Charles Ramon Peterson

1:20 a.m., Wednesday, February 5, 2020

 

No! It hurts…so bad… Ramon wished for death.

The centipede-looking creature with pinchers dropped from the ceiling and jumped on him. He tried to grab it and throw it away, but it already latched on the side of his neck, securing itself with dozens of its sharp limbs. Unimaginable pain coursed through him as the creature effortlessly ripped his skin and chewed his flesh, digging deep into his body. He couldn’t pull it out. He couldn’t stop it. His mouth gaped in agony but the pain was too much he couldn’t even gather the strength to scream out loud.

Just let it all end…

 

…

 

Be one…Crave for power…Reach across the veil…Why am I thinking this?

His thoughts were jumbled. Was it the creature turning him into a monster? This was it then. Every trace of his humanity would be soon gone. But the pain slowly numbed and disappeared. Not just the pain. He couldn’t feel…at all. His own movements, the hard floor beneath him, the creature in his neck… nothing. It was as if time crawled to a stop. His consciousness was being whisked away, but at the same time he stayed anchored in his body. He was outside his body, witnessing it get taken over by the creature. At the same time, he was also inside his mind. Trapped. The creature was pushing him to a corner. He could hear its thoughts. It was calling out for something.

You are nothing...life is meaningless...your life is meaningless...He already knew that. Why did he think that now?

You can find meaning...it's not too late...I can give you meaning...what do you want? Who was this inside his head?

 

…

 

I’m taking you with me! You’re dying with me! Ramon repeated this mantra as he held on to the knife.

In the swirling consciousness that wasn’t his own, he was able to resurface. The next thing he knew, he had already stabbed himself. No. He stabbed the creature inside him. What happened to Boady and Johnson came back to him. Boady had stabbed the slug in Johnson’s leg before it took him over. With this same knife! And then Boady, with amazing will, tried to kill the slug inside his head as it made its way to his brain. Boady failed and turned into a monster. Ramon resolved that he wouldn’t.

Better die as a human!

 

…

 

What happened? Why am I still alive?

The cloud over his mind was lifted. There were no other thoughts drowning his own. There was no pain. There was clarity. And strength! He clenched his teeth to stop himself from screaming out loud. He stood tall, brimming with power.

And what was this before him?

A headless monster.

On the floor was the monster’s severed head covered with long hair, its mouth wide open, screaming as it died. He continued looking down and noticed a blade. It was like the upper part of a gigantic crab claw crossed with a single-edged curved sword. My arm! Before he could gather his thoughts, the headless corpse stirred. Tentacles emerged out of the stump of the neck. There were roars from behind him. A couple of hulking monsters burst forth from the walls and charged towards him. Now wasn’t the time to think about what was happening to his body.

Now was the time to fight!

 

---

 

“Why did you have to bring him?”

A woman’s voice.

Who was she?

Ramon might’ve heard her speak before, but he wasn’t sure.

She shouted over the din of someone…or something…pounding hard on wood. The door? There were also other sounds…scratching, wailing, eerie chatter, growls that made his heart uneasy. They were stifled; outside the room, maybe? He opened his eyes and winced at the bright light over him. Where was he? What happened?

“He’s an Adumbrae!” the woman said. He was shocked at her words, but Ramon closed his eyes again and pretended to still be unconscious. “You should’ve left him there to die. Look, he already healed himself.”

“Because he helped us,” replied a man. He sounded like he had a hard time talking; he was in agony and was only forcing himself to speak.

“Not much help when he also destroyed the elevator. That was our ticket out.”

“He helped us,” the man repeated. Then he groaned in pain.

“And how sure are you he’s going to continue helping us? Look at him! He’s an Adumbrae.”

Ramon wanted to shout ‘No!’ to her, but he didn’t move. Adumbrae? I'm not an Adumbrae. Why would she say that?

Everything came back to him.

The two continued to argue while Ramon laid still, processing everything that happened so far.

What do I do now?

A heavy object was being pushed. He felt the vibrations of the floor with his cheek.

He could also feel that his body wasn’t human. Without needing to look at a mirror…he just knew.

Am I still me?

Someone stamped their foot on the floor. “He’s not much help now, is he?” the woman said. “You only delayed us. And now we’re trapped.”

“He…he can help us.”

“Try to wake him up then? If you’re so sure he’ll help us.”

“I…I’m not going to do that.”

“Then what do you propose we do? You just led us here in this room to die!”

“Shut...shut up! Help me get more things to…to…ungh…to block this door,” said the man. “They’re trying to break it down.” As if to prove his point, the monsters outside intensified their efforts to get inside the room, their growls growing louder.

“We’re going to fucking die!” the woman cried out. “No, no, no, no. This isn’t happening!”

“Hey, what’re you doing with that gun? Are…are you going to kill yourse—?”

“No fucking way I’m going to do something idiotic like that.” She walked closer to Ramon, her shoes clicking on the tiled floor. He cracked his eyelids a sliver. Her shadow was over him. She said, “I-I…I’m going to kill as many of them as I can before they eat me. Starting with this one.”

“Don’t shoot hi—!”

Ramon fully opened his eyes, sat straight up, grabbed the gun that was pointed down at his head, and threw it away. The woman yelped in surprised and jumped back. She sprinted to one of the bedrooms in the condominium unit and slammed the door shut.

The other person in the unit was a shirtless man leaning on the stack of furniture and various things blocking the door. He was holding up a bat with one hand, ready to strike. But it was obvious he didn’t pose any threat.

His other hand was just a bloody stump, his face deathly pale and covered in sweat. The torn clothes he used to wrap his injury was dripping blood on the floor. “Are…are you on our side?” he said.

“Yes,” Ramon said, lowering his blade-arm, unsure of what he could say to convince him that he meant no harm. “Yes, I’m on your side.”

There was the sound of something breaking. It was clearly the door being torn down even if they couldn’t see it because it was covered by an ornately carved wooden cabinet. Suddenly, all of the things blocking the door lurched forward.

“No!” the man said, throwing his body over the furniture. “You’re not getting in!”

Once again, Ramon didn’t know what was going on. With his body. With his surroundings. But he only knew that one thing was certain. He was going to fight the monsters that were trying to get in this room.

Fight them.

And kill them.

He strode over to the injured man with renewed purpose and helped him stand up. “Go and hide. I’ll take care of them.” The man nodded and staggered away to find a hiding place, cradling his injured arm.

Ramon held out his blade-arm in front of him. The chitinous plating covering the left side of his body shifted, brushing against each other as he moved, like it was plate armor worn by a knight in fairy tales. Except that he wasn't a prince in shining armor; he was the monster.

How was he supposed to use this blade-arm? Just swing it wildly? It was sharp. He was strong, several times stronger than before. It didn’t need a genius to figure out what to do.

Just cut everything in my path.

Something stirred inside his blade-arm. Energy hidden within. Concentrating on this power, the blade glowed a sinister violet. Scattered along the spine of his blade-arm, the part that looked like a huge crab claw, were holes, or more like small vents. These vents puffed up black smoke, as if something ignited inside his blade-arm. The air around it shimmered from the heat.

“Let’s get this party started,” he said, giving his blade a few test swings. He snorted. Why the hell did I say that? The absurdity of the situation caught up with him. He laughed at the stupid line he said. At his stupid situation. At—

Crash!! A large tentacle shot through the cabinet.

Ramon turned his body, positioning his armored part forward. The tentacle slammed into him, but he stood his ground. He was momentarily stunned not by the force of the blow but at how strong he became. He instinctively slashed at the tentacle. There was a blur and the tentacle was cut into pieces.

I’m fast as hell!

The tentacle withdrew through the hole it made. The pieces he hacked that fell to the floor burned with violet flames.

Clawed hands were the next to come out of the hole, digging at its edges, making it bigger, ripping the wood and upholstery. Ramon jumped on the couch in front of the cabinet and slashed at anything that emerged out of the hole. The creatures on the other side squealed as he sliced them. The violet fire crept up their limbs, continuing to burn and consume their mutated and decaying flesh.

With this wave of monsters retreating, Ramon saw through the opening what was coming next.

“Oh, shit,” he said, crossing his arms in front of him.

A large ghoulish skull forced itself through the crowd of monsters packed in the corridor, shoving those that got in its way, smashing past what remained of the door and the rickety barricades. It burst into the room and slammed into Ramon. He arched across the air and crashed into the opposite wall.

The skull, which was as large as his upper body, opened its mouth. Several voices speaking gibberish filled the air.

And his head.

“Aaah!” Ramon cried out. His head hurt so much. His movement became sluggish from the pain.

The voices were singing. The jumbled choir became increasingly louder and louder, the piercing voices speaking over each other, each one following a different melody, each song bringing up a painful memory from deep within him. The death of his best friend...his mother and father fighting...his pet dog...

“Shut the fuck up!” As an angry battle cry left his lips, he leapt at the skull hovering near the ceiling and stabbed it repeatedly with his blade-arm. He sliced the sides of its face, removing its lower jaw. Then he jammed his blade into the eye sockets. Violet flames engulfed the floating skull.

Something cracked inside of it and exploded. Once again, he was thrown back.

“You…you…fucking piece of shit.” The right side of Ramon’s body was heavily injured by the impact of the blast. Pieces of the skull tore into the mostly human and unarmored part of his torso. But it wasn’t the physical pain that hurt the most.

It was the memories brought back by the skull’s singing.

He closed his eyes, trying to forget about them, but they wouldn’t go away.

“I’m going to kill all of you!” He jumped through the doorway into the seething masses of monsters.

He hoped that fighting and killing would make him forget about those memories. That it would also make him forget about his situation, that he was no longer human. He slashed at everything that moved. And all of them attacked him. He screamed in pain as they bit off chunks of his flesh, as they clawed at his body, as they yanked off pieces of his armor. A monster spat acid on his shoulder. Spikes buried in his back.

The pain only increased his bloodlust. But in this rage, he was able to find peace and think.

I wasn't much of a human before.

And now, the human Ramon was practically dead.

Gone.

What remained was a monster with parts that looked like human, but a human, he was no more. His monster heart ached at this realization.

Tears streamed from his human right eye as he continued fighting even as the monsters did their best to eat him. He couldn’t hear anything other than the beat of his heart.

Only then when he realized that he was screaming. And he couldn’t hear himself.

Mom…I’m sorry.

Memories of his family and friends…

He didn’t have a good life. He didn’t accomplish much. Nothing to be proud of. A tiny blip in the entirety of existence that made no impact at all. He wasn’t able to help Boady and Johnson. He set out to help Erind, but he also failed that task before he found her. He wasn’t even able to kill himself before he turned into a monster. And when he died here, he would also fail the those two people hiding in the room. He recalled what that woman said before trying to shoot him.

The least I can do is kill as many of these monsters as I can before I die!

 

---

 

“I…I…survived?” Ramon said. His body was grievously injured but was already healing back. He didn’t know what to think. He expected to die. “Is…is this a second chance?”

He trudged back to the room where those two people hid. If this was a second chance, then he was going to help these two get to safety, and any other survivor they may come across. He was going to kill each monster they'd meet. That would be one less monster hunting other people still alive in this building. Hopefully, Erind was one of those survivors.

“It’s not over yet,” he said to himself as he climbed over the pile of monster corpses outside the doorway. His original plan of reaching the roof was still doable. The man and woman in this room, he was going to bring them up there. He also promised to try and find Erind, but he wasn’t so sure he still could. “And after that…after that…I’ll…” He didn’t know what to do.

There was no after that for him.

He shook his head and looked for the two hiding in this room, following the man's trail of blood on the white tiles. He was going to think about that after all of this. If hiding in the sewers for the rest of his life was the answer, then so be it. It seemed the world didn’t want him to die just yet.

“Hello?” Ramon said. “It’s safe to come out now.” He found the woman with the wounded man. Perhaps she looked for him during all the fighting. She didn’t seem as bad as his first impression of her.

Unfortunately, she also retrieved Boady’s gun and was pointing it at him. “Back off, Adumbrae.”

“I’m not an Adumbrae. I didn't answer the call of the Adumbrae from across the veil. I was turned into a monster. I…I didn’t want this.”

“Is that so? Still a monster.”

“Yes, you’re right. But I’m on your side. I’m a victim too.”

She slowly lowered her gun. Her face was confused. He did save them twice now. She had been crying. Her tears ruined her heavy eyeliners. The man beside her was unconscious but breathing shallowly.

“I killed all monsters outside.” Ramon continued in a gentle voice. He knelt down and hid his blade-arm behind his back. “I don’t know how I regained consciousness and didn't become one of them. Like one of those outside that hunt humans. But I assure you, even if I look like this, I'm still human deep within and I'll help you get out of this building alive.”

“You…you will?” Her face crumpled and she began crying again. “We have to get out fast. Rolly…Rolly is dying. He bled too much.”

The woman had a complete change of attitude compared to when she wanted to kill Ramon earlier. Apparently, she also cared for this Rolly. Perhaps she was just stressed by the situation. He could relate to that. “Rolly? Is that his name? My name is Ramon.”

“I’m…I’m Cassandra.”

He picked up Rolly and went out of the room. “Let’s get clear of this place before more of them come.”

“Ho-How do we get down? The stairs?”

“We’re using the stairs. No other choice. But we’re not going down.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Do you still have your phone?”

“Yes, I have it. But there’s no signal.”

“That’s good.” He patted Rolly’s pocket and felt that he also had his phone. Ramon had somehow lost his own when he dived the crowd of monsters earlier.

“Um...you still didn't say where we’re going. How do we get out of this place?”

“Up."

"Up?"

"We’re going up to call for help. That’s our way out.”