Monday November 23rd, 2020

The exercise:

Write about something or someone that is: cornered.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Cornered? The boys or the chupacapra? I know it's three against one, but... is it a fair fight still?

Cornered
"It's fast," said Ben.
"Damn fast," said Jimmy. "This might be harder than it looks."
I held my tongue since they were only saying what I'd already thought. It wasn't like I had anything to add to the conversation at that moment. The creature -- the chupacapra I supposed -- tensed and then scuttered up the side of the building another floor, seemingly unafraid of heights or gravity. Jimmy started looking more nervous, his gun swaying very gently in his hands, as the chupacapra was now above him, even though it was still a couple of buildings away. Thirty metres didn't seem like a huge distance anymore.
Ben lifted his gun and aimed, and the chupacapra promptly ran back down the side of the building and raced across the street, moving like some gigantic spider as its limbs flashed out and pulled it this way and that.
Jimmy fired and the creature swerved, just as Ben fired, and then it twisted in mid-air, leaping upwards and into the path of my bullet, which I'd fired over its head after Ben had fired figuring it had nowhere else to go. One, maybe two of the bullets hit it, because it jackknifed in the air and fell to the ground and started hooting. I couldn't tell whose, and I was sure we were all going to claim the kill. I looked at the other two, and then back at the -- it was gone.
"Where did it go?" I asked, looking around.
Ben and Jimmy both indicated they didn't know, and my sense of dread got a little stronger. I didn't want to move, but there was no choice: I forced myself to walk over to where it had fallen when we'd last seen it, though with each step the skin between my shoulder-blades crawled and I felt like Shanghai Suzie was pointing a gun at my back. I knelt, looking around three times before I was sure there were no strange shadows nearby, and then looked down.
We'd hit it, that was for certain. There were three black pools of tar-like blood on the floor, one smeared about as though the creature had rolled after bleeding. A smell like rotting grapes mixed in with week-old chicken rose up from it: a sweet undernote made more disgusting by the rancidity of the meat-smell. The pools were thick and I wondered if the creature really bled or if it oozed. I prodded the smallest of the pools and realised that a thick skin was forming on top of it, like that you get when you boil milk.
"We need to find it," I said, looking back up and then around again. Twice, because I still couldn't shake the feeling between my shoulder blades. "Quickly, I should think, and corner it. This blood is... well, it's practically setting. That thing isn't going to bleed to death for us."
"At least we know guns work," said Ben. "That's something."
"When we're fast enough," I said. "We got it when we all fired at it, and I don't know how many bullets actually hit it."
"Mine did," said Ben and Jimmy in unison. I snorted.
"Reload," I said. "I have a feeling we're going to need all the shots we can take."

Marc said...

Greg - I think it might just barely be a fair fight, the way this thing moves...

Oh man, the creature disappearing when Red looked away was proper horror movie stuff. I am pleased and impressed they managed to hit it with a shot or two though! That's encouraging, right?