“Just you and me sweetness.” I laugh and lick my teeth nervously.
“Yet still this fond bosom regrets while adoring…”
I begin to reach beneath my eyelids. When I touch my eyes it reminds me of that Halloween game we used to play with peeled grapes when we were kids. “This is an eyeball.” Someone would say while they placed the peeled grape into your hand, and it felt…just like this. But what if I rip out my eyes and this woman disappears and no one returns in her place? What then Einstein?
“…That love like the leaf must fall into the sear…”
“That’s just a chance I’ll have to take.”
My fingers hook into claws.
“…That time will come on when remembrance deploring…”
“I’ll always love you,” she says.
My last thought before I destroy my eyesight, is about that old movie “The Man with the X-ray Eyes!” At the end of the picture the guy goes crazy and tears out his eyes, then the screen goes blank. But rumor has it that in the original director’s cut, after he rips out his eyes, he turns and screams to a horrified audience: “I can still see!”
“That’s just a chance I’ll have to take.” I say to myself.
And then the screaming starts.
“…Contemplates the scenes of our past with a tear.”
“I’ll love you forever.”
Run Away
The night absorbed the landscape around me, swallowing the terrain whole in a thick tapestry of shadows. Ahead of me I could see nothing but the street lamps lining the freeway and the ominous silhouettes of stalled cars laid out like grave markers, their occupants long fled or murdered. The only sounds were my own rapid footfalls, my own panting breaths, the disturbing sound of tearing flesh, and the snarls and growls of the things pursuing me in the dark. The screams had stopped a few days ago. I feared I was the only thing left alive. It was all the incentive I needed to keep running.
I tried to stay beneath the streetlights. Slipping from one protective cone of electric sun to the next. Shadowy creatures lunged at me baring saber-like fangs and long gnarled claws, yellow luminescent eyes glazed with hunger. Gruesome things lived in the darkness now. I spun away from them, weaving and faking like an NFL runningback. I knew they couldn’t catch me. Not as long as I kept running. They were slow, stupid, and every-fucking-where. There was just enough illumination between lights to allow me to see their silhouettes lurking there in the blackness, waiting to spring.
A car parked at the curb rocked and jerked with violent activity as I passed it. A few weeks ago I would have thought there was a couple in there, fucking their brains out. Now I knew that whatever was in there wasn’t copulating. It was eating. The wet smacking and sucking sounds, the grunts and growls and moans of ecstasy were not those of a happy couple consummating their relationship but of a feeding frenzy. I shivered and kept moving past. I still carried the axe I’d borrowed from a sporting goods store a few days ago when the cramps first began; the first indication that I wouldn’t be able to outrun them forever. But whoever had owned that vehicle was past any heroics I could provide.
I hit a wet slick of dark liquid trailing out from under the car and nearly tripped; saving myself from a lethal fall by grabbing onto the next lamp post. I looked down at my running shoes already knowing that it wasn’t motor oil that I’d stepped in. There was no time to wipe the tacky red substance from my sneakers. I had to get moving again. The car door was opening. Several long serpentine phantoms came slithering out, tracking my scent, drawn to my heat. Had to run.
Human remains littered the street ahead. I would have to dodge the creatures while running the obstacle course of rotting carrion. Some of the bodies were still being fed on by the night things. I tried not to disturb their meal. I pumped my legs harder, nearly sprinting as a herd of the dark creatures rose from the gruesome maze of death and decay.
There had been all kinds of speculation as to where the things had come from. It had started with a few random attacks but soon swarms of the things began to pour out, covering the earth in a thick cloud of voracious evil. The best theory seemed to be that they had come from beneath the earth; roused from the bowels of hell by petroleum drilling equipment in search of hidden pockets of fossil fuel. The most popular one was that hell had unleashed its minions upon the earth. The end of times. Armageddon. Churches filled with parishioners begging the lord for forgiveness. Many of them were eaten right on the church steps as they left, having made the mistake of worshipping past sunset.
Soon the wild theories and speculations began to peter off as thoughts turned towards survival and the theorists themselves were murdered in their beds. It seemed the entire human race was now under threat of extinction. Of course it could have just been happening in isolated cities and I’d just been unlucky enough to have run through every one of them. Or maybe it was just the West Coast? I couldn’t be certain. My only concern now was with my own survival. I had to keep moving. I had to stay one step ahead of them.
I hurtled a couple of the night things as they burrowed in and out of a man who appeared to be about six-hundred pounds. Most of his girth was due to his body filling with gases as his organs decayed. He had obviously been dead for some time. The stench of the dead was overpowering. Nothing seemed to be alive anywhere except for the rapacious shadow creatures and me. I tried to block out the thought that I might be the only living thing in the whole city to keep the panic from crushing the remaining air from my chest. I calmed myself as much as possible, concentrated on the road, maintained my heart rate at a steady even pace, still only slightly below panic level.
My lungs were burning and felt as if they would explode under the tremendous exertion. Still I maintained my fanatic pace. For the ninth day in a row I put in miles that would have awed the most dedicated ultra-marathoner. There were still at least another three hours left before daylight and already I’d run twice the distance of the average marathon. But now my body was starting to rebel.
I was perhaps a day or two away from organ failure. I was losing fluids far too rapidly. And there was so little fat left on my body that my muscles were starting to consume themselves for fuel. Spots began to dance in front of my eyes as the oxygen in my blood continued to decrease, my lungs unable to keep up with the demand. But once again I could feel them expand a little farther to accommodate the strain and allow a few more breaths inside. The cramps in my legs and calves were getting worse. The blisters on my feet burst two days ago and the raw skin now rubbed against the synthetic leather of my broken down Tuned Air Max running shoes, aggravating the tender flesh. Soon the sores would be infected and I wouldn’t be able to run. I’d have to fight. But that was days away. Hopefully by then I’d be deep in the desert. Safe from the night things.
I jogged up the freeway entrance ramp dodging in between cars. As soon as I hit the freeway I knew that this had been a bad idea. The smell of death choked me and scalded my throat, churning a tidal wave of bile in my stomach. Even worse, the cars were too close together. If there were something inside waiting to lunge out at me, I had only inches to avoid it. But then again, if I managed to reach open highway where the traffic gridlock thinned out enough to allow a vehicle to pass through fast enough to avoid being attacked, I might be able to borrow one of the cars and give my legs a rest for awhile. I decided it was worth the risk. I kept running down the freeway, between the cars.
There were more lights on the freeway. There were hardly any gaps between the road lights. But where there were gaps, they were great expanses where the darkness seemed to stretch on for almost a mile before the light resumed. The pain in my calves, thighs, and feet was starting to slow me down, affecting my stride, and my lungs were starting to cramp again. I couldn’t keep that pace up for long. I knew I had to make it to the end of the freeway.