Tag: Beta Read

The first thing Lizzie felt when she woke up was an immense pain in her temple and that sense of being pulled out of some other world. The one she was now in still was rich in haze from the fog of slumber and remnants were still fresh in her thoughts from the one she left behind.

     Had it been real? Had any of that just happened? It had been so real to her. It felt more like memories than dream fragments, but if that was the case why had she been Jessica. She had known her thoughts, her past, things that Jessica had never told her about herself. About her friend. She couldn’t have made all that up, could she? She was unsure, but it unsettled her, because if it was real, then her friend was dead.

     The rock formed in her stomach. She had wanted to warn her earlier. She had tried to warn Jessica that something was coming after her. She had known they were next, but maybe it was because of that premonition that she had dreamed about it.

     The dream had been so real. Too real. She still felt the bone deep cold inside her, and as she opened her eyes and exhaled a puff of mist formed from her lips. Lips that had just hours before been kissed by Roland. How could she have slept with him after everything that has happened between them. She could never have been that stupid, but she had.

     The heart wants what the heart wants.

      “But honey, that hadn’t been your heart talking, that had been something else. That was you pussy talking and it was hungry for the ‘D’.” A voice said to her in her head. She recognized it as a voice from long ago, though who it belonged to, she couldn’t recall. It was a voice from out of time floating in from some forgotten past.

     As she tried to focus on it, more of the dream faded away yet the cold remained. It was very cold, too cold even. A shiver ran through her and that shouldn’t be right. She shouldn’t be shivering from a dream, should she?

     Something tapped into her back, and she remembered she was still in the hotel room. He was there too, asleep behind her in the bed.

     How could she have been so stupid?

     She wanted desperately to get out of there. She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but the little of it she had was enough to clear her mind. God! What had she been thinking?

     Didn’t matter. The deed was done and tomorrow he would wake up and remind her of it, maybe even try for a repeat as if everything was forgotten and forgiven. Men.

     She wished she had driven herself. Then she could sneak out into the night and disappear, letting the miles between them build until maybe this would become another ungodly nightmare.

     First, she needed to call Jessica, make sure she was okay. It was the middle of the night, the outside light filtering through the hotel’s curtains confirmed that suspicion, and she would probably wake her friend.

     I just need to make sure she’s okay.

     But you know she’s not.

     I don’t know that, just the dream had been so real.

     The conversation played out in her mind, and she continued to lie there in indecision. She should wake up Roland and tell him about it. He would calm her down, tell her she was being silly, but hey, here’s my cell phone if you want to call her. He’d do all those things, as he was a good guy who cared for her. So why did he also have to be such a lying, cheating bastard?

     Last night she had believed all his bullshit. Why couldn’t she believe him now? Because she had come to her senses, that’s why. What had she been thinking?

     She could feel him shift in the bed behind her and let out a soft moan.

     He probably sensed that she was awake and was waking up too. He had always been good about waking up with her whenever she couldn’t sleep. He was usually a heavy sleeper, but the moment she had a bad dream, he was up and had her in his arms. When her parents died, he had slept over a lot, and there were many of these nights when she would find herself crying on his chest.

     She didn’t want him knowing she was awake. Damn. Maybe if she was still and stayed on her side, he wouldn’t know, but she wanted to call Jess. Damn. What if she fell back to sleep waiting for him to fall back to sleep? Damn, damn, damn.

     She pulled the blankets tighter around her. It was so cold in the room. They must had forgotten to turn on the heat when they had come in. Considering how they had been with each other, she wasn’t surprised. They had been generating their own heat.

     Now the room was an ice box. She could use the temperature of the room as a refrigerator, their bottled water would be nicely chilled for drinking where it sat on the little table across the room. The temp must of dropped down lower than forecasted if the room was this cold. She hadn’t brought enough clothes.

     Roland moaned louder. Then he moaned even louder. This wasn’t him waking up.

     Then he screamed and she turned over to see that she had gone from dreaming one nightmare to be living in another.

     “tik-a-too, tik-a-ted, there’s a dead man in your bed.” The hideous voice cackled. She could see the dark shape that was sitting on Roland. It was hovering over him but watching her and smiling at her. Even in the dimly lit room, and his obscured form, she saw the bright whites of a chilling smile as he laughed at her. He was so close. Too close, she couldn’t do anything, but get away. Immediately she jumped out of the bed and twisted to never take her eyes on him. She didn’t stop backing away until she hit the wall, then she pressed herself against it as hard as she could. She would have melted into it if she could find away.

     Run. She should just run away, get herself out of there and make her escape, but it had Roland. It had turned away from her, ignoring her because for now it had what it wanted.

     Roland. She looked at him, and she could see that the shadow thing had one of its hands deep into Roland’s chest. It hadn’t broken the skin, it was like the shadow man was only part way into this world and because of that, his hand didn’t have any substance. He was was in Roland’s chest, but it had gone through the skin, not breaking it.

     That wasn’t true, as Lizzie watched Roland shake violently, the shadow man laughing as he squeezed inside. The shadow was killing him. It was suffocating him from the inside or squeezing his heart. She didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. This was how it really enjoyed taking lives.

     She wasn’t sure how she knew, but as soon as the thought occurred to her, she was certain she was right. It liked death and took it in any way that it could. When Sarah had been killed, it had no way of killing her directly. Same way with Josh and Elisabeth, it couldn’t touch them directly. She didn’t know why, and there was much of it that didn’t make sense. There must be some set of rules this shadow had to play by, and killing directly was a no-no. It used surrogates and manipulation to take most the lives, so it was less accustomed to the joy of taking life within its own dark grasp.

     So, what had changed the rules? Why was it there now, killing Roland? Was it getting stronger? She vaguely recalled something Josh and Sarah had been arguing about. There had been many things, but something Sarah had wanted Lizzie to notice.

     There had been the picture. Last night, oh God had it really just been last night that Josh had appeared to them? It had and this had easily become one of the longest days in human history or at least she’d ever had because it seemed like so much shit just kept rolling her way.

     But the picture. It fell. The two fighting had been able to move it and the picture fell and then it broke. How had she not noticed that before?

     She thought back to the hospital room and how Sarah by herself hadn’t been able to move anything no matter how hard she tried. Oh, and then there was the touching each other. They had both made each other sick trying to do it, but at the coffee shop Sarah had no issues with choking her.

     You still don’t know if Sarah was even there. It hadn’t been like before. That could have been just you. You know your losing your mind, right?

     She wished she could silence her own thoughts, especially with some of the newer thought voices that kept giving her their opinions.

     It had been Sarah and she had been choking her. They were getting stronger. He was getting stronger. She was feeding it somehow.

     It was all the people around her that was doing it. They kept dying. It fed off the death. It wanted her friends to die, her loved ones. It was killing them, all of them, and was going to keep doing it until she stopped it.

     If she could stop it. Her uncle hadn’t been able to.

     Her uncle hadn’t been able too. How did she know he had fought it? Because it all made sense. He had hidden himself back in the woods, away from everyone, cutting himself off from the outside world because anyone he cared about was killed.

     She couldn’t think about it right now, but it all was rushing at her. This thing had killed her parents. It killed her aunt. It had been after all of them and when her uncle couldn’t handle it anymore, he had killed himself and now it was killing everyone she loved.

     Tears rolled down her cheek, but she paid them no attention. Instead, she looked around the room for something, anything she could use. She heard Roland’s wheezing breath, and knew she had to be quick.

     But why even try. Her uncle had years to fight this thing and it had never done any good. How are you going to stop it?

     She didn’t know and the thought voice was becoming increasingly annoying. She wished it would just shut up. Shut up and let her think, dammit!

     In the dim light she could see Roland, his face was turning grey, dark lines stretching along his cheeks and bulging from around his eyes. She feared those were his veins. His blood was being replaced by the shadows darkness and now his veins were visible through his skin by their black hue.

     She wasn’t sure what possessed her to throw it, but she had unplugged the coffee maker by ripping it from the desk. The cable struck her, and she grabbed it, quickly wrapping it around the little gadget and them flung it across the room. She didn’t wait to see the thing react as she grabbed more from the desk. She used the tray the coffee maker had been on, a local phone book, and a folder that must have contained local delivery options or the TV guide directory. It didn’t matter because if she could lift it, she had thrown it. She didn’t stop until she tried to lift the large lamp at the end of the desk only to find that it was mounted in place. She was pulling at it, trying to shake it back and forth, wrestling it free when she heard the laugh coming from behind her.

     She couldn’t get the lamp free, and she had nothing else to throw. Slumping her shoulders, she turned to look back to the bed wrestling with another idea, one that was crazy and not like her at all…

     She stopped thinking when she saw the thing was looking at her. Its eyes burned red with some internal flame, and they burned into her. Its smile was wide, and somehow the light that flickered from its eyes never touched his teeth, as they were white to the point that they seemed to glow and they were sharp, each tooth ending in a narrow point.

     “Hello.” It said, speaking to her for the first time without that sing-song cadence. Now it was fixated on her, and she was hypnotized as the unseen lips moved, only noticeable for how they blocked the glow of its teeth when it spoke.

     “Get away from him,” she said. She could hear the tears in her voice but was surprised at the anger. Where had that come from? She wasn’t sure but as she stood there, clenching and unclenching her fists, remembering what this thing has taken from her, her friends that it has killed. She knew the anger, and she embraced it. She wanted to be done with allowing this creature to come into her life and steal everywhere cared for from her.

     “Why should I? What is he to you? A lover? A friend? You care about him that much?” The voice grated on her nerves. It was rough, a gravely voice that echoed in her ears as though many voices tried to speak as one.

     Lizzie took a deep breath and let it out through her mouth. Her fists unclenched and she shook out her hands before she clenched them again. She could feel her nails digging in, the uneven edges from how she chewed at them threatening to break her skin.

     “He’s nobody to me.” She tried to sound convincing. Yesterday she wasn’t sure if she would even have stopped the shadow thing from taking Roland, though she liked to think that deep down she was a good person. Even a good person wouldn’t let a lying, cheating son-of-a-bitch to die when she could stop it.

     Today, she found that she still did care about him. Her feelings were still there and that is why she had hated him so much. Because under all that anger, she did love him.

     She couldn’t tell this thing that. It had some kind of connection to her. It killed those close to her. So she had to find that anger and hate she had for Roland if she was ever going to save him.

     She had to find a way to kill the shadow man.

     It had been watching her as she stood there and the longer, she didn’t say anything more, a sound grew from him. It wasn’t until it developed into a sound, she recognized that she realized it was laughing at her.

     “You sleep with him. He fucks you, and you say he is nobody to you.” And as it said that Roland writhed in agony below it.

     “Fuck you,” the anger now boiling up inside her. She had noticed something. She had just caught the slight glint of metal on the floor and had taken a moment to realize just what it was. The keys to the car had fallen to the floor, probably having dropped out of Roland’s pockets as she had pulled his pants off of him.

     “Those you wish about and those you love

     From the wings of a morning dove

     All those in which you cherish

     Will slowly die in agony and perish

     They will be mine these dreary few

     And once they are gone, I will come for you.”

     She didn’t want to hear any more of his creepy words. Each once made her skin tingle and her back tense. She tuned him out the best she could as she made her plan. It wasn’t a good one, and she knew it wouldn’t work, but it was her doing some thing. She was so tired of not doing anything. She had to try something to stop him.

     She rushed forward, grabbing the keys as she moved. Her arm rose high, she had her sites set, aimed for where she wanted to strike while fumbling in her hand to have one key out between her fingers. She was unsure of herself, having never been a fighter, but did all she could to put everything she had when she brought her hand down.

     It struck just below the eyes. Or it would have, had the shadow man been anything more than shadow. Her hand slipped through him, and then she was slipping through him, her momentum carrying her into him and landing on top of Roland.

     This had been a mistake. She had realized it the moment she didn’t make contact, but as she was flung over the bed, she realized just how much of a mistake it had been.

     Her skin had turned to near ice as he was just so cold. She couldn’t breathe. Her breath was frozen in her lungs. All of her was frozen. She was trapped and even worse, she was in his essence and there she could see… something.

     She didn’t know what it was. Around her there was so much darkness. It was an ether. She knew she wasn’t on earth. It was an ‘other’ place, one where there was no light to cast the shadows. Shadows were not made, they were things, and hid other things.

     She could feel that hate that emanated from that place, from all the creatures that surrounded her there. She couldn’t see them, only feel them, sensing that they were reaching out for her. They wanted her, to take her, torture her how they have been tortured. She was a creature of the light and they hated her for it.

     How did she know that?

     Because she was inside of him. He was from this place, and he felt that way towards her. But that didn’t make sense. If he hated her, all of them so much, then why not just kill her. Why kill her friends?

     Because the shadow man-thing didn’t hate her, it hated man. She was a person, one who lived in night and day. The shadow-man wanted all light to be perished from the world.

     She was the lock that kept them at bay. She didn’t know how that worked.

     Now she was there in the dark place. The things were moving around her. They had noticed her. She could feel them moving towards her. A wave of fear ran through her, but it wasn’t her fear. The shadow man was afraid of these things. It was afraid… of them. It didn’t want it to get her.

     She was not sure what to make of that and she didn’t have the time to find out as she found herself ripped out of him, back in her own world and being hurled across the hotel room. She had the briefest of sensations of no control, the weightlessness as she flew, and then the pain. She hit the wall, and it forced the air out of her lungs. She fell to the floor, and everything hurt. Her insides felt like they had been squished, her arms and legs were sore. She wasn’t sure if she broke anything. It felt like if she hadn’t then she had definitely sprained something, everything.

     Across the room, cutting through the cold and dark was a blood curdling scream that was quickly cut short.

     The room grew deathly still. The only thing Lizzie heard was the repetitive sound of her breathing. Even the hum from the electronics in the room was silent. The darkness felt out of time. She was all alone. She feared what she would find when she stood and looked on the bed.

     She pulled herself up. Each movement took a concerted effort as she fought against the pain.

     When she stood, she turned and saw Roland on the bed, the shadow man was gone. Roland wasn’t breathing. His skin was ash grey, and she knew he wasn’t coming back. She was alone in the room with her dead ex-boyfriend. A man she had made many public threats against his life and bodily harm.

     She was quick putting on her clothes, finding her phone and wallet before grabbing the car keys and getting out of there.

     Outside, the world was dark, the streetlights having burned out in the last half hour. She worked her way through the void as best she could and got into Roland’s car. She felt the tinge of guilt as she drove away. She knew she should call the police. There would be plenty of questions and they would wonder why she just left. She wasn’t sure if she had any answers for them.

     She was empty. Empty of answers, empty of emotions, empty of everything. She was a shell, and even the tears weren’t coming.

     She made her way to the interstate. Within a half hour she was speeding down the road, on her way unsure of where she was going.

End of Part 1

     The wind had turned cold. There had been a chill earlier, but it hadn’t bothered her so when she left, she hadn’t grabbed her jacket from the counter. It wasn’t winter yet, and the nights had been mild. She was a big girl, she’d grown up there and had lived there all her life, she could handle a little October chill.

     And it hadn’t been that cold when she left. Come on Jess, you’re tougher than this, she thought as she tripped over another root. She’d been walking through the woods for a while now, stumbling through the dark forest trying to find her damned boyfriend. Dennis had gone out there earlier and at this point in her search for him she was sure she was going to kill him if she did find him.

     Damn! Another root she hadn’t seen, and nearly tripped over. She caught herself, she always had been graced with amazing balance but after the years of boxing and martial arts training, her balance only improved. Now she was not only a well toned fighting machine that people often overlooked due to her smaller stature, but she was also as graceful as a butterfly on a spring morning. Dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

     She scanned around her with her flashlight. She was still on the path Dennis had taken. He had told her it was the path to the lake though she thought they were much closer to the lake than this. She’d been walking for twenty minutes and still no trace of it.

     Had he lied to her? If so, his ass was grass when she got her hands on him.

     She had just left hung out with Lizzie earlier when Dennis had called and said he had made arrangements for them to go to his dad’s cabin for the weekend. They’d never been up there, and Lizzie had never heard of his dad owning a cabin, which she had thought was strange for how long they’ve been together. She would have thought he’d have said something in all that time. He knew how much she loved rustic cabins. They brought back some of her best memories with her grandpa and fishing trips as a little girl.

     He knew that. She had told him stories about it.

     Then when he picked her up, he had explained that his dad had just bought the cabin. He hadn’t discussed it with any of them, even his mom. So now both his parents were fighting, the big D word, divorce, has been thrown around a few times though Jessica couldn’t imagine it coming to that. Those two were such an amazing couple who normally did everything together.

     This trip had been as much as a romantic getaway for them as it was an escape from his parents fighting. Though Jessica didn’t know how much his dad paid for it, she thought that whenever his mom did come to give it a chance, she would like it.

     The cabin was clean, much cleaner than she expected after hearing the story of his dad buying it on a whim. She had assumed his dad had gotten it especially cheap which led her to believe it would have been a small shack covered in dust and filled with animal bones. She had expected to walk into a horror film, much like Lizzie had, and was surprised when she had found a well cleaned, nicely furnished rustic cabin home out in the woods.

     Dennis had immediately put their bags in the upper bedroom and then had gone outside to start up the wood stove. Okay, maybe it was a charcoal grill… she hadn’t looked it over too closely but knew he had to work to get the fire started and once it warmed up, he had thrown on steaks he had brought with him.

     He had done it up, that was sure. He had cooked steaks on the grill, lit the fireplace in the main room of the cabin. Then somehow, he had placed and lit half a dozen candles throughout so that when he brought in dinner, they had cozy firelight, that romantic flicker washing over them as they ate.

     If there wasn’t the air hanging over them about his parents fighting, she would have thought he was going to propose to her. He had already asked her to marry him once before, but that had been a shamefully bad attempt and had gone terribly. She knew he felt bad about that and wondered if he was going to do it again now that he had gone all out and created this wonderful setting.

     She felt a tingle inside her. No, that tingle was on her arm. She felt something something dancing along the skin, and found herself back in the woods, ripped out of her memory from earlier to look at her arm, shaking it and quickly stepping away from where she had been.

     She flashed the flashlight in that direction and couldn’t see anything and she still felt that tingling. She looked, it was getting closer to her body, moving up her arm. She moved the light beam to her arm and…

     There was nothing there. She ran her hand along her fingers along her arm, accidentally flashing to light into her own eyes, but couldn’t feel anything where she had felt the tingle. There was nothing there.

     Damn she was really starting to hate the woods. What had ever allowed her to think she would like it out there.

     This wasn’t anything like when she had gone camping with her parents as a kid. Those places had woods, but it was like a controlled wooded area. Small patches of trees easy to walk through and you never got the sense that you were getting lost. No matter which way she walked, she would have found a campsite within ten to fifteen minutes. Now, she had no clue which way she was going. She wasn’t where she had been coming from. Both ways looked the same. It was all the same and it was so dark out there.

     On their drive up she had marveled at how beautiful the moon had been. It had been large in the sky and so bright she was sure that if Dennis had turned off his lights, they’d be able to find their way in that dark brightness.

     Yeah, well, where was that moon now because she couldn’t see a thing. The trees reached so high and all of them joined together to blot out any chance of her seeing the sky above her.

     She was lost. She should call out, yell, and maybe Dennis could hear her. She didn’t want him to know she was freaking out, but she was out there looking for him, why not call out his name?

     “Dennis!” She yelled, not quite at the top of her lungs, not yet, but she still had a booming voice and in the silence of the woods around her, it was loud to her own ears. “Dennis!”

     Why had he even left the cabin? He had set the scene, it was perfect. She thought he was going to come around the table and get down on one knee. They had been sharing a moment, just looking deeply into on another’s eyes.

     Then he had stood up, said he needed to take a walk down to the lake and that he’d be right back and that was it. A half hour later and he still hadn’t returned. It had gotten dark, and he had left without a flashlight. Jessica didn’t know what to do, afraid that if she left to look for him, he would return to find her missing.

     She had started looking through drawers in the kitchen not even realizing she was doing it. She just needed to do something while she waited. It was when she found the flashlight that it occurred to her that she had been searching for it.

     What was up with him? This wasn’t like him, and it made those knots forming in her stomach twist to think about what it meant. What if he hadn’t brought her up there to propose again? What if he brought her up there to break it off? Could she have done something wrong? Something that might have upset him? She couldn’t think of anything. Nothing. They had been happy, or so she thought.

     But he had walked away from her. No real explanation, he just got up and left.

     What the hell!? The path ended abruptly to thorn bushes. She hadn’t been paying attention and walked right into them, and they were tearing into her flesh. As she pulled herself back, she could see the scrapes on her hands as well as something else. There was something white and stringy. It stretched out from the bushes and was all over her arms, clinging to her sweater and hands.

     It took her far longer than it should have to recognize the strands of the spider web. It probably had something to do with all the shifting black things that had kept her from fully comprehending what she had stepped into.

     “Oh God, what the fuck.” She exclaimed as she took another step back, stumbling as she did. Damn another root, they’re frickin’ everywhere, she thought as she bit back another curse.

     She lifted her foot higher and took another step backwards, this time slow so as to not put all her weight when she wasn’t sure of the ground. Her arms still had so much of the white crap, and she kept shaking them, trying to get it off her. Those couldn’t be spiders, she had to keep telling herself that, but she could feel the tickling sensation moving across her arms. Then she felt them getting under her shirt. They were getting everywhere.

     Her foot came down on something raised but it was also soft. She shifted her balance; glad she had kept her calm and had moved slowly. It was easy as she felt the dancing devils getting everywhere.

     She turned as she moved and shined the flashlight down; glad she hadn’t dropped it.

     Dennis was on the ground. A shape just behind it looked like a person hovering over him. If Jessica had continued back, she would have fallen over the person. The person was looking down, close to Dennis as though she was kissing on his chest and neck. She was moving viciously, and it almost looked like they were making out if it wasn’t for how still Dennis was with his eyes open and lifeless.

     Then the face looked up at her, blood dripping from her mouth and Jessica recognized her though it wasn’t easy. The woman’s face was mangled, her skull looking like it had been crushed, one eye having exploded out of its socket and had dripped, now dried on her cheek. Her teeth were white beneath the blood splatter and caught in a haunting smile as she spoke.

     “Hey Jess, missed me?” Sarah said, her voice on the verge of a cackling laugh as she spoke.

     “Sarah..” The name escaped her own lips, though Jessica didn’t know this alien weak sound.

     In the woods behind Sarah, others emerged, all mangled, blood dripping from wounds. None of these people she recognized, and she found herself looking back at what was her former friend as she stood up from where she had been devouring Jess’s fiancé.

     Jessica wanted to back away and run. She could feel the tingle all over her body, it was electricity in the air and sent sparks to every part of her telling her to run. The dead were there for her, and she needed to escape.

     Spiders. That was what made herself tingle. Come one Jess, they’re covering your body, you were trying to shake them off when you stumbled upon the dead.

     She shown the light back to the bushes behind her, but they were gone.  Behind her was a wide-open clearing, inside of which stood the shadow of a man. She flashed the light to where she saw the shadow, but the light went through him. She had to blink to wonder if she actually saw it, but then a twig snapped, and it brought her spinning back to face the oncoming horror.

     Jess, if you want to run, now you can. You saw where the path went now. Through the clearing the path went on. You can get out of here, escape.

     She looked down at her fiancé, the mangled mess of his neck was exposed, his trachea stretched out to the side. She could see now that his eyes were gone, their sockets rough from where someone must have fought to scoop them out.

     They had done this. Sarah had done this. Sarah.

     Inside her, the flame burned and she knew she wasn’t going to run. She knew it from the moment she had seen Dennis on the ground. She wasn’t a runner. She was a fighter.

     As Sarah came into range, Jessica took a brief step back and then launched forward, using her full weight and all her training to bring the blow perfect to slam into her jaw. It connected and with a satisfying crunch, she thought it t drove Sarah’s face back. Then she realized to late that her fist had broken through Sarah’s jaw, sinking through the brittle bone into her face. It through Jessica’s balance off. She had made a beginner’s error for any fight. She had over committed her weight and with that mistake, she found herself falling forward.

     Within a heart beat she could feel hands on her. Sarah twisted around, and as Jessica fell, she could feel the woman falling with her. Jessica fought to soften her landing, but she could feel Sarah’s hands as they pulled at her. She was trapped, all of them were around her and she knew it, soon they would all be tearing into her.

     She briefly wondered how Sarah would be munching on her with her mouth now a crunched, smashed in pulp of bone and dead flesh. As she hit ground, Jess twisted herself and realized her hand was still in Sarah’s face. The resistance of having her hand stuck prevented her from being able to turn with the fall, allowing the blunt force of the drop slam into her shoulder. The air left her. She winced in pain no matter how hard she tried to push it away and stay focused on getting out of there.

     She rolled naturally from the fall, but her hand held fast. She could feel something soft and wet suctioning on it, like a muscle around her hand was contracting. She tried to pull away but the feeling intensified, nearly crushing her fingers together.

     Jess turned to look, not being able to see to well and not sure where she had dropped the flashlight. What she saw even in the dark light was the shape, what was left of Sarah’s face, around Jessica’s hand. What had been her mouth, had gone inward when she had been hit but was was left of it was now around Jessica’s hand and it was like she was trying to maw on it, using the fractured pieces of her jaw to bite down with teeth that were no longer there.

     “Ugh,” escaped her and she pulled harder on her hand. As she did, she was the spiders that had been crawling on her moving along her arm and up her legs. They danced in her hair and along her skin. She wanted to brush them away, but already Sarah was reaching out, frantically clawing at her, pulling at her clothes.

     Then there the other dead people. They had surrounded her and now we’re dropping down to their knees reaching out their own hands at her. She didn’t know when, but she had somehow become a victim in some zombie film as the dead surrounded her, grunted and reached to tear at her flesh. When had zombies become real? Had she missed the email on that one?

     “Get the fuck off me you mother fucking fuckers!” She wasn’t just talking about the spiders or zombie things; she was talking about all of it. She kicked out and thrashed, trying to keep any of them from getting a good grip on her. When she thought she had worked herself into having room to move, she quickly reached down to push herself up.

     Jess was hoping to check the closest zombie and get it out of her way so she could run back to the cabin. She was stopped when she reached down and felt her hand slip in a puddle of something wet and sticky under her.

     Blood.

     Dennis’s Blood

     Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

     She didn’t have time to think about it, just work with it. Maybe it was why these things were having a hard time grabbing hold of her. Now that she realized just how much of it had spread on the ground around her, she noticed how much she was covered in it.

     They had also fallen in it. His blood was what keeping her alive as their hands were just as slick as hers. Just she was a fighter and used to reacting quickly, using her weight and her body as a weapon. Even in the dark she had balance and her inner perception. As she moved, she looked inside to find that center and pushed in to find that calm that came to her when the outer rage burned.

     She found her balance, twisted, and turned spinning as she stood so they couldn’t grab her and then she was up standing. There was a large man on his knees in front of her. She didn’t even slow her momentum as she shifted her weight, accounting for the slippery ground and brought her knee up to connect with his face. It found its home and his head rocked back and the force of the blow propelled him out of her way.

     Then she was running and found herself past him. She was on the path, she knew it was the right one and if she continued to run, she would find herself back at the cabin, safe and able to call for help. All she had to do was keep running. The flashlight was gone, but the moon had re-emerged. The path was lit in the moonlight bright enough for her to see and she knew if she went back, she wouldn’t trip on a single root.

     Yet she stopped in the path and turned back around to face the dead.

     Jessica was not a runner. She hadn’t run since she was a child and had runaway that first time. That time when he had hurt her mom. She ran then, and her mom had been put into the hospital. Jessica had ran, and ran, and ran until she found a place to run too.

     She had only been a teenager when she had found the gym, the small one that was almost hidden in its neighborhood. It was an old building and looked like the gym had been there for a long time though Jessica hadn’t remembered ever seeing it before.

     She had stepped into the building crying, unsure of why she was going in. She hadn’t ever been in any gym other than the one at her school and that was for P.E. and cheerleading practice.

     Inside it wreaked of sweat, old and new, and while the building seemed abandoned on the outside, inside was a bustle of activity. Upon walking in the door, she was attacked by the noise of clattering weights as they crashed down, and the loud thump from the back of the room as people dropped down barbells. To her left was a line of treadmills currently being used by a couple of old women as they walked, focused on some far destination as though they would ever get there.

     She didn’t know what to do, she hadn’t known why she had gone in there. She just stood there in the doorway unsure of what to do. She just kept watching in her mind as her dad struck her mom, throwing her against the wall.

     “Can I help you?”

     She blinked herself out of her trance and turned to see an older man stand behind the counter. He wasn’t old, old, but she’d guess he was easily over 50. A woman who came in behind her and walked past, tossed down a card on the counter as she addressed the man as “Stone.”

     “Hey Rachel,” Stone said to the passerby, keeping his eyes on this crying teenager who had just appeared from outside. “You competing in Strongman this weekend?”

     “Not sure. Might have to work.”

     “Okay, just let me know and I’ll need your entry fee by Friday.”

     Jessica watched as the woman strode across the gym to where there stood a boxing ring in the back corner. A man already stood in the ring stretching. Without pausing the woman tossed her gym bag aside and climbed into the ring.

     “You ready to get your ass kicked?” She asked.

     The man in head gear and boxing gloves nodded. She gave him a clap on the back and then jumped down to where her bag had landed and started taking out her own boxing equipment.

     “Hey kid! Can I help you.”

     With a sniff and a wipe at drying tears, Jessica turned from the spectacle in the back.

     “Do you teach people how to fight?”

     “We do. We offer classes. Boxing, Tai Kwan Do, other forms of self defense. You should have your parents come sign you up.”

     “What if it’s my dad I need to defend myself from?”

     She saw something cross the man’s face, a cracking of stone she thought as the man had looked as hard as nails. Then he looked down to study the floor and then up to look outside the window. He looked anywhere except to look back at the kid crying before him.

     Jessica knew when she wasn’t wanted. It came from growing up and knowing that you were never wanted around. Stone might have felt this way, but it was being better than her dad would have been. He would have flat out yelled at her, telling her to get her lazy, ugly ass out of there.

     She went to leave. Stone called out to her before she could do more than set her hand on the door.

     “Are you a runner or a fighter?”

     Jessica turned back to look at him.

     “I don’t want him hitting her.”

     “Are you a runner or a fighter?”

     “I don’t know.” Her tears returned.

     “Go out that door and you’re a runner. You’ll what, runaway in a year or so, end up on the streets. Maybe end up in foster care when they find you if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you’ll actually get away, maybe make it to some big city and end up doing what to survive? Have you thought about that?”

     Her hand dropped away from the door. She felt sick to her stomach. He couldn’t be right, could he? She wasn’t going to abandon her mom, was she?

     She turned back to him, finding a resolve forming inside her that she never knew was there.

     “I’m a fighter.”

     “Are you sure, because it looks like you ran here.”

     “He hurts my mom. I want him to stop.”

     “Then call the police.” Stone locked eyes with her and Jessica steps closer to his counter.

     “Cops don’t care. They’ve come and never do anything.”

     “I can call them. I’ve got friends.”

     Jessica looked past him as Rachel was climbing back into the ring. She was in full fighting gear now and she had a dangerous air around her. She was electrified with a grace and moved with a confidence.

     “There’s other ways to fight.”

     “Yeah, Yeah, there are.” Stone looked back to the ring. “Wait until she’s done with her lesson then talk to her. Tell her I’ll pay for your lessons.”

     “What do you mean.”

     “I mean your going to become a fighter.”

     And she had. Years of boxing, followed by various forms of kickboxing and karate turned her into on hell of a fighter.

     It took time but eventually her dad stopped hitting her mom.

     She was a fighter. She had made that decision. She didn’t run away. She wasn’t going to run now. If she ran to the cabin what would happen. Dennis was dead, killed by these dead things. If she let them go, who else would die by their hands. What if they didn’t follow her. They could go to town or one of the other neighboring communities. What if they got into these residential areas and went on a feeding frenzy? How would she live with herself if other people died and she would have been able to stop it?

     She stood on the path and watched as the dead things worked themselves to where they were standing. Jessica wasn’t sure what they were, if they were zombies or ghouls or whatever the correct term was. She knew they could be fast. They had been lashing at her, viciously grabbing at her before.

     She had to be faster. They had to be stopped. They killed Dennis; they could kill others. She changed that, repeating it in her head. Then she came at them.

     The big one was closest. She struck him first with a round house kick that was timed to keep her moving. Her foot had connected with his already broken face, and it crumpled more of his skull. The momentum of the blow sent him into a nearby tree with a satisfying ‘crack.’

     Two more had been behind him. These two were smaller and looked like they had been much younger when they died. These two seemed different from Sarah and the larger man. They weren’t moving fast to get to her, and they looked more at each other than at her. Their hands held each other’s, had these two been lovers?

     Jessica wasn’t going to waste time thinking about it. They were dead, their feelings didn’t matter. They were killers and she was going to put them down.

     Her fist flew forward, her weight behind the blow as it slammed into his face. He staggered back and like expected, the girl had reached out for her. Jessica grabbed it and twisted, launching the girl over back and sending her to the ground. Jessica followed it up with a kick down, slamming the girl hard in the chest. Jessica didn’t hold back as she would with a living opponent and brought down her weight and she heard the satisfying crunch as ribs broke.

     Then she spun around in time to see that the man, and Sarah were both coming for her. Sarah’s face was a mess, nearly unrecognizable, but Jessica knew those eyes though the fury in them was foreign.

     In most fights, Jessica would have considered the man to be the bigger threat and have attacked him while blocking Sarah. Something screamed at her that if she did that, she was dead. The man had no life left in his eyes, this wasn’t a fight of passion with him, but Sarah was a beast who had gone rabid. Turning away from her would be a costly mistake.

     Her adrenaline was flowing. She could see herself as she moved, and it made her think of an action movie. She wasn’t quite like Jackie Chan and now fights were always so choreographed with chairs and ladders all around him so he could use them as weapons. No, this was bare knuckle. This was a classic Van Damme film. She was a master, a brawler, and she saw it all as she was on the attack for her remaining opponents.

     Jessica approached them almost with a strut of confidence, and when Sarah reached forward, Jessica grabbed it. She pulled and used the force to twist and spin into the man. The blow knocked him off his feet and freed Jessica to continue to spin and driving a powerful blow again into Sarah’s already weakened head. There was more crunching as the blow connected and the center of Sarah’s face crushed inward.

     If she had been in an action film before, she had just crossed over into the absurd, cheesiness of a bad horror film. One of those films that went over the top with the gore, because as she hit Sarah her fist sunk deeper into her face than Jessica thought it should. Her fist going until she felt the thickness of the back of Sarah’s skull.

     What had been Sarah’s brain, the grey matter that had made her a walking corpse was all over Jessica’s hand and it was like a jello mold around her fist. It suctioned around her hand as she tried to pull it back, sucking at it. Sarah wasn’t fighting her and her body had gone limp, but the skull wouldn’t release her. As the body fell to the ground, Jessica was trapped and going with it. She fell, and only had a moment to realize she was going to land next to next to Dennis.

     I’m going to marry him… She had come out there to find her fiancé because he had been acting so weird, but they were supposed to be planning the best day of their lives for a future together. There was still a lot to do, they hadn’t even been able to lock down a date yet, but she still could see it in her mind.

     It was going to be in the church she had gone to while growing up. It was a beautiful church that loomed grandly in her memories. The cathedral rose high, the bell tower rising higher and ringing those wedding bells announcing that it was her day. Their day really as they were joining their lives together.

     She would have a purple dress, having already decided that she would never be satisfied with traditional white. Tradition was for those who invited her family, a mother, and a father. Her mother would be there, she would be giving Jessica away, but her father…

     He would never be allowed within a hundred feet of the ceremony. Jessica had the restraining order and had taught him more than once what happened when he broke it. He broke it, she broke bones. Not just one, but multiple. She enjoyed hearing him scream.

     So no father to ruin the day, It was going to be filled with only things that would make her happy. Dennis. He made her happiest of all, and as her mother walked her down the aisle, he would be there, standing in front of Father Abraham. He would be in a suit, his friends behind him, his older brother standing as his best man behind him. Tony, the brother, would have the rings hidden away, his irresponsible self, doing something right this time.

     She would walk the aisle and once next to him, he would take her hand, and hold that hand until they were married. She would never let him go.

     And as she fell, she thought of him, how she loved him, and was never going to let him go. Not in her heart…

     She landed hard, no hands available to steady or catch herself. Her balance was off by her hand being stuck so she had no way to prepare, to tuck and roll with the motion. No, all of her weight and the momentum of her punch came down on her and she crashed into the unforgiving earth with the air expelling in a rush from her lungs.

     The thing that was Sarah somehow landed on top of her and she immediately felt hands pulling at her. She knew it wouldn’t be long before the things around her pulled themselves close and were biting into her, and really, what did it matter anymore.

     She was looking into the dead eyes of Dennis as he was less than a foot away from her. Those dead eyes that killed her soul and twisted the knife buried in her chest. She wanted tears to flow but the cold had already dried them away.

     She felt the stabbing pain as teeth ripped into her leg. Then more as something landed on top of her and tore a chunk out of her back. More hands grabbed at her; they were pulling in all different directions. If she wanted, she could turn over, or try to, she wasn’t sure she could do it, and use her hands to fight at them as they made their way onto her. She had done it once; she could probably do it again.

     But she didn’t. Instead, she reached out her hand, extending to where Dennis was. His was covered in blood as was hers. Still, hers slipped into his like they were meant to always be holding each other.

     Blood was filling her lungs. The pain was shooting through her thoughts making everything around her impossible to focus on, but she fought it. As she gasped, wheezing towards her last breath, she coughed out “I love you.”

     His hand slipped out of hers. She felt it but had to blink away the tears to see why. The pain had dulled as the world grew colder. Through her blurry vision, she watched as Dennis was moving. He was a shape coming towards her.

     She couldn’t help herself, but she smiled as she coughed up another lung full of blood.

     “Den-“ she couldn’t get it out as her chest spasmed. It didn’t matter. She used her outstretched arm to pull herself towards him though she could see he was nearly to her. She thought maybe they they would get their one last kiss. She hadn’t realized just how much to yearned to feel those lips again.

     His lips neared her own and she could see the blood splattering his own lips. He had a large toothy smile, and she tried to force herself to return it through the pain. His mouth opened wide, and she had a brief second to mentally question why he was opening his mouth so wide when he was going to kiss her and why did it look like his mouth was full of spiders.

     Then his mouth closed over her own, and her scream was cut short as he bit off her own lips. The little bit that had remained of her mind, that had stayed focused on Dennis was ripped away as insanity took her moments before she was lost to the eternal night.