Anyways, this one is shorter than the others by, like, a paragraph or two, but it finally finished up Clarise being about to fall to her death. Find out what that means by reading it! If you have the time and want to let me know what you think of either the writing or the story so far, feel free to let me know, and I hope you enjoy this piece of writing. See you tomorrow at eight AM for more of something!
Oh, right, there is swearing and stuff in this story, because human beings are found to often swear in tense situations, and most often books get written about tense situations, as they're more interesting. It isn't gratuitous, merely where it seems likely someone would curse, like when they're holding on to a helicopter for dear life and someone starts shooting at them, y'know? Enjoy!
Clarise's End-Times V by Mackinley Clevinger, March 25, 2016
I know it’s unlikely. I know that, given how things have been going for me lately, I’m pretty much certain not to get the chance, but you know what? One day, I want to be able to sit behind a desk in a cushy ground-level self-owned business, bearing the scars of this whole mess proudly, and ask the terrified kid interviewing for a job what he would do if he were hanging from a helicopter by its landing rail with a single blood-encrusted hand approximately a thousand miles above the streets below as the aforementioned helicopter is about to scrape you off of itself on the edge of a rooftop like dog-crap off of a shoe, cause honestly? I haven’t got a clue what to do, and I’d take advice from anyone right now.
Logically, I should be grateful for a few things, I guess. Strictly speaking, the good outweighs the bad right now; I’m not being shot at anymore, or being swung around by a flailing helicopter, or falling to my death yet, or being eaten by a horde of zombies, and I’m getting what is likely an amazing workout for my… biceps, or something. On the other hand, I am about to die, but that’s, like, only one thing compared to the other five. It pays to really take notice of the good in your life sometimes, and remind yourself that things aren’t so bad after all. I mean, after all the strain that I’ve subjected myself to in the last half hour, there is literally nothing I can do besides watch the high-rise get ever closer to scraping me off of the helicopter, but at least at this height, I’ll get to enjoy that post-stress burn in my arms, right? And, uhm… No, I think that’s about all the false-positivity I can bring to bear in this situation.
For a little while longer, at any rate. I looked down, past my dangling feet at the last stop I’d ever make. I couldn’t even see the street in the darkness, just buildings on either side of me that tapered towards a darkness my eyes couldn’t penetrate; and yet… there was something down there. The tiniest little patch of white light, an oblong smear as large as a few pixels on a television across the room that moved in a little circle that fit neatly between my two limp feet. The more I watched it, the larger it seemed to grow, bit by bit, becoming slightly more defined in image. Something in the back of my head grew with it as it approached, a tiny receptive patch similar to the one that had appeared in response to the horde, but this one was… cleaner? Purer? Not comparable to rotting meat left in an alleyway in summer for a week? It was smaller, though, but starting to grow. A shining light with a reflective platinum core, the whole thing soothing my mind by its very presence, making death seem somehow… fitting. Not that I deserved to die, but that it was part of life, just as what came after was, too, a part of our existence. It was weird to know that the feeling was coming from a foreign entity seemingly implanted in my mind, but it was calming, and unobtrusive.
At the rate that patch of white was moving, it’d be up here in about a day. I wasn’t even sure if it was rising, anymore; I think it’s just hovering underneath me for some reason, and yet it was growing more defined as that patch of shining platinum grew to greater prominence, the same way the horde had when I let it take over to catch a ride. Could I do that again? Use it to clamber up the helicopter, uncaring for my physical limits, and not fall to my death? I shut my eyes, the after-image of an increasingly defined world underneath me, centered around what had become, I think, a pair of wings, disappearing, replaced by the inside of my eyelids. Not the darkness that usually came from shutting your eyes, but a close up of the thin flesh that protects your eyes, in all the glory of knowing what your anatomy actually looks like. In short, creepy as fuck, and not something you can shut your eyes against or look away from like a severed limb, because it was literally pressed against my eyes. Strange as it was, I didn’t have time to screw around right now; the timer was up when I felt a building start to scrape me off of the helicopter, a sentence I never expected I’d be using at any time in my life.
Ignoring the creepy stuff, I reached for the horde in my mind, tapping into the patch that granted me access to the horde and would activate the hunger. It felt like a floodgate, allowing its influence to spread throughout my body and take hold as long as I allowed it, able to be shut again at will. I couldn’t feel the horde behind it, and as I moved to release its influence over me, something didn’t feel right. It was… empty? I tried to release it anyways, but the other patch that had been slowly growing, its platinum light shining brighter, suddenly flared, an inferno of sensation in my brain that made me lose all sensation mentally for a few seconds. Something screamed, a voice of outcry, repulsion, and what sounded like intent to kick the ass of someone who deserved it, and it took me a few moments to realize that it had come from outside of my mind. My eyes shot open, the focus and acuity of sight reverted back to normal as that tiny patch of indistinct white stopped circling beneath me and shot off down the street, the white fluctuating in what must’ve been its wings beating against the air as it left me at increased speed. Maybe it didn’t like me trying to become a zombie? What a prejudiced stranger monster-thing. Can’t accept a girl for her cravings of living flesh? My arm bumped against something rough, my heart nearly escaping my chest in my realization that my time was up.
This was it. I was going to be scraped off of this thing and die any second now, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. What do you say in times like these? This might be my last chance to tell them something, to let them know that they had been wrong to do what they did and that I was innocent, just a girl in the wrong place at the worst possible time. I was going to die in the prime of my life, with nothing to leave to the world to remember me, because of a misunderstanding and being stuck in a terrible situation. What are my last words going to be? They might, just might, hear me, if I was lucky. What do I want to leave them with? Anger at a life lost in vain? Forgive them for being assholes? How could I make sure they’d hear me? I didn’t have a voice like that winged thing I’d seen, though… Wait. Just because you’re going to die doesn’t mean you can still act like an idiot. I reached in my mind for that tiny patch of the shining platinum light that I’d been left with, calmed after the thing with wings had left, and released the meagre stores held within to empower my voice. I could barely hold on any longer; my hand was high enough up to avoid being crushed, but my wrist was pressing into the concrete hard, and there was only so far my hand could bend to keep on holding on. Last words time, something to reflect the pain and struggle I’d been put through because of them, something for the tombstone if I ever got one. I breathed in, ignoring the pain in my wrist, and released it in an empowered shout, draining the shining platinum light but not ridding it from my mind. I think I got the words just right.
“You guys have small dicks!” The world shuddered as those words left my lips, each ensuing word, booming out of my mouth in a voice that could drown out an entire football stadium, adding to the concussive blast that I released, an echoing wall of sound that grew louder, not quieter, as it reflected off of the building and the helicopter to escape and fill the city with a statement reflecting my feelings on the nature of those men who had let me dangle beneath them for so long. The building shook, glass shattering beneath me as fragments of windows fell the long journey to the street below alongside bits of the building’s façade that cracked and fell off. The helicopter shuddered, the landing rail vibrating madly inside my failing grasp as we all suddenly shot upwards, my body scraping along the ragged and shaking edge of the rooftop. My eyes were still shut, at first from straining every part of my body to make my voice louder, and now from the pain of scraping against a jagged and rough surface at such speed, the effort necessary to open them and the relief from clenching them ensuring they stayed closed as we rose. The pain and the strain added to the vibrations were too much, and to the echoes of my own voice, my grip finally failed and I fell to whatever fate awaited me below.