Night Life
Night came, and it was crawling, scuttling across the worlds purposefully. People do not think that night has a sound. But they are wrong. Night is, in fact, incredibly loud. The sound of darkness is the sound of the universe as it moves, ages, dies, and crumbles. People are fortunate indeed that they have carefully learned to tune out the sounds of the night. Soothing lullabies promise children that the sun will always come out the next morning, like it's some kind of absolute certainty. Civilization is the lullaby of existence--our way of coping with night sounds.
The night devours whatever stands in its path. Stars. Light. Heat. Planets. Worlds. Empires. Civilizations, scrabbling out their existences, fancying themselves advanced and important, crying out to the increasingly empty universe, boasting of their petty triumphs, such as art and science and culture--getting only silence and darkness in response. Night crawls ever onward, blind and uncaring, feeding mindlessly upon existence, bringing a breathtaking expanse of pure nothing and leaving only shadows of what once was. And even then, shadows eventually fade away.
Out in the darkness, in thinning places full of emptiness, creatures lived. They were of the old breed, the true children of the night. Older than humans, older than laws, older than Earth, older than time and light and heat and existence. In the beginning, God said, "let there be light," and they had been waiting there.
In the dead parts of the universe, they lay dreaming.
One of them stirred. A thousand miscolored eyes blinked slowly, in no particular order. Nobody knew precisely what colors its eyes were, as they had no equivalent in the visible light spectrum that most civilizations knew of. Rubbery night-leather stretched, and there was a scream that shattered the galaxy in which it had slept.
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Far above the Earth, a thousand stars twinkled rather more brightly than usual, sending out a garbled Morse message, intended for the trilobites. Now they were long-dead, and humans scuttled about busily underneath the sky. Then, all at once, those same thousand stars seemed to shift across the darkened heavens, creating a brilliant effect, as of a comet the size of Jupiter streaking through space. A sun-bright flash lit the dark half of the world for less than a split second, and then it was gone.
The curious effect went unnoticed by billions. In hilltop observatories, studious people in white labcoats remarked about it in alarm. They hadn't expected such a thing. The object had been worryingly large and frighteningly nearby for the split seconds that it had appeared on their screens and monitoring equipment; after that, it had vanished entirely, both from the skies and from all of their equipment, as if it had never been there at all.
Outside of the space station, high above the planet's surface, an astronaut drifted, staring. There had been an infra-black flash behind his eyes, and a feeling that his soul and mind were flayed apart into ribbons. And now he didn't think of anything. Not after the flash. For being only half of a split second long, it had been an eternity. He stared. He had been doing something, but couldn't remember what it was. Couldn't remember what he was doing up here, either, and couldn't think of what it might have been. He drifted further, the line connecting him to the main structure pulling tight. It creaked soundlessly in space, and after a moment, it severed. Tom Sosa floated, his mind frozen in horror, not of being severed from the cable tying him to a firm space, but of the infra-black flash. There had been things crawling, reaching, in that flash, and those things had made his soul crawl as well. His eyes darted about restlessly even as he died, on the lookout for those Things, and he wondered, distant and dim and vague, if it would hurt to decay, or if he would be safer from those Things being dead.
He floated toward the moon as night overtook the western hemisphere of the Earth below. Tom shuddered in the icy reaches of space--not from the cold, but from the dim, vague fear that there might be Things waiting out in the darkness.
Meanwhile, down on Earth, on the North American continent, a city glowed in the hot desert night, throwing bright light into the dust-choked air for miles. A man stood at the window of his apartment, gazing down into the city full of lights and life. He'd had a dream that troubled him immensely, and the life and movement in the city below soothed him. Shining black figures reflecting his face, like humanoid funhouse mirrors… He had stared at a roomful of them, and the room had been star-bright white, covered in glass. The glass had not reflected his face, but the black figures had. The black figures had touched his face lovingly, and it made his skin crawl--because he could feel theirs crawling, like a thousand tiny insects under a thin layer of rubbery skin. They had been whispering in strange languages. Languages that had been unthinkably ancient when the planet was a cooling lump of plasma hanging in cold space. That was the part that troubled him the most--the ancient whisperings.
He would've given anything to forget those vile, guttural whispers in the dark, and was very happy that he couldn't hear them now… Didn't matter much. Dreams were just dreams. Right…?
He rested his forehead against the cool window, and his hot breath fogged up the glass. He tried to comfort himself with the notion that it had only been an awful nightmare, and he'd had some awful nightmares before. But it had nonetheless troubled him deeply, to the pit of his soul, and he knew that he was not going to get back to sleep that night without the aid of the happy pills. He supposed a walk would be just as good.
Though he wished he were on patrol that night instead. More interesting, and it would've taken his mind off of things at any rate. And maybe it meant he would've avoided having that fucking dream at all. He scratched his chin absently as he shuffled to the coatrack by the door. It seemed like a cool night, so he wanted his jacket… and just for safety, he picked up his gunbelt and strapped that on, too. The heavy weight of it comforted him, the way that the warmth and soft weight of a teddy bear would comfort a child who'd just encountered the bogie-man.
Now, out to the night, to walk, to try to forget.
Far across that same city, a young lady walked, her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, her face tilted up to look at the dim, smog-obscured stars. She wasn't going anywhere in particular. Just walking on, ever onward and upward, through the eye-searing sea of lights; the expression on her round face was the contemplative expression of someone who spent excessively long amounts of time pondering the ills and joys of the universe. But she wasn't thinking about terribly much, really.
Just that she wished she could have gone traveling somewhere--besides endlessly circling the streets of just one city, over and over and over again, day in and day out. Sure, it was a big city, and big cities had plenty of things to keep you occupied; that was why she had moved from the small Ohio town she'd lived in for most of her life all the way out west.
Still, Morgan MacBride felt restless and impatient. She had a job and a stable, secure life; during the day, she worked for a local patisserie delivering cakes and other treats on her rickety old bicycle. The pay was pretty decent. It kept her fed and it kept her put up in a small, somewhat bare apartment. So, mustn't grumble; it was a decent way of living, secure and safe, never having to really worry about much. It was scads more than a lot of people had, and she was grateful for that.
Still, Morgan wanted to go other places. Places with history and stories, where adventures and excitement could be found by the brave souls who dared to explore far enough. Australia, for instance. Australia seemed like a neat place, full of interesting wildlife, friendly folks with charming accents, foreboding canyons and lonely deserts. Or Russia. Looked pretty neat over there. Or England. Or Finland or Iceland or Egypt or Morocco or anywhere that wasn't here. It was safe here in town, but that was what made it so dead dull! She would've sold her soul for a mad adventure and someone to share it with.
She paused at a crosswalk, waiting for the little green 'walk' man to replace the pulsing red 'do not cross' hand. Just a little excitement. That was what she wanted. Her days and nights were extremely routine, no matter how much she tried to shake it up, no matter how wild she tried to be.
She'd tried some everyday adventures first--she'd tried drinking, but didn't like the taste or the smell of alcohol; she'd spent the rest of that night downing milk in an attempt to get it out of her mouth; after that, she'd tried smoking, but the smoke made her sneeze and cough, so she'd had to put a stop to that.
After that, she'd tried going out clubbing, but found that claustrophobia had sent her to her knees, gasping, much to her embarrassment; there were far too many people in far too small a place. The dark and the pulsing neon lights hadn't made it any better, nor had the pounding bass forcing its way into her skull, squeezing in between her fingers as she clapped her hands over her ears and ground her teeth, trying to make it all stop.
And after that, she'd sort of given up on everyday adventures and just started walking around the city, with absolutely no destination or purpose in mind. Morgan would just walk until she got tired and felt like going to bed, at which point she'd make her way back to the poor side of town, head up the stairs in the old apartment building, say good night to the Watch-Cat who always seemed to be sitting on a ratty old wicker chair in front of the landlady's door, and then go into her own apartment and pass out curled up in a pile of pillows. It wasn't much, but it was her life, no matter how much she had grown to dislike it. It was safe, secure, stable--it was what was expected of her, and nothing more. Disappointing and depressing. She was doing the responsible, adult thing.
She hated it.
She had carefully considered the matter through many a night of wandering aimlessly around and around the city streets after work, and several slow afternoons when she just lay in bed staring at the crumbling ceiling, and had come to the conclusion that being an adult was a rotten thing. Being a child and being a teenager hadn't been a lot better, but responsibility really sucked. It was boring, being a good girl. Boring and rather depressing. Good girls didn't have any fun. Such was her nature, though, and try as she might to get away from it, she hadn't succeeded.
Morgan crossed at the light and turned left, walking down a sidewalk full of cheery reveling folk. A tall woman with a party hat raised an empty champagne-glass to her, grinning merrily, and slurred a happy something-or-other to Morgan. She wondered what tonight was and why they were celebrating. It was just an empty, quiet Indian-summer night. There were partiers and lovers and madmen milling all about, but it was a quiet night.
A tall, thin man in a leather jacket brushed past her, and a chill suddenly stole over her; she looked around, broken out of her reverie for a moment, and it drew her to a pause in the middle of the sidewalk. Like someone walked over her grave... Of course that thought was disturbing. Another shiver slipped down her spine. The air felt alive and electric, as though a storm were brewing right there over the sidewalk; it made her skin prickle with a nervous excitement. She cast her gray-green eyes about madly, as if looking for a little black rain cloud hanging above her head, and adjusted her glasses, which seemed to have fogged up of their own accord, despite the dry desert air. Curiouser and curiouser… Morgan took off her glasses and wiped them dry and clear with the corner of her T-shirt, then put them back on and blinked; the air did not feel any less thick or electric. If anything, the feeling had intensified. Another shuddering chill ran through her, and she looked straight up at the sky. Somehow, the heavens held the answer; she didn't know how or why she had reached this conclusion, which disturbed her, after a moment's reflection. It had simply come into her mind, as a simple fact, the way everyone knows that summer follows spring.
A silvery shooting star tore through the smog-choked, over-bright night sky. Startled and suddenly very uneasy, for reasons she couldn't quite understand herself, Morgan wondered if she should look down. If she should just keep walking onward and ignore any answer that heaven, earth, hell, wherever, whoever might have given her. Perhaps the answer to the question, the reason for the electric night, was not something that was meant for her. And even if it was meant for her, did she really want to know it? A fragment of verse occurred to her, from some storybook she'd read as a child--or wonder till it drives you mad, what would've followed you if you had. Tolkien? Or Lewis, maybe? She took a step forward and sighed to herself.
Well, she thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Morgan started walking again, out towards the direction in which the shooting star had gone, out towards the southern edge of the town. Something was waiting for her there. She didn't know what it was, and had a distinct feeling that it wasn't going to be entirely pleasant or cheering when she found it.
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There is no worse thing than spiders in your head.
He had found this out the hard way. It itched horribly, and it wasn't even an itch you could get to. Even if you tore out every rich-brown lock of your hair, carefully, strand by strand. Even if you got right down to the skin and dug your ragged brown nails into it and scratched, putting all of your strength and fury into trying to scratch that itch, you still couldn't get to it. It just kept itching.
And it was noisy, too. The crawling of the spiders was awful loud. He wished they were quiet, like normal spiders on nature shows, like the Discovery channel used to have. He used to watch the Discovery channel; he liked the shows about sharks. Sharks were pretty cool, and he always liked watching those crazy motherfuckers who'd go down and try to pet the sharks. He'd laughed at them with Danny and Rob. They'd bring some booze--cheap shit, but the good shit--and the cards for poker, and they would play a few games and watch Shark Week. They'd drink every time some idiot did something that would get the shark snapping at them, and be delightfully buzzed in no time at all. And he'd thought spiders were pretty cool, too, until they'd moved into his head. On the nature shows, they were quiet and just went about living their lives, not really bothering anyone. But these things! They built their hundreds of tiny webs in a cacophony of sharp steel strands, the unbearably loud scraping against the inside of his skull, and the endless crunching and clicking of thousands of tiny fangs.
Danny and Rob hadn't been over in an awful long time. He sort of wanted to see them and play poker again, or maybe smoke 'em at Monopoly; he was the only one in his wide circle of friends with the patience for Monopoly. And he always got Park Place and Boardwalk; he was good at the game, good at hustling deals like that. But it had been a long time since he'd felt like dragging himself out of bed. Not that he would have been able to anyway. Still, he just didn't feel like moving very much. It might've aggravated his tenants, and that would have made it itch even worse, because it would have wrecked their stupid webs. Would have made the noises louder. So he'd laid on his belly in his bed for weeks, staring at the headboard with wide, sleepless, staring eyes. He didn't dare to close his eyes, either. It might have bothered his tenants if he slept. He knew that he snored and that he tossed and turned. His last girlfriend had told him as much. Sort of missed her. She'd been a rose, she had, but she'd left him, and he couldn't quite remember why anymore, no more than he remembered why there were spiders nesting in his skull right now, or when it had started.
He scratched his head again, and howled, loud and piteously, as his ragged nails tore open several red gashes. Had itched so much that he'd dug fine little furrows down to the bone, and they never quite closed. Every time he dragged the fingernails across, trying to get to the maddening itch in his brain, he would tear open an old one and it would bleed afresh. Then the noise would become even louder, as if they were scolding him for ruining their work.
Hot tears slid down his dry face; he dug his nails into the rough sheets of his bed instead and let his head bleed. At least the itching had receded a little bit, for even just a second, before starting back up again amidst a racket of angry fang-clicking and whining steel strings. He groaned quietly and buried his head into the pillow. One ice-blue eye twitched as he felt dozens of tiny, spindly legs gingerly creeping over the back of one of his eyes.
He felt a tiny, tight thread wind around the optic nerve directly behind his eyeball, and his eyelid twitched again. Next would come the nightmares. They seemed to do this in cycles. First they'd crawl around weaving their webs. He'd scratch and tear open old wounds, shaking the spiders around. Then they'd continue weaving their webs, and they'd be careful to weave them around his eyes, too, so that he saw everything they were doing. He would see the spiders crawling through his skull, weaving intricate silver webs in the empty space. He would see flashes of Things. Pink fungoid things with curious, grabbing hands with dozens of long, oily fingers. Great green octopoid thing with grabbing, slurping tentacles in place of teeth, and it would grin at him, then gurgle nastily at him, as if to say, "hello!"
He'd see the flashes of those Things for weeks; they'd get clearer and closer the longer the spiders spun, and then he couldn't take it anymore, and he'd have to itch. They'd disappear from his mind for a short time, then it would just start up the whole vicious cycle again.
There's no escaping spiders in your head.
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Morgan finally stopped outside of a small gas station. It had once been a gas station, anyway; it was closed, decrepit and crumbling now, abandoned for years. She had walked a very long time, and her feet were actually tired; she felt a mild sense of accomplishment in this. While she would walk for a few hours almost every night, she never managed to feel all that tired--really, she'd usually feel more restless, awake, and nervous than anything else. It was the early morning now, closer to dawn (though, with the lights and the smog and the way that the sky above the city usually was, who could really tell?) and even the wildest of the party animals had turned in for the night. The streets were eerily quiet, but something about the air hummed with energy and excitement. She looked around, then turned to her left and looked down at the ground, scanning it carefully--for what, she still wasn't sure… until she saw it.
A small crystalline orb, about the size of her thumb--perfectly round and perfectly clear, though, somehow, it had become somewhat embedded in the dirty, broken pavement of the abandoned gas station's parking lot, though the surface didn't look at all scratched or cracked. The shooting star? Seemed just about right. Morgan knelt before it and brushed it with her fingers hesitantly.
The crystal spoke to her--whispered tantalizingly and promisingly of a high and righteous Destiny, of power and of glory, of the tales of mighty stars and of how they came to be set in the sky. It promised a place in the heavens for the remembrance of all eternity; it swore her a story of her own; it avowed adventures and excitement. It was silent, as any lump of stone would be, but its presence spoke of the stars, and it spoke volumes.
It came out of the pavement easily. She picked it up and squeezed it in her hand. Energy--power--coursed through her body when she did; it felt warm and exciting, like soft fire in her heart. She stood up and was suddenly struck dizzy; she stumbled a bit, clutching the little orb tightly in her fist, and grabbed at empty air for something to hold onto to keep herself standing. That was dumb. Why had she grabbed at a weird little thing from space, embedded in broken, oil-caked pavement--'cos it was shiny? She scolded herself deliriously--what are you, Morgan, a magpie? Where's your common sense, the good-girl's responsibility?--and stumbled again, trying to take a step forward. The little rock was probably covered with all kinds of alien germs and radiation and other undesirable nastiness. Probably poisoned her right off, just by touching it--who knew what kind of germs a space-crystal would have?
She felt a pair of arms wrap around her and steady her carefully. Her vision was still swimming, and distantly, she heard a voice, the words muddled and unclear. It was a deep voice. A man? What…? Absently, she swung at the figure, but he caught her wrist, knocking the little crystal orb out of her hand. It clattered to the pavement, though it didn't appear to get scuffed or cracked in any way. The world righted itself almost immediately, the dizziness gone as swiftly as it had come. She shook her head a little, still very confused. The person loosened his grip, but kept a hand on her shoulder to make sure she was all right. Morgan turned slightly to look at the person. Good-looking fellow; tall and somewhat muscular, with dark hair, sharp green eyes, a fair bit of scruff about his chin, and a somewhat concerned look on his face.
"You all right there, girly?" he asked. His voice was deep, authoritative, and carried some kind of New Englander's accent. Bostonian, perhaps. It was unusual to hear out in this part of the country, so it stuck out.
"Um. I think," she said uncertainly, face turning pink.
"Not hurt, are ya?" She shook her head no; he leaned a little closer to her, giving her a quick once-over. No bruises or cuts or bumps visible on her pudgy body; her clothes didn't seem to be wrinkled or torn or in any way out of order; her russet-brown hair was neatly combed and tied into girlish pigtails. Her glasses were perched neatly on the bridge of her nose, and her gray eyes held a bit of confusion, but looked otherwise fine. Not a freckle out of place, it seemed. Shrugging, the man knelt to pick up the little crystal, dusted it off with the edge of his blue T-shirt, and examined it for a moment. It glittered under the orange, flickering light of the nearby dying streetlamp. Just a little bauble. "Do you have any known illnesses, allergies, shit like that?" She fidgeted nervously, shaking her head no again, but didn't respond verbally, so he merely shrugged again. "Hm. This yours?" He held it out to her; she hesitated for a moment before opening her hand to take it again, wincing in dread. This time, though, nothing happened--no dizzy spells, no stone whispers. Yet somehow, it seemed to sparkle knowingly, almost menacingly, although the thought of anything sparkling menacingly almost made her laugh for its absurdity. Morgan pocketed it. "What happened here?" he asked as he reached into his coat pocket and produced a packet of cigarettes, carefully selected one, and poked it into the corner of his thin lips. A tiny nervous laugh escaped the girl. How on earth would she explain this to anyone? Morgan chewed her index fingernail; it was her nervous habit. The man struck a match against his thumbnail and lit his cigarette, taking a puff on it.
"Er," she said, unable to come up with anything that wouldn't make her sound absolutely mad. She shuffled a foot on the pavement shyly.
"Go on," he encouraged. Regular first-aid procedure, finding out exactly what had happened to the patient. He wanted to make sure that the girl hadn't been struck in the head or ingested anything unhealthy. Just doing his job, even if he was off the clock. Protect and serve and all that.
From not too far away, there came an earsplitting howl of pain. A shudder shook her body. A cry of body-rending pain… of birth…? It was a truly awful sound, and she found it mightily disturbing that any creature, human or animal, could have made that noise; it was the kind of scream that one would have expected to hear coming out of a portal to Hell, not from some earthly person, even in the greatest of pains. The man heard it, too, and that seemed to distract him from questioning Morgan any further. He pitched the cigarette onto the pavement, crushed it out with the toe of his shoe, and ran in the direction of the screaming. There was another pained howl, and then a hellish screech that most definitely wasn't man or beast; it was a far louder, and a thousand times more terrible than any noise she could think of anybody making.
Morgan took a couple of steps forward, then started to jog toward the sounds, after the man in the blue T-shirt.
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The man howled, scratching his jagged, ragged nails at his eyes. He was sick of it all. Couldn't stand it anymore. One of the eyes had torn open at the brush and catch of one of those ragged, stumpy claws that his fingernails had become after months of neglect. It bled and dripped on the carpet as he stumbled and staggered, screaming, down the hall, towards the door.
Had to get out. Had to try and shake the spiders out. He'd had it and that was that. He had clawed at his head wildly, scraping the wounds open yet again, and the hot blood ran down into his eyes, dripped onto the old, creaky floorboards of the house as he staggered towards the door, slamming against the wall and leaving a trail of gore as he left. He couldn't take the visions anymore. Couldn't take the green octopoid Thing waggling its tentacled mouth at him and the nasty gurgling speech. Couldn't take the coiled tiny webs around his optic nerves or the spiders crawling through his skull and strolling purposefully over his eyeballs. Wanted them out.
He scratched at his eyes, his ragged nails catching on the other eyelid and pulling it down, gashing it open. Blood dripped into his ice-blue eyes, blinding him. Had to break the webs apart. The scuttling, the clicking, the sound of straining strands of metal, were up to a din now. Had to get them out.
The man lumbered out of the front door blindly, tumbled down the stone stairs, and onto the sidewalk. The tiny spiders clicked their mandibles angrily at him; he could hear it echoing loudly in his head. Still not out. His torn eyes pulsed lightly, wriggling loosely in their sockets. One fell lamely and brushed wetly against his cheek. He screamed again, but this wasn't so much in pain as joy, as he felt one of the spiders crawl out of the empty hole; the little spindly legs marching down his face still made his skin crawl, but at last, they were leaving!
Morgan gagged and covered her mouth with her hand as she saw the person who was screaming. It was just a man. Looked like a man, anyway… Everywhere you looked, his head was bleeding profusely. A popped eye made distressing squelching noises as it swung across his cheek, and the other one seemed to be rather close to losing its proper place in its eye socket, as well. He was down on his knees at the bottom of some stairs, his ragged nails still clawing madly at his head. Spiders, tiny and shining, were starting to troop out of his open eyes. He grinned madly, a man who had long since gone careening off of the edge of reason and rationality.
The tiny silvery spiders scuttled across the dark pavement, glimmering beautifully in the sickly orange light of the streetlamps. The man in the blue T-shirt stomped on one--it crunched and squealed underneath his heavy black boots--and he picked it up by a long, thin leg. It cut the callused flesh of his fingers, and he dropped it, hissing and sucking on the cut. Vicious little fucker. He stomped on some more out of irritation. Ever more were crawling out of the other unfortunate man's head, forming a marching gray carpet of clicking mandibles and squealing shrieks. Things were reflected in the silvery web that they wove as they walked (he wondered how), and he gagged at the visions in the web. He clapped a hand over his mouth and choked back the rising bile of revulsion. The things. The things from his nightmare. Slimy, shiny, smooth mirror-people grinned out at him from the fluttering web; the thickly-woven web seemed to rise and crest, and black, perfectly round, perfectly smooth heads started to rise from the mirrored, silvery threads… He ground his teeth together and started furiously stomping on the spiders, fully aware of how perfectly goddamn goofy he probably looked, but he didn't fuckin' care anymore. He just wanted them dead. He didn't want to see those things ever again. Didn't want them to crawl out of an empty place and jump on him and touch him. Didn't want to feel their creepy-crawly rubber skin. Not in his nightmares, not in his waking life, not in his city. Never.
The loud crunching of the little shining spiders broke Morgan from her horror. Instinctively, she reached into her pocket and grabbed at the crystal, as if scrabbling for comfort. Power. She wanted to feel the power, the soft fire that she'd felt in her heart right before the dizzy spell struck her. She gripped it tightly and brought it out of her pocket, backing away from the crawling spiders. They were weaving a web of nightmares over the street as they marched ever onward, out into the night, out of the poor man's head. A few of them crunched underneath her tennis shoes as she did. She squeezed the crystal in her fist tightly and looked over at the man in the blue T-shirt, who was furiously stamping on as many of the creatures as he could. Something else was rising from the webs--an enormous black creature, completely glass-smooth, save for two mouths full of jagged, dagger-like teeth. It grinned stupidly as it rose and shook free of the strands of silver, reached out its long black arms, and pulled itself all of the way out. The pavement cracked underneath its weight; its stupid grin widened and saliva dripped from one corner of it, hitting the pavement with a hiss.
In one fluid motion, the man in the blue T-shirt instinctively grabbed for the gun hanging from his belt, gripping it tight and firing at the black creature. The crack of the gunshots seemed to startle it a bit--at the very least, it wiped the stupid grin off of the creature's un-face, which was only the very smallest comfort--but the bullets seemed to just stick in its rubbery skin. They didn't penetrate it, and it didn't bleed from being struck by a volley of bullets from a SIG P226. They just stuck there.
She shuddered violently upon looking at the thing that had pulled itself out of the web of nightmares. It didn't seem to really have a back, nor a front. There were two mouths on the back of its head as well, its obsidian body otherwise completely smooth. The surface reflected her terrified face, and the reflection shuddered when she shuddered. Disgusting…
She squeezed the crystal tightly in her fist.
He reloaded the gun, his hands shaking, and fired at the creature again. If nothing else, he found it comforting to pump the goddamn thing full of lead. The gunfire seemed to startle it, kept it back from him, and that was comforting, too, though he felt rather guilty that it seemed to be backing towards the young lady, who had followed him over to investigate the screaming and foul inhuman noises that had followed it. He circled around the creature and stepped in front of her, the gun still at the ready. Protect and serve. Even if he was off the clock, he still had a job to do, an oath he'd taken, and all that sorta shit. He shot off another round at the creature. Still, it didn't seem to be taking any real damage from the shots.
"Stay behind me, girly," the man ordered. She nodded. The two slowly backed away from the bizarre creature, its dumb grins spread on all of its mouth once again. It flattened against the street, leaving the spent shells on the pavement, and slithered around, a flat, ultra-black shadow circling around behind the girl. She yelped as it brushed one long claw against her face lovingly--it was black and rubbery, yet she could feel its skin crawling, as if it was filled with thousands of tiny insects marching through its veins (did it even have veins? she wondered deliriously). It said something, but she wasn't sure what; it was some long-dead language, dead for aeons when the stars were still young. It pressed one claw against the top of her head, squeezing it. The man reloaded his gun a third time and tried to find an opening to shoot at; he didn't want to hit the girly, of course, but… His hand trembled a bit, and the gun rattled slightly as it did. The nightmare of its crawling flesh occurred to him again, and the man shuddered violently.
The creature gurgled nastily as it softly squeezed Morgan's head. There was something tasty in there; it smelled sweet and enticing. A wonderful treat, probably. Silvery strands of dream-stuff. It bared its awful lipless mouths in a greedy smile. Tasty things.
She wailed hoarsely and swung at it blindly. Her elbow dug into some firm thing (a skull?) buried in its blank non-face. It snarled loudly and let her go; she landed on the ground, scraping her hands and her cheek against the pavement and some dead metal spiders. The man with the gun made motions to her with one hand--stay down!--and she crouched as he fired a few more rounds into the thing, pushing it back away from her. Morgan scuttled clumsily across the ground, trying to avoid the thing's notice, but to no avail; it grabbed her in a massive creeping hand and grinned awfully, but briefly--then it started to frown and howl, and it was a horrible noise. Imagine nails on a chalkboard, imagine the futile squealing of dying animals, imagine the shriek of flying missiles, imagine a crack of thunder to shake the ground itself, imagine rasping metal, imagine breaking glass. It was louder and a thousand times more horrible.
It had seen things. Things that were alien and unfamiliar. Boxes in which they trapped thunder and lightning; they would strike the boxes, and the bony creatures in dangling rags would dance among the rolling thunder and the flashing lightning. A dark creature with a burning smile, embedded in the earth, dancing amidst fire and thunder. Bright white sand and the deafening pound of gray surf. Flat teeth viciously crushing and tearing the flesh of other creatures. A cacophony of screaming metal strings, and the sigh of a young fleshy creature. A burning star bathing the world in heat and light. Too bright. Too hot.
It didn't like what it saw at all. Its crawling skin rose and stretched with gooseflesh the size of human hands.
It dropped Morgan to the ground, and she got to her feet, blowing on her hands and trying to brush dirt off of them; the pavement and the corpses of tiny metal spiders had scuffed them up pretty well. The man with the gun had run out of ammo, and was now frantically pawing around the gunbelt for something else to throw at the creature. Pepper spray, or a billy club, something!
The creature bayed atrociously and piteously, in a voice to shake the moon, and the spiders marched onward. Another black shape rose from the silvery web; this one was larger, but looked otherwise exactly the same. The ground shook as it prowled towards the two humans; it roared, but this roar had far more power in it; something about it came off as being ten times as vicious and angry. Morgan's lips twitched, forming silent words. She didn't like this. Not at all. She wished she hadn't followed the man in the blue shirt. Seeing that poor fellow with the gouged-out eyes was bad enough, but this was worse. The shimmering, crawling skin touching her face, the awful howling and roaring, the burning, sulfur-scented air, the ever-present clicking of the tiny metal spider-legs… She shuddered. The bigger of the creatures reached towards her, and she jumped away just in time; it cut a few strands of her brown hair. She saw them float lazily to the ground, glinting in the dimming streetlamp's light, and get lost in the increasingly thick rug of webbing that the spiders were still weaving, purposeful and ever the hard workers. Other, even more terrible shapes moved around in the silver mess.
She had seen the world beyond that web, just a tiny flash, when the black shape touched her. She wouldn't have been able to recall it later, except that she remembered that it was a horrible, alien place, somewhere that she didn't want to see again.
The young lady frowned and ground her teeth as it swung out at her again, snapping six sets of thousands of teeth each. She didn't want those things to touch her again. Didn't want to feel the crawling rubbery flesh. She would have to scream herself into abject, blind madness if it touched her again; that would be the only way to cope with it, the only way to forget the touch, to forget the hazy dark reflections of her face in their smooth, shiny skin. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Morgan didn't like her life very much, but she did quite like being able to think. Think and dream and remember. She didn't want to lose that. She didn't have anything else but thoughts and daydreams and memories, and she wanted to keep those, thank you very much. She liked to sleep peacefully and dream of bright seas and flying ships and star-people; she liked to walk across the town on Indian-summer nights and think of visiting the Tower of London or hiking through Incan ruins; liked to read detective novels and try and guess the solutions before reaching the last chapter; liked to listen to German heavy metal and attempt to translate the lyrics in her head with the two years of German class she'd taken in high school. Losing the noise that constantly ran through her mind, the soft hissing of the speed of thoughts, terrified her. She didn't want a silent wasteland in her mind. She wanted to be able to think.
Of course, she hadn't really thought all of this. It was more of a feeling, really; her only clearly-articulated thought had been something more along the lines of a panicked mantra of, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO…
Those words that she had subconsciously started mouthing to herself. What were they…? The soft fire that had entered her heart when she touched the round little crystal was suddenly set ablaze. She wanted to keep her self. She wanted to keep dreaming; she wanted those things to go away and leave her mind alone.
"E… Epsilon Power… M… Make UP!" she cried, opening her hand. The crystal blazed with an unnatural white light, bathing Morgan. The dark creatures howled again, in mingled fear and anger, and leapt at her. The man finally decided to give it a shot; he grabbed the can of pepper spray in his belt and gave them a shot in the place where faces should have been. They recoiled slightly from it, clawing at their un-faces with long knife-like claws, and he gave them a second shot of it before briefly turning his head to look at the girl. Could this night get any fuckin' weirder? he wondered deliriously.
Apparently, it could. The light faded, and the girly was dressed in something completely different--it looked like a damn Halloween costume, as opposed to the practical clothing she'd been wearing before. It appeared to be a white leotard with a sailor's collar, white opera-gloves, a short white skirt, white socks, and white tennis shoes. The only splash of color in the entire outfit was a pale yellow ribbon tied into a bow over her chest and two stripes of the same color on the sailor-collar. She didn't look like she had any more clue than he did as to what the fuck was going on. Which was just fantastic.
The creatures snarled loudly and lunged for her; she put her arms up defensively, and they glanced off of a solid wall of force. It was clearly visible for just a second, glimmering gold in the dawn's pale and sickly light. Regrettably, it only seemed to make the creatures angrier. She looked from side to side, panicking slightly. She didn't know what to do. In comic books and TV shows, superheroes always knew what to do immediately, but she didn't feel any mystic bolt of wisdom strike her, nor the mighty martial-arts prowess that all heroes seemed to have. Worth a try anyway, wasn't it? She attempted a roundhouse kick at the smaller of the monsters just to check it out, but wound up missing it completely and falling on her ass. Even amidst the madness, the man had to work to suppress a laugh. It was a funny thing to see, was all. Besides which, if he didn't laugh, he'd have to start screaming, because this was just fuckin' madness, it was. He didn't like screaming much. The girl rolled out of the way when the smaller creature swung its heavy knife-like claws at her. How was she going to do this? She'd never been in so much as a pigtail-pulling spat in her entire life. How was she going to get rid of these two enraged things? They were several times her size, and didn't respond at all to gunshots. They'd responded a little bit to the pepper spray that the man had sprayed in the blank expanse of their heads, but that was it so far… She ducked another swing and tripped into the man, who was futilely trying to find something to combat the creatures with. In the same boat, weren't they?
Morgan tried to think of something. Magic was all that came to her mind. The bigger of the creatures roared again; its breathing was heavy and gurgling. It drooled acidic saliva onto the pavement, and it pooled, smoking viciously, like a witch's potion. MAGIC. She examined the word in her mind, circling it carefully, appraising it, and suddenly grasped it. She had magic… she could do anything she wanted. She could fight back.
She felt a tendril whip past her face, within whispering distance, and her wondrous, rational thoughts regarding magic stopped in their tracks. Instead, they were replaced with rather more disjointed, defensive thoughts.She squeezed her hands into fists again, then held a hand out to her side, wishing for a weapon, for power, for something... Wishing for something to blow those disgusting things away--any-- The larger of the creatures was bearing down on her now, salivating and grinning threateningly. Something metal and heavy, but comforting to the touch, formed in her hands… A microgun; a Gatling about the size of the young lady herself, though she didn't seem to have trouble at all with lifting it, as if it were light as a feather. She lifted it, stumbled back a couple of steps, and fired it as the bigger creature just as it snapped its jaws at her. Round after round of long, pointed, peculiarly bright bullets screamed out of the gun, the chain whipping about in the air as it was emptied; the bullets tore at the creature's skin and the thick bone of its skull, and the top knob of its spine, splattering it onto the desert hardpan at the other side of the empty street. The microgun dropped slightly, and some more bullets tore through its shadowy, oozing chest; what was left of the creature dropped on the pavement, twitching slightly, and then was still. She shivered, high on the adrenaline, and turned to the smaller one, which was crawling around behind its dispatched sibling, mewling and wailing horribly. It brushed its great, quivering head against the smoking remains of the other creature and snarled, springing at Morgan.
An arc of violet lightning soundlessly split the air, and the other creature fell to the ground as well; it made a nasty, yet bizarrely comical "splat!" noise when it landed; very shortly afterward, it started to crumble and turn to dust, blowing away in the desert wind--the same with the spiders. She looked around wildly, clutching the barrel of the magical microgun to herself. Another young lady stood on the edge of a building, up above Morgan and the man in the blue T-shirt; she wore a similar sailor uniform, save that her ribbon was a pale violet color, and she wore stiletto-heeled boots instead of tennis shoes. There was another person there, as well, a person in a dark leather jacket, with a thick mop of dark, curly hair. He patted the other sailor-uniformed woman on the head, stroking her dirty-blond hair.
"Good job, Sigma," he said. He had a rich, warm voice, but Morgan found herself unnerved at the sound. The other woman smiled, in a creepily vacant manner, and allowed herself to be patted on the head.
"Um. Thank you very much for your help," Morgan called to the other people uncertainly.
"No problem!" the fellow in the leather jacket said cheerily, waving one large hand. He hopped off of the edge of the building, as if he were just hopping off of a curb, and Morgan gasped--but he landed on his feet neatly. "Ahh--I see one of our other players has arrived!" He looked her up and down closely. "Sailor Epsilon, I believe?"
"My name is Morgan," she said uncertainly.
"Hmm." He leaned closer to her, squinting his eyes at her chest. She fidgeted and flinched away with an indignant huff. How rude! "Oh, come off it. I wasn't bein' rude." The other sailor-suited woman appeared in a puff of soft-violet smoke, looking cross, but remaining silent. "But I believe you're Sailor Epsilon. Yes. This is Sailor Sigma." He put an arm around the other woman. "And we're sure to be seeing lots more of each other. Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name." A grin spread across his face; it wanted to be a warm grin, but skewed malicious instead. "Go on, let's all shake hands. Be polite."
Morgan, confused, held up her hand for it. The man in the leather jacket shook--he had a firm grip--but the other woman merely looked at her strangely. He tutted at her reprovingly.
"Don't be that way, Sigma," he scolded gently. "It's the classy thing to do."
"Yes, sir," she replied, offering her hand. She shook with Morgan, weakly, looking mildly suspicious.
"There's a girl." The curly-haired man patted her on the head, and she smiled shyly. "And now, Miss--Morgan, was it?--Sig and I have business to attend to elsewhere, so if you'll excuse us…" He nodded at Sailor Sigma, who waved her hand. Both of them vanished in a puff of soft-violet smoke, leaving a baffled Morgan--Sailor Epsilon?--and the man in the blue T-shirt, who just scoffed and shook his head. Apparently, the world had gone and decided to suddenly stop making any sense whatsoever. Dizzy girlies in pretty sailor outfits, sharp-legged metal spiders, the things of nightmares, magical sparkly microguns, purple magic spells, folks jumpin' off of buildings…
He threw his hands up in the air and muttered, "I officially have no idea what the flyin' fuck is going on here anymore." The thought disturbed him. It was his city, and he didn't like the notion of not knowing what was going on, of not being in control of the chaos--at the very least, he liked his authority and the rule of the law to be recognized. He'd have to stay and question the remaining girly further. "What was all that about, huh?" he asked her gruffly. "And have you got a permit for that?" He motioned at the handheld Gatling before going into his pocket for his cigarettes again, pausing only to hold the packet out to her. She shook her head no.
"I--I don't really know, either," she admitted, leaning against the microgun and trying to smile.
"Hmph! Ain't that about a bitch," he grumbled, taking a drag of the freshly-lit cigarette and blowing a smoke-ring into the air. "So you don't know anything. Not how those… things came out, not how you managed to summon a--a fuckin' magic gun, not how you poofed into that frilly little skirt?" She shook her head.
"Am I in trouble?" she asked nervously. For a few moments, the man didn't say anything, weaving his quickly-burning cig through his fingers thoughtfully, staring at the ragged body of the unfortunate man, the one that the spiders had crawled out of. He sighed. How would he report this, explain it to his superiors? Well, he could report it as a commonplace murder, but there would be lots of things to explain that couldn't be explained correctly without sounding like a goddamn nutcase.
"I suppose not. They'd cart me off to the nut hut if I started ravin' about magical sailor girls, nightmare spiders, n' shit. I like my job too much to take that risk. But I warn you, girly…" His green eyes glittered, and his voice was deep and serious. "Don't fuck it up. I'll remember you, and I hope we can get along. You seem like a nice enough girl. But I won't hesitate to take you down if you start gettin' up to shenanigans--breaking laws and harmin' the citizenry."
"Of course not, sir," she agreed. "I wouldn't want to run afoul of the law."
"Good." He kicked a pile of dust that had once been a mighty crawling darkness, then tossed his finished cigarette into it and stomped it out. What a weird night. A few hours ago, he'd felt like never sleeping again as long as he lived, but now that was all he wanted to do. Sleep, and forget. Of course, he knew, very deep down, that he wouldn't be able to forget, not as long as he lived, and maybe even after that. But dammit, he could try, couldn't he? "I'm Officer Ian Moffat, by the way. In case you need to call me." He took out his cigarette pack, but tore the paper off of the top of it and scribbled his telephone number on it with a pen. "You said your name was Morgan, right?" She nodded.
"Morgan MacBride."
"That other guy called you Sailor Epsilon."
"Yes, he did… I'm afraid I'm not sure what he meant by it, though." This was all awfully confusing. She wondered if Superman had felt this way when he found out he could throw cars around like tennis balls and soar into the stratosphere; she wondered if he'd felt confused and awkward, or if he'd felt powerful and free. Honestly, Morgan felt a bit of both. On the one hand… she was special now. She was Sailor Epsilon (though perhaps she'd change the name, as it sounded silly); she had magic, she had power; the thought occurred to her that she could be a hero now. She could have adventures this way. But on the other hand, the leotard didn't flatter her pudgy body much, she didn't much like the idea of being on the law's bad side, and she hadn't much liked seeing those horrid
(nightgaunts)
things. Officer Moffat shrugged.
"My guess'd be a classification system of some kind. What did he call the other girly? 'Sigma,' was that it?" She thought a moment, and nodded. "Hmph. I'll have to keep an eye out for them, too." He kicked at the dust again. "What are you gonna do now?"
"Um. I don't know." She smiled shyly. "Try to figure out how to change out of this outfit, I guess. It's kind of chilly." He nodded.
"Good for you. I'm going to head home and discuss this matter with Dr Jack Daniels. You have a good night and stay out of trouble, girly. Remember what I said."
With that, Officer Moffat turned and left, disappearing from sight when he turned the corner at the end of the block. Morgan sighed and fiddled with the hem of her skirt. She didn't really want to walk all the way back across town in this sort of immodest outfit. People would stare! Not only at the short, frilly skirt and clinging leotard, but at the gun in her hands. It didn't seem to want to vanish. Morgan wondered again if Superman had had this problem, but then it occurred to her that his mother had made his superhero outfit, and his outfit was really cool, despite having red undies on the outside of it. Not to mention that Superman and Supergirl weren't pudgy like she was. Still… she could at least try to be super. No escaping it now, she supposed, standing there with a magical gun amidst the swirling, vanishing nightgaunt-dust. She had been given a chance at greatness, and it had to be taken, for she would never receive one again; indeed, she'd never gotten one before in her life, so it was probably best to seize onto it while she had it in front of her. She could be something more than just ordinary for once… yes. Yes, it was for the best.