Thirteen #3
He stares at me, seeing the bloody knife in my hands.
I watch as Lewis’s eyes widen with understanding of what’s going on.
Before I can leap to my feet and contain the situation, he’s off to find a door and his freedom.
The other men I had in here did the same, but the drugs from the syringe subdued them. All twelve of them.
My third and I believe seventh kill, tried to escape. One ran into a wall, and I was on him before he got any further. The other found the door but was unable to open it before I got to him. Lewis, on the other hand, is headed for the closet door.
He grabs it and I smile. When the door opens, a miasma of rotted stench fills the air, and he screams, as bloody bodies, stacked neatly inside, fall onto him.
Lewis jumps and lands on his back, flailing and trying to push the death away.
I pay no attention and straddle the man, plunging my knife in the middle of his chest first. Pulling it free isn’t easy, as I hit the bone and cartilage of his sternum.
Lewis struggles to break free, gasping and wheezing as he does, I realize suddenly, it’s the floor beneath him that has my death instrument not bone.
Lewis’s arms swing wildly, and he knocks me from him for a second.
Sighing, I see this will be harder than I thought.
I suppose the last one should be. He sits up, pulling the knife free of the floor.
It’s still firmly inside of him. With a ferocity I didn’t know I had, I jump on Lewis, grabbing the knife and pulling it free.
A great spout of blood splashes me in the face and I’m rejuvenated.
Now the time is right. Both hands of the clock are pointed skyward, the midnight hour is upon us.
With a quick swipe, I take the knife across Lewis’s throat, opening it like a bag full of fluid.
He reaches for his throat, gurgling and spitting, then falls to his knees.
For a second he wobbles there, staring at me, his eyes an unbelieving spectacle of what just happened to him.
Spitting blood, he falls forward on his face, then lies still.
The blood flows onto the floor, but just like all the other times, soaking it up like a sponge.
The room becomes warmer and all I see is red, filling my vision.
The heat rises but instead of my body temperature rising with it, I’m wracked with tremors of cold like some strange fever has entered my body.
The clock is spinning out of control as the hands are no longer on the twelve but all over the place. It sparks and sends fireballs through the air like a fireworks display. The clock is a flurry of red and black, as the hands melt into a sea of crimson.
There is no order for the conglomeration, only chaos on a scale I’ve never seen.
Strangely, it soothes my mind and helps me prepare for what I hope is the next step in my transformation.
Voices are calling from the walls, telling me to look at the clock.
Staring up at the face of the timepiece, my eyes widen at what I see.
The entire face of the clock, the number one through twelve have gloriously changed to thirteen.
This is my moment, and I’m thrilled about what I’m going to receive. Tendrils of bloody ropes shoot from the wall, reaching for me, grabbing my wrists and ankles. One is attached to my neck. They push me back, propping my arms and legs against the adjacent wall, like I’m being crucified.
Something stirs inside me. It’s happening, the transformation I know will take place.
Intense pain and discomfort wrack my body.
In horror I see my belly rising, bloating out before me, and I feel a child squirming inside.
I think it may be larger than any human baby.
The thing inside me doesn’t stop but keeps growing as I hear the voices in my ear.
This is the body broken for you, take and eat of it.
“No!” I cry out “This isn’t right. What are you doing to me?”
Another pain hits me, and I want to bend over, but I’m bound too tightly to do so, and instead I must endure this unbearable burden. My stomach splits open, and blood gushes onto the floor, mixed with clear amniotic fluid.
A head with a long neck juts forward, and in my horror, a reptilian thing emerges. It screeches like a baby bird, then gets louder, as not one head but several appear, ripping my body. I cry in misery, doubling over from the pain.
The floor beneath me is covered in blood and I fall into it wondering how it's possible I’m still alive.
When I raise my head, I’m confronted with a dragon covering the entire room.
It has multiple heads and snaps in the air at me.
The creature turns and smashes through the window, taking a chunk of the wall with it.
Dragging my broken body along the pile of debris on the floor, the agony and pain are enough to make me nauseous.
I pull myself to the edge of the window and look outside.
The reptile flies through the night sky, up toward the heavens.
Then, I watch my creation dart and breathe fire on the unsuspecting below.
I sigh with the contemplation of a new mother, as I slowly bleed out.
The End