by Al K. Line
Others were soft and squishy, their bodies fattened, almost jelly, as if they were returning to their strange, external womb-like existence. More yet were back to being grubs, but there was no movement from inside, the once milky carapaces now blackened and like hides, all life gone. Halfway through the tunnels and things changed once more.
The grubs were small, no larger than caterpillars. They littered the ground like detritus. Discarded, useless, dead. I crunched over them, having no choice, feeling like I was walking on the bodies of a million babies, each one telling a tale of a mother's sorrow.
Then I was trampling fragile little scabs of skin, the Chemist's own flesh from whence all this came.
Finally I was at the entrance and I left, only to emerge into the night like I had before, where we'd said goodbye to the Chemist and I'd promised to cook him his meal what felt like a lifetime ago.
The cemetery was quiet, not even a ghost, just a faint hint of necrotic flesh and the ghouls who'd feasted.
"Where are you, my friend?" For he needed me. If he wasn't alone now then he soon would be. I understood all too well about loneliness and loss, more than anyone could ever imagine and more than I'll ever tell.
We all have a past, things we're not proud of doing, and I may have told Grandma more than I'd planned but there was much left unsaid, more than I'd bargained for and more than I will ever say.
Some secrets are never told for a reason.
Nowhere Left to Hide
We'd come full circle, right back to where this started. His children were dead or dying, so something had obviously happened. Had he changed his mind and done something, destroyed them? Unlikely. He'd seemed very sure of himself and the future of his kind when he'd stormed Hidden HQ. No way had he had a total rethink in such a short time.
So it had gone wrong somehow, and at least some of his followers, those born from his dead or dying flesh, had succumbed to whatever flaw there was with his transformation.
"One last try," I whispered into the night, weary beyond weary, full of pain of the heart and mind, the belly too. "Hush, little one, it will all be over soon." The baby squirmed and kicked me and it felt like he was trying to claw his way out. But it wasn't time yet, I knew that much. Just not a lot else.
If we were going full circle then I had one more place to visit, one last chance to find him before I had to rest, sleep the sleep of the damned and the demented. This life inside me needed it, I needed it, and then I realized I didn't have a home anymore, it had been taken from me. But I still had my family, and just let anyone try to take that.
I couldn't drive. For one I was too tired, and for two, I didn't have a car, so I called a taxi, strictly Regular, and gave the address. The driver was one of those super-chatty guys who wants to relieve the boredom and monotony by talking about absolutely anything, but I didn't have the will or the interest and sank into a sullen funk. He got the picture eventually, but it took him a while.
When he pulled up, I dragged myself out of the vehicle and grabbed several notes from my pocket. He looked at them, raised an eyebrow, then grabbed them and sped off. Guess I overpaid. I couldn't seem to focus properly as my eyes were ready to close and stay that way for a very long time.
The street was quiet, the houses all had their curtains drawn, and the only lights were the streetlights that hadn't been smashed. It was very dark, just the way I liked it.
There were stains on the asphalt, a faded pink tinge to the black. A reminder of the fog that had followed us, of the Elders, of a man in pain and the extremes he went to so he could be something other than what he was.
I descended the steps to the basement door, hanging by a single hinge and most of it blasted away. It was dark inside, no lights here, and yet there was a strange glow coming from inside. The history of the Chemist's alchemical obsession written into the fabric of the building even after it had been gutted by fire.
The stench of smoke and strange chemicals, of ghouls and of the Chemist himself, eddied and drifted around the entrance. I took a deep breath of it all, let it inside of me, then stepped over the threshold into darkness.
Eek
"Chemist, are you in here?" I tried to ramp up my vision, as for some strange reason it wasn't switching on automatically like usual, but the room continued to be obscured in a strange dark cloud of what I can only describe as roiling emotion.
It made my words falter, my mind reel, and my stomach squirm. The baby went into meltdown, twisting and turning until I was convinced he'd make his first appearance right there and then. Hell, if this was what it was like just being pregnant then what was it like giving birth? I decided to forgo the actual giving birth bit and find an alternative, which I'm sure many a mother has also decided is the best approach once their waters break and large heads begin to poke out of once small spaces.
The wisps of dark cloud eddied and swirled to my words as if they were strong gusts of wind, and the magical tingle in the air intensified until I was pushed back by the sheer strangeness and threat of violence it contained.
I steadied my resolve, pushed off from the blackened door frame, and crunched through the broken glass until I came up against the fire-damaged work bench. Slowly, my eyes adjusted, but everything was still murky and the smoke or mist or magic, or whatever it was, continued to whirl about the room in anger.
"I know you're here. Can we talk?" I asked in my nicest voice.
"Go away, Kate, I'm not in the mood."
"You know it's me so you know I won't do that. I understand you're hurting, and why. I found the tunnels, I saw what happened."
"No, you don't understand at all," spat the Chemist, and a pile of rags rose from the corner where his bed used to be.
"Then tell me. Explain it. I feel your loss, I know it hurts, but this has to end."
"End? Haha, this is only the beginning. Those were just the first, but there will be more. There must be more. Something went wrong, they couldn't survive here, but I think I know what the issue is. Go away, I don't want to hurt you."
"No, I'm staying right here."
"I said GO AWAY!"
His voice hit like a hammer to my guts. I was shunted across the room and out the door, my feet sliding across the litter of a lifetime's worth of work. I forced magic through the ink and strode forward, feeling like I was wading through dense water, then came to a sudden stop at the threshold.
Smoke congested at the entrance like a black door, and as I put my hands out it snapped at my fingers, burning them, threatening to hurt me in terrible ways. Magic burst from my palms and white light seared holes in this temporary shield. The edges burned away, revealing the murky, but quickly clearing interior. Again, I let the magic escape, until the barrier dissolved like black sugar, leaving the way clear.
"Let's talk," I said, still keeping my voice low and calm when I really wanted to grab him and shake him for being so pig-headed.
"No, no talking. I've got work to do."
"Here? Everything's gone, it's ruined."
"Not here, somewhere else."
"You can't, it's not fair. The damage you've done, the things that have happened, don't you care?"
The Chemist's hunched body unfurled and he stood erect, almost banging his head on the ceiling. He seemed to have grown taller, close to eight feet now. What I could see of his body was even more distorted than ever, his face a mask of pain. And something else. Loneliness? Fear? Maybe he needed a cuddle.
"Fair? You stand there with your perfect baby all fat in your belly and you dare talk about fair? You don't know what it's like, how could you?"
"Then try me? I get why you did this, you want a family, you want to belong. Make me understand."
The Chemist stormed forward until he was lit by the light spilling down the steps into the basement from above; I took an unconscious step back. He was a wreck, literally. "No, you don't get it. And you never will."
Scabs fell as he spoke, and as he shook his arms about angrily the tattered rags of
his cloak and the shirt and trousers beneath fell away in rotten patches. "Your body. What's happening?"
"The potion's twisted, it's doing its job, keeping going, making me more of an Elder and less human. I'm becoming a true original, capable of so much."
"But your body. It's covered in sores, I can see your muscles and your bloody tendons. There are bits of bone," I shrieked. "You're going to die."
"Die? Haha, I won't die. I'm becoming true ghoul once again, and there will be endless more." The Chemist waved his arms manically as he cackled, lost to madness now, and I truly feared for him.
He was insane, had lost the plot, no longer able to think like a rational being. Obsessed, and driven over the edge by his need to become something different, to have his family and to belong. Losing it all had taken his mind along with everything else.
I watched as the scabs and flakes of skin that fell from his ruined body sparkled like ice crystals hitting the floor, as if the mist in the room somehow activated the diseased flesh and gave it a breath of warped life. The scabs turned to tiny grubs and they began to grow. Fast. Just like the baby inside me, everything sped up by the power of the Empty and the untold possibilities it contained.
The Chemist advanced, shucking off more of his own flesh as he did so, and then he was right up in my face, his exposed teeth writhing with tiny maggots. He was being consumed by his own magic, eaten up to become who knew what.
"I'm going to be a daddy," he snarled, then laughed as the tiny maggots spat from his mouth and landed on my face, in my hair, on my clothes.
More spewed forth and fell to the ground, and I saw them come from his ears and his nostrils. I may have run away screaming, just a little.
He followed right behind.
Squirming
I batted at my face as I hightailed it up the steps into the street. I spat and rubbed and raked my nails through my hair. Sour, milky juice squirted between my fingers, the ends of the grubs popped and shot their foulness onto the road where they sizzled like acid, staining the dark asphalt white in a splattered plague of cancerous tumors.
I spun as the Chemist shouted, "My children." He cackled as his cloak fell away completely, revealing his ruined, mangled arms covered in terrible sores that shed scabs like ash from a fire. More and more of his skin dropped and as it did his own pink flesh hardened in the air, healing faster than mine ever had. As it turned brown and dark and thick so the process began again.
Each tiny piece of flesh, each scab, flake of skin, even the hair that shed from his scalp then regrew into long strands of writhing blackness, each piece became a tiny grub that fattened and squirmed in an instant.
"What are you doing?" I shouted, aware that I needed to be quiet but unable to help myself. "You can't do this, it's insane. And here, where people can see?" I glanced at the windows, at the houses that contained sleeping people, knowing it would only be a matter of time before they woke. What would they see?
Sure, we were veiled, but when magic was used all that went out the window. If they saw this insanity then it would be game over, no putting the magic back in the box. Then we'd all be things of hatred, the focus of worldwide media attention, and not in a good way.
"It's time the Regulars knew," he snarled, raising his arms to encompass the world.
So I ran away again. Trust me, the longer you're an enforcer, the more often it seems like a good idea.
As the Chemist danced around in a frenzy of mindless ecstasy, I made a call to Dancer. Once he'd stopped swearing he hung up.
Less than five seconds later I felt the air above compress and looked up to see the underside of Delilah in dragon form. She was several feet above my head and already descending. She folded her wings slightly and swooped lower. Intense fire blasted from her reptilian mouth and burned the road, the grubs, and the cars on either side of the street in searing heat, then she was up and away before I'd even stopped running.
The Chemist was ablaze, and I watched as his hair burned away and his face was engulfed. Flames shot up the tattered material on his legs, wrapping his entire body in orange death.
In the blink of an eye, Delilah was back. A great warm gust of wind blew hard and fast down the street, extinguishing the fire. She darted past like a supersonic jet and disappeared into the night. She was no killer, not if she could help it, but I did wonder how she'd answered Dancer's call so quickly. It's not like dragons can answer the phone or anything, is it?
I watched her depart, not an ounce of me happy about any of this. I ran to the Chemist but he was already up from where he'd been knocked over by the powerful gale. His body was black and his eyes shone freaky white against the charred skin, but even as he rose his flesh regenerated. His hair grew, and his limbs cracked and popped and flakes of dead, truly dead skin, turned into grubs that would never have a spark of life.
But fresh flesh was beneath, and already the carapace of his new body was hardening in the air. He turned his eyes to me in utter madness and anger. "You burned my children. You killed them."
He ran at me.
Eight feet tall men are surprisingly fast, so I turned on my heels and put some serious vampire juice into my legs and made like Bolt.
My Babies
"My babies, my babies," screamed the Chemist, over and over and over again until I felt like my head was going to explode.
His voice was filled with such anguish, such hurt and loss that it broke my heart into a thousand pieces. My child squirmed and my stomach cramped, forcing me to run at normal speed after just a few seconds because I couldn't cope with all the conflicting emotions and pain. How much could one person endure? How much must he be hurting? The thought of losing a child was insufferable, didn't bear thinking about, but he'd lost countless.
Was it the same? It couldn't be. It wasn't. But to him, in his state of mind, then yes, it was enough, more than enough, to drive him completely over the edge.
I kept on running, my entire body cramping up now, and he gained on me, never stopping his pitiful cries and screams as he chased me down.
We pounded through the empty streets of Cardiff, and I headed out of the built up areas as he ran after me, his screams now whimpers. I still heard them loud and clear. I couldn't stop listening, couldn't shut off my sensitive hearing and make the world a quiet, peaceful place. I wondered if I'd ever be able to do that again. This was too much, it had to end. It had to stop. Right now.
So I stopped, there in the street, and I turned to face him. He pulled up several feet short of me and glared like he was going to rip me into a million parts.
"Well, what are you going to do?" I asked. "I'm your friend and I've been trying to find you, to look after you. To help. What, you going to kill me?"
"You destroyed my children," he whispered.
"No, you did this. You brought them into this world knowing they wouldn't survive. You used them to try to change things to how you wanted them. Life isn't like that, things don't work that way. You cheated. You created them but they weren't real, they weren't even truly sentient. They were your playthings."
"No, that's a lie." He rubbed at his broken face, the torment visible as he tried to fight inner demons that had control of his every action and thought.
"It's the truth. You wanted to be accepted, I get that, but you used those innocents, not your children, just you, part of you, your need made real, to change things. Well, that's not how it works. You are what you are, same as me. If people don't accept that then it's their problem. You don't make change by forcing it on people, they won't tolerate it. They'll just hate you all the more."
"You killed them," he whimpered, unable to focus on what I was saying. But something must have been getting through as the anger and violence shed from him like his own broken flesh. He shrank in size before my eyes, folding in on himself, retreating somewhere I knew would be dark, lonely, and eternal.
"This has to end. Now."
The Chemist dropped to his knees, tilted his head back, and screamed in
anguish. A piercing wail that I will never forget however many years I live. It was the cry of the truly alone, of the broken. Of someone who just wanted to be loved and had lost their way, unsure what to do or how to find a place in the world.
I dashed to him, ripped the gift from Grandma out of my pocket, and pulled out the stopper. I poured it into his open mouth and he spluttered then swallowed. He let out his sadness in a cry for help that shattered windows.
A Change
The Chemist's howl of anguish turned to one of pain as the liquid sped down his throat. I dropped the vial and it smashed, the purple drops evaporating as they hit air. The self-made Elder tore at his chest, exposing a wide, painfully thin ribcage.
His flesh became almost transparent where the potion had slid down his throat. Purple and white glowed powerfully through his skin and sparks hissed and crackled but didn't burn him on the outside.
He grasped at his throat like it most certainly was burning on the inside though, and he clawed with filthy nails at his chest, raking huge tears in his skin that made the light burn ever brighter. Like a puppet on bouncy strings, his whole body spasmed and he sprang up to his full height as his arms flapped like he was trying to take to the wing.
"This is for your own good. You can't stay like this, it won't last. Even if it did, it can't. I'm sorry." The baby stilled as if he too was saddened by what I'd done, that the Chemist had to be treated this way, but it was better than the alternative, a lot better. The mood Dancer was in, I knew it was only a matter of hours before he sent out the big guns. Heck, he'd just sent Delilah to burn up a street, and that wasn't something he would usually even contemplate. Who knew what kind of clean-up crew he had to deal with that.
The baby kicked as my mind wandered, so I tried to focus but there was something wrong with my eyes.
Bloody tears. Yes, literally.
"Ugh, I don't feel so good." I was being clutched by the Chemist and he seemed to have no interest in letting me go.