This will more likely than not be my final post, as I know I have so little time left.
I tried to fight it, I tried to kill it, I tried so fucking hard to end it before it got this far but instead I made it so much worse.
I thought losing Catherine would be the worst of it, but no, what’s about to come is universally worse.
I fought the gangly man on its turf, right where I saw it take my daughter from me. I burned the fucking thing to the ground and I saw the fear in it’s eyes but it continued to get up until the entire forest burned. I thought it would run away and find somewhere to lick its wounds.
Man, I was so fucking wrong.
Immediately the next morning, I heard on the news that the firefighters dispatched to the forest were either dead or hospitalised, all ranting and raving about it. They all saw it kill their friends, and somehow they lived to tell the story.
I think it lets them live, I think it knows I would hear what they had to say one way or another, like it wants me to know it’s coming for me.
We hadn’t heard anything else about the situation for the past two weeks, just that people were warned to stay indoors as much as possible and to keep their doors and windows locked, and keep their pets indoors as well, because the news was spinning the story like a wild bear on the loose. Fuck, if we were only that lucky.
Now, in the last week I’ve seen on Facebook and Twitter that things are getting even more weird. I’ve seen photos of it lurking around peoples houses, video footage (some quite obviously fake) of it messing with window latches and door knobs, like it’s learning how they function.
And now there were the trucks. Big armoured trucks patrolling the streets every night and every day. They’re armoured to high hell and have what looks like a giant grenade launcher on the top that looks automated, or controlled from the inside of the vehicle.
Armoured men were stationed at every street corner in fully kitted gear, holding these massive assault rifles, some with street sweeper shotguns. It looked like a scene out of Red Dawn for Christ’s sake. I saw one guy from out my bedroom window hollering at them. Asking them what they were doing here. The one with the rifle didn’t even look at him, just pointed at his feet and shot, missing by inches. Needless to say the guy took off, and I heard nothing else about people asking questions since.
#TheFinalSweep started to trend on twitter for a bit, and until two days ago, I hadn’t known what that meant.
Until it happened. Until the levee broke.
Last night, I was laying in bed and just watching conspiracy videos on the gangly man and my town when out of nowhere gunshots broke out just outside my window.
“Blast the fucking thing! Kill it! Kill it! KILL IT!”
I jumped up to my window and was face to face with the most hellacious scene I’ve ever witnessed.
The men, now a group of ten or more, were lined up and firing down the road into the black of night. I tried to see what they were shooting at, and for a moment I couldn’t see it, but then it came into view. Barreling down the street, swinging its arms and laughing maniacally was the gangly man. Its arms seemed to bend and break and readjust with the swings and its head rocked back and forth in every direction on its neck like it was broken. The bullets were bouncing off of it like rubber pellets and they weren’t even leaving a mark on it. But it was marked now. Its skin was crispier than I remember, looking taught and stretched like new leather. And its eye, where I made contact, was now a blackened empty hole of puss and flesh. And yet it still ran at the soldiers like it was unharmed. When it was finally on them, it made short work out of the front line, picking one man up and snapping him in half like a toothpick. Then it picked two more men up at once, shoving them both into its gaping maw, legs first, and crunched down. Their screams…I’ll never forget that sound. It stomped on a few others, crushing them beneath the force of its surprisingly strong legs.
Then there were two left, and what I witnessed was a fucking shock. One guy pushed his partner down and shot him in both knees, leaving him as bait as he turned and ran.
Toward the closest thing he could think of as a safe place to hide.
Toward my fucking house.
The gangly man stomped down on the crippled soldier’s back, severing his spine with ease, and turning on the body to run towards that last one.
I didn’t think.
I just acted.
I ran to my front door, swinging it open and hollered for the soldier to get in. He dived in, clearing past me in the process. I stood in the doorway as the thing ran across my yard towards me.
“Hey fuckface.” I said in such a low, confident tone that even surprised me. It slid, nearly tripped on itself, and stopped only inches from me, its face in front of mine. I could smell its breath, the flesh of the soldiers it ate dangling from its teeth.
I was hoping it wouldn’t look away from me and it didn’t.
Because there’s one tiny thing I hadn’t mentioned yet.
I was waiting for his moment.
What I hadn’t said yet, was that I had rigged up a special surprise for it when this moment would come. Without getting into much detail, I had four hoses hooked up to gas canisters that were inside of a dispenser I had built that would cover my yard in diesel at a moments notice. Also, I had a lighter on me at all points in time.
I pulled out a garage door opener I had bought online that was set up to the dispenser and flicked the switch. Immediately the thing and I both smelled the strong scent of gasoline fill the air. I then pulled out my lighter and flicked. In its one good eye, I saw the fear I was hoping for as the flame sparked. I threw it at its feet and in mere seconds it felt like I was back in the forest again. It fell backwards, writhing in pain and screaming into the night with such a grotesque, vile sound, it nearly made me throw up.
It tried to stand, but the gas was still being poured on it and causing it to slip and burn more and more. Finally, I saw its skin begin to rip apart like jerky. The screams began to sputter out and the movement began to slow. Minutes later, it was an oversized husk of a dead monster.
I finally did it.
I finally fucking killed the thing.
It was over.
So I thought.
I turned to the soldier who was staring out at the thing from the floor in wide eyes astonishment.
“Wasn’t my first encounter.” was all I said.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.” He said as he stood up, looking outside.
He turned to me, his eyes still wide.
“What time is it?”
“Like five thirty, why?”
“Fuck.”
He fell to his knees.
“We’re out of time.”
The soldier, Logan Donaldson, began to tell me that he worked for an organisation that dealt with these things. They would come in, assess the situation, and deem what was the necessary course of action. Apparently the gangly man wasn’t the only of his kind, as Logan told me he’s faced many of them before and the only way to truly eradicate them was through an oral injection of a chemical a team of scientists at the organisation had come up with that melts its insides.
“That thing out there, it aint dead. It’ll evolve through the pain and be that much harder for us to kill.”
He then went on to tell me that in these cases, where an adult life form has planted its home here, they can never be sure if it has young around, so the only course of action was “complete erasure of the population”.
Which means scrubbing the internet for any sign of my hometown and encounters with the gangly man.
Which means bombing the town.
He said the bomb was going to drop in a half hour, so I should send my goodbyes.
I’ve messaged everyone I knew, friends, family, exes and people I was interested in. I said goodbye.
I’m sitting on my front step right now, having a cigarette with Logan as we watch the breathing on the thing slowly come back and writing up this final post on my phone.
“It won’t recover fast enough, listen.”
It was so silent, but in the distance I could hear the plane engine.
I love you so much Catherine, I’ll see you soon.