no signs the wolf dog was rabid. He seemed curious about Jacob’s presence. They sat communing silently for a long stretch of time.
When Jacob shifted his position on the rock, the creature bared his teeth and growled, a long, low, primal sound. Jacob went still, and the beast quieted himself. They resumed their vigil. Dusk settled over them, night not far off. Jacob had a headlamp and knew the way, so had no worry of getting lost. His dilemma was how to leave. He experimented, and raised his rear ever so slowly off the rock. If the beast did not object, he would back away until he could turn and head for home. The creature lowered his chin, growled with greater menace than before, and inched toward Jacob, his eyes focused on his throat. When Jacob sat down, he backed off the precise distance he had moved forward, and rested on his haunches once again. Jacob told himself that if the wolf dog had wanted to attack, he would have done so by now. He had only to wait until the creature tired of watching him, and returned to the woods.
The creature did not move. Sooner or later, one of them would need to sleep. Jacob did not wish to test what would happen if he fell asleep first. He cursed himself for leaving his pistol at home. He decided to show no fear, and stood up abruptly. Wolf dog, as Jacob had mentally named him, bared his fangs and came within inches of him. His breath was sulphurous and foul. He growled with force, and a trace of his spittle landed on Jacob’s face. He scooped up dirt and rubbed hard where the spittle had struck, to erase the malodor. A pang of fear knotted his stomach. He calmed himself and concentrated on devising a strategy to make the creature leave. Full night had come. A quarter moon in a cloudless sky kept the landscape from being completely dark. Jacob looked for a stone to throw at wolf dog, but the nearest one was several steps away from the rock on which he was stuck.
Perhaps sudden noise could jostle the beast. Jacob put his arms out in front of him, and clapped his hands as loudly as he could. In the dim light, his hands appeared small. Wolf dog did not budge. After ten minutes, he clapped again. His hands looked smaller still. The tone of his clapping was that of a child. He stared at his hands, palms up, then palms down. Had they shrunk? Could it be an illusion, borne of the dark and his long captivity on the rock? A strange sensation unsettled Jacob, one he could not place until he looked down at his feet. They no longer touched the ground. He closed his eyes and opened them again as if to dispel a nightmare. He waited, he could not tell for how long, then looked again at his hands, and at his feet, which were further from the ground than when he first noticed they were not touching. Jacob put both hands on top of his head, and with his fingers, traced his forehead, his ears, eye sockets, nose, mouth and chin.
“Oh, no, no,” he screamed into the night.
He was shrinking, and by some magic, the clothes he wore shrunk with him. As Jacob trembled with a desperate panic, the pace of his shrinking quickened. His feet were halfway up the rock, his hands the size of an infant’s. Wolf dog eyed him intently. He growled softly, an almost tender sound.
Jacob bawled. He whimpered, his cries ever more high-pitched until they were swallowed by the screeching din of the crickets and cicadas. At last, Jacob sat in the center of the top of the rock, a perfectly formed miniature human being. Wolf dog stood and moved forward until his gigantic maw hovered over him. Suddenly, wolf dog’s tongue was curled underneath Jacob, who was transported up and inside the creature’s mouth. Now Jacob understood why the beast’s breath was so devilishly foul – he was not the first. Jacob slid down wolf dog’s throat into the hollow of his stomach. He felt wolf dog’s digestive fluids wash over him, felt the sting of acid, the burn.
***
Kenneth N. Margolin is a retired attorney, and lives with his wife, Judith, in Newton, Massachusetts. Ken’s stories and creative nonfiction have been published in print and online in Short Edition, Sport Literate Magazine, Dash Literary Magazine, Concrete Desert Review, CommuterLit, Evening Street Review, Corner Bar Magazine, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, The Literary Hatchet, among others; poetry in Shot Glass Journal.