Saturday, November 5th, 1:11 a.m.
Paul's instincts towards self-preservation woke him with a start, just in time for him to hear the words, "They're coming."
He let out a loud, prolonged groan. Paul's back ached, actually his everywhere ached, but his back was screaming in protest while everything else was a dull roar. Cold metal digging into his back wasn't doing him any favors either.
A grouping of faces he didn't recognize peered over the lip of the truck. None of them looked familiar except for that homeless millionaire and the officer that had arrested him earlier. Paul didn't know which of them had woken him so he addressed the general vicinity.
"'they?' Is it safe to assume you don't mean a late night pizza delivery?" Paul asked.
A man groaned and Paul paired it with Officer Perry Durant.
That's what that fucker's name is.
Paul didn't like the fact he didn't know where he was, or the people around him as a matter of fact, so he grasped at the some semblance of control in the only way he knew how. Sarcasm.
"Officer Durant, if Rohypnol is involved can that really count as consent?If you're going to take me out to the middle of nowhere, the least you could do is buy me dinner first."
Paul grinned at the tightening of the man's jaw.
"I would, but something tells me I wouldn't be able to afford it," the officer jibed back.
"Vergil," another man interjected, "This large human should be perceived as a threat, he was affected by the Resonator in much the same way you were, but he appears to be unstable. Blujh and I attempted to incapacitate and capture him. It appears he is craftier then I first imagined."
It took Paul a moment to realize he recognized the man. He was one of The Beings. The man's face had changed, but Paul could tell by the way he carried himself. Paul's tendrils accepted leapt at his behest, poised and ready to defend Paul. He had a feeling he was surrounded by enemies.
"Maybe we could use someone with a little craftiness to them," said an individual with ratty, blond hair like he had foregone washing it to perfect beach bum look.
The homeless millionaire.
Paul remembered seeing an article about the boy's mother dying a couple of years ago. He found the boy's disregard of his newfound wealth as admirable as it was foolish. It was rare a human could set aside his basest urges if they meant material gain.
An Asian woman spoke up. She glared her eyes drawn to two thin slits. Paul enjoyed the look.
"Even if the man is a murderer?" She asked.
"Let me dispose of him," said the other Being. Paul also didn't recognize him until he spoke up.
"When all of this is over, he will stand trial in a court of law. Until then, somebody is going to have to keep an eye on him," said Officer Durant.
Paul revelled in the naivety of the officer and wished they did not need to be on opposite sides of the law. In another life, maybe they would have even been friends. The man's integrity was a rare find when it came to the boys in blue. If Paul was a younger man, maybe he could've steered him straight, restored his faith in humanity or something else cheesy like that. Unfortunately, the time for that had passed.
No use dwelling on the past.
"Gentlemen, I don't mean to distract the conversation by staying on topic, but who are these 'they' tall, dark, and creepy was referring to. Something tells me they're not coming out to the middle of nowhere for a social call."
A woman with violet hair answered. She also did not seem she was going to be a member of the Paul Neiman fan club.
"The people in this town are infested with parasites, and you'd be one too if we hadn't saved your sorry ass."
Saucy Lass? Delightful.
Paul shivered, an overall odd sensation when you could only feel your body from the waist up. He knew what the woman was referring to. He remembered the dark marbles in the place of Diego Sandoval's eyes. They were devoid of anything resembling a human being, and if more of his like were about to fall on their little group, Paul didn't like their chances, unless somebody else had an ace up their sleeve.
He quested out with his tendrils trying to sense the parasites' approach, but he found nothing. He didn't know where they were, so his tendrils were limited to his immediate surroundings.
"You and you," Paul pointed at Officer Durant and The Being with the permanent scowl that stayed even when he changed faces, "I need you to lift me to a position where I can see the welcome wagon. I can be 'craftier' that way."
Perry raised his eyebrows at Paul's words but he acquiesced to the request and then felt the need to assert the obvious, "I don't know what any of these people are talking about. I'm playing catch up myself, but I do know this you miserable pile of human waste. If you hurt anyone else, I will make you regret it for the rest of your pathetic existence. Do we understand each other?"
"Read you loud and clear officer!" Paul gave the man a crisp salute, well as much as someone could with an arm that looked like a dinner ham, "Lucky for you I happen to speak Neanderthal."
While he was mentally sparring with the officer, Paul flexed his tendrils. They were not nearly as powerful as he was accustomed to, but the impromptu nap had replenished him to a degree.
The millionaire halted their conversation mid-flow, "I can see them."
Paul glanced in the direction the man was looking. He needed to squint his eyes, years of looking at a computer screen too closely had taken its toll on Paul. He saw the outline of at least ten forms crossing the distance between their group and the fence of the drive-in with a speed that would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money.
Most of the people that were assembled did not seem surprised at the events, and Paul realized that many of these people had been experiencing events as strange as his. It prickled at Paul's ego, but he shoved that aside. He was a creature of self-preservation, and he still hadn't exacted his revenge upon his enemies. That meant overcoming pettiness for the greater good. The greater good being the meticulous murder of his tormentors.
The little girl, Paul's pesky neighbor, spoke up. Her voice gave Paul the creeps. It was calm and composed and eerie in its certainty.
"We are drawing them to us."
A boy, perhaps the girl's polar opposite, chimed in. The exuberance of the boy would be annoying even if they weren't in a life or death scenario.
"The bad guys always come for the heroes after they've thought they won," his statement was as exactly as matter-of-fact as the girl's, but far more asinine.
he belligerent Being groaned and Paul felt a moment where he sympathized with the creature and then immediately hated himself for it.
"Don't hurt them, these people are our friends and family," the millionaire stated eliciting another groan from the Being.
The Asian woman, she looked familiar to Paul, asked the little girl, "What do you mean by drawing them to us?"
"We're special," the girl said referring to their entire group, "And these people, the parasites, are special in a different way. That makes us all connected, but I think our type of special angers-"
The girl's statement was cut short as the feral men and women of Lancet Falls descended upon them. In the midst of their conversation, the parasites must have snuck up to their group catching them with their pants down.
Fuck what the millionaire says. These fuckers creep me out.
Paul set to work with his tendrils. He did not feel the need to administer any killing blows, he'd regained his control. His gift was meant for revenge and self-protection, and this certainly qualified as the latter. Paul sharpened the edges of his tendrils with his mind and reached for an altered human. He couldn't tell who it was, and was thankful for that fact.
The parasite Paul had set his sights on descended upon his neighbor. Paul had seen something on a nature channel about predators trying to focus on the weakest of a group, and all appearances said that was the girl. Her presence and the way she held herself bespoke a strength that was uncanny in one her age. The parasites were dead wrong.
Paul didn't know why he leapt to her aid, but his quick response surely saved her life. Tendrils sawed through both Achilles' tendons of her assailant, and proceeded to jab a needle point tendril into the synovial fluid of the elbows of both the parasite's arms. Without his limbs to support himself, the man collapsed to the ground. The others of its kind trampled over the body, unconcerned about their fallen comrade.
He noticed that Officer Durant, the surfer bum looking man, and the woman with purple hair, now holding a miniature schnauzer all had locked themselves in the black truck Paul had used for refuge from the parasites not even a couple of hours ago. Looking at the numbers of his adversaries, under the truck may not have been a bad place to be, but Paul doubted that would go over well with the assembled group of wannabe heroes.
The insufferable little boy that had probably been dropped on his head multiple times when he was an infant leaped into the air and just kept going rising. He soared above the mass of predators and taunted them.
"Hey look at me! Can't catch me!"
He's like a buzzing fly that needs to be swatted down.
Three of them broke from the back of the mass of subhumanity. The boy flew low enough to the ground as to make them feel like they had the chance to catch him. He let them get close enough that a well-timed lunge could make him a midnight snack, but he continued his foolish efforts luring them away from the main group.
The Asian woman and the millionaire charged towards the remaining group. There were six of them left. Paul snipped the joints in another, leaving the heroes five to deal with. Pau recognized this one from a series of mattress commercials. The Mattress King toppled to the ground his momentum making him do somersaults before he lay thrashing in the gravel. That didn't stop the predator from scrabbling against the dirt trying to pull himself back up, but his arms and legs could no longer hold his weight.
Paul felt a withering glare come from someone in the truck, but he didn't care.
I don't see them doing anything productive.
The millionaire had reached the group of approaching menaces and grasped one of them in his arm, a child predator, and wrangled the kid into a headlock designed to deprive the little monster's brain of oxygen until he fell unconscious. The move was foolish and left him exposed to the rest of the predators.
A bulky predator that resembled a grizzly bear more than a man lunged at the millionaire, and Paul formed a tendril into a blunt round object that he used as a billy club. The tendril smacked into the temple of the buffed up predator, and he toppled to the ground. He had felt the skull crack into bits of eggshell fragments.
Whoops.
A long, black, noodle-like shape wriggled in the little boy's ear as the millionaire tightened his choke hold. The worm fell onto the dirt, nobody else seemed to notice. However, when the thing had left the ear canal, the boy went slack, his eyes glazed over, devoid of life.
In the meantime, the Asian woman had dispatched the last three predators by herself. Her movements were elegant and Paul suspected she dabbled in Krav Maga. All women that felt powerful and self-important did Krav Maga, a martial art that tried to leverage their frail bodies into an advantage. Frail body or not, Paul didn't want her coming after him.
The black girl had not indulged in any of the violence. She shivered in the middle of the action, frozen.
Maybe she isn't so tough after all.
Meanwhile, one of the predators had gotten wise to the flying boy's games and had gotten ahold of his ankle. The boy struggled to rise back into the air, but the predator's inexorable strength made escape impossible.
A black blur that Paul felt but couldn't see streaked across the dirt throwing up clouds of dust as it went.
The predator was knocked several feet backwards causing it to release the boy's ankle. The neighbor girl stood in the midst of the predators and raised her hands in a defensive posture. The remained predators closed on her. None of the other heroes were close enough to be of any help, and Paul didn't have enough time to engage in any precise work. He took three tendrils and wrapped each around an ankle of the predators and lifted them high into the air.
A beam of brilliant light lit the night, and Paul thought the Radiance had returned, but was disavowed of that notion as the light, Paul now realized it was a beam, struck a predator full in the chest. The woman predator wearing frilly underwear, probably in an effort to invigorate a dying marriage started to cave in on herself.
Where healthy bone and muscle once were, a gelatinous human goop took its place. A fleshy mass of liquid dripped to the ground, and before Paul knew it, all he was holding was a leg. The rest had flopped to the ground, no longer held in place by her torso.
Paul looked for the source of the beam and was not surprised to see the Being with a perpetual scowl holding something that looked like a child's plastic gun. The scowl seemed to soften as a smile touched the corners of his lips. Paul nodded to the man.
A man that knows how to do what needs to be done.
"Jesus Christ Blujh!" the millionaire shouted.
Officer Durant looked at the human goop and didn't look happy, but he stayed out of it realizing things had spiraled far out of his depth.
"What else are we going to do with them? They come at us with mindless determination and I'm not risking mine or Vyth's skin for your precious humans. The Miasma is probably going to come wipe them all out anyways. Everyone here knows too much. Even me," Blujh said, his scowl returning, harder than it was before.
Paul contemplated slitting the Being's throat before it became a threat. He didn't care what happened to any of these other fools, but if they were threatening his own skin, it might have been simpler to remove the man from the equation. Before Paul could pull the proverbial trigger, Blujh put up his hands in a placating gesture directed at the millionaire.
"That's right boss, I forgot. We are leaving and never coming back. I'll see if I can talk some sense in the Miasma. Besides, some of you humans aren't as worthless as I thought."
It was clear Blujh didn't include Paul in his assessment. While the two of them were bickering, the Asian woman had dispatched the two remaining predators Paul was holding with two well placed kicks to the temple. Paul let go of them and they fell to the ground like rag dolls.
A more well-adjusted version of himself would have acknowledged the fact that in some twisted way, he enjoyed doing things for the greater good, but that was a dangerous thing to admit. If he did, people would start expecting good things from him and that wasn't his style. Being the good guy was going to be a one time thing. Besides, Paul being the good guy still meant slit tendons and split skulls.
I'm not built to be a hero. They don't make heroes in size XXL.
The scattered group of people returned to the truck as their implied rally point. They immediately started chattering on how to proceed. None of them appeared to be on the same page.
The Asian woman was focused on asking questions, and that's how Paul remembered where he knew her. She was a newswoman he occasionally saw online when he tried to keep up to date on local news. While she did her reporter thing, the kids, with the exception of the one that had huddled in the truck with tear stained cheeks, were more interested in making the Beings "fix" Jordan's mother, but the two Beings seemed as confused as everyone else.
The tall man in the trench coat stood apart from the group. He hadn't participated in the fighting. He had waited by the truck. Coiled anxiety radiated off of him in waves, like he was prepared to spring into action but only in a moment of true danger.
Apparently nothing before qualified.
The rest of the group was too busy trying to talk over each other to notice two things. One, the dog seemed to be just as engaged in the conversation as everyone else. He had his head cocked to one side like he was listening with rapt attention. Two, the feverish glow of a fire was approaching their group. Not at a rapid pace, but its path did not deviate a hair.
It's definitely headed towards us, and it looks almost... white.
Paul broke into a sweat. He could almost feel the heat from here. He called to his tendrils and they responded. Paul felt the tendrils start to encircle his frame, but they were unable to do much more.
Despite Paul's recovery, the tendrils couldn't carry him away without the aid of the Relaxzen Rocker. The chair had been a good focus for Paul's energy, and it was something he was as familiar with as the back of his hand. Paul knew the difference between each and every stain whether it be a splotch of salsa or a darkened circle of dried sweat.
I even know the exact amount of change in the cushions. $1.17.
"I don't mean to be the rain on your wedding day, but if you all could pull your heads out of your collective asses, we've got a problem," Paul said, "Unless of course any of you gentlemen carry around a fire hose in your pants."
To Paul's surprise, the trench coat man reacted first. He took a couple of unconscious steps backwards, and that's when Paul noted the soot on his face. It all made sense. The guy had a run in with the fire before, and the fire had come back for best two out of three.
As the fire approached the perimeter of the fence, Paul could make out silhouettes of forms on all fours ringing the edges of the fire, like they wanted what was inside, but still had enough inhibition to not jump inside. They were content waiting for whatever was inside.
"It's time for you to go," said the woman with purple hair.
She had been silent for the large majority of the fighting, but her patience had reached its end.
Paul didn't blame her. Indecision is the trademark of a fool even if the fool had good intentions.
"I couldn't agree more," said the more thoughtful of the two Beings. His face seemed to droop while he watched the fire as if his face were made of wax.
When he looked away, his features regained their human quality. The Being pulled out a small object that looked like a laser pointer, and he pressed a button on the side. The Being walked to the middle of a charred circle of Earth and tossed the small object into the middle of the circle. It started to radiate a pulsing violet light as it spun like a blooming flower on the Fourth of July.
Paul tore his gaze away from the sight, he could feel the intensity of the fire on his skin and it was time for him to leave. He had an idea. His tendrils weren't completely useless. He used them to probe the interior of the truck searching for any sign of the keys.
If he could get the engine started, he would leave all these fools behind and continue on his quest for revenge. He had had enough excitement with the Super Friends. With any luck, they would all get incinerated, so none of them could come back and get in his way.
Probing around the ignition, Paul found nothing, so he expanded his search, but he was afraid of what he would find. Or wouldn't find. The glove compartment, the middle console, and sun visors all were devoid of keys. The truck had been stolen, and now that the the engine was shut off, Paul was shit out of luck.
The fire illuminated their little patch of nowhere, and Paul realized they were at the old drive-in just a little less than a mile from his house. Illuminated in this feverish light, the place had more life now than it ever had when it was open. The posts in the ground seemed to waver in the heat, and the group cast shadows in the middle of the night giving the impression of gangs of ghosts and ghouls that had gathered for the show.
Paul fought back the urge to scream. He could feel his skin bubbling, but when he touched a hand to his face everything was intact. Had these people tricked him again like those people had done so long ago? Was this all an elaborate ruse to burn Paul once more?
No, the others barely acknowledge my presence with the exception of the officer and the Beings. This is just me winning the opposite of the lottery, taking another bite of the shit sandwich that is life.
Paul's eyes were inexorably drawn to the fire as if the blaze exerted a gravitational pull that Paul was powerless to resist. Before Paul was trained tp avoid all things fire, he remembered learning that the orange part of the fire contains the least amount of heat, and the lighter the color got, the greater the heat. This fire didn't have any variation in color, there was no orange, no yellow, and no blue. It was a blinding white.
Why couldn't it have at least been violet?
If all of that wasn't weird enough, the fire wasn't leaving behind a burning wake. Where it passed, the Earth was scorched and blackened, but it wasn't ablaze. The fire was localized to a central point that it didn't deviate from.
The collective group took a step back, except for the tall man; he watched with horrid fascination.
Paul followed the man's gaze and realized what he was staring at. A human silhouette was trudging towards them with deliberate slowness as if every step was an exercise in agony, but their dogged determination kept them moving. Paul could pick out individual features on the figure like tresses of long blonde hair, and an angular set to her face that looked familiar. As the figure drew closer, Paul saw that there was a woman inside. She looked like the embodiment of sorry. Paul would know. He was the resident expert on sorrow.
She didn't even seem to register anyone but the tall man. Her mouth opened and her lips repeated the same movement ad nauseum. Paul couldn't tell what she was saying, but he had to turn away. The heat had gotten so close that it hurt his eyes to look directly at her.The humane thing would be to end her suffering, and Paul was only happy to oblige.
Paul left the physical world behind as he probed towards the woman in the fire. On other occasions, Paul had not been able to feel anything physical via his immaterial appendages, but this time, he would've sworn he felt the heat singing his tendrils. Even so, the time to hesitate had come and gone. Paul took control of the situation
A disembodied voice shouted "Rachel!"
It pierced through the night, but it was not enough to divert Paul's laser focus. It was taking every shred of willpower he had to keep the tendrils on course.
"Rachel stop! We will figure this out, just stop!" The voice shouted
Paul heard him this time, but he preferred not to see the woman in the fire as a human. She was just another predator.
In the past month, he had grown a taste for killing, but he took no pleasure in the events that followed, maybe a perverted sense of altruism at having done the right thing.
Paul may not be able to escape the prison of his mortality quite yet, but at least he could help this shambling woman wreathed in flames find some peace.
With a reverence, Paul eased tendrils into her brain, lungs, and mediastinum. Once in place, he twined them around her cerebral artery, pulmonary veins, and aorta. In perfect synchronicity, he severed each one gifting her a death that was both merciful and swift.
The enormous bonfire sputtered and turned from its pure white to the crimson of blood. The smell of scorched atmosphere and burnt earth became overpowering in his nostrils, and Paul felt his grip on consciousness starting to slip, but then the woman toppled to the ground with an anti-climactic thud.
The world was pitched into blackness.
Being thrust back into the darkness of the evening, Paul tried his best to regain control. He used his tendrils to try to get a picture of his general surroundings, but was overpowered by one still image. It was not only emblazoned in his retinas, but deep into the folds of his brain. A woman's face, tear-streaked eyes wide with surprise, and a lock of golden hair at her temple.
I know where I've seen her before.
A deafening sound rang through the night, and Paul felt a searing pain in his shoulder. He shrieked, not the shriek of an injured man, but that of an enraged predator. Paul Neiman was gone, and the predator had taken his place.
The predator scanned its surrounding. Something had come into its lair and had the audacity to hurt it. The humans surrounding it were breathing hurried shallow breaths, and the predator recognized and delighted in their fear. However, these ones were not its concern.
His tendrils passed over a human who heart pumped with a rhythm of rage. The human's arms were extended and held a searing metal object. This object was the source of its pain. The object kicked in the man's hand, and the predator felt a small buzzing object fly towards him. It moved sluggish in the air as if traveling through petroleum jelly.
The predator plucked the object from the air and sent it back to its master. The small projectile slammed into the man's shoulder with enough force to send him rocking backwards. For a moment, the metal object was pointed away from the predator. It's tendrils seized the opportunity and hurled the object into the night, and went back to work on the human.
Three tendrils plunged into the man's chest searching for the muscular organ pumping rage and life into the man's limbs. They constricted the organ until it was nothing more than a fleshy pulp, and then yanked it out of the man's chest, the bony cage around it splintered outwards.
The rest of the humans turned on the predator, but it had already become Paul again.
Paul surveyed the looks of fear and hate in the rest of the group and prepared himself to fend them all off even if it meant killing every last one of them.
The Asian woman was the first to make her move. She sprinted towards Paul at the speed the bullet had travelled towards him, and he gave her the same treatment he'd given the predators. He snipped tendons responsible for supporting her body weight. The reporter fell to the ground in a heap.
He felt the one called Blujh finger his weapon, but then take it off his weapon again.
He's waiting to see who the winner is going to be.
The rest of the group paused when they saw what had happened to two of their friends. They looked at him with mixtures of awe and horror, and Paul realized how he must look at that moment. They couldn't see the tendrils, so they must have associated Paul with some sort of low level omnipotence. If he had any chance to talk some sense into them, it was now.
"Listen up, you morons. I saved your skins just because you all were eager to get burnt to a crisp, doesn't mean I was. I saved myself and you in the process, and Wonder Boy took it upon himself to try and shoot me. You all saw it. Am I not allowed to defend myself? Besides, if you haven't noticed, we've got more company," Paul said.
Sure enough, more predators had massed around their group, but the Being's pulsing violet firework seemed to be holding the parasites at bay. Confusion marred their faces. They didn't understand the otherworldly contraption, but if their behavior before was any indicator, confusion wouldn't hold them back for long.
Paul let the Super Friends sans Officer Durant realize the gravity of their situation before he continued.
"Do you want to focus on getting your precious revenge on me and we all die, or do you want to work together and get us out of this mess? After I save your sorry asses, you can do whatever you find appropriate."
The last bit was a lie. Paul would take the first chance he had to escape, but they didn't need to know that.
One by one, they turned their faces away from Paul and to the approaching mass of parasites.
There were too many to count.