"DROP THE GUN, HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!"

"DROP THE GUN, GIRL!"

"DO IT! DO IT NOW!" hollers a policeman with a loudspeaker, backed up numerous officers with the clattering of pistols trained upon my figure. A dozen police cruisers still have their siren-lights in revolution.

What in the world was going on?

The rain had finally stopped, and the afternoon Sun was shining harshly directly into my eyes; combined with the strobing of sirens and the milky-haze after the rain, it was difficult to discern how many officers there were or how I could make an avenue of escape. It was all a misunderstanding: I had done nothing wrong. Well, actually yes, but...

If I were alone, I could perhaps jump out, roll, use my mirror to escape, but... this little boy named Iseul is holding my hand. Any wrong move and he gets hurt, too.

As much as I don't want to be in the hands of authorities, I acquiesce. I can probably escape from the police station anyway, cut that, most definitely. I drop the gun that served as the makeshift torch, letting it clatter to the pavement, and raise my hands to open my palms.

"NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS", yells three officers out of what could be three dozen, as two of them approach me with pistols and the other with handcuffs, others lowering their aim.

But a shrill cry pieces our ears.

"SARAM-SALYUH!" ("SAVE US!")

"EUAK!" ("UAH!")

Cacophony, rumbles, sounds of shattering glass and breaking concrete. Blood shoots high into the air and above the roofs of the low-rise shops and commercial rises.

It's coming from the next street. Crows perched atop power lines scatter, and stray dogs scurry away.

An entire row of buildings beyond that of this street crumbles, collapses, and goes up in smoke.

A thump-thump-thump echoes across the street over, like monstrous footsteps of a dinosaur. It grows louder, and at a distinct point it seems like the sound has turned the junction and is careening towards us.

Running men and women are picked up into the air, lifted into the sky by an invisible force; they are ragged this way and that, too fast for anyone to survive, and their arms and legs are torn apart before beginning their descent.

The sight that greets us is terrifying to behold.

A writhing, twitching mass of dozens of dead men and women are suspended four meters in the air, their blood and bile pooling but not pouring down, as if they were held in a spherical bottle. The twitching mass darts this way and about as if belonging to something, and more men and women who have been ensnared by the invisible force are torn apart to slide down what seems to be an unseen tunnel to join the mass of corpses.

The twitching mass makes a rush towards us, leaving behind carved depressions in the asphalt with what must be its foot.

The policemen make an incoherent scream, and would have continued to do so, if not for their sergeant.

"BALSA! BALSA! SWA!" ("FIRE AT WILL!")

Resolve returns to the policemen as they aim towards the general direction of the twitching, writhing blob of dead men and women, and open fire with their pistols. Iseul cups his ears and ducks to the ground behind me as I witness what is about to be a shooting gallery.

Lights crack and fizz the autumn air as the bullets slice through the distance and seem to make contact with something far short of that globule of corpses, and as the policemen's pistol magazines are expended prompting some to reload, the phantom monster falls upon them. A police officer is lifted high into the air, and before he can react, he is torn asunder in two, flipped so that his head faces down and his feet up, and descends to join the others, tracing the path of what appears to be a gullet of a creature.

The sergeant is eaten as well.

The police cruisers are crushed and flipped, windows exploding with the force of something above them; leaving behind a footprint, no a pawprint, no a talon-print of –

My left forearm burns, twitches. I see a moving shape of brown and black reflected in the mirror from the corner of my vision, and as I instinctively examine it, my eye widens.

A colossal, monstrous vulture the color of umber-brown is gobbling up the officers, shredding their uniforms, crushing the cruisers. I can only see the monster through my mirror – it is invisible in the world of reality. But its effects are making terrible renown. This isn't something anyone can deal with on their own. Guns had no effect. Just a few days ago, this was a sight that I could not have even imagined. I would probably have been a victim to this too, devoured without knowledge as to why or even how.

But now, this was something I could deal with.

I shove the questions in my head away as I rush towards the nearest intact police cruiser with Iseul in tow, gripping his hand behind me. I implore the officer to drive away with the little boy. Screams and beggings issue forth from the carnage behind me as the officers are devoured one by one, splat into walls, their entrails snapped and slurped up by the vulture demon. The officer in the car is frozen in terror, but I slap him awake, putting Iseul in the backseat. My eyes are ever cognizant of the vulture's reflection in the mirror.

The officer makes no complaint as I slam the door shut and holler into his face for him to put his pedal to the metal. He comes to his senses, puts his gearshift in full force, and the tire makes a resounding screech as it begins to speed off –

Uh-oh.

The sound grips the vulture's attention. It snaps its gaze towards the cruiser and begins to lumber its way towards it, demolishing and pulverizing anyone still alive under the rubble –

I bite my right hand and tear off a chunk of flesh to draw my blood; I sight the creature's reflection in the mirror and slash down as hard as I can with my nails.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

An orchestra of ripping fabric and closing zippers ring off as its fuligin feathers are slashed and thrown-off in the wind –

But no blood comes.

The vulture comes to a screeching halt with its taloned feet, and slowly cocks its gigantic head towards me as if to pose a rhetorical question:

How. Dare. You.

It stretches its wings, spanning the width of the entire street, and rears up on its talons sparking across the asphalt. Its visage is nothing short of unholy.

I can see from the curved reflection upon my mirror its features. Red, beady eyes, sparkling with a fierce and murderous intelligence glint in their sockets; its talons, as long and lustrous as sharpened swords, are attached to browned, scaled feet, moving, cutting, silencing a struggling policeman below with alarming dexterity. Its beak is yellow and leathery, painted with guts and entrails, its wings seeming to be able to conjure a gale, and above all, these weapons of war accompanied by a coat of dark and brown feathers thicker than bulletproof armor.

This wasn't going to be easy. The vulture demon probably won't go down with uncoordinated strikes: I had to focus on its vital spots. Its neck, its wings, its heart.

The battle begins in earnest.

The vulture lunges forward and snaps at me with its huge, pincerine beak, but I dodge, and deliver a punch to its neck through the reflection, never laying my eyes off of it as I roll, duck, and slide sideways to escape its almost crocodilian reflexes.

But my punch has as much force to the creature as a fluffy pillow. The creature flexes its talons and makes a gashing swipe at me, which I dodge with the help of the reflected image in the mirror; I feel the real air around me displaced as the claws come down, scratch, and slash like scythes. Several locks of hair lob off from my head.

I drive a fist right into the heart of the vulture, hard, and it is knocked backwards for a second, but it unfurls its wings and brings it down, unleashing a gale that knocks the power poles clean out and knocks me off my feet, tumbling me away. It feels like I'm launched out of a catapult.

When I come to in just a second, I see nothing in the reflection around me; I turn and twist desperately to see where it is approaching me from, from the east end of the street, to the west end, but I find nothing.

And that's when the thought hits me.

This thing is a bird.

This thing can fly.

I hear a rising pitch of a falling bomb, and as I lower my silver forearm to reflect the sky, I see the vulture dive-bombing towards my back at full force.

I feel the air before it strikes; out of time, I pull upon a neon sign behind me through the reflection, not with the intention to break it, but for it to serve as an anchor; I am yanked back in the nick of time as the vulture bodies the street with the full force of its slam, pulverizing the asphalt and exploding the water and gas pipes underneath.

Fire bursts into being around us, and as I am confused for just a moment, thinking that I could have been reduced to atoms had I delayed just a second longer, the vulture is gone from the smoking, blazing crater.

I direct my mirror towards the sky, much faster this time, and I find the vulture in the middle of a somersault a few hundred meters above me, about to initiate its dive yet again.

But this time, I would be ready.

I prepare and hone my mind with a force of will, bent upon absolute destruction; the same force of will that gripped me as I punched the reflection of the stall door in the restroom in which I found my mirror.

I wait as blood oozes from the wound of my bitten right-hand.

Time seems to slow, stretch into infinitude as the vulture careens towards me with a speed so fast that fire is forming from the friction of its wings against air.

I wait.

It comes closer.

Not yet.

It comes closer.

Not yet.

Just fifty meters away.

Not yet.

Almost on top of me.

Not yet.

Right on –

NOW! I bellow, as I drive a sideways punch towards the reflection of the vulture's neck as hard as I can, nearly splintering my knuckle, and with a click of both our consciousnesses and a force explosive, my mirror conjures an eldritch force upon the vulture's neck.

It cannot let out even a scream or a shriek as the punch connects and blasts it full might, shooting the vulture into the building next door, annihilating its pillars and a small restaurant, collapsing it entire in a mountain of rubble. It's as if a tank shell had hit the building; no, at least several bombs.

Breaking gas pipes and haphazard water throw even more fuel to the roaring fire that engulfs the street.

Is it dead? I ponder.

I cautiously approach the scene, trying to verify its body with my mirror.

And without warning, the vulture demolishes the rubble with an extension of its beak; with a single bite, cleaves off my right arm clean.

Blood spurts from my shoulder.

I scream.

The vulture goes for my head this time, but the mirror slides down to my foot and compels me to jump, saving me by the skin of my teeth.

I land again, but the vulture swipes, shrieks, roars, cleaves with wild abandon. The mirror is on the sole of my feet; I imagine how the vulture's reflection looks in the mirror, and kick at its image, pounding my feet together like I am furiously riding a bicycle. I cannot see the creature with my waking eyes but the mirror can; rubble and pipe and dust and grime dance and rush around my figure, assaulted by forces invisible to both me and any survivors on the street.

I hear a screech, a cry of pain from the creature; I must have hit it good in the mirror or taken out its eye. And as it does, the writhing mass of corpses in its stomach start to hurl; I see the half-digested glop and bones from its belly begin to regurgitate through an invisible tunnel that must be its gullet, gather in its mouth and beak, and hurtle out towards me. It's just corpses, but together they must weigh at least a ton; if I'm hit, I'm as good as dead.

I try to roll out the way, and seeing that sharp rubble blocks me all over, I brace for impact, my back on the foundations of the building; but the mirror swallows the incoming corpse-projectile whole, absorbing the pile of bones, flesh, guts, and blood with the soles of my feet.

The mirror immediately expands and stretches across my entire body. A dozen sharp murderous eyes with teeth appear below the surface of my mirror, and just like moments before in that subterranean hall, I feel a surge of memories rise like a tide, memories that aren't mine.

A new state of consciousness envelopes my being, and once again, I can sense – rather than see – the totality of everything around me – the licking flames of the roaring fire, the cold, explosive drizzle of a broken fire hydrant, the caustic cloud of debris that clumps the moisture of my lungs, the panicked movement of the ants and insects across the streets far away, burrowing into their colonies, and of course, the presence of this vulture demon just mere meters away from me, its wing-and-tail feathers standing on the end, its precise dimensions, the size and strength of its musculature, the capacity of its vision – which reveals that I did indeed knock out its right, red, beady eye – and that a talon on its left foot is beginning to crack.

Once again, I hear the thrum of the melody, the reverie of a feast: KILL.

I chuckle.

"You just gave me ammo."