Monday, November 5, 2012

October 14th

It’s been hard to find the words to describe what happened that night. At a few points, my… our memories are blurred, while others we can recount clearly. What we wouldn’t give to just forget all of it and pretend it never happened, but given the situation now… I… we don’t see that happening.

We’d been following Sarah’s blog for a few weeks. We didn’t mention anything about it before because  we wanted to know what she said behind our back… But if she knew we watched her blog, that wouldn’t happen. And though she didn’t live up to our expectations, we did acquire some information from her blog. One, her friends wanted to kill us for having ‘something’ inside us; Two, Sarah had Others following her; And three, the time and day when Lois was going to give birth. It wasn’t the smartest thing Sarah had done, posting that stuff on her blog, but we shouldn’t complain. It helped us.

The police were looking for us after the… event at the house. Our face had been broadcasted to just about everywhere in that part of the state, so we thought it was better to take our time in arriving at the hospital rather than getting caught because of a reckless decision. But as soon as we walked through those doors, it didn’t really matter.

When we walked through the doors, we immediately saw a man in the waiting area who didn’t belong. He was unshaven, clothes were dirt-ridden and tattered, and he looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in months. His attention was focused on the television, but as soon as we walked in, he looked up and knew who we were, probably identifying us by our mask. He started to shout, actually taking a gun out of his pocket – even managed to get a shot off - but we were too quick for him. We had crossed the distance between us and him and knocked the gun out of his hands before kicking him in the stomach. He collapsed very quickly.

By then, the hospital staff was starting to call out to people, trying to get their attention, maybe get some help. It didn’t help, of course. We ignored them, passing through the doors leading to the stairs.

And what a coincidence that we’d come face-to-face with William on the stairwell.

We’re kind of amused and horrified when we think back to his expression of horror. He had gone as pale as a ghost and was sweating like a dog. We wanted to kill him right then and there, but something held us back. We instead grabbed his throat and threw him against the wall. “Where is she?” we asked.

William just shook his head, saying he didn’t know. We raised our bat over his head, ready to crack his skull.  I repeated my question. He started blubbering, saying that Lois was on the third floor. He begged us not to kill him. And then, something odd happened. In our head, we can picture the scene… but we only hear echoes of words.

“I’m not talking about Lois.”

In our head, we see William’s face contort in confusion… and then understanding… then there’s nothing. There’s just a blur for a few moments... And then we are walking up the stairwell, leaving a broken William behind us.

When we got to the third floor, people were already running about, trying to figure out what was going on. Some saw us and ran in different directions, while others looked at us in confusion. And there were some… we didn’t know why at the time, but they attacked us. Not the hospital staff, either; the patients, some with wounds on them from a grievous injury. They’d come one-by-one towards us, always appearing from behind a corner. And they’d never go down with just a hit with the baseball bat; they didn’t even seem to feel it. We think that’s why we used the … the other part of us.

We’re not sure what it is, but we started to feel it inside us then. Something… running through us, escaping. Smoke, we think, but we didn’t cough or choke when inhaling it. But when this smoke drifted past someone else, their skin blistered and burned. Sometimes, the smoke even entered through an opening in the attackers, burning them from the inside. We know they weren’t actual living people but their looks of pain seemed genuine.

We became aware of the sprinklers going off after a time. That brought part of us back to reality, showing us what things looked like. A few fires had started, and blood, bits of flesh, and bone were running together in the water. We could hear screams throughout the hospital, and occasionally we’d see the odd person running around, looking for an exit.

It occurred to us that Lois and Sarah would have attempted to get out, and since there’s a parking garage connected to the hospital… We thought that was our best bet in finding them. And, as it turned out, we were right. We found them in one of their cars, ready to leave.

Lois looked tired and out of her mind, probably because of the painkillers they had given her. Sarah, on the other hand, seemed… calm. She was scared, that was obvious, but she didn’t look hysterical like the people we had seen around the hospital.

We started to walk towards their car, but stopped halfway when a man blocked the way. He was dressed in a firefighter’s uniform, except the baggy jumpsuit was a soot black and the gas mask was the only thing covering his head.

“I get it. A ‘guardian angel’, is it? That’s what you’ve become?” we heard ourself say.

We saw Sarah and Lois leave out of the corner of our eye, but our attention was focused on the Other in front of us. We couldn’t see its face, but we could feel its gaze. It was standing rigidly, an axe in its hand. We stood there for a few moments, just taking each other in, and then… We started to hear it speak.

But speak isn’t the right term. We… could hear this multitude of voices in our head, all speaking at once and asking the same thing:

“What are you doing?”

We gave it an answer: we rushed it, swinging the bat at where its lower jaw should be. A foolish move, in retrospect, but we weren’t about to stand there and have a staring contest for several hours. Its left hand reached up and caught the bat in mid-swing, took it from our hands, then tossed it to the side. We were surprised by the fluidity of such actions, and that allowed it to gain an advantage over us by punching us in the gut and then kicking us to the pavement.

“What are you doing?” it asked again, looking down at us. It infuriated us to be belittled by Death; we could feel the smoke trying to rush into it, to consume it, but it was no use. The gas mask prevented us from getting in.

Death brought down its axe at our chest while we were trying to recover our breath. We saw it at the last moment and rolled to the right. Seeing that we were still a little off-balance, it kicked us in our right side, dropping us to the ground yet again.

We moved back inside the body and our vision began to blur again. We could feel ourselves taking complete control and remembering all of it in each detail.

We get to our feet, taking a right jab at Death’s torso. Of course, it manages to catch our wrist and headbutt us. We fall to the ground again, and our head hurts for a few moments as it is scraped against pavement. The axe swings down again, this time at our right leg. We move, but a second too late as part of it is struck. We can hear ourselves crying out in rage and anguish, and the multitude of voices in our head asking the same question over and over again.

Outside thoughts keep crossing our head, thoughts like “I’m going to die”, but we pay them no mind. We court fear; we do not let it consume us.

Death prepares to attack again, this time standing over our head and chopping at our throat. We counter by grabbing hold of the axe shaft as it attempts to draw blood. This time, Death is the one caught by surprise, and so with a little burst of energy we take the axe shaft up, hitting it in its mask. It stumbles backwards into a pillar, dropping the axe right next to us like a present. We take it in our hands and start towards Death, ready to end this.

Death is not perturbed by this change; instead, it runs at us before we can even get the axe into a swinging position. It crashes into us, sending each of us sprawling onto the pavement and the axe just a few feet away. It begins bludgeoning our head onto the floor, as if it could force us out that way. It puts its whole weight on our chest so that we can’t force it off of us. One hand curls around our throat, the other pulling at the mask… and slams us again and again into the floor. Red appears around our vision and we can feel ourselves slipping.

It pauses for just a second, and in this tiny moment of peace we can hear exhausted breaths being let out by the body Death possesses. It makes the fatal error of thinking we’re too incapacitated to move and stands. It asks us the question again and starts towards the axe, intending on finishing us off that way.

We try to move, but our body doesn’t register right away. We blink several times, watching as Death picks up the axe and hoists it onto its shoulder. It starts towards us, its breathing being the only thing we can hear aside from our heart beat.

And then we hear the voice in our head, giving us a brilliant idea. The air becomes polluted with our presence, making it hard to see. Death fades from view, but we know it is trapped. We manage to pull ourselves a few feet away before it can strike.

We can hear the gas mask breathing in, out, in, out, but the noise is everywhere. We manage to stand up; we try to get our bearings. And that’s when we see the shadow of Death cross in front of us, searching. And so we take our chance.

With a final ounce of strength, we lunge forward and rip at the gas mask… and tear it off, revealing only flesh and bone underneath. But it is enough.

Almost immediately we enter Death, setting it aflame from the inside out. And we do so much more than that; we go after what is there but not there, that which ties itself to this world. We strike again and again, letting the urge to destroy do our work for us. We can feel its pain and rage; we can feel it trying to escape, or strike back, and so we grab its neck. Its form is slowly becoming a shining light, and so we throw it a few yards in front of us. Before it reaches the ground, the body is nothing but a wave of light spinning in the air.

And then what we wanted happens: The light begins to dim, like it is being extinguished…

But something new happens. The light is surrounded by another, a… darker, paler light, like that of a maggot’s skin or the flesh of a corpse. For a moment, the original light shudders… and then it fades from view as the other light replaces it. The area around us becomes too bright, even for our eyes, and we are forced to shut them. As the glow subsides, we look back at where Death was killed.

Standing where we saw it is a strange man. It resembles a kind of priest, one that wears a long, dark jacket and a wide-brimmed hat. Its skin is pale, like the light that overtook the original, and in place of a mouth, there are only long, jagged scars. There is only a small indent where the nose should be, and both ears are gone. It regards us with strange, inviting eyes for a moment, tilting its head as if it is curious.

Then, the new Death folds smooth, pale hands behind its back, and in a flash of light it is gone.

We collapse onto the floor, exhaustion overtaking even us. And in our last few memories we have of that night, we recall two young men dragging us into the back of their vehicle while attempting to stifle the cries of a newborn child.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:09 PM

    About time! I was about to make another post, come to think of it... a much more violent one, too!

    xoxo,

    SID

    ReplyDelete
  2. The stuff about the Archangel is interesting, but I'm more curious as to what has happened in the past three weeks.

    ReplyDelete