by L. A. Tafe
From the passenger train I focus on moving it forward, fighting with the train to turn its wheels. Finally it lurches beneath my feet and begins to chug forward, climbing up the first spiral and gaining speed.
The inside of the passenger car looks similar to a subway, long wooden benches on each side with windows up above them and straps to hold on to hanging from the ceiling. I move to the middle of the train car, ready for Oliver and his clone to attack.
I hear steady footsteps coming up the stairs on both sides of me, Both Olivers smiling as they board the train, one on each side of the car with me in the middle.
They both wear the same smile, their eyes watching me closely. “No where to run now, Lance.” I don’t hesitate, rushing one of them, growing my hands into claws just like theirs, slicing at him, spilling his blood everywhere as he swipes back at me. The other Oliver joins in and I parry blows, slashing for their necks, healing myself as their claws gouge me.
Blood pours from both Olivers and myself, puddles forming all over the passenger car, another Oliver rising from each one. In just minutes there is a half dozen Oliver’s in the train, all of them slashing at me viciously. Something better happen soon.
I dodge and parry as much as I can, slicing through flesh and bone with my own strikes whenever I can. I heal my wounds constantly; only to be gouged twice more for each wound I heal.
Blood sloshes around the train car as we speed around continuous loops, climbing higher and higher into the sky. The train car is fit to capacity with a dozen Olivers, another rising each time another falls.
I grab an Oliver with each arm and draw them close, spinning with them, each of them taking the claws that were meant for me while I take the moment to heal my many wounds, the long slice across my stomach being the worst, with my intestines on the verge of falling out.
An unearthly high-pitched shriek comes from outside the train, and everyone stops, including myself. Each of us looking out the windows at our new surroundings.
Everything has gone dark as if we are in a cloud, long strands of white streak through the sky. Another shriek rings out, close enough to rattle the entire train.
As we come around another spiral I see exactly what the strands form and my blood goes cold. The Olivers scan the windows for the source of the shriek, none of them having a clue where or what is going on. I never should have come here.
Something crashes into the train, shaking it so hard I lose my footing and fall to my knees, luckily Oliver and his minions are to enthralled with what just hit us to attack me before I can get back to my feet.
I stare up through he hole that the creature took from the ceiling, revealing a sky above us filled with more white stands, large black creatures move along the strands, all of them moving towards us.
“What is this?!” Oliver yells, only one of them speaks this time and I know it must be Him. Now is my chance. Another shriek comes from outside, then another right after. There is more than just one outside now.
I move past two of Oliver’s doubles, both of them looking through the windows to get a glimpse of the beasts. Oliver sees me coming for him and his clones all turn on me, clawing at me as I reach for Oliver.
I manage to grab him by the neck and take him to the ground. My back is torn to shreds as I whale on Oliver, beating his face bloody, smiling the whole time.
I bring my claw back, numbing the pain in my back as the other Oliver’s rip me to shreds. It doesn’t matter now. it’s over. Oliver looks up at me as I bring my claw down.
A shriek comes from just outside the train car and then the beast crashes into the car, reaching its long hairy legs in the window, prying one of the walls off.
My claw misses Oliver’s head as the train car is rattled, half of the train car now missing, ripped off by the beast. Through the opening it created, the beast crawls inside the car, grabbing at the closest prey it can find.
The beast stabs one of Oliver’s clones through the chest, dragging him close and sinking its massive fangs into his skull, killing him instantly. The beast shrieks and the whole train shakes, the sound sends stabbing pain into my ears.
Oliver gets free from my grasp as I gape at the massive spider in the side of the train car, stunned and terrified by the beast. My biggest horrors come to life.
The spider hurls what is left of the body it just gorged upon, grabbing another of Oliver’s doubles, and jumping from the train into the massive web that encases the sky. Another shriek rings out from just outside the car and I know another is close by.
Get up! Get up and find him! I tell my body but I still don’t move. Too scared to move. Another spider rams what is left of the train car, taking out one of the sidewalls. Several Oliver’s fall out of the torn open train car, screaming to their sure deaths.
Without any support, the ceiling crashes down, crushing and pinning me under its weight. A claw smashes through the wooden ceiling, carving into my face as well. Oliver thrashes at the ceiling, digging to get to me. Get a fucking grip! I scream at myself. Kill him!
Oliver claws until he carves a hole in the wood, getting my head free so he can drive his talons through it. “All over now, lance.” Oliver says. Having me at his mercy. Oliver grabs my head, digging his talons in, driving them into my skull slowly.
Under me I can feel the train shifting, all of the weight going to the front. We have reached the top! The whole train shakes as we pick up speed. Oliver looks around and sees what is happening, releasing me as he does.
“Not over yet, Oliver.” I gasp, the roof crushing down on my chest. With the new speed, air rushes over the falling apart train car, tearing the rest of the walls clean off, whipping them through the air, taking the last of Oliver’s clones with them. What is left of the roof begins to lift off of me, launching into their air with Oliver still on it.
As the roof whips through the air, Oliver leaps. I roll out from under him just before he lands, his knee driving into the floorboards, shattering them.
All around us the screams of Oliver’s clones ring through the air followed by shrieks from the spiders as they feast upon the clones flesh.
Oliver and I stand to face each other, just the two of us left to fight upon a mangled train car in the middle of a giant spider web. Couldn’t be better.
We charge each other, moving quicker than ever before. He jumps to tackle me and I slide beneath him, grabbing him by his shirt, corkscrewing him to the ground, shattering the floorboards as he lands. He can’t face me one on one.
I pin him to the ground and put my hands around his throat, rage taking over as I strangle him. I bash his head against the floor as I choke him, blood painting the floor beneath his head. My blind hatred drowning out everything around me.
Oliver’s face is expressionless as I bring him so close to death.
I see in his face that he is letting go, giving up. It makes me slam him harder, squeeze his neck tighter and tighter, reminding him of what he did to Amy. Getting my revenge.
Silence surrounds me as I kill Oliver, so wrapped up in his death that I don’t feel the train car rumble beneath me, only noticing something is wrong when Oliver’s blank expression turns to a strained smile. I know it before I even turn.
I roll off of Oliver immediately and a giant spindly leg stabs Oliver in the chest. Blood shoots from his mouth and his whole body writhes. The monstrous spider shrieks, stabbing Oliver again, then it turns on me. I back away from the beast, just barely stopping myself before falling off the edge.
The spider attacks with one of its front legs, swiping through the air at my chest. I duck the blow, watching closely as the beast’s leg slices into my back. The pain stuns me for a second but I react swiftly, grabbing the hairy spider leg before the beast can retract it, snapping it off with a flick of my wrist.
The beast rears back and shrieks out in pain, milky blue blood pouring from its stump of a limb. I know I need to kill it now, attack it while it’s in pain, all fear I once had now fading to nothing. Kill i
t!
I run towards the beast and it lunges at me with the leg drenched in Oliver’s blood. I roll to the side and the beast buries its spear like limb in the wooden floor. Just what I wanted.
I pin the trapped leg and kick it, snapping it in half, driving the beast back in pain. I pull the spider’s appendage from the floor and rush the monster. The beast backs up till it has no where to go, its afraid of me!
The spider rears up on its back legs, allowing me to bury the tips of the legs into its chest, driving them in up to my hands. The beast shrieks and goes even farther back on its legs, any farther and it will surely fall off the edge.
I climb the beast’s chest, using the buried limbs as pegs, jumping up to the mouth of the monster, grabbing it by the fangs and twisting the body around, slamming it to the floor of the train car.
The beast’s dagger like fangs lunge at me as I reach for them, narrowly missing, allowing me to seize them. I rip the fangs from the beast’s mouth, raising them above my head and plunging into the middle of the beast’s cluster of eyes.
The spider shrieks low and weak, its legs no longer thrashing about, its body no longer writhing. It’s dead. I killed it. “Fuck you!” I yell at the dead beast, spitting on the monster as I pull the fangs from its eyes.
Oliver stares at me with his mouth agape, standing at the other side of the train car with his wounds healed. “It’s your turn.” I say to him. “It’s over.” He closes his mouth and charges me, Leaping onto the beast, tackling me, knocking us both off the speeding train, sending us hurling towards the ground far below us.
Air rushes over our entwined bodies as we rip through thick webbing, falling to fast for it to stop us. Oliver bites into my neck, shaking his head like a rabid dog, tearing deeper and deeper into me.
Farther and farther we plunge to the ground, right through the middle of the spiraling track we just went up. I don’t try to stop Oliver, don’t attack him, I leave him be, waiting for the ground to get closer. With my body limp, Oliver pulls his fangs from my neck and looks at me, blood drenching his razor teeth. A victorious smile spread across his face.
His smile fades as he sees me just staring at him, indifferent, careless, dangerous. “It’s over Oliver.” I tell him like a parent scolding a child. With both of the spiders teeth I stab him in the back, driving the draggers in as far as I can.
He roars out in pain, bucking wildly, spinning us in the air. I can see the ground approaching rapidly beneath us. I put a foot up under Oliver’s jaw, with my other knee against his chest. His eyes stare into mine as we hit the ground.
As we hit, my knee plows right through the middle of his chest, while my other foot crushes Oliver’s skull, the splintering bone shooting out in all directions.
I stand steadily and look down at Oliver’s lifeless body, watching it turn to dust, blowing off into the air by no wind at all. It’s over. My nightmares are gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
I shut my eyes, opening them to the sound of an electric beep, another following a moment later, and another a moment after that. My eyes feel heavier than ever before and I feel to weak to open them. I try reaching up and rubbing them with my hands but nothing happens.
Slowly, the memories the last few days come back to me, all the way up to the crash. Again I try to move my arms but nothing happens. my whole body feels too heavy to move.
Straining hard, I open one of my eyes just an inch, looking around the hospital room through a hazy fog for a second until my eye focuses. My body is wrapped in bandaging almost and medical equipment surrounds me on all sides of my bed, one of them is still beeping rhythmically.
In the hallway I hear someone talking, disdain in his voice. “That piece of shit killed his father then an innocent girl! He deserves to rot in jail or hell, not some damn hospital bed!” Awhhh officer bitch fit. If he has just left me in the car to die he wouldn’t be here complaining.
“I'm sorry sir but there’s no way of knowing when he will wake up. It could be today or two years from now. He may never wake up.” Someone says, must be a doctor or a nurse.
I don’t hear what officer bitch fit says but I'm sure it was just as pleasant as always. “If he wakes up. You will be the first to know.” The other man replies, the sound of stomping footsteps echoes into my room, fading as the officer storms down the hall.
I look around my room some more. Thinking about how none of my family has come to stay with me, or send flowers, or anything remotely family like. But what can I expect? I’m a killer. The scourge of the earth.
Amy would be here. I tell myself, tears coming to my eyes with the thought of her. There is no reason for me to be here anymore. I take another look around the room before I shut my eyes. Leaving the world behind for a world of my own.
I open my eyes and find myself standing at the base of the spiral tracks. The train I was on now sitting motionless on the tracks just a few feet away, the nightmare spider still dead upon the torn apart passenger car. I wonder for a moment if my nightmares will ever come back, but no fear accompanies the thought. I will kill them if they do.
I begin walking towards where the rubble of my home lies, each carnival attraction I pass comes crashing down, starting with the train tracks.
Shrieks echo through the air as the nightmare spiders rain down, the tracks tearing out the bottoms of their webs as they crash to the ground as well. The shrieks only last until the beasts hit the ground, splattering upon the dirt, falling train tracks crushing their corpses into the dirt.
The shrieks are all gone by the time I reach the ash field surrounding the rubble of my home. I don’t stop as I move through the field, my home resurrecting itself from the rubble as I walk, each piece falling into place exactly where it belongs.
Out of the ash pops up the greenest grass imaginable, dotted with fruit trees of every kind. Apples, pears, peaches, cherries, all of them already bountiful with fruit.
My home looks perfect with the landscape around it, it’s blue door shines in the new sunlight. The shutters exactly how I remembered. Every window, every arch, every color, just like I built it before. Every thing about it is beautiful.
I walk inside and head for my room, admiring the oak stairs as I do. I see my bedroom door is closed and I know why, knocking gently before I walk in.
“You know I like the door to be open, feels so boxed in when it’s closed.” I say to Amy. She is in the corner behind the table, her legs crossed, sitting in my favorite wooden chair.
“I'm sorry.” Amy says smiling at me, getting up and striding across the room to kiss me. Everything about her is so warm and wonderful, so perfect.
“Forgive me now?” she says as our kiss ends. I nod with a smile and lead Amy to the window. Outside is a carnival with every ride and circus game imaginable, lit up with neon lights, and happy clowns throughout. Nothing ever looking so inviting.
Amy screams in excitement. “You know I hate carnivals.” I say to her. “But I love them!” She squeals, pure happiness in her face.
“I know.” I say, kissing her cheek with my arm around her, holding her close to me. Amy breaks free and pulls me by my hand, “Come on!” Pulling me down the stairs and out into the Carnival.
THE END.