Season 2 - Blogisode 11

CHAPTER 11



1998

Christian stands naked, feet suctioned to the cold cement floor. Blood trails thick and sedated down the rough blade grasped firmly between his fingers.

The room is more dark than light, though it is clear that he is far from alone. A sea of silhouettes circle round him to the back, silent enough to hear clear the shiver and twitch of anticipation that rives through the crowd as the next man is brought to center stage.

A voice thunders down from a set of speakers tucked someplace high up in the darkness.

“I expect by now you know the rules?”

Christian snaps back to life at the sound of the cracked and muffled bass. His eyes haze back to a solid vision, the world returns.

“Where…”

He pays quick mind to the knife in his hand, the life that slides down its blade.

“Jesus fuck.”

His fingers unfurl from around the weapon allowing it to fall plain to the floor with a short ‘THUK’.

His eyes drift to the sound of metal on rock, to the knife, to the trail of blood that starts at his feet, and to the place where it ends in an abstract splash of vermilion several feet in front of where he stands.

The naked child lie dead at his feet, still leaking fresh from a collage of puncture wounds that run through his entire body. Legs tucked tight to a semi-fetal; arms do their best to conceal the boy’s face from the ungodly misery laid upon him not second prior.

Christian falls to the floor, the same quick ‘THUK’ of the blade resonates through the silent steel hall as his body connects with the stone below.

The silence that envelopes the scene feels deafening in the seconds following his collapse.

Then another shadow steps into the thin hail of light that dances over the small center of the scene; another adolescent, naked, knife in hand.

He advances toward Christian, his eyes glazed with a sort of fog that tints them to a dull grey. Though void of all expression his face is still capable of conveying the sinister notion tucked between his eyes.

The child stops to stand over Christian’s sleeping mass, passed from the shock of coming to from a horrendous nightmare only to discover that it has followed him back to the land of the living.

The boy looks down at the helpless frame, Christian’s bruised and naked body. He hoists the knife high above his head with intent to…

“Enough.”

The same speaker box voice booms out once more, very plain, very matter of fact.

The boy freezes half lunge, lowers his weapon and slowly bows out into the shadows.

The crowd of anxious onlookers disperse without word. Several stay back to gather the corpses of the boys who, unlike Christian, found no respite in their last act, six in total.

Christian is left to his own, sleep full on the floor, naked pressed to cold, the blood drifts his way, pooling slow round his ear and neck.




THE PRESENT FUTURE

Christian dodges through the mayhem as blood and bullets flash past him.

Set leads the way cutting a vicious path for them with the frenzied excitement of a predator caught to the scent of death. Man and beast alike, he cleaves through them with tooth and talon separating them from their lives with no qualms as to which side who is on.

Christian keeps safe pace in a great work of not involving himself in the devastating quarrel. Half man half monster he can hardly make mind to which side he aught fight for, which would appear a trivial debate given Set’s lack of prejudice toward his encounters.

Gunshots ring out over the call of the alarm as they reach the far back of the interiors exterior. A second’s glance over one shoulder paints a tapestry of a losing battle on both sides, across the yard more death than life.

Set kicks through a splinter of a door and grabs Christian by the tatter dragging him in behind.

They haste way several yards down a coiling staircase which stops abrupt at face to a large steel door embedded deep in the subterranean rock below the station. No lock or handle, a small dimly lit key pad illuminates their scene mounted to the right of the entrance.

“How did you do that? I mean, and why were you killing your own kind? They came here to rescue you.”

Set addresses Christian’s query as he punches code into the glowing 1 through 9.

“Those creatures you refer to as my kind would more sooner see me dead than free. This was not a rescue mission, it was a warning.”

“I don’t get it.”

The key pad chimes in, a click and whirr, then the door hums open.

“You don’t say.”

Set steps through the portal, Christian follows without word.




ABOVE

Jade shoulders the front door of the hall urging it to part just enough to fit her frame. She makes first step into the frantic day that awaits, stepping over the fresh dead cast about the earth before her.

She looks on, eyes to shock, half of her kin dead, the other half en route. The demons, thought to be long past departed from this world now upon them like a tsunami of unrelenting fucking madness.

She pushes focus through the screams and sirens to survey the scene for sign of salvation. The worst possible thought envelops her, escape could be her only option.

A thrashing beast, seven feet of horn, fang and scale, spots her from mid court. Its eyes lock with hers, a grin all too human runs its jaw as it makes its advance upon her.

“Fuck.”

She runs.

Jade foots with quick through the maze of death pivoting on toe and heel past the fallen and near fell.

The demon rushes without break to her heels, a swipe takes her.

Jade bites her tongue to hold the pain as she tumbles to the painted earth, her right calf cut deep, an inch if not more.

Her aggressor stands over her, preps to lunge.

She spins round on her back to greet him as he comes down on her, her knife finds his throat first.

Planted under the girth of the dead weight she struggles to squirm free. Half out her eye catches a glimpse, two men, or rather near men, a shattered door.

The prisoners have escaped.