Too Far Gone

It was dark.

Normally she would scoff at that thought as it flittered through her mind, seeing as it bordered on redundant. It was late at night, and quite cloudy at that – of course it was dark! Perhaps street lights would have once illuminated the footpaths, but it had been seventeen years since electricity had been a true part of life. She herself barely remembered it. All she had were a few dim memories of constant sunshine, and a box full of dancing colours.

She would have greatly appreciated a little of that constant sunshine now. How could she have been so foolish, so unbelievably suicidal as to have gone so far out? It should have been a simple trip, nothing more than a quick scavenge to restock her supplies. There was a small corner store near to her home – her fortress, her barricade – that still had sufficient supplies to keep her going. Oh, even if it hadn’t been sufficient, there were a dozen other places she could have gone.

But no, she’d gone chasing after rumours of a larger stockpile, and now she was still several blocks away from safety, and it was dark. She clutched her bag, full of the food and the clothing that would keep her alive, hugging it against her chest in an attempt to push back the whimpers that kept slipping out no matter how tightly she clenched her jaw.

She was terrified; there was no way to deny it. Never before had she been caught out-doors when the sun went down. Once or twice there had been harrowing moments where she only just managed to slam the door shut before the last few flickering rays disappeared, but to be outside when all light had fled? She kept her eyes focussed only on the ground in front of her, not daring to look to the shadows. Maybe if she didn’t look, then she wouldn’t see whatever might be lurking there, and she’d make her way home unscathed with only the memory of this night burnt onto her, and she’d never make the same mistake again…a particularly loud whimper, almost a sob, slipped out.

She didn’t want to hear either, wanted to be able to shut down the mechanisms inside her head, but instead her ears seemed to have become so attuned to the world around her that every whisper of movement echoed as loudly as a blade scraping against bone. Every quiet sickly squelch was blood falling from severed skin, every murmur was a scream, every rustle was a snarl and sharp teeth and arching bodies riddled with pain, and even the sound of her sneakers pounding against the ground couldn’t block them out.

Then her shoes caught against the cracked and pitted pavement, and she pitched forward with a stifled shriek, the bag dropping from her arms as she reached out to try and stop her descent. She hovered, half-sprawled upon the ground, chest heaving in an attempt to suck air in past the quaking that threatened to collapse her arms beneath her. Her palms stung sharply, and a harder shudder forced its way down her spine at the thought of her blood leaking onto the pavement.

They could smell blood, couldn’t they?

With a frantic gulp of air, she reached out, scraping her belongings closer and dragging them into the bag, ignoring the damage she was doling out to them and her already battered hands. Tears and splits were irrelevant, dents and scratches of no importance, cuts and bruises not worth consideration. Not anymore. She’d take what she could get, and lament the losses later, when she was safe at home.

Home. Home. She had to get home. She had to get home right now, right this very minute, or she’d never get home again. Or was she already home? Home was where the heart is, they say, and her heart was throbbing away inside her to the beat of hysteria.

She heaved herself upright in the jerky motion of panicked prey. Her bag swung limply, the objects shoved haphazardly into it sitting awkwardly, and draping over the paper edges as though attempting to escape and crawl away into the darkness. Her fingers scrabbled over the brownness of the bag automatically, seeking a secure purchase and pushing the falling possessions back in.

She flicked her gaze upwards, the blue iris surrounded by stark, twitching white – only to find that the long dark street she had thought to find herself looking down was obstructed.

This time she didn’t even remember falling, didn’t remember tilting backwards and letting the bag fall and spill out its contents across the concrete once again. All she knew was that suddenly she was sitting back on the ground, bracing herself with one painful hand and the other clapped across her mouth to hush the scream that already bounced from wall to wall down the alley.

The figure that had so silently appeared in front of her stood still, head tipped to one side as though confused by this mad woman and her clumsiness. Some of the trembling tightness inside of her calmed as she realised that the figure was human in shape. A masculine being dressed in what passed for normal human clothing, their face somewhat obscured by a flat-cap angled downwards.

Woman and maybe-man regarded one another without speaking; the harsh gasps of her breath contrasting with his soundless inhale and exhale.

Another human survivor? She knew that she was not the only one. But did she dare hope? Her gaze crawled up the body in front of her. Though her vision was blurred by the salt sea pooling behind her eyelids, she could see no discrepancies. Everyone knew they couldn’t take a properly human form – there was always some flaw, if you could find it. But there was nothing, no misshapen appendages or body parts that shouldn’t exist, no animalistic features…then he raised his head, the shadow slipping back from his face, and the foundations of her hope crumbled and sank down to be swallowed by bleak despair.

No human eyes could ever look like that.

It was a strange shade of black, she realised distantly. Stranger still because she hadn’t realised there could be shades of black. Shades of blue, yes. Shades of green, yellow, pink, orange, purple. Shades of grey. But never before shades of black. This particular shade defied all other shades by going deeper, darker than ever before. It was only one shade above being so dark it was nothing at all. And this almost-deepest black, this almost-nothing, was nestled in its face, stretching from eyelid to eyelid.

The being – the demon, her mind sobbed silently, it’s a demon and I’m not going home – cocked its head again, tilting it to the other side as though seeking a different perspective on her. She couldn’t tell where it was looking, the pupil-less darkness simply fixed on her in general.

“Little mortal.”

She jerked convulsively in shock as it spoke, something inside her cracking at the completely normal, utterly human sound of its voice. If she’d heard that voice on the end of a telephone line, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

“Silly little mortal,” it sighed, a man commenting on unfortunate times.

She was supposed to beg, wasn’t she? That’s what everyone else did. She’d heard them as she went to close the windows at night. Heard the pitiful pleas cut off by the sound of breaking bodies. She was supposed to grovel, to say she had family that was depending on her, children that needed her, people that would miss her.

But all she had was a boyfriend, and seeing as he was buried under the floorboards in the walk-in wardrobe, she didn’t think he’d miss her when she didn’t come home.

“Please…” A half-hearted whisper adhering to ritual. She had no hope to put strength behind it.

“They made me forget,” it said conversationally. “Forget what happened. But I’ve nearly got it all back now.”

She trembled mutely.

“Women are the best, I find.” It took a step closer, bending down ever so slightly to turn those nothing-eyes deeper into her soul. “They hold the best ones. I even think I know why. It’s quite an accomplishment.”

“Please.”

“Nearly there.” Its voice dropped down to a speculative murmur. “Silly little mortal, you can’t think to hide them from me forever.”

“I d-don’t have…”

“You can’t think to keep them from me,” it hissed.

Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, forcing the sea to spill over and trickle down her face. She dropped her head, chin tucked against her chest in a defensive curl. Every single nerve ending was on high alert, every muscle tense, every single aspect of her being waiting for the pain. The waiting and the fear seemed almost more excruciating than anything the demon could do to her, only she knew it wasn’t, and that made it all the worse. Home was out of reach.

“I don’t want to be here,” she whimpered.

With her eyes closed, she didn’t see the demon’s face twist, as though it was silly putty and someone had dug their fingers in and twisted sideways violently. All she heard was a rustle of movement, and the low rumble of its voice.

“Neither do I.”

And then there was pain.