by Ricky Fleet
“You don’t understand…” he took an exaggerated, drunken pause, “I have seen them in my dreams. They are coming!”
“Fuck off, you moron,” the woman snarled and pushed him away.
“But you must listen to me… the Chosen Fathers are evil, they have lied to us all!” he continued and fell forward, catching Paul in the face with his outstretched hand.
“You’re dead!” shouted Paul, throwing a punch at the drunkard.
It connected with his nose and for a brief moment he sobered from the blinding pain. The woman took advantage of the shock and kicked him squarely between the legs causing a shrill squawk to escape his lips. He doubled over and fell to the ground clutching his damaged testes, mouth gaping like a fish out of water.
“What shall we do with him?” she asked.
“Kill him!” shouted one of the crowd who had seen the drunken outburst.
“Can I?”
“Well he did commit blasphemy against the Chosen which is punishable by death,” Paul pondered.
“Won’t the sentinels take me?” the mysterious woman looked worried and aroused at the same time.
“Not if you are with me,” Paul declared, showing his security pass.
A chorus of; “do it, kill him, punish the unbeliever”, gave her courage and she reached into her purse. Withdrawing a lethal looking flick knife, the razor sharp blade popped out and glinted in the neon lights of the shop displays. She seemed hypnotized by the weapon, staring at it with an unhealthy fascination that gave Paul the willies. Maybe he wouldn’t take her back to the hotel after all.
“Miss, you have to believe me,” begged the injured man as she knelt by his side.
“But I don’t want to,” she apologized and smiled.
“Then you are all damned,” he whispered in resignation and lay his head down, exposing his neck.
“Damned fine ass you mean,” she said, patting her rump.
Without hesitation, she drew the blade deeply across his throat, cutting skin, muscle, and arteries. A gargle of blood coughed from his mouth, covering his upturned face while a jet of crimson coated some of the morbid bystanders who leaned too close. Cheers and laughter roared from the gathered crowd as the feeble struggles ceased. The blood stopped flowing and Paul was sure the death rictus had a smirk turning one corner of the mouth up. It may have just been muscle damage though.
“Look, I have to go now. I’ll see you around,” Paul made his excuses and tried to merge with the crowd.
“You can’t leave me now,” smiled the woman, wiping the knife on her skirt. He wasn’t sure if it was a plea or a threat.
“If the sentinels show, tell them it was Paul Atkinson who heard the sedition,” he said, “I will file a report tomorrow.”
The woman looked insane, teeth bared in a hideous smile. The crowd parted and Paul was nearly overcome with relief to put distance between himself and the beautiful murderer. The square was heaving with celebrations, with music blaring and people gyrating. Some were even having sex in the middle of the street, oblivious to all other stimulus. He looked at his watch and there was still plenty of time to have a shower and a couple of drinks before Shelby arrived, he just needed to fight through the crowd.
“Where do you think you are going?” called out the woman. She had cleared the group who still poked and prodded at the dead body, and looked completely normal again.
“Shit!” Paul muttered as she approached.
The street lights flickered and the music died, causing a massive groan of disappointment from the revelers. Rain started to fall and Paul was amazed to feel the warm drops hitting his exposed skin. Certain he must be imagining the temperature, he held out a hand and the rain was most definitely warm.
“What the fuck?” he said in confusion.
The clouds above started to swirl and meld together, like a force was churning them this way and that. No natural wind could cause such vivid undulations on the grey formations. The night seemed to lighten, and it was due to a growing mixture of reds, yellows, and oranges within the overhead vapor. The lightning danced around the moisture with a ferocity that made Paul duck down. This wasn’t a thunderstorm.
“What the fuck?” gasped the woman as she reached Paul, echoing his earlier sentiments.
The sky was actually burning. Like a hovering pool of fuel, the clouds started to expel blazing balls of heated liquid. A few of the more drug addled party goers pointed and clapped, thinking it was a firework display in honor of the great victory in battle. Only when it impacted the ground, covering a group and turning them into a shrieking funeral pyre, did people start screaming and running.
“They must be fighting back, I thought we had beaten them?” wailed the murderess.
“I thought so too, I watched on the TV as they executed the leader,” he replied, bewildered by the unfolding disaster. Whatever it was, the resistance didn’t have access to thermobaric weapons.
“We need to…” she started but a voice silenced her protestations.
“It is time, my children. By your actions, you have given yourselves unto me.”
The voice rasped from the sky and beyond all reasoning, from inside people’s own minds. It was totally devoid of any humanity, the sound of a billion screams of agony and suffering given voice. Its source was something not of this world, an entity of unfathomable malevolence and hunger. It was so intensely evil that half of the people hearing the uttering vomited where they stood. The tone changed and the wails of the damned were replaced by clotted, gurgling laughter. It was the sound of a corpse long gone into putrescence, cackling from lungs brimming with the liquids of decay
“We are going to have so much fun, my children. I have cruelties to show you, such beautiful suffering to inflict, the likes of which you could never imagine. Until now.”
Some of the crowd had started to claw at their own ears, ripping at the flesh to silence the malignance that was infecting their minds. The voice changed once more, now more akin to a serpent hissing as it prepared to strike.
“Your world is mine. Rise now, thralls of darkness. Teach my children the meaning of eternal torment.”
Paul was frozen in terror and could only watch as the ground bulged impossibly in the middle of the square, throwing people from the rising mound as the earth cracked. Bursting forth was a creature unlike anything he could ever have created in his darkest nightmares. Six legged and the size of a large bus, with the body of a reptile, and a tail thick and heavily inlaid with razor sharp fins. Where the head should have been, was a mass of writhing tentacles and a toothless, sucking opening which could only be its mouth. Those closest were grabbed without mercy and fed into the greedy maw, their screams silenced by the crushing orifice. The tail thrashed around with the pleasure of feeding, rending bodies into pieces that still writhed on the ground in piles of their own innards and gore.
“We have to run!” shrieked the woman, dragging him backwards into a side alley.
“What is that thing?” Paul squealed louder and more feminine than even the woman could manage.
“I have no fucking idea, but we need to get away from it.”
They hurried down the narrow path with one other man who had also managed to flee the unfolding horror. Ahead were several deep puddles of the collected rainwater, but Paul and his companion slowed down before reaching them. The stranger hurried on, oblivious of how the pools bubbled and seethed, giving off a poisonous smelling steam. Heedless of the danger as he splashed through, the liquid coated his leg and started to melt through the fabric. He dropped to the ground howling in pain as the corrosive substance caused flesh to peel away, dripping onto the tarmac in hissing blobs. A hand rose from the pool, then an arm, and finally a head which looked around, studying them. It had no eyes as it surveyed the three figures, only dark empty orbs that leaked acid in place of tears.
“Oh my God,” gasped Paul, another wrong-phrase which would have surely cost him his liberty and life before this mayhem.
&nb
sp; “God? Oh no, my son, they can’t help you now. You are mine, for all time,” the voice inside his head roared with laughter.
The child creature had impossibly pulled itself out of the inch-deep puddle and scurried on all fours to leap on the stricken man. The wet body soaked him even more and they watched aghast as he was slowly liquefied by the monster. Howls of intense agony bounced from the alley walls until the man’s throat melted away into a sticky red puddle. More hands rose from the liquid and Paul hadn’t noticed the increasing silence from their rear, so rapt were they on the prone man’s plight.
“What the hell?” gasped the woman as shadows stretched without any light providing the cause. The shades thickened into firmer forms, roughly the size of people, but mobile.
“Hell? My daughter, you are about to find out how right you are,” spoke the vile voice in her mind.
The wraiths reached out and plucked her from the ground as if they were corporeal. She thrashed in their translucent arms, but in spite of their ability to exert force upon her, the kicks passed through the dark forms as if they were nothing. Unformed faces moved in and started to feed, draining her of blood and vitality. Her body shriveled, aging her to a hundred years old in seconds. Her cheeks sunk and she took on the look of someone horrifically emaciated, finally culminating with her skin turning a leaden grey of death. The shades let her drop and the concrete was unforgiving of her brittle frame, cracking bones. Satiated, they made a noise like a dying exhalation and reformed into the nooks and crannies they had spawned from. Incredibly, the once beautiful woman who now resembled an arthritis riddled crone, reached for him imploringly.
“Get the fuck away from me!” he shrieked and kicked out at her gnarled fingers, breaking several.
Turning to flee back onto the street, he could only whimper as the huge reptilian amalgamation regarded him without eyes. Lightning quick, the tentacles lashed out and lassoed him before a scream could peal forth. Paul held out his hands defensively, but the mouth closed over him, mucus easing his passage down the crushing throat of the beast. His body was broken and, through the unspeakable pain, he couldn’t understand why death hadn’t claimed him. With a final movement, he was expelled into the pitch black stomach of the creature and splashed down into the gastric juices among other flailing bodies. His flesh started to soften as it was digested, and the acid filled his lungs, eating him from the inside. Gargled, melting moans echoed within the fleshy organ as other victims lamented their fate.
“Why am I not dead?” he screamed within his mind at the unbearable pain.
“You cannot die. You and all your kind are now mine. This is but a taste of the infinite ways you will suffer for my enjoyment. Eternity beckons, my son. Now is the time to despair!” the voice chuckled at their fate.
As Paul’s eyeballs melted away, he did indeed despair; his suffering was just beginning and a billion deaths awaited.
Malachi woke with a start and a scream caught in his throat from the feeling of suffocation. Yanking at the bedcovers which had become entangled around his upper body, he slumped back down with exhaustion. Sweat ran from his fevered body, coating the bedspread. Why did the dreams always seem so vivid, so real that he could actually taste the sour flavor of vomit? It was then he realized the lumpy, sticky moisture on the bed wasn’t all perspiration.
CHAPTER TWO
Malachi bowed his head, letting the water course over his scalp. The liquid was hot enough to sting, but it couldn’t sear the haunting images from his mind. His legs still felt like jelly and that thought alone was enough to remind him of the melting victim on the dream street. Dry heaving in the small cubicle, only a little bile was brought up, with the rest of his stomach’s contents being scoured clean by the washing machine which rattled in the kitchen area next door. Raising his head and opening his mouth, he let the scalding fluid flush some of the taste away.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” he asked, slapping himself in the head to try and dislodge whatever misconnected neural pathway was causing the horrific visions.
Dreams were a normal part of the human psyche, an opportunity for the mind to catalogue and make sense of the day’s happenings. Nightmares were the yin to common dreams yang, an interconnection of darkness and light which was essential. The slumbering terror gave release to subconscious fears and a chance to overcome them in safety. Malachi’s fantasies were now manifesting in the physical world, an escalation that brought back long forgotten fears.
The darkness of his shuttered eyes triggered more memories of the corrosive bowels of the creature and he shuddered violently. Opening them to the morning light, the water swirled into the drain plug at his feet, carrying away the liquid just as surely as his sanity was being eroded by the awful imagination running rampant in his mind.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he said, picking up the shower gel.
Washing thoroughly, the sudsy sponge followed the mounds of his taut body. The finely sculpted pectoral muscles flexed with each rotation and his firm stomach received extra attention. Pride was a balm to his frayed nerves and even though his mind seemed to be broken beyond repair, at least his physique was in peak condition.
Turning off the shower, the drain coughed and gurgled in protest, spitting a vile black sludge into the tray which needed to be wiped clean. It was just another issue with the tiny, dilapidated flat he called home.
“Mmm, delicious,” Malachi grimaced as he held the blackened tissue at arm’s length before tossing it into the toilet bowl and flushing.
Toweling dry, rubbing the skin with enough force to sting, some of the tension had evaporated along with the water. The mirror was blanketed with condensation as a result of the broken extractor fan, and he wiped it with his hand, the cold surface sending a chill up his arm after the heat of the shower. The face that returned his stare was in its early twenties and vaguely distorted by the rivulets of water that ran down the glass. His skin was smooth and bronzed from the time spent at the beach. Only the eyes betrayed the tortured soul within; red rimmed from torn capillaries in the orb itself, a sign of the mental pressure he felt during the visions. Those eyes had witnessed things no sane mind should see and it was fast approaching when the horror would prove too much to bear.
“Why me?” Malachi’s voice broke and tears flowed unashamedly.
In the bedroom the alarm started to chime from his phone, a pointless exercise as the dreams tore him from sleep with increasing frequency. It was a welcome distraction from the self-pity, and with a final deep, shaky breath, he left the tiny bathroom and the disturbing visage in the mirror.
The flat wasn’t even large enough to call a flat, more a bedsit. Comprising the bathroom, a small hallway and the bedroom which also doubled as the kitchen and lounge. Roughly two hundred square feet of cramped, mold creeping squalor. But it was home. The patterned wallpaper had started to curl away from the dampest parts of the room, and no amount of adhesive seemed to keep it in place. Malachi would paste the edge and, like clockwork, two days later he would wake and the paper would be sagging once more. He had always been taught to make the best of things and, despite the run down feel of the property, it was his sanctuary. Freshly changed linen adorned the paltry single bed, crisp and neatly turned down; until the next dream anyway. The meagre furniture would have been worthy of pity had it not been kept scrupulously clean. The armchair was accompanied by a small coffee table, coasters laid at perfect angles to the edges. On the TV screen a mix of the latest trance music played, crowds of revelers swaying to the melody and strobing lights.
“Shit!” cursed Malachi.
The celebrations were not unlike the nightmare and with a sigh of disappointment he silenced the tune with a press of a button. Music had a way of alleviating his distress, the bass and treble mingling into a structure that his own existence lacked. Praying the association between the loathsome events in his mind and the solace to be found in a vinyl melody would dissipate with the coming hours, he got dressed. The uniform had a
faint scent of lavender from the fabric softener and as the t-shirt enveloped his head, he took several deep breaths. After the acrid smell of bile and partly digested food, the fragrance was heaven sent and lifted his spirits.
Looking at the toaster, the mere thought of food was enough to send his gut into spasms of protest so he ignored it and picked up his toothbrush instead. The minty foam and bristles dislodged the final remnants of the vomit that gargling in the shower could not. Finishing with mouthwash, the blue liquid set his tongue ablaze with alcohol and mixed chemicals. With a final swirl he spat it into the sink and rinsed the bowl with fresh water. The familiar belch came through from the bathroom drain and Malachi closed his eyes with growing frustration.
“You know you have to wait,” he admonished himself.
Cleaning his teeth always caused the pipe to overflow, but in his distracted state he had forgotten. After cleaning it again, coupled with a pointless threat to the inanimate waste pipe for the constant aggravation, Malachi picked up his car keys. Pausing by the front door he glanced to the left and the picture of his parents that was hung there. A professionally shot image with a much younger Malachi dressed in his finest suit, seated at their feet. The beaming smiles spoke of a love so pure it could have eclipsed the sun. The term soul mate was often coined by people, but he had never seen a devotion as total as that shared by his folks.
“Love you, Mum. Love you, Dad,” he said and planted a kiss on each mouth through the glass with his fingertips.
As his front door swung closed in his wake, the opposite entrance opened and Miss Cortez jumped in fright. She was as friendly as she was old, with a shock of white hair that no longer followed the guidance of her hairbrush.
“I’m sorry, Miss C, are you ok?” Malachi said, reaching out to steady the older woman.
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s my own silly fault, I wasn’t paying attention,” she chuckled in reply, holding a hand to her chest.