Snippets of Eventide

No. 5: Bad End

Not even the light of the full moon penetrated the forest canopy. Not even the rustle of the sea breeze in the pine drowned out his breath, sharp, rasping, desperate as he ran. Ran. Ran away from me. Me. My legs flew across the pine-needle ridden ground, fast, faster. I was getting close. I could hear him. I could hear him. Hear him. He was tiring. Soon. It was only a matter of time.

He cried out as his foot snagged under a gnarled root. His body fell. A thud and he rolled across the dirt and rocks and fallen needles. Fear flowed off him, cloudy. Like steam from a doused fire.

I stood over him, a grin spreading sharp across my face. Claws curled at my sides. Shadows drew nearer, pulled like light towards a black hole. Towards me. Grasses, shrubs, insects, they died at my feet, grey and brown and lifeless. And so too would he. So too. He knew it. oh he knew it too, didn't he?

He scuttled backwards, shaking, trembling, scared. "P-please. Leave me alone!"

I dropped to a crouch, looming, leaning. Fear, terror, desperation poured from his skin, straight through the air and dying deep within the marrow of my bones. Past the fast-paced emotion, past the skin, past the bone, past the muscles, his soul waited. Sitting just within his ribs, it flared and pushed against it's limits.

He thought he was going to die. He thought I was going to kill him. He thought this was the end. He thought. He thought.

I shot forward, slamming my hands against his shoulders. I held him against the damp cold ground. Fear raced cold and sharp through the palms of my hands. Through my skin, spiking my blood and coursing through me. My heartbeat drowned out his cries, fast, loud, in my ears. Fast, faster. He wasn't going anywhere. No.

A clawed hand dragged across his chest, feeling, testing. Testing the edges, finding the weakest spot. Testing, until.

My hand snagged on the edge of his soul.

I tore it through the wall of his ribs into the cage of my fingers. The skin burned. He went limp, staring on the ground. My hands burned. I snarled, opened my mouth and crunched. His soul broke between my teeth. My mouth burned. It burned. It burned. My jaws fell open. What was left drifted away. Like mist. It drifted away, floating, disappearing like the mist on a morning lake.

The body lay still breathing. Still staring. There was nothing. Nothing anymore. A hole in the life that ebbed through the forest. A hole. Nothing. Nothing.

No foxes would scavenge the body. No birds would pick at the corpse. No insects would feed on the flesh. Here it would remain. Perfect, untouched. For so much longer than what was right. Then what was natural. Only the bacteria, the fungi, the plants which cared not for the state of it's host would lay their claims on what lay here tonight.