#1:The Longest Road
He looked up at the sky, his pale eyes scanning the pitch black sky as the rain poured onto the area surrounding Chicago, Illinois. Nodding to himself, he continued walking through the storm towards the enlightened Windy City.
His true name was Breynz Hrandor-pronounced b-ROO-nd h-ROON-der-which meant "Pocket" in Gershakian, though since the creatures of this world called "humans" did not speak or understand Gershakian, that is what he simply called himself when speaking to them:The Pocket.
He was a Dekllanian, a species who had, through convergent evolution, evolved to become a type of combined humanoid and canine creature. This did little to help, though, on their planet, a world filled to the brim with savage and merciless predators, a planet where only the strongest, fastest, and most intelligent creatures could ever hope to survive and-if they were lucky-fulfill that hope.
And so, the Dekllanian's first gained the trait of being able to see in their dark, lightless world, despite the fact that their eyes were pale and they were originally blind. Their eyesight was able to make out a single bead of sweat on a person's forehead, able to focus on a single strand of hair on another Dekllanian's head. Their hearing had become supersonic, able to pick up sounds from ten miles away, though this meant little if one was slow, and so to match their hearing, they were able to run at approximately one thousand and nine hundred and seventy miles per hour.
After that, they had gained the trait that made their appearance so unique, and so horrifying to the humans:their skin, muscle, and bone fused together into a thick outer carapace, with the only remaining body parts of pure muscle being various inner organs such as the heart and brain as well as the tongue. Superhuman strength gave them the ability to lift something as heavy as a General Sherman tree and to punch something with ten thousand pounds of force. Black fur grew in thick patches all over their bodies and many Dekllanians took the custom of letting their hair grow down to their waist, so as to protect them from the brutal, unrelenting winters of their world.
They felt little pain from any injury and had gained a regenerative healing factor, a trait commanded by the brain, which immediately ordered the body to produce new cells and tissue to heal a wound incredibly quickly. Their most vicious and unique adaptation, though, was the slit in the center of their chest that was opened by the Dekllanian upon being faced by a threat; upon opening, the slit unleashed a tangled mess of wet tendrils which then tore the threats head off and absorbed it into the body. The brain then read the genetic code of the threats face and grew the face out over the Dekllanian's face, in an effort to fool predators. The face dissolved either at the command of the Dekllanian or if a new head was absorbed.
The Dekllanian's one remaining weakness was light due to their world's incredible darkness. The mere light of a lamp was able to scorch a Dekllanians face and singe their hair.
Breynz, by all accounts, barely stood out amongst his fellow Dekllanians. His head looked like a wolf skull atop a bulky body with bone replacing flesh and muscle, while his shaggy black hair fell down to the middle of his back. The eyes in his sockets were pale and a grin which flashed his fangs and stretched to his graudls (the two hollow holes on the sides of his head used for hearing). He was dressed in an almost completely black outfit composed of a long sleeved shirt, pants, and knee-high boots with the only non-black part of his outfit being the thick brown rope that was his belt. It was a garb that had been adopted from the Genoshean tribe, who had lived in the Kezian Crescent of the Dohjen Republic.
The seemingly eternal grin on his face betrayed what he had been forced to go through in his life so far, half of it in his childhood. Though his mother worked around the house, he had never gotten to know her or even her name, as she was little more than a punching bag for his father whenever she did something he did not like, or when he was drunk (and most of the time, it was both).
His father had been the leader of a small-time crime syndicate, which he ruled with an iron fist and yet, he was never happy; he always wanted more. More territory, more resources, more men, more control of anything he wanted. He had often beaten Breynz due to his need to find a target to focus his anger on. When he had once bothered to ask his father what he thought Breynz should be when he grew up, he had told him that he thought he should be dead for being annoying.
When he was nine years old, his mother had accidentally knocked down a lamp meant to give off a small amount of light in order to provide heat, starting a fire. Angry at her for causing the damage, his father had pushed his mother into the fire so her head was submerged in the flames, holding onto the ends of her hair so she could not escape. The immense light from the flames had killed her within a minute; afterwards, his father had brought him along to see his mother's corpse being dumped into a landfill, telling Breynz to never let anyone see the real him, the actual person at the core.
"People can't understand the real person at heart. The truth is, people like masks, so keep yours on. Do not compromise" was what his father had said.
After coming home from school at the age of twelve, Breynz's father had pulled a black hood down over his head as soon as he had come through the door before he had sent him tumbling down a flight of stairs. His father removed the hood, revealing that he had taken Breynz to the basement, before he had left, saying just four words.
"Keep your mouth shut."
He had never heard his father speak like that before; his voice was so low, yet he had hissed like a dzerne, pure rage hiding behind a thin curtain. The mask had fallen off.
Breynz had laid there for what seemed like hours, until the door to the basement was thrown open and then promptly shut and locked. His father had raced down the stairs, a handgun clutched in his shaking right had. Fear and desperation plagued his face, and in his pale eyes, Breynz thought that he had seen, however faint it might have been, a hint of regret. Above, he could hear multiple footsteps and various intermingling shouts.
His father had screamed and spat about how the law enforcement had finally caught up with his syndicate, and now, they were going to Breynz away and coddle him and make him into a "toothless bitch", as he had said.
"I will not allow them to mutate me like they shall do to you!" his father had declared, and it was then that Breynz had realized that that hint of regret concerned the fact that there would be no one to pick up the pieces of his organization.
That being said, his father had placed the gun in his mouth, clamping his jaws down onto the muzzle before pulling the trigger. The back of his head had exploded, pieces of his brain and the back of his head exploding outwards in a red mist, a flash of orange light igniting the inside of his head and burning it into an unrecognizable black clump.
Breynz had been shifted from orphanage to orphanage until he was nineteen, when war had broken out between the Olitarian Confederacy-a democratic alliance between Craet, the United Teregon, and the Free People's Republic of Reinmerk-and the alliance between the oligarchical Felizarn and the plutocratic government of the People's State of Jeduine (Breynz had never heard of a more ironic name for a country).
The war had been fought over argon drilling rights, though Breynz had not known that at first and had enlisted in the Craet Land Force because he thought that when he came back, he would be a hero. People would admire and respect him, he would be able to easily build a family, and he would not have to worry about money ever again; his benefits from his service would take care of that.
The Olitarian Confederacy had won, but not like Breynz had imagined them to; a total of fourteen million soldiers had been killed, and hardly any of his comrades had known why they were fighting. He was the only survivor of his unit, Helion Company, 203rd Basic Infantry Regiment, 96th Land Force Division, the rest of them having been wiped out during the campaigns at Hergi-gon, Perskan, and Tarzus.
He had come home to a nation filled to the brim with ungrateful, whiny, and spiteful civilians who hated the soldiers because they saw them as psychotic "baby killers". In response, a large number of soldiers had violently retaliated and in the United Teregon, a riot had broken out and had left almost thirty civilians dead.
When he had turned twenty four, he had met Elnar Kotran at a pharmacy in a convenience store. They had married within a year, though he had refused to ever tell her that he was a veteran, fearing that she would reject him and whine and moan about how soldiers were murderers, just like every weak minded civilian did.
The marriage itself fell far short of what Breynz had expected. Elnar's parents had cut off all communication between themselves and him when they had found out that his father had been a criminal. His first child, his daughter Golma, fell ill with pneumonia just several hours after she was born, forcing her to be isolated until she was fifty six days old. When Golma was three, his son Drenik was born; he was blind in his right eye.
He still remembered that day. The memory was always so vivid, like a technological recording. It seemed so close. Elnar was wiping the tiled kitchen floor clean, Golma was learning the alphabet from some pathetic book her teacher had given her, and Drenik, who by then was two years old, was doing something with a puzzle; he certainly wasn't solving it, that was for sure.
Breynz remembered yelling at Drenik for messing with the puzzle. Elnar got mad at him, telling him that their son was just a child, and Drenik started crying. Golma yelled at her parents for distracting her...when the front door was kicked open. The Dekllanian was white with his hair only covering his scalp, just like the haircuts given in the military. He waved around a beam cutter rifle, screaming and ranting to the point of almost sounding unintelligible; what Breynz had been able to make out were incredibly vulgar and angry comments directed towards Elnar due to her criticism of the veterans.
Breynz had run up to the man and pinned him down, telling him that he was going to call the authorities on him if he stopped. The man did not stop, kicking Breynz off of him and wrapping a black blanket around his head, screaming something about how veterans did not kill veterans; a code of honor. Then, just as Breynz started untying the blanket, three shots tore through the air. When Breynz had taken the blanket off, the veteran had already left and his wife, daughter, and son were dead.
The police had conducted a search for the psychotic veteran for two weeks before simply dropping it. The life insurance he had bought for his family had turned out to be useless, saddling him with over forty eight thousand and six hundred Craetian dollars to pay for the funerals, and eventually, his bank had foreclosed his home due to the murders that had happened there.
It was at that point, when his bank had taken the last reminder of the happy life he could have had, that Breynz had realized something. The reality around him was that the whole world was filled with suffering inflicted upon innocent, undeserving people. When people died, they went to a happier plane of existence, one that was only reserved for the dead and the gods who ruled over those souls. And for that, Breynz hated them.
The world around Breynz, though, was so rotten to the core that it was unable to learn anything from its suffering. He had demanded that a priest of Nadul, the god of emotion in the religion known as Adjutarianism, conduct a ceremony to endow him with the power of empathy, so he could feel the misery and sorrow of those around him. To his surprise, he had received the power, and to him, it was the gods' one sign of kindness. With the power of a book called the "Desgratica Ednors"-which, in Jeduinian, meant "image of death's law"-he had been able to see into the many other universes, parallel to his own and separated from each other by "void" universes.
He had chosen to enter one universe at random, and after passing through a pitch black vortex for what had seemed like an eternity, he was ejected into a room, a room constructed of a completely alien architecture. He had almost immediately sensed the bitterness from somebody in the opposite room. That was when his mission had truly started.
Breynz intended to kill those suffering from their misery, as absorbing their heads would allow him to grow their face onto his own, and with the false smile etched onto his face, everyone would be able to see that there was a better place to go to after death. Besides, in his world, if someone just couldn't take it anymore, it was best to kill them. Killing them would free them from their stress, so why wouldn't the creatures of this world think the same? Of course, Breynz still had yet to learn much about the creatures of this world:humans.
Upon first seeing them, Breynz wondered just how such animals could possibly survive. Their clothing was loose and thin, and there was barely any hair on their bodies. Their eyes were much too colorful, their faces were too round and flat, their noses were too heavy and long, and instead of having graudls, they had ridiculously large and leathery pieces of cartilage called "ears." To Breynz, they were the most foolish and disgusting beings he had ever seen, what with their ignorance of their harsh environment and their dusty, flimsy, aging skin.
He had not been sure of how to approach the creature, even though it was alone. It had been carrying a large clawed object in its hands, with the clawed portion attached to the wooden handle. Breynz had left the room he had entered, and slowly walked towards the back of the room, hugging the wall. Originally, he had intended to simply sneak up on the human, before opening the slit in his chest and tearing its head off and absorbing it. If he hadn't knocked over the glass bottle of liquid on the table.
The human had heard the bottle being knocked over and had swiftly turned around, its eyes bulging and its lower jaw nearly falling off, before it had pulled a brown curved stick out of its left pocket and started screaming. It hadn't screamed anything in particular, just maniacal gibberish. Breynz had almost immediately ran up to the human, and in half a millisecond, he was directly in front of him. The stick in the humans hand, however, seemed to have been a gun just like the ones in Breynz's universe, and just like those guns, a flash of yellow light had filled his vision. He had collapsed to his knees, screaming and crying like a freshly born infant, while his face was scorched and smoking, the front of the top of his hair on fire. From several hallways away, he had heard another gunshot. After about half an hour of clutching his face, he had gotten up and ran-slower than usual, as he had still been reeling from the burns-and had found the back of the humans head torn apart, blood coating the wall behind the corpse, the gun still being held in the humans left hand, albeit very numbly. Right next to the humans corpse was a desk, and on top of that desk was an almost half rectangular, half circular brown object of medium size, and dangling from it was a wired crescent device. Eventually, Breynz would learn that such things were called "telephones."
Eventually, after hours of walking around and observing the structure, Breynz had heard loud footsteps and shouts of, "POLICE!" and "We ask that you come out and show yourself!" Even though he did not know of anything pertaining to the English language yet, Breynz knew exactly what the human had done with that device called a "phone":it had summoned other humans to come and find him. Breynz would have none of that, and he had hidden himself inside a pitch black tunnel deep within the silo, and under heavy amounts of garbage that led directly to a sewage pipeline. He had had no intention to reveal himself to anyone, especially when he considered the fact that the humans raiding the silo would have guns as bright as the first humans.
Once the footsteps and voices had ceased, he had wandered around the silo until he had found the first humans showering system, which looked remarkably similar to the Dekllanian showering systems; he had no desire to reek of garbage for an extended period of time.
Ever since then, for more than thirty seven years-he knew because he had seen the first humans calendar-Breynz had hidden himself within the silo. Occasionally, some teenagers would come to the silo, hoping to prove themselves by trying "survive" him. In reality, Breynz could feel it all within them-all of the bottled up rage at their parents and society for "putting them down", their anger at their peers for talking behind their backs, and in some cases, a strong desire to murder those around them. But Breynz alleviated that pain; he opened the slit in his chest, and took their heads, and their souls, to a better place. He made them happy in death. It was the only place where happiness was eternal.
And now, after four teenagers had come to the silo, two of them had been killed by him while the two others had escaped, allowing him to escape as well.
He was here now, in Chicago, the city colored with blood. Human blood.
Amongst all of the miserable souls that overwhelmed him like a tidal wave, Breynz could sense one who stood out from the rest, his misery and restrained rage practically oozing from every orifice of his being.
After thirty seven years, he was finally in the open world of the humans. Tonight, salvation would come from bloody tendrils, and the last thing the downtrodden would see was the smile of a man with nothing to lose.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
With his face scarred and pitted from untreated acne and his ribs easily visible underneath his one hundred and thirty five pound body, Aaron Challis was one of the most physically repulsive seventeen year olds not just in Chicago, but in the whole world. His hair was as black as ink, covered in grease, and grew all the way down to his eyebrows, with all of the accumulated sweat, heat, and grease creating a nest of blood red pimples on his forehead.
Aaron was popular in elementary school, having at least twenty friends in each elementary grade and having all of his childish jokes laughed at because, to everyone's young mind, they were funny, and not because they were considered "white."
And then middle school came. The random mixture of students from elementary schools, the vanishing of longtime friends, and the introduction of periods and multiple teachers in one day killed any chance at popularity that Aaron might have had. It wasn't that he didn't want to or didn't try to make new friends to replace the old ones that had moved; it was because Chicago was still about forty years behind in race relations. Anyone who claimed otherwise was either lying or just stupid.
The black kids in his school hated him; they viewed him as being a racist, despite the fact that Aarons family had not even come to America when slavery had been around. The girls stayed away from him because his arms were not thick with rippling muscles and he didn't vomit his lunch to flirt with them, even though it was the muscled vomiters who hit the girls and, in several cases, raped them.
Puberty had hit, and when it did, his face had turned as red as a ripe apple. Aaron had often clawed at his acne, resulting in blood oozing out and his fingernails to be filled with grime. His sideburns had grown down to the sides of his chin, forming a goatee rooted in the acne. The hair in his armpits had grown into thick clumps that ran down to his forearm. Ever since puberty, everything about Aaron was so disgustingly inhuman.
High school was even worse. The football players were savages, sadists who thought it was their right to push other students around because they were the ones who brought their school recognition. The principal didn't punish them and had their grades "protected", so they still got decent grades despite never actually learning anything. North Chicago Community High School never actually won any of their games, but the school still kissed the football teams ass, apparently holding out hope for a win.
Tonight, he found it hard to fall asleep, even though it was past twelve o'clock and his parents, Ethan and Margaret Challis, were both asleep. Were it not for the rain tapping on his bedroom window like an impatient intruder, it would have been completely silent. He hated storms-the constant pitter-patter of the rain, the whole room shaking from of the thunder, the sound of cars rushing through the water a times when those driving should have been sleeping at home. But anything beat total silence, when Aaron could hear his own breathing before an inexplicable footstep-like noise came from the hallway outside.
Aaron sat up in his bed, looking down at the blanket blankly, before he laid back down. He shot back up two seconds later when he heard one incredibly close thunderclap, followed by another of similar proximity. He briefly plugged his fingers into his ears, though he could still hear the rain.
That was when Aaron realized it.
That was no thunderclap.
That was his front door getting thrown open and slammed shut.
He leaped out of his bed and peaked his head out of his bedroom door. Aaron could hear the footsteps coming up the stairs at an alarming pace, each step sounding like a hammer banging down against a nail, telling him that it was a very large man. That threw out Aarons original plan-waiting until the intruder entered his parents' bedroom to jump him-out the window.
The intruder came into the hallway and continued, the footsteps coming closer and closer to Aarons room. Aaron closed the door as quickly and silently as he could before he ran to his closet, hoping to get inside and hide before the intruder came.
He had nowhere to hide now, though, as the door was thrown open with such strength that it fell off its hinges. Standing before him was the intruder, the most hideous creature he had ever seen. To Aaron, it was a demon straight from hell; its clothing was completely black, save for the brown rope that was its belt. It stood at around six feet and four inches. That was where any similarities to humans ended; its head was a wolfs skull, grinning yet displaying no emotion, only its fangs. Its hair was black and as thick as a fur pelt, short at the the front and the sides yet long at the back. Its eyes were both completely white, yet gazed right into his soul. And it spoke, in a deep, growling, raspy voice:
"I...am The Pocket. And I have come for you."
Aaron responded with the only way he knew how to in such a situation. He screamed at the very top of his lungs, jumping back into his bed and pulling the blanket over himself. He continued screaming, hoping that his parents would hear him. The creature, which seemed to call itself "The Pocket", tore his blankets off of him and tossed them to the ground. It was still grinning.
"I have come here to grant you your salvation. Please, fear not, for soon, you shall be free" The Pocket growled. A disgusting splitting noise reached Aarons ears, and as he looked down at The Pockets chest, he could see bloody red tendrils squirming inside. Suddenly, those tendrils slithered out of The Pockets chest like a legion of snakes, coming closer and closer towards Aarons head.
"Many have told you that there is no escape, but there is. I am that e-"
A resounding BANG and a flash of yellow light cut The Pockets sentence short. Although Aaron could now only hear a distant ringing in his ears, the flash of the Remington Model 870 pump action shotgun did not hinder his sight as much. He could see The Pocket falling to its knees, opening its mouth in a scream, before it clutched its face, which looked blacker than it did before. He turned his head to see his mother turn the lights on as she stood next to his father, the barrel of the Remington smoking in his hands.
"NNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!" The Pocket suddenly shrieked, a noise so loud and painful it was able to break Aarons deafness. Right behind it was a small pool of a black liquid.
"TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!" The Pocket screamed, and now Aaron could see smoke emitting from its blackened face, right before the scent of burning hair reached his nose. The Pocket ran towards Aarons parents so quickly that he was a black and white blur. It threw his father and mother into the wall outside before it flicked the switch down. Its grin gone and replaced with pain, The Pockets head slowly turned towards Aaron, and its eyes narrowed.
How the fuck can its eyes narrow? Its head is a skull! Pure bone!, Aaron thought before The Pocket ran back to the side of his bed and pulled him out. It held him in the air by his left shoulder, squeezing tightly while forcing Aaron to face his doorway as his parents were getting back up.
"Never have I come across such an uncooperative human as yourself! Do you not want happiness?" The Pocket hissed into his ear. Now both of Aarons were back up on their feet, with his father pointing the Remington at The Pockets leg.
"Dad! Don't shoot, don't! You're gonna make him kill me!" Aaron screamed as that splitting noise came again.
"Put my son down NOW! I don't know what you want from us, but you'll get nothing from murdering my son! Think about it: you kill my son, you'll either be dead or put in a zoo! Just put my son down, and we can both go back to our families" Aarons father yelled at The Pocket.
"Your son must die! Either I bring him salvation, or you will shoot your own son!" The Pocket roared with venom in its voice, tightening its grip on Aarons shoulder.
"Is this bullshit what you call SALVATION?!" Aarons father spat, loading another shell into his Remington. The Pocket roared at that, the tendrils squirming out of the slit in its chest and encircling Aarons head.
"Dad, mom, quit just fucking standing around and do something!" Aaron screamed before the tendrils wrapped around his head tightly. He tried to scream, but the tendrils were so tight, his mouth was pressed shut. The tendrils were warm and thickly coated in some kind of fatty substance which felt like vegetable oil running down Aarons face.
The, just as suddenly as the tendrils had wrapped around his head, they let go, and Aaron fell to the floor. Almost instinctively, he began wiping his head and face, feeling as if though his head was covered in a mound of sweat.
He blinked and saw that the light was back on. The screaming reached his ears, and Aaron turned his head to see The Pocket covering his face with his arms while smoke filtered out through the gaps.
"Good night, you piece of dog shit" Aarons father laughed as he calmly walked up to The Pocket and aimed the barrel of the rifle at its head.
It had tried to kill him; it had tried to rip his head off, had broken into his house, and had nearly forced his father to shoot him. But, deep down, Aaron saw anger behind that grin, a rage at the powers to be for shoving his wants and needs to the side, for taking away his one chance at happiness. Deep down, Aaron saw the same specimen as him. The ultimate specimen.
Before his father could pull the trigger, Aaron ran to the light switch and flicked it back off.
"Honey, what the hell are you do-!" his mother shriek at him before The Pocket threw his father into the closet door and ran towards Aaron and his mother at impossible speeds. It took one look at his mother, snorted, and then kicked her in the leg, sending her flying down the hallway. It then turned back to Aaron and grabbed his throat before raising him to face it.
"Why?! Why do you not want to be rescued? Do you not want happiness and peace?" The Pocket roared at him in its deep, animalistic voice, shaking Aaron with all of its might.
"No-why, why? What have I done-to be killed?" Aaron asked, struggling to speak through the shaking; he felt as if though his brain was going to fall off its stem and smash into his skull at any moment.
"From you, reeks a rage and discontent unlike any I have felt. But why do you struggle? Do you not want your bliss in the next world?" The Pocket answered while it stopped shaking Aaron. As it answered, its expression changed to a look of sadness, as if though it was depressed at the fact that Aaron did not want to be killed.
"Because you can't just kill people because they feel miserable! Its not right!" Aaron yelled at it.
"But...you humans do not kill the miserable? The grieving? Those so angry, they are on the verge of violence?"
"I don't know if you noticed, but we are NOT the same species! Why can't you understand that we don't have the same customs as you? By killing the miserable, you're only spreading more misery! Families grieving, friends left without anyone to talk to-then you're gonna come after them! What are you gonna do when you wipe out an entire race? Are you going to kill yourself because you'll otherwise have to live with that?"
"But-you just let them live!"
"So what? They did nothing wrong! There are millions of criminals and sub-humans out there that murder and steal, and yet, you only go after those who are having a bad day!" Aaron spat, his saliva flying into The Pockets face, though it did nothing to wipe it away. Instead, its face twisted into a vicious snarl.
"So you are telling me to betray my traditions for your beliefs? To go kill those who cause the misery?"
"Obviously! You think your life is worth something when you murder innocent people?" Aaron sneered at it, narrowing his eyes in contempt for the creatures philosophy, right before it threw him into the wall right behind him.
Aaron could hear the wall crack like wood in a fireplace; his whole body throbbed, feeling as if though he had been stabbed in a thousand places with a blade of molten steel. His breathing was weak and strained, and he could feel blood swelling up in his throat. He was shocked he was still alive; he was sure that The Pocket would throw him with enough strength to instantly kill him.
Aarons eyes briefly flicked open, and he saw The Pocket standing over him, the distrubing grin back on its face.
"Fine."
That was all it said before it sped away so quickly that Aaron could only briefly see a black blur, and with that, Aaron allowed unconsciousness to smother him.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
How could one attempt at salvation have gone so horribly? He was just another teenaged boy, so why had he failed? Even if the human had screamed so loudly that he sounded like the opposite gender, why did it take him so long to just attempt to rip his head off?
Breynz had not known that there were two other humans in the house, the boys mother and father. Still, they had been smarter than any humans he had ever come into contact with. They had turned the very environment against him, had used large guns to burn him with their flashes. Even though he had eventually overpowered the two elders, there was still the boy himself.
Aaron Challis-that was his name. The boy had been cunning, screaming so as to call his mother and father, turning the lights off to bait him, and then actually trying to negotiate with him. No human had ever tried to negotiate with him until now.
Breynz could not believe his ears when the boy had suggested to him that he needed to stop killing the miserable-those who were already dead inside-and instead focus on those who caused the misery itself.
Just because one kills the first patient, does not mean the disease comes to a halt, he thought as he threw the boy into the wall. The child was still an arrogant human, after all.
He quickly checked on Aarons mother and father, and found that they were still out cold.
Good; they shall not try to follow me for attempting to save their son, Breynz thought. He resumed his grin; Aaron was still conscious, and the boy needed to think Breynz had agreed with him. He could sense it within the child-nobody agreed with him. Besides, Breynz had been both a victim and practitioner of psychological warfare; these humans would most likely be left unnerved by his large, emotionless grin.
He saw the boys eyes flicker open, weakly; it was clear that he would soon fall into the same slumber as his mother and father. Walking over to him, he looked down and decided his course of action.
"Fine."
And with that, he sped off, racing down the stairs and only stopping to open the front door, close it once he was outside, and then he continued, his empathetic abilities searching for nay who caused misery of any kind.
With just one word, Breynz had sealed his fate.
-Two hours later-
Nothing; absolutely nothing. He had been searching for more than one hour, and yet Breynz had still found no man or woman that had caused an excessive amount of misery for others. In this city, this human city, how could he sense no decay? Surely, there was but one human who had created an admirable amount of grievances?
He felt betrayed, lied to. Did that Aaron boy trick him just so he could save his own life? He still could not believe that humans did not save the miserable. How could an entire species be so cruel as to allow their own people to continue suffering? Did they tell the miserable to simply get over it?
How could they expect such a method to work? What can work on one who is only living in the body?, Breynz angrily thought. Never had he imagined that an entire species could be so sadistic.
"Where's my reward?! I stack the plates when they're washed all the time!"
"You're not old enough to have an allowance, Marcus."
"That's bullshit, and you know it!"
He had caught something. A wave of anger, resentment, and above all else, a desire to make things his way, with no room for compromise.
"I brought this middle school a state championship last year! What do you mean my grades can't be raised? Not even a little?!"
"Marcus, you seem to keep forgetting that it was the team that brought this school a state championship last year. Besides, you know the school policy-if your grades fall below a 70, you are ineligible for any extracurricular activities, including football. But does any of this really justify you making such a scene in the hallways?"
The boy stood up and tried to throw a punch, but his arm was grabbed by the student resource officer, who promptly picked him up and carried him out. Even when he was launching an array of swear words, the boy could still hear the counselor speaking in a perfectly calm voice:
"You're not going to talk to me like that."
Breynz raced towards the man as fast as he could, the man's rage continuing to overwhelm him.
"So you're telling me I can't join because I don't know how to use a gun?! What kind of gay excuse is that?! Give me Carl, I'm gonna show that bitch-ass motherfucker how easy it'll be to rip open his tiny dick with my bare hands!"
"You got an attitude too, shorty! Ain't no one gonna talk about my nigga Carl like that, so you lucky I ain't gonna cut your tongue out with my scissors, you motherfuckin' faggot!"
"Nigga, I ain't short! I'm taller than you!"
"Figure of speech, dumbass bitch! I can tell you never graduated middle school!"
The man tried his best to rush forward, but was stopped by the two larger guards next to the recruiter. They quickly threw him outside and locked the door, and from outside, the man could hear the recruiter laughing.
"Your ass is too pussy for me to kill!"
He was here; Breynz found himself at the doorstep of one of the humans' bizarre houses. It appeared to be two stories tall, with light peeking out from the two square windows next to the front door. From outside, he could hear the shrill, painful fighting.
"I said I love you, Marcus!" he heard the thick voice of a woman screaming; she sounded as if though she was just barely holding back the tears.
"You talkin' to yourself when you sayin' that?!" the rough voice of a man replied before Breynz heard a particularly brutal slap.
"I've loved you before! Why can't you see that?! Why do I have to tell you now?!" the woman shrieked, her voice growing thicker with emotion with every word she yelled.
"Because you're tryin' to save your own cheatin' ass! You think I'm that fuckin' stupid, huh, you little bitch?! You think that because I just wanted you to cook my food, that I don't know nothin'?!" the man roared, punctuating every pause with another slap, before Breynz heard the brief sound of metal jingling.
"Marcus, why you gotta think like that?! Why you gotta take off your belt?! I never saw anyone else! Why can't you believe me when I say anything?! When I say I LOVE YOU, MARCUS!" the woman cried, her sobbing now quite audible, only for it to be rudely interrupted the sound of leather lashing against skin. The woman's screams grew louder with each lashing, to the point that Breynz thought his graudls would start spewing blood.
"'Cause you don't love anyone but yourself, dumbass slut! You can fool your own retarded self, but you ain't never gonna trick me! I know dozens of women who aren't so goddamn stupid that they believe their own stupid lies!"
"I'M PREGNANT WITH YOUR CHILD, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!"
For several seconds, everything was completely silent. Breynz thought that one could hear dust fall in the sheer silence. To him, it was the loudest thing he had ever heard, louder than any bomb could ever hope to be.
And then, the man reacted.
"Well then let me keep you busy 'til you're dead! I ain't gonna let some kid with your nasty-ass blood see anything outside of your womb!"
Breynz decided that that was enough; this was ten times worse than anything his father had ever done to his mother; even his murder of her was better than constant rape.
But the light. There was too much light in the house. If he went inside, he would surely burn up within minutes.
Surely, there is a connection that bring power to the house so I may enter without dying?, Breynz thought as he sped through the wooden gate into the couple's backyard. He heard more metal briefly jingling.
"NO! GET OFF OF ME, MARCUS! YOU CAN'T DO THIS! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT-!"
"Shut up! You wanna know what Uranos did so Gaia's kids never came out? You wanna know? He showed her his love, he just didn't want any little bitches gettin' in their way! And how does Gaia accept his love? She gives a scythe to Kronos so the little bastard can castrate him! See, I told you I ain't as stupid as you!"
The woman started screaming again, this time so uncontrollably that Breynz knew what was happening. There was no time to find a power source and shut it off.
Stupid child!, Breynz angrily thought as he raced back to the front door of the house and, taking a deep breath, sped forwards and into the house, shattering the door into multiple pieces in the process.
He could immediately feel the light clawing at him, making his head burn and blacken within seconds. He could smell the smoke rising from his face and hair, and the sound of crackling hair reached his graudls.
However, at least the couple had stopped. Instead, the man stood up, his pants pulled down and his belt in his right hand, staring at him with incredibly wide eyes and his mouth agape. The woman was on the ground, though she had lifted her head and her reaction to him was the same as the mans. Unlike most of the humans he had met so far, these humans were very dark skinned, with the woman simply wearing a sleeveless white shirt and the man wearing a black and orange shirt with a large half-circle in the center of it.
"This light...it burns!" Breynz growled before he turned and found another light switch similar to Aarons, and he pushed it down. The light instantly died.
"M-m-m-m-m-m-m…" the man started stuttering, his face covered in nothing but fear. The belt fell out of his hand, his whole body shaking violently as his eyes squinted in fear.
Breynz ran up to him in less than half an attosecond, the slit in his chest opening.
"I am The Pocket. I come for you."
With that, the tendrils sprung out of his chest and wrapped around the mans head before they whipped back, tearing the mans head clean off in the process. The tendrils then slowly slithered back into Breynz's chest as the mans body fell to its knees, fell forward, twitched for two seconds, and then laid still.
The slit closed and the man's face grew out onto Breynz's face, grinning grotesquely. Knowing that there was no point in keeping the mask, Breynz made the face disintegrate.
"Buh-buh-by…"
He looked down to see the woman, her eyes as wide as a mans fist and her speech so slurred that she couldn't even spit out a single coherent word.
Before being forced out onto the battlefields, Breynz had been educated on giving medical aid before the actual military medics arrived, and so he had learned about the state of shock, and how it could affect both soldiers and civilians. Specifically, this woman was suffering from both the physical shock caused by the man's violent behavior, and mental shock caused by both his ghastly-at least, to humans-appearance and his violent murder of the man.
It was why he hated working with civilians; well, one of the reasons. To Breynz, they were so weak in both body and mind, unable to cope with anything quickly and learn to adjust to their condition in an acceptable manner and time span. Their brains faltered and entered a catatonic state the moment they saw something they were not expecting, and they had no idea how to fight, forcing the soldiers to constantly leap in and save them, often costing the lives of the good soldiers when the civilians should have been ready to give up their lives.
He knew that the first thing he needed to do was loosen any tight clothing that had the potential to cut off the woman's blood circulation; fortunately enough, the man had already done that for him when he had tried to rape the woman. Instead, he sat down next to the woman and grabbed her by her jawline and forced her to look at him. He needed to reassure her that she was now safe and everything was going to be fine; of course, he knew how unpredictable the mind of a civilian was.
"M'am, you need to calm down! You are currently in a state of shock, and if you cooperate with me, everything will be fine!" Breynz told her as calmly as he could. The woman's only response was her eyes growing larger and her skin actually beginning to turn pale, despite how dark it was.
Breynz stood up and cursed the woman for being so uncooperative, and decided on a different approach. Seeing a bowl on a counter in the dining area, he ran to it and placed it underneath the cleanser before he moved the handle to the right, releasing a jet of cold water into the bowl.
Running back to the woman, he sat back down next to her and tipped the bowl over, dumping the water onto her face. Immediately, the woman gasped and sat up, as if though she had come back from the dead. She looked around quickly, until she set her sights on the large, wolf skull-head creature by her side.
"No, no...no! Don't touch me! Stay away, RIGHT NOW!" she screamed, crawling back and away from Breynz. He stood up and stared at the woman, still grinning at her as he tilted his head slightly to the side.
"M'am, you are safe now. I have killed the savage that tried to torture you eternally, and as such, you are no longer in danger" he told her in the same deep growl. The woman took some kind of small rectangular device out of her pocket and cowered behind a couch, whimpering as if though it was going to save her.
Realizing that he was done here, Breynz turned and began quickly walking out of the house, intending to search for a little while longer before heading back to the boys house.
"You...whatever you are! Who are you? Why did you come here, tonight?" the woman asked quietly. Breynz stopped and turned his head to face the woman.
"I am The Pocket."
With that, he turned his head to face the shattered doorway and sped outside, realizing he was wasting his time in the house.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 64
(NEXT ISSUE: The Pocket continues his quest to find those who cause misery in Chicago, as Aaron begins to bond with the inhuman creature, seeing something of himself in the Dekllanian. But Aaron's parents remain unsure of the creature, and The Pocket might have already bitten off more than he can chew when the Chicago Police Department begins investigating his attacks and a young boy experiences his first crime up-close...All this in The Pocket #2:Life on the Street.)