That night was a bad one for me, turning that way even before the firelight of my very first sunset had faded into the dark of sleep.
Sometimes the mind just won't let you forget things that you really want to.
Sometimes it gets creative and mixes things up so it's even more upsetting. This looked like it was going to be one of those.
I was under a flashing strobe of green, white, and black and the air was stuffy and hot. Something was coming at me, but I couldn't see it but its labored breathing - more like huffing - was coming closer with each heartbeat. This felt like the Glades where K'rth and I fought the Dark Night cell, but through a distorted roller-ronker lens. My skin turned clammy and I turned around, not seeing anything.
Slapping down at the side of my leg, I found my MAC and snapped it down and clear of its sheath. The blade hissed as I pulled it and I cursed when I found that my Blitzer was missing from its shoulder holster.
"A knife's a girl's best friend," someone said and I stepped forward before spinning around. The person was too close and I needed room to move.
Sparks peppered the darkness as something metal and bright slashed at my eyes out of the gloom, sending chips spitting from the edge of my MAC. I backed up, not sure who or what was after me yet. Nothing but darkness in front of me, but something was shifting in it, forming a silhouette as it stepped forward.
"Afraid yet?" the voice asked. It was female but sounded synthetic like a Shiver's mask. Something in my memory stirred and but I lost it when she barked a "You better be!"
A scream echoed from somewhere in the distance and I slashed with the point down. My blade arced across the face, then back again to hook with the point but both times I met air instead of meat. The screaming voice sound again and it was familiar too, but too far away to recognize.
A low chuckle and a cough sounded from the darkness from behind me, but I couldn't afford to turn around to face it. There wasn't anything in my periphery and I circled, knowing I was cornered and about to die.
"Right here, lover!" the voice said. "You're getting slow!"
Now I could see the figure in front of me and it was female, but made of stains and broken pavement instead of a flesh and bone. Her hands were held to the sides, palm up and each of the nails ended in long slivers of glass or rusty metal blades and hooks. The strobe flashed again and she blinked to the side, circling me in stop action. There was something on her jacket that looked familiar. Some sort of symbol or maybe a-
Blades snapped the air in front of me and I ducked back, blocking with my MAC and the back of my arm. Pain from my fingers and sparks of heat on my brow where one of her hands had gotten through and blood poured down the length of my wrist and in to my palm. I yelped and she let out a cackle that sounded like breaking glass.
"You bleed good," she taunted. "Delish!"
I feinted at her face and then dropped and spun, sweeping my heel across the pavement and got paydirt. I caught both of her heels and she landed in a heap, but immediately flipped backwards into a squat like a cartoon character. No one could move that quickly or could they?
"Still doing that kung-fu shit Cole?" she sniggered. Now that was familiar. I know I've heard that somewhere before.
Blades whirled across my vision again and fire cut across my nose and cheek. My face was wet and burning and I snorted a wet mass of something onto the floor.
She cackled again and I was sure that the voice was familiar - everything here was, but it was changing. The walls were made of pulsing, sinuous flesh like a foldship and they were bleeding and dripping onto me. The lights flashed On. Off. On. Off.
Green. Black. White.
Red.
She screamed and blinked towards me and I met her with a hard kick to the center of her chest. Instead of knocking her back, my foot sank in like she was made of wet cement, folding around my leg and swallowing it up to mid shin. I screamed and hopped around flailing and could feel her voice resonate up my leg.
"Now THIS is gonna leave a mark!" she laughed.
The woman kicked at my groin and I blocked with my arms, feeling the bite of blades into my forearms and fists. As she lined up for another shot, I saw rows of razor blades wedged into her shins and struggled harder.
More pain tore through my arms as I took another hit on the arms and I jumped up, pushing off and taking her backwards and off balance. She flailed on the way down, flaying my shin guard and boot. I stomped when we landed and the foot came loose, leaving something black and sticking as dirty oil running down my leg. Meanwhile, she flopped around like a wet sewer eel but that stopped after I stomped her head.
"Okay, let's find out who you are," I said as I gasped for air and flipped her onto her stomach. The armored gloves that covered her hands wouldn't come off - they seemed to be part of her and the embedded razor blades and fishhooks leaked red on my hands as I tried. Giving up, I crouched on her back and slid my blade under her chin. Carefully reaching around with the other hand, I managed to find the edge of the mask and pulled it off towards me. It looked a lot like a Prop mask on Mort, but the neon green eye that winked up at me from behind was unnatural. I froze when I saw that it was Gael's face staring up at me, but Ebon's don't have irises. Also, they don't have big bloody holes where their noses used to be and I gasped. She began to laugh and it racked her body in a spasm that echoed from the walls and floor. That was when the face trembled and sloughed off to the floor, running across my hand like melting wax. I tried to scream but only heard her voice as I reeled backwards.
"Surprise, surprise," she giggled and backhanded a fist of something into my face. It felt like salt or maybe sand to my skin, but my eyes burned like it had been hot cinders. My vision was gone in a field of white and the world tumbled around me, impact after impact as I bounced head over heels again and again. Impacts like bullets hit the ground around me, spraying me with hot dirt and something like broken glass filled my mouth. My head spun as the chatter of laughter and gunfire echoed around me. I was dying on the Mariella all over again.
Suddenly all motion stopped and I was staring up at a pale blue sky with a burning sun. My hands and face were covered with a pale light grit and I tried to dust them off but couldn't. There was too much of it and it was all over me.
"Where in the h-" I tried to ask, but ended up coughing and gagging. The spasms ended when I finally managed to spit out a ball of dirt the size of my fist. I watched in horror as it began to slither away, leaving a faint moist trail.
A low wind moaned around the empty space around me, kicking up dust clouds from the surrounding sand and I covered my eyes. Somewhere in the distant, I heard the groan of metal and a squeaking but couldn't tell where it was coming from.
"Where am I?" I asked aloud, but there wasn't anyone to answer. It was a sea of white dunes, but then a pall of black smoke started rising above them and tried to block the sky. My chest tightened as I looked for a way out and felt vulnerable without a ceiling above me.
That was when I knew that someone was there and I had to turn in a full circle to find him. A man was staring down at me from a high dune and started down towards me. He was dressed in black and I thought it might have been Roman or maybe that guy from Cloak, but there was no way I could tell from here. When I rose to walk towards him, a growling burst of wind knocked me onto my face.
That was when I woke up, or rather realized I was awake. My face and chest were damp with a cold sweat and I wiped at it absently with the pillowcase. It felt like there was something else to the dream that I missed by waking up, but it was just beneath the surface and completely out of reach. The sudden pounding at the door pulled me back into the real world before I could think about it.
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