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Chapter 3 time:
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SOUL
Chapter 3
It was times like these where I wished that I was simply able to lie down and let whatever happened happen. However, my mind would never allow that to happen—I was big-balled, thick-skulled, and always ready to give it my all.
My gash reduced in bleeding rather quickly and simply turned into a large swelling. It still hurt like hell, but I couldn’t let that bring me down. This was the moment that determined how the rest of my life would be played; I needed to be quick, strong, and smart—emphasis heavily on the latter.
I was still leaning against the steel door to my apartment, and I could feel the presence of fear emanating from the other side of it. I could feel the rumbles of hundreds of feet to humans bursting through the hallways as fast as they could go; I could feel some of these humans tripping and being trampled, never to experience the feeling of life ever again; and I could even feel bodies being shoved into my door, some accidental, some in desperation to find a hiding spot. To accompany these scurries, I faintly heard their cries and curses through the deafness veil covering my eardrums.
Thankfully, my door still maintained its locks throughout this crisis, which provided the inability for anybody to bust it down and interrupt me from figuring out how to save my life.
With the help of my blood-spotted door knob, I was able to lift myself to my shaky feet and wobble back over to my balcony once more. I stared out into the world, though my vision was limited due to all of the black smoke and debris clouding the air; literally, the blackness came in blankets of thickness. It was also becoming a difficulty to breathe, but I was too focused on what the hell was going on to grab something to cover my nose with.
I could see what appeared to be the silhouettes of police officers and military personnel surrounding the impact zone of an object that leveled the building across the street from me. While none of them were using motor vehicles due to the buckled roadways, several cops were on the backs of horses, which seemed like something that would never occur in my part of Forumopolis.
Within seconds of me viewing them, they all flinched backwards several steps. My hearing was starting to return, and I could hear their yells to evacuate people to nearby areas. Their arms were throwing off frenzied motions directing the nearest groups of people to my building, though only a few of the people could hear them through the chaos.
Another explosion. My deafness returned as a force flipped me into the air and onto the junk that occupied my floor. Pieces of plastic and metal and plaster all poked into my stomach, causing me to cough a slight bit before shoving the items aside in rage. I crawled back to the balcony and watched as a mushroom cloud formed where the latest impact was. The officials on the ground were all knocked to their feet, but several of them were able to get back up as quickly as they fell down. Sadly, none of the horses appeared to get up after the impact.
After most of them were helped up to their feet, they all took aim at the object once more. The thick black smoke from before had changed to a translucent gray, which allowed me to get a slightly better look at what all was going on.
The object wasn’t too large, though only a glance could have given you the idea that it wasn’t any type of space rock. It was metallic—a white and scuffed metal of some sort. It appeared to be in a pill shape, with engravings all around its center.
It didn’t take much longer to show what those engravings were.
The officials all backed up once again as the object started to open up—the engravings were cracks to the doors. A tiny bit of gas steamed from these doors when they opened, and a dim yellow light appeared to be flickering rapidly inside of the object. Then I noticed motions from within it, and my body became abnormally cold and shaky.
The motions were slow—very slow. The creatures that were coming out of these pods appeared to be almost dead with these quivery, slow movements. The officials didn’t spare any time for questions with these things; bullets from all around started impacting both them and their space pod. With this, I could also hear the echoes of bullets from other segments of the city growing in volume.
The officials eventually had to reload, and this is when amazement overcame me once more. The creatures, which were finally stretching and showing their full height, appeared completely unaffected by the bullets. In fact, at least half of the bullets were scattered around the ground as if they shot back out of the creatures’ skins.
The officials appeared to be stricken with amazement, as well. They started moving backwards slowly, hoping to get as far away from the creatures as possible. These creatures were still stretching, but the moment of “peace” allowed me to examine them slightly better.
First off, the creatures had to be at least six-and-a-half feet tall—they surely overshadowed the officials by at least a half a foot. From what I could tell, their skin was a darker shade of green, though most of their bodies appeared to be covered in the same whitish metal their space pod was made out of (which would explain why so many bullets were thrown about on the ground). One of their eyes was covered in this whitish metal, while the other one appeared to be triangular, with a blood red color to it. They also had a flat headpiece made out of their metal that stretched several inches higher into the air and covered the front parts of the exposed tips of their heads. To top it all off, they had thick tails that appeared almost flexible and surely had a lot of muscle in them.
Despite all of these irregularities, they still took on the relative shape of a human being though, with a standard human posture and muscle shapes that matched our own (albeit much larger). Even though I could see their human-like features, they still appeared menacing, and definitely didn’t look like something to mess with.
It had to have been at least a half a minute longer before the officials fully reloaded their weapons. Their slow movements had brought them at least three yards back from where they originally were, which may have seemed like an accomplishment to them, but probably wasn’t going to help save them at all. More rounds were fired by this pack of men, but the creatures didn’t take this set of assaults as lightly as they did the last set.
In a split second, the three creatures’ visible eyes brightened with an intense red color that almost glowed like a spotlight. A split second after this, the once-slow creatures exploded with speed, dashing up to the officials and knocking them out with some type of metal baton that I didn’t even see them pull out. These things were quick, and their speed and power was enough to intimidate me. I knew that I had to start leaving while I still had a chance; the pods had at least temporarily quit raining from the skies, which was the best luck I had seen in my eighteen short years of life.
I dashed to my kitchen, where I yanked out my silverware drawers and found the sharpest knife I could find. I had a whole set of steak knives, so I just randomly picked two out (incase I needed a backup) and ran back out to examine what was going on outside.
The creatures had simply overpowered the officials, as there were only a few left. These men were still firing away with their guns, but they had failed to realize that they weren’t harming the creatures at all. A few seconds later, the remaining men were dead, staining their bodies in literally puddles of their own blood.
I still needed something else to defend me with…steak knives were definitely not going to save me. I searched my mind for anything that I had in my apartment for defense, and one thing finally came to mind.
It was under my battered futon, whose cotton was leaking onto the floor from all of its punctures. It took a few seconds to find, but when I could finally get a full grasp of it, I lifted it high into the air as if I was proud of finding it. My lacrosse stick: the item that I knew could pack a punch if I used it right.
So I had some knives and an aluminum stick, great. Since my mind was on the fritz, I went even further with my defensive actions and wrapped one of these knives to the butt-end of my lacrosse stick. In fact, to make absolutely sure that it would fully stay on the back of my stick, I used a half a roll of duct tape on it. I felt great; I remembered how I could always level people in high school with the stick when playing as a defensive “middie”—mid-fielder.
The time had come; the time for true escape. I looked at one of my only functioning clocks by my doorway—only fifteen minutes had passed since this whole mess started.
I unbolted my door; I knew it was going to be a friggin' long day.
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I apologize for this chapter being a bit longer than usual; I have written this one sporadically throughout the course of Spring Break, meaning that it was throwing a whole bunch of mindsets and odd details into the mix. I also need to find some lessons for describing creatures, as I didn't really like my approach in this one (though it could be because I'm trying to give you all what I think the exact appearance of these creatures should be).
There may be another one of these up in a short while.
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