by Marlin Grail
“You know what I want,” I shiver out, shredding my anger as each word drops. “I want you to kill me. I’ve got nothing left to live for, because of you!”
“Not. Me.” It’s disrespectful how he denies it. “Like Harold’s death, it wasn’t me that killed them, but F.”
What?
The deliriousness electrifying my neurons, my thoughts, the insanity I’m starting to feel all comes out in a giggle and headshake.
Yeah. Now, I correct you.
“You didn’t even know we went to that base, so stop acting like you did! What was the real reason?”
There’s a crack in Claw’s perfect world, one that lowers the smirk he’s kept on his face this entire conversation. Now, it becomes a serious look, except he’s not man enough to look in my direction.
And now, I’m the one smiling.
“You count on luck. You’re no masterful puppeteer. You failed at your ‘integration’ of people, because you had no idea about Casey’s people already on your side. Imbecilic moron. You wasted your time with us, but you wasted so many people while at it. You have no idea what happens, why it does, but just—”
“You watch your mouth!” he spews in rage. Claw’s mouth slobbers droplets of saliva in the process, but it won’t ruin this smile of mine. I know I’m pissing him off further.
“Or what?” I egg on. “You’ll kill me? I’m dead already…Clouse!”
Two hands snake around my neck, interlocking together. His own anger is driving him to squeeze out the happiness I feel from feeling him choke me.
If this is how he kills me, then so be it. If I ever cared about winning, this would be my time to gloat, suffocating being my taunting.
Chapter XXIX
He strangles me with a passion, surely over the fact I revealed his true name. In my mangled voice, cutting in and out, my Donald Duck pitch being rendered because of such a violent choking, I continue to taunt his name repeatedly.
He might kill me, but not my spirit. I know that because of the phantom, who probably was alive at one point in time. If this man won’t die, then I’ll break his spirit this way, by reminding him of what he’s spent this whole time likely trying to erase from history.
“Clouse…Cl…ouse…Cl…ou…se!”
A solider, one of these men that came with us, shouts, “She wants him alive! Wants him alive!”
Dammit. The closer I feel my life fading out, the harder it becomes to know I’m being pulled back in.
This soldier finally shakes Claw off me. Despite the black spots clouding my vision, I see he looks pathetically afraid when Claw gets up in his face. “Fine!”
My back is against the ground, with knees bent up. I’m like a broken turtle. This represents my complete lack of interest to how dignified I appear.
I’ve made it more than apparent I have a suicidal urge at this point, because—
“Claw,” Ominous intervenes, “she gave us the news to what she saw. Tell him.”
After all I’ve seen from last night to today, there’s nothing else I want to know. There’s no more mysterious wonders to concern myself over. At the peak of danger, I don’t care to ask the super villain why their motivations are what they are. My only remaining curious thought is those 11 officers dispatched shortly before my people and I arrived at the base.
My assumption?
It was Casey and his unit. Betrayal is looping again and again. All due respect to those 11 officers, but I no longer care to solve any more mysteries.
I stare up at the sky, fixating on every dark streak from the spore-infested air pollution I can see with the naked eye. Dimly, I’m waiting for what Claw wants to share, though it’s a tiny spot on my mind. My eyes seal up, without a care in the world.
“Listen!” he demands roughly. “You think your people are gone. I thought the same. We all did, until shortly after our little ‘reunion’. Grim could see it clearly. Your people aren’t dead.”
Just as he finishes his last statement, the blinds rise up, my eyes being the window to my soul, and they express genuine rush of incredulity.
This state of disbelief is all but ample to the seismic activity giving me purpose yet again.
“What did you say?”
Once again, Claw and I trade expressions. A smile’s taken off of me, and one’s developing on him.
“This is where we get to the rules.”
Chapter XXX
Confident he has my full attention, he diverts to a new topic, one which tampers with my comfortability. I can’t forget Ominous, along with a few soldiers, are surrounding me with guns leveled at my head.
It didn’t matter if they would’ve shot me a minute ago. Now, because they too know how deeply cemented my care for my people is, it matters, completely, to me that I live. Even though I know any of them wouldn’t shoot, and won’t now, because of Grim’s request not to, again, I have to stay down.
But what if they shoot one of my legs? My people need me intact.
“You have until tonight. Let’s say…9:00pm. You can’t get there on foot, and certainly there are no cars just resting on the side of any of these roads. Your best bet is going straight into these woods, to find the people. Ominous was once captured by them a while back.
“He told us it was awful. He wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy to experience what he did because of their nasty ways.”
Claw lets this sink in for a moment before continuing.
“You’ll need to go to them, if you want a chance of getting a ride from them. You’ll have to forcibly take one I’d imagine, seeing as how they’re not that nice.
“Here’s your consequence. Grim knows your people are very much alive, and where they are at. No, it’s not the base. She will have us—like her dogs—go out and get to them. We’ll then tear each and every one of their throats out. Make it at 9:01pm, and that’s still going to happen.”
My mind is swirling too fast for me to keep up with.
How would she know? Here I go, getting sucked into the mysteries. It’s best I just know because she knows. That’s it. She knows where there are. Lissie…
There’s a part that resists. “S-see? You’re just lying to get to me—”
“I could be!” he interrupts in a yell. “Maybe I am, Gary. Maybe, you don’t come at 9:00pm, none of them die, because they’re already dead. Or, maybe, you could know their faces, know Kayla’s face, is still warm and alive at this very instant.”
Kayla. That’s the false name Lissie gave Claw when we all met him for the first time. Lissie didn’t want him to know her real name. And I haven’t wanted him too either.
Especially not now.
Strange as it may be, but knowing Claw couldn’t dirty her real name gives me comfort. Especially, after hearing what he says next.
“Then, you could live on the rest of your days, knowing hers got mashed in by our boots, then sliced off, then fed to the converted.”
If they are alive…I can’t assume it’s just a lie. He’s right. I could assume, but then I could assume more afterwards with the repeating question, “Was he telling the truth?”
Mushing of the grass and dirt starts again, leaving behind boot marks from every single one of them. But though most of them head back into the truck, Claw’s the only one that heads to the right side of the bed to pull something out.
It’s a gun.
You won’t kill me, but…
He steps slowly to my position, meeting me on eye-level again. Except I’m now physically scared to get up. If there’s a sliver of a chance my people are alive, then it matters now whether I live or die.
“Gary…Grim sees much in you, and you’re drawing her affection away from me. The way to all that affection is through me, and to get through me, I need to test you.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he grips my shoulder with his free hand to draw me closer. Claw then firmly plants his gun’s barrel to my right thigh.
It goes off.
Though I know there’s a fire burning the
inside of my leg, so much so I fall to the ground in agony, I’m still reticent about showing him I regret ticking him off earlier. How I regret calling him by his real name.
I wheeze. Only tiny bursts of air come into my abused throat. I now fear this sensation of suffocating.
My people need me! I need to find my people!
When I stress my body to its absolute limit, taking every fiber in my working muscles to turn my shot thigh off of the ground, I have stage-fright. Claw is just absorbing this as pleasure, watching me writhe away. His sadistic pair of eyes weighs heavily on me for a few more seconds. Then, with not a care in the world, they turn back towards the truck, along with the rest of his body.
My heart races exponentially, a terrible motivator to pump more blood out. I try to calm down. But, when seeing the blood gush from the entrance hole on my thigh, I feel my heart racing more. What hurts me more is how lucky he was to ensure that bullet is lodged in my meat.
There’s no exit wound.
Claw’s made me the wiggling worm of the earth. I know he loved the sight of my helpless agony. Even without being here, he knows that I’m fighting to get my ground again.
I’m ashamed to say I’m feeding him the pleasure with my vocal and visible despair.
Everything’s been my fault, and even his adoration about my pain is my fault.
I behave like a toddler on a temper tantrum, banging my fists against the ground, roaring out my spleen. The back of my mind is thankful for all my years of singing, because my throat isn’t going out anytime soon.
For a minute, my voice is solo, then, during my prolonged cry, there’s an included snarl, disintegrating us to a chorus I don’t want.
An undead stumbles and limps its way out of the forest edge. Its nude body is becoming more slovenly and appalling—higher in definition—the closer it gets to me. The gray skin shading this body’s muscles showcases someone that was exceptionally fit, but their beautiful muscles clearly weren’t enough to save him from his fate.
How’d he become completely naked? If he was killed by people, or other undead, his body wouldn’t resurrect. Only hazes convert.
They can’t strip people of their clothing.
As much as I had reached a low, one where I had a yearning to be killed, I plop even farther down to a pit of shame, a culmination reached when I imagine this man’s past life.
He likely didn’t want to die, and he got what I wished I did a few minutes ago. What’s this mean? Is life for everyone really fair? Is only those with the most intriguing story meant to get a continuation?
Would he have taken my place, one where I’ve turned down the opportunity to flourish? Even if it meant causing others pain, sorrow, and misery?
Would he have taken it up in a heartbeat?
I wish to keep chiseling a story for this dead man, a means to give respect to his nameless vessel, his open and crooked jaw, and his…haze-incubating eyes. I curse to myself, which this actually “curses” me.
The undead gets in a wrestling match with me.
Chapter XXXI
It’s on its knees, perpendicular to how my body is currently laid out. It seems to have thought it would’ve easily gotten to my neck, but I grab hold of its scrawny wrists, though I might as well be fighting off a scrawny dog.
It’s not so much their limbs you have to worry about, though you still have to be mindful of them, but it’s more of their relentless and intimidating chomping mouth. That gaping maw gives tunnel vision to where it wants you to practically feel defeated already.
I can’t give up because of what I see, though. I can’t give up here because of what it appears: an undead lurched over me, having a ram’s mentality, trying and trying again to bite me. What I know is my people could possibly be alive, and they need me alive.
I can’t give up, especially if their lives count on it.
My mind races with all sorts of possibilities to knock this undead off me—if my right thigh’s current condition didn’t cripple most of them, while also crippling me. To buy myself extra time, time which I can only measure in seconds before one of us surpasses the other in strength, I snake my right arm under its left.
I immediately regain and maintain control. I’m able to create distance between us when my right arm wraps tightly around his neck. Just like that I’m able to then push his whole jaw up so its face is no longer able to look at me.
Good work, Gary. However, this can’t go on forever. It needs to get away…
This entire duration of us gracelessly and sluggishly contending with one another has an answer to end it. A solution that has been completely far away from my conscious, due to this moment where a select few considerations have entered my thoughts.
Purposefully bursting a haze-incubating undead hasn’t been one.
Until now.
I’m immune. I shouldn’t have to worry about the freshly-born haze. I’ve controlled undead with concentration, but I can’t concentrate at the moment. I’ll have to rely on barbaric human physicality this time around.
The solution comes further upfront to my face.
It’s always been literal, but the visual is just becoming noticeable to my examination. The neck has a tear of skin, a little slit. I see the resemblance of paint on a wall that can be peeled apart with just a thumb.
Enough torn skin to its insides should set off the haze to burst, killing the undead instantly. Hopefully, because the explosion catapults chunks, even bones, in all directions, the major pieces will go everywhere besides on me. I’d appreciate it if a bone won’t shatter into a sharp enough object, then impale me somewhere critical.
I can’t be certain, and I’m nervous because of it, but the risk of getting injured further doesn’t outweigh the risk of just endlessly battling this undead. All it’s doing is killing time for me to find my people, and, eventually, me falling victim to its uncontrollable hunger.
My right hand, still squishing its throat, makes it my own personal stress ball. I slip my thumb into its small-scale flimsy skin. The initial touch needs only a slight push, before I feel the leak and gust of cold air.
I need to feel more than a breeze that could be easily mistaken for wind. The black dust must come out.
I yank the skin more aggressively with my thumb, including my index finger to make quicker progression with tearing open its neck. The undead snarls, weirdly sounding angered by me creating an exit point for what it doesn’t know is inside itself.
It doesn’t know pain, or fear of not eating flesh again. Like animals, they don’t worry about their past, or future. They’re about the now. Now, it just knows something’s about to go wrong. Wrong for it.
When all my fingers seem to be working together in making a gaping hole in its jugular, green blood and gunked-up mucus oozes out and drips onto my hand. Still I persevere. I’ve ripped layers of skin off—working myself to a sweat.
Then, before I can flinch at the sight of the whirling haze emanating a warning to cover my face, the environment jumps from one menace to the next.
There was the wilderness around me, the sky beating down a muddled blue. Now, there’s only a haze, with its dark particles glittering their own dance as a maelstrom. The confusion comes because my hearing goes muted, a high-pitched soft squeal roaring in my ears because it’s the only thing I currently can hear.
This goes to show how much we as humans rely heavily on our ability to listen in on our surroundings. If I go deaf, I wouldn’t be worried that I’d miss out on alluring sounds, but, rather, where the threats are.
The undead is now mostly mush. The lower half of its body is surprisingly intact, legs connected to the pelvis still, and sprawled on the left side of my body. The internal intestines, the sausage-like organ where it could stretch for an incredibly long distance, has spilled on my stomach.
Even though I can’t hear myself, I know I’m moaning in disgust and from alarm by this explosion. My adrenaline lowers, and then pain comes back again to my shot thigh. Now, I g
runt and wheeze against that as well.
The haze settles itself, whereas I struggle for mobility and wellness.
I’ve always been about mind over the body, but with so many blows, externally and internally, I can only go so far without reacting as a pure human.
One in indescribable hurt.
My hearing starts to regain, but not through my ears, or coming externally from the environment. It’s due to me being in a haze. But, again, the sound comes within my head.
It’s a voice. I startle as I recognize it.
The phantom’s voice comes through.
Chapter XXXII
“Hello, friend.” It’s emotionless, but as exuberant as it could possibly sound. “I know about your hallucinations.”
“What of them?” I telepathically ask, somewhat rudely. Pain has a way of taking things to the bone. Civility being one of the first to fall.
“I shared with her what I could sense of all your thoughts. Your most emotional memories.”
You “shared” with her? You gave free ammunition to strike me where it would hurt in my heart?
Outrage bursts out of me. “Why would you do that!”
“I’m sorry.” It apologizes, but without the emotion, it could’ve simply said “I don’t care” and I’d feel the same as I do about it now.
“Just tell me why.”
“I’m happy when I talk with those who can talk back. If I consider you all my friends, then I consider us all friends together.” Its tone is not derisive. It’s genuine. It’s believing what it says. “When I told her I spoke to a new friend—you—she was curious. There’s much to you, much layering that I couldn’t give justice in words. She then asked for your thoughts, and I gave them, because she wants to be friends.”
“Have you forgotten the whole reason I met you?” My mind pauses to emptiness. The phantom’s speechless for once to a question I ask. Its lack of response wastes my time, and it also sucks me back to my current situation.
