by Hall, Andrew
‘I am not dying in slow motion!’ she yelled at it, punching its lifeless head over and over. She tried desperately to pull her legs free from the inevitable. She wrestled uselessly with alien fingers thicker than her forearms, black and solid as cast iron. The still monster’s eyes flickered and greyed, staring. It didn’t flinch when Tabitha clawed at them. Its teeth closed glacier-slow around her boots, huge and cruel, piercing the soles. Tabitha screamed as the teeth sank in amongst the skin and bones of her feet, so slowly, with a cracking drawn-out crunch. She screamed louder than she ever knew she could. She was passing out with the pain, feet gushing blood into alien jaws. She hit desperately at its head, over and over; punching at the brain exposed there and frantically digging her hand inside its skull. It was useless. She screamed and smacked the road in agony and reached for the axe redundantly. But still the teeth sank down, slower and slower. And then, they stopped. The monster’s grey eyes flickered to black. The thing was finally dead. Tabitha sat there in a shining silver pool, screaming, attached to the monster’s corpse. The teeth were stuck halfway through her feet. Her blood gushed through her boots, welled in the monster’s mouth, and dribbled out from its jaws to patter down into the pool of alien blood. They both had the same blood; the same slick silver. Pale and shaking, Tabitha struggled lethargically against the jaws. A rush of shock came over her then, cold and sudden. Sickness filled her head; her vision faded to black. When her head dropped back and hit the road hard, she didn’t feel a thing.
It was dark when she came around. A fresh shock of pain coursed up her legs, and she gasped at the agony and remembered where she was. Her head hurt; her scalp was caked in silver blood. The hulking black mass of the alien looked even darker than the night around it. A full moon shone above, pouring ghostly white light down on the high street where she lay stuck in her monstrous bear trap. Caught by a vast black body in a silver pool. Tabitha wanted to throw up at the agony but only dry-heaved, over and over. Feeling almost drunk on the pain, she propped herself up on her hands. Looked over its clutching fingers at her trapped feet between its teeth. She’d tried not to move her legs when she sat up, but she couldn’t help it. She screamed afresh when her legs had twitched, and she felt the grinding teeth and stabbing fingers scrape against her bones. Punching the dead monster’s head in a rage did nothing but make her scream again with the pain. She had to think. She had to figure out how to escape before anything turned up here. One spider wasn’t much to her normally, but stuck here she could meet a very slow death if one turned up and tried to tire her out. She tried to open up the alien’s fingers and jaws with her hands, but it was no use. The axe was just too far out of reach, and digging in the monster’s squelching brain achieved nothing with any motor reflexes it might have had left. She felt around its head and neck, searching for bolts, seams, joints or rivets; anything she could use to dismantle its head from its body. But the metal monster seemed completely organic, whatever the hell it was. She sighed shallow; panicked and distraught. Was this it? Was this how she was supposed to die, bleeding to death with her feet caught in a dead monster’s mouth? What kind of superhero did that make her? She tried to breathe deeper. Shallow shaking breaths in the moonlit dark.
‘I’m going to get out of this,’ she told herself, cringing at the pain. ‘I’m going to get out of this.’ She thought back to the silver spider in the bathtub in her house; her first kill. At first it seemed invulnerable, a metal monster. She’d cut it open though, managed to dismantle it. She went through it in her head – the silvery crustacean skin, the tendons, the white flesh beneath. Everything could be reduced to its parts, whether it was an engine or an alien body. She knew alien bodies better than anyone. Even better, her rough metal fingers were practically pliers.
‘Start at the weakest point,’ she whispered to herself, trying to ignore the maddening pain. ‘Break it down. Start with the smallest piece.’ Tabitha reached down and grasped the giant fingers gripping her legs. She felt down the first fingertip where it was buried in her bleeding calf. Gasping at the pain, she wiggled the alien claw tip as hard as she could. It wasn’t about to come loose. She breathed deep, tried to stop panicking, and tried again. She strained at the finger with everything she had, and the joint creaked and loosened. Staring in shock at her victory, Tabitha pulled the finger away as hard as she could. She set to work on the rest. It was agony, but it was worth it. Nothing motivated like the promise of freedom. Wrenching the last curled finger from her calf, Tabitha rested a while to let her legs heal up. She could barely even look at her feet though, trapped and punctured in its giant piranha teeth.
‘Start with the smallest piece,’ she repeated, like a prayer. She reached into the monster’s mouth and gripped the smallest tooth. With a great deal of prising and wiggling, in a few minutes she’d wrenched out the tooth from its jaw. She gasped and leant back with the pain in her feet, staring at the starry night sky. The tooth looked like black enamel, and it had a root. So the monster was more organic than machine; it had to be. Tabitha felt more hopeful at the thought. The second tooth came out easier; she prised it from the jaw with the help of the first one. Same with the third, and the fourth. She worked her way back through the rows of giant teeth, first loosening them from the mangled metal gums and then, wishing she had a strong drink to go with it, pulling the teeth from her feet.
Tabitha blacked out with the pain as she worked. Coming around, she reminded herself of her progress and pulled more teeth. Willed herself on. The last one was the deepest; a knife of black bone buried deep through her right foot. She pulled it out and screamed, punching the road. She screamed again as she tugged her soles off the bottom rows of teeth, one foot and then the other. Free. Tabitha took her numb legs slowly out from the monster’s mouth, crying with the pain. She dragged herself away from the cold silver pool of blood, shivering in rain-soaked clothes. She had to get warm. All she wanted was a corner to crawl away into. She slunk off to sit down in a shop doorway, with darkening eyes and the axe by her side, and rocked herself to sleep. She woke up shivering soon after, and knew that she had to get warm. Her feet hadn’t healed up. They weren’t bleeding, but the wounds were black and festering in the moonlight through her torn-up boots. She staggered up and leant against the wall of the shop doorway, and hacked away the shutter over the door with the axe. Once inside, she slotted the axe through both handles to bar the doors, and crawled off into the dark heart of the clothes shop. She ripped coats and cardigans down off their hangers; piling them into a nest down behind the tills.
As lonely as she’d felt when she came clothes shopping here, back in the real world, Tabitha knew she could rely on the sad knowing smiles of the checkout girls. The ones she could spot a mile off; the ones like herself. Just like her, they had to put up with the indifference and the judging glances of the girls who were better off, better dressed, better equipped to handle life… just better. But now, here, behind these tills where the sad girls used to stand and work, Tabitha felt at home. It was a human point of reference; a familiar place. She felt herself getting warmer inside her pile of coats and cardigans. For the few moments before she fell asleep, Tabitha felt almost human again. Until the dreams came, and the hands and teeth and white eyes descended on her in the dark. She sat up, reaching her hand out to nothing in the empty shop. Her mind raced as she lay back down and closed her eyes. Venom dreams; hallucinations. The coats were human skins piled high over her, dripping silver blood and molten steel that burned her skin. Her feet gushed blood and liquid metal. Her hands curled and froze and cracked. Her feet burned and grew stabbing teeth. Tabitha screamed and cried into hot human skins that were coats, and passed out into a deep poisoned sleep.
It was dark when Tabitha woke up, and she remembered crawling into the shop as if she’d been drunk or drugged. But peering over the checkout counter, she spotted dots of light through the metal shutters over the windows. It was morning, and she’d never felt happier to see it. She remembered dreams, fleeting and te
rrible, slipping her mind. She limped over to the doors, and then the monster came back to her in a jagged thought. Its staring white eyes. Its grip. Its teeth. The sea of skins and a tide of silver blood, and the gnawing cold of the night. Tabitha dropped to the floor and gripped her knees to her chest, rocking and staring at the sign for a half-price sale.
‘Up,’ she commanded herself, sighing out the tension. ‘Get up. Get up.’
Tabitha’s feet were agony as she hobbled around the shop. She peeled off her cold damp jumper and t-shirt and looked in the changing room mirrors. Everywhere but her hands, her skin was still pale and freckled. Human skin. She hugged herself with grey metal hands that seemed a little darker this morning, a little harder and stronger. Despite her agonising feet and everything that had happened, she somehow felt more energetic today. She was especially impressed with the muscular crease that ran down her stomach. She’d never had one of those before. She felt springy, powerful. She had intended to change into some new clothes here, but there wasn’t anything practical for autumn. Only sandals and shorts; flimsy summer dresses. Clothes from the old world, where fashion was a real thing. The jackets were light cotton; nowhere close to her own musty weatherproof that she’d tossed down smoking outside somewhere. She pulled her wet dirty jumper back on and gave up on changing. It’d be warmer than anything here anyway, once it dried off. Its damp stink and silver bloodstains gave it a hard-wearing honesty that she didn’t want to part with. Her feet still throbbed and ached in her torn boots.
Tabitha limped over to the doors, unbarring the handles and throwing one open for a bit of daylight to see by. Popping her head outside, the coast was clear. There was only the hulking black corpse of the monster out there, sprawled massive on the road. She couldn’t believe she’d killed it. As she walked out a little further, Tabitha wondered why she was still limping. Surely her feet should have healed up by now. Worried, she sat down on the shop’s doorstep and unlaced her mangled boots. She peeled off her stinking blood-crusted socks, and with great difficulty she pulled the shredded strands of fabric from the dark open wounds on her feet. She noticed then in the daylight that her fingers weren’t grey any more; they were black. As black as the monster on the road. They’d changed since the fight; since she’d been asleep. At her wrists the black skin faded to grey, and from grey to her own pale skin tone. Her hands felt so much harder; heavier. Stronger. With a punch, she shattered a tile on the shop doorstep and cracked the concrete beneath. She was definitely stronger than yesterday. She finished pulling shreds of sock from the gouges in her feet, and stared in horror. It wasn’t just the shadows in the doorstep and the strange milky glow of the morning light; her feet really were turning grey. They were starting to match the new black skin on her hands, growing darker and harder by the minute. She jumped a little then at a giant moth resting in the doorway, halfway to a small bat. She shuddered at its zombie stillness and pushed herself up from the doorway, staggering out into the light.
Tabitha certainly felt stronger once she stood in the growing sunlight, admiring the monster’s corpse. She wished she had a camera, really. She could have buried the axe down in its brains and posed for a photo with a foot on her kill. She couldn’t get enough of the warm sun, like it held a new tingling fascination for her – just like that bloody moss in the forest. An inexplicable attraction; some new alien part of her mind maybe.
She rested down on a bench with a bottle of whiskey from the torn-up pub, with the axe propped beside her and her rescued coat drying in the sun. Closing her eyes, Tabitha let the sun shine red through her eyelids. Whiskey had never tasted so sweet, so hot. But then she’d never needed a drink as much as she did now. It went down easy; a burning liquid smoothness to scorch her thoughts away. She sighed, breathing deep in the sunshine. Smelled the whiskey fumes on her breath. The rotten sulphur stench of the drains hampered the scene a little bit, but the city was so peaceful, so empty. She wiggled her bare toes while she rested, and gradually felt the pain in her feet subside. She noticed all sense of touch fade away from her feet too, just like her hands. Nothing much she could do about it; no point in missing it.
‘Well, I did wish for them,’ she mumbled to herself, thinking back to her journey over the hills on soft bare feet. She thought about her escape from the base. Flashbacks of operations haunted her for a second; she killed the thoughts and dragged her mind back to the present. Tried to experience the world around her, right here and right now. Deep breaths. Her clothes stunk of damp. They’d dry while she wore them, she supposed. When she stood up the limp and the dull ache had gone from her feet, and the wounds had disappeared. Just like her hands, her feet had grown dark and armoured like the dead monster’s hide. The new skin was thick and iron-hard, black as coal.
Tabitha walked across the road to test out her new feet, feeling nothing of the pavement under her hard bare soles. Walking felt smooth and natural, better than wearing shoes. She kicked a sturdy metal bin; left a dent. Kicked it again. And again. A sudden anger rising, she punched it and kicked it until the bin was a crumpled ruin. She kicked hard against a wall and shattered a brick into fragments, as if her heel was a sledgehammer. She ran down the street and kicked a lamp post into a bent tilt. Punched a phone box half to pieces and shattered bricks with her fists in the wall behind her. Leaning on the wall to get her breath back, she lifted up her feet one by one to take a closer look. The soles were covered in tiny scales, super-grippy on the pavement. She launched herself into a sprint, and felt a new strength in her feet like coiled springs. Heartcore racing, she felt high when she circled back up the street and jogged to a stop by the dead monster.
Tabitha found out just how strong she’d become when she gave the alien corpse a cursory punch to the head. Clenched her black hand into a fist and smashed it down into the creature’s skull. She’d left a dent – she couldn’t believe it. Another punch deepened it to a crater. And then the pain started. There was a tingling in her hands then, sharp like an electric shock. Suddenly her palms were burning. Every finger felt on fire. She screamed and shook her fingers and hugged them tight under her armpits, stamping the road and desperate for the vice-grip feeling to stop. The pain made her want to throw up, to faint, to cut off her hands just to stop it. It felt like someone was taking a chainsaw to her fingers. Tabitha staggered and stumbled into a wall. She dropped to her knees and shook as the burning came on again, even worse than before. She screamed, clenched her teeth; clenched her fists as she fell to all fours. Her trembling hands were shifting, bleeding, changing before her eyes. Claws sprang from new gaps in her fingertips, thick and stubby and sharp. The pain faded just as quickly as it’d come, and Tabitha stared wide-eyed and nauseous at the claws. Her claws. By reflex they sank back down painlessly into the new gaps in her fingertips. By reflex, she could spring them out again like a cat. Sinking her new claws into the dead monster’s back, she could even peel away its thick skin a little. She licked the creature’s silver blood off her black fingers as she stood up. It was sweet, but not in any way she could put a taste to. A stronger hit than the spider blood. Her heart core raced as she swallowed a gulp; excited. She felt an electrical buzz, elated at the taste, and her old appetite came back with a vengeance. She lapped at the silvery blood that still covered the road, ice-cold and refreshing. She caught sight of herself in a window, licking blood off the tarmac on her hands and knees. She ignored herself and carried on, as if she were licking up melted chocolate. It was a thin covering though, and it tasted too much like the road. Like dirt in good wine. Pouncing hungrily on the creature’s head, Tabitha peeled its skull apart and sucked at the blood that had welled around its brain. It felt like milk and vodka going down, cold and strong and silky. Her face was covered in it when she was done. She felt tipsy; tingly all over. All the itchy anxiety was gone. Breast-fed newborns didn’t feel this contented.
‘You’re delicious,’ she told the alien corpse, leaning back against its body on the bloody road. With her old hunger finally gone, Tab
itha sighed with satisfaction and watched the golden sun rise over the empty city. She felt one of those intense moments of peace again, like the sunshine held some strange power over her. She felt her mind resting, and the warm sun on her face. Maybe her bloodmeal had a lot to do with the way she felt. Inspiration struck her then, and she wandered off to find some plastic bottles. It was so simple; why hadn’t she thought of it before?
Later on Tabitha retraced her steps down the city streets, following the trail of destruction from her fight the day before. Every trace of havoc; every cracked and crumbled wall. It felt like a dream now. The worst dream of her life. She found her way back to the taxi she’d been hiding behind in the rain, and retrieved her damp rucksack still lying beside it. She zipped it open and popped a couple of packed painkillers with a swig of water, and promptly retched them back up again.
‘Seriously,’ she mumbled angrily, unable to keep even a pair of pills down. She packed up her rucksack and looked back up the road. That was the square, up there. The sea of skins. The thought gave her a sick hollow feeling; a massive sadness. Even worse that she couldn’t do anything about it. She was sure that if the Ghosts were here, Will would’ve had them burning every skin they could find in a huge bonfire. Except… the Ghosts weren’t here. They were gone. It was just her. And after the kind of dreams she’d had last night, she just couldn’t face seeing all those skins again. She just wanted to leave this city. She never wanted to see this place again. She turned away from the street leading to the square, and headed back down the road away from the centre. That was the road to take now; the one out of town. Tabitha put her rucksack back on, picked up her axe, and walked away.