Blood 1.2

I didn't know where I was running to. My only companions were silence and the slow ragged breaths making their way out of my mouth. It wasn't just pain anymore. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to simply exist. It felt like I should be keeling over and crying, but for some reason, I soldiered on.

I had long left the warehouse and the assortment of other small buildings behind. I didn't know how long I had been moving, but the almost unbearable sun from before was slowly starting to set. I was jogging along the sidewalk of some abandoned street corner. I think it was a neighborhood or a suburb of some kind. There were many similar houses and flats with almost all of them having small concrete fences. To me, it looked nothing other than odd. Not that anything about my day so far hadn't been.

It was a miracle that I hadn't run into anybody else. The town seemed almost dead. It was quiet and uncomfortable. I was eerily alone.

I slowed my pace. My footsteps quietly echoed around the neighborhood, bouncing off the construction. I had to find somewhere to hide. To get away. To rest. From there, I could figure out something.

"Damn it all." I sighed. Gritting my teeth, I clenched both my hands into a fist. I winced as pain shot up my left arm.

What the? I thought. Something warm seeped through my fingers. I stopped moving, before slowly bringing my left hand up to my eyes. Opening it, I limply stared. A scar.

It looked like a series of long jagged cuts. The skin surrounding it was a dark pink. It looked intentional like someone had carved it into my skin. Whoever, or whatever, did it had wanted it to hurt. I couldn't quite make out the shape of it from the scar. It almost looked like they branded me, tearing my skin and healing it over and over again. It was bleeding, seeping out a ruby red with the thump of my heart. How didn't I notice it before? Why didn't I? I could feel it now, a dull sense of pain irradiated out from the wound. It didn't change anything, not now at least.

I grit my teeth.

It looked vaguely familiar. The lines were all jagged and raw. Too messy to make sense of from the muddy browns and reds caking my skin. I couldn't make sense of anything anymore. I had died, or at least I think I died. There are memories there, foggy but still present. It made my headache worse thinking about it. Whatever had happened to me, I wasn't dead. At least not anymore.

It was like something had simply plucked me from the scene of the accident and had thrown me into that warehouse. What happened after that? I guess only God knows. After a few faint memories of beating that thing to death came back to me I was drawing a complete blank. There was just nothing there. I couldn't understand it.

Things like this didn't just happen. A twenty-year-old doesn't get hit by a speeding semi-truck and survive. I don't have the strength to fist-fight a four-legged monster goat-woman to death and win. I certainly don't have it in me to run away from the police, foreign or not. I don't have the cool to stay calm with all these things going on at once. There was something else going on here. Something weird, downright supernatural. It was like something with god-like power had decided to play some cosmic prank on me. I wasn't amused.

Immediately, a thought came to my head.

It couldn't be the God doing this right? I know he'd done some relatively crazy stuff in the past with Jonah and the whale or the great flood, but he shouldn't have any reason to pick me of all people to make another story of. Before all this, I didn't really do much that I think the big guy would care about. I was just studying to hopefully get into a small town college and start working with computers, nothing crazy like what had happened today. Sure I didn't exactly practice all the things mia nonna told me to, but could anyone blame me? I think I'm going insane. Nothing feels like it's real.

If God did have a hand in this, he had an absurd sense of humor. Maybe, I should've listened to her a bit more. It might've helped.

I was starting to run on fumes. I had to find somewhere to stop and rest, soon. The sun was almost tipped all the way below the horizon. A dazzling array of golden colors lit up the town around me. If I wasn't haggard and fearful for my immediate future, I would've called it beautiful. The elevation had slowly been changing as I walked further and further west of where I started. It was starting to go up, almost like I was reaching the summit of a small hill. The little house lots and small flats were starting to get more sparse.

It looked like I might've been reaching the edge of the town.

For a second, I turned back to look from where I came. From the new height, I could see all the houses dotting the neighborhood I had been trekking through. Out towards the setting sun, I could spot what appeared to be a large Victorian-styled building. It glistened in the light, perfectly reflecting the glamour of the sun into my eyes off its white marble. It had large wrought iron fences surrounding it on all sides. The building stuck out like a sore thumb when compared to the rest of the town.

A college? I questioned frowning. It was a bit confusing. It looked nothing like its surroundings, all posh and shined. It was like someone had cut out a couple of mansions from some old place in London and then slapped them in the middle of the town without a care in the world.

Just a short way North of it I could spot many tall sprawling buildings, not quite as large as a skyscraper but big enough to spot from far away. It looked like a small commercial district if the shining billboards and signs were anything to go by. I still couldn't understand them at all, not that I could clearly read them from that far away anyways.

To the South was the industrial district I had fled from. It was filled with small and large warehouses, little businesses, and many more gray concrete buildings to fill in its gaps. My stomach jumped. I felt uncomfortable just looking at it.

Wincing, I turned back around. My feet moved in lockstep, slowly trudging further out.

I could see something sitting there in the distance. It was a church. It wasn't as large as the school below, but it definitely felt out of place just as much. The building even had a similar Victorian style, if a bit more run down. The broken cross sitting atop it and the dilapidated windows on its side really hit that fact home. The church was abandoned.

I grinned.

It was perfect. The old church was exactly what I needed, a place to settle down and rest for a while. With it being abandoned, there shouldn't be anyone there to bother me. I don't know if that officer from before had put out a BOLO or something similar on me after I ran, but I certainly didn't want to find out. With a little bit of hope and a lot of luck, they wouldn't find me here. Well, at least until I straightened myself out a bit.

Maybe, the place would even have running water. That would truly be a Godsend.

I quickly pulled myself over to the church, being careful to look out for anyone following me. It would be just my luck today to almost get to safety, only to be tackled to the ground by a group of cops. It was absurd. I still couldn't believe I had to worry about this. A large part of me still thought of everything that happened as nothing more than a fleeting fantasy. I was still hoping that I'd hear an alarm ring and awaken back in my own bed, scared but safe.

The Door to the church looked just like the rest of it, that being, broken and full of holes. It was large and brown, with old intricate carvings decorating its make. The door looked to be made entirely of wood, and much unlike the rest of the doors I had seen around town, tall enough for me to easily fit through.

That's odd. I thought. The buildings around town looked quite small to me as I ran around them. I didn't really get close enough to check but almost every single one seemed pretty small. It was a bit weird, but I just chalked it up to being in a foreign country.

Some things were like that, I've seen the photos of my father when he went to Thailand. You could see him standing over a crowd there a mile away. It was comical in a certain sense.

Steeling myself, I leaned up against the door. My arms found themselves pointed outward with my hands resting on the old brown wood in front of me. There were no handles. There was nothing to turn, simply to push. Slowly building up pressure, I gave it a heave. I grunted as it swung open. The door creaked and groaned, I could feel small splinters in my hands. Blood was still dripping from my left palm. Weirdly enough, it didn't hurt as bad as I thought it should. It was just a dull thrumming, thumping along with the beat of my heart. It was there. I knew it was, but it wasn't all-encompassing. The pain was just a constant reminder of my new reality.

I looked around.

The inside of the church looked to be about the same as the outside. It was full of small debris and wood. I could even see some stone statues near the back that were cracked solidly in half. There were lines of pews coming up from my left and my right leading to a lone podium at the end of the room. It was raised higher than the rest of the room by a couple of feet. I could see a few stairs by the left wall to allow someone to climb up. I could smell something old and musty. My nose crinkled.

Up above, I could see a myriad of old stained glass. It was dark and foreboding as the sun finally set, with the faces of what I'm sure were saints or angels staring down with stretched features. In the dark, it looked inhuman. Some of the glass was even broken in. From some freak storm or just general disrepair, I couldn't tell. Either way, it was creepy as hell and not at all welcoming.

"This place could definitely use a little sprucing up," I commented, slowly starting to walk about the room. I needed to see if I couldn't find the back rooms, maybe a storage area or dorm of some kind. Whoever had run the church had to have lived somewhere on site. He or she would've had some basic supplies at some point. If anything was left, I didn't know. I had to hope. I needed something to try and take care of my wounds and clean myself up. A change of clothes would also be nice. It wouldn't do to make it all the way here and keel over just a while later of infection or some other sickness. I needed to keep moving.

As I slowly made a plan in my mind, a voice called out from the dark.

"Hey tomato boy, is that look just for show or did you get lucky tonight?"

I stopped, stumbling over my own two feet. In complete shock, I turned around. There was a man standing there, smiling. He had straight platinum-blonde hair that ended just at his shoulders. He was smiling at me, his head twisted at an odd angle. He was dressed like a priest. White and black robes adorned his body with yellow trim running down them. A golden cross sat openly on his chest. I quietly looked into his eyes. They were red and filled with an almost mad gleam. A priest? Why was he here? The church was in disrepair. I didn't know what to do, what to say even. As I stared, an old memory came to my mind.

He looked familiar. Eerily familiar.

There's no way...I thought, slack-jawed. The wannabe priest stalked forward, clapping and smiling.

He looked amused, giddy even, as he let out a loud laugh. I flinched at the sound. It was grating, nasally and purposefully hard to my ears. He stood there for a moment more. I was so shocked, that I didn't even pay attention to the fact that he was speaking to me in English. He couldn't be who I thought he was. It didn't make sense. He was just some odd cosplayer. My mind was reeling, not wanting to put two and two together. If he was just some weirdo playing dress-up, why was he in this old church? Why did the blocky revolver on his hip look like it was made of actual metal?

"So, did you pop your murder cherry tonight or what?" The man joked. He was standing not even a foot away from me now. I was starting to feel decidedly uncomfortable. The priest continued without a care in the world, "Because it certainly looks like it."

I think I was going through an existential crisis. I knew who this man was. I think I even know where I'm at now. It had certainly been a long while since I'd heard his voice, but after seeing his appearance and a couple of words, it all seemed to click. I should've put two and two together once I first woke up at the warehouse. If I was paying attention it was basically kicking me in the head. I think I was just too high on the adrenaline to really notice.

Fuck me, man. All of the places...of all the people. Just how? Why? I lamented in my mind.

"I mean a little birdie told me about some kid killing one of the strays out in town a few hours ago, but I didn't believe it. But here you are, practically knocking on our front door, and now I owe Dohnaseek a drink."

I silently gulped down a glob of my own saliva.

His smile was downright disturbing now. It was pointed and sharp, all teeth. I wanted to run, but I knew I wouldn't get very far. He held out a hand to me. Happily, the priest finished, "The name's Freed Sellzen, exorcist and shitty devil killer extraordinaire. Sup."

I wanted to scream.

Freed Sellzen giggled.

AN: And that's chapter two folks! I ended up writing this second chapter literally right after posting the previous one. I don't know why, but this story is coming out so easily for me. It's like my fingers were possessed. I guess I can go on and give a little context on the story, and a story recommendation.

I think the reason I'm writing these chapters as I am is so I can actually sit down and finish a chapter in one sitting. I have a real problem with making a chapter and editing it forever if I don't do it like this. I've got a Worm fic that's been sitting around for ages at like 18K words that I can't stop re-editing and changing.

Anywho, You all should give The Mortal Son a try. It's a Warhammer fic by FreedomOfThinking that gave me some of my inspiration for this fic. Other than that though, Feel free to tell me what you think. If you notice any English/Grammar errors please let me know, I would greatly appreciate it. The next chapter will probably be up within a couple of days. Until then...

~ciao