Rig

by Bryan Alaspa

  They came through the other side and for the first time since he had known her, J.D. heard Karmen scream.

  * * *

  Lazlo descended in darkness and for the first time felt confident and completely at home. Even without the light on he was able to move through the tunnels and walkways of this rig since he had helped design and build the thing from the start. He moved over obstacles with an ease even the mercenaries would have envied. He positioned the charges perfectly. He figured that, at the very least, this one leg would blow out properly and would bring the house down.

  At first Lazlo had been traumatized by the idea of blowing his baby to pieces. However, as nightmare after nightmare was visited upon them, the realization that this place had to be brought down because it was itself becoming part of the evil that it had released, he realized he had no choice. Once the decision had been made he followed through with his mission. Being a religious person Lazlo figured he was fighting a demon or perhaps all of Hell itself. He was determined to do something right.

  He reached the launch tube and placed his remaining charges. He perspired freely just glad that for once he was able to do something and do it better than the mercenaries. He finished placing the charges and then leaned against the round surface of the launch tube and removed the lighted hat he wore. He wiped sweat from his head and leaned his head against the cool metal.

  Mark’s questions came over the earpiece. He smiled at the writer’s nervousness. He answered his questions and assured him that everything would be fine. The tubes were meant to be used in an emergency. Crew members were expected to descend to this depth rapidly and then resurface rapidly. They were below the water level but not to a degree that you needed to worry about the pressure. Had they needed to descend all the way down to where the legs were anchored in the floor of the ocean that might have been a problem. Lazlo was confident that the charges down to the launch tubes would disrupt the structural integrity of the supports enough to bring the many thousands of tons of oil rig above them on top of what remained of the legs. So much material was above them he was also certain that even if the rig leaned as it fell enough debris would cover the hole beneath them.

  Lazlo closed his eyes and waited for word that they were to meet up and get out. He allowed himself a chance to smile and thought about his wife. They fought just before he left to come on this adventure. At the moment he could think of no one he would rather have been with than his wife even if she were still pissed at him. Just as the image of his wife entered his head a cool breeze rushed past his head. His eyes snapped open into the darkness.

  A shape loomed in the darkness. Lazlo opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. Something about the shape was familiar but the familiarity was all wrong. He sniffed the air and smelled a familiar smell.

  “What are you doing, baby?” the figure said.

  Lazlo heard the voice and felt his entire body shudder. His head felt strange as if rough hands were rooting through this mind. He could hear the sound of the screaming and torture filtering through his brain. He shook his head and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “You’re not real,” he said.

  The air seemed to lighten. The shape stepped forward and the red hair gave away the fact that it was his wife. The image was perfect. Her smell and the way she held her hands. The color of her eyes was the only thing that wasn’t quite right. Instead of the intense green he was used to there was a blackness that swirled behind the iris. He found himself staring at the eyes and the things that were logical and illogical began to lose meaning and importance.

  “I’m here with you,” she said stepping forward with her arms outstretched. “They send me to take you home.”

  His head buzzed. It was so hard to think. “No, this is impossible. You can’t be here. You’re lying to me like you’ve lied to all the others.”

  “They sent me to get you,” it said, “Once the storm cleared. The company sent me to get you. They’ve got it sorted out. You don’t have to blow up the rig.”

  “No,” he whispered.

  She reached him and put her arms around him. He felt her body against his and it was her body. He smelled her shampoo. He smelled her perfume. He reached out and touched her face and felt her skin.

  “Come with me,” she said. “Come with me now and we can go home.”

  “Home,” he said just above a whisper. “I want to come home so bad.”

  She leaned in and he felt her lips brush against his. He put his hands around her and felt her body against his. His head buzzed and swirled. He was so tired. He wanted to go home so badly and hold her just like he was now. He couldn’t focus past her and her smells. He leaned in and kissed her lips and felt the familiar lips part and her tongue touched his and he closed his eyes. Her hands ran up his back and he moaned despite himself. Then there was pain in his mouth.

  He jerked back and put a hand to his mouth. There was blood on his fingers. She had bitten his lip. The taste of blood mixed with the pain cleared the fog around his head just enough for him to see what was really there. The shape did not hold its form now that he saw it for what it was. It seemed to shift and shimmer like a mirage. Something beneath the image had teeth and fangs. Something beneath the mask couldn’t contain its appetites for human flesh and had taken a bite out of him.

  “You’re not my wife,” he said.

  “Damn,” it said in his wife’s voice and her face broke in a smile, “I just never could contain myself once I had a taste.”

  With its cover blown the façade disappeared. The skin fell away like clothing. His wife’s face split and fell away. Something beneath it began to form and this time it wasn’t hiding. It was a form combines of a thousand other forms. It was like a ball with a mouth and thousands of teeth stacked row upon row. The teeth moved and whirred like saw-blades. Arms extended on either side and numbered in the hundreds. Each tentacle was tipped with something sharp and barbed and serrated. It floated in the air and the eyes swam with black and red. It was a creature that had only one purpose and that was to create pain.

  “Now,” it said, “I need you to scream, please.”

  The teeth and slits on its face that passed for mouths twitched and Lazlo realized he was looking at the thing smiling. One of the arms moved and there was a moment of exquisite pain at the end of Lazlo’s left arm. It happened so fast that he felt nothing at first. He lifted his arm and saw that all of the fingers on his left hand were gone. He looked at the floor and saw them lying scattered across the metal floor. Blood ran freely down his hand, his wrist, his forearm. Lazlo opened his mouth and screamed.

  “That’s the spirit,” it said.

  Another arm moved and then a dozen more. A dozen barbed and sharp ends pierced Lazlo’s shoulders, legs, arms and hands and he was thrown against the escape tube. The barbs pressed through his flesh and out the other side, pinning him off the ground and against the metal. Lazlo screamed again.

  “Now,” it said, “please try your best to stay awake. I’m really hoping this will last.”

  Tears began to flow from Lazlo’s eyes. The spikes in his body twisted. He screamed again. The arms began to move. The blades began to cut.

  * * *

  Somewhere along the tunnel Mark lost his hat and his light. His breath wheezed in and out of his lungs and his legs felt as if the muscles had been scooped out and replaced with lead weights. It took all his effort to put one foot in front of the other. There was pain along his side and across his chest. He cursed himself for the thousandth time for choosing a career that allowed him to sit on his ass for such extended lengths of time.

  Up ahead the end of the tunnel began to glow. Screams echoed down the long and dark tunnel. Mark found it rather amusing that the so-called “light at the end of the tunnel” in this case was infinitely worse than the darkness which currently surrounded him. The sounds of Lazlo’s screaming were mixing with the background screaming of the tortured souls. Beneath that was a growling and rumbling that Mark knew
, somehow deep in his mind, was the creature laughing.

  Mark paused for a moment to catch his breath. The glow at the end of the tunnel pulsated and shimmered like moonlight across the surface of a pond. The glow was a faint blue. It would have been beautiful if not for the cries of the damned and the soon-to-be-damned. Mark wished he had a weapon. He reached into his bag and removed one of the explosive devices. He studied the device and soon realized he hadn’t a clue how the things worked. He hoped that the creature was still weak enough not to pick that fact out of his mind.

  He gathered several lungs full of air and then summoned the last of this strength. He ran with all of his might and endurance into the tunnel. He had enough time to register the hideous creature and its multitude of limbs. He noticed the blood running across the floor and the wounds in Lazlo that they ran from. He even had time to notice the barbed ends of each limb before he drove the full force of his weight into the creature.

  The impact was like colliding with a large sponge. The skin and tissue of the creature had an elasticity that was unlike anything found in a sane world. The many limbs flailed. Barbs ripped from Lazlo’s body and he fell to the floor in a heap. Mark and the creature became entangled. Limbs flailed at him and he felt his skin rip open in a dozen places. The creature rebounded against the far wall as Mark fell to the floor.

  “Oh you will pay so dearly for that,” he heard the creature say deep within his mind.

  Mark held up the explosive.

  “I’ll blow this fucking thing down right now,” he said.

  The creature let loose a kind of scream of rage that pierced Mark’s head and he let loose a scream of his own. He put his hand to his ear but it did no good because the scream was in his head.

  “You’ll blow yourself to pieces,” the creature said, “and your bluff does nothing!”

  “I know I don’t stand a chance of getting out of here alive,” Mark said, “so I’m going to be sure I take this whole rig with me and you too if I can. Even if I can’t, I’ll trap you in this place forever beneath a few thousand tons of steal and concrete you pathetic creature.”

  Mark expected another roar. He expected another scream of rage to pierce his skull. Instead there was a soft rustling followed by an even softer voice.

  “Mark,” the voice said, “put that down.”

  Mark turned in surprise. Mark West had long ago given up on love. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that love for him did not exist and that his life was meant to be one of solitude with his stories and his characters. Before he had come to this realization he had loved someone very much. He had loved a girl who lived in Canada just like something out of a joke. She had been everything to him. He gave everything he had to her and loved her more than he had ever loved another living soul. He exposed his heart to her the way you were supposed to if you believed all the fairy tales. He arranged his life around hers and planned to move out of the country once she had finished school. Never before and never since had he ever felt emotions so intense and so strong and when she had called him late one winter’s night to tell him she no longer wanted to be with him it was the most painful thing he had ever experienced.

  She stood before him now. Every detail was exact. She was small with brown hair and intensely beautiful eyes. It was the eyes that he was drawn to. They were blue but they swam with red and black. He couldn’t look away from the eyes.

  “Amy?” He said.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I’m finally here for you after all this time. Now put that thing down before you hurt yourself.”

  The sounds were in his head and he couldn’t think. All the hours of terror. All the lost hours of sleep. All of it was crashing into his head and once and his head hurt. The cuts across his body hurt and he felt blood soaking his clothes. He was so tired. It was so dark. His head swam with a thousand thoughts that he couldn’t push away.

  Lazlo jumped from his right. How he could move at all given the loss of blood and the gashes across his body was beyond belief. He flung his body at the figure of the young woman. He swung the miner’s helmet and smashed the hard plastic down on the head of Amy. Mark had a moment of rage at Lazlo and then the feeling in his head cleared.

  “Lazlo!” He screamed.

  “Get out of here!” Lazlo screamed back. “It gets into your head!”

  The creature morphed again. The face of Amy changed and the limbs tipped with barbs and blades erupted from her back. The face became distorted and extended. Limbs shot out at Lazlo and wrapped around his neck and lifted him off the ground. Lazlo kicked, sending droplets of blood onto Amy’s face. More limbs reached for Mark.

  Mark held up the explosive device as the limbs reached him. The tentacles froze. The barbs and serrated edges hovered inches from his face.

  “You went a little too far with that one,” Mark hissed.

  There was another flash from Mark’s right. Karmen screamed in a way that was both fear, anger, fatigue and fright. Her blades came down on the tentacles in front of Mark’s face. The limbs severed and fell twitching to the metal floor. The creature roared and the tentacles ripped through Lazlo, slicing open his stomach. Lazlo tried to scream but the tentacles around his neck prevented him. His intestines spilled onto the floor and the creature tore him in half. The top half of Lazlo’s body flew at Karmen. She was sent spinning by the impact. Lazlo finally let loose the scream as his upper torso skittered across the metal floor. His hands clutched at his leaking body for a moment and then his eyes rolled back into his head.

  J.D. reached Mark and put an arm around his waist and lifted him to his feet. Mark turned to see J.D.’s face. He had to be sure what he saw was real and he reached out a hand and felt J.D.’s face.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” J.D. asked.

  “Just making sure it’s really you,” he said.

  “Stay out of the way for a second,” J.D. said.

  Karmen was on her feet and both blades were out and shinning in the dim blue glow. The tentacles lashed at her. With amazing speed she dodged them. She spun and leapt and danced. The bladed tips and edges sliced through fabric and scratched her skin but did not let loose any torrents of blood or sever a limb. Karmen could cut as well and she moved with a speed even the creature could not fathom. The tentacles began to fall to the floor as she moved. The blades were flying too fast to follow in the dim light. The creature let loose with a scream as Karmen worked her way closer to it. She drew two blades across its face and burst apart one of the red and black eyeballs. Black ichor sprayed from the socket.

  Karmen kicked at the shape and sent it sprawling against the wall. The many tentacles splayed out against the metal structure. Many of the tentacles ended shorter than they had been a few moments ago and spewed more of the black mess from inside.

  “Karmen, down!” J.D. cried.

  Karmen dropped to her knees. J.D. grabbed his sword by the handle and threw the blade. In the pulsating light the blade cast a crazy reflection against the gray walls as it tumbled end over end. The blade impaled into the center of the creature’s body. The blade, honed to an amazing sharpness over the years, pierced through the creature’s flesh and came out the other side. The metal end clanged loudly against the metal wall of the support and the body fell to the floor.

  The body began to spasm. Karmen stood and ran toward Mark and J.D. The creature’s limbs twitched and writhed. The blade bobbed and weaved within the mass of flesh and limbs. The scream filled their heads and then the creature began to change shape rapidly. It was Amy. Then it was Joe. Then it was Iler. Then it was Larry. Then it was Lazlo. Then it was a million faces over a million years. The roar became deafening and still it writhed and beat against the metal floor.

  “Do you really want to stand here and watch this or should we get the fuck out of here?” Karmen screamed.

  J.D. tore his eyes away from the creature and looked at her. He nodded, adjusted his grip around Mark and helped the writer to his feet. Karmen took a spot on the oth
er side of Mark and they ran for the tunnel.

  * * *

  They only ran for a few feet before Mark began running on his own without the need for any support. J.D. could feel blood running down Mark’s side and over his shoulders and face but the adrenaline must have been pumping through him so hard he didn’t feel it. Behind them the creature roared and writhed. The entire structure vibrated with the sound. The being they were fighting was not really anymore solid than vapor but it was weak and they had managed to wound it while it was weakened. Their resistance seemed to further weaken the creature. The vibrations seemed to indicate that the creature was getting mad and as it got more mad it gained strength.

  The tunnel was darkness itself but they ran as one down the long tunnel. Their breath was ragged and irregular. Pain stitched across their muscles. Mark fell to his knees and Karmen and J.D. helped him back p and then Karmen stumbled at one point only to have her fall stopped by Mark. The roaring grew more intense and they all darted glances behind them and noted that the blue glow was getting brighter.

  Finally they emerged from the tunnel to the other escape tube. J.D. immediately dropped the bag and removed the detonator. Karmen twisted the metal wheel in the escape tube and flung open the door. Inside was a tubular space lined on either side with chairs that had harnesses like something from a roller coaster. The entire chamber came to a kind of conical or pointed end. It was like sitting inside a bullet.

  “Do you have any idea how to work this?” Mark asked once he peered inside.

  “I think you can use the controls near the door here,” J.D. said indicating a control panel on the wall of the escape chamber. “You guys get in and strap yourselves in. I’m going to keep an eye on this tunnel here until we’re sure everything is secure.”