The Violation in 314 ✔️

***10***

Through the crack in the top corner where the wood had rained down from the broken segment of door, light poured in, but the room was darker than before.  What little adjustment Mickey's eyes had made to the low light was now lost.  He was in a world of sound and darkness. 

A lock clicked, reverberating through the room, as the door's bolt passed over the strike plate and settled into the latch.  Mickey's heart raced as he imagined what hid in that dark; as he guessed at what thing had just locked the door. 

He strained to see through the thick black of the sealed apartment. Slowly the dark split into shadows and silhouettes and then into dim shades of grey.  A form loomed just off from that beam of light – a large form, the light reflecting off of it as if it was drenched in sweat or fresh from a shower; only with the smell of the thing – and Mickey was no longer certain the stench of sewage was from Weber's body alone – the suggestion of a shower sweat was the wrong analogy.

Mickey shook as he shifted his light towards the hulking form, his Mace held at the ready.

"Don't move..."  Feeble and no more audible than one of maybe Jerry's former greetings in the hallway.  The light moved from the handle of the door up to a long charcoal grey arm dripping a pus-like liquid, and up --

-- only to be knocked away with one heavy smack of that grey arm and the fist at it's end.  Mickey's arm snapped back with the force of the blow, the Maglite shooting from his grasp.  It rolled twenty feet across the room where it banged against the far wall then came to a stop.  The flashlight now rested it light upon the prone form of Abbie Weber. 

Mickey, oddly elated at the sight of her, had no time to form a clear image of the woman he had imagined that he was here to save.  He noticed only three things.  Abbie's eyes appeared to be open, she did not seem bound in any way, and she was not moving save for a tiny tremble in her lips. 

Before he could see more, a heavy black arm pulled him close pressing him up against that massive slimy form hiding in the shadow cast by the door.  He could taste the rot in his mouth as the pus-sweat oozed from the thing, then another arm, and yet another third arm squeezed him tight, as if in a grotesque hug.

Only, Mickey knew this was no hug.  The thing was grappling with him, and soon it would snap his spine like a split twig.  It squeezed and lifted him clean off his feet and up two feet into the air and suddenly he felt its desert breath burn upon his scalp.  The arms squeezed tighter now and a sharp stab of pain tore through Mickey as a rib cracked, wrenched apart with a loud snap.  He screamed, unable to contain the pain.  Yet even as he did, Mickey fought to come to his senses. This was, after all, the moment he had longed for all his life – a chance to act out his inner demons without the retribution of the law.

He opened up his palm, spreading his fingers taut, and then smashed his hand up into the dark void above that scorching breath, up towards where a nose should have been.  Had there been a nose there he would have thrust it back into the thing's brain ending the nightmare right then.  Unfortunately for Mickey Vartabetian, however, his hand met no nose, only a vacuous hole and more wet flesh. 

He hesitated, but only for an instant, then followed through with almost no loss of momentum forcing his hand on towards the back of the thing's skull – and yes that was the feel of bone, so it must have a skull.  The thing's head whipped back busting another hole through the tattered remains of the door, but its arms only squeezed tighter. 

Pop!  Something burst inside Mickey and the shockwaves of pain rippled through his system.  He pressed down on the Mace and sprayed the expired contents of the canister into the thing's face.  Suddenly the thing shrieked, a shrill and guttural gurgle that was the only voice it had known in its short yet eternal existence.  It was a scream of a deep rage, riddled with its first awareness of hurt.

The thing's arms relaxed and Mickey squirmed in its embrace using its body sweat to slip through its grasp.  As he forced his way down towards the floor, slipping through its arms, the thing's skin shed like a snake's; only instead of peeling off in dry flakes it slid off in wet sloughs with a consistency both thin and gritty that felt to Mickey like a wad of waterlogged toilet paper.

He fell with a plop onto the stained carpet, thankful in the dark that he could not see the pool of fluid in which he had landed, and breathed a momentary sigh of relief.  A slick of skin fell from the thing, dragged down by the force of his retreat, and landed on his arm.  Mickey jumped, screaming like a girl – yes, high-pitched and shrill as your baby sister used to scream you pansy – then skittered backwards like a crab that didn't quite have a proper sense of movement.  Back, back and further back until he bumped against the lifeless form of Mr. Weber.  Then he screamed again and bolted to his feet, trying not to watch as Weber's head bobbed in the wake of his sudden movement.

Turning, he saw the silhouette of the thing framed in the light now streaming through multiple cracks in the door.  It must have stood nine feet tall, as its head peaked out well above the top of the doorframe, yet it was difficult to make out any details in this low light and Mickey had little time.  Each apartment had an open kitchen to the left, and he scrambled there now.   There would be light, and, better yet, knives in the kitchen.

He loped forward as fast as he could, glancing back as the thing moved in a slow blur of motion and spray of sweat.  His cracked rib ached and something inside was broken, but he could not stop.  Mickey gritted through the pain.  Four feet to go.  Three feet.

He felt the brush of fingers against the back of his neck, then a tug backwards as a bony hand caught upon his jacket collar.  He let his arms go limp, then pushed forward with all his weight, slipping out of his jacket and the thing's grasp and falling face first into the wall by the light switch.  His nose twisted to the side from the impact, and he could taste the blood trickling down into his mouth.  This was good though.  The blood helped mask the aftertaste of rot lingering from his close-up encounter.

Mickey flipped the switch, backed into the kitchen nook, and then immediately regretted it.  Now he was caught between the two kitchen walls and the counter, with the only avenue of escape blocked by the thing, this violation that had snuck from the depths of madness and up into the world of man. Now, for the first time, Mickey could see it clearly.