Chapter 36

Just Punch It.

Damien Reyes

Time/Area: August 1st, 2013. NYC

“ARHGWAWARRRRRRRR!”

I yelped at the sound, instinctively turning on Fear Sight before whipping my entire body around.

My already heightened senses entered overdrive as I felt every air molecule rush past me, heard every slight chirp of the crickets within the yard, and tasted every scent lingering in the air. My heart was pounding with such force and speed I felt my knees begin to buckle, unintentionally causing the sides of my head to warm as my brain wildly ripped through sound after sound in a two mile radius.

Where.

Was.

It.

I took in the noise of the neighbor’s two year old son crying from what his parents assured him was thunder. I took in the nervous whispers of a couple on a nearby sidewalk. I took in the hundreds of theories and ideas being made by everyone on this entire street as to what they all had just heard.

But no one saw anything?!

My eyes glowed furiously, and I couldn’t care less about who was watching. I treated the world fading around me as routine, no longer feeling the satisfaction and serenity of this ‘mode’ I had access to as I ignored every red outline in search of an abnormality I knew existed.

Even as I looked, I couldn’t keep the questions from forming.

Why couldn’t I see it yet?

Where did it go?

Is Jason still in the house?

If it was here, how do I stop it?

Why wasn’t Terry saying anything?

HISSSS

I doubled over as yet another burning plague washed over my spine, my head sub consciously flicking in what I could only perceive as a random direction as I…saw it.

There, past the many worried and fearful crimson outlines, was a huge, crawling, beast looking form that was completely made of…yellow strands?

That…was a monster. A real freaking monster.

I squinted through the void, watching each of its four…five…six limbs prance around what I placed to be the main street of Draxon.

I could tell it was huge, even from here, but I…didn’t hear any screaming yet. Not monster screams, that wasn’t what I was listening for. No human was seeing this right now.

How?

I listened, answers flooding my ears as a result,

“The lights went out dad!”

“My phone just died guys!”

“Hey Mom, I swear I saw something outside, but now the street lamps are out and I can’t see a thing!”

“J-just stay away from the windows, a-and close the blinds!”

“It isn’t…really a monster, right? That’s just a prank!”

“The power still isn’t back.”

So the power was out?

I couldn’t tell, since I wouldn’t dare to cease my glow. I couldn’t risk it disappearing, yet at the same time I wanted nothing more than that exact thing.

I-

Wait.

The thing stopped moving.

Then, slowly, its swirling gold form spun around, each of the tendrils composing its body twisting in what could only be described as anticipation as it began to crawl.

Right at me.

I gulped, “I-it can’t see me…”

Its four, lengthy…things attached to the underside of its torso scraped at the ground like a giant dragging its feet, its two arms jutting out at unearthly proportions from the side of its body while the rest of the strings of light seemed to make up an oval shaped head.

It was terrifying. From here, it seemed like a shadow. No one knew it was there, yet here it was; stalking towards me.

The burning in my back intensified, but all the adrenaline now coursing through me outweighed all that.

“Do all monsters see how I see?” I wondered.

It kept coming, noticeably dodging invisible structures as it continued its pace.

“No,” I dismissed the thought, “it can definitely see objects.

But that didn’t change the fact it was coming at me.

“I have to do something.”

It felt like an eternity was passing between the two of us, the…shadow keeping its foreboding stride while I ran every possible idea through my brain. Each one involved me fighting, but I just…couldn’t.

I…I wasn’t crazy, right?

Ha…no. I was a teenager. Barely even that!

It stopped moving once more, now much closer to me than it had been the last time it paused.

“I’m…fourteen.”

Its oval-shaped head tilted sideways, whatever spider legs on its body pattering on the ground endlessly in mild excitement,

“Please…leave.”

The head tilted the other way, and for a second I thought it could be hearing my thoughts,

“I…I just want-”

“GHAAAAARRRRGH!”

The shriek tore through the air, eliciting many more human cries of terror from all around me that I physically couldn’t ignore.

“I can’t move.”

Its huge outline bellowed once more, charging towards me in a horrifying gallop as it dodged cars I couldn’t see and beelined for what I guessed to be our backyard fence.

I shivered from the sight, watching as the entire street behind the monster practically burned bright red from the fear of humans. It was too much for me to process all at once.

Bump

Bubump

“It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming it’s coming.” I told myself repeatedly, clenching my fists at my side.

But as it got nearer and nearer, any resemblance of firmness left my body, and I found myself to be just another one of the countless red dots on this street. Just another scared human.

I was going to die. I was going to get… ripped to pieces by whatever the heck that thing was. Oh gosh… I was really going to die. No no no no…

Desperation clinged to me like a pestering fly, doing nothing for my nerves as I mentally barked useless orders to my equally useless self.

MOVE you...stupid body!

I was frozen in place.

GO GO GO...please.

I didn’t want to die.

Why

Silence this… pathetic speech of yours.

“Terry?!” I thought, welcoming even the smallest reprieve from reality.

I am here so just...calm down. I can barely speak to you when you aren’t calm.

Bump

Bubump

It was...so close now.

It was even bigger than I thought,

“T-terry,” I barely whispered, my voice and hands and...everything shaking uncontrollably as I struggled to catch my breath.

Bump

Was the ground shaking?

Bubump

Yes… the ground…was shaking.

I coughed, watching the fence as it rattled and rattled.

“W-what do I..how do I..what should I do I-”

I felt my body stiffen, once again feeling Terry’s voice collide with my brain.

Listen Damien, you’re not strong enough for me to be able to take over your body, but you’re definitely stronger than this idiot.

It’s simple; punch that thing in the face.

Just punch it.

Stop being so dramatic.

I-it was right outside the fence now, crouching its almost spider-like body down like it was going to jump over the entire thing.

No…not like…it was going to jump over the entire thing.

It was going to pounce on me.

Such a thing didn’t even seem possible with the fact that the yard itself was nearly one acre in size… but I had just jumped forty feet into the air, so things got…a lot more real from here.

I have to move.

Just...punch it?

“Hey dude! What’s that rumbling!??! The power went out, are you okay?!” Jason’s voice suddenly appeared from my left, startling me out of Fear Sight.

Punch it.

I whipped towards Jason, losing any concentration as Jason stepped closer to me.

“No, Jason don’t-!”

“ARRRWARRRRGHHH!”

In a roar that was louder than thunder, a dark shadow was suddenly casted over me and Jason, threatening blue flashes blasting from above as my eyes went upwards.

The monster was high in the sky, a glowing teal spike of flesh attached to each of its six limbs and a torn open hole for a mouth. It rose just as high, if not higher, than my charged jump, its huge form blocking out the rising sun as it started to succumb to gravity. I recalled what Terry had told me the day of my parent’s funeral. I recalled what he said about us being…supercharged. Was this one of those creatures?

When it landed, it was going to crush Jason.

Just punch it.

“HRARGHHHH!”

On impulse, I tackled Jason to the dirt, moving him just as the beast dug its spikes into the grass where we had been standing. Upon its impact, a huge dust wave was kicked up, blinding me and Jason to everything but the brightly illuminated creature from within the murky cloud. I had pushed us far, and created about five meters of space between us and it.

I didn’t know how I did that, but whatever freezing fear I felt had disappeared in that moment. The moment when I realized it wasn’t just my life that was about to be lost.

The monster tilted its head towards me, Its glowing blue form slowly crawling at us like a predator stalking prey while streaks of the same color arced off every point of its body. It was like a living, breathing, moving storm.

Just p-punch it...

“Ohhhh my gosh…” Jason muttered, crawling backwards behind me as he coughed from the dust in the air, “Th-that’s a..a -”

“M-monster..” I finished, standing still in front of Jason, looking through the haze of brown directly into the eyes of our attacker.

Just.. punch… it.

The monster almost stopped crawling at my gesture, bewildered at what seemed like confidence.

But no, this wasn’t confidence at all.

It wasn’t self preservation, and it definitely wasn’t experience.

I glanced over my shoulder, my heart beating rapidly as I saw Jason’s eyes widen with terror.

I looked back at the twelve foot tall mass of bulging flesh, letting every possible restriction or remnant of common sense loose from my body as I held my glare with its lightning blue eyes.

No, it wasn’t any of that.

I slid my right foot back across the scattered grass, clenching my right hand into a fist as I was able to feel the hundreds of sparks zigzagging over my skin.

This, simply, was resolve.

Like I had before, I mentally pretended to have a conversation with the small beads of energy lingering around me, still unable to think straight as I basically pleaded for this to work,

“All of it.” I thought, feeling every vein in my body tense while the monster in front of me pressed its hind set of legs into the dirt to pounce once more,

“A-all of it in my hand…please!”

Upon giving the order, my head was pelted with pain, and I felt like life itself faded from my body.

I didn’t care though. I didn’t care about the sudden nausea passing over me or the fact that I was using all my ‘Excess’ and energy in general.

Why?

Because it was working.

My fist had begun to glow a deep scarlet, practically oozing energy as the sound of electric pops in the air intensified.

My heart was beating so fast…

Just...punch…... It.

My entire arm was now boasting a glorious crimson, sparking uncontrollably as the monster began to charge.

Fatigue was slowly encumbering me, making it difficult to stay standing as my vision scoped.

I took a deep breath, crouching down while slowly bringing my arm back,

“I have one shot,” I reminded myself, my heart threatening to crawl out my chest as the dust cloud parted for the monster,

“ARGHWARRRRRR!” It yelled, lunging for me.

“DAMIEN LOOK OUT!” I heard Jason cry.

I clenched my fist even tighter, swirls of excess extending past my fist until it seemed as if even the surrounding dust and dim early air began to hum with a vibrant red.

I wasn’t going to move.

“Just.”

As the monster flew towards me through the air, its own tendrils of electric blue energy began to envelop the space between us, both our energies reacting with one another before we even touched as sparks of purple light began to pop and burst more frequently by the millisecond. It created a sort of pressure that seemed to extend time itself, trees in the distant border of our yard threatening to snap in half as I heard countless car alarms whir from the street.

“Punch.”

The monster’s ripped open face was basically in reaching distance now, its pitch black skin reflecting off our collective charade of light as its hideous mouth stretched wide enough to swallow my upper half.

As soon as I felt the tiniest hint of its sulfuric breath scrape at my skin, I rocketed my fist forward with every bit of untested strength I had, feeling all of my stored power enter its chin with a resounding,

BOOM!

“ARRRRRR!”

The sound rippled through the air as red met blue, a huge flash of violet erupting from the collision as a trail of black liquid fell from the monster’s mouth, its 12 foot body flying across our yard before hitting a tree with a loud,

CRACK!

The tree snapped in half, the upper part falling down on our fence as the monster slumped onto what was left of the stump,

“It.”

-

The dust had been fully dispersed now, allowing me to get a full view on what was happening.

Mud, dirt, and splinters of wood were scattered through the yard, and at the end of the 100 foot trail of destruction laid the monster.

That was the distance from the epicenter of our yard to the fence…one hundred feet.

I…did that?

Its body was no longer blasting the shining blue from earlier, and instead was just a dark husk of unnatural flesh and mutated bone.

“Agh!” I cried, falling on my knees.

I coughed, my vision blurring as blood came out from my mouth.

The only thing I felt in my punching arm was pain, and ‘fatigue’ was no longer a good enough word to describe the exhaustion plaguing me.

I looked down at my arm, letting out a desperate cry when I saw the white of my bone. The entire sleeve of the compression shirt was gone, exposing the open fracture to the air. Every slight movement brought another wave of pain, and I found it a separate battle to just keep myself from screaming. Police sirens wailed in the distance as I forced my eyes to look at the damage I had sustained. A five inch gap was in my arm, and the same black liquid I saw flowing from the monster’s face was pouring out of me. Had my blood just changed color?

That…that didn’t make sense.

My chest felt like it was splitting apart, and each time I coughed it only felt worse.

“D-Damien!” Jason bent down on his knees next to me, his face covered with dirt, “Y-your..arm.”

“I-I noticed..” I managed to speak, cradling the limb with my undamaged hand, “It-t really hurts.”

Jason suddenly gasped, looking down, “Y-your blood..it’s-”

He took a deep breath, “Dude, I-I’m going to take you to the hospital..” Jason said, standing up.

I shook my head faintly, “N-no… j-just inside please..”

Jason hesitated to touch me, “Damien... does your secret really matter r-right now?”

I shot him a look that said I didn’t really want to do this right now, hoping he got the message,

“Okay, okay, fine..” He muttered before helping me to my feet, wincing in sympathy with each drop of black that hit the grass. I too was covered in dirt and grass, but my head was starting to hurt too much for me to care how I looked. There were too many sounds entering my hypersensitive ears all at once for me to think…

I resisted the urge to scream in pain as Jason hefted me towards the door,

“I-I think you killed it..” Jason whispered, kicking open the kitchen door.

“I better have..” I thought, groaning as Jason helped me sit on a table chair.

The sounds became slightly muffled, my powers evidently not having the stamina to keep up as I felt my eyes start to close.

“Wh-what do I say to the police?” Jason asked,fear in his voice as he made a desperate effort to remain calm. His hands were dripping with my blood, and his body was quivering.

I coughed some more, “J-just..show..monster.”

It was gut wrenching to use my voice, but Jason nodded, seeming to get the jist, “H-how..” Jason struggled to speak, looking at my body, “It was so bright…I couldn’t even see- what did you even do to kill that thing?”

I winced, feeling my ears burn my powers were suddenly turned on again,

What the heck happened here?

I don’t know, I woke up to a scream.

I was so scared.

The power went out for a little bit!

It hit the Mabel Mansion!

I thought I saw two boys playing around from my window, I hope they’re alright.

What could’ve made such an explosion?

I thought I saw Lightning strike

Yea me too!

It must’ve knocked down the tree!

But didn’t it look red to you?

And purple!

You saw that too? I thought I was just seeing things.

The police are here!

Oh gosh, this was a monster wasn’t it?!

They are real!

HEY, Step aside people! Jeez! Make way! Hiru, Melissa, let’s sneak in through the yard. The police are going to the front door.

The burning subsided, my brain once again crashing as I struggled to form a sentence

“J-Jay… Selina..here.”

Jason gulped, exiting a gaze he had locked with the kitchen tile floor, “W-where are they?!”

I nodded towards the kitchen door, “C-coming through that way… police in front..”

BANG

The kitchen door was kicked open by Hiru, who gasped upon seeing us.

Melissa and Selina followed,

“Damien!!” Selina shouted, rushing over to me, but stopping when she saw my blood, “W-what..”

Jason shook a little, “G-guys get Damien upstairs and hide him, I g-gotta go talk to the police.”

He ran off, not bothering to explain.

Melissa’s eyes were wide, “What happened..” She whispered, “Damien?!”

Hiru, not wasting another second, quickly hurried over to my slumped position on the chair and brought me to my feet.

I let out a groan of constricted agony while I put most of my weight on his shoulder.

Selina had fear in her eyes as she looked me up and down, “W-we need an ambulance…your arm, Damien…”

The bleeding had pretty much stopped, but my wound was still visible and I couldn’t feel anything healing.

“No..” I muttered, causing Hiru to stop, “Upstairs…”

Melissa shrieked, “What do you mean upstairs, do you see yours-!!”

“DO as I SAY!” he ordered.

My teeth gritted, not having the strength to shut Terry up, “S-sorry..” I tried, watching the three of them almost step back in shock, “Just…please.”

This is why they can’t know.

Selina stared at me, “D-Damien.”

“G-go..” I managed.

But it was too much. I felt something snap in my head, losing all sense of reality as I felt the sounds of sirens and voices fade.

The last thing I heard was my name before the world went black.