(ahh, yesss. my old style of horror returns here, for some reason. deformed something kills something. originally meant to be two chapters, i thought it would be stupid to have it so. a hundred word chapter? thats a little short. thus, the colon in the title. moment of clarity: nightmare machine. 2nd half was inspired by my gothic story, written a few years back.)

CHP14 This is a moment of clarity: nightmare machine

     

      I catch something.

      "I felt the temperature change inside the room. Colder, it got colder, a lot colder I remember. The lights flickered too, I'm not sure why or how. I was told that he was at a meeting and that I should wait in his room."

      The man has a throne.

      "So I waited and waited. I don't know what was up with the lighting and the temperature but there was nothing I could do about it. Then, I heard him..."

      "You heard him?"

      "Yea. I heard him coming. It didn't make sense to me but I knew it was him. All kinds of weird scraping and clangs...like an army tank or something."

      "An army tank. Do you even know what an army tank sounds like?" 

      The man wears a suit of armor.

      Naimlis? Are you still listening to that?

      It's my room mate.

      "Metal plates! Grafted into his arm! He had these wires"

      don't know what you find

      "eyes removed. So he sat down at the desk and greeted"

      now? I thought it was amusing for the first five

      "face me. The computer flicked on behind him. He told me to"

      two days! It's a new record, I

      "responses appeared on the screen behind him. He didn't even type any of it! Like the computer was alive and hearing what I said. Or, straight through his ears onto"

      heard the 911 calls? Those were

      "my emergency assistance warning flashed in my internal vision. I think he disabled"

      Disabled? Disabled what?

      Naimlis? Hello?

      "Are you sure he hacked into your internal"

      Internal what?

      Hobby-one that doesn't involve snooping

      "overheated! My hands started burning where the sensors were. I wanted to tear the wires out of my skin"

      Naimlis? Your clothes really need to be washed.

      "Damn it, bitch, will you just shut up!" I yell. Damn you.

      Jeez, what the fuck is your problem?

      "laughed. It is impossible to manipulate another person's implanted hardware. Impossible"

      If you're going to be a bitch to me I'm

      "Impossible. It can't be done."

      Can it?   

      Privacy violation. It is illegal

      "robot? Something else? That thing wasn't human"

      Something else. I know what. I turn off the device.

      "I'm sorry," I say to her. "I get carried away sometimes. I'll wash my clothes this evening, I swear. I didn't honestly think they smelled that bad."

      They don't know that I know.

 

      A primitive village once existed before steel buildings and lighted streets. It existed here, at this very spot. My boots stand on concrete where a crude dirt path led into a little village. Ahead of me, a gas station, brightly lit so no one could slash ankles from beneath cars. Ahead of me, also, a tiny brick cottage where a family of ten or so gathered in a candlelit room. I did not see the people or the room, but I did see the candlelight. The candlelight from this house, the other house across the dirt path, and the ones next to those. Candlelight from brick cottages were the only orange in shadow and night. A black sky with white tiny stars and the earth, a black sky with no stars - is what I remember. This memory is stronger than the red-purple corroded sky and the smell of gasoline. I remembered that only evil, vile things stalked the streets at night.  I think I heard the sound of clamps, pistons, switches, pumps, and thousands of pounds of metal grinding and scraping across metal.

      Tink tink was all I heard at night. It was a very light sound of metal tapping across air. A necessary sound to pierce the night, the only sound. I walk over to the convenience store, listening carefully to the phantom steps of the primitive mechanical stranger. Leaning close to the bullet proof glass, I ask for an instant win lottery ticket. The language converter yells something to the man in a Slavic language that I don't know.

      "God I hate that thing," the man says in perfect English. I don't ask. Maybe the man who usually works that shift isn't there, maybe no one knows how to turn it off, maybe it's broken. Who knows. I pay my two dollars.

      Undead, demons, wraiths, deformed magicians, and other horrible creatures walked this road. They hid in shadow, and although the cool night air invited one or two bold villagers out, most knew to stay inside in their flea-infested beds. Better to itch oneself to insanity than chance an encounter with whatever walked in candlelight on sky under sky. I am not afraid now; there is no night here. No candlelight, no stars, no sky, no dirt path here. I take out a quarter. The man inside is counting down the register - his shift must be ending.

      "And, what are you doing so late out? Are you lost?" the voices were always laughing at you.

      I spun around but all I can see was the tiny orange square a few feet across to the other side of the path. A small window with a candle by it, someone inside being bitten in their sleep.

      They were in the night somewhere. I stepped away from the window, so I could be there also. Tink tink, I heard. I think I am making this up, but I heard the streets with cars and the buzzing of lights and computer powered everything. I know that the black sky eventually just crashed to the earth and left a red-purple mass in its stead.

      "You do know that it is unsafe to walk these streets at night, especially alone. There are things with seven eyes and claws so long they are self mutilating. Dripping, oozing things. Things that can see through the darkness." It said with a tink tink. Tink tink, it got closer, louder.

      "Yes, I do know, everyone knows that." I said to it, unfazed and unmoving. I stayed in the darkness, did not cower in candlelight or bang on windows.

      I scratch off two horseshoes. Another instant win ticket, I won. He is still counting the register when the language converter tells him I need another ticket.

      "God damn it! I hate this thing!" he even walks over to the box and screams "I hate you!" With long fingers, he slides another ticket through the slot and resumes counting the register.

      "If you know that," it says, "then you must be something evil, something sinister, something vile and disgusting. Whatever walks at night does not walk in day for good reason. It is because what is good and righteous will destroy it." Tink tink.

      "I am not afraid of anything -- not good, not evil," I said to it, without drawing a weapon because I could see the man counting the register in the middle of the night. I knew, then, that the darkness will spark, that good and evil would swirl together in an indecipherable mass of red and purple. Light will be created, concrete poured over dirt, the primitive darkness subdued.

      I did not see him too well. It had a male shape, pectorals and broad shoulders. He showed himself in the dim light, black horizontal and diagonal markings on his flesh. Metal, hooked claws tapping on steel forearms. Long, pointed metal teeth slid easily through large holes in his cheeks. They glistened with his saliva. With one black pupil that stretched across the diameter of his eyeball, he looked at me. He blinked a few times and smiled. His cheeks were pulled taut against dagger teeth. A little blood, his own blood, dripped down a tooth, though he smiled still.

      He spread his arms wide and wrapped them around me. His hooked steel claw, in several jerking motions, smashed through bones and organs. He turned his head and without even opening his mouth, slipped an exposed tooth into my cheek. Although pinned body and face, I tried to break free. His fingers moved a little in my chest, and I can hear them tink-ing on steel forearms.

      A tongue, sharp, jagged and steel tore through a new hole in my cheek, smashing teeth. Instinctively, I bit down with my gums but they only hit cold steel. Teeth chattered around inside my mouth and attacked my other teeth and my throat and tongue. I couldn't even scream without choking on my own teeth, which I did anyway. The tongue tapped on the roof of my mouth a few times, gently, so that I would know. I tried to move away, but I was pinned to him. I could only hum desperate tunes in his ear. Very slowly, the steel tongue tapped its way through. Hot, black blood streamed down my throat and took teeth down with it. Hot tears streamed down my cheek and down my nasal passage. Finally it must have reached my brain because that is when the pain stopped. Maybe it snaked its way down my spinal column, maybe through my eyes. I died that night the most horrible death. 

      "Do you see the sky tonight?" I ask the bulletproof glass. The man cringes at the Slavic translation.

      "Huh? What?" he raises an eyebrow. "Yea, it's pretty...Why not..."

      "Ever wonder what's beyond it?" I ask him in a language I don't know.

      "Galaxies? Stars? I don't know. Who cares. Aliens." He looks nervously behind me.

      I do not know why he stood and waited beside my body. He must have not known I could cast magic that could eradicate entire empires from beyond the grave. He must not have known that although I die, I can cast resurrection spells on my mortal body. Horrible, sinister things walked around at night, I remember.

      "I'm not sure completely," I tell him, "But I think beyond that sky is a bright, white sky. It is so white and so light that every color next to it will look almost black." Even though the man has trouble focusing on my sentence and not the translation, I think he understands me.

      "God I hope to hell you aren't driving tonight."

      My body disappeared, the darkness disappeared, the houses, the lights. He found himself in a small white room, the walls and floor and ceiling some kind of thin papery material. He looked around and wandered a little. He soon became very afraid of the floor, as it seemed he was going to break through to what, he did not know. A knight, eight feet tall, in ferocious Warlock armor, materialized next to him.

      The white walls spoke to him. "Had I not met you, I would have harmed no one this night. But I am not good. There is only evil this night. All should fear that, even you and your kind. Not even your evil is safe from the overall evil. You do not own the night."

      I did not kill him. I let him go on the same dirt path where he killed me. He watched me walk away, but did nothing. It did not make me good or evil. I a sense, I was the first, I believe. The overall evil was the world we live in, doesn't matter if it was then or now. There are those that think they can take advantage of it but that is where I come in.

      I told myself that I will kill him later.

      "Can you just scratch your ticket and leave? I don't have all day for you wacked up techno-drug addicts."

       That is why I listen and anger my roommate. It is because the evil that is this world is getting to be too great.