Here's the latest chapter. Had a long holiday weekend working on it.

Also, I'd like to ask you guys something regarding one of the review's for this fiction. Mainly about the synopsis. Do you guy think I should try to update it? Is it good as is? Do you think it requires some more depth to capture the actual story? Anyways, thanks for the advice and comments!

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Of Monsters and men

Chapter Five

In RPGs, you know how one of the best parts is often looting the bodies for cool, new gear? You just click on the corpse and a nifty little pop-up screen appears with what you find. Well, reality is far more ghoulish I found out.

My nose crinkled as I rooted in the pocket of some guy’s lower half. That’s right, I said lower half. The man’s upper body was nowhere to be found, and I wasn’t exactly interested in searching for it.

Thankfully, I soon felt the rectangular shape of a smartphone within.

I wiggled the phone free. Standing up, I wiped the sticky blood off the scratched up screen with the last clean edge of my torn, bloodied shirt. Then my thumb pressed the phone’s home button. It hesitantly flickered on—

—and died.

That was the fourth cellphone that had died almost as soon as I’d touched it. The fourth-fucking-one! “Fuck!” I flung the phone away in disgust, and it smashed into the nearby stereo player, killing the stilted music that I’d been tuning out since the fight.

A cold gust blew in through the shattered balcony door, and I heard the staccato of distant gunfire carried on the wind, as if a war had broken out. 

Some part of me was still hoping this was all just some fucked up nightmare, that I was still stooped over the toilet, unconscious and dreaming. But, deep in my gut, I knew this wasn’t some crazy dream.

The world had gone mad.

And somewhere in the heart of that madness was Paige, alone. Just the thought that she could be trying to call me at this very moment, desperate for help, set my teeth on edge and made me want to throttle something.

Anything.

Yet try as I might, each cellphone I managed to find strangely died on me, as if my very touch were anathema. Even the apartment’s landline had blared out a sputtering, ear-piercing screech of a dial tone before cutting out on me.

My hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. But when I focused my smoldering gaze on the blaze lighting up the winter night, framed quite perfectly in the shattered glass doorway, I began to calm. Because I could feel Paige out there, somewhere, and I knew it wasn’t just wishful thinking.

This was different.

It was as if we’d been connected on a level beyond the physical. Beyond the rational. Now, I wouldn’t describe this strange connection as sappy as two people sharing one soul, but it felt as if Paige held within her a fragment of, well, me.

Fuck—it sounded insane, but just a short time ago, fighting a real-life troll would’ve sounded just as crazy. So, I was pretty open-minded at the moment.

Feeling a bit stupid, and not quite sure if this would even work, I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my connection to Paige. To follow the invisible thread tethering her to me.

Only dimly aware of my physical body, my mind trailed after the connection, following it into the city until I suddenly ran up against some sort of resistance, as if to prevent me from finding Paige. My teeth ground together as I pressed on.

Flashes. Fragments of emotions—of surprise and of terror—filtered into my mind, rapid-fire. Then distorted and jumbled scenes, taken from Paige’s perspective, flashed before my mind’s eye as I continued to struggle through the mounting mental pressure.

Monsters surrounded her.

Monsters and fire.

A face appeared, then, amidst the monsters with Paige. A woman’s face. She was young, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a pixie cut of red hair, and her lips were drawn back to reveal a blood-stained snarl of a grin.

A groan escaped from between my lips as my mind began to buckle beneath the crushing pressure of an invisible force, and blood flowed freely from my nose.

“Arrgah!” I reluctantly withdrew from my connection to Paige, and shot back into my battered and bruised body, where I collapsed onto a knee, with one hand pressed against my throbbing temple.

A few stretched-out moments passed as I just breathed.

In and out.

Soon, the pulsing within my skull began to lessen, and my breathing became less haggard. I wiped the blood away that had drenched my upper lip and spat out what little had seeped into my mouth. However, an excitement filled my eyes now. “It worked,” I said with a laugh, mystified. “It actually fucking worked.”

I’d felt Paige’s general direction through our strengthened connection, though her exact location remained hidden from me by that strange resistance.

“Don’t you worry, Sweet Pea,” I murmured with a steely resolve in my voice. Climbing to my feet, I picked up the sword and shield I’d laid on the ground during my looting spree. “I’m coming to find you.”

And not even a city of monsters was going to stop me.

But first, I needed to patch myself up.

I stalked back into the kitchen, towards the refrigerator door embedded into the sink wall. Crouching down, and tucking the sword flat under my armpit, my fingers wrapped around the glass neck of a whiskey bottle that had managed, somehow, to remain stuck on the door’s shelf.

The clear amber liquid sloshed within the bottle as my bruised body hobbled into the bathroom, where the single light fixture above continued to flicker uncertainly. The whiskey bottle clicked sharply against the bathroom’s marble counter when I put it down. Then I laid down the shield and sword in a nearby corner.

Above the sink was an oval mirror, and a familiar face stared back at me from its silvery surface—deep set eyes an alluring dark green; a five o’clock shadow of auburn whiskers; and high cheekbones that radiated a noble and dignified air.

I was still the same ol’ devilishly handsome Fitz.

Or was I?

An expression of doubt appeared on my face when a chilling question, one I’d been trying to ignore, prodded at the back of my mind yet again. What if Cole wasn’t the only monster that had been born at this party tonight?

What else could explain how powerful I felt?

How I could crush a phone in my bare hands with ease?

A few scratches and cuts marred my features, but I wasn’t sporting any curling horns jutting out from my skull, nor the wart-ridden hide of a troll. Unsatisfied though, I leaned closer and pushed back my upper lip as I examined my teeth.

Nope.

No fangs either.

But, I was different now. I could feel it beneath my very skin, in the invigorating strength flowing through my limbs. So what, then, could turn a good man like Cole into an unrepentant monster and me into a—

—a what?

I still felt the same, personality-wise, and I didn’t have a newfound hankering for human flesh either, which was good. So then what was I? Superhuman? Fitz v2.0, perhaps? Or how about—

No.

This wasn’t the time for wild speculation.

All that matters right now is getting to Paige.

I tugged the mirror open to reveal the compartment behind it, which was full of medications, perfumes, toothpastes—pretty much all the normal stuff one would expect to find in a bathroom cabinet. Inside, I also found a small first aid kit.

Jack-fucking-pot.

I took the first aid kit and put it on the counter. Then I began to unbutton my torn up shirt and carefully peeled the bloodied thing off my skin. Once I’d finally gotten it off, I tossed the bloodied bundle into the corner.

My fingers delicately probed the torn flesh of my chest as I examined my wounds in the mirror. Three ragged lines cut across my chest, from shoulder to hip, and dark blood had already begun to crust along their edges. Thankfully, they didn’t appear to be that deep.

I turned to get a look at my left shoulder next, from where I’d pulled a shard of chinaware out of my back. A trail of half-dried blood ran down my back from the wound, and I winced when my fingers brushed against it.

Okay.

So, I’m not in what I’d call ‘tip-top shape’ at the moment, and my body may have sprung a few leaks, but it was nothing a little thread and duct tape shouldn’t be able to fix. Duct tape can fix anything, after all.

I twisted the handle of the faucet to wash off my hands, and for some clean water to wash out my wounds. A small amount of water sputtered out as a gurgling groan echoed from the plumbing. I sighed in disgust. “Guess I’m doing this the hard way.”

I grabbed the whiskey bottle and took a nip. The small swig of whiskey burned a trail of fire down my throat, and blunted the edge of pain radiating from my wounds. Well, here goes nothing. I took a deep breath, and then I poured the whiskey down my chest and back.

A fiery agony seeped into my wounds, cleansing them, as the whiskey ran down my hunched over body. My muscles began to involuntarily spasm. “God…”

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My hand tightened on the lip of the sink, and my eyes squeezed shut as I tried to block out the pain, to focus on anything else. The next word hissed out from between my clenched teeth. “Fucking…”

Crunch. Cracks webbed out in the marble from where I had my grip. But then it subsided and I shakily breathed out in relief. “Damn it…”

I snatched up a nearby wash towel from a wall rung to pat myself down, and then I gently wiped away the dried blood and grime. My pain-addled fingers fumbled the first aid kit open, and I took out a small spool and needle. I took another nip of whiskey to calm my nerves and steady my hand. “Alright. Now for the hard part.”

Slowly, I began to stitch myself up, knitting my flesh together. Each stinging jab of the needle made my jaw tighten, and cold beads of sweat dripped down my brow, but I endured the pain in a stoic silence.

After what felt like an eternity, but was closer to around fifteen minutes, I finally finished and tied off the thread. My body slumped against the counter as I released a pent up breath. I fished out a roll of gauze from the first aid kit and eyed the thin medical tape distastefully.

I’d definitely need duct tape, especially if I had to run the gauntlet of a city gone mad. It was tough, durable, and it’d take a lot to come free. So after a bit of scrounging within the apartment’s cabinets, I managed to find some, along with one of Cole’s shirts and my own coat to replace the bloody rags I’d already discarded.

Using my teeth, I tore off a few long strips of the gray tape and laid them over the gauze covering my wounds with all the expertise of a redneck doctor. I made sure to do the same for my shoulder until half of my torso seemed to be tape up.

Then, before donning my coat, I shrugged into the dark red dress shirt I’d taken from Cole’s closet. It was around two sizes too big for me, but it’d suffice.

Now dressed, I couldn’t help but eye the sword and shield propped up in the corner of the bathroom, a rather ridiculous combo in today’s modern era. But, I did just kill a fucking troll, so ‘ridiculous’ might’ve been too strong of a word.

Besides, it’s not as if I had many other options in lieu of an actual gun. Cole had been a collector of many things, but guns—antique or modern—wasn’t one of them. So I took up the sword and the kite shield once more.

Sickly green troll blood, now beginning to dry, still coated the naked blade of my ancestral sword. I wiped it clean with the blood-soaked wash towel I’d used earlier, revealing the cold iron beneath. I gave the weapon a test twirl, and I was once again struck by how right the weapon felt in my hand, like it’d always belonged there.

But though it felt light, similar to a feather in my grasp, it also seemed to hold an unfathomable heaviness, as if it contained the suffocating weight of a mountain. And when the flickering light danced along the blade’s mesmerizing length—

I blinked and snapped out of my trance.

In my hand, the blade now just seemed like any other sword. Not bizarrely light or heavy. Just a simple, old sword. However, an unsettling feeling still remained as my gaze lingered on the naked blade. Probably best to find its sheath, I decided, as I tried to shrug off the experience.

Finding it wasn’t hard. The sheath was right where I expected it to be—inside the main room, amidst crushed presents and beneath the splintery remains of the oaken box it’d been originally resting in. The tip of my shoe nudged aside the wooden fragments, revealing a leather back sheath.

Affixing the sheath to my back, and over my coat, I tightened its straps until I reached a comfortable balance between being able to breathe and not having the sheath bounce around too freely. Then, after a few awkward misses, I slid the sword inside.

As for the shield…

I found a thick scarf hanging from a wall rack near the door. It was among a collection of jackets, hats, and other winter garments lining the wall, all left behind and forgotten in the panicked escape.

Looping it through the shield’s handle, I tied its ends together in a tight knot, and slipped it over my head and under my arm, so that the kite shield rested snug on my back. Then I snatched up the set of keys hanging from one of the rack’s smaller prongs.

Cole’s keys.

He should have a couple of cars in the apartment’s basement garage.

With a grunt, I fully pulled open the ajar apartment door, and swept aside the mangled bodies that had been blocking it. I stepped into the hallway then, one hand over my shoulder, my fingers wrapped around the sword’s grip.

Above me, the grating buzz of fluorescent lights struggled to stay on, but other than that it was eerily silent. Only the muffled rapport of gunfire from outside, and the occasional screech of tires or sirens pierced the quiet.

Faint impressions of bloody shoeprints stained the once pristine carpeting of the hall, as if a stampede of people had trampled over others in their mad dash to safety.

Based on all the signs, ranging from scattered personal effects to the gory smears of handprints painted on the stairwell door, most of the horrified party-goers had gone for the stairs, situated right next to the closed steel doors of the elevator. A smart choice given how erratic the power was at the moment.

Padding over, I pressed an ear to the stairwell door. Nothing. It was as quiet as a graveyard. However, I still unsheathed my sword and held it at the ready. The door softly clicked open when I pressed on the latch, and I slid inside without a sound, my eyes scanning the area for danger.

Still nothing.

Human or inhuman.

My footsteps noisily echoed in the stairwell as I went to peer over this landing’s rail, first below me then to the few floors above me, searching for anything…odd. Or, you know, for anything that potentially wants to eat me and use my bones as toothpicks. Either-or works for me, honestly.

Seemingly alone, I began my wary descent.

Upon the eighth landing, however, something caught my attention. A crumpled body. She was twisted around so her glazed stare pointed above, and a pool of congealed blood surrounded her head, where she’d obviously cracked her skull against the polished concrete landing.

I knew her. Not personally, but I was sure we had exchanged names sometime during the party. What was it again? I began to wrack my brain for her name, sorting through the hazy fragments of my recent memory. It definitely started with an ‘A’. Could it have been Annie? No. Not that.

Annabel.

Right.

I knelt beside Annabel, noticing her twisted ankle and the broken heel of one of her designer shoes, the reason for her fatal tumble. Just to be sure, I pressed a couple of fingers to the cool skin of her throat.

Nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I said before closing her eyes. It was all I could do for her right now. I rose with a heavy sigh, and sparing the dead woman one last glance, I continued down the stairs, my footsteps just a bit heavier and my mood even more sour.

Finally, I reach the first level. The lobby. This stairwell apparently didn’t go to the basement garage directly, but I was almost certain that the lobby had a connecting stairwell that did. I pressed my ear against the thick door, its steel surface cool upon my cheek, and listened. Wait…

My eyes narrowed in concentration as my senses sharpened. Were those voices? Slowly, I cracked the door open to not alert whoever was talking and peeked inside.

Devastation.

That was the word that came to mind when I saw the inside of the lobby. The front glass doors had been blasted open, littering the area with glass shards, and allowing the frigid night air to blow in swirling gusts laden with snow. And amongst the devastation were broken bodies.

More party-goers, I guessed.

From behind the front desk came the voices I’d heard through the door. They belonged to the movie streaming on the desk manager’s computer, which dangled from a cable over the desk’s edge, its cracked screen painted with a thin veil of blood.

But other than that, no one was present.

I stepped inside.

Crunch.

My sensitive ears pricked up when I heard a soft whimper in response to the glass crunching beneath my shoes. It came from behind the front desk.

Taking hold of the initiative, and deciding it was better to act than react, I broke out into a sprint. One moment I was standing as still as a statue, and the next I become a blur, the pain of my wounds all but forgotten. With an almost alarming ease, I leapt clear over the desk and fell into a crouch, brandishing my sword as I turned.

A strangled scream erupted, as if from a hog on the butcher’s block, and then a large shadow dove out from under the desk, charging at me. The light of the desk lamp flashed off something metallic in one of its fists.

My free hand snaked out, taking hold of a fistful of fabric and twisting it tight for leverage. I shifted the shadow’s momentum past me, pulling it forward by its shirt, and slammed its back into the wall. My sword’s raised tip scratched at its quivering jowls, ready to plunge into its throat.

“Wa—wait!” the man begged. The desk manager’s face was ruddy and slick with a nervous sweat, his bulging eyes locked on the sword at his throat. “Please! I thought—I thought you were one of those things!”

But I barely heard him. Instead my attention was glued to the metallic object hanging loosely in his hand with the threat of death hovering literally inches away.

“Did you,” I began with awed incredulity, raising my eyes to match his pleading gaze, “Did you just try to attack me with a stapler?”