The creature levered itself up out of the cored-out husk of Michelle's corpse. As it coalesced more of itself together from the dissolving hard plates and semi-digested human flesh, its body began to take on the same characteristic toothpaste-blue hue and matching gelatinous consistency that April had seen before. The chunks of material that had until very recently been sections of her friend's flesh and entrails were dissolved seamlessly into the smooth mass, indistinguishable from the substance that had composed the creature in the red forest.
The only pieces that retained a distinct shape were the remnants of ribs and other examples of the longer bones, which were iteratively whittled down and smoothed out until they were sinuous white spines, soft, unblemished and razor tipped. They dotted the creature's form as they had before, suspended within it as well as poking out of it at odd, grasping angles. April wondered what sorry unfortunate had provided the first creature with its equivalent armament.
With a sucking thwap, the thing pulled itself fully free from the remnants of Michelle's body. What was left were the extremities of her limbs, arrayed on the floor like the outer-edges of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, and her head, face contorted into an expression of agony. Notably, the eyes and an area at her crown seemed to have caved on themselves with the creature's last sucking pull away from her stump of a neck, an eerie contrast to the otherwise untouched surrounding features. The empty eye sockets cried streaks of red blood.
The remnant appendages did not have a sharp cut-off point where they had once joined onto the larger body; rather, the stumps of flesh deteriorated into grey folds with an increasingly mushy consistency, until all that remained of the torso was a reddish-black stain painting the messy outline of a human form. That, and the pulsing blue mess in the centre of the hole, that was stretching and pulling at itself in the manner of worked taffy. It made strained, clacking-croaking sounds, as if it were trying to form words.
April was already backing away towards the door, her mind fuzzy with shock, hands clenched in white rictus fists. Her fingers were stained with blood, fingernails with blue-grey globs caught underneath where she had tried to pry the thing away from her dead friend. Reaching the doorway, she turned around, caught the wooden frame with both hands, then abruptly vomited onto the floor of the hall, her stomach emptying itself of the meagre meal she had eaten earlier in the day. Half-digested globs of cereal spattered out. She wiped her mouth deliriously, staggered over the mess, and then sprinted back down the hall towards the bedroom.
She still had some half-idea of getting to her phone to call an ambulance, although part of her realised that the situation had probably progressed far beyond that point. Then- the cops, maybe? Animal control? The government? She wasn't sure, but she ran in and picked up the phone anyway. The lock screen was aglow with a notification for a received text beneath the shattered glass, displaying a reply from Charlie to her earlier message.
"Glad to hear you and michelle r having a good time. Give her a kiss from me :)"
April scrabbled at the smooth glass, her fingers leaving streaks of blood across the surface. The sight of her blood covered hands for the third time in two days pressed the wrong buttons in her brain hard enough to cut through the adrenaline for a moment, and she faltered in her grasping. The lax grip and wet blood let the phone slip from her grasp, and it tumbled to the ground, clattering onto the hard floor. As she stooped to pick it up, the clacking, knocking sounds from one room over grew louder, and she heard a heavy crunch, followed by a shattering sound as if of porcelain breaking.
She enclosed the battered smartphone in a vice like grip once more, and ran back out into the hallway, heading towards the door. She reached out for the handle and it rattled, uselessly; Michelle had left the fasteners locked and bolted when she had closed the door behind Clyde. She persisted in a half-hearted attempt at pulling them open with her slippery fingers, before turning in a panic to the phone instead, unlocking the screen and dialling three nines. She put the broken wet rectangle to her ear.
The operator connected. "Emergency, which service?"
April hesitated, stammering into the phone. "Uhh...!"
"Ma'am? Are you-"
There was a crash from down the hall, and the sound of splintering wood. April screamed and dropped the phone, sending it once again clattering across the floor. The creature had fallen out of the bathroom and thudded hard into the opposite wall, sliding down onto the floor next to April's puddle of sick. Part of it still seemed to be wedged into the plaster, having dented it with a wet weight that was belied by its airy, translucent appearance.
"Although," April thought to herself, "doesn't it look a little different?" The creature seemed to have a more consistent shape now than it had possessed in the forest, or even two minutes earlier. Instead of an amorphous collection of bunched appendages and stretched blue sheet-flesh, it seemed to be holding to a more static body plan than she was used to, which was limiting its ease of movement. It took it some time before it was able to extract one of those limbs from the wall, but eventually it pulled free in a spray of splinters, twisting around to face April. It staggered, shuffling awkwardly, then began waddling towards her on two stumpy leg-like limbs.
"Krk- krk- aaah... krk- krk- aggaarhhh... pp!" it croaked, shuddering.
April screamed again instinctively, producing sound on an almost subconscious level. She scrabbled at the door for another moment before giving up on the stiff dead-bolts in face of the oncoming creature. Instead, she lurched sideways into the kitchen, crashing into the table and knocking over the remains of her and Michelle's coffee mugs, which had been sitting there incongruously, still steaming softly.
Recovering from the blow, she turned around and slammed the door shut behind her. That didn't seem enough though, somehow, and so she grabbed one of the wooden dining chairs, leaning against the door and wedging it under the handle like she had seen people do in movies. Having made sure it was secure she backed away to the other side of the room, staring in terror at the now barricaded door. A faint, arrhythmic thumping was coming from the hall on the other side.
A sudden frantic tapping sound erupted sharply from somewhere directly behind her. April shrieked and jumped around, looking up to see a small recessed window set into the very top of the wall, presumably to allow some small modicum of natural light in from the street level. Behind it was the monkey, peering in at her, red eyes twinkling with reflected light from inside the flat. In concert with the dim ambient glow of the now early evening visible through the window behind it, the typically vibrant powder-dye patterns of its coloured face were made to look uncharacteristically dim compared to usual. It had one knobbly little fist raised to the glass, where it had been tapping.
She stared at it wide-eyed for a moment, then gasped out, "help me!"
The little animal almost seemed to shrug at her. It opened its mouth, tiny rows of sharp teeth gleaming, and said something through the glass. Half-muffled, she just barely made out the word "leave!" in the monkey's usual high pitched, squawking voice.
"Yeah, no shit!" she shouted at it, turning back around towards the barricaded door. There were no other exits from the room.
The thumping from the other side of the door got louder, and culminated in a loud thud against the door itself, the wood rattling against its hinges. The chair shook, but didn't fall. April stared at the brass door handle as it began to twist experimentally, curling up and down against the wooden top bar of the chair. Her blood had turned ice cold, and her stomach felt like it had all but dropped out of her body at the nearly comical horror of it all. After a few probing seconds of the handle twisting and shaking in place, the motion stopped, the whole door going still. She remained where it was, frozen rigid, still staring at the closed door.
A fresh outburst of clacking groaning noises rose from the other side of the door, like dozens of different mouths retching in concert. The sound wove together, creaking and clicking and moaning interweaving, until it was almost like...
"crk- crkaa- aaaahhclrkp... Aaaaaaahhprrll..."
Almost like...
"aaaAAAahhpril... crk- bl- blessyd sinew frame, Aayyyyprillll. Crk- hh-h! Know that... you are not to... become convert, hence! Krrr-"
The half-coherent vocal gestalt that was now recognizably a voice broke down again into a series of clacks and chirrs, but the form of the sound was almost coherent now. It had the character of a throat being cleared. For her part, April didn't vocalize anything except for a sharp breath, remaining frozen against the far wall.
"kl- kl- kahluh- luh- llittle wun, we- ah!"
Something on the other side of the door seemed to snap, sharply, followed by a sighing sound.
"...little meat chyld, we could not consume you, even if- crkh- if we tried..."
"S- Stay away from me!" As she shouted at the closed door, one of her hands groped around on the counter top behind her, feeling for something she could use as a weapon. A knife, maybe? No dice. Michelle apparently kept- had kept- her cutlery in the drawers, and April couldn't reach over to where she could recall seeing them without moving closer to the door. Her fingers closed around a box that might have contained teabags, squeezed it for a moment, then dropped it again. As she continued to scrabble around behind her, the voice on the other side of the door began to speak again.
"whkr! Was... it not saiyd already... We have no intention of- bringing you to harm!"
"What about Michelle?!" April screeched at it. "What about her?! You harmed her! You ate her!"
The thing clacked, considering.
"Uhh.. uh.... uhnfortunate... leavings... Context grystle. Your own self could not suffice. We did not yet have- have a mind..."
April closed her eyes, shaking her head. It didn't make sense- nothing was making sense. The thing that had crawled out of her friend and lover; the thing that had shrugged off her flesh like a soiled handkerchief to be discarded, was now trying to make conversation with her. I have to get out of here... have to get out...!
She turned back around, glancing up at the window where the monkey was crouching. It was looking behind itself now, back out onto the street. April followed its gaze and noticed that there was a dimly lit silhouette standing alone in the dark, apparently staring back towards the monkey. Unfortunately, the high angle of the window create a sufficiently narrow sightline that she couldn't make out any details.
"Mnn.. April," groaned the voice from behind the door. Its ability to form language was improving at a prodigious rate alongside each new sentence. "Discard these word... husks! You must... leave this place..."
"What do you think I'm doing?!" April screamed at the voice that seemed to be mocking her.
"Leave this place... with us!"
"Fuck you!" April continued to clutch around behind her, failing to find a weapon or an avenue for escape. Maybe the window? She glanced up at the monkey, and almost screamed again, for there were two faces looking down at her now. The monkey was perched on the shoulder of a gaunt, blank-faced man with dark eyes, who was lying prone, face pressed up against the glass. His features were marred with dark bluish blotches in half-circles around his eye sockets, and he looked curiously familiar. The monkey had secured itself to him with one hand clasped in his short crop of black hair.
"What the- Who are you?!" she shouted, mentally leveraging the surrealness of the situation to find her voice.
"We... kah... are not naym-ed... not have a name..." gnashed the creature behind the door.
"No, not- Not you!" she shot in its direction, and then, hysterically, barked out a rough laugh that had a tone more resembling some animal cry of distress.
The man in the window didn't say anything, lying still next to the monkey, while the creature beyond the kitchen door ploughed on with its monologue, oblivious.
"But leave... we must!" It coughed, sounding more like an extremely gruff, sick old man now than it did a choir of grizzly bears and crickets. "We must... leave! We will be looked for. Hunted..."
"I fucking hope that you'll be hunted, you fucking freak!" April climbed onto the counter-top where she could reach the window frame. There didn't seem to be any sort of latch. She jiggled the surrounding plastic frame hopelessly, hands inches from the face of the strange man, who remained impassive.
"Think, little disquiet, think! Mayke use of faculties... that are your birthright... before ours. Who brought us here to wreyk such... incongruity?! Who is our partner in this?"
April had to chew on that one for a second before getting it. "No! Fuck you!"
"Pah! Kr-dr.. Cease these cryes of copulation... would not your fill have been sated prior... K-hh! But hear us now! We speak truth... We are both strangers here... We on your back, you in your own little dysharmony. Seekers of anomaly will find our pattern... and purge it! This is true for us... and for your gnashing form... lyttle mis-projection... world gristling..."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The thing burst out into a sudden guttural gurgling, which trailed off to silence. April took the opportunity to look up at the window again.
The man and the monkey were gone.
A tremendous cracking crash of splintering wood rang out from behind April, causing the whole basement flat to shudder. April jolted back around towards the kitchen door, expecting to see it shattered asunder, the blue blob-creature rearing up in the broken doorway. But the door was still intact; whatever had made the sound had apparently come from its far side. April heard a dull thumping sound, then another, followed by a sort of metal-scraping that terminated in a clunk. Then the kitchen door did jump, as some great force appeared to clamp down on the door handle from the other side, fixing the whole structure rigidly in place.
The brass door handle slowly began to turn, angling downwards at a slow but inexorable rate. At thirty degrees it clacked against the wooden chair still blocking the door, remained stuck there for a moment while wood creaked, and then- SNAP! The wooden headboard of the chair splintered down the middle as the pressure from the other side of the twisting door handle sheared it in two, the halves falling to the ground in front of the door. There was a soft click as the door unlatched, and the twisting motion halted for the space of two short seconds. The door teetered for a moment on its hinges, something in its construction objecting to being subjected to such immense force at a single point, before, with a squeaking groan, it swung open.
April, who had in desperation grabbed at the half-empty box of teabags again—maybe it could serve as a distracting projectile?—clutched it to her chest instead, mouth opening in a round "o" of surprise. Instead of the blue creature that had consumed Michelle, a familiar armour-suited figure had supplanted it at the doorway, prow-like spiked chestplate jutting upwards in front of its two-lobed diver's helmet. Its appearance so soon after the amorphous blue creature gave an impression that it had perhaps chased it from their mutual dreamworld that was the red forest.
In fact, that was maybe precisely what had happened. The suit crunched forward a step, the weight of its foot denting the cheap floorboards, helmet pivoting slightly to-and-fro as it surveyed the corners of the room.
"You!" said April, staring at it.
"Me." The suited figure spoke plainly now, overlapping layers of static gone from its voice. Instead, the crisp male baritone was clearly audible through the helmet speakers. She wondered for a moment if it was even the same suit, but the voice was familiar, and the inscription on the left breast—"AUẞENBANDÜBERWACH AUSSCHUSS 10"—was the same.
It finished surveying the kitchen/dining room and looked back at her, taking in her haggard appearance.
"Why have you done this?" it asked.
"I…" April chewed air for a moment, lost for words. "What?"
"You carried an orgoane to your own projective layer. Did you not know?" The figure lowered its head slightly. "Still, you have responsibility in this. You were allowed to travel?"
April stared at it. "I don't know what you're- look. Look, you- you helped me before. That- that thing is here. You need- we need to kill it. It- it killed-!"
"The orgoane. Yes, it carried itself on your blood. This is how it spreads. I don't know why it didn't consume you, however… But there is little time to discuss."
The armoured man took a step towards April.
"You- you need to stop it! Please!"
"I will." The metal helmet twisted around 45 degrees, then halted, catching at some physical stop on its rotary mechanism. It was just enough, maybe, for a person inside the suit to be looking behind, out through the doorway. It paused in that position, before taking a breath. "Do you know where it is?"
She pointed in the same direction where it was looking, belatedly, hand shaking. "It was… it was out there. It spoke to me."
"That is very bad." The figure sighed, then reached up to the neckline of the helmet.
For a moment, she assumed it was going to adjust one of the knob-like protrusions that it had been preoccupied with previously, but instead the gauntlets gripped two slightly recessed notches in the metal. She heard a soft clicking sound as something interfaced between the two surfaces, and then the helmet snapped free, pulled away from the suit with a faint hiss that was accompanied by a smoothly-oiled metal sliding sound. Lifting up, she could see the face of a severe, dark-skinned man in his 50s, hair a close-cut grey, and perched atop it-
April did a double-take as she saw that the monkey was crouched on top of his head, having apparently been nestled in the second, smaller bulb of the snowman-shaped over-tall helmet. Except, no, it wasn't the monkey. It was definitely a monkey, and it too had colourful markings across its face, but the shapes and tones were different; there was an emphasis on violet, with wide crescent-shaped sweeps down its cheeks, dotted with semi-circular elaborations which bled into a pastel pink, masquerade-esque outer starburst. The cooler colour palette was arrayed against a backdrop of grey fur as opposed to brown, and—unlike the more familiar monkey she had seen before—this specimen had faint streaks of colour down its limbs and the sides of its torso.
It leaned over the brow of the suited man as he raised his eyes to meet its own. The eyes of this monkey were a desaturated navy blue.
"Navique, search for it. Don't get too close." There was something strange to the man's voice as he spoke. The shapes his mouth made didn't quite match the words, and April caught snatches of syllables that seemed to be spoken in another language, only for the English phrase to carry through over the top via the speakers built into the collar of the suit.
The new monkey- Navique?- appeared to nod at him, then hopped down backwards off of the crown of his head, scampering away deeper into Michelle's apartment.
"The orgoane will be dealt with, but by bringing it here you will have caused fissuring. This projective may not be salvageable." He took a step towards her. "You won't be able to remain here. Come with me."
"I- what?!" April cowered back against the counter-top, her body feeling weak at the knees. "I don't… I need to get… that thing killed Michelle!"
"That only demonstrates the jeopardy at which you have placed your world. If the fissuring spreads then there will be far worse casualties. Now, please. Let me take you from the layer or I shall have to do so by force."
"I'm not going anywhere with- with you or anyone!" A tear ran down April's cheek, beading at her chin before dropping to the floor. "This is all just mad! I need- we need to go to the- to the police maybe, I-" She tried to take a step, but the suited man shifted his weight, lifting a gauntleted hand to pre-emptively bar her path.
"There is nobody we need to see except for the Committee, and to that end I will remove you from this layer before you do any more damage to it than you already have. Your irresponsibility has-"
April cut across him. "My what? You- fuck you, I haven't done anything wrong. My friend- my friend just died, and- ‘remove me from this world'?!" She gasped for air, then shouted the last few words, "who the fuck even are you?!"
The man in the suit rolled his eyes, expression disdainful, and took another step towards her, arm outstretched. She had a brief flashback to the vice-grip he had managed to place on her shoulder back in the vine forest, and quickly shied away, dodging out of the way of the reaching hand. He twisted to follow her, and she flung the box of teabags towards his face. The panic of the moment seemed to have granted her an uncanny speed and accuracy, or maybe she was just blessed by luck, because the little cardboard cube hit him directly between the eyes, surprising them both.
April recovered first, however, sprinting forward and ducking below his outstretched arm as he flinched backwards from the strike. Correcting the motion, he moved to grab her again, but while he was unnaturally responsive and coordinated within the suit, the thing still had a certain base inertia to it that gave her the edge in reflexive movements. She managed to complete the dodge, twisting past him and through the doorway.
She found herself standing in the hall again. An eerie orange light cast stark shadows across the scene; April was disorientated for a moment until she realised that it was a street light shining down through the front door, which had been shattered into a dozen splintered shards and that were now scattered across the floor. Presumably, the armoured man had opted to break down the door instead of finding some way to unlock it from the outside.
Something came screeching around the corner from the direction of the bedroom, and April screamed too, catching a bright flash of sharp white teeth. The monkey- the second monkey, Navique, had swung out of a doorway and sprung directly at her face. Flailing her arms forward automatically, she brought down one forearm in a half-block, half-karate chop that caught the little creature at the last second, its tiny hands scratching painfully at the patches of puckered red skin half covered in the beige sticking plasters. April threw it to the ground in front of her, yelling, and then instinctively punted it back down the corridor with one foot.
The monkey screeched in pain this time, and the man behind her let out a similar yell, as if he had been the one kicked instead. Anticipating his movement just in time, April threw herself at the opposite wall, dodging out of the way just as the man's armoured metal gauntlet came swinging down behind her, propelled with a weight and speed that must have been at least partially a mechanical augmentation built into the suit. She cracked against the plaster of the wall, staggering, and leaned to one side to avoid the follow-up swing of the man's other arm. He crashed straight through the wall up to the metal shoulder, one arm projecting into the room beyond as he wheezed in exertion.
April staggered too, her shoulder aching from the pain of the impact, but nonetheless managed to take advantage of the suited man's temporary immobilization in order to stumble towards the doorway leading to the stairs up and out of the Pits. Craning her head up, she blinked in the face of the rusty orange streetlamp glow, trying to clear black shadows from the edges of her vision.
As she did, one such shadow cohered into the shape of a man. After a moment's confusion, she realised that what she was actually seeing was the silhouette of the gaunt man who had joined the monkey in staring at her through the window. He was still staring at her now, his face impassive, and mostly shaded from the overhead light. As she squinted at him, he held up his hands rigidly in front of his body, making balled-up fists, then extended a collection of fingers, displaying them towards her. She strained her eyes to see, image caught in that frozen moment, and counted five fingers on one hand, two on the other.
Suddenly something was flying at her face out of the darkness. As she stumbled backwards again, pressed against the wall, she saw the monkey—the first monkey, that she had first seen at Sporks—catch its hand on the top of the doorway to halt its trajectory, teeth bared and barring her path forward with its body.
"LEAVE!" it screeched.
"Then let me through," April thought, trying to move past the doorway blocked by the hanging creature. It kicked back at her, little feet displaying astonishing force for something so tiny. April staggered a little more, briefly falling into the bizarro stained-glass artwork of the elephant that hung on the wall next to her. The monkey shouted again, its squeaking voice more human than ever as it strained at its vocal cords.
"LEAVE!!!"
April remembered when it had first said that word to her, while she was trying to escape the red vine forest. The little animal had been her guide then, leading her forwards through the foliage until she had arrived with it at a tunnel back to her own reality. But it's not fucking leading me anywhere now, is it? It's blocking my way out!
Unless... unless it means...
There was a crunch behind her followed by a grunt, and she glanced back to see that the armoured man was finally managing to extricate his gauntlet from the wall. Navique was hanging from the back of his suit, staring at her—and particularly at the other monkey—with its teeth bared. April figured that she only had a few seconds before he was going to be able to free himself, and so if she was going to find a way to leave, then she only had that long in order to do it.
She took a breath, unfocusing her eyes.
When she had been lying on the floor of the A. S. Eddington, her head had been spinning from the prior blow it had taken, an involuntary dizziness permeating her conscious mind and pulling her down towards its unconscious lower abyss. Now that she was forced to think about it, she could make other connections to the sensation she had felt before the fabric tunnel had closed around her.
Lying in bed when she was a child, perhaps, letting her brain fuzz into that indistinct middle-ground between waking and dreams. She had done that often when she was a kid, stubborn brain not wanting to comply with the imposition of an early bedtime. Lying in the darkness she would look up at the patterns of colour that formed behind her eyes, blending into patterns and shapes as she floated further into hypnagogia, feeling her motionless body twist with a phantom momentum that she could shape with the right mental suggestion.
It had been like that on the 'spoons' sticky carpet, too, she now realised. That half-conscious fuzzing, the directed sleepless pulling of the dreaming into the real. And the end-point of that transition had been...
Something began to shift around April as she worked to steady her thoughts, pushing her mental monologue back into her hindbrain. She had always had a sort of reflexive distrust of "mindfulness", and the fact that this was life-or-death certainly didn't make it any easier to work those flows, but nonetheless...
The hallway was starting to swim a little now, the solid walls seeming a little less real. Staring out of the doorway blocked by the monkey, she saw shadows begin to creep in, shifting and merging in the orange light that was suddenly only the furthest extremity of a wider spectrum of hues. She thought she could see figures standing in that dark mist, some distorted in form like the ghost-creatures she had seen that morning, but even this distortion was dynamic, twisting through dizzying variations in form that were mesmerising for all that she could not give them her full attention or risk losing the fluid cadence of her thoughts.
Only the monkey and the shadowed man standing behind it remained truly still amid the shifting scene.
She turned her head slowly, ignoring the clanking noise of the suited man extricating his arm, finally, from the wall, and looked for something to focus on. Directly across the hallway from her was the stained-glass ornamental tableau of the elephant mauled by wolves, the amber-gold backdrop of the scene shot through with a spiderweb of lightning cracks from where she had crashed into it a moment before. As she set her gaze upon them, they began to shift and twist, finding an unnatural mirrored quality that recalled for April the multi-axis kaleidoscopic symmetry that emerged during drug-induced psychedelia. As she chased that sensation deeper, the pattern of the stained glass began to flow and warp in that same way, blooming along an eightfold star, growing, expanding...
"WATCH IT, GIRL!" shouted the armoured man, collar-speakers of his suit peaking from the high volume. In the corner of her eye, April was aware that he had finally managed to free himself, and was starting to charge towards her. Something in her that was not concentrating on the twisting patterns in the elephant glass frowned at the words he had spoken. Why, after all, would he warn her about himsel-
Something dropped from the ceiling and hit April hard at her back, gripping tightly with engulfing, pore-adhering appendages. It had the mass of two large sacks of flour, and April crumpled in on herself, stumbling while it hooked itself around her—tipping her forward with two faltering steps directly into the face of the still-expanding window in the elephant glass. As she—and the thing clinging on to her—made contact with the surface, she found herself passing into a wider maw, a fractal tunnel of cracked amber glass spiralling away from her with all the depth that she had half dreamed into being.
A distorted, breathless male voice shouted after her, amplified into a mechanical confusion of artificial tones, but still legible as one furious English outburst. "NO!"
April heard no more from the man in the suit as, with a shuddering crack of rebounding shards, the dilating orifice of gold-hued crystal fragments clenched shut behind her in a maelstrom of light and sound. The stifled voice was supplanted by harmonic resonance that ranged from a gentle tinkling of chimes to screeching nails on chalkboard as she fell forward into a blistering yellow shaft of interlocking glass splinters. The heavy creature clung to her back, and followed in her wake as they descended together in a stomach-twisting free-fall.