Pedro flicked the lighter, moving it under the spoon. The translucent glow of the Moon spilled in through the open door of the shack, trails of light glowing on the dirt as white as bones. It gave Pedro’s tanned face an eerie, skull-like cast. His sunken eyes stared out from two swollen, purplish eyelids. I couldn’t remember the last time we had slept.
The cocaine in the spoon gave off a subtle smell of cloying peppermint as the water bubbled. Satisfied, Pedro grabbed the needle and shoved it in the center of the cotton.
“Ahh, the water of life,” he said as he flicked the air bubbles out of the clear water in the syringe. He pulled up his long sleeves. I looked in horror at the scarred wreckage of leaking wounds running across his arms like the blasted landscape of a nuclear holocaust. Black, necrotic spots covered his skin in many areas where he shot the drugs.
After taking off his belt and pulling it tightly around his right bicep, one damaged vein pulsed like a fat worm. He shoved the needle in and pumped the entire dose of cocaine into his bloodstream within seconds.
The effect was immediate. He jumped up, grabbing at his heart. His teeth gnashed and chattered together as he walked in circles. As he paced, he kicked his feet high in the air, like some macabre parody of goose-stepping soldiers. Rivers of sweat immediately started winding their way down his forehead. His long, black hair shone with grease and filth. A smell like wet leather and old sweat always followed Pedro everywhere he went.
“They’re watching us, man,” he said, his dilated pupils flitting around the shadows outside the dilapidated shack. “I can feel eyes on me. They’re all around us.” As if to emphasize his point, a gunshot went off in the distance, followed a second later by the rhythmic screeching of a car alarm. Someone screamed off in the distance, and I heard various shouts. A few seconds later, the tumult died down.
“Will you shut up and sit down?” I asked, flicking my half-smoked cigarette in his direction for emphasis. “I have to plan tonight’s visit.” Of course, “visit” was really just a euphemism for breaking and entering, armed robbery and, sometimes, murder. We had gotten a tip-off that a local dealer would be purchasing a large amount of cocaine and meth at a safehouse about a quarter mile from here. Our plan was to take it by any means necessary. I knew the dealer also had a wife and kid living there, and I really didn’t want to have to hurt them. I thought back to the last job and shuddered.
I didn’t really like to use licks like Pedro. He was unstable, unpredictable, sadistic and, above all, a drug fiend. But he was also cheap and not afraid to kill. I could pay him with a pound of cocaine for helping with a haul that brought in twenty or thirty pounds. I was just afraid that, one day, he would sober up enough to realize that he could get a lot more drugs by just murdering me and taking them at the end of a job, even though that would also mean the end of new assignments.
Pedro pulled out his revolver and began playing with it, like a bored cat batting a toy. He opened and closed the cylinder, putting it to his temple as if he were playing Russian roulette. He pointed the gun at me.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” he yelled, jerking the gun with an imaginary recoil every time he exclaimed it. He laughed like a maniac, emitting an insane, high-pitched cackle that raised goosebumps on my body. “Boy, my head feels like it’s a million miles above the ground.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” I asked, radiating calmness. He instantly went as still as a statue. His dilated eyes gleamed with bloodlust. He took a step towards me. In the moonlight, his silhouette looked as narrow and tall as a scarecrow’s. He opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment, a rattling, diseased breath rang out from next to the shack. We both looked towards the front.
There was no door. Someone had ripped it off long ago. Gang graffiti covered the inside and outside walls. A mattress growing patches of black mold lay in the corner. A wooden bench and a few folding chairs were set up against the back. I surveyed the situation and realized that this was not an ideal place to get attacked. We had no door to barricade, nothing to take cover behind if the enemy started shooting.
But it seemed ridiculous to get so worked up. Surely it was just an animal nearby and I could scare it away with a single cry. The rasping breaths sounded freakish, but it was probably just something diseased. And anyway, I had my pistol on me, my lifelong companion I nicknamed “Speedy”. Speedy had seen me through many hairy situations in the past, and I was confident that it would get me through this one as well. Well, mostly confident.
“What was that?” Pedro whispered, his thin frame shaking with nervous energy. “Wild dogs?” The roaring, choking breaths came again even louder, this time directly outside the shack’s dilapidated walls.
Pedro couldn’t stand it any longer. His skin seemed to shiver with nervous energy. He sprinted outside without a moment of hesitation, raising his revolver. He turned right, towards where we had heard the crying last. I heard him shouting and then his pistol firing in rapid succession. Five or six shots pierced the night within a couple seconds. The growling grew to a deafening cacophony, and then I heard a wet, sloshing sound. Something heavy smashed against the side of the shack. I thought the shack would collapse on its meager frame. Dirt and spiders fell from the ceiling in droves.
I stood shaking against the back wall. I had my pistol in my hand, yet I didn’t remember taking it out of the holster. I didn’t remember cocking it. I just remember staring at that empty doorway, seeing the cracked beams. The light streamed in from the cracked windows and broken door. I saw clouds of dust swirling in cyclonic whorls within the pale moonbeams. The world seemed to hold its breath for a moment. I stepped forward slowly.
“Pedro?” I whispered, hoping against hope that he would show his grimy, greasy face at any second. But as I edged closer to the door, that ragged, choked breathing grew louder. Some blood-soaked animal crawled around the side of the threshold, dragging its bleeding, broken body behind it. I looked down and, to my horror, saw it wasn’t an animal at all. It was Pedro.
He had deep slash marks down the side of his face. One eye limply hung from a destroyed mountain of gore, only connected by the optic nerve disappearing into his skull. His mouth formed into a grimace. He tried to whisper something, but blood continuously trickled down his lips. His remaining eye shone with fear and agony and something else, something I had rarely seen, even on the faces of the dying. Perhaps the closest description would be “existential horror”.
“Please…” he said, reaching out a mutilated right hand towards me. All of his fingers except for his thumb were missing. It looked like someone had taken an ax to his hand. The stumps of his fingers spurted bright red blood in time with his frenzied heartbeat. “Don’t let it hurt me anymore… Please…” He continued to drag his destroyed body towards me like a snake with a broken spine.
As he pulled himself forwards another foot, I realized both of his legs were bent backwards, appearing almost like the legs of some freakish bird. I could see fragments of sharp bone piercing outwards through the skin. His feet were not only facing the wrong direction, but his calves had been wrenched upwards. The torn jeans were covered in blood. They spiraled up his shattered legs.
“What did this?” I whispered. I couldn’t imagine the amount of strength required to do this to a human body in the space of less than a minute. My voice sounded like it was coming from someone else’s mouth. Everything felt slow and dream-like. Pedro had nearly gotten to the door when his eyes widened. He flew back, dragged by some unseen hand. I saw him trying to claw at the hard earth with his remaining hand, the fingernails ripping out with a sickening rending sound as he disappeared into shadow.
I heard him screaming as if he were being burned alive, but within a few seconds, it cut off. A heavy thud shook the ground from the other side of the bare wooden wall. A harsh death rattle marked the end of Pedro and the beginning of my struggle for survival.
I looked out the door, trying to measure how far it would be to the nearest house. Streetlights streamed down in the distance, only a couple hundred feet away. An alleyway covered in graffiti stretched out in front of me, strewn with garbage and covered in skittering rats. Police sirens drew nearer by the second. The dancing red-and-blue lights strobed through the dirty walls of the abandoned buildings on the nearby streets. I had never been happier to see the pigs show up.
Soft, dragging footsteps reverberated outside the small shack, seemingly in time with my heartbeat. I realized I had waited too long. The creature that had attacked Pedro came around the corner. I gasped as something from a nightmare slunk out of the darkness.
It looked like it had put on an old woman’s skin, like a bum might put on a secondhand coat. The skin hung loosely from the hunchbacked frame, naked and still dripping blood from a dozen places. Its teeth shone like long, wicked nails. It had dozens of them in its grinning rictus mouth, each shining a cold, cyanide blue.
Its lips formed a grinning white line like a scar across its monstrous face. The eyes seemed to suck in the meager illumination of the distant streetlights, emanating a ghostly light that filled the orbs with a sickly, pale radiance. They looked as white as an animal’s eyes in a car’s headlights.
In its hands, it had curving, metallic claws like its teeth, each as sharp as razor wire and as blue as sapphires. Its breath rattled as its sunken chest expanded, its naked body quivering with excitement. Fresh blood streamed from where it wore the skin around its eyes, its fingers, its skeletal feet and its jibbering, gnashing mouth.
I stood there for what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a second. I stared into its flat, bloody eyes, only the sound of my heartbeat and the choking breaths of the monster breaking the silence. The police sirens had turned off, but I still saw the flashing lights bouncing off the street. My instinct screamed at me to act.
I raised Speedy, my old friend. A Taurus Judge, I knew every inch of its black surface like the body of a lover. It shot .410 bore shotgun shells and could rip through flesh like butter, especially at point-blank range. It had saved my life twice before, and I prayed to God that it would do so a third time.
“Fuck you, you crazy bitch,” I said, pulling the trigger twice. The first shot hit the abomination in the face, tearing away large chunks of the creature’s costume of skin. The second ripped through its right arm.
Underneath the covering of human skin, I saw more of that blue, alien metal. It grinned wider, the skin pulling apart with a sound like ripping paper. It ran at me, seemingly unaffected by the shotgun shells, pieces of bloody gore flying off its body. Its white, lidless eyes seemed to take up the entire world as it drew near.
I saw its metallic arm coming up, the fingers like blue scalpels rising to meet me. I ducked, but I felt it claw its way across my scalp. A numb, cold pain shot through my head. If I had been a moment slower, it would have ripped my face to shreds, but instead it just left four deep gouges through my scalp. I felt blood instantly soaking into my hair and running down my face.
I tried sprinting past it, but it was too fast. I felt a sharp, burning pain as its claws dragged through the meat of my back. With Speedy still in my right hand, I sprinted for my life towards the police cars.
“Help! For God’s sake, help!” I cried. I couldn’t see anyone on the street through the narrow view of the alleyway. I jumped over bags of trash, seeing mice and rats slink away into the shadows. Rapid footsteps sounded right behind me. I didn’t dare look back, but I could hear the creature. It was fast and drawing nearer by the second.
My foot caught a half-broken chunk of cinder block laying in the path, and I went flying. I had nearly reached the street by this point. Soaring through the air, I landed hard on broken glass and sharp stones. I felt countless small wounds biting into my flesh, but my adrenaline was so high that I barely noticed.
I spun so that I was on my back. The creature came down on me with a crushing, suffocating pressure. I raised Speedy, praying that the last three bullets would have more impact than the first two. As it raised its clawed metal hand, I pointed the gun point-blank at its heart and fired the last shots in rapid succession.
The hand hung over me like a looming guillotine for a long moment, the fingers flexing and shaking. Then the abomination fell back, twitching and kicking. Its white eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. The last of its human skin had come off, and I saw something truly alien laying there.
It had throbbing black veins running over its metallic blue bones. Its many teeth constantly bit and gnashed at the air, and it continued to swipe its deadly claws in front of its body. But from a torn pit in the center of its chest, I saw a torrent of dark fluid rushing out. It gasped its final horrifying, raspy breath and then lay still.
Shell-shocked, bleeding from dozens of wounds and still hyperventilating, I walked out onto the street. I looked both ways, seeing no one. I felt confused, as this area always had people on it.
Then I looked down. I saw two murdered police officers laying on the ground, their eyes wide and staring, their pupils dilated. A blue, metallic creature stood over them, carefully peeling off their skin with claws like sawblades.
As silently as I could, I turned and ran. I left the city that night and took refuge far out in the countryside.
And as far as I’m concerned, the city, with its ineffable nightmares and agonies, can take care of itself.