Rabid Deconstruction

Every time I wake up, somebody dies.

But it’s never me.

Never me.

The last time, this morning — I call the thirty or so instances ‘mornings,’ but my sleep has been anything but regular. The man told me to go. So I went. I didn’t want to. Why did I want to stay?

I shuffled the few feet to the stairwell, which was toward the middle of the lot to the left. I stood at the exit to the stairs and fumbled with the door. The rusted metal looked as though it had a tendency to stick.

I stood and listened. Ripping. Tearing. Squelching. The unmistakeable sour smell of recent evisceration. Of slaughter.

And then I looked.

I had a suspicion, before this day. After a month of waking up someplace different… I mean, if you woke up in random places, wouldn’t you start to think that maybe it was for a reason? But, anyway, I looked.

A squatting figure in a dirty grey sweatshirt was bent over a mass of blood and flesh with legs. Tearing, guttural exclamations of gluttonous consumption. emitted from the tableau. With the hood up, its hands ripped out chunks from the body and shoved them into its face, as if it were dining on its hands.

Then it stopped, turning its head with a grunt. We both remained still.

“Sorry, bye,” I said as I opened the door with a squeal. I hurried down the stairs. The heavy door, however, did not slam shut. Everything in my body, told me to keep moving. I leapt down the stairs.

The silence was broken by a low guttural growl, then the metal door at the top of the stairs slammed upon into the concrete wall, resonating through the stairwell. A shadow filled the stairwell and a low, steady growl filled my ears. I was already two flights below. I looked up between the railings and, as if playing with me, the figure’s face popped over the side of the railing.

It’s black face was cut open in a wide grimace of jagged points that had to be teeth. As I flew down the stairs, I felt the fear and anger at being hunted by something that was amused by the chase.

I finally made it to the ground floor. The thing had gotten close twice. One of the times, I could smell it. Rotted meat and stale, old earth and something else. The other time it had vaulted down, letting its eagerness, its hunger get the best of it. I misjudged the number of stairs and stumbled. The thing had hit the wall and fell right behind me. I high-stepped, expecting the thing to reach out with one of its claws to trip me up, and slid down the rail on the next flight of stairs. I stumbled down the last set and barreled my way through the door to the ground floor.

I looked and saw LL1 and a sign that pointed me back up the stairs down which I had just vaulted to L1-Ground floor. Hearing a growl echo behind me, I ran across the dimly lit ramp, up toward the Ground level.

The thing boomed through the push levered door, slamming it into the wall with another boom.

It laughed. It actually laughed at me. The last look I got running up the ramp, out of the corner of my eye, was of a hooded figure loping low to the ground I could hear its heaving breaths of anticipation, huffing and grunting like a bull.

I barely saw the light of the street through the metered exit. Lights that seemed too bright shining over the booth and arm leading outside. Not sure what would have been worse. The claw.

oh god, it did have claws dug into my calf. I sprawled forward, gravel and pavement biting in the palms of my hands.

The smell of rotted meat and stale earth, was stronger, mixed with the sharp smell of endorphins seeping through its oily, dirty pores. I flailed across the pavement, trying to crawl the last few feet up the ramp. The oil and gravel dug into the palms of my hands.

I wailed and cried, but there was no sound.

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