If she could be fast, faster than a damned beast dog, she could grab a crystal off the wall and use that. But would she be able to break the crystal off the wall? Could she do it before the dog got to her? It seemed highly unlikely. The dog edged even closer. She didn't want to show fear.
The closer it got the more she wanted to run. If she ran, it would chase. She knew that, logically.
But fear weighs more than logic.
One hand was still against the wall. She dug her fingers into one of the warm glowing red crystals–just a test. To see if she could grab it. Nothing budged.
Cujo over there kept coming closer still, and by now she could feel its breath on her, and it was growling at a regular pace. It barked in her face. Territorial. It wanted her gone. She stayed still.
Her fingers dug deeper into the wall and she felt something begin to budge, it seemed like her efforts were beginning to work–
And it bit her in the arm, digging straight into her flesh, with no warning.
She screamed and with her free hand plunged her fingers into the dog's eye. It howled in pain but didn't release her arm. She wrapped herself around its neck and went for the other eye, effectively blinding the creature, while it whipped its head back and forth.
It finally let go of her arm and she screamed in pain again at the release, unable to move her fingers on that hand at all. The dog ran into a corner and she kicked at it as it left.
The other three ran up to her and she screamed at them. They backed up at first, looking towards their wounded leader, but then ran forward again. She grabbed the first dog by the snout as it opened its mouth to bite her and threw it against the wall, then kicked the next dog in the jaw.
"Fuck!" Yelling didn't help, but it sure felt great.
The third dog just barked at her in the corner, then lowered its body and crawled into the corner next to the leader. It cowered like a weakling. The second dog came back up to her and went to bite her again and she grabbed it and slammed its head into the wall again, this time leaving it bloodied.
"Fuck you!" she shouted.
The dog barked at her.
"Yeah, I know!"
After a long pause, she took off her jacket and her shirt and tied up her forearm with her shirt. Then, she put her jacket back on. She gave one final glance back to the creatures.
"I'm sorry. I've always liked dogs," she said. "I hope you live, Cujo." Sure, they couldn't understand her. But in a way, she felt that they understood her more than anything else in that cave ever had. They were trying to live and would do whatever it took to survive. She couldn't blame them for that. Unlike her, they were a family. They had each other.
She had no one.
With that, she left the creatures as they were and continued on her mission.
It was time to finish things, once and for all.
|-SKY WONG-|
The ground climbs, sinks, scrabbles at his ankles like hounds snapping at his feet. Behind him, the monkey's heavy footfalls are jaws gnashing inexorably at the trail, tumbling stone echoing down a long throat into a dark belly. Sweat stings Sky's open eyes as he sprints, staring angrily into the eternal emptiness of nothing, Mabel a line of pressure on his back driving him onward. The ground swerves, dips, defies the screaming tempo of his feet. And the further he runs the further he is disappearing, swallowed, careening dangerously through the veins of the cave. Dust in the darkness. A pebble dropped down a wind tunnel. The Earth's crust crumbles at his back, gulped down in the scrape of tectonics shifting.
The Predator: Entries
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