(Short Story) THE LAST CALL by Alan Ealy
"The 101st"**
They warned me about Sherry.
Not with words, not really. It was in the way the regulars went quiet when she passed. How their eyes flicked toward the door when she smiled at someone too long. How they drank fast, tipped heavy, and **left early**.
But I was new in town. And stupid. And drunk.
Sherry was behind the bar at **The Hollow Tap**, pouring drinks with hands too graceful, too precise. Her black hair fell over one eye, and when she laughed, it felt like she was unzipping your soul just to peek inside.
She noticed me watching.
“Last call,” she said, sliding me another bourbon.
“I could use one more,” I said. “And maybe… company.”
Her smile curled, slow as a noose.
“My place, then.”
---
Her car was old, silent, and smelled like copper and roses. She didn’t talk. Just drove, eyes locked on the road like it might bite her if she blinked.
The house was buried in trees. Tall, skeletal things that scraped the windows like they were trying to get in—or out.
No lights. No neighbors. Just the creak of old wood and the whisper of wind that somehow sounded like _breathing._
Inside, everything was **too clean**. Not like someone lived there, but like someone scrubbed away all evidence that anyone ever had.
The walls were pale, almost grey. Like flesh. I saw claw marks on one doorframe, and a patch of floor that had been bleached so many times the boards warped.
“Wait here,” she said, her voice flatter now, like it had forgotten how to be human.
She vanished down a hallway that seemed far too long for the size of the house. I sat. Waited. Something moved behind the walls. Slow. Wet.
The air shifted.
And then I saw the pictures.
They weren’t on display. Just barely visible behind a cracked cabinet door. Hundreds of Polaroids. Each one a man. Each one wide-eyed. Drunk. Smiling.
All numbered. _1 through 100._
They all had the same thing: carved symbols in the corners. Symbols that pulsed when I looked too long. Like they were breathing. Watching.
And then I saw the newest photo. On the table beside me. Fresh. Still damp.
It was me.
_No smile._
No eyes.
I turned to run—but the hallway was gone.
In its place, a staircase spiraled down, impossibly deep. And something was **coming up.** Heavy, wet footsteps. Too many legs.
I ran toward the door—bolted. Windows—nailed shut. The walls pulsed. Breathed. Something whispered in my ear with a tongue made of cold air:
“She doesn’t live alone.”
Then I saw her again.
Sherry.
But her eyes were gone. Her mouth stretched too wide, jaw unhinged. Her hair slithered like worms in water, and her limbs bent in ways I can’t describe without screaming.
She floated.
She _smiled._
“You’re number **101**,” she said, her voice filled with static and rot.
And then the walls began to scream.
---
I don’t know how long I’ve been here.
The others won’t talk. Most don’t have mouths anymore.
There’s no time. No sleep. Only the humming. The chewing. The voice that whispers under the floorboards, counting down, always starting from 101.
And above it all, Sherry, still smiling behind that bar in town. Waiting for the next man to say:
_“I could use one more.”_