Anyways, this is part six of Clarise's End-Times, where it looks like Clarise is finally going to get to stop reacting to the world around her and start doing stuff! I mean, there's not much opportunity when you're basically in the first five minutes of an episode of Supernatural without anyone to come along and fix anything for you, so it's nice to be at a point where she defines the plot instead of the other way around. Hope you enjoy this, I enjoyed writing it as much as it took me many hours, and see you tomorrow for more of something!
Clarise's End-Times VI by Mackinley Clevinger, April 9, 2016
“Oof, he looks rough. What kind of a gang war leaves a guy bitten up like this? Don’t know how he’s still… Emerick, he’s coming to, get him ready for – What is he… How the hell is he doing that? You’re going to hurt yourself worse than – Emerick, help me hold him down! Fuck, he bit me! What the hell is wrong with… Here, this should knock him out. Keep him restrained until it takes effect, I need to go down to ER. God damn these nutjobs we keep getting today, they’ll be the death of us all at this rate, I swear. I’ll send a nurse up here when one has the chance, just… keep him down. Damn this hurts. We’re spread way too fucking thin for all these patients, and now this?”
I could see a face through the thrashing, the erratic head movements forming a blurry image of the man, Emerick. The hunger was intense, but I subdued it, feigning rest and restraining myself. He let go of my shoulders and leaned in to examine me, neck growing more and more exposed. Patience. Wait for the perfect –
I lunged, widened mouth and bared teeth aimed for Emerick’s neck, only to be met by a clenched fist that woke me out of the fog and bounced my head against the gravel I was lying on. My vision swam; I didn’t know if the stars I saw were celestial or head trauma, but either way I’m pretty sure I survived falling from the helicopter. My face felt numb, but the rest of me wasn’t so lucky. I let out a piteous groan as I tried to move a too-sore shoulder, and shut my eyes at the discomfort.
“Second time you all’ve tried that, worked as well as the first.” Who the… Oh, right. Emerick: The guy who is likely going to hold it against me for nearly trying to eat him, and apparently also Mr. Punchy. I drew in a breath, the feel of my chest moving as it filled with air hurting like hell. I lacked the breath to do anything more than mouth my view on current events: Everything. Sucks.
My eyes snapped open, vision clearing and pain dampening as a platinum glow trickled down my spine. It wasn’t enough to get me back on my feet, but I could roll aside as a boot came down where my head had been. One tooth wasn’t enough for you, eh, Emerick? I dragged myself along the rooftop, trying to create some distance before he tried to do something more stupid than before, like trying to kill me competently.
The platinum glow was still flowing – well, trickling was more accurate – and keeping the pain down, but I didn’t think that was a well I could tap any further at the moment, and I’m pretty sure tapping into the horde would be counterproductive. Which left me the only option of trying to convince this surely reasonable – “You think I’m going to let you get away?” – man that I was not interested in partaking of his flesh in any sense.
I just needed time to get my senses back so I could talk to him, make him understand where I was coming from. Actually, where the hell was I coming from? Why was any of this – More important things, Clarise, just keep dragging yourself away from the mad man until you can speak properly at volume without groaning. That wouldn’t be too difficult so long as he didn’t –
Fingers wrapped around my ankle, barren of a shoe that had long slipped off, and pulled me away from the vague direction I’d been heading. I tried to speak, but could only cough while trying to spin around and see what he was doing, kicking at him with my other leg to make him let go of me. Being dragged on a rooftop rarely led to anything good in my experience; of which I have had very little and would quite like to have kept that way.
He kept dragging me, and I kept kicking him to a rising assortment of curses and vocal abuse. I kept trying to tell him to stop, but the words just wouldn’t come out loud enough; they were just gasps of escaping air, which did not help my case for humanity on top of his clear bias towards me. My fingers failed to find any kind of a grasp on the gravel, just ruining my cuticles and scraping some of the blood off of them in their attempts to slow our progress.
“Don’t know how you managed to get up here, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to stay here.” For a moment I paused, tired mind working through what he said. Panic swept through me at realizing what he meant, and I lashed out with everything I had at him, trying to stop him from dragging me any further towards a fall I had worked so hard to avoid. I strained to say something; anything that would make him stop as I launched a kick at him, but nothing would come out of my… oh fuck.
My foot hit something solidly, a shock racing down its length and briefly piercing the dampening of the platinum glow to remind me I was in dire straits. He released me, letting out a shaky gasp as I ignored my pain and launched myself away from him, desperate to put any kind of distance between the two of us. I fell on my chest, ribs screaming at the abuse, and dragged myself further away from Emerick, mentally slapping myself in the face for not realizing it before.
People lose their voices all the time for talking or singing too much, and have to let their vocal cords rest; I just shouted loud enough to fuck up a helicopter, and had definitely not conditioned my voice for anything like that. My vocal cords were probably torn to shreds; no way I would be talking my way out of this while Emerick was so gung-ho about throwing me to my death. I’d just have to communicate to him that I’m not what he thinks I am, and make sure he isn’t so obsessed with vengeance for… I looked behind me as I crawled, at a figure bent over and holding his groin.
This might be an impossible task I have before me.
I couldn’t have been out for too long; I was still virtually blind in the dark of night, especially up above any lights that might have survived. I was pretty sure we were on the Meyers building, and where else but one of the tallest building in the city would be the best place to put someone down to keep him safe from whatever the hell’s going on? Too bad for him that he thinks he wound up with a cannibal when I would be much happier asleep and drugged up than eating anything, let alone a person. Too bad for me he thinks the answer to his problem is for me to vacate the premises.
I bumped into something while the sounds behind me quieted down. I pulled myself up against it, the vague impressions I got in the dark being of the rooftop access; a short rise of concrete that ended in a door, just like the one I had beat on for half an hour over a day ago. Wait, how long has it even been? I sat myself against the concrete surface, thinking as I watched Emerick creep towards me slowly.
It was getting to be night when I decided to jump after being stuck on a roof for a night and a day, after which things kind of sped up… I was off the roof and on the helicopter in ten minutes at the most, and might’ve spent five minutes hanging for my life, not that it seemed to short at the time, so at most it’s been... it hasn’t even been half an hour. Holy crap, no wonder I want to just curl up into a ball and escape life for a while, an active lifestyle is hard as hell.
I coughed again, eyes locked on Emerick as I felt pain flare briefly underneath the platinum glow that raced all along my body. I know you’re not supposed to be unconscious from trauma for very long, but if it gave my body time to recover the stuff that masked the pain, then I was fine with risking it. It wasn’t enough to get me on my feet yet, but maybe it’d fix me up if I could just manage to give it enough time. I wonder if Emerick was likely to give me the opportunity.
Was I willing to give in to the horde to save myself? I mean… If it’s really him or me, then surely… I felt into the back reaches of my mind, curious as to the state of affairs there, finding the platinum glow flowing down and out of that region of my mind. I wasn’t going to do it if I could, but I’d hate to have put myself through so much just to die because of a misunderstanding. The horde was there, too, brimming with an eagerness to take over again and… ‘help’ me.
Maybe some things are more important than living at any cost.
Something else was there too, though; something new. I shut my eyes to the vision of Emerick getting ever closer, able to imagine the look on his face as he approached the wounded and fleeing target of his attention, and focused on that portion of my mind without the distraction of sight. There were the two I was familiar with, as much as five-minute’s knowledge with something you don’t understand at all makes you familiar with it, and a third that was growing as the platinum shining light had.
It was dull and dirty, the texture and look of a tanned animal hide. It gave off a feeling to me, a fog of confusion towards the world made clear by simplicity and unrestrained violence. I found its place in the back of my head as it grew, and opened my eyes again to see Emerick standing a few feet away from me. I rose an arm between us, the other lying flat against the floor while my legs lay splayed between the two of us. I wonder how I looked in that moment, if he could even see how beaten up I was.
I tried to speak, knowing it would be useless, and could only cough instead, trying to use my hand to signal him to stop, give me a chance to tell him somehow that I’m not bad. I don’t think he got the message, though; Emerick took a step towards me, his hands formed into fists. “I know you’re a victim of whatever’s gone wrong with you and everyone else,” It was a bad time for it, but I spat out a mouthful of blood. Blood tastes awful, by the way. “but I’m really starting to hate you.” Emerick, my dearest friend, I could certainly say the same about you, if only ignorance were a disease. And I was capable of speaking.
He took another step towards me, readying himself for a very dirty deed, and I decided to find out what happened if you mixed platinum-glow with dirty-tan. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be getting purple, but there was always a chance of getting lucky when playing with things you didn’t understand.
The tan trickled down with the platinum, and nothing changed. I was still lying against this stupid slab wall with dumb guy over there wanting to hurt me. My stupid voice wouldn’t work because of stupid magic shouting, and everything hurt. I want to be left alone by all these stupid people. Why won’t they leave me alone? What did I ever do? I just want to be left alone in my home.
This was mine now, and they kept coming here and talking, talking, talking; always talking and saying things and not leaving, not when I said ‘Leave me alone.’ Not when I said ‘Please.’ They only left when I hit them. Except for the sleeping man, but he doesn’t talk. He can stay. But the rest of them, talking and asking and screaming… They won’t just leave me alone! It makes me so… so... angry. It makes me want to break, to smash, to destroy! If they won’t leave me alone, then I’ll make them. Leave. Me. Alone!
The sound of shattering concrete woke me from the fog, the world flooding back in as the anger left it, and my mind returned to normal. Emerick was standing further back than before, and my right hand was embedded in the concrete wall I was lying against. I had lashed out a fist from my sitting position, and it had broken the concrete, sending cracks out from the impact point, and embedded my fist in the wall. Except…
Without it being broken, cut, or hurting at all beyond the old aches and pains which, admittedly, were many. I stared at my fist, awestruck by what I had done, and looked at Emerick out of the corner of my eye, still shocked by my feat of strength. I could feel the platinum glow alive and strong inside of me, attached to the source, while the tan had cut itself off, freeing my mind while strengthening my body. I wrenched my hand free from the concrete, sending chips and dust flying through the air, and brought my feet underneath me, ignoring the old pain and exhaustion with the strength at my disposal. It was time to address my adversary.
I stood up, facing Emerick with my arms crossed and my face set in a glare. His figure was indistinct, but I was pretty sure he was in the process of being frightened for his life. I was pretty familiar with that body expression by now, but things were turning around for me. New world, new start, new Clarise; and it would start right now, with Emerick.
I stepped towards him, imposing in all of my five-feet two-inches as he backed away from me, putting his hands up in front of him, ready to attack. Would this guy give it a rest with the ‘trying to hurt me’ thing he keeps doing? It hasn’t ended well for either of us, so far, and I think I can guess how it would go down for him now. I could see the fear in his face, as dark as it was; say what I wish I could, Emerick’s not one to back down.
I bull-rushed him, not giving him time to react to my approach using my newfound strength, and drew both arms back, hands formed just right for maximum impact and body set for perfect range. I threw everything I had at him as he stood there, frozen at my sudden approach. I was going to make sure that he wouldn’t hurt me again in a way he would never forget.
He flinched; of course he flinched, but it didn’t make my attack any less effective. He’d thrown an arm over his face, shielding it from whatever imaginary attack he had though I was going to launch at a target nearly a foot over my head. He lowered his arm after a few seconds of not being horribly assaulted, to the sight of my entire body composed in a straight line, starting with my planted back foot and ending with two middle fingers right in his face.
Human enough for you, asshole?