It's Poison
"Wake up, Sanchez." she said.
Sanchez was in an old building.
He was panting and slowly recovering his breath, taking long inhales
through his nostrils to steady his lungs.
The brick walls had been eroding over time but they still honored their
obligation. His brain told him
that he was smelling the musk of the past, a mixture of dust, dirt, and rot. The brick walls combined to form a
polka-dotted pattern of reds, whites, pinks, and grays that was punctuated by
intermittent holes where light poured in.
The light was too intense to see details outside but Sanchez thought he
could see trees. As he walked
around to learn his surroundings, he saw the ruins of an old staircase so he
assumed he was on the first floor.
He wiped the sweat beading on his brow and blood from slash marks on his
right forearm. He winced slightly
and double-checked his wound.
There were 5 slashes grouped together that formed red streaks across the
top of his forearm and, although the slash marks weren't deep, they still
stung. While Sanchez looked
around he saw some broken wooden beams on the ground, some of them had nails
sticking through them. He picked
up one of the beams that was the least rotten, tested its weight, and felt that
it was still strong. As he looked
around, Sanchez stirred up the dust under his bare feet. The cool, damp dirt felt strangely familiar
to him but he had no idea where he was or how he got there. He looked all around the dilapidated
room to find an exit, but found none except for the occasional window.
As he walked by one of these windows, he caught a glimpse of a young
woman standing outside. Sanchez
snapped his head back and ran towards the window but the woman blurred out of
focus as he made it to the ledge.
He called out to her but heard nothing in response. Sanchez had just turned away to look
for the exit when a cat leaped upon him from behind and sank its claws into his
bare neck and head, biting him ferociously. Sanchez screamed and instinctively dropped the wooden beam
he carried. Frantically, he
reached behind his head, grabbed the growling cat, and threw it to the ground
with a hard thud. "What the
fuck is that?!!" he screamed.
The cat screeched as it hit the ground and stirred up old dust but it
didn't run away. The cat arched
its back and stood sideways to appear larger and menacing. The tail and the arched back of the
feral cat were puffing up as it snarled at him. Sanchez reached down, grabbed his beam, then lunged hard at
the feline. He saw the bright
amber of its eyes and the whites of its teeth, but the cat didn't try to run
when he brought his weapon down upon it.
Sanchez clubbed the cat over and over, each time the cat's screams escalated. Sanchez finally raised the club over
his head and brought it down so hard that his feet left the ground. When blood splashed across the floor
and the cat fell silent, Sanchez fell to his knees and allowed his adrenalin to
dissipate. He let go of the wooden
bat in his hands and watched the dust settle around the cat's broken body.
As the adrenalin subsided, he felt the pain on his neck and checked his
wounds. His hands came back with a
mixture of blood and dirt, though it wasn't bad. When he lowered his bloody hands and returned his focus to
the dead cat, Sanchez saw it was gone and the body of a woman had replaced
it. Sanchez yelped uncontrollably
and scurried backward toward the brick wall, kicking up dust while shouting
confused curses. Sanchez calmed
his breathing and looked at the woman's body. Her head was split open and her blood still oozed from the
wounds. She was wearing a
blood-spattered white cloth garment that looked like robes that had symbols on it. The symbols looked familiar but Sanchez
couldn't focus on them - they seemed to move over her robe. Sanchez saw that one of her hands was
holding an apple that had a bite taken from it. He furrowed his brow and looked at the bite. Instead of the normal glistening white
inside, it was black with small white dots. Sanchez moved closer to inspect it and, as he got closer, he
saw that the inside of the apple looked like Outer Space. Sanchez saw stars, galaxies, and
nebulae glowing and undulating inside the glistening red skin of the
apple. As he watched, he saw a dot moving across the Cosmos
inside the apple. It was a
shuttle! The shuttle was flying
across the great blue atmosphere of
what looked like Neptin.
Sanchez was able to see the identifiers on the shuttle and, while awash
in shock and disbelief, he looked to the plasma view window to identify the
pilot. Sanchez's eyes grew wide as
recognized who was flying the shuttle.
His consciousness awoke in his mind and, for a split-second, he knew
what was happening.
"Wake up Emilio!" she said.
Sanchez sat straight up in shock and gasped "Don't eat it!"
© Christopher Robert Dawson 2000-2013
No comments:
Post a Comment