-Reaping Silence: Stage of Carnage-

Act 1

The crisp air of dusk kissed my cheeks in the barren field enveloped in insidious mist. Sky a deep void black as the chirp of nightingale’s call echoed in the forlorn night. My mind was in a daze. Hide.

My steps brisk, as they shuffled against the worn-out dirt. The moon arisen a white luminescent glow in darkness that solely guided me against these fatal fields. Blindly I wandered the area looking for shelter, a hole to hide in, it was time, they could sweeping the lands and reaping it of all life. Moving in squadrons, unable to feel pain, the ‘Reapers of Dusk’, the embodiment of the perfect army. Unable to feel pain, they carry forth orders in utmost efficiency and loyalty, after all, they are already dead.

Gradually, the mist began to grow thick. Ahead, a town at the edge of the field of vision. Buildings dilapidated as they were blanketed in dust and soot. This place was barely caught in the attack. My legs, heavy, I carried on forth until I reached the entrance where a staggering barricade of metal alloys hastily stuck together towered before me. I could feel people staring daggers at me.

One step in front.

“Who are you? State your business” a figure spoke in a husky voice.

“A survivor of the first wave of attacks, please let me enter your haven.”

“I am afraid I can’t do that. These soldiers that entered our country are merciless, you may merely be an attempt of infiltrating our last stronghold.”

“Please, sir, they have already stolen everything from me, I have no place to call home or a family to care for.”

“We cannot risk our last efforts of survival to be forfeited, I’m sorry, but you will have to survive alon-“

“Please, sir, please I beg of you” My fists began to pound on the metal structure, my knees against the cold terra.

“Please.”

Silence.

Footsteps in unison could be heard. I placed my ears against the earthen ground, the sound reverberated through my body as a freezing chill crawled up my spine. In the distance, I saw my final moments. Iridescent eyes at dusk, shadows moved in one company, rifles in hand, cloaked in darkness. Bullets flew. Scattered shrieks and screaming drowned the melody of birds.

Act 2

Hurriedly, I scurried to the edge of the village, the siren wailed, deafeningly loud. From underground they emerged, Reapers of Dusk. At the fore front of their attack. Silhouettes of carriers in the darkening sky overhead. In front of my very eyes laid a reaper. Unarmed with a gun, it had a blade. I screamed, skeletal hands that carried the weighted blade with ease as it sliced through furniture and surrounding structures as if they were made of water, in order to reach me. I fell.

I looked up, the shadowy figure before me, hand in the air, blade that stood proudly atop my view about to deal the finishing blow. A waist-belt, from its attire, a leather compartment. Eyes wide, I felt blood rush through my body as new energy surged throughout me. Fear. Tackling the solid figure, I ran through the waist-belt and snapped back the leather pouch and pulled out a brass revolver. The cold steel of the barrel pointed at its head. This time with ease, I pulled the trigger. My eyes bloodshot as I stared upon the living corpse. It moved, I missed. I took my chances and ran at breakneck speed through the carnage unfolding. Fire alight the structures as they burned down. A high-pitched noise could be heard in the background. I noticed I could barely hear anything, and my hands were trembling uncontrollably.

Soldiers, masked in jet black, only with eyes peering out, dead. People on the ground before being dealt the finishing strike. My eyes absorbed the scene, tears ran through, I could hear a little now. Screaming, shrieking, they filled the air. Help me as they would exclaimed before being dragged away and shot, I kept running. Bombs fell in crescendo, bullets flew in staccato. A symphony of chaos. Vibrations from the ground stuttered my movements, the forest beside the village, that is where I need to run to.

A group of reapers caught sight of my movement and trailed relentlessly, my legs were dying, lungs ailing, gas began to envelop the scene from the corner of my eye. Tears would not stop flowing. Someone, please, help me. The forest was bright as flames engulfed us from left to right. They kept chasing, chasing me under the company of trees that mocked my effort of running, branches sprawling out like veins in an intimidating silhouette. Three in total, like hounds, ready to pounce if I were to slip up at any moment. Roots that crawled through the inertia of terra. My ears were echoing from pleading of terror, repeating it like a broken record, engraved in my memory.

The snap of twigs and crushing of leaves, I knew they were on hot pursuit, they were at a hair’s length, I swiftly turned counter clockwise, forming a fist with my right, the remaining strength I had, and threw a heavy blow to the first soldier’s abdomen. It felt nothing, and grab my fist, before flinging me in a back breaking throw against the trunk of a tree. I coughed out blood. Three soldiers stood before me. I cried out to the sky. Revolver in hand I fired the shots, the trigger has never felt this welcoming.

“Get away” I announced. My throat hoarse, unable to scream, my intestines twisting from the run as I could feel the gastric acid making its way up. Backed against a wall, I fought. Two held me from behind. I bit at their gloves, flailing around. They were immensely strong. My final swing, against the mask, like porcelain, broke along with my knuckles. I grit my teeth in agony. It pulled out a blade from a sheath. I was frozen in fear at the sight of the creature.

Eyeless, the sockets glowed a crimson red, half its jaw torn off, a shadow appeared beside it, forming from dust particles like a puppet master, what the shadow did, the corpse followed. The shadow, ghastly it smiled, a person? Skeletal fingers, the smile, eerie, I choked on my breath. One strike.

Blackout.

Act 3 Final

I was at my wits end. A puppet master in a spectral white glow than hid in the shadows of its toys. The final fort, the country swallowed up by this darkness, people skewered in the streets as their blood drained into the sewers where the remaining survivors hid in accompanying darkness. The atmosphere, stuffy, and you could smell the methane that filled the air. A mother and child quivering in fear at water’s edge as we resided at the pathways of the sewer.

Footsteps began to echo. A metal clank against the ground as the heavy boots they wore, they needn’t hide the noise. People ran at the slightest implications of their arrival, the sight left many scarred. One pattern of each victim they had killed, their eyes were gouged out.

We could barely keep our silence, people overcome with fear ran their fingers through their hair. In this insidious darkness, they were being driven with insanity. Light was the least of our worries. Their eyes would glow, that would be the last of what we would see. Breathing, heavy and sonorous from a distance at the far end of the sewer’s tunnel that we hid, a cylindrical shape where drips of water echoed endlessly in our surrounding. They were close.

The mother clutched her son closely to her as the remaining survivors picked up impromptu weapons. A crowbar, glass shards and metal pipes. I kept the brass revolver I found in the forest close-by. The barrel cold, the trigger warm. Only one shot left as the final bullet was isolated in the lonely revolver.

You could feel the tension in the air, thick enough to cut with a knife, everyone’s breathing sparse in the suffocating atmosphere as it crushed your body, as if a heavy object were placed upon your chest.

“Just KILL ME!” A man screamed as he ran into the void.

“Wait, you idiot” I cried out before clasping my mouth; his screaming could be heard before a gunshot resonated in the tunnels and there was silence again.

Quiet whimpering from the child and parent could be heard, as even in the grainy darkness you could make out the tears rolling down their cheeks. Soldiers now standing before us. They walked ever so patiently. One by one survivors went to defend as all I could do was listen. Listen, listen ever so closely to the melody of howling and screeching from victims of the reapers. Fear overcame me and my body moved on its own, I scurried towards the mother and child and pushed them aside to reach the back most wall of the tunnel. I don’t want to die, please I don’t want die. Take them not me. Take them not me. My mind went on endlessly, my sanity had reached its lowest and had taken a plunge, I had abandoned my own morality.

“KILL THEM, NOT ME!” My voice shrill as the child and parent gazed with their lifeless eyes at me as I quivered in the corner of the wall.

A reaper engaged the two of them, before they could cry aloud, it had plunged both of its fists into their heads and gouged out their eyes. Blood dripped like a running tap from the eyeless sockets to their mouth where blood collected and spilt forth on to the ground. The reaper pulled down its mask then devoured the eyes, then, approached me.

“Please, please, spare me, you had your fill, spar-.” I could feel the blade run through my intestines, cold and smooth as it quickly pulled it out and punctuated my leg next.

I could not voice my pain, its right hand clasped tightly my neck as it held me in the air five inches above the ground. My vision was blurry, behind the reaper, the puppet master shows itself again, I had seen it once before. The reaper pulled open its vest to reveal another mouth at its abdomen covered in stitches, incisors gritty and bits of flesh clung to it. The stench was rotten and acidic as it stung my nose in sour acidity. I threw up on its arm as it loosened its grip and began lowering me into the mouth of the creature. My mind was a blank, I could no longer think. A putrid green hue the skin held, before my ribs were crushed as I closed my eyes. All the actors of this play had exited the stage.

End.