Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Unearthly Symphony Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

UNEARTHLY SYMPHONY

As she drew open her tired and sticky eyelids, the dim world came back into view. She blinked again. A foot away, a man stretched out, his limp arm reaching into her lap. She took his hand and gazed down into his anguished eyes. The situation cast him into a new and unwelcome light. He was her husband. She still had that.

He coughed and she squeezed his hand.

“Water,” he said, harsh and raspy.

She fought off tears, wore the brave mask, and looked to the plastic water bottle on the filthy floor. There was some, but not much left. She put the bent straw to her husband’s lips. He drank deeply, craving more.

“I’ll go now. Be back,” she whispered.

It was wise to stay quiet.

“I love you, but you can’t—” he started.

Her brave mask melted on her dirty face, tears carved paths to her chin. “I’m not going far. Now, shh.”

She crawled. It was once her living room, a room that made up the central space of an apartment, fixed below the main floor of a large house. The home above had caved in and buried their lives. Two corners of the home withstood the quakes. Partially safe, the couch sat under the crooked ceiling. She longed for just the cushy feeling, but she didn’t dare use it, she slept on the cushions as the couch was heavy and too far from her husband’s reaching hand and he was unable to move his trapped legs. The living space overhead had pinched him to the floor.

She crawled, past the couch, past her old life, and through the hole.

She’d dug a small opening to the kitchen. At first, she screamed for help, her husband unconscious and in need of emergency care. Nobody came.

It started with the grind, that’s what the news called the noise. The grind.

That seemed a million years ago.

The grind, a thing imposed onto their day-to-day lives. Something that didn’t slow traffic or fill emergency rooms. The grind, just a noise that sat on the air like humid pollution in the summer and nobody knew for certain what it was. If they had known, it might’ve been different, but not likely. It felt like a sick, pre-ordained joke, humanity’s destiny.

The grind had quieted. The quakes began. The homes crashed. The home above the happy couple included.

She’d screamed for help, hapless as the cry choked in her throat upon seeing her husband. Closed eyes, short breaths, she touched him, dreading the worst, but he wasn’t dead. She searched the rubble for a phone, but came up empty.

She crawled. Moving wood, plaster and books as she slunk her body onto a handmade path. She slid in a worried panic; everything had become unstable after the quakes. The ready-to-collapse path was her only route out for help.

 She dug, crawled through to the small kitchen, pipes spouting waterfalls, trickling fountains of lifesaving drink. She prayed that the electricity died in the lines as lifesaving became life ending all too quickly. She called out for help as she followed the light at the far side of the basement.

To her feet, she leaned against a wall, reaching to a small window, frustrated by her weak arms while looking up to the world outside. She’d never needed sufficient muscles to, literally, pull her weight. She called out the window and stopped to listen: screams, car alarms, rattling steel, barking dogs. The trouble wasn’t localized to the apartment.

She moved bric-a-brac, rubble, debris, once things she loved, into a pile below the window and pulled her body up an inch at a time, her feet kicking against the wall below. The outdoor light blinded once she finally had herself free. She stood a moment as the bright splotches moved from her vision. The air stank of smoke and tasted like dust.

An arm with a gun in hand, just an arm, torn from its socket, lay in the green grass. She shook her head, no, and ran from the back of the house toward the street. Dead in her path, she stopped. The mountain range rimming the city had fallen, caved in. Homes crushed, streets cracked, it was a nightmare come to life.

Animals: deer, moose, bears, rabbits, birds, cats, and dogs ran from the woods below the mountains. Scurried about, confused and scared, just like the townsfolk, just like she and her husband. She called out again, stepping out to the street, a neighbor’s home no longer obscuring her view. She covered her mouth as a new scream ejected from her throat like a siren.

A blue Mercedes pulled out onto the street, the driver wild. Typically slow and old, she knew him as Mr. Pendleton. He was a retired insurance salesman. The engine roared, joining the din of the miserable voices, the unhappy animals, the alarms—flame, gas, carbon monoxide—and rumble of the pandemonium around her.

Steel crunched and creaked against steel. One of four massive feet belonging to a dirty metallic beast stomped onto the Pendleton’s Mercedes. The engine died and Mr. Pendleton swore a slew of horrors through the shattered window. A bright red light, pinpointed and burned the car’s interior to ash in a blink.

The metallic beasts with hinged knees moved on, widening the path of destruction. The path was the block. The city and then…

The world, she thought, oh God, save us.

The real grind was below the mountains, under the ground, all over the world, different volumes in different areas. The grind sang its mysterious song just about everywhere.

Had they all caved, is this...? Is it this all over the globe?

Everywhere she looked she saw more of the dirty metal beasts, saw the beast’s masters, beasts in their own right. Tall and heavy, muscular beneath the clunky-looking suits of dull materials, single vertically cut eyes, wide mouths, teeth sharpened to points. Carnivores. Skin greenish grey, pale as a sickly child awaiting the flu to pass, baldheaded and bleached, creatures beyond reason. Horrid alien things living beneath the world all this time.

She ran. Her eyes trained on the window, she dropped to her knees, crawled backward through the hole, eye-level with the severed arm. She hated guns, but reached for the dead appendage. The fingers gave with ease and she pulled free the tool of destruction, the tool of protection.

She slid to safety. Home.

Gun in hand, heart hammering behind her ribs, she crawled through the former apartment, her former life strewn about in compartmental anarchy. Without realizing, she catalogued the available items of survival: sprouting water, utensils, cans of food, last night’s leftovers. Pizza still wrapped in plastic, plate beneath broken but together.

A constant groan called from her throat as she crawled. She was home, but she didn’t feel homey or safe as she’d planned. She slunk down through the hole back to her husband.

Eyes open, blood ran from his scalp over his face, “I’m stuck, Beans, I’m stuck.” Pitiful, helpless, frightened tears moistened his cheeks.

Beans, the pet name cut like a rusty knife. She dropped the weapon and travelled to his hand, kissed his dusty face and dirty lips. “There’s something outside, things,” she whispered, quiet and severe.

“What things?” he shouted, but she covered his mouth and listened to the din outside.

Overhead was a window, crushed all but closed, letting in sound and pins of light. It was chaos, but distant. “We have to whisper, there are things.”

“My legs,” he said and after a moment’s pause, “Are they still there, I mean are they attached? I can’t feel them. I don’t want to be paralysed. I don’t want to be in a wheelchair. What things?”

She looked at his legs below a hunk of ceiling plaster. They were there. Bones stuck out, sharp white below a thin coat of red. It seemed to matter more than what went on outside, she imagined her already docile husband pushed to the brink of lifelessness. Paraplegic was a horrible thought, but nothing as bad as the world outside the rubble. His worry seemed almost laughable. She squeezed his hand, letting plaster back down onto his battered legs, covering a mess of trashed humanity.

“Broken, maybe pinched at the spine,” she said and then explained the alien things.

He considered the facts presented, overwhelmed. “The noise stopped. The grind stopped. Aliens, the things?”

“Shh, you have to whisper. I don’t know, the things, creatures, they’re alien to me. It’s bad. It’s like a horror show.” She gazed at the remains of her belongings.

“What do you mean?” he whispered, finally heeding. 

“The mountains…” she explained all that she saw.

He listened. Quiet after she’d finished, ponderous look on his face, “I’m going to die here,” he said finally. It was a fact, undeniable.

She tried to tell him no, but just held him, he was where he would be until time, the aliens, or hopefully, the military decided otherwise. Are there real heroes in situations like this?

Hours passed and hunger came upon them. She crawled out to the kitchen and gathered a buffet: pizza, crackers, hummus, and an apple.

They ate, a yellow stream traveled a dusty trail, she lifted her food, but didn’t say anything. He hadn’t noticed his bladder working independently and she fought back more tears.

Minutes later, he vomited all of the food he’d eaten. Wasted, regurgitated into a bloody mound, the dough holding it all tight. It was as if white golf balls went through the wash with a red one. She cleaned it so he wouldn’t have to look at it. They wept, holding onto the minutes.

He slept. She didn’t.

Outside, animals scratched until they moved on. There was a wealth of food all over town for the scavengers. Had to be.

Light rose and she finally slept, but woke to find a grimace, angry and sad, on her husband’s face. She started to ask about his expression, but her nose told before she needed say anything further. Not just his bladder, all functions worked automatically.

The time passed and his hue lightened. She crawled often for water, moving around the strewn weapon, never losing track of its location. It was the old west type, that’s how she saw it. It had a spinning cylinder. She thought of The Deer Hunter and Russian roulette.

Mau, di di mau!

Suicide wasn’t viable, not yet. It would not come while hope continued to play on the outskirts. A wheelchair for her husband seemed almost a wonderful dream.

She filled the water bottle and listened. There was movement close by. She crawled back, stacking hardcover novels in front of the hole she’d used.

She fed him water and he drank, feverish, dying, but keeping the liquid down.

Night returned and she slept when he did. He mumbled in his sleep about the horses and the eagles, fevered nonsense. His hand in her hand, they woke together wishing it was all an awful dream.

Clear eyes, clean inside the filthy, sweaty, bloody face, he looked up at her. “I love you, Beans, I’ve loved you since we met,” he said and forced a smile.

She cried as he rattled toward death. All that she could give him was water. She could ignore urine streams and the fecal scent forever if he just stayed with her.

“I love you, too.”

“Do you remember…?” he started into memories, once so happy, romantic. Now, heartbreaking and poisonous, he continued about days gone, permanently deleted heaven.

“Shh,” she said finally, rehashing the honeymoon in Alaska was too painful, “no more, please.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted us to share it again, before I die,” he whispered.

She took his hand. “Help might come. It might.”

“How? Nobody will know.”

He was right, even if humanity fought back and won, they were quiet, in fear, too scared to announce a presence. She sobbed and he let his eyes slide shut without argument.

He shook and moaned in his sleep. She moved to her book stack. He needed help. She pushed aside the blockade, revolver in hand, and crawled out.

The quiet had departed from the alleyway window and she heard chattering. The aliens communicating in their abominable native tongue. The sound was akin to razors on glass, starving mice feeding on infant mice, kittens drowning in a sack, nails on a chalkboard. The voices sounded of motion, awful, squeaking and scratching. She covered her ears.

The chatter ceased and she crawled back with water.

He awoke and drank. She didn’t mention the alien voices. Couldn’t. His lips had dried and his cheeks paled further. His eyes were sunken and dark. He had enough to take without knowing the sounds of the horror beyond the crumbled walls.

Once he’d had his fill, she drank, and then put the straw by his mouth again. He’d barely had any and didn’t want any more. She opened a can of refried beans and ate the black paste on soda crackers, the wells behind her eyes held strong.

“I love you,” he muttered. Over and over.

A grown man, devolved into infancy, as if he’d learned a phrase rather than a single word. I love you instead of Mama or Papa or no. She returned the phrase, pushed the cracker to his lips, but he shook his head. Straw to his lips again, he sipped.

She finished the can of beans, drank from the straw, emptying the bottle, read, and then slept.

It was dark when she awoke. Thirsty. She’d felt safer in her space, but carried the revolver as if it was a sixth finger on her right hand. She crawled, moved the guarding book stacks, and followed the sound of water still spraying from the pipe.

It was dark, but not pitch-black, the sun was still out there somewhere and she judged it perhaps four or five in the morning. She held the bottle under the trickle. The chatter came high and surprised from behind her.

It was over. She felt the end shiver through her body. Those things had found her and wanted her. They’d have her with their metal beasts and…

She screamed and pulled the trigger with the revolver pointed at the floor. The chatter continued. A stream of light filled the room. Her only hope was a monster in the closet startled by the fearful child poking out from beneath the covers. She trained the gun on the center of the light and pulled the trigger three more times. The sound was momentarily deafening in the small space. There was a wheeze and a final movement.

Her heart threatened to leap from her chest, through the flesh and bone and cloth, achieve freedom from the horror slouched on her ruined dining table.

Forgetting the water, she crawled back to her dark safety, a place the bulb from the alien thing’s lens couldn’t reach. She gasped for air and cried while her husband moaned in his sleep.

Unwilling to rest her eyes and unable to muster the courage hours later to dampen her parched throat, to face that dead thing out there, she attempted to wait out time. Eventually, exhaustion took her away.

“Water,” her husband said, grabbing for comfort, finding only debris.

She awoke and took his hand. She squeezed. “I’ll get some.”

“I love you, Beans,” he said.

It was brighter and she saw the form’s figure completely. It was a creature, but up close, obviously nothing of Earthly origin. Skin, blood, eye, mouth, not of the familiar evolutionary route. The beast was otherworldly, so very alien, but dead just the same.

She filled the plastic water bottle, filled a secondary jug, tossed cans from the floor through the hole and crawled, pistol in her loose pants.

Lucid, the fever offered an hour’s reprieve. “You shot one?” he asked, his throat hoarse.

She explained.

“Sounds terrible. But it’s dead, for sure? What did it look like?”

She nodded to the first question, but didn’t want to answer the second.

“Terrible,” he reiterated, pausing to ponder and then said, “You know, I love you. If you think you can get—”

“No,” she said, too loudly for comfort

They sat quietly, she was never the strong one of the pair, not that either thought they might survive anything like a television apocalypse scenario, but it was his duty to take the brunt of things, bad things and hard things. That was his duty until the grind ceased and the ceiling fell. Until his legs broke. His back broke. Her heart broke. All the hard things became her duty.

She read aloud, a gentle voice until he slept, she continued silently until the light died. Snuggled into the cushions from the couch with the dusty throw blankets, one for each of them. His hand in her hand, pitch-black, flashlights dead outside, no glow around the books. She squeezed his hand tight, kissing his hot cheeks whenever she woke from a drowse.

“This can’t be the end, you can’t leave me,” she whispered, but he didn’t react. “I need you.”

Time melted together like Neapolitan ice cream in the sun. Days into night, night straight into evening, morning erased by fear.

She ate and drank sparingly. She held her husband. He hadn’t opened his eyes all day and then night came in its quick way. His face burned against her lips. Outside, dogs barked. Inside small scratches surrounded them. She shook with every sound, imagining demons and monsters somehow worse than the ones she’d witnessed already. Sleep came despite the scavengers, fingers entwined with her husband’s.

The hold separated in sleep. The dark was just dim again and the scratching was closer and splashing. She had to risk it and she crawled, moved aside the stack.

Rats chewed on the alien and she smiled, crawled back and piled the book stacks. She ate tuna out of the can, the crackers gone, she recollected the simple pleasure of breads. Gone.

The scratching of the rats ceased. Bored and curious, she pushed aside the stacks to look. The spilled blood poisoned the rats, their tiny legs pointed to the sky around the strange corpse.

Night came and her husband finally awoke, barking a request that she didn’t understand. The straw met his lips and he sipped. “Go, save yourself,” he grumbled.

“No,” she said. She’d considered it, but only for a moment, she’d never face that world without him. Her will would waste with desperation. There was hope for the military yet. “Never.”

“Please.”

“Shh.” She grasped his hand.

“Love you, Beans.”

She responded with echoed sentiment.

Sun rose and fell, moon likewise.

He panted and she held his hand, whispered in his ear.

Time mounted.

It had been a forever since he spoke, three days since her I love you returned, the memory never quite fresh enough. It was quiet outside the living room. Not so much as a dog noise all day. She wondered what that might mean. Decided that it didn’t matter, she crawled away from his hand to peek. Came back and held tightly. There was nothing out there.

The sun rose higher and brightened the gloom. There was good news, the fever broke and his temperature fell. It was still early in the day and she felt cause for hope.

She held his hand, it continued to soak up the heat offered from her palm. On and on, she felt for a pulse and broke into racking sips of air as if she had to steal back the oxygen from the atmosphere. Her I love yous never to be returned again. Dead men lost their fevers, dead men grew cold.

Warm revolver grip in one hand, cold flesh and bone in the other, she glazed, eyes like a doll’s eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered.

She listened to a rustle somewhere near. They were coming.

She repeated, “I love you.” No longer whispering.

The rustle became clangs and bangs. They wanted blood and revenge for their fallen comrade. Surely.

“I love you.” She kissed his dead hand.

Things moved and shook beyond her flimsy protective wall. Something was close, so very close.

If there was an afterlife, if there was and she screamed loud enough, “I love you!” then maybe he’d hear, catch the words and send them back.

She heard nothing and thought again of The Deer Hunter. She glanced at the tool in her palm.

Things she’d stacked began to fall.

“I Love you!” she screamed. Over and over, her voice hoarse, damaged from the shock of change.

The chatter was close and the foreign emotion came through. There would be blood.

“I love you!” she shouted again and squeezed every finger but the index of her right hand. The one on the trigger.

She’d killed one. She’d killed one of them and maybe she’d kill one more if it poked its head through the wall. She imagined them with lives like humans: wives and husbands sickened by the death. Perhaps a wonderful alien parent killed and an evil alien child left orphaned. The creature’s family could bare the same burden she had to. Maybe.

“I love you!” She looked at the tool again and weighed her options.

She saw the motion beyond the broken walls. The alien thing threw about remnants of her former life, aching to get close enough to exact payment for the dead creature out there.

“I’m coming! I love you! I’m coming!”

The wall of rubble caved in patches. Plaster and wood clunked and fell all around her, further burying the life she led with her husband in the time before the grind. She glimpsed a giant eye. It blinked a ball like a watermelon. Hideous through the cracks.

“I’m coming!” she screamed and kissed the cold dead hand.

The stacks of hardcover books fell and an enormous eye showed clearly.

It was time to act. She’d made her choice; the world around her was horrid and surviving through it all, alone, was unthinkable. She pressed the muzzle to her chin and glanced to the ceiling. Tears streamed without limit down her cheeks.

The alien thing chattered loudly and began to climb through the hole it had carved as a doorway.

“I’m coming,” she whispered and squinted hard against the fear of unknowing.

The alien thing screamed out in its horrid tongue. Reaching toward her, only inches from touching.

She put pressure on the trigger, her hand shaky, her chest heaving with heavy gulps of panicked breath. “I’m coming!” she shouted.

A familiar voice floated on the air, Not yet, Beans. Listen, Beans. Listen, Beans. Listen! Listen!

She opened her eyes and stared down at her dead husband after hearing his voice. There were horrid chattering screams beyond the limited safety within the walls of her former life. Hope lived in those screams. She looked up at the thing pushing through the wall and pulled the muzzle from her chin.

Someday Beans, but not yet. I love you, Beans, the voice faded as if drifting away beyond the walls and the horror opposite her.

“I love you!”

She squeezed tightly, hand-in-hand and hand-on-destructor.

As the blast reported around her, sending a ring into her ears, she watched life drain from the ugly creature. The alien thing slumped back from the destroyed wall, its chest heaving, its blue blood draining from the burst eyeball.

Beyond the apartment were curious sounds of violence, brigades of booming humanity paraded their will to live on the invaders—or was it the ugly aliens imposing a firmer grasp on the claimed soil and decimated humanity? She couldn’t be certain, but there was hope.

The memory of the voice that kept her latched to Earth played in her mind, listen, listen. She bent down and held her lips to his chilled and damp face for several seconds before climbing out through the rubble to a life after the grind.

XX