Impulse

The Bloom

Obviously I’m terrified, who wouldn’t be? It’s not every day a girl wakes up and morphs into something weird she can’t see, nearly kills the guy who’s seemingly helping her, runs away and then when she stops to take a breath gets cornered by three floating heads.

Boy aren’t they hideous too. I’ve seen snaggly teeth before, but these guys are giving everyone a run for their money. Long, dirty, maybe black, maybe blue, possibly gray hair frames their face and hangs down past the sawed looking cut at the mid range of their necks. Blood drips, it looks like ink and when it falls the object on which it falls on sizzles. Their eyes are black, like tiny black marbles and the skin that covers their face is the leathery grey of an elderly person coming close to their end.  The smell that protrudes from their heads are unbearable and I press my palms against my nose to keep it away.

They speak, but whatever they’re saying is incomprehensible, coming out in tongue clicks and fast paced Asian dialect.

ClickClickClickClick.

The heads face each other and nod in agreement. I’m amazed, because up until now I thought that they were in capable of doing anything human, much less communicating with each other and nodding.

Disembodied heads that nod…check.

I look around quickly, and it isn’t long before I realize that I have no way out except under them. I’ve done something stupid by running to this garbage can. There’s a small space between the back of the convenient store and fence behind it, but I shake my head, there’s no way I could fit there and what if I get stuck? I’d really be toast then.

I’m scared, I could shit in my underwear right now. My body is heating up, my hands are shaking, palms sweating and the red is coming back again. Red is not the only thing that’s coming, so are they heads. The smell of putrid rotten eggs and old urine fills my nostrils, despite my palms, as they swoop towards me. I’ve gotten up in a half crouch position and hop up to a standing position. My palms are shaking again, then I feel a searing pain right in the center, it grows until my entire palm feels like it’s on fire.

The heads keep coming, all three of them are spaced out, prepared to launch at every angle.

I see red, hold my palms out, a sinister voice speaks, “Not today bitches.”

My lips curl, a darkness blooms in the corner of my mind, gently laps the perimeter of conscious with it’s wispy tendrils. A sweet voice sings gently, urging me, telling me that I have this.

The heads click to each other, confused, and then they attack.

One comes at me from the front, I hold my palm, the darkness takes over, and pain engulfs my body as a heavy stream of fire breaks through the delicate skin of my palm directly into the disembodied head. It hisses and screams in its clicks and shies away to the foreground. I haven’t killed it, but I know I’ve done enough. The next one brushes against my shoulder, it’s putrid scent in my nose, it’s slimy skin and grimy hair all over me. I shiver, feel the darkness ebb away and with it my strength.

“Come back,” I whimper and scramble away from the two heads gaining on me, “Come back please.”

I hold my hands up to protect my face, my back hits the old brick walls of the One Stop Convenience Store and the cool air of December threatens to frost over and with it me as well.

I think about my options, remind myself that I have zero, and try to harness whatever this thing is that’s inside me. This strange power that I didn’t know I had. I have to get it back somehow.

I’m scared to death, but I reach out with both hands, and it surprises me how quick the motion is, my hands are nothing but powdery brown color, within one quarter of a second I’ve managed to graspe the head nearest to me. It gnashes it’s teeth, thick, heavy strings of saliva the color of grey and moss green dribbles from its mouth to the ground.