Smother
I was dreaming.
I don’t dream much, no, I hardly dream at all. I tend to have nightmares—of her, of him. I wake up in cold sweats with a pounding heart and limp limbs and force myself to remember they don’t even know what you look like anymore. They haven’t seen me since I was five months old; now I am a lady, a fully blossomed female, and they have no idea how big their baby girl has grown.
They don’t even care to find out.
I waken on a hard, unpolished wooden floor. My hands slide down the hardwood, feeling the uneven grain and eyeing the chipping paint. A breeze wafts over my skin, lifting my long blonde hair from my back in a mess of waves.
Nothing feels right, I don’t even feel right.
Gone are my hooves and here are bare feet, cold and itchy. My coat has gone to skin, my muscular body has been traded for a slimmer figure, and my head has shrunk to unimaginable proportions.
I am a land walker, a human, a woman.
It doesn’t take me long to raise myself from the floor, the creak of the weak wood practically as loud as a person in a cave with an intercom. I shiver at the sound of my own impact.
Before me, I see two options. My body tightens as the choice weighs on my shoulders. A liquid stained door, dripping of deep burgundy and vibrant red hues, to my right; an ebony door with a faint ominous glow to my left.
They are both a door I don’t wish to open.
My instincts for adrenaline, the devil on my shoulder, impulses me to be quick—be rash. The angel hovers above my mind like a UFO, “pick neither. Wait for help.”
I have never been good at being rational.
My hand, tanned with no impurities, latches around the gold handle of the black door. An aura of energy latches onto my body like a rope. Adrenaline loops my veins and impulses my actions—I am a junky, an addict.
My wrist turns the handle.
Wind, and rain caress my face like a violent rapist attempting to be soothing.
Like before they diverge in their own massacre—like in the movies, when the killer holds a human at gunpoint before pulling the trigger, they always need to stroke your cheek.
My body stiffens with every inch of cold air toying at my skin, producing goose bumps in every visual sector of my body. And then I hear a faint whisper.
Curiosity killed the cat, but I have to see who it is.
I shut the door behind me, the slow whine as it closes deafening my ears. I look to my left, following the hushed voices and faint whimpers. Beyond my reach, a few feet down, I see two females kneeled behind a dumpster.
I narrow my eyes, but I can’t make out what they are speaking of.
“Hey,” I whisper, my voice rising into the air like a knife into butter. It slides up easily against the silence, the alleyway echoing my tone just enough to grasp their attention and revaluate their conversation.
One holds up a finger to her lips, I will call her Bossy. Her eyes narrow at mine, as if I was dumb enough to raise my voice, before gesturing with her hands, come here.
I begin to walk, before their hands fly up in a panic. If only I was as quick to listen as I was to speak. My foot lands on what I can only explain must be shrapnel from a broken bottle. The crack of the glass sounds like a blow horn, louder than something of its size should be.
They glance at each other, and then at me.
I watch them, my heart pounding.
The growl—groan? —Of something beyond where light can reach sounds from at the end of the alley. It sounds unpleasant, as if someone is struggling to wake up from a rough night. Not dangerous, not even coherent, just gurgling.
But then I hear a shriek.
The pounding of running feet, the echo of it’s snarling threat. My instincts as an equine cringe—flight or fight.
Both girls are up in running, Bossy apparently the slower of the two.
Flight it is.
I lurch into a run no more than five strides from my new partners in crime. I know better than to look back—I know to run as fast as I can and only look at where I need to go—but my curiosity (as it normally does) gets the best of me in my worst hour. Rain impacts my vision, but what I see must only be the most magnificent animal-predator alive.
It is a human of an unnaturally appearance. Its cheek hangs in an unacceptable manner, it’s eyes glow of whiteness, its neck is cracked to the left in what I can only explain to be inhuman.
These girls aren’t fast by any means—I am within their reach in half a minute, and nearly passing the lead girl—let’s name her Quick—in maybe two hundred yards. They are both blinded by fright; I can see the desperation in their stare.
I keep forgetting to breath.
I see the end of the ally coming almost too soon. The flickering light of a dying lamppost is illuminating a paved street. I feel semi-relieved. Streets mean more people.
It isn’t until we round the corner onto the paved street that I realize more civilization could mean more monsters. It isn’t until then that I realize us making such ignorant noise could trigger more of these felons to chase at our heels.
We can’t stop running, but we have nowhere to run to.
And we are surrounded.
I stop running, feeling the weight of Quick and Bossy cave into my back. Every inch of my body seizes, I feel trapped and insecure. They are watching us, as if to analyze our every limb. It is like when in front of a predator, you don’t make the first move.
Or in war, you wait for someone to draw his or her gun first. Make the first shot.
We are in that stand off, but I have a feeling it won’t be long till they just devour us regardless of our Opossum game.
The monster that forced us to run is finally catching up to us now. He was slower than I would have pegged him to be, but much like horses I am sure we will have our faster competitors. He is snarling.
He will be the opponent to start the game.
As a prey animal, I always imagined personally, that I would be brought back to this world in a better skin. A human, I would have thought, would be at the top of the food chain.
But a human come back to life with impeccable running skills…now I wish I were on the other side of the coin.
It was like a light bulb went off in each of our brains, Quick was first to lunge away (she earned her nickname fair and square), while Bossy followed suit (I should rename her Coward). All three of us didn’t’ wait for the opponents to draw the first gun, we just took off like three defenseless deer amongst a hoard of hunters.
The game, of which I thought would be easy, has turned into a massacre.
We cannot run fast enough to save our lives, I hear the intense snarls and teeth-chattering growls from just at my heels and my heart begins to pound. My breathing is heavy, my desperation for air nauseating, but I cannot stop.
If I stop, I die.
If I die, I come back a monster.
Who am I kidding, I am one.
We need to slow them down, though I am not entirely sure how yet. We keep changing directions by turning sharp corners, shaking them for a mere fifty yards before the hoard gains speed. We cannot outrun them forever, we need to breath, they just need to eat.
It isn’t until our third right (after our second left) that I realize we have reached a dead end. At this dead end, glimmers a wooden door beneath an old porch light.
A sigh of relief. A way out.
We are all sprinting at speeds slower than I am used to going but yet I cannot make two legs carry me more efficiently. Quick, a red head with vibrant green eyes and a pale complexion looks over at me with a face I can only describe as stunned. Bossy, a little behind both of us but keeping up and not being eaten nonetheless, has a strict face of determination. I notice now she is pretty, with deep, rich brown eyes and caramel brown hair.
One of them needs to sacrifice themselves if we are going to make it to the door, open it, and get into it in time.
Someone needs to die.
I promise you, it won’t be me.
I thank my father, here, now, for my rational decision-making in life or death situations. He has no consciousness, he has no real emotion. He had no problem tossing me out to the cold life of Beqanna without so much as a blink. He has given me his angel free shoulder.
I utilize his genetics for the first time right here, right now.
Quick is up at my speed, but Bossy is falling behind. I slow to her pace, “Quick, run hard,” signaling the red head she should not follow my stride. I match Bossy, my eyes leveling with hers; she stares at me with a questioning glance.
I nod my head as if to say, thank you for your service.
And then I push her.
I push her awkwardly, an angle not ideal but I refuse to make the perfect execution at a time like this. I watch as she flails, her arms—I notice a bracelet on her right wrist, gold with small pearls—reaching out for something, anything to save her from her tumble.
I hear the satisfied snarls of the hoard as they surround her squirming torso.
They will be finished her petite frame in seconds, there are enough of them to eat fifty of her and still be starving madmen. Quick and I have moments—seconds, before that door opens.
And Quick is not performing well after my maneuver.
“What the hell was that,” she is franticly pulling at the knob, which will not turn.
“The door is locked,” I say with an eerie calmed tone before analyzing the doorframe.
“You fucking killed her,” she is still stuck on Bossy.
I point to the side of the door, “first off, find a spare key. Second off, your welcome for saving your life.”
I begin grasping at the cobblestone wall, feeling for a faulty rock or loose stone that could be harboring a key.
“You killed someone who didn’t need to die.” She is angry, her voice penetrating the air like a dagger into my flesh. Her words are so condescending, so ungrateful.
I snarl, “It was either her or you. She was useless. She was slow. She was holding us back. Though now in hindsight I have a feeling she would have been more pleased with the outcome than you are now.”
The unimpressed growls and groans rise from behind us. They have finished her like ten people destroy an appetizer at Red Robins. They are moving on to finish off the rest of the trio.
Two left.
No exit.
I am on my knees now, pawing at the floor, picking up every stone and every rock—anything and anywhere a person could hide a key.
Someone must have put something somewhere, people always fucking hide shit.
My hand dusts away a rock that seems too light for it’s build. Desperate and fearful, I shake the rock violently, hearing the clamber of a key wiggling within the stone.
“I got it,” I practically squeal, a feeling of relief washing over me only momentarily.
Out falls what I can only describe as a skeleton key. The white bone curling into a perfect frame.
We are both in front of the door, one hand on the handle and the other within the lock. I am turning it and fiddling with it—it’s old build not much on efficiency and quickness.
The lock clicks and we are instantly pulling at the wood. The pounding of running feet echoing just behind me.
Two seconds before I become their dessert.
I am too good to be main course.
It opens within an inch of my life, and we are flying in the door like squirrels onto a tree. I feel the clench of a hand wrap around my hair, pausing my jump mid air.
I scream.
I see Quick, scrambling in her pockets like a hound on a scent, when she pulls out the smallest of pocketknives wrapped in her fist. She doesn’t even pause, swinging her between the crack of the almost shut door, cutting my hair right at the source of the dead hand.
I fall face first onto the floor, hearing the door slam behind me. The knife gets lost within the hoard of menaces.
“You could have said you had a fucking knife the whole time.”
