A Life Internal - A Fable

Part 6

Damn it, Blake thought, that fucking thing moved to this floor. He wondered deep down if it somehow knew where to look for him. Hell, at this point why should he not believe that the man he had spoken to had not directed it here somehow. Slowly he backed into the doorway and let the door close most of the way. He watched the hallway through the narrowly opened door and sure enough within a few moments he saw the silhouette of the beast that had chased him on the floor below. It stopped shortly passed the door and he heard a sharp raspy sound as it sniffed the air suddenly. Blake closed his eyes tightly and held his breath as he waited for the beast to notice him. But, a moment later, it gave up and continued on its way.

Blake waited until the clicking of its bony legs was barely audible before stepping quietly out into the hallway. He referred to the map on the evacuation plan he carried from the room where he had spoken to the odd man on the phone. Examining Room 2 seemed to be through the door in front of him and part way down the hallway behind it. Better get moving before that thing comes back, he thought to himself.

As he approached the door, almost instantly he was filled with the feeling of something out of place. He hesitated before opening it, and began unconsciously backing away towards the stairwell door. His hand dropped to the gun in his pocket and drew it as he thought he saw a nearby shadow move and he spun to face it. Just as he turned he saw it again out of the corner of his eye in front of the door he had been about to open. He turned again to see but again the movement remained out of his direct line of sight. His frantic search ended quickly though at the sound of the roar of the creature from before as it spotted him.

Blake raised the gun and turned on his flashlight, waiting for the beast to come into his sight. As soon as the light caught it he opened fire. The beast let loose another roar, this time of pain as three bullets struck it squarely in the face. Its humanoid limbs raised to its face and buried it in its hands as it writhed in pain. Blake stood his ground now, with the gun still trained on the beast. The beast raised back up on its back four legs as if to charge again when William caught sight of movement again in the shadows beside him, this time it made a beeline for the wounded large beast.

The light caught something that looked human, but was crawling on all fours on the ceiling. Its completely black body made it nearly impossible to discern from the darkness of the hallway except for its hands, which looked like a normal human's hands rather than something that would be connected to a monstrosity like this.

Almost too quickly to follow it dropped from the ceiling and landed atop the beast with a snarl and grabbed its head in its hands. The beast wrenched its head to the side and bit its attacker in the wrist hard enough to sever the hand completely. The shadow creature shrieked and grabbed on harder with its remaining hand. It wrenched the beast's head back until Blake heard an audible crack from its neck as it snapped. The beast fell to floor, lifeless.

Blake stood frozen, all this had happened so fast he was completely at loss of what to do. He could only observe now as the shadowy creature lowered off of the dead beast's back and pulled one of its arms out from under it. From the stub that remained on its arm from where its hand had been bitten off, a long sword-like blade erupted with a metallic sound. It set to work cutting the hand from the dead beast. After it came free with the sound cracking bones and tendons, the creature retracted the blade into its arm and pressed the hand to the stub. Within moments the hand was moving again and grafted itself onto the shadowy creature.

With a raspy sound that almost sounded like laughter the creature looked up at William and raised its new hand to point at him. Before it leaped back to the ceiling and raced towards him. Blake panicked and ran for the door he had first tried to enter. He raced through it and slammed it shut behind him. He heard the creature hit the door and its frame shook, it was obvious that this would not hold for long.

The examining room, he wasn't far from it now, if he could just make it there, maybe he would be fine. He had barely stepped away from the door when a concept that he took for granted presented itself in a manner he did not at all expect. He heard the latch of the door click, and it opened as the creature stopped beating on the door and simply opened it.

The light in this hallway was better and now Blake could see the creature better. He could see now that the hand that it retained from its battle looked like it was from a human, but most certainly the rest of it was not. Its skin was so dark that it seemed to absorb the light as it struck it. Even its eyes, though visible, were completely black as the peered at William blankly. It stood up onto its back legs and started approaching Blake as he began backing away, now scrambling for an idea for escape. His fear had been so great that he had forgotten about the gun, as it occurred to him he raised it and pointed it at the creature. It stopped in its tracks and stared at him silently for a moment.

Suddenly it roared as if in incredible pain and fell to its knees. Its human hand gripped the wrist of his other, the one he had just removed from the dead beast. The skin covering its body seemed to bubble and contort as it fell onto the ground still roaring painfully. Four spikes erupted from its sides and as they emerged fully, Blake realized that they were like the legs of the creature that lay dead in the previous hallway. The shadow creature's body began to elongate and Blake now began to understand what was happening. He turned and ran as fast as he could towards the examination room door.

The roars in hallway behind him became deeper and more familiar and the ones he had been running from earlier. He reached the door and turned its handle. It was locked. "FUCK!" Blake screamed as he beat on the door, "OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!" He turned to around to look down the hall where he had come from just in time to see the large beast, now fully formed, swing a claw at his torso. The blow caught him with nearly its full force. He could feel the blood flow from the wound but was unable to see its severity before a second shot connected to his head. Blake sailed several feet through the air and struck the ground hard. The hallway dimmed and became fuzzy and he lost consciousness.

To be continued...

(heh...did you really think I'd end it like that :-p)