Read Uneasy Reading: 4 Horror Shorts for Free Online

worry; the Haitian can keep you
company."
    3.
    Joey wasn't going to stick around town to
see how pissed Giovanni got when she found Vincent sitting there in
a pile of his own puke. Vincent deserved whatever was coming his
way. He felt bad that things had gone the way they did with the
Haitian, but he wasn't about to stick around and try to make sense
out of any of it. What had been able to do that to him? The
Haitian was a big man, smart and always armed.
    The thought of Giovanni hiring a little
person as an assassin was as amusing as it was brilliant if that
was what she'd done. Who would expect trouble from a midget… or was
it dwarf? Maybe it was little person. Joey didn't know the
politically correct terminology. The fact that he was even thinking
the words politically correct pissed him off. He had to
hurry.
    The only thing he wanted to do was to grab a
few things from his apartment and then skedaddle, get the hell out
of Dodge and every other cliché he knew for blowing town. He
cruised through two red lights on his way and didn't even bother
slowing, not caring if a cop pulled him over. Hell, it would have
been preferable to dealing with Giovanni, or whatever she had hired
to kill him.
    He made it across town and pulled up to his
apartment in less than fifteen minutes.
    Psycho cannibal midget or not, he wasn't
going to stay in town any longer. Someone had torn out the Haitian's throat. He'd cruise south for a while and
then head east. Maybe stay in Albuquerque for a bit and just let
shit settle. He could find work there. Yeah, that sounded like a
plan. He hopped out of the car and hurried up the steps into his
little one bedroom hideout. It was barren and held only his
essentials.
    As he was tossing several knives and some of
his clothes into a duffle bag, he heard someone behind him, the
sound of shuffling feet across carpet. In a single fluid motion, he
spun around and dropped to a knee while drawing his .40 from its
holster.
    Instead of an angry dwarf or one of
Giovanni's toughs, it was a little girl. The same little girl that
was on the picture he'd found in the crate. She looked just the
same as she had in the photo, except she no longer looked bored.
She looked unsure, almost timid. Blood covered her pallid hands and
mouth. Her once white dress looked like a Jackson Pollock study in
red.
    She tilted her head and stared at him.
    Her mouth opened to reveal sharp teeth and
suddenly she didn't look so fearful.
    4.
    Vincent huddled in a corner as far away from
the Haitian as he could possibly get. He'd tried the door several
times but the lock was strong and it wouldn't budge. He thought
about turning off the light so he wouldn't have to look at the dead
man. But he really didn't want to be alone in the dark with a
corpse either. Instead, he just sat with his head down and prayed
that he might be lucky enough to have a heart attack before Carlos
and Giovanni showed up. They were going to make life miserable.
    It didn't take him long to remember that he
had some weed. Once he started puffing away on a joint it took the
edge off a little. He relaxed a bit, stretched out his legs, and
then chanced at glance at the Haitian, the poor bastard.
    "What the hell happened to you, man?"
Vincent said. He took another hit and thought he saw the Haitian
move. His arm twitched. It was slight: but he was sure he
saw it. He swallowed hard and kept watching. Maybe the body did
things like that. Maybe it moved after death because of nerves or
something. Vincent didn't know. He'd never had reason to try to
find out something like that.
    The Haitian's foot twitched.
    "Fuck," Vincent said. He stubbed out the
joint on the concrete floor and kept watching. If the son of a
bitch moved again, he'd –
    The Haitian's mouth opened and he
groaned.
    Vincent pushed himself further into the
corner, told himself it wasn't real. Someone must've laced his weed
with LCD or something because it couldn't be real.
    The Haitian sat up. His chest heaved as