The Key to Everything by Alex Kimmell Page A

didn’t notice it at first. A shadow slipped over the bricks on the ground in front of him, prodding him to look over. It sat on the chair, sniffing at the air and looking right at him again. Its claws made a scraping sound against the wood as it hopped up onto the table. 
    Jabez reached for his rifle, took aim and then thought better of the situation. Gunfire would only call attention to his location if there were someone nearby. He needed something to throw instead. As he leaned down, his good leg lost traction on the slippery ground. Trying to support his weight by pushing his rifle in between the bricks at his feet, his back slid slowly down the door until he landed in the mud. 
    The squirrel watched with an unchanging yet interested expression. Jabez grabbed at some loose gravel and threw it at the small animal. While most of the pebbles missed their intended target, the oddly observant rodent’s tiny hand reached out and caught the only one that came close and immediately threw it back, hitting Jabez between the eyes.
    They both remained still for a time, eyes locked in a strange embrace. In all his years being a soldier, Jabez had learned quite well how to judge his enemy by their eyes. He could tell a vicious killer from a scared little boy costuming himself in a tough guy’s uniform with one glance. But these…these were eyes he had never seen before. These were the first eyes that had shown him what death actually looked like.
    As if the animal sensed his fear, he watched its snout form a hellish shape resembling a twisted smile. Exposing sharp teeth too long for its head, it issued an uncharacteristically deep growl from its small body. Jabez blinked, and the squirrel’s head twisted to the right at an impossible angle that should have broken every bone in its neck. Its mouth stretched open wider still, tearing and ripping at the edges of the dark black lips. 
    Jabez screamed and pushed against the door, straining hard with every muscle he could access. Looking around for an escape route in the debris, he realized that even though he sat in a virtually wide-open space, he was completely trapped. He couldn’t make it to the side of the wall with his leg in this condition. Scrambling for purchase, his hand knocked the rifle. The squirrel flew off the table, grabbed the gun, and threw it backward over its shoulder, as if it weighed no more than an acorn. 
    With its head still bent over at that obscene angle, it made a noise like a child’s laughter, sending chills through Jabez’s entire body. He kicked at the squirrel with his good leg and missed. He screamed, tearing at the inside of his throat, and kicked again. This time he connected with the creature, sending it tumbling away in a hideous mass of fur and spit. 
    Digging at the ground to find anything solid, his fingers scraped across something hard and sharp. He squeezed it, piercing the skin of his palm with the cold wet metal. He quickly glanced down to see if it could be used as some sort of weapon. It was an old and rusted brass key, oddly shaped, with a strange engraving. He knew the wall was broken, but if he could get himself on the other side of the door, it might give him the break he needed to create some defenses from whatever this thing was. 
    His blood dripped down from the sharp edges of the key’s teeth breaking through his skin. A deep, unnatural laughter carried in the wind, from over the rubble and just beyond his line of sight. Jabez felt every vertebra rattle in his spine. He lifted the key up over his head just as the squirrel scrambled back over the loose bricks and mounds of snow. The key was slippery with blood and melting snow. He gripped it tightly and tried to slide it home into the lock without taking his eyes from his small attacker.
    Rocks and jagged chunks of broken bricks hit him and the wood of the door behind him. As the squirrel ran, it picked up whatever it could and threw it at him with a fierce accuracy. A sharp