Strange Days: A Collection of Prose, Verse, and Essays by Lucia Kevin

Author:Lucia, Kevin [Lucia, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

His sweaty fingers clenched the machete’s hilt as he advanced on the tall one, rage burning in his belly. His pulse pounded behind his eyes as he felt a foreign stain flow through his veins. He heard everything. Felt quicker, faster. Worse, he sensed its thoughts somewhere beneath his own, humming behind that damned throbbing. The knowledge that he too was something more – or less - than human filled him with mad glee and intense shame.

He twirled the machete and swung, aiming for the thing’s head, but it ducked and slipped to the side. The machete whistled and missed. He snapped his wrist, slashing backwards at its torso. The cook snatched his wrists, arresting him mid-swing. Their gazes locked. A momentary connection was made.

He broke its gaze, aware of delicate phantom fingers probing the soft folds of his brain. He snapped a kick at its knee, which was blocked by a counter-kick. He used its momentary but necessary shift in balance to press closer, straining his full weight against the deadlock until only bare meters separated them.

They moved maybe another inch, nothing more.

He found himself staring again into the thing’s soft, glowing, gentle eyes. Eyes that reached inside him and caressed his hot, burning rage, blunting its edges, sapping its intensity. His hands trembled. The machete wobbled and slipped…

He closed his eyes, broke the connection, and threw his head forward, striking the thing’s face with a sharp crack, crushing its nose. He felt a fierce pleasure at its howl.

Its grip slackened. He pulled the machete free and jammed it forward. It screeched as he plunged steel through writhing flesh. He lifted his boot and kicked it off his machete and to the ground where it lay twitching, fumbling to cover the gaping hole in its gut.

He stepped in to finish it…

…and spun, jamming the blade forward, impaling the gas attendant he thought he’d taken out first. He looked up, fully expecting to see its death throes…

..and felt a sudden pang of shock to see it smiling at him.

“Aw, shit,” he muttered.

It chuckled; horrible mouth full of glistening teeth. Before Travis could pull free, the monster clamped its hand around his hands, slowly lifting him off the ground by the machete still imbedded in its abdomen.

With a mighty heave, it threw him. He slammed off the convenience store’s brick wall and crashed to the hard asphalt, gravel digging into his skin.

He’d no time for thought, because the big one was on him, swinging at his head with the machete. He ducked, dropping as he felt the cold swoosh of metal breathe over his scalp; heard its clang against brick, saw the sparks from the corner of his eye, felt the heat.

Before the monster could reverse the machete’s arc, he vaulted on one hand and kicked both feet into its wounded midsection. He was rewarded with an earsplitting howl. It fell back several steps but recovered quickly, charging again, swinging, screaming, but the kick had given Travis the room he’d needed.

He jumped to his feet, ran at the brick wall and up it for two steps.

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