Chapter 23

Death Screams like a Girl

I screamed[sh14]!

I screamed the way anyone would when faced with so much death.

However, I wasn’t the only one.

Ben started screaming the second he saw me, and we were both locked in some kind of screaming match, seeing who could make the most horrific sound the longest.

“Oh shit!”

Ben finally said as I just continued to scream the second I saw what he was doing.

My friend, my once kind and innocent little artist friend who I’d spent time with, watched movies with and cooked my pasta bake for with homemade garlic tear and share…I had fucking eaten a meal with this guy and now I find out he is a bloody zombie!

I watched in pure disgust as the bloody forearm he had been chewing on slipped from his decaying fingers just before his bloody lips said,

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

At this I seemed frozen to the spot and asked myself if I was some extra in a dark comedy horror movie I didn’t know about, because all I wanted to do was cock my hip and say, ‘Oh no, because it looked like you’d massacred a couple of people, chopped them up into small manageable pieces before you had yourself an all you can eat human buffet!’ But instead I went with my instincts and just started freaking out the good old-fashioned way.

“Oh, my Gods…Oh my Gods, no! Oh my…Fuck!”

I screamed, backing away to try and get away from him, but doing so in a way that I thought he might pounce.

“No! Oh Gods, Emmie it’s not what it looks like! Emmie please!”

He started shouting after me, but I ran from the bathroom and back into the living space.

Then I looked over my shoulder to check that he wasn’t following me and the second I took my eyes off where I was going, I barreled straight into someone.

“Dante!”

I shouted, throwing myself into his arms, knowing that he would keep me safe now.

Safe from the monster that I had once thought of as my friend.

Because I had seen demons, hundreds of them over my time, but nothing could have ever prepared me for the horrors that lay hidden inside that room.

That room of death, decay and for Ben, what had looked disgustingly like a…a feast.

I would have liked to have believed that zombies weren’t real and as far as I knew I had never heard of demons that looked and acted like a zombie, so for all I knew Ben could have been the first.

This sent my mind into a panicked overload asking myself everything from, secret government experiments to infected diseased monkeys that were going around biting people!

Was Ben infected? Could he infect others? Was there a cure for such a creature?

“Alright, darlin, it’s okay, you’re safe now.

Just calm that little human heart for me, yeah.”

Dante said in that soothing voice of his.

But then I heard Ben emerging from the bathroom and the second I looked over my shoulder at him, covered in blood and still with a piece of dead flesh hanging from his cheek, I screamed again.

“For fuck sake, shifter, you’re gonna give her a fucking heart attack!”

Dante shouted at him and I frowned before looking up at him, asking myself what the hell was going on here?

Did he just say a shifter? But far worse than that, Dante knew him, knew all along what lived opposite me?! Knew that any minute he could have just unlocked my door and helped himself to a midnight snack…say, on my freakin’ leg!

“No…No, no, no, it can’t be…it…let me go!”

I screamed again as I tried to fight my way from Dante’s arms, because now it was clear that Dante knew not only who Ben was, but more importantly what he was.

“Calm down, fuck, calm down now okay, we won’t hurt you, we just want to…”

“NO! LET ME GO!”

I roared up in his face as his arms tightened around me.

Then he looked down at me with a regret before he said,

“Very well, but remember, Princess, you left me no choice.”

I paused in his hold wondering what he meant by that and now asking myself what choice he spoke of that I had taken from him.

Well, I was soon to find out as he suddenly placed his large hand over my eyes and the second he spoke my entire body froze.

I was suddenly plunged backwards as his hand pushed on my forehead and I heard him quickly whisper,

“Take a breath.”

I did as he said and just before I landed painfully with my back on the floor, I crashed through water.

I felt my whole body floating backwards so slowly that when I opened my eyes I saw a world of nothing all around me.

Then, as I continued to fall with my feet rooted to the spot, it felt as though the whole world was tipping on its axis, meaning that my feet were soon above me.

I was suspended there, totally losing all sense of direction as to what was up and what was down.

I took a careful step forward and the second I did the world flipped and I was suddenly upright again. It was as though I had been forced into a different dimension or was it worse…was this the realm of nightmares?

I had heard it being rumoured that such a place existed but seeing that most people who woke from a Drude’s touch didn’t remember a thing afterwards, then there was never any proof.

Drudes never confirmed or denied such a place so again, it simply became a rumour.

One that I had to wonder how it even started, for surely there was at least one person to have remembered or how would such a place even begin to exist if only in people’s imagination?

So, the question remained, was this the secret to the Drudes’ power and if so, just how many people over the years had they left down here in this abyss to feed from.

Was this where all the people in comas were trapped?

For some reason, I knew that even having these questions was unheard of in a place like this, for the lack of conscious thoughts down here were no doubt the reason no one ever remembered.

But questioning why, how and where was the very root of conscious thought, so what did that make me down here then?

Suddenly a small white light shone and the second I saw it a voice from all around me started to speak in soft and hushed tones.

“Follow the rabbit down the hole, darlin’…deep…deep down she goes…follow her down…”

From the very first moment he started speaking, my world became dominated by that single voice.

As though I needed to obey it at all costs.

I saw the small light in front of me where, surprisingly, a small white rabbit started to glow.

Then it started to hop away, meaning that if I didn’t chase it I would be left standing in the dark.

I looked around for a brief second and saw that it was so black that it could have been a brick wall surrounding me or an eternal abyss of dead space. I just didn’t know but I was too scared to find out, so I took a step towards the rabbit and then another.

That’s when I heard his voice once more, echoing around me.

“Follow her and she will take care of you…deep down there…you see her, she needs you to follow or you will be lost…that’s it…keep going…”

and I did.

I continued to follow her like he said and then once I finished running I saw her sat at the edge of a large hole looking down.

I started to question what she was waiting for when the voice spoke again and told me.

“Go on, she is waiting for you…that’s it…just a little more…”

I frowned thinking that I didn’t want this.

I didn’t like the look of that hole, with its broken and cracked stone wall only two bricks high.

It looked like a broken old well or something.

But more importantly, what exactly was down there?

No, I wanted out of this place! I didn’t want to go down there, not now or not ever.

Why had I been forced here to begin with? I couldn’t remember.

No, I didn’t want to follow the rabbit…I didn’t want to go deep down there with it. I… I…

“Why isn’t it working…she should be gone by now?”

I heard the faint whisper behind me, next to me…all around me as if we were in a vast open room and it wasn’t just echoing off the walls, but it was being repeated over and over, but with hundreds of them all in the same room as me.

“Silence!”

Suddenly, a roar of command snapped the cord on that echo and instead it boomed all around me, taking place of the once hushed tones.

“Follow the rabbit, Amelia…go and follow him…”

Him? But I thought it was a she? I looked the second I heard the mistake being made, for I don’t know how I knew, I just did.

This was proved when the rabbit turned its head to look at me and I saw its eyes.

Burning olive green that started to cloud over to glowing white so bright that it pierced the night and cut two lines straight through the darkness.

“She won’t go.”

The calmer voice of the two said again and this time there was no echo that followed.

“YES.

SHE. WILL.”

The voice suddenly boomed and suddenly this dark chasm started to cave in around me and the rabbit suddenly started to grow bigger and bigger, morphing into something hideous.

It rose up on two back legs after it first grew to the size of a child before then rising up further into that of a man…and then beyond.

Now a great white beast stood in place of the rabbit and it looked as if someone had elongated a bear, with arms that touched the floor and feet ten times that of a man.

It wasn’t looking my way, but I just knew that when it did, I would be utterly terrified.

Long white fur grew and started to twist into clumped spikes that dripped with some kind of dark liquid as if the monster was secreting it from its skin.

Long yellow talons grew and curled round in on themselves.

Then, as a heavy demonic paw landed by the hole, the deadly claws left deep gouges on the small stone wall that surrounded the hole, telling me how easily those same claws could tear through a person’s flesh.

Oh yes, now I was truly terrified.

“No…please…please…bring back that rabbit…I will go with her…not with him…anything but him,”

I said in a terrified whisper and the second I did, the creature threw back its head and let loose a mighty demonic howl, showing me the half face of a monster and the half face of a man?

I questioned this and couldn’t help but gasp into my hand as the face was covered in hair that was parted in the middle.

The top part was pulled back taut and came to two points at the top of his head which I now realised were wrapped around a pair of antlers.

Then the bottom half was pulled down by his chin making it look like the creature had a long beard.

A pair of ears like you would see on an elf were pulled back with the tips elongated and curled enough to reach the top of its head.

But even though the face of the creature wasn’t human, it also had enough distinguishable features for me to be able to see now that the beast in front of me was also a man.

It was…

Dante.

Then suddenly, after granting me a swift look, his white eyes started to fade back into olive green and he then started to retract back in on himself.

He threw his head back and roared once as if in pain before he bent over double, curling inward and rocking forward before he started to get smaller and smaller until soon the small rabbit was back in his place.

Had I really just seen the true image of a Drude?

They were extremely secretive by nature, which is most likely why no one had ever seen one before or seen one and remembered, which begged the question…would I?

“Now, keep your promise…deep, deep further down she goes…your time to follow is now…one chance…or he will take you!”

I swallowed hard and knew that now it was as he said, I had no choice.

I knew what this was.

This was the difference between a nightmare and a good dream and here Dante, the royal Drude was God.

So, I looked back at the darkness and suddenly as if all I needed was a push I was shown the very thing I had been running from in the first place.

I screamed just as Ben’s blood covered hand reached out for me.

That dead man’s flesh still hanging off him as if he was shedding his skin and the old had to first decay before it fell.

But then it was his face, his demonic face, that had been feasting at the centre of a massacre.

Human lambs brought to the slaughter for a flesh-eating demon to feed.

That was what I had seen the moment I opened that bathroom door. A room full of blood as limbs had been torn from torso, as arteries slashed open and sprayed outwards like the paint had on the floor from his cans. This was his real art work.

The crimson art of death and carnage.

A creation I quickly started to run from.

So, I ran and jumped down into the hole, looking back up only to see that the rabbit hadn’t followed like he said it would.

No, now instead it simply stared at me, with its little white face growing smaller and smaller the further I fell.

“Finally, she falls.”

I heard the voice speak behind me as Ben spoke like a zombie with the memory of his own voice.

“That’s it…run, little darlin,’ down you fall…”

“…Fall deep down and finally sleep.”

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