“AHH!” She screamed again, “AHH!”
The monstrous vision wrinkled and sagged, with a greasy, pale, grayish skin. Disfigured with skeletal sockets and distended points, its sharp, sickled claws were second in menace only when compared to its mouth full of fangs, and each fang had tiny serrated edges up and down along the sides of its teeth. The creature spoke, swelling to a size twice that of the girl. It puffed out its chest, and flung open its switchblade talons. “Go ahead…scream, scream.”
The girl did, letting out several at the highest pitch her lungs and voice box could carry. “Help! Help! I’m being attacked! HELP!”
But not one person, even the ones that heard her, cared at all. No one came. No one called the police. No one even yelled back. The girl, now sober with grim reality, her eyes wide, backed away from the monster and its scheming grin.
Two other beasts stepped out from the dark and hemmed her inside a triangle. The scent of iron floated in the air. One of the three monsters was covered in blood, her friend’s blood, yet still seemed hungry. The beast had clearly gorged itself, yet stared at her, reflecting only her dread in its large, black saucer eyes.
“I told you, told you.” The creature gloated. “We are Dwellers, are Dwellers. And no one cares about you, about you.”
She began to scream again. A cold hand raked against her neck, scraping abrasions and pulling her into the darker wedge of the street. Cars fifty feet up ahead on the main strip raced, their motors revving as tires burned smoke toward the crowds of hoots and hollers.
The girl fought as best she could, yet the Dweller inflicted steady pain. All three Dwellers pierced and bludgeoned her with talons and teeth. She stretched a hand upward as one Dweller carved her throat. Soon she quieted. Her blood oozed everywhere. The creature bit through muscle, cartilage, and arteries, severing her neck from her spine.
Atropical island in South America has a reputation for the strongest men
on Earth. In an illegal arena, these colossal gladiators battle each night in a secret club for entertainment, riches, and fame.
Two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds of muscle brutishly bash skulls, tear ligaments, and even occasionally kill for a few extra dollars, and a host of callous cheers and chants of, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” The crowd begs and stirs for blood to be spilt, for pain to be inflicted, so money can be passed from one greedy, moist hand to another.
Long after the witching hour, three mammoth mounds of bulk, each tall as they were wide, carried their gym bags and left through the side door between the old airplane hangar at a deserted airfield.
After heavy rains, the air was muggy, with a humid oppression that only jungle downpours broiled upon a sweltering heat. The tropical rains brought sizzling temperatures, even at night. Temperatures so hot, they had been known to cause malaise, overwhelming reactions, and even sickening the mind, bending the firmest resolves into psychosis.
The musclebound gladiators, still dripping with beads of perspiration, both beaten and bruised, with eyes cut, lips swollen, and stitched and bandaged, were the victors of the evening. One of them grinned, flipping through his cash as he walked out the door. The jungle was oddly quiet, yet he did not notice as he shuffled his cash like a deck of cards, before tucking it gently back into his gym bag.
Their cars were up ahead, the last cars around in the lot, and only a few dark patches of wooded brush separated them from a well-deserved and air-conditioned trip home.
The leaves in the trees vibrated unnaturally, rustling from yanks and tugs. The three colossal men halted, one pulled a handgun from his gym bag. Hesitation immobilized them all. A long chain-link fence ran hundreds of yards to their left. The old airplane hangar ran a solid wall nearly as long as the fence to the right. Everything else was dark, save for a sporadically blinking light above a self-locking door the fighters exited.
The shadows trailed at the rear, in front, and all around the enormous jungle behind the fence. The strong man in the lead halted his two large companions. Their bravado was piqued, just like their abnormally high testosterone levels. Each of the strong men prepared to defend his hard-earned money to the death.
Confident, even to the point of cockiness, they challenged the invisible threat, certain no one was stronger than any one of them, and certainly not able to take on all three of them at once.
In a strained voice, one of the musclebound men yelled, “Come on out, esse, so I can break your little neck in half.” He spun his head back toward his friends, and hid his anxiety with a grin and laugh.
The three shared a grunted laugh.
The trees had ceased rustling.
Bavuud. Bavuud. Bavuud. Multiple feet pounded the airplane hangar’s metal roof, some sixty feet above the men’s heads. Clomp, clomp, clomp. Faster and harder the steps pounded around in circles. The noises eerily taunted and teased the large, musclebound men.
The men ended their boasting. Their heads sunk in a valley between their massive shoulders. They resembled turtles shrinking into shells, and no longer brave goliaths, unafraid of anything the world had to offer. They had reverted to their childish, bedtime fears, no more in control. Wells of emotion spilled out in quick succession one after the other. And while they were still large and strong, they were now weak and flimsy, when matched with the unknown and unnerving.
One man stuttered, “Whaa…what’s going on?” He raised his gun and erratically fired it several times into the air.
Sweat poured down another man’s face. “I’m outta here.” He bolted, running toward his car, his breath labored, his strides slow, he knew he would be faster if he released his gym bag of money, but he figured that he could make it, because dropping his money was not an option. “You’re on your own.” He scrambled away from his two friends.
“Wait for me!” One of the other men followed his friend to his car.
Still another man thumped his chest, while standing his ground. “You chickens!” He mocked his friends. “It’s just a bunch of weakling kids messin’ with you. Well I’m goin’ to mess them up. I’m goin’ to mess you up! You hear me!” he shouted at no one in particular.
The jungle, bustling with life earlier in the evening, was now unmoving and strangely quiet. The strong men had not previously noticed the unnatural lack of jungle noises, but a clamoring whisper, sussurrah, sussurrah, offensively lurid, dominated the night and approached from every direction.
Of the two men that fled, one was gone in a flash. Whoosh! He was pulled by something into the nearby thick brush. His massive body became that of a flimsy ragdoll. The strong man was swiftly hoisted from off his feet, pulled through a small opening in the chain-link fence, shaking the metal links and anchored poles up and down in a wave of clacking steel. “Aaah!” He quickly shrieked and then disappeared into the dark jungle with silence. All that remained were rustling leaves and his footprints in the gravel.
The largest of fighters stood his ground, dropping his gym bag as he watched one of his friends vanish into the rainforest, while his other friend continued running toward the car.
The planted, towering block of muscle doubted his unseen combatant had the strength to best him in a fight. He mashed his fist into his palm, cracking his knuckles. “Come out then, show yourself, and fight like a man.” He was trained in mixed martial arts, and still loose from winning all his matches that evening. “Come on!” he screamed. “You coward! Show yourself! Fight me!” He banged against his chest, beating it numerous times.
From high above the airplane hangar, a hefty body jumped down. Whaam! A thud pulverized the ground in front of the strong man. A lesser sized, yet bizarrely grotesque creature, and not a man, looked up at the strong man in amongst the vast shadows.
“Ha-ha.” The man laughed. “What is this, a costume?” The man became indignant. The man, over six-foot-five-inches tall, and weighing three hundred ten pounds, expanded his muscles
, with a grinding of teeth.
The sinister figure puffed itself larger. It slowly rose, climbing from out the hole it created in the ground after diving from the sixty-foot high, airplane hangar roof.
The strong man and the creature stood toe to toe. The strong man gulped, yet a lump lodged in his throat. The sporadic light hummed on briefly, revealing an awful truth. He stepped back as the creature stepped forward. The man’s brown skin shaded white, even in darkness. The man simply uttered in a hushed voice, “El diablo.”
The creature spoke. “I’m not the devil, but I can arrange a meeting.”
The man stammered. “Whaa…?”
“What am I?” Gurrhr. It growled. “I am Dweller.” It extended long, thick, razor-tipped talons.
The man backed away, the gravel beneath his feet grating with each step. “Here, take the money!”
“Not interested in money.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can.” The Dweller grinned. Cling! It sprung open its black, sickle claws.
The strong man took a single step backward. He then refocused his battle plan. The strong man punched, elbowed, kicked, and attempted to grapple the Dweller, but the Dweller was faster and stronger than any other fighter the strongest man of the strong men had ever fought.
“Diablo, I’ll kill you!” the strong man called out.
Unfazed by the strong man’s onslaught of hits, the Dweller callously asked, “Are you the best this world has to offer?”
“I’ll tear you up!” The strong man punched the Dweller repeatedly, landing blow after blow with devastating accuracy. The strong man dislocated the Dweller’s jaw. Sideways the jaw hung, bent down and crooked. The strong man then punched the Dweller in the ribs and stomach, but the strong man tired out in a matter of seconds. The strong man’s fists were bloodied. It was as if hitting a mound of stale gelatin. The Dweller’s core body vibrated and shivered, but remained intact, untouched, and resilient to any possible damage.
“Hmm.” The Dweller let out a relaxed grunt. “That felt good. But I think you missed a spot.”
The two were not equal, and now the Dweller intended to show its might with an overwhelming, destructive attack. Five unkind, razor-tipped talons wrapped around the strong man’s neck. The Dweller lifted him a foot from the ground. The strong man’s eyes bulged. He desperately gripped at the Dweller’s hand wrapped around his neck. The strong man tried to remove the Dweller’s hold from him, but the creature’s grasp was unmovable, cutting off the strong man’s air supply as his eyes drifted backward, rolling up until only the whites remained.
The strong man’s brutish arms flapped to the side, dangling limply. The Dweller’s blunt muzzle issued a disappointed snort, while still holding the once strong man by the neck.
The Dweller suddenly flung back its sickle claws, and with a gash, black talons tore the strong man’s chest into an open cavity. The Dweller went berserk. The beast split through the ribs and sternum, breaking bones, crushing them apart. It grabbed the man’s aorta—the main artery carrying blood from the heart—and unplugged it. The aorta gushed with blood as if a geyser, shooting a solid stream into the air, falling red with showery droplets. The Dweller sucked on the aorta, drinking the crimson fluid as if through a straw. The strong man’s body shriveled.
“The white cells are delicious.” The Dweller wiped its blood-soaked mouth, and then tossed away the rest of the man as if he was a piece of crumpled, handheld rubbish.
Blam! The Dweller threw the man off the side of the aluminum airplane hangar. The aluminum dented inward, and the man’s body flopped to the ground, face down in a sloshy puddle of muddy red.
“How utterly worthless,” the Dweller lamented aloud. “Must leave no body.” The Dweller wrapped its talons around the man’s head, and sluggishly dragged his floppy carcass toward the jungle.
Not knowing what became of his two friends, the last of the strong men had reached his car, yet in his peripheral, a creature resembling a wolf on all fours raced toward him at speed. He fumbled with his keys. They jingled as he tried to find the right one. The man panicked, dropping his gym bag for a moment before picking up the bag along with falling money. He unlocked the door, revved the engine, and his tires twirled, kicking back pebble and asphalt chunks. His car blasted down the long, dark, empty parking lot.
The car’s speedometer reached sixty miles an hour. Its headlights on, the car bounced up and down the uneven road. The man angled his rearview mirror, breathing easily at the sight of nothing in chase. He patted his bag, checking his money, and then ran his fingers through his hair, fixing his shirt collar after. With both hands on the wheel, he felt safe and in control. He even grinned to himself in the mirror.
Tup! Ba-boom! It felt as if a rocket hit the driver’s side. The door to his car ripped away with a single tug. The creature hung from the side, holding the car door, its claws tearing into the metal frame. It then tossed the unhinged car door and reached for the man.
“Ugh!” the man yelled with a child’s voice. The car zigged, kicking up waves of stony gravel in its wake.
“Ta-da!” The creature displayed rows of fangs. It swiped at the man, gashing him, ripping his flesh into stringy pieces. Plasma emptied out, the cold warmth flowed a river, coursing down, saturating his clothes.
The man winced, grabbing at his injury. The agony was visible, yet all the man said was, “You stained my seats!”
The creature chomped at him, missing several times. Its fangs hit a bicep, ripping a larger chunk of flesh from the man’s body. The man cut the wheel, trying to shake the beast, but it was fastened tightly, so, with one hand on the wheel, and part of his other upper arm severed, he leaned over and snatched his handgun.
He aimed it at the creature’s head and fired round after round into its head and chest. Bang! Bang! Bang! The gun popped, and fire flew with each bullet. His ears rang, deafened by the loud cracks of the gun.
The creature, filled with holes, squirted black tarry goo at first, then the tarry substance turned into slimy wads of swarming spiders, roaches, and wind scorpions, which climbed up onto the steering wheel and over the man’s hands, biting and stinging him repeatedly.
The man clenched his teeth and quickly flung off the crawling swarms. The man hopped inside the car with nonstop, animated, freaked grumblings. The man turned pale. He acted even more disgusted by the bugs than the inexplicable creature itself.
A voice whispered in the man’s ear, “We are Dwellers. And we can’t be killed so easily.”
The Dweller’s head deliberately rose. Like a shark, the membrane above its eyes arched downward. The man’s heart skipped a beat upon seeing the black, round death of his own image in the Dweller’s lifeless pools of reflection.
The man shrieked. “Ahh! Ahh! Ahhhhhhhh!”
The Dweller pulled the steering wheel, and the car flipped out of control end over end. Parts and pieces of the vehicle tossed about in every direction, tires this way, glass that way, metal fragments everywhere else. Kirik. Metal twisted. Sssshblamm! The car exploded, bursting into flames, scorching out of control in the isolated parking lot.
The Dweller pulled the man from the car, dragging him away. Only the quiet, steamy jungle hid the remains of a terrible fever, a symptom of malcontented cruelty, which served to unleash the Dwellers’ vengeance upon the rest of the world in need of their purging inclinations.
Vincent had heard the gossip, anecdotal stories, and whispers of sightings of hideous creatures in the night. Some in local Mediterranean towns swore their loved ones had been taken but were not runaways, as many investigators had concluded.
Ordinarily, Vincent would not have even inquired, or cared at all, but he worried, for it seemed a part of his past somehow had risen again. It vexed him most for Noemi’s sake, his love, his only reason for living. His concern about what she would think if she heard t
he same stories, drove him to unwilling action.
Vincent discouraged Noemi from venturing too far past their pleasant cabin on top of the countryside wheat fields after dusk.
It had been many weeks since the immortal Revekka visited him. After a tense, introspective week or two, Vincent felt as if his relationship with Noemi had never been better.
It was a very hot day.
The sun parched all things with a profound heat. Vincent’s shirt soaked, with an uncomfortable cling to his body. He unbuttoned his shirt. Bare-chested, his pectoral muscles hung parted, but symmetrically, not too large, but evenly toned with a six-pack of abdominal ripples down to the top of his pants. Together he was a collection of tan muscle fibers, appearing carved from solid rock, but soft and gentle to the eyes.
The sun branded enflamed prickles down upon his skin. He slid his suspenders off pronounced deltoids, and then removed his shirt, throwing it with a tossed, arched lob to the ground.
Vincent stretched his sculpted biceps and shoulders. He curved his back inward before letting go. The black, elastic suspenders dangled, looping near his knees. He casually stood there glistening in the sun, appearing as if on a photo shoot, accidently modeling the perfect front cover for any stylish men’s magazine.
Vincent eyed the six-foot-tall, jumbled pile of wood nearby. Wiping his brow, he reached over, grabbing the unevenly weighted axe handle. He placed a block of wood on a large stump, and with two mighty hands, he raised the axe over top his head. His muscles expanded, heaving with lines of defined power. Vincent chopped down with a crack upon the block of wood, splitting it clear in half, and from the rubble, tossing the divided pieces airborne in opposite directions.
At first, he had been too distracted by the loss of his vigor, his power, and source of his strength to notice Noemi’s sadness, but now he had restored a measure of balance within himself. Yet, he failed the first class of Boyfriend 101—not listening, while trying to solve. Not hearing, thinking he understood, and dismissing any problem as tiny and illogical, yet with every rationale, Vincent missed the hidden, parched well of despair deep inside Noemi’s core.
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