Pit Episode 10 : Blood, Sweat and Fears

Blood, lots of blood.

There are other things too, I am sure, black chunks that look disturbingly like spoiled jam, bits of shattered bone, and what I can only assume is marrow. But the blood, the blood is that substance that tells us, even if it isn’t our own, that something bad is going down. That nearby some horror is occurring, and one should get out of the situation as quickly as possible. 

Screaming, so much screaming. 

The stone may be sharp, but it is wielded in an inexperienced hand, the cuts miss their mark as much as hit, and more than once, a stout piece of tendon or muscle makes the procedure much more traumatic than it needs to be. 

But all said and done, one could say the operation is a success. As much of a success as any operation done by someone who knows nothing of medicine could be. 

My companion sits , clutching his now plucked right hand, and I stand there, looking at the macabre prize I have for my efforts. A pile of stout fingerbones , stripped of flesh, some still warm to the touch. 

I try to tell him that I will get help, I try to tell him to look on the bright side, but he isn’t hearing any of it. He is too deep into his own world of pain and loss. 

I wedge the bones into the hole, originally meant for the man’s femur, they don’t fit like lego, that is for sure, but to give me a boost, to get to the opening about 9 feet off the ground, they should get the job done. 

“Listen, I promise you, when this is all over, I am going to fucking skin this psychopath, roll him in salt, then call the police. You have my word on this. “ are my second to  last words to the man as I lift a foot to stabilize myself on the handhold of bone I have created. 

There is a moment when the bones shift, and I think it is all over. I hear one fall to the ground, but the rest seem to be holding , and with a quick lift, I find myself in a three foot high horizontal shaft , about 20 feet in length. Rough made walls, of stone and wood surround me, and I guess , for a moment that it is good that I have no idea who I am, or how I got here. For all I know I could have been a claustrophobic.

“Hang in there…” I start, still feeling the need to have some kind of conversation. I mean, there is just something rude, about removing the useful part of someone’s hand, and not even saying sorry. But then again, it could have been worse, how many people wouldn’t have cared enough to try and save the guy? How many folks would have just broken his neck and tore out the bone, no questions asked. 

One thing I can say about myself, I guess, is that I am a compassionate person. No fucking lunatic with a few acres to turn into a sadistic fun house , is going to control me. 

Or so I thought. 

Suddenly I hear a noise, actually calling It a noise does not do it justice. It is a shrill screaming sound, that is causing pain, not through sheer volume , though that is loud enough to make my teeth rattle, but rather by the sheer unpleasantness of the noise itself. 

I lay flat on my stomach , a gut reaction, and cover my ears, but the sound just keeps going. Minutes that feel like days go by, my vision starts to dim and distort, and just when I think I have tripped some kind of mine, meant to give whoever is doing this a good show by exploding my head, it stops.

My ears are ringing, and I notice a few drops of blood dripping from my nose onto the combination rock and cement underneath me. 

“ You listenin?” I hear, though the volume is the same, deafening, bowl loosening, the sound is not from the very pits of hell. 

“Who the …” I start, and a quick burst of that noise, that horrible, otherworldly noise kicks in. Just a half second or so, but enough to shut me up rather quickly. 

“ Are, you, listening?” the voice says again, pronouncing every syllable very clearly, so there can be no misunderstanding. I notice a hint of an accent, nothing foreign, or  for that matter immediately recognisable, with the exception of the fact that it sounds rather “ country”.

“ Yes.” I say simply , not wanting to aggravate the voice, whoever it belongs to, further. 

“ Good.” It says, and no sooner does the d in that word get pronounced, than I hear the sound of a giant , probably rusted grate moving open in the room behind me. Then something vague and mechanical as if far away, an engine perhaps?

A few seconds later I hear a scream, and then a terrible sound, the sound of flesh meeting metal, and the scream at first changes to more high pitched, more frantic sound, then becomes a liquid choked gurgle, and after that, I can only hear the sound of something somewhat dense hitting metal. An image of a giant blender hits me and I dry heave, smacking my chin off of the ground in the process. 

“ He’s dead.” The voice lets this hang in the air for a while, “What you need to understand, son, is that this is not a fucking game. This is not something you can cheat your way through, you get no points for being original, ‘thinkin outside the box’ is not going to be your friend here. You understand?”

I immediately reply in the affirmative.

“This is what you would call a process. You either complete the process or you fuck it up. You understand what is gonna happen if you fuck it up son?” The voice doesn’t sound smarmy so much as exasperated.  And again I give an audible, if unenthusiastic “ Yes.”

“ All right then, as long as we’re shootin the same can here, I think we can continue with the process. You think we should do that?” The voice says, another “yes” escapes me, though in truth, I would like to scream and rant, tell him to come down here and fight me face to face, claw at the walls, do anything other than agree, but what choice do I have? Somehow I ended up on this ride, and there is no way to get off. 

“ Then move on ahead son, for my money I don’t think your going to be any different than the others, but what the hell, I’ve been surprised before. “ there is a harsh click, and the background noise produced by whatever speakers were relaying the information to me ceases. 

It would be more poetic, if I gave a sigh before continuing, but I didn’t, I just crawled on all fours through the tunnel . 

Once I reach the end I take time to think that maybe it is just a 400 foot drop to somewhere unpleasant. That this sick bastard has a short but traumatic way of getting his jollies. I force the thought from my head, not because it is impossible, hell, not even because it is unlikely, but because it isn’t useful. Either I am going to splatter , or I am not, there is no option c, so I jump.

The fall isn’t very far, about 4 feet or so, but when I hit the bottom I am jerked forward, in my backwards fall the back of my head ricochets off of a metal bar, and as my eyes adjust to this lighter level of gloom, I realize I am on a giant moving sidewalk,  the kind that you see at airports.

And this thought leads to another. Why do I know what an airport is? Why the hell did I know enough to knap stone , hell if you want to get really into it, why do I know how to talk, or breathe? I don’t know some of the most important information about myself, but I do know that in a place where folks go to fly , there tends to be moving sidewalks. 

After a moment I hear a harsh electric cracking noise, and a few feet above me rows and rows,  of television screens light up. Farther than I can see, they extend down this long, otherwise dark corridor. 

An image flickers for a moment, and I take the time to notice that these aren’t all uniform monitors, some are old things, saturated with green, and flickering on and off, some are brand new, thin as a wafer, and displaying an image that is almost perfectly true to life. Still others look they began life as small screens for other electronic devices, maybe a laptop, something like that. 

Then the music starts, happy, albeit overly so, instrumental stuff. Bringing to mind images of home movies, badly edited by an overzealous and under talented uncle.  

“ Mary and John Gonzales” the monitors display , a bubbly almost childlike font, over a pink background that no one in their right mind would ever think would be pleasant for a human being to look at. But considering that more than likely, the same person who just made me mutilate a complete stranger made it, that doesn’t exactly shock me into a coma. 

Ever watch a film, and in that hour and a half you become part of those characters lives? In 8 hours I got to know Mary and John.

I got to know that they were both professed atheists, rational, logical folk. But Mary keeps a pendant of Loki in a small pocket in her purse. And when things really turn down John tends to sacrifice a twenty dollar bill or two to Jupiter, not because he believes you see, but you know, just in case.

I got to know how John’s father had died, long illness, one of those that just leaves doctors scratching their heads, and trying to give it their best guess. He was a trooper about it though, and up until his last week he still took John and Mary’s children to the park in his , some would call it classic, others would call it junk, car. 

I saw a poorly made montage of pictures that played out the drama of Mary and John’s romance. Nothing overly interesting, but a strange contrast to the dark, bloody world I have gotten used to in the past few hours. 

The story of their lives, up to this point was told in that style that one would call childish if one didn’t know it was the domain of folks with just enough knowledge of how to work a computer to be dangerous. 

At one point, 5 or 6 hours in I sit down, the corridor is damp and humid,  and my clothes stick to me, now that I have a better view I can see they are very simple, a pair of faded, thin jeans and a white shirt. I try to get some sense of my size, by my only reference is someone who I can make the educated guess, is 20 to 30 years my senior. Every time I try and think of people, just people in general, I get a  floating feeling, an unpleasant sensation like my brain is threatening to reboot.

After Jon and Mary,  In that same style, that would be funny if not for the circumstances, I see the story of Abe Mcculough. Abe wasn’t an important man, but none the less I had an 8 hour film of his life, and as I had few other options I watched intently. 

He worked at a scrap yard, not for lack of education, mind you, Abe actually scored on the somewhat high end of average in high school, and eventually, achieved his certification to teach physical education. But the scrap yard was owned by a close friend, and he enjoyed working with his hands, a massive guy, by the looks of him, compared to the others in the video and slideshow that is his life, he would have had no problem moving anything likely to be found in  a scrapyard. 

Abe was known as a prolific drinker,  but in contrast to the angry violent drunk image that comes to mind when one thinks of a musclebound guy drinking. Abe was known , at worst a prolific fool. At best, a generous man, who had no problem buying a round for the bar, or prying a couple of guys off of some poor fool who’s mouth started getting  him into trouble. All without throwing a punch, Abe didn’t mind taking a hit or two, it was the dishing out of harm he never grow a taste for. 

After Abe, I find myself thirsty and at the same time in dire need for a piss. I shudder at the thought that immediately comes to mind. But I instantly make the decision that since the sick disembodied voice didn’t give me a bottle, I don’t have any way to keep the piss anyway, and I refuse to put any effort into finding a way to remedy that situation.

“I’m going to take a piss, right here, if you feel like killing me over that, now’s the time to say it.” I wait for a minute and after no lighting bolts, or poison gas I start to spray the cement floor beyond the  moving sidewalk with urine. It gives me some kind of pleasure to at least be defacing some of this bastard’s property. He may get to see me shredded to pieces, but he is going to have to scrub that some time.  But I notice , as the stream flies sharply to the left, that we are really speeding through this place now. Must have been gradually increasing the speed while I have been sitting around trying to make some sense of the situation. 

As I finish the piss, that may be the last I ever take, the story of Walter and Timothy Labrande is displayed through another third of a day. 

These two were a little more interesting, but retained all of the wholesome , salt of the earth vibe presented by Abe, John and Mary. Turns out these two brothers, and yes they were brothers despite the fact that their manager promoted them as twins, had won one of those singing attention whore shows, and as such were on the way to quite the career. And in truth, after viewing  a few hours worth of concert footage, while the songs sucked, the kids themselves sang them well.

Last we had the odd ducks. Charlie and Bruce Scott, brothers. This video , while still being in the same format as the last few, seemed much more vague.

Charlie and Bruce were not only brothers, but best friends, and business partners. Their trade of choice? Private detectives, and for 12 years they had a good little business going on. Ever since the day, that while keeping tabs on someone’s scumbag husband, said scumbag decided to fatally wound a police officer.

Outgunned in the extreme, armed with only a pair of .22’s they bought “Just in case” , they managed to subdue the man, who survived after being rushed to a hospital. From that day forward though, they carried two custom handguns, .50 caliber jobs that it took both of them almost a year to get the hang of firing. 

Buy apparently, as per the narration ( still that country cousin voice, but in a tone that suggested he was trying his hardest to make it sound like a proper narration. Which simply made his mispronunciations, grammatical anarchy, and poor timing, all the more noticeable. ) these guys stumbled upon something they shouldn’t have, represented by a comical yellow question mark on a black background. And due to this they were taken into custody by an unknown individual.

Boring yes, but I learn about the minutia of the lives of these seven people. Maybe it didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat, but 8 hours, is a long time in regards to movies. A picture is worth a thousand words they say, and how many pictures would there be in 8 hours of film?

Over a day of this , and my body is starting to ache, and I am groggy with lack of sleep. Starving, and in need of my second piss, I stand , looking up in the general area of the ceiling and saying “ Takin a piss boss.” , as I make good on that threat. 

But half way through the piss, (surely this will be the last piss of my life, I find myself thinking.) the ground abruptly stops.  I’m launched in a bone crushing ark, as two doors open with an airy “Woosh” sound, bathing me in white light, that is intolerably harsh compared to the relative dimness of the corridor of nice folks. 

After a few bumps and spins I finally stop and the first thing I notice as I stand is a woman, tied to a chair , looking terrified. 

“You’ve seen the lives of those people, if you got any heart in you at all, you feel some attachment to ‘em. “ The voice suddenly says. The room I am in now seems more finished than the last, smooth cement, with 4 pillars running floor to ceiling. My guess is the room is about 10 feet high, making me somewhere in the ballpark of six feet. In the harsh glow I see I have a few scars, but nothing that would give a clue as to who I am, or why I would be here. I’m fit , but not overly so, and now that I take the time to think , my hair hangs over my ears, judging by the way it hangs though, I am guessing this is more due to lack of upkeep than deliberate style. 

“ But this girl, you know nothing about. And the only thing you will know, is something even she would agree with son, she is a stone cold bitch.” As the voice says this I look to her, and get a reaction that is a very clear attempt to express “ Well, yes , its true, but I don’t think that has a bearing on the current situation.” 

The room is an 80 foot square, and as I hear some rustling , I realize that the last 30 or so feet are hidden in shadow.  

“Now the difference is, that this girl, is innocent. The worst thing she has done in her life, is fuck her boyfriends brother. Your friends on the other hand…” as the voice says this I can make out some forms coming out of the shadow.

The first one I recognize immediately, it’s Abe, but not the happy grinning gentle giant I had seen in the film, but rather a psychotic looking caricature of that person. His skin is pale and leathery looking, his eyes wild, and twitching from one spot to the next, a thin line of drool hangs from the left side of his mouth, the fat covered workers muscle he possessed is now replaced with seemingly random assortments of muscle looking as if they were cut from steel. 

As he sees me he cocks his head to the side and starts a deep, frightening chuckle, and from behind him comes exactly what I expect. Mary and John.

They are wearing what look to be their wedding outfits, but ragged, and dirty, they have the same lunatic glare in their eyes, but it seems a bit more focussed than Abe’s, they move with kind of a jerking, halting stride, and seem to be barely holding in laughter at the situation. Physically they are much the same as Abe, a bit bigger than they were, skin that looks like it was cured, and in general, just something … off about them , that you can’t quite put your finger on. 

The rest come out, to stand in a loose grouping of people, all staring at me with a combination of dimwittedness and malice. All except for Walter and Timothy, while I don’t see them, I hear the frantic sound of small feet running two and fro somewhere in the shadows, and catch the odd glimpse of small forms as they wander a little too close to the light. 

I don’t know what happened to them, but I can summarize my situation rather nicely. By their looks alone, they want to kill me, why? I have no idea, but the fact remains I am trapped with 7 lunatics.

“ This part of the procedure is simple, they get let out if they kill that there bitch, and she gets let out if you kill them. So who you gonna save son?” The voice says, sounding amused. 

“ I’m not fucking killing anyone.” I say defiantly, but even as I say this I hold no qualms about throwing a punch or two should this situation get too thick. I mean they are people after all, maybe just folks who have been fed LSD, and locked in a room, but they are people, and as such , can be reasoned with, I hope. 

I hear a laugh from the voice, “ Makes no difference to me son, I got plenty more good ‘ol boys to shove through the Pit, if you can’t finish it, no skin off my ass.” And another click signals, that the time for dialogue is over. 

“ Okay, Abe, I know you don’t know me…fuck actually, maybe you do , but you’ve been pumped full of something, and you aren’t thinking right, same goes for the rest of you guys, I don’t want to hurt anyone, hell I don’t think I could stop you guys if you wanted to kill her, but I know you don’t, believe it or not I just got 8 hours a piece of your lives, and I know that this is not what you guys would be doing.” As I say this , it feels lame, it gains no reaction , except for gales of laughter from the crowd, John looks to Mary, grinning a feral smile and says, “ Drugs, he thinks we are on…drugs.” He starts to thrash his head around laughing for so long that it goes well beyond the realm of absurd and into the land of being ominous.

Mary fixes me with a glassy stare , and in  a soft , but undeniably insane voice says “ Hon, if you don’t want to hurt anyone, just step aside. We don’t have to hurt you, just…” Abe finishes her sentence for her , “ Her.” He growls.

I see the crowd start to slowly move forward, testing my boundaries, I notice Charlie mumbling to Bruce “ Its allright kid, we are gonna get out of here, we just have to do this one thing…” over and over again, an insane litany meant as comfort. 

“ Seriously, back the hell up here guys. I can’t fight off all of you, but I can certainly hurt the first person to get close.” My voice quavers, and for a moment Abe’s eyes sharpen, and meet my own, “ Really?” he says outdistancing the rest of the group, now he is only 20-30 feet away from me. “ Hurt me then little man, hurt me.”.

And he rushes in. 

I feel my eyes go wide with shock, my stomach drop, and my heart sink. This situation has officially just went tits up, and for the life of me, I have no idea what to do.

He charges in , as if he is going to simply bull rush over me, but at the last moment jags to my left, it seems that he is more than willing to play “the voice”’s game, I am merely an obstacle , the woman in the chair is the goal. 

In a moment of instinct, I swing my left arm out toward him, in the portion of a second it takes for the blow to connect, I find myself thinking just how silly this is, but not being able to do anything about it. But as my left arm hits his chest, squarely , something happens that shakes up my entire view of what is going on. 

My arm hits with a wet slapping noise, the torn shirt ( or maybe it was an apron, in its state I couldn’t quite tell.) providing little muffling of the sound of flesh hitting flesh. And instead of going straight through, laughing at my last ditch effort to bring this situation back from the point of insanity, he is stopped dead in his tracks. He isn’t knocked flying backward, he isn’t taken out of the fight, but he stumbles a half step back and fixes me with a quizzical look. 

The look doesn’t last long though, as he shifts his focus from the girl in the chair, to myself, and without a word sends in a lightning fast haymaker my way. I barely have time to register it, but I manage to move my body to the right, the blow cleanly missing my head, but just as I am in my own world, wondering how I managed that, a left handed blow sails my way, this one, hits solidly on my chin, and I find myself on a short flight about a meter backward. 

This is when I think it is all over, anything with that amount of force, surely shattered my jaw, probably caused some brain damage, hell the flight may have just broken my spine. 

I hear them laugh, Abe looks backward, and says “ That didn’t take too long , did it?” with an ejaculation of spittle and laughter. 

I bring a hand up to my jaw, and strangely find it in tact, and as I try to stand, I feel no numbness in my legs, no headache possibly meaning that my brain is starting to swell, and despite a bit of ringing in my ears I am , for lack of a better term, still, “with it.”.  I find a touch of a smile coming to my own face now, which worries me, makes me think that whatever he dosed these people with, maybe its airborne, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, as the woman in the chair, is having a very appropriate reaction of screaming heavily through the thick leather gag she is wearing, and trying to twist and turn her way out of the chair. 

“Hey.” I say simply, “ Maybe we could talk this out now?”, I say this not trying to sound macho, or threatening, but still , legitimately trying to end this situation sans bloodshed. Abe turns his stare back to me and gives a bull like snort, and starts walking over this time, a bit less sure of himself. He gets into what I can only describe as an insane boxer’s pose as he closes the distance, and I put myself into something that, hopefully resembles a defensive stance. 

Being prepared, I find he is telegraphing his blows well in advance of throwing them, and even being able to launch his punches at a speed that makes a blur of his fist, each one seems to whizz by, just to the right or the left of my head. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t take effort to avoid them, after about a dozen or so, I notice he is slowly getting fractions of an inch closer to his target.

I can hear the woman in the chair screaming something, it is unintelligible, but my best guess  is that she is telling me to put this guy onto the ground, if not under it. 

As I feel a left hook skim my ear, I duck low to the right, and launch a short jab into Abe’s stomach, this blow, much less ineffective than the last, causes him to stumble backward, and drop his guard, I step in raising myself from the low duck to land an uppercut to the left side of his chin. I feel bone give way, hell not just give way, but turn to pulp, and Abe starts into a spin that tosses him right back into the shadow , I hear nothing, and assume that a blow that hard , that turned a rather sculpted jaw into a bag of flesh filled with gravel, would be enough to take him out of the fight. 

Mary and John give a scream of rage and run forward, they are much more task oriented, and each tries to go around me, one on the right, one on the left. I find myself thinking of what to do, and before my rational mind can make this decision, I act, stretching my arms out wide, and with speed that makes me think of a cobra, I grab them both by the face. For a moment I stop and think , and I could swear that my hands are just a touch bigger than they were. But then again, I havn’t slept for who knows how long, havn’t eaten in longer, and have been tossed into a shitstorm without a raincoat. 

Their momentum snaps their bodies forward with enough force that I find myself thinking “ I hope I didn’t snap their necks.” , but even as that thought goes through my mind, my first instinct is to drive my arms down, smashing their heads between my hands and the cement floor. I hear a few moans of pain, which I take to mean I didn’t kill anyone, and kick both Mary and John, about 5 feet away, I take a step forward staring down Charlie and Bruce.

My mind hasn’t quite caught up to what my body is doing, and again I try to take this situation down a peg, “Come on guys, this doesn’t…” suddenly I am listing to the left, something slams into the top of my body, and suddenly I can’t see, small, but incredibly powerful hands cover my eyes, and as I attempt to pry them off, I feel another hit , this one low and from the opposite side, I fall, despite the strength I am starting to realize I posses. 

The hands over my eyes curl fingers inwards, and as I find myself fighting a losing battle to pry them away, I feel a brilliant amount of pain as a small fist starts to hammer, relentlessly on my crotch. I hear cries of “ Get him!” from Charlie, as I thrash about trying to get some kind of leverage.

I manage to grab ahold of a single finger, and I feel my stomach churn as I hear a sickening snap, but there is no relenting from the rest, and I can start to see bright red spots where the fingers are applying a huge amount of pressure to my eye. With a bit of luck I manage to grab ahold of the forearm attached to the hand that keeps using my nutsack as a punching bag, and steel myself for a moment before bending it backward, breaking the arm cleanly , this actually results in some relief, as the body clutching my leg can no longer anchor itself with one arm, while pummeling my genitalia  with the other. I kick outward and hear a thump as the body hits something.

I start to work on another finger, as I feel a sharp kick to my chest, it rolls me over, and I feel another from the opposite side, from the encouragement I hear , Charlie telling Bruce he is “Doing a great job.” And to “ keep it up.” , I guess that they have joined in the fray. 

I snap another finger, and another, but I can feel myself starting to lose my edge, the kicks, and stomps, are taking it out of me, and at some point the child I had thrown into something jumps back in, though now, the strikes are less concentrated , and effective. 

The child ( either Tim or Walter, I cannot tell which.) , is down to just two fingers now, but they both are relentlessly digging into my left eye. Through my right I can see Charlie on my left, Bruce and Walter on my right, Walter’s arm hanging at a grotesque angle , not that he notices, as he gleefully throws random blows to my torso. 

I reach out with my right arm and grabbing Bruce’s ankle, throw all my force into tossing my body to the left. Balanced on one foot for another kick, Bruce falls, hitting the ground like a sack of grain, my hand continues and grabs Tim’s head and drives it into the ground, there is a sickening crack and some blood, but I still notice faint breathing. Charlie, starts to get a stomp ready, and gets the same treatment as his brother , leaving me with only, Walter, who I backhand hard enough to slam him into a pillar 10 feet or so away. He hits the ground in a slump, and doesn’t seem to have any more fight left in him. Before Charlie and Bruce can get up, I plant a kick under each chin, the jaws turning , instantly into shapeless masses, but as far as I can tell , both men remain alive. 

I look up at the ceiling again, “ Its fucking done, they aren’t getting up, let me go.” I say simply, no anger, no bile, just a statement of fact and a request. 

“ Well, I say that was a damn fine effort son. But unfortunately , this is no time for half measures, round two seem fun, son?” ( something about the way the man pronounced unfortunately, makes me think of someone with a word of the day calendar,  as if he learned the word phonetically ) The voice says. 

And I hear something strange, a kind of crackling, wet noise , like a bag of ice cubes and ground beef being thrown through a wringer. And out of the corner of my eye I see something that worries me.

Abe, is rising, and as I get a better view, my theory that this was drug induced goes straight out the window. He is different now, a few random tumors, or maybe bone jags appear on his body, and the jaw, previously bone pulp and blood, now stands firm, beyond that it seems to have more bone, sticking out at angles that seem to have been directly made to take a blow better. His entire lower face is a mass of jutting bone , and torn skin, and he looks incrementally more insane, and beyond that, itching to show that the first defeat was just an accident. 

As I notice this, I hear more shuffling, and see more of the same. John and Mary get up, and each has a large bone plate extending from the point of their skulls that hit the ground, Walter has a third arm, of all things coming out of the spot where the arm was broken, and his back sports small bone spikes coming out of the spine. His brother no longer even seems to have fingers, that are recognizably human, but long, 8 knuckled things ( with the exception of the two that remained unbroken.) that seem to flow and pulse like the tendrils of a jellyfish. Charlie and Bruce seem to have sprouted mandibles, and all of these people, the people that I know more about than myself, are now closing in.

In a worse situation than before , surrounded, I started to feel a touch fatalistic, but I am starting to get the hang of the situation. Actually it feels, right, somehow, like I have done this before.

I kick the chair into a far corner of the room, I hear a cry of pain from the girl, but I ignore it, better hurt than dead. 

Putting two and two together, I realize that getting out of this by disabling these people, simply isn’t an option. Whatever the hell is going on, they don’t really seem to care about broken bones, or black eyes. 

This time, they forgo the conversation, and the fun , and all charge in at once, the children, Tim and Walter, are there first, sprinting toward me with uncanny speed. But, they try the same thing again, leaping at me , one high , one low. A fatal mistake. 

I grab Tim by the head as he comes in and use his momentum to crack him, whip like , shattering his neck into a distended formless mass, before spinning his body, using it as a club, to send his brother flying away. I toss the mangled corpse aside, and actually spew forth dark red vomit, as I see his child’s form lying in a corner, mutilated by my hand. 

Not slowing my momentum, my head whips around to see John coming at me, screaming, with his hand cocked backward for a punch , long in advance of reaching me, before he throws his readied punch,  I swing my right arm, in a roundhouse arc, landing a closed fist , with all of my body weight behind it straight into his throat. A torrent of blood spews from his mouth , covering me, and as he starts to sink down, I toss another blow to the back of his neck, snapping the spine, before bringing my hands up in a defensive position. 

This is all seeming so natural, more like a dance than a fight, I wouldn’t say instinct is taking over, but I guess along with the ability to talk, and remember stupid minutia, fighting, is something the voice couldn’t take away from me. 

Mary follows quickly behind her husband, but is thrown to the ground as Walter, uses her as a springboard, to launch an airborne attack on me. There is no skill in what I do, simply a straight strike forward and walter stops in mid air, his chest caved in, as a dry heave wracks my body. I kick the corpse away, not out of any sense of malice, or need to intimidate, but rather, just so I don’t have to see it. 

I feel arms around me from behind and I am embraced in a tight bear hug, by the size of the arms, I can guess it is Abe. I thrash around, but it seems whatever made him fresh as a daisy after having his jaw shattered, also amped up his strength, now it’s him who has the slight, but noticeable strength advantage. 

I feel teeth, too large, sharp , dig into my shoulder, I scream in pain, and toss my head backward slamming it , again and again into Abe’s face, I manage to keep him off balance enough that we are moving around the room, keeping the others from being able to get in a clear shot, but with every twist and turn, I can feel a bit more blood pouring down my chest. 

And then everything seems to go silent, my rage, and fear, and disgust at my own actions goes away for the moment, and I have a sense of peace. Well, peace isn’t really the best word, but calm. I hear a voice, not the voice from the loudspeakers, but a soft male voice, with just a hint of feminine, or maybe fop, would be a better word. It says two words to me, “ Sonny Chiba.”, I don’t know what they mean, my first mental image is some island resort, but it puts another idea into my head at the same time. 

With a mental snap the calm is gone, but the idea remains. Instead of trying to free my arms, I reach them down low, grabbing ahold of Abe’s oversized, and deformed genitalia, and twisting , squeezing, and tearing with all my might. 

A finger, can be ignored by these people, having one’s Johnson, stones, and much of the surrounding skin removed, cannot. I file this piece of information away, as I feel the arms leave my body.

I spin around as I see Abe screaming and holding the spurting area of his groin, I waste no time leveling a kick at one knee, that brings him to the ground, and stamping with every bit of force I can muster on his face, I do this two more times before the indent is deep enough that I can be assured that he is not getting up. 

Bruce and Charlie are both upon me now, and a series of blows are exchanged between the three of us. I land a few solid hits, knocking one back, then the other, but my own body suffers, I feel a kick connect with my face, my nose now spewing blood, and a fist, whether left or right, I don’t know, hits my eye, a few moments later I can feel it start to swell. 

I back off a bit, Bruce and Charlie working much better in tandem than their young counterparts. My heel hits something, heavy , and about the size of a small melon. I look down and see a chunk of cinderblock, on the ground. With one foot I send it into the air, straight upwards. I snatch the rock with my right arm and fire it at Charlie, the throw is true, and half of his head caves in. Grey matter and stuff I can’t even recognize spews forth and he hits the ground. Bruce screams “ Chuck!” as he charges at me, this time I don’t throw a blow, I simply grab the man by the remaining bits of his shirt and spin him around once, lifting him up a bit , I throw him, head first into the solid cement wall feet from the girl. His head evaporates, showering her with gore.

It is just me and mary now, she sways from side to side giggling slightly as she starts to wander toward the girl, not even seeming to notice me. She doesn’t react as I walk over, and she doesn’t utter a noise, nor try any kind of defense as I step behind her, extend the middle two fingers of my right hand, and drive a straight punch into her spine hard enough to sever it cleanly, she drops, and anti climactically the fight is ended. 

 The lights click on with a bit of effort on their part, flickering slightly before finally casting a harsh white light on what looks like a slaughterhouse at the end of the workday. I start to breathe a little easier and look around expecting some new surprise , but after a minute or two I hear the background noise of speakers , and seconds after that I hear the voice again. 

“Well, bravo son, bra-fuckin-vo. I bet that put some hair on your chest, now didn’t it? Boy, that was some killin right there.” He says, his tone is somewhat gleeful, but, moreso relieved for some reason. “ It weren’t that hard now was it , boy?” he says as I start to make my way over to the girl, I start to undo a knot, and he begins to speak again, “ But I got some bad news for ya, something your probably not gonna take a shine to. “ from within the stone walls I hear something, almost like someone tipping over a metal shelf full of cans. 

“ Ya see, I give you respect for getting this far, I really do. But problem is, it takes a little more killin to put these fellas to rest, I know it’s a crying shame, I havn’t seen a dust up like that in years, but it just weren’t good enough. Weren’t thorough, enough ya could say.” He says thorough in the same way some people drive a car they aren’t used to. Carefully, but despite this, poorly. 

Another metallic avalanche sound, from within the walls, and it sounds like it is getting closer. 

“ Ya gotta squash em like bugs boy.”

The metallic sound gets closer, and another sound I don’t like creeps into the auditory scene, a familiar meaty rustling and sliding sound, I start to feel panic rise in me, as the voice continues his speech.

“But I ain a complete asshole, no not by a long shot, ya see, you showed me you could job the job, so lets see what ya do with the right tool.” He laughs a bit as the speakers cut out again, and in small bursts of stone, doors explode open, and as they do a torrent of weaponry starts to fall like confetti at the worlds strangest parade. 

The lights flicker a bit, some turning off, casting strange shadows about the room, the girl is screaming now, loud enough that you can hear it clearly through the gag. 

I look around and see only two weapons took a bounce lucky enough to land within reach. 6 foot length of chain covered in blades, barbs and hooks of all kinds. I tear off the rags of my shirt, covering my left hand, then I bind that with the chain, the weight stirs something inside of me, as I squeeze my hand around the improvised buckler, I feel a rush, something inside me feels giddy. I find myself fighting the urge to smile as I hear the corpses, (or is that even the right term?) of the people I have harmed, then killed, in that order, reassemble into some freakish new arrangement, so that I can kill them for the second time. 

The other weapon was a two foot length of piping, long spikes coming from one end, and a blade welded to the tip, its heavy, and the handle is wrapped in some kind of tape, I swing with it and I feel a chuckle start to rise, its insane, I am outnumber by things that just won’t die, but something inside me loves it. Something inside me wants them to come back again and again until I fill the room with their blood and drown. 

The first to rise is John, this time seems to be taking a bit more effort for my temporary roommates, but that is allright with me. Now he barely resembles anything human, his head moves about on wrinkled mass of skin that was his neck, extending and contracting as he walks over to me, not in a berserk rage this time, but with cold calculated movements, snakelike. He is armed with a cleaver which he takes the time to admire once during his advance, and a can of some form in his left. 

I want this over as quickly as possible and run in , taking a swing with the pipe at the last moment, hoping to stop this all right off the bat with a well placed blow to the head. He doesn’t raise the knife, like I expected, but rather the can and with a hissing noise, and a rush of heat I am driven backward, a gout of flame erupting from the device, and scorching, if not seriously wounding me. 

But that was only due to getting a momentary burst, I fall backwards, landing heavily on my ass, and do a full somersault to land in a crouch just out of reach of the flames. I skitter behind a pillar, and scan the area. 

Scan it just slow enough to miss Abe standing there, holding two machetes. The only thing I see is a blur of motion, so I throw myself backwards with it, and manage to get the pipe up just in time to put something between the blades and my flesh.

Abe, Abe, was a caricature strong man, all giant bulging muscles, and thick black hair. His clothing had mostly torn away by now, leaving only blood soaked shorts, with some fingered appendage that used to be his Johnson hanging from them. 

His entire head was one gaping maw, the exact indentation I had put in his face, damn near through the back of his skull had became a tooth filled cavern, with 6 malicious eyes staring from the back.

“Fuck!” I scream in shock, both at the strike and the sheer deformity of whatever it is now, that used to be called Abe. 

Metal on metal grinding, pieces of razor sharp steel fling off of the twin swords, but neither of us care about such small wounds. This is a greater game we are playing. 

And with that thought something , turns over, inside of me.  That giddiness, that battle-lust, I need it, it isn’t just some psychological mechanism to deal with this absurd situation, there is something there, something that I am not going to win this without. 

It doesn’t feel so much as giving in, that would be entirely misclassifying the process. The closest I can come, is the feeling after you have been cutting your food with a dull knife for years, squashing every tomato, making balls of all your bread, slicing your fingers, and then someone sharpens them for you. Just that, almost eureka moment of “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”.

I scream , raising my chain and cloth covered left arm, and managing to wedge it , as well as the pipe between my body and his weapons. And with a scream that could be better called a roar, I shove forward. For a moment it doesn’t feel like he is going to movie, but the swords slip, and I find myself able to spin and face him. 

My mind feels muddled, like oil and water, one moment I am thinking only of the soft parts of its body I can jam the spikes on the pipe, the next I am thinking of I am trapped, and being forced to kill people. Then I am thinking of how great it is to be trapped here , like the minotaur in a maze, with an endless supply of foes to fight, then I think…

As my mind has a break down,  Abe, (though now the name I think of is “cunt face” for obvious reasons) roars a phlem choked, warbling scream and kicks out, catching me square in the chest, the slam against the wall brings me back to my senses, I raise to my feet by throwing my body forward, and am standing in an instant, breathing heavily and grinning like a crocodile. 

“No fair” I say sprinting toward the beast, leaping over a steel box, that once housed weaponry made by an undoubtedly insane son of a bitch. 

He raises a machete to block my first blow, but the pipe shatters the flimsy blade, and on the backswing I knock the other sailing across the room. I give him no time to react, and throw a mailed left fist into the vaginal orifice that is now his head. I don’t go all the way through, but I do a good job of starting the task, yellow triangular teeth shatter, and I feel a burst of liquid, that was 2 of his six eyes popping like grapes. I bark out a laugh and withdraw my hand as quickly as my body can, wanting to get in another strike, to watch this thing, this mockery splatter.

I see something out of the corner of my eye and hit the ground, the room is deafening with the crack of gunfire,  I see Abe’s half todger, half arm explode into red mist, and a chunk of cement the size of  a basketball explodes a foot to my left. 

Abe screams in rage as I look to my right to see Bruce and Charlie, holding the massive, custom pistols I have seen before. 

Charlie’s head now seemed to be two long, thin , smaller heads, both with a complete set of features, but arranged in an odd, seemingly jury rigged fashion. Bruce on the other hand, his body must have decided to do away with the whole head idea all together. His shoulders and arms had became huge, and a large face made its home between the two. 

I throw the pipe at Abe, the spinning arcing shot wedging it deep within that orifice that nature forgot, and hopefully taking out another eye or two. 

I dash behind pillars as I see chunks of cement spray, sometimes just inches off of their mark. I don’t  have time to scan the ground, and all the weapons seem to be indistinct lumps, taking the time to pick up something that may not help does not seem the best choice in my situation. 

Instead I grab one of the steel boxes, hits heavy, weighted oddly, and perfect for what this almost reptilian part of my mind has in store for Bruce and Chuck.

As I pop out from behind the final pillar, no more than 15 feet from them, I throw the steel box, putting as much spin as I possibly can on it. It flies in an erratic, swirling, looping pattern, making a visual block, and hitting Charlie hard enough to knock the gun from his hand, Bruce is stunned enough, that before he can react to the steel box, I am upon him , I tear the gun from his massive hand with two of mine, grab the grip, and drive it into his eye. Part of me would have pulled the trigger, but that odd part, that part that seemed to be waiting for this, found the fact that he had his own weapon, a blunt weapon, jammed in his eye, terribly amusing, and didn’t want that to stop. A bark of laughter and I shove past Bruce.

Unfortunately one head of Chuck’s was smart enough to keep an eye out while he looked on the ground for another weapon. He raises quicker that I could have thought, and is brandishing an axe handle studded with sharp looking blades, about 3 inches long. He takes a swing and I raise my left hand, the blow numbs the arm, and drives me backward, but does no real damage. 

But the strength he possessed, it seems every time I kill them, they get much stronger, if I let this go on to long, they will win the war of attrition. 

And this is a thought I scream from the rational part of my mind, the problem with trying out this great new tool, is that it seems the tool doesn’t want to be put away. And instead of just getting this over with , it wants to play, it wants to take the time to plan out a death, when really, speed is what is required. 

He presses forward and swings again, I aim my blow at the axe handle, snapping cleanly through it with my left hand, the right grabs hold of the left head on Chuck, and with two tugs tears it free. Chuck screams and hysterically flails backward. 

Bruce on the other hand has gotten over the shock of having a pistol jammed into one of his massive eye, and is coming at me with a large sledgehammer with a dark black handle. No time to react, no time to dodge, I toss his brothers head at him, in a vein attempt to distract him, but I guess that kind of thing only works if the head in question belongs to someone who is dead. As odd as that phrase sounds. 

I step into the blow, taking a lot of the sting out of it, but it still manages to slam me into a wall, knock the wind out of me, and send me into a coughing fit that leaves me open for the next error in this comedy. 

Enter the children. 

I stumble out of the way of the swinging hammer, and just as I begin to be able to get my wind back, I see something out of the corner of my eye. 

Its Tim, a horrible mass of twisting limbs with a thin blob of formless flesh in the middle holding it all together, if this image conjures up a creature that seems pathetic, that is because it was, but that did nothing to detract from the wicked speed, or razor talons of the thing. 

A scream, and I lash out with a fist, the child doesn’t dodge, doesn’t duck, doesn’t strike back, but with a movement so fast I can’t say I witnessed it in it’s entirety , it grabs on and begins to climb up my left arm. By the time the swing is finished it has made its way to the shoulder.

I thrust myself backward, but in the chaos I only just now realize that there is no wall behind me, for a moment my arms are pinwheeling, trying to keep balance. Then I see long thin spikes start to extrude from the parts of the blob closest to me, thin deadman grips hold onto my shoulder as the creature tries to force the wicked little barbs into my face. 

Suddenly I feel antsy, and I don’t think, I just do. I slam my right hand into the thing over and over again, heedless of the puncture wounds , I manage to get a weak grip on it with my left, pulling the spikes up and away from my face, what I was staring at was its underbelly, and what was staring back at me was the twisted, yellow eyed, fang mouthed face , that used to be Tim. 

But I wasn’t thinking of who this used to be, I wasn’t thinking at all. In my rage, my glee, my fun, I thrust my head forward, tearing a bite out of the thing that removed two eyes, part of a lip and left a gaping wound. 

With a rather pathetic snarl it tries to scurry down my arm, but wounded now, some of its greased eel speed is gone. And my own is more than a match for the insect. 

My right hand grabs a hold of a mass of the flesh , and takes a few nasty scrapes , from lashing multi jointed limbs for the effort. I hold the creature, maybe 90 pounds, but fighting with the strength of ten men in my right hand, with my left I start to pummel it, I am screaming, all of the frustration, all the horror, I let out into this assault. With every chain wrapped blow the creature starts to thrash a bit less, and by the time the sixth has landed, you can no longer see the sickly white flesh, only blood that seems to have a slight tint of yellow to it. By the 8^th my mailed fist hits my hand and I cast the mass, in the general direction of Chuck and Bruce. 

What happened next cut straight through to that human part of me. They looked at it with sorrow. It was clear even on their alien, distorted faces. That this hurt them, they turned upon me in unison, and I smiled, no use trying to be diplomatic now.

I bend down and pick up a piece of stone, about half the size of the fist and I take aim at the last vestage of that middle blob of flesh that remained, a roundish lump in the middle, that I could only assume housed all the really vital bits, as it was still wriggling a bit toward the end.

I catch their attention with the rock and point at the creature, three for three throws, as it splatters the roundish lump into pulp and streamers of flesh. 

What happened next cut straight through to that other part of me, it looked at it with glee, and rejoiced in such a gift. And this was clear even through the alien, distorted thoughts.

After a few moments the body began to twitch violently, the limbs and bits of wriggling flesh that remained , that is. And just about as all three of us noticed this, the thing exploded, completely and utterly. 

Even that is a world class understatement. The explosion wasn’t just everything that was there, it was things that weren’t. From that 90 pounds, the blood , viscera , bone fragments, and organ meat of 3 , maybe as many as 6 men erupted, in a spray of gore and slightly black light. The floor was instantly slick and it doesn’t even need to be mentioned that the girl was covered, and in hysterics that I thought very well may kill her due to this. 

This caused all of the creatures to scream at once, a shrill terrible song, coming from the mouths of 6 twisted beasts. 

My heart leapt, I killed one of them. It was obvious, nothing is going to come back from that, there is nothing to come back. The biggest chunk of bone being no more than the size of  a fingernail. I screamed again, my body seeming to be rejuvenated, though obviously, as per the bleeding wounds I had covering my arms and chest, this was just a mental state, rather than a physical one.

I feel invincible though, I feel powerful, I feel like the king of this concrete jungle, or rather, if I was to put a more accurate spin on events, I could say I feel like the nastiest creature in the zoo.

“ Abe!” I roar, twisting my head around wildly, heedless of the other abominations. With a liquid scream he springs from behind a pillar, wielding a wood axe, with what appears to be a mace head on the bottom of the handle. 

He fixes me with the remaining 4 eyes , gleaming a menacing red light. I grab the axe in both hands, it took all my effort, but I stopped it dead, still a foot from my face, Abe digs in and starts to push toward me, but we have played this game before, and I know that I can win. 

Instead of pushing back, I fall backward, curling my body in as I grip the axe hard enough to leave shallow indents in the hardwood handle. Overbalanced,  he falls directly into the throw, and by the time he realizes his few hundred pounds of bulk are moving, he is on an unstoppable course for the nearest wall. A 10 foot flight sends him into it with enough force to knock the axe spinning across the floor. He seems dazed, and as I walk over I spy a rather nasty looking steel baseball bat, studded with nails as long as fresh pencils. 

He begins to stand , shaking off the shock, but much too late. The first swing, upward, more like a golf swing than a baseball one, tears a quarter of his grotesque face away, and forces him roughly to his feet. The second, swung in true grand slam fashion blasts a hole halfway through his chest, his massive, tumorous heart, impaled, and still beating on the end of the bat. By this point Abe had mustered enough of a defense to sneak in a wild, two handed swing, that imbeds the bat in his arm, but also snatches it from my grip. 

He takes a stumbling step forward, and something catches my attention, my head snaps to it out of some deep reflex, I have just enough time to notice it is Walter, much more recognizable than his brother, but with a set of extra arms extending just below his elbows. 

Before he ends his squeaking, ratlike battlecry , I raise one foot, high, and send it down, he tries to escape, but the power, and the speed get him no farther than only having his head and shoulders turned to pulp. I unfurl the chain sending it into Abe’s face, the snap does no real damage, only knocking out a few teeth, but makes him back off enough , that I can get in a second stomp, to describe the pile of gore that once was Walter would do no good, except to say that at first glance one probably wouldn’t associate it with a body, until they got to the legs. I raise my leg for a third stomp, not wanting to take any chances, and that wondrous explosion, that firework of gore, catches me unaware. 

I find out that there is not much force behind the gore, a lot of amount, and spray, but the explosion itself had little ‘oomph’ to it. I reset my right foot as I hear the blood and god knows what else drip off of me onto the ground.

I shake my head to the right, clearing my vision a bit, as I yank the chain backward, grabbing it in a looser grip, simply wrapping it around one hand, more like brass knuckles than a buckler. The action sends a spray of blood, now almost completely covering all of the floor to some point, across the room in an almost artistic slash pattern. I stalk toward Abe, who seems to be breathing very heavily, the gaping wound in his chest making a sucking noise as he does so, spurting that just off blood colored blood in a regular rhythm. 

I dash at him, but showing that I am not the only one with speed and strength, he strikes out, grabbing me by the back of the head, and trying to pull me toward that damaged, but still quite dangerous looking maw of his. I wedge my right arm on his chest, my forearm keeping distance between us, but almost immediately I can feel the pressure, and the pain this is causing. My wrist is screaming and there is a dull, almost numb pain in the middle of my forearm, which I can assume means nothing good. 

But this is only a slight variation on my original plan, and I go with it. I smash the wound again and again with my left hand, the chain tearing it wider and wider with each shot. When I can get my entire hand, chain and all into it, I push it downwards. A torrent of blood and vomit comes from the clicking, foul maw, blinding me. I hear Abe laughing as I twist and turn my hand, entangling the chain in entrails that actually feel like they are fighting back, trying to choke and jab my hand.

I try and force my eyes open, but it is no use, this shit is thick, and stinging, not acidic enough to eat through skin, but my eyes scream at the hint of it. The smell sends a dry heave through me that almost costs me this grapple, but it passes, and it still seems to Abe as if we have a Mexican standoff.

When I can feel the chain hooked to the point where it doesn’t want to move, I throw up my right foot, bracing against Abe’s chest, I push backward, and turn my body. For a moment he thinks he has won, as there is no more resistance , but the chain pulls tight against my shoulder, digging a few hooks and barbs into it, and as I spin, the chain inside the beast, hooked onto so many important things, in so many strange loops and knots, comes tearing out. The movement is quick, and has almost every muscle in my body working for it, in an instant the creature is empty, and even this thing, drops to its knees, quite literally. I throw a kick, it isn’t a hard target, and the generic black boot I am wearing (I notice that it seems just slightly too small for some reason.) sends his grey matter ( though the matter in question was actually a dark purple.) spraying in two thick streams.

In contrast to the previous two creatures , Abe’s last hurrah, is almost instant, almost the second brain turns to liquid, his body turns to enough flesh to fill a van, spraying in every direction. The floor is now wet and uneven with gore, like winter in hell. 

With wet noises one would associate with mud if they have not just been made to become a human blender, I walk toward the group. John, Mary, Bruce and Chuck. Seeing Mary for the first time, she looks rather, normal compared to her counterparts, a little crazier than before, a little paler, more leathery, but pretty much human. Her red stained wedding dress hanging in tears and tatters around her. 

They seem tentative now, like a group of bullies that just realized their intended victim has pulled a knife. That combination of indignation , fear and rage, that could end the fight, or lead to it getting much, much worse. 

I am starting to flag at this point, my mind, feels invincible, I feel like throwing myself heedless info the fray, lashing out at any bit of flesh and bone I can, but as I realize that I am taking my breath in, in large gasps that seem to do little to satisfy my aching lungs, I can reason that this isn’t a good idea.

I need to find a way to draw them one by one, but with the limited space in the room, I can’t see how. And as they start to slowly, very slowly close the distance between me and themselves, the issue doesn’t become any more clear. 

Then another one of those moments, like the world stops, that eerie mental calm, like suddenly floating in a warm bath after being tossed around in a tsunami, hits me. I hear another voice this time, and as I take the time to listen a bit more to the nuances, I realize it doesn’t sound as if the voice is talking to me, but rather like it is pre recorded. Like I am picking up on a bit of a recorded conversation, or reading a passage in a book, if that makes sense. This time though, the phrase is one that I can recognize, the voice is jovial, almost manic , “ Piss them off, the make a mistake, they make a mistake, they die”.

And I take the advice to heart. 

I make a huge, bubbling hocking noise and spit, a fist sized blob of phlem and blood that hits it’s intended target squarely. Mary, gives a quizzical look at the gesture, almost as if she doesn’t understand, but John, something deep in him, something that whatever happened to them can’t erase kicks in, and he is furious at the treatment of his mate. 

He screams, his long, almost phallic neck shooting upward as he dashes in, well ahead of the group.

Said neck retracts into his body as he really starts to gain speed, and I can see the attack coming from a mile away. As he closes the distance he launches hit forward, in a piston like movement , my intent was to twist, letting the blow hit, for a chance to grab him in some kind of headlock. But at the last second I realize something, John may not be as far gone as it would appear. He didn’t come to the fight unarmed.

As his neck extends, he opens his mouth, and a thick, heavy punch dagger is clenched in his teeth, before I can do anything to avoid it, it sinks deep and high on the right side of my chest. I grab the wound, an instinct that unlike many others in this fight, costs me. In the second my focus is not on him he manages to get in three more quick strikes, pistoning his head like the worlds most enthusiastic jack in the box. I back away, prodding with my fingers at the first, and most serious wound, to try and get a sense of how much it is going to take the fight out of me. 

By the fourth strike I manage to get some kind of defense going, by the 7^th, the flesh wounds have turned into minor cuts, and by the tenth I am dodging the blows by inches. 

The puncture wound was wide, but a few inches in it tapers off, my finger hits bone, but nothing beyond that. Amazing considering the amount of force behind it. 

I back off, leading the pistoning head of my attacker by mere inches, I manage to distance him from the group. What I want to avoid is having to grapple with the thing, and having my back turned toward his companions.

He is laughing wildly, and throws his head backward, swinging it rather than pistoning it. The whiplike arc, intended to slice open my stomach, gives me a grade opportunity to employ a rather standard headlock to the creature. With a thud that moves me a couple of feet, I manage to secure its neck under my right arm, slamming my left down, I drag it back and forth across the neck, the hooked and barbed chain acting like a serrated knife, and slowly but surely sawing through the thing’s neck. It thrashes around, but the laws of physics are against it, its body, some 8 or so feet away, simply doesn’t have the weight to give the abomination any leverage, and instead of moving me, in his wild thrashing , he succeeds in moving only himself. 

The rest, previously enjoying the battle start to move forward, their love of violence being overridden, for the moment, by some deep buried instinct to protect their own. And I realize I have to end this battle, in order to win the war. 

I sever the head, with about a quarter of the neck still attatched, by striking downward with my left forearm, a spray of ichor later, his head hits the ground. But I do not slow in the slightest, I grab ahold of the vein ridden phallic neck, digging my fingers in deep, and swinging it like a flail, smashing John’s body hard against a cement pillar. It bounces with a wet slapping noise, and deep tears appear in the soft parts of his anatomy, I continue the swing in a full circle, smashing him again against the pillar, this time all the sinew holding things in gives way, and John’s body rips open like a horrid piñata. The third swing turns his rib cage to pulp, and I throw the neck, and tattered remains of flesh aside, swinging my ehad around to meet the next threat. 

It is Mary, dashing forward, and covering almost the entire distance in the time it took me to toss aside the body. She leaps into the air and with a spray of shredded clothing he body bends backward, revleaing sets of long, brown spikes, almost teeth like covering the front of her body. As she reaches me, I notice what can only be described as a new joint, slightly below her rib cage, by the time I have put two and two together she has thrown her first blow. Her body folds neatly, like the jaws of an alligator, I manage to turn enough, that I am not split in half by the attack, but my right arm is wedged painfully in this orifice that I am hesitant to call a mouth. 

The weight of her burdens me, her body folded down the vertical middle, grinds and tears my flesh , the biological beartrap her body has became, seeming the most effective weapon the creatures have pulled out.

I find myself thinking , “ How the fuck is she so heavy?”, but the answer is academic at best. Maybe it is blood loss or fatigue on my part, maybe it is just another wonderful benefit to being whatever these things are. But the fact is that Chuck and Bruce have not only noticed the fact that I am now in dire straights, but seem to realize that the girl is an easier target. 

I try to slam Mary against a wall, and the pain that ensues is enough to make me not want to try it again. A few more of those, and I know, for a fact that my arm up to the forearm would be useless. I scream in rage, and try to swing my arm, letting the centrifugal force tear her free, to the same basic result. 

Panic is starting to bleed through that sense of fun that has been saturating my experience, and goes into the red zone as I start to hear a small engine try to rev up.

“Fuck me.” I mutter, as with a belch I hear the engine kick into high gear, and see Bruce wielding an impossibly big chainsaw, that has been modified with long blades along the chain, my guess is that this particular saw has never seen a tree. 

Chuck on the other hand has found a smaller, but still functional pistol somewhere and , as chips of cement hit me, I realize I am being fired upon. Stuck in the middle of the shit storm, I see Bruce charging toward the girl with a reckless psychotic glee spread across his massive face.

Mary is cackling and making sexual references that I can’t even be bothered to listen to,  as I try and sprint toward Bruce. I manage to get just close enough to grab him with my left hand, he instinctively swings the saw in a horizontal arc aimed for my head. 

Starting to feel light headed, I throw up by right arm in a defensive manner, the saw hits and bounces, leaving a long, deep gash in Mary, in a second my worry is replaced with vigor, if only of a psychological variety. 

I swing my left arm in, he raises the saw, and in a spark ridden collision of chain, he brings it back for another strike. This time my right arm goes up again, it takes quite a bit of effort, but I raise it in time to absorb another blow, and leave another bloody ditch in Mary’s back. 

Bruce, starts to drool and laugh as he presses the attack. He has the range, and he has the stamina, he thinks, or rather he knows that he is going to win. Saw strikes come in rapid back and forth motions, the creature wielding the weapon like he was made for it. But I keep up my defense, and with every strike, I feel a little more fight go out of Mary. 

This goes on for a little over a minute before one slash finally splits the thing down the middle, tearing a large chunk out of the back of its skull, as it hits the ground it still tries to escape, but a quick two stomps , one to the head, another to the chest , stops this.

Just about as I notice that we are nearing John’s body, the thing decides to go off, covering myself, the girl and Bruce in a torrent of gore. As I try to blink away the overly thick ichor, I think to use the situation to my advantage, hoping that Bruce will take longer to get his bearings. But just about as I start to be able to see the cement cage I have been locked in , I feel a deep burning pain in my right shoulder. 

My right arm starts to feel numb, and between this newest wound ( a quarter sized hole that is spurting blood in regular bursts.) , and the hamburger visage my right arm now has, I start to realize that this may not be a first hunt, but a blaze of glory.

I back away slowly, starting to feel quite light headed, the girl, literally drenched in gore has a very panicked look on her face,  this scare me more than the black spots starting to cloud my vision. 

“ Your telling me you can put a finger through someone’s eyesocket?” I hear suddenly in my head, as if the owner of the voice ( and it was that second voice, the cartoonish, obnoxious one.) was having a conversation I was not a part of. That sense of calm is there, but muffled, my pain overshadowing it.

My eyes fix on Bruce’s , and before I launch my attack I have time to think that if this doesn’t kill him, hopefully it will at least blind the prick. As I dash, Mary’s body goes off, distracting me for a moment, but not much more. 

Right behind the gore bomb, I leap at Bruce, both arms forward like a child pretending to fly. The engine of the saw comes down, hard on my back, but both arms, sink up to the elbow in Bruce’s eyes. With a saliva spraying scream , Bruce tries to push me away, but by now, I have my hands hooked behind the thin bone that served him as both ribcage and eyesocket. 

“ At least you make this convenient …” I begin to saw, cracking bone, and getting a good grip, “ All of the squishy parts…” I tug forward furiously, hearing the cracking noise of the bones under stress, “ In, one, “ I say, with a grunt between each word , “ Place!” I finish with a yell, as Bruce’s innards hit the ground moments before his saw.  Like Abe, he explodes within a second or two, as I stalk, slowly toward Chuck. Not out of any sense of trying to scare him, only because it is taking everything in my to stay conscious. 

He fires, but randomly, and scared, the bullets hit me, and hurt but nothing that is setting off any alarms that real damage is being done. 

Three dry ‘click’ noises , and Chuck drops the gun, making bubbly gibbering noises, and waving his hands at me in a warding off gesture. Of all the things I realize , at this point my boots are almost skin tight, I fix him with a glare as I remove them, I toss them at the creature, he doesn’t dodge, he doesn’t run, he just lets them strike, as he backs up to the wall, giving pleading gestures, and pathetic sounding gurgling pleas to me. 

I may not know exactly what it is trying to say, but I get the gist, and reply, “You think, after all of this, I am just going to let you go? Fucker, I am probably going to die myself, “I say waving a hand casually at my body, which is covered in deep gaping wounds, blood both my own and that of the people I came to know so well, and gunshot wounds that are slowly oozing thick streams of blood. “ And you think that I am going to save you?” I laugh a deep bark, as I keep walking over.

I kill it, no fanfare, I’m much too tired for that. The resultant puddle of flesh, and explosion is much the same as the others, but I take no time to revel in it, I simply walk over to the girl, bracing my back against a wall, and sliding down. 

“ Well holy shit son!” the voice suddenly , gleefully says, “ That is the ticket! That , right there is grade-fuckin-a monster stompin. You take a bow for that shit son! But there is just one thing, you kill enough of them in the same spot, all those lil’ bits kinda get frisky, but I am sure you don’t mind fighting some more do ya?” As the voice says this my heart sinks, surviving the next hour just sitting down seems like it is going to be a chore, the fight, has officially left me. 

I groan, and see an oak stick, with several thick steel studs attached, and use it to at least prop myself up in a half standing position, waiting for the pool of blood, now inches deep in most of the room, to spew forth another horror.

“ And your still willin to die on your feet, fuck son, you may actually make it through this. I was just Joshin about them comin back this time. You just remember this, ‘Holy God in Heaven’.” As the voice says this I am relived, but wonder instantly what place religion has in this mess, but that is rapidly cleared up , “ That is a way to remember how to kill ‘em son. Head, Guts, and Heart. Ain’t nothing, coming back when all that is gone. “

A part of the wall slides free to reveal a doorway, to a rather clean looking hall. 

“And I am a man of my word son, the girl is free to go, she’ll be at home being a bitch by dinnertime. 

“ I open my mouth , and the voice cuts me off , “ And if your wonderin what is holdin me to my word, I’ll just give her the same treatment I did yourself, she don’t know nothin that is gonna hurt me no how. “

He could be bullshitting, but it seems the best I am going to get in this situation. With a shakey hand I slice through the remaining ropes, and the girl, without a word sprints toward the hallway.

The door closes, and another opens at the end of the room. 

I limp and stumble over, and see what appears to be a closet, the walls a disgusting green sponge looking material, dripping with a fluid that carries a harsh alcohol smell. 

“ Step on in son, you ain’t gonna quit on me now are ya?” the voice says. 

“ No, because then I wouldn’t get to drag you into a room, and rip pieces off of you for a week. “ I say, tonelessly, as I walk in. 

The doors slide shut with a loud clacking noise and a woosh of air. And the walls start to, literally close in, in a few seconds I cannot move, and I am held , like a Faberge egg by their slimy, wet embrace.