“It’s a fish. Where can it go?”
SPOTS
A Novel of Small-Town Horror — COMING SOON
Tina Mayhew is thirty-eight.Divorced. Broke. Three weeks from losing the pet shop her father built on Marginal Street.So when a traveling dealer walks in with a cooler and a promise, she doesn’t ask enough questions.She never does.
Inside the cooler is a fish.Bulging gold eyes. A mouth like a frog’s. Four stubby legs.It watches her.And it’s pregnant.
By spring, its hundreds of babies have turned Marrow Creek, Georgia, into a roadside sensation.Kids name them. Tourists line up around the block. Local news sends a van.The ledger goes from red ink to black.Tina finally sleeps through the night.
Then, at three o’clock one morning, every tank in the store breaks open at once.
The bodies start turning up at the lake.The FBI comes. Then the Army. Then the walls.Nobody uses the word quarantine. Everybody knows the word.
So Tina does what anyone would do when the world stops making sense.She goes home.Two counties north. The white farmhouse. Her mother’s pot roast. Her father’s pipe smoke. The kindest man she has ever known, waiting on the porch with his hands in his pockets like nothing in the world is wrong.
Her father keeps a parrot that has never once flown.He has a fat striped cat named Spots that purrs like a motorboat.And he has a locked door behind the canning shelves.
Some monsters come out of the lake.Some come home with you.And some curl up in your lap and purr.
Perfect for readers who love:
Small towns with long memories. Family secrets with teeth. Slow-burn dread that detonates. The creeping horror of Stephen King’s Castle Rock, the biological nightmare of Jurassic Park, and the quiet, domestic terror of realizing the danger was never outside the house.Pet lovers: you will never look at your cat the same way again.
Spots — Coming Soon.
Stay tuned. 🐟
One warning before it drops.Read it during the day.And put something heavy on the lid of the fish tank.
Discover more from TheTimeDok
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.