MYTHIC #13 by FoundersHouse1

Author:FoundersHouse1
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Founders House Publishing LLC
Published: 2020-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

I SLEEP FITFULLY. Tossing and turning, I fear the thornbacks will return. Dreams interspersed with human-sounding moans and grunts haunt my subconscious as I struggle to plot my next move.

I shudder awake. A woman is shrieking. It’s still dark. A stream of distinct words follows: “Apricot. To. The gun. In park.”

I chalk the gibberish up to the lingering cobwebs of a waking mind. Surely I misheard them. Maybe my relief has arrived!

My heart races in anticipation.

I scramble to put on my boots. “I’m over here!” I yell.

“Massacre. Ripple. Star field. Mendicant. To there,” a male voice blurts out.

As my conscious mind awakens, I grow uneasy. Something’s not right.

“Lacuna. Immobile. Survive.”

This time it’s obvious where the voices are coming from.

The pit.

I panic. For an instant, I fear my rescuer’s fallen into the hole. Then I think better of it. I drag the bulky plasma rifle and lumber toward the ditch.

When I reach the hole, I lower myself to the ground and crawl forward, aiming the plasma rifle down at the thornback. One glance in the pit and I wanna puke.

A series of horrific images scar my vision: animated human faces on disembodied heads. Mouths open and close like fish yanked from the water. They sputter a jumble of random words. Dead eyes watch me with an unnerving intelligence.

I recoil, fumbling backwards in my haste to avert my eyes.

Their cries grow louder, more insistent. “Us! Out! Pit! Nice!”

The verbal mishmash is making more sense. The thornback must somehow be hijacking the neurons of the dead to speak.

My urge to kill the thing is overwhelming, yet I resist. My curiosity stays my hand. Could I be on the verge of a breakthrough?

I cautiously return to the hole’s edge, steeling myself for the grotesquery. As I stand over the trench, the vivid image of the thornback-human hybrid imprints on my eyeballs, searing them with white-hot intensity.

I stare at the alien’s thorns. They seem to throb with energy and heat. My raw emotions yield to curiosity. I look closer. Each thorn has a pore at its tip. What is it? A sweat gland?

It only now occurs to me that my dead companions are silent. I peer over the edge of the pit for an even closer look.

As one, the heads swivel toward me and moan. Like a cow in an abattoir, right before slaughter, my mind seizes up as it struggles to process the insanity. A puff of black dust erupts from a thorn. I flinch and pull back, but not before I’m covered in grimy discharge. I cough and choke. I feel light-headed. The edges of my vision blacken like the corners of a photograph set aflame. Then nothing.

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