Chapter 2: Proving One's Worth (Part 6/7)

Pulling out another clip to load into his empty firearm, he got up close and personal as if to avoid hitting Jeremy and let loose on the pile of flesh that had sucked the life out of one of his temporary charges. To my eyes, this continued assault appeared to have a notable effect in hindering the monster's ability to heal itself. The shots kept coming with no rest until the second clip ran empty. Despite his aged appearance with well-practiced movements, that empty clip was again removed from the gun and another quickly took its place, as the detective continued his assault on the monster. However, that brief interlude from being fired upon between the 2nd and 3rd clip, seemed to have been exactly what the creature needed to retaliate. In a single swift movement, the initially prone creature leapt upon the detective like a raptor taking down prey, and dug into his uniform causing fountains of fresh red blood to spew forth from the deep lacerations. The previously rich red blood soon turned black as the flesh around the spurting wound necrotized from the effects of the creature. This was finally too much for me. I rushed to the glass door that led to the patio from inside and I yanked on the handle. Locked!?! "ARGHH!" My frustration and anxiety finally were coming through at what felt like a quickly shrinking stone room with no exit. With my hands clenched in anger and fear, I looked around and saw the tall lamp beside the 2 lazy boy chairs in the alcove leading to the patio. Grabbing the lamp, I swung with all my adrenaline induced strength against the glass door. *Crash!* The satisfying sound of the door glass shattering brought relief to my ears. Dashing out of the now open door way I heard someone cry out. "He's clear!" Through the shattered glass frame to the patio, I waited and watched so as to stay as far from the creature and the field of bullets that I knew was soon to come. With agonizing clarity, I saw my would-be protector turn into a pile of grey stinking flesh that you could taste with your mouth. This induced a surge of acid trying to force its way up from my stomach to purge the offending thoughts and odor. All of this happened within a few seconds of the detectives full on contact with those deadly claws. "Open Fire!" Only then when the others saw that there was no saving the two did they resume their barrage upon this evil incarnate. A massive stream of firepower tore into the creature, carrying even more destructive force then the time before, seeing as backup had arrived. Unfortunately, it seemed that the creature, after having killed 3 or 4 innocents and consuming the life force of 2 of those people, had been greatly empowered. This allowed the monstrosity to shrug off much of the damage. Large pieces of flesh still were torn off by the hail of bullets, but in the same breath they seemed to turn into mist and re-converge upon where they fell from. This effect led to the creature's appearance being that of a mist like wraith that could not be harmed by mortal means. Every once in a while, from my vantage point, I would see some bullets tear away at its chest cavity near its heart, revealing what looked like a pulsing and somewhat glowing black mass. While I could see that projectiles did no damage to the heart, I had to wonder if separating the heart from the body would rob it of its vitality. With the high walls of the patio and the hail of gunfire at close quarters, the reverberation was deafening on a whole new level that I had never before experienced. I think that if they had a rocket and weren't worried about destroying the building itself, with all the fragile elderly residents, then they would have used it by now. After about a minute of the cacophony of fired bullets, I noticed some changes. The gathering mist appeared to become more sluggish and less effective at recovering the lost flesh. As the entire carcass was continuously pushed further away from those firing upon it, black smears remained in its wake which took increasingly longer periods of time to vanish and reassemble with its main body. Eventually the tide of bullets began to peter off and then the last rattle of a gun spewed off its payload. Amidst the deafening silence I snuck a look at the results. From the more secluded vantage point of the outdoor patio, I could see that the entire hallway behind the creature was a mess of Swiss cheese with the lights of the parking lot streaming in from the holes. Pieces of the creature lay strewn about with a hint of the mist rising from them as they struggled to return to their original form. Laying there, giving an occasional twitch like a burned-out husk, one could hope that it was near the end of its immortal existence. The once high-speed regeneration it boasted of, had slowed to a crawl, hinting at the possibility that the bullets weren't as useless as I might have previously thought. It appeared to have lost much of its previously vaunted healing ability from that barrage of dense lead and steel tearing through it unrestrainedly. Its chest cavity lay hideously open to the light of the room, and the dark heart continued to beat soundlessly as it worked to heal the damage dealt to its shell. At that moment, I risked a look to see the fearful expressions of the police as they slowly backed away, now that a majority of them appeared to be out of ammunition. Occasionally one of the SWAT members was able to dig out an extra clip hidden somewhere and unload it into the twitching corpse before overwhelming silence once again reigned. No one wanted to get near that thing, seeing what had happened to the previous victims. It was wise on their part, but eventually detrimental as I felt that without risk, there was no way for them to finish the job. Looking back at the slowly healing monstrosity, a trickle of sorrow and regret filled me inside, and with that a wash of the feelings I had grown so accustomed to, began to fill me. The trickle became a stream, then a river, and finally a flood as the emotions of the day began to overwhelm me. Tears finally broke free from the damn that had held them back and with that, power filled me. Through the blurry vision of my tears, I looked onward with a sense of melancholy and resolve. My fists clenched in anger at the damage that had occurred both to life and property. At that moment, my legs began to carry me towards the slowly regenerating corpse. All four of the limbs were missing except that the creature's right arm seemed to be the closest to reforming itself. If something was to be done, it had to be now, and no one else besides me appeared willing to get closer to do it. Making my way through blood smeared shattered glass I could feel the crunch beneath my feet as I slowly approached the pulsing mass. I couldn't describe all the gazes of the police and other officials as they watched my approach. What I could see from most of them was overwhelming terror. Here was something so far outside of their purview and control and they feared their lives were not on the winning side of the equation. Voices from without and within, that I didn't heed, screamed at me to step aside or run. As I crouched down beside this abomination, a kind of warbling hiss issued from what I assumed to be its mouth. It sort-of twitched its torso, as it tried to ineffectively reach me. With it missing all its limbs it was about the size of a 4-year-old child, albeit nothing there was anything childlike about this terror. As its right arm was the closest limb to being fully formed, despite my trepidation, I used my leveraged weight by pressing my left knee against its right shoulder to restrain it, and provide better leverage for myself for what I had to do next. Reaching into its open chest cavity from my right side I grasped its heart. Freezing and corrosive energies assaulted me, even as I remained empowered by the mysterious warmth that had been with me within easy reach for as long as I could remember. In my mind, the quiet ticking seconds that forewarned of the creature's recovery slowed down as I struggled to tear out that poisonous heart, which continued to pulse with black veins, from its body. The cracking of my skin, as it froze and broke in various places that were in direct contact with the heart wore at my own resolve. To my surprise, the dark smoky tendrils which I had seen reassembling the scattered pieces of the creature began to be shifting from their original goal. They had withdrawn from the surroundings and now directly came from the heart as they were split between keeping the heart connected to the flesh it was housed in and attacking my hands. I hoped that this was a sign that what I was doing was making a positive difference. That thought however ended with excruciating pain as I felt my arm being stabbed with what I could only imagine as an icepick. Unfortunately, due to my undivided attention of trying to remove what I felt was the source keeping this monstrosity alive, I missed out on the other developments around me. Enough time had already passed to allow the creature's right arm to regenerate or mutate, to form a much smaller cord like extremity with a single enlarged nail at its end. I didn't know if the corrupt power knew enough to attack me with misdirection or it just instinctively knew to cut its losses and work with what it had. Despite my advantage of weighing more than its crippled torso and head, it had managed to dislodge my left arm which had been gripping its shoulder for leverage and sunk that single reformed nail into my bicep. "AGH!" The sharp pain distracted me from my current endeavors. I tried twitching my shoulder to dislodge the nail which only served to add an additional shot of pain through my body. I briefly considered letting go of the heart to try and free my arm from the creature's attack, but considering I was already beyond elbow deep in this chaos, I knew I needed to continue. Blocking out the additional pain as best as I could, and refocusing my attempts on continuing to extract the heart, I pressed onward. However, the damage was done as the shock and distraction had been too much. The overwhelming power that had previously suffused my body had been shaken and was even now fading away. Immediately I felt high levels of corruption begin to push against the last dregs of my power, whatever it was. The pain was excruciating! Outside of the natural pain from the nail itself that had been embedded into my left arm, I felt something try to diffuse into my body. However, I believe that the power within me was what held it at bay when I first grabbed the heart. Until this very moment, I had thought that all this power could do, was make me feel good inside and empower my emotions. For that reason, I had never made a monumental effort to keep that energy flowing through me for longer than a minute or 2, since doing so became increasingly difficult. The stronger the emotion and greater the will then the longer that the wave of energy would last. Unfortunately, it was like the tide of the ocean, where through sheer will alone you could not will the waves to remain high up on the sand. For when the time came for it to return to the depths of the sea, it was inevitable. As the tide of power within me drew back, the dark powers of this creature were able to more fully run rampant within me. In an attempt to describe it, I'd say it was like having someone stab you with frozen shards of sewage and burning poison. As my body heat "melted" that shard then the corruption began to mix with my body. The scent was terrible, but the greatest fear I had was being consumed like my predecessors had been, after challenging this monster.