James was not exempt from that sortie of howling death, as he too was caught in the bony, gnarled clutches of a red tinged alien gaze and furiously pumping green feet. The shock at least served to uproot him from the earth and the heat of their malice thawed his bones for movement. People cast their screams skyward into the night, a great unanimous lament from all over the city. He wasn’t however sure if he joined his voice to theirs, his ears inundated once more with the persistent and tribal thud of his own heartbeat. The goblins surged closer and his knees began to quake.
A thick fingered sausage hand grabbed his shoulder roughly and wrenched him from the fatalistic thought spiral that those engorged, bestial pupils had brought on, it was Marc, and he was dragging him back to the doorway quickly being slammed shut by the two more cautious housemates.
James needed little more than a suggestion of movement before his own spider legged, lanky gait outstripped the other on their sprint to the now firmly locked door. Marc arrived close behind, childlike curiosity and wonder gone from his face the moment he saw real monsters, now replaced with an unreadable and out of place placidity, tinged however with an anger with which he hammered the wooden door till it shuddered in its frame, shouting all the while.
“Open the fucking door!” He part roared part sobbed to the stony-faced oak barrier, the before mask slipping. James hadn’t even tried the door; he knew he wouldn’t have opened it if the roles were reversed and monsters bore down so why would they? Instead he was more occupied with the outward facing window and portcullis of flyscreen which preceded it.
Maddened eyes stole a momentary glance backward to see the closest creatures preoccupied in pinning down and wrenching free the throat of the now loose neighbours’ dog, the rottweilers blood fogging up the air in a final libation. They were sated, for now.
A free hand wrenched Marc’s t-shirted shoulder from where it had been bracing to batter the door with another bludgeoning kick and spun him, with considerable effort, to face the window. Few words needed be exchanged further between them before the two men placed a foot against the wall and interlaced fingers with the lattice holding the mesh in place and began to heave. It groaned like a waking bear, all stiff and reluctant motion before finally, and with a sudden and recoiling snap, did the lattice and mesh behind come free, sending the two men to the ground with the residual force of their labour.
The glass before them was fragile and James lusted after the space and curtains visible through them. Rising to his feet however he heard the grinding scratch of talons on concrete as his pursuers pivoted from the before quarry to the new and decided louder and more virile pair of men a short distance in front of them. James didn’t even need to look back to know a wicked blaze was alight in their eyes as they began to tear across the foot path toward him.
Neither did Marc it would seem for the man, with form belying speed, had shot back up to his feet and cast a reckless haymaker, knife pommel first, to the un-marred window pane.
As the blow landed James launched himself into the air, arms curling up into a carapace over his neck and face he shot toward the now shattering window, hoping the violent motion of his entry would help in carrying him through and away from the falling, transparent shards.
It only worked partially as he blew through the kitchen window and over the sink with only minor lacerations to his forearms and back later landing in a foetal, curled up heap on the tiled and stained floor. The blizzarding shower of rigid glass icicles which followed took a greater toll however, and scored a particularly long cut against his ribs, eliciting a lancing wildfire of pain to scour his body, even through the heady, adrenal fog.
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Self-pity was soon banished when, looking back to the now sundered window and maw of viscous teeth that once was its frame, did James find he was the luckier of the pair. Marc, who had taken the time to step rather than leap through, was currently playing the part of the bucking bull to a pair of grimly delighted and squealing creatures as they bit down deep into the flesh of his neck and shoulder.
The man howled and sliced deep yet clumsy gouges into his assailants with a meat cleaver, making them pay the price of his life with deep furrows as they dragged him back out of the window and onto the porch.
This was an unknown scene to James however, having turned and run deeper into the house after coming once more face to face with the murderous glint of those atavistic eyes.
He was heading to his room, he got as far as the midpoint of the living room before an unseen weight took him out at the knees, sending the man to the floor in a tangle of limbs and wafting, warding of blade.
A quick corkscrew roll took the youth to his back and his gaze once more to a goblin’s form. This specific one currently peeling its body off the ground where it had landed after the kamikaze, tripping headbutt.
He scooted back, blade bared high and menacing before him and mind ablaze with wonder as to the whereabouts of the other members of his house yet jaw to clenched shut to call for help.
The goblin was on its feet now and in a low crouched stalk, a warbling croak eking out of its throat. It slinked from the left to right periphery of James’ vision, eyes ever trained on the glinting point which followed its motion.
A wall, it took James a moment to realise he had crawled himself back against his closed door and as he turned, instinctively to regard the obstruction, he heard the slight creak of muscle and rush of air with followed behind a creature’s pounce.
His head whipped back round, recognising his folly, yet not in time to skewer the screeching, childlike form, scoring merely a large cut on its protruding and engorged stomach. The creature latched onto his arm, slickening it with the black blood now oozing hot from the leaking gulley carved on its abdomen.
The tips of its dirt blackened nails dug into his forearm as he flailed the appendage about in an attempt to dislodge the small hissing beast and prevent it from progressing further down the limb. It failed, and with a scream of martial triumph did pike like canines sink into the pinkie finger of his left hand.
James squealed like a distressed pig and slammed the beast onto the ground, stunning it and stabbing his brain with yet another ice pick of agony as the teeth were hammered yet deeper into the bone.
The Goblin, when it had recovered, countered by mule kicking an un armoured heel into the side of James’ elbow, causing the joint to groan in a slight misaligned wrongness and his face to scrunch up.
Finally, and before the thing could rear back for another viper like kick and snap his dominant arm rather than simply bruise the joint, James cocked and fired a reluctant stomp to the bulbous crown of the goblin’s head, freeing his arm from its clutches, yet also severing his finger from his hand right below the second joint.
Before it could recover, and before the pain of the missing digit could fully overwhelm him in an agonizing haze, James, with a vindictive, sadistic relish stomped the creature’s head so hard and with such numerous repetitions that it cracked and stained red the tiles and grout below the battered skull. It moved no more after that.
There was now a silence in the house but for his pained, gasped intake of breath and the gurgling, scrabbling burbles from the other side of the kitchen window. James felt the acid reflux of bile in his throat and he screwed shut his eyes and stuffed back the oncoming rush of nausea.
A shaking, pallid hand reached up and fumbled with the door handle, turning it open, he then leant forward before flopping back into the welcoming darkness of his room. He shuffled the rest of his torso in with quiet, persistent motion from his feet as his right hand clamped a hard tourniquet of fingers around the base of the mangled finger. He watched with a sigh as the door swung itself closed, for once happy at the minute slant on which the shoddy house had been built.
A whimper slipped out of his throat and he wasn’t sure if it was elicited by the searing pain or the tell-tale tinkling shift of glass that heralded the entry of another creature through the window.
Then something curious happened, in the left corner of his vision, flashing almost imperceptibly, was a small exclamation point, once more hewn from the mystical black lettering that had begun this ordeal.
It was then that James resolved, as he heard the splattering sounds of goblins slaking their hunger on the corpse he had left behind, to at least for the meantime distract himself from the very real pain with a light touch of the fantastical.
“Status.” He murmured at the barest possible volume, hardly more than a breath, it served its purpose.
Name: James Peter Meade
Age: 18
Sex: Male
Ether: 2
It took his remaining strength to squash a cynical and melancholic cackle from bursting forth from his diaphragm. All he could think as he stared at that slight increase was that Marc had been right. Ether definitely seemed to act like experience.