I was already in motion when the intercom cut off. There was no noise except my boots hitting the floor, which only added to the tension I was feeling. How many would be coming after me? I couldn’t begin to guess. And all I had was a gun I didn’t really know how to use and a knife. I needed to get out of here.
The door was unlikely, the bathroom definitely out. The window was the only option, if I could tear the curtains off in time. And only if whatever had shrieked at me earlier didn’t try to eat me.
I raced to the door. Despite it not being a way out, I could buy some time. Lock, deadbolt, then grabbing the chair from the bathroom and shoving it up against the door. Back to the bed long enough to grab the smaller suitcase. The larger one with the creature inside could stay here. I doubted I could lift it anyway.
The sound of a slamming door made me half jump as I made it to the window. More quickly joined in, and the sound of feet on floor. Heavy curtains were in my hands as I tried to pull them aside. They were nailed to every edge. Cursing I pulled out the switchblade and started cutting.
The blade buried itself in the thick curtains, and every cut felt like I was slicing through metal. The combination of tiny blade and thick fabric slowed me down. Too much. The shuddering of wood filled the air as someone rammed into the door, arguing in languages I couldn’t understand.
A hole was open, enough to reach through. Gripping both sides I pulled. It ripped easier than it took being cut. Dust blew out, right in my face. Coughing as it got into my throat and eyes I kept on ripping, widening the hole.
I ripped enough open to step through, right into a cloud of dust. My eyes burned whenever they opened, so for now I kept them shut as I felt for the latches. Even blinded and with only one hand free I found them and opened the window. Another crack behind me. There was still yelling as well. And even if I couldn’t understand what was being said, I could tell tone. They were angry.
The night air was chilly on my skin, wind blowing around me. Already damp clothes felt even colder now in the air. Eyes still burning, I blinked repeatedly, tears washing most of the grime and dust out of my eyes. I forcibly grabbed the handrail in front of me. I wasn’t ready for what was in front of me.
Wind whipped all around as I looked down, trying to see the ground. I couldn’t. My hands gripped the guardrail to the point it hurt as I was paralyzed staring down. Stretching beneath me was layer upon layers of fire escapes joined to the side of the building, racing down a wall into a fog below. There must have been easily a hundred stories.
Other buildings were around, stretching far above me. This one too, once I tore my gaze from the abyss below. Light was shining onto me, which only made it more clear there was something between them.
Light was swallowed by darkness, that seemed as solid as stone one second, as immaterial as smoke the next. It shifted and moved, as if trying to push against the windowlight. The wind howled against me suddenly, and I could see something push from within the shadows, long claws moving closer before suddenly evaporating as it got closer to the hotel.
Cracking wood interrupted my stupefied state. Looking behind me, an axehead had gone partway through my door. The edge of it peeked out through the small hole it had opened so far. Did I want to risk that? I turned back to the writhing shadow between the buildings. Had it gotten closer? It couldn’t be more than ten meters away.
The fire escape shuddered under my feet. My grip tightened reflexively as I desperately searched around for what had caused it. Nothing I could see. It kept shuddering, beginning to jerk violently, while a rumble began to build.
“MEAT!” A voice called out from inside the building. The fire escape jumped under me, the jolt sending me feet into the air for an instant. The entire thing slid out from the wall. Only a tiny bit. It finally got my hands out of their death grip on the railing all the same. Now I was rushing back to the window instead.
There was an axe back in the room, and what sounded like a dozen people wanting my head, and whatever had just set the building shaking. But I was not plummeting to death on the ground or to whatever those shadows were. Heart racing, I reached the window. The crack of wood as the axe went through the door again. Three identical cries of triumph followed that. Great, triplets with an axe. The voices were garbled, it was a language I could recognize but did not sound human.
I grabbed the gun from my holster. I stared at it blankly, hoping the information on how to use it would pop into my head. To my despair nothing as the axe widened the hole to the door. Animated series and British satirical novels were fair, but not how to use a goddamn weapon? It felt like it belonged in my hand but that didn’t tell me how to use it!
Wood ripped as the next blow tore more of the door out. An entire section fell out of the door, revealing the people beyond. Mandibles clicked and clacked, antennae moved, and compound eyes focused on me. It looked like an ant. It was, of course, wearing a pinstriped suit with a tie. The fedora on top with the antenna sticking out was the final straw. My sides started shaking uncontrollably. I started laughing.
Not because it was funny, although it was certainly absurd. I woke up in a bathtub with no memories? A lightbulb and a corpse in a suitcase trying to kill me? Now management of the hotel I was in wanted me dead for not paying my bills. Oh, and destroying a lightbulb.
Now some ant-man in a fedora and pinstriped suit was trying to hack down my door. The sight of which now had another collection of unwanted media trivia shoved into my head. What the hell was the MCU?
The ant-man shoved his arm through the hole in the door. It reached about, trying to find the handle. Mirth died on my lips as I aimed the gun in my hand at the creature only to realize I didn’t know where the safety was. Did this gun even have a safety? I looked it over, hoping that it would trigger some kind of thought in my head, only to get while Edgar Wright was originally slated to direct he was eventually replaced by Peyton Re- oh god I would not die because of Edgar fucking Wright. Whoever he was.
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A chitter of triumph filled the air as the ant-man found the lock. The door rushed forward, only to suddenly jerk to halt. It hadn’t noticed the deadbolt, and even missed a chunk the door held for now. Long enough for me to notice the small lever on the back. My mind told me it was the safety. That and how it was a plot-relevant part of Scream, which I could have done without.
I thumbed it and aimed the weapon, to find the ant-staring at me. I thought it was. Telling what the compound eyes were looking at wasn’t easy. I paused as it just stood there. Was it scared? Afraid I was going to shoot it? Could I even shoot it? It wasn’t a human, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a person. It wasn’t even an it, possibly, and oh great I was some kind of bigot wasn’t-
Their head suddenly convulsed and a thin stream of liquid shot at me. The tip of my ear burned as I moved to the side, a few droplets from the stream splattering there. I was on fire. At least that’s how the tip of my ear felt. Hissing filled the air as where the stream had hit the railing behind me. Metal was being eaten through. In maybe half a second the railing I had been leaning against earlier had a section half a foot wide just gone.
“Did you just try to disintegrate me?” I yelled, turning my attention back to the Ant.
It didn’t bother responding, instead reaching with its arm for the deadbolt while the head began to make the same motion. But I wasn’t hesitating anymore, not when it was trying to melt me.
Half a second to raise the pistol, aim down the rear sight and pull the trigger. It was about halfway through that my brain told me I should probably hold the pistol with two hands and make sure my arm was ready to-.
My arm was nearly ripped out from its socket. My ears rung like someone had set off a trio of alarm clocks inside them. The sound of the shot bounced all of the inside of the room. What didn’t bounce was the bullet, which went right into the chest of the suit, right where the heart would be on a human.
The ant looked down at the hole with casual ease. Some kind of green ichor leaked out. It didn’t seem to care that much. A sinking heart could join my ringing ears and thoroughly yanked arm as I tried to aim the gun again, this time at its head. Suddenly it shuddered, then fell against the outside of the door. A shriek like a tea kettle filled the room.
With a crunch the entire section of the suit retracted into the ant’s chest. More crunches followed as its torso compressed, shrinking before my eyes. The whine became a scream as its neck compacted in on itself, becoming no necks as shards of chitin exploded out from the pressure. Eyes shrunk, blood leaking out of them as they compressed. Mandibles turned inward, punching through skin as they were drawn through.
The shriek was not even anything approaching describable sound as the wreck of a creature in front of me continued to compress. Limbs compacted, shrinking, the excess mass blowing out of the joint before being pulled in together as well a second late. It was half the size it used to be. Not falling to the ground. I could see it being pulled all in a single direction. Where the bullet had landed.
The head entirely pulled into what was becoming just a ball of chitin, blood, and screams. There were no snapping sounds anymore. Just the disgusting noise of the remnants being forced through the small hole my bullet had punched. And it was still alive. It hadn’t stopped screaming, and it didn’t even as what was left went through the hole. Tiny, a pinprick at this distance, colored the same as the shadow outside. Then it vanished, and so did the screams.
My stomach churned as I tried not to throw up again. Nothing in my stomach after last time, and currently I felt like I never wanted to eat again. Dry heaving, I tried not to stumble backwards. What the hell was I holding onto?
Another ant appeared in the door, a shotgun leveled and ready. I just dropped. Too late. Another roar filled the room. My shoulder exploded with pain and I screamed as I hit the floor beneath. A thousand tiny needles were in my shoulder it felt like, as I tried to force myself off the fire escape floor. My arm screamed in agony, but reflexively I forced it to have the pistol ready as I popped up, already firing.
No one was at the hole in the doorway. The bullet passed through nothing but air before hitting the wall.
I went back down, and my shoulder burst into fresh agony as it hit the floor. Biting back another scream, I looked it over. Torn clothes. Blood was already pouring out. But my flesh wasn’t being sucked into the wound. While it hurt like hell, I wasn’t suffering the same fate I’d inflicted on that ant.
I got back up to make my way to the stairs. Even if another shaking caused the fire escape to come loose, I’d take my chances making my way down out here. Of course, right when I did, the shotgun wielding ant reappeared.
I dove, and knew as soon as I did this would hurt.
Agony hit my free hand when I tried to move it in the way. My head whacked right into a step, a half second before one of my knees hit another. It felt like a knife had been driven in. Pain hit me every step down as I fell down the stairs. The only consolation was the clothes blunting some of it.
My back went through a fresh hit of pain as I landed on the floor below, groaning. I tried to get up, screamed as I tried to put my palm against the ground. Skin hung from where it had hit the stairs in tatters when I looked at it. The other hand was even less helpful as my shoulder protested every move. Somehow I got myself into a sitting position-only to find an imp in front of me.
I didn’t know how else to describe it. Bald, gray mottled skin, a small, ugly face that looked like a mixture of a pig’s or dogs. Okay, it was actually kind of cute maybe, but I wasn’t really in the mood to think of things as cute at the moment. It stood perched on four limbs, still as a statue. Wait, was it a statue?
The little imp turned to face me, and I felt the fear set in again. Should I shoot it? Did I want to shoot it? Oh, please don’t make me have to shoot it. The imp opened its mouth and shrieked, the same noise I had heard when I went to the windows the first time. Except this time it was maybe half a foot away from me.
Now I was also shrieking as I put my hands over my ears. It felt like drills had been set on them, and worse I could feel something liquid coming out. Blood. Everything was some strange sensory assault since I had woken up and please just leave me alone!
By the time I had recovered from that, the imp was flying off, wings flapping as it flew into the dark void between buildings. It just vanished once it got maybe thirty feet away from the building. Another mystery to add to the pile, but one that was at least useful. Things could go into those shadows.
No one else was coming onto the fire escape from my room yet. Apparently, my ability to compress people into living balls of flesh and pain was a deterrent. What the hell had I shot that ant with? What the hell was I doing here? Why the hell was a dead monster that wasn’t dead in my briefcase? Who the hell was I? And why the hell was there even more of those little imp creatures I could see at everyone’s window!
Okay, so a warning system or a living alarm or a wild animal or who cared I needed to get a move on before the ant hive back there finished breaking their way through. Or whoever else had lined up at the door. Or whoever lived on this floor below me spotted me and decided they wanted a month’s worth of free rent. Whatever that was worth. Either way, I needed to get moving. So I slowly got back up to my feet, determined, ready to move forward, despite the protests of my body.
That’s when the world in front of me burst into blinding light.