'I'm approaching the ground way too fast. I'm gonna die if I don't do something about it!'
I scanned the black fortress, my eyes locking on a cluster of wooden houses. 'Falling on wood for sure beats falling on stone.'
I tried to angle my body toward them, with marginal success.
In the last few seconds I took one final look at the fortress.
'What are those things...' I didn't get to finish the thought before I was sent spinning into a bundle of ropes with old clothes draped across them.
I managed to protect my head and neck, but I felt ropes burn and coil around me until one caught my leg and swung me against the side of a building.
Most of the force from the fall had subsided, but I still smashed through the wall. Pain erupted in my leg and the wind was knocked out of me. My vision went black.
Ghhhhh... I took a deep breath as I tried to sit up. I woke in an unfamiliar room. I was surprisingly alive and definitely not dreaming, the sting in my right leg refused to let me pretend otherwise.
Looking down I saw my mangled gym pants and a lot of blood. 'Oh, that's not good.'
A loud bang from the floor below snapped me back to the moment. Those things I had seen returned to my mind. 'I need to hide.'
Trying to ignore the pain, I stood up using one of the legs of the table that had taken the brunt of my fall as a walking stick. It looked like I had fallen through the wall of an office: papers thrown about, a padded chair and...
[BANG] [CRASH]
An even louder bang, followed by what I assumed was a door crashing into the house. The sound of breaking glass was quickly drowned by heavy thumps mixed with... skittering.
Something was coming up the stairs, fast.
There was a liquor closet across the room, the lower section with two doors. Behind them were two rows of books. I pulled the middle wooden panel and it thankfully slid out. The books tumbled to the floor, making space inside the closet.
I squeezed in and pulled the doors closed just as I heard...
[BANG]
This time the banging was on the door to this room. It struck the wood. Through the small slit of the closed doors I could see the room and the trail of blood leading straight toward me, barely hidden by the pile of books I had flung onto the floor.
I never learned how to pray, but if I did, I would be praying now. 'There's no way that thing isn't gonna find me. It's just going to follow the blood. I'm so dead...'
[BANG]
The door to the office flew in, straight through the hole my crash had made and out onto the street, making a cacophony of noise. Then... silence.
I couldn't see it.
A sound like dragging nails made the floorboards shiver. The heavy weight of something creaked into the room.
I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs.
The edge of a claw came into view, stomping on one of the books and driving straight through it.
'Please, please, please...'
[Huff] [Huff] [Huff]
'What is it doing... Is it sniffing around?'
The foot with the claw shifted, tossing the book aside. It looked like a hand, open with four clawed fingers and two opposed thumbs. The foot was completely skinless. The same was true all the way up the creature's limb. It was raw, exposed muscle with black veins snaking across its surface.
Then the creature shifted lower, the way the veins and muscles moved almost made me gag.
Its upper body and face slowly came into view. The head looked almost human, but the jaw was much bigger, the teeth were pointed and sharp. What I had assumed was a foot was in fact one of its hands, on the end of a disproportionately long arm. Without eyelids, its eyes were milky white, with no clear pupils. 'Maybe it's blind?'
It lowered its head even further and puffed against the books. It clearly smelled the blood.
A long black tongue, dripping a tar-like substance, extended from its mouth as its jaws opened. It started... licking the blood. My stomach turned. Never had I thought I would see a monster licking my blood off the floor.
To my despair it started to follow the trail. Soon it would reach the cabinet, and then what? Was I going to die here?
I was almost at the limit of holding my breath too, my lungs screaming at me, demanding something they couldn't have, not now!
If there was a god, it seemed that, even if I didn't know how to pray, it decided to spare me today. As soon as it got to the doors, its undoubtedly putrid breath tickling my face...
[Dong] [Dong] [Dong]
A loud, ear-ringing bell started somewhere in the fortress.
Startled, the creature looked toward the hole in the wall and jumped outside. I could hear it running away toward the noise, and only when the sound faded...
Gaaaaaahhh... I let out my breath and began to hyperventilate.
'What was that? Oh God, what was that thing?'
I pushed the door open, rolled out onto the books, and immediately pushed myself away to avoid the tar-like saliva of the skinless thing.
During the maneuver I hit my right leg on one of the doors, a sharp pain shooting through my body that almost made me puke.
I dragged myself carefully to the hole where I had come in and looked outside.
The path below was made of irregular stones. Houses like the one I had crashed into lined the narrow street on both sides, the road curving and blocking my view of the city beyond. There were no signs of any more creatures around the house I was in.
'I did see several while falling, though... I guess I was lucky.'
Looking up, I saw some houses that were taller than this one and then...
'That's my backpack!'
It was dangling from a web of ropes, barely within arm's reach. I stretched as far as I could and freed it.
Another pang of pain drove home the urgency. I was still bleeding, not as much as before, but still a lot.
With my backpack on and the makeshift cane in hand, I walked out of the room. I was as quiet as I could be, though that did not amount to much with my leg the way it was.
I didn't have ambitions of getting very far like that, so I stumbled into the corridor. There were three doors; any would do. I went through the one opposite the office and found myself in what looked like a master bedroom. The bed and the furniture were larger than human proportions if you paid attention.
I closed the door behind me and locked it, more for self-soothing than protection at that point.
I pulled some sheets from the bed, which looked old and dusty but still high quality, and laid them on the floor. I would rather not soil this room with blood any more than I had to.
Sitting down, I took some time to slowly remove my gym pants and examine my leg.
The situation... was terrible.
A wooden spike, probably half of a table leg, protruded through my thigh from one side to the other. Now, having a nurse for a mother, I knew better than to try and remove it myself. I should head to a hospital and find someone who knew what they were doing to take it out...
'Yeah, I should definitely do that. I wonder if I can ask that skinless thing if it comes back where the nearest emergency room is.' I chuckled.
I was going to have to deal with this myself.
'I'm so glad my mom insisted my stupid self carry a small first aid kit. The situation would be a lot better if I took the big one she wanted me to, but it would also be a lot worse if I didn't have anything.'
I took it out of my backpack and laid out its contents: a pair of disposable gloves, sterile gauze, medium and small bandages for cuts, a small spray bottle of iodine, adhesive tape, painkillers, a small pair of scissors and tweezers.
Everything I would need to take care of a small, even relatively large, cut. Not ideal for a full-on spike through the leg, but it would have to do.
I took my water bottle from my backpack and used the scissors to cut a bit of the sheets. Using the now half-empty bottle, I wetted the rags and cleaned around the wound, removing as much coagulated blood and dirt as I could.
I prepared the gauze and iodine, left strips of tape ready, and swallowed three painkillers.
I grabbed one of my notebooks from my backpack and bit into it. I couldn't scream.
Then, finally, I put on the gloves, held the spike firmly and took a deep breath. The small movement causing me to see stars.
Breathing out, I steadied my spirit.
And I pulled.