(Posted this in the wrong section the first time. Hope you enjoy it; I'm still learning.)
Tijuana Bibles
Day 1
It occurs to me I have no idea where I am, so I rise from where I had curled up the previous night and try and get my bearings. I’m in a motel room; dusty and filled with the smell of decay. I choke, trip, try and catch my fall, but all I do is manage to bang my head rather violently against the bed post. Stunned, I lay on the cold, clay ground for a while, hissing at the throbbing pain in my forehead. After a while, I resolve to get up once again. No falling this time; but the pain is still there, and this time I notice the blood. It’s everywhere. All over the floor, the bed, on my rather torn and dirtied clothes. The bodies are collapsed on the floor across the room, huddled in a corner, away from the windows. All bones and dried blood and ragged cloth. They tried to get away as the sun rose. I remember what happened. I swallow. Then I head into the bathroom. There’s no shower to speak off, only a meager silver bowl on the floor and a steel pipe jutting out of the wall with a small knob next to it. I wash my face, and then remove my ruined clothes and wash my body. I take a piss in the other silver bowl across the room behind a shower curtain pinned to the ceiling. I rinse out my mouth. I remove the least destroyed pair of pants and shirt from one of the skeletons - this one in the middle of the room; he was bold, angry, old, I remembered that; he tried to remove my head with his claws - and took a brief look at myself in the old mirror propped up against the wall. All I see is a wayward soul and a pair of tired eyes. I pick up my bible and leave without checking out, stumbling out across the arid plain. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t care.
Day 2
This time I’m in a jungle. It’s sticky, to the point I can feel the moisture when I press my blood-soaked fingers together. The air smells sweet, and it also smells of blood. Everywhere I go smells like blood. It’s nighttime, almost dawn. The clothes I’d been wearing only an hour ago are gone; I wear my enemies blood. She’s still alive; I can smell her. She threw dirt in my eyes - stunned me. I can hear her, leaping above me from tree top to tree top. Circling. She has a limp; one foot lands before the other, and I feel her cringes. She isn’t like the ones in the motel - she’s young, but strong. An Elder must’ve been her sire. Even though I’ve taken a good amount of blood from her, she’s done the same to me. I’ve got rake marks on my back and arms and chest. They sting. They always sting, their claws. But I ignore it. She leaps now, desperate; she’s running out of time, she can feel the sun starting to wake. Stupid little girl. I grab her face and force it into the ground. She’s still writhing, twitching, shaking, even after I force the dagger given to me by the local medicine man into her spine. I leave her and the dagger there; pinned to the ground. She’ll burn when the sun rises. I find a stream and wash off the blood. Then I drain some plants of the liquid inside their roots and rub it into my wounds. Doctor’s orders. I return to the village, but everyone’s gone. Only the huts remain. The skeletons are all in a pile, in the middle of the village. I wondered why they helped me hunt her. One of their own. Finally, I realize I don’t really care. I take my bible from it’s hiding place within the roots of the great tree on the edges of the village and leave, walking naked through the forest as the sun washes through the tree tops and life springs anew with the coming of morning.
Day 3
I remember why I hate cities.
I found it in the sewers. It didn’t even qualify as one of them; all melted and mutated and filthy. I wonder what drove him to come down here. He’s literally fused to the wall - he must’ve been sitting there for decades. Only one victim has been taken by this one; himself. He growls at me, hisses and roars. But I see the pain in it’s eyes; it’s eyes are the only solid thing on it’s body. I take pity on the thing, force the aglaphotis into it’s tooth-less mouth and watch it wither into nothing but dry dust. Then I leave.
Day 4
I catch a hint about a nightclub out in a desert that’s supposedly a nesting ground. I find it hard to believe; dry and wide and nowhere to hide from the sun. But I go anyway, at night. The pulsing beats and cries of joy hurt my ears. I pour the circle of holy oil only a few feet from the club itself and light the match. I don’t stay to watch them burn, but the screams reach me after a few minutes. I read from my bible and leave.
Day 5
I feel their pain before the call arrives. A weak voice pleading for help. I don’t need directions, don’t need a car. I travel on the wind, and I’m there. A small house secluded in the woods. They’re everywhere; on the roof, looking through windows, hiding in the tree tops. Something is calling them there. A single body - his chest has been torn open and hollowed out. A rifle lies to his right; fool. The front door is open, and a pair of them are conversing; clicking, twitching, deciding whether or not to go in. One has a bloodied muzzle. The other has long, platinum hair and eyes as black as night. The leaders of the pack. I’m upon them before they know it. The stake goes through the blonde-haired one first; she screams and collapses. Two more take her place, sinking their teeth into my shoulder and my neck and dragging me to the ground. The other leader disappears into the house. No. I drag the two others off me and smash their skulls together. Another one leaps from the trees and three more start the rush towards the house. I reach for the bottle stuff into my back pocket and hurl it at the four of them; they’re dust within minutes of writhing and screeching. Christ, these people live far out. I can’t feel anything other than them for miles. I glare at the remaining group; weaklings, grunts, unsure of what they should do. They’re lost without their blonde-haired, bloody-mouthed leaders. I glare, and within my glare they see their history; pulling themselves from the mudpits at the beginning of the world, my arrival into their ranks and the deaths of millions of their kind at my hands. They know, and they disappear, fleeing into the night. I enter the house.
I find him upstairs. I half expect to it be over all ready; a grizzly scene within, ripped and shredded bodies strewn across the room. But no. He simply stands there. I don’t understand at first. The woman and her children are there; cowering prey. It’s then that I realize. The woman is not a woman at all, and neither are the children. I feel the body in the yard reduce into a skeleton; not a husband or a protector - a trick. She mocks me and repeats the message I received on my phone, and then speaks to me in her real voice. I quiver. I piss. I drop my bible, and it bursts into flames. Her ‘children’ rub against her, fawning; one makes a move to feed from her naked breast, but she is hungry herself, and she tears the things apart like nothing. The other one flees into the shadows, and the blood-muzzled one is suddenly nowhere. There is only she and I. Her skin is black; she’s been burnt a thousand times. Holes and scars riddle her form; she’s been impaled and stabbed millions of times. She steps freely in the holy water dribbling from the silver bottle I dropped on the floor along with my bible; she’s been drowned in holy water, it’s been forced down her throat, injected into her body. She is the mighty queen and I am nothing.
But suddenly I am not nothing. I understand. I feel cool metal and leather, and with a shaking hand, as she makes to tear into my neck, I force the dagger into her belly. For a moment, she stares at me with her eyes of deep, surprised and suddenly helpless, and I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
I burn the house to the ground and it’s then that I discover the nests. She’d drawn me here to snap my neck and feed my to her spawn; make them stronger. For the first time I stay to watch a nest burn, see what happens when the thick cocoons burn away and the fanged feti try and drag themselves from the burning flames. I feel no sympathy.
I don’t care that my bible’s gone. I have the dagger from the medicine man, and I have my knowledge, and I have my strength.
I leave.
Tijuana Bibles
Day 1
It occurs to me I have no idea where I am, so I rise from where I had curled up the previous night and try and get my bearings. I’m in a motel room; dusty and filled with the smell of decay. I choke, trip, try and catch my fall, but all I do is manage to bang my head rather violently against the bed post. Stunned, I lay on the cold, clay ground for a while, hissing at the throbbing pain in my forehead. After a while, I resolve to get up once again. No falling this time; but the pain is still there, and this time I notice the blood. It’s everywhere. All over the floor, the bed, on my rather torn and dirtied clothes. The bodies are collapsed on the floor across the room, huddled in a corner, away from the windows. All bones and dried blood and ragged cloth. They tried to get away as the sun rose. I remember what happened. I swallow. Then I head into the bathroom. There’s no shower to speak off, only a meager silver bowl on the floor and a steel pipe jutting out of the wall with a small knob next to it. I wash my face, and then remove my ruined clothes and wash my body. I take a piss in the other silver bowl across the room behind a shower curtain pinned to the ceiling. I rinse out my mouth. I remove the least destroyed pair of pants and shirt from one of the skeletons - this one in the middle of the room; he was bold, angry, old, I remembered that; he tried to remove my head with his claws - and took a brief look at myself in the old mirror propped up against the wall. All I see is a wayward soul and a pair of tired eyes. I pick up my bible and leave without checking out, stumbling out across the arid plain. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t care.
Day 2
This time I’m in a jungle. It’s sticky, to the point I can feel the moisture when I press my blood-soaked fingers together. The air smells sweet, and it also smells of blood. Everywhere I go smells like blood. It’s nighttime, almost dawn. The clothes I’d been wearing only an hour ago are gone; I wear my enemies blood. She’s still alive; I can smell her. She threw dirt in my eyes - stunned me. I can hear her, leaping above me from tree top to tree top. Circling. She has a limp; one foot lands before the other, and I feel her cringes. She isn’t like the ones in the motel - she’s young, but strong. An Elder must’ve been her sire. Even though I’ve taken a good amount of blood from her, she’s done the same to me. I’ve got rake marks on my back and arms and chest. They sting. They always sting, their claws. But I ignore it. She leaps now, desperate; she’s running out of time, she can feel the sun starting to wake. Stupid little girl. I grab her face and force it into the ground. She’s still writhing, twitching, shaking, even after I force the dagger given to me by the local medicine man into her spine. I leave her and the dagger there; pinned to the ground. She’ll burn when the sun rises. I find a stream and wash off the blood. Then I drain some plants of the liquid inside their roots and rub it into my wounds. Doctor’s orders. I return to the village, but everyone’s gone. Only the huts remain. The skeletons are all in a pile, in the middle of the village. I wondered why they helped me hunt her. One of their own. Finally, I realize I don’t really care. I take my bible from it’s hiding place within the roots of the great tree on the edges of the village and leave, walking naked through the forest as the sun washes through the tree tops and life springs anew with the coming of morning.
Day 3
I remember why I hate cities.
I found it in the sewers. It didn’t even qualify as one of them; all melted and mutated and filthy. I wonder what drove him to come down here. He’s literally fused to the wall - he must’ve been sitting there for decades. Only one victim has been taken by this one; himself. He growls at me, hisses and roars. But I see the pain in it’s eyes; it’s eyes are the only solid thing on it’s body. I take pity on the thing, force the aglaphotis into it’s tooth-less mouth and watch it wither into nothing but dry dust. Then I leave.
Day 4
I catch a hint about a nightclub out in a desert that’s supposedly a nesting ground. I find it hard to believe; dry and wide and nowhere to hide from the sun. But I go anyway, at night. The pulsing beats and cries of joy hurt my ears. I pour the circle of holy oil only a few feet from the club itself and light the match. I don’t stay to watch them burn, but the screams reach me after a few minutes. I read from my bible and leave.
Day 5
I feel their pain before the call arrives. A weak voice pleading for help. I don’t need directions, don’t need a car. I travel on the wind, and I’m there. A small house secluded in the woods. They’re everywhere; on the roof, looking through windows, hiding in the tree tops. Something is calling them there. A single body - his chest has been torn open and hollowed out. A rifle lies to his right; fool. The front door is open, and a pair of them are conversing; clicking, twitching, deciding whether or not to go in. One has a bloodied muzzle. The other has long, platinum hair and eyes as black as night. The leaders of the pack. I’m upon them before they know it. The stake goes through the blonde-haired one first; she screams and collapses. Two more take her place, sinking their teeth into my shoulder and my neck and dragging me to the ground. The other leader disappears into the house. No. I drag the two others off me and smash their skulls together. Another one leaps from the trees and three more start the rush towards the house. I reach for the bottle stuff into my back pocket and hurl it at the four of them; they’re dust within minutes of writhing and screeching. Christ, these people live far out. I can’t feel anything other than them for miles. I glare at the remaining group; weaklings, grunts, unsure of what they should do. They’re lost without their blonde-haired, bloody-mouthed leaders. I glare, and within my glare they see their history; pulling themselves from the mudpits at the beginning of the world, my arrival into their ranks and the deaths of millions of their kind at my hands. They know, and they disappear, fleeing into the night. I enter the house.
I find him upstairs. I half expect to it be over all ready; a grizzly scene within, ripped and shredded bodies strewn across the room. But no. He simply stands there. I don’t understand at first. The woman and her children are there; cowering prey. It’s then that I realize. The woman is not a woman at all, and neither are the children. I feel the body in the yard reduce into a skeleton; not a husband or a protector - a trick. She mocks me and repeats the message I received on my phone, and then speaks to me in her real voice. I quiver. I piss. I drop my bible, and it bursts into flames. Her ‘children’ rub against her, fawning; one makes a move to feed from her naked breast, but she is hungry herself, and she tears the things apart like nothing. The other one flees into the shadows, and the blood-muzzled one is suddenly nowhere. There is only she and I. Her skin is black; she’s been burnt a thousand times. Holes and scars riddle her form; she’s been impaled and stabbed millions of times. She steps freely in the holy water dribbling from the silver bottle I dropped on the floor along with my bible; she’s been drowned in holy water, it’s been forced down her throat, injected into her body. She is the mighty queen and I am nothing.
But suddenly I am not nothing. I understand. I feel cool metal and leather, and with a shaking hand, as she makes to tear into my neck, I force the dagger into her belly. For a moment, she stares at me with her eyes of deep, surprised and suddenly helpless, and I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
I burn the house to the ground and it’s then that I discover the nests. She’d drawn me here to snap my neck and feed my to her spawn; make them stronger. For the first time I stay to watch a nest burn, see what happens when the thick cocoons burn away and the fanged feti try and drag themselves from the burning flames. I feel no sympathy.
I don’t care that my bible’s gone. I have the dagger from the medicine man, and I have my knowledge, and I have my strength.
I leave.