The Toe Eaters

Way beneath the blazing summer moon; grandmothers told their grand children stories since time began.  It's no differant in Kentucky, except the moon's just a bit hotter.  Like the sun at night, every night.

Tomhas Sawyer Johanson sat on his grandma Ella-May's lap and listened to a new yarn he'd never heard in all his seven and a half years.  His grandma was a gnarled looking thing, skinny as a rail but with fleshy arms and fingers.  Her voice had grown hoarse and grizled from near eighty years of smoke.  The perfect little combination for the tale she spun.

"The Toe-Eaters," she repeated after his plea for clarity. "Lil' blonde clumps of hair with big bug eyes and sharp lil' teef commin out the bottom.  They crawl along the floor like rats, but they's faster than rats.  And if they catch your feet under the bed when you prey, or your toes slip out from under the covers when you're sleepin', they'll eat um off!" 

After finishing her grusome tale, she put Tom to bed and tucked him in especially tight, where he lay anciously looking up at her, his large brown eyes filled with fear and suspicion. 

His grandma shut the door, disolving the light and any hope he might've had.  He began to plot what he might do if encountered by a Toe-eater; bash it, shoot it, or lose.  He decided the best course of action was to stay awake and guard his toes from any preditors that might come in his sleep. 

For a good hour, he kept up his game and stayed vigilant.  But soon after felt the comferting and deadly touch of heaviness brought on by sleep.  His eyelids fell like lead bricks and his head dropped to the pillow, sinking into the linen.  It came so quickly he hadn't time to react or even fend it off, but submitted accidentally.

Tom was only awakened later by a sharp gnawing pain in his right foot, where the big toe should be, but wasn't anymore.  A phantom limb that didn't exist before he'd gone to bed.  Afraid to face whatever was devouring him, he lifted his lids reluctantly and gazed in horror at the end of his bed.  There, was the white and ghastly form of his hunched grandmother, enhanced by the firy whitness of the moon, with half of his foot between her teeth.