Season 2 - Blogisode 9

CHAPTER NINE



“What is it honey?”

The beast churns into James from behind with the force of a semi truck. It doesn’t even break stride as it inserts its six inch claws into James’s backside, lifts him off his feet and carries him kicking and screaming another fifteen feet down path before slamming his tender frame rough into the dirt with both talon fists.

“Jesus Fucking…”

His voice is cut short as the wind huffs out from his lungs. His body displaces the earth beneath him with a rough thud imprinting the visage of a disfigured snow angel contrived about in the earth.

He struggles, weak and helpless, as the demonic vision overpowers him, its hulking frame surrounding James on all sides.

Teeth, blood, claws, fur, and those eyes, void of all humanity, the last thing.

The blood showers out of James as his body streams past Persia and Christina sprinkling them with his life force as he passes some six feet above them.

The two women look on in a state of complete shock and horror as the beast dives face first into James’s neck, shaking like a wild dog as it tears the flesh from his body, separating A from B, head from chest.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Christina’s contraction pulls them back into the moment. The paternal instinct takes over and for a second is successful in blotting out the mayhem several yards behind them.

“Okay baby just push.”

“Help me!” The gurgled scream trickles out of him from beneath the monster, his last gasp of life spits out from his throat, then a silence more deafening than the madness and mayhem.

It’s all Persia can do to keep focus on her task.

The thought comes quick, there’s nothing she can do for him now, if she runs to his side in aid she will surely die as well, this is where she needs to be right now.

“Okay girl you’re doing fantastic, just focus on me, just focus on me.”

Christina’s eyes dart back and forth between the place where Persia sits between her legs and the demon devouring her companion several yards from where she lay.

Her eyes lock with the dark empty gaze of the demonic vision now feasting on James’s entrails.

The creature feasts like orgy, the blood drenches its fur as it ravages James’s lifeless body with tooth and fang.

And then a sound slips into the scene that humbles the world around it in direct opposition to the suffering and death about it. The sound of a newborn as it panics through its first breath of life.

Persia wipes the birth from off the baby's face and stomach, smiles down at it and for the briefest second, forgets about the scene not then paces behind her.

Its cries stifle the madness. The jungle goes silent, save for the pleas of new life in search of comfort.

Persia places the child upon Christina’s chest.

“It’s a boy.”

A sound like ‘Oh my God’ escapes from between Christina’s exhausted lips, trailing down her chin with the beads of sweat that spill from her body, evaporating out into the forest.

The first second of her life as a mother begins, no demon nor dog can snatch this moment from her. No fear, no world exists outside of the thin line of awareness that passes between the mother and child.

Persia hands over the newborn to his semi delirious mother, pulling her own top from over her head and wrapping it around the boy to protect him from the undiscriminating sun.

“Wait here, everything is going to be okay.”

The words hardly convey a sense of security.

Thankfully Christina is too lost someplace between awe and fatigue to pick up the nervous undertones snapping and crackling their way through Persia’s speech.

Persia stands, weary, body trembling with fear, eyes unsure. She turns to face the menace that stands to her backside ready to pounce upon them in an instant, snatching the life from their bodies without a seconds thought to the contrary.

Nothing.

“I…”

The beast is gone.

Persia finds herself unable to digest the peace of mind offered up to her by the absence of this lethality. Instead she finds herself forced to come face to face with a horror she could not imagine were it not painted over every inch of her reality. Her partner in life and love lies strewn about in section at her feet.

She goes to him, or rather the largest parts of him. Too many pieces, too few recognizable sections to pay homage or cry upon one thing.

She drops to her knees in the pool of blood gathering near the center of the massacre, bits of red and tone of flesh splash up against her bare chest and stomach, her head drops in sorrow.

“No time for tears.” She speaks the words for her and her alone, a whisper in the wind.

“I think you should come with me.” The voice, deep and hoarse, unfamiliar, snaps Persia round to where Christina sits on the ground, her new son in arm.

Christina coddles the child, tucking him tight to her chest, the smile in her eyes casts off the devastation about her; at her side a man, draped from shoulder to heel in a drab cloak of grey and black, too thick and cumbersome for the climate.

He strokes the thin tuft of hair spitting out from atop the boy’s head then stands erect next to the woman and child, each far too involved in one another to pay mind to the new stranger among them.

Persia stares in mild confusion at the man. The long line of questions she wants to ask muddle in between the visions of carnage that press firm against the front of her mind’s eye.

“If I were here to harm you it would already be too late to do anything about it. I need both of you to come with me now.”

“Who…”

“If we had the time I would gladly answer all of those questions spinning around in your bewildered little head right now, unfortunately our time is quite limited and if you expect to enjoy much more of it in this realm you will need to lift your yourself out of this funk and follow me.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“And this surprises you?”

The man kneels at Christina’s side once again, leans slight to her ear and whispers. She turns to him and nods a sign of approval.

“Who are you?” Persia manages to pass off a touch of conviction as she firms the query toward this new face.

He only cuts an eye her way, impatience and disapproval, as he gently lifts Christina, child in arm, from her pool of sweat, blood and mud.

With the ease and care of a man of great age holding his only grandchild for the first time he wraps himself about her, his cloak becoming a shield for both mother and son.

Persia, confused, lost, no amalgamation of adjectives can describe the world inside her head at this moment.

“I suggest you shake it off, and keep pace.”

The words are spoken without a look back as the man moves down the path and away from the scene, mother and child in arm.

“Wait up!”