Bavel (22)
The boy stares down at the man, the world a blinding, ringing sound that pulls his hands to his ears and a scream from his throat. He can’t hear anything, but the raw pain that throbs from the man below him pierces his chest and roots him to the spot. Why did the man stop? Why did he stop?
The woman grabs the boy’s wrist, pulling him out of the way and to the boat. He struggles, confused, trying to shout and feeling his lungs scratch but hearing nothing. She hoists him into the speedboat, yelling at him something he can’t understand. Her eyes are wide, hands shaking and gun gleaming. She puts a hand out in a gesture-- telling the boy to stay where he is, and then she disappears from view. He keeps his hands over his ears and seethes through tears, afraid to even pull up and peek over the side of the boat.
Lia turns to cock her pistol again--
The man socks her across the jaw, smacking her to the ground. He stands on one leg, the other bent, and he limps over her, drawing his electric gun. His scarf has slipped from his neck, and his teeth glare furiously.
“I am not-- JEALOUS of that tinker’s toy! It took the only thing we need to survive, don’t you GET IT?! It’s destroyed what I needed to-- to be here, to think, a-and remember, to live, to-- to be HUMAN!”
Lia begins to push herself from the ground, but doesn’t dare stand. She leers at him, spitting blood. “You stopped being human the moment you turned your back on everyone. It was your choice to form this mindless mob, to slaughter innocent people. You know whose Bavel that is-- so you know whose fault it is for what it’s become. You have no one to blame for all of this but YOURSELF.”
His face wrinkles in rage, semi-obscured by the sandstorm that finally catches them. He opens his mouth to growl back a reply, when he hears the boy scream. He snaps his head up and turns, and he loses all color the moment he knows what he’s looking at.
A Parasite towers over them, its huge body finding balance on its small, bony limbs. It slips in the sand, but eventually finds the wood of the old pier and drags itself forward-- curious why its prey has stopped running. Acid gushes from its gaping mouth, digging holes in the floor, and it grinds to a stop before the boat. Low, loud clicks come from somewhere inside it, a call to its kind or… maybe some kind of laugh. The boy’s knuckles are white as he grips the boat frame, and his hearing fades in only to the sounds of his half-breathing, the sand on wind, and the giant creature. There are no expressions, no face to read, no words it speaks that gives him fear. It can only be described as a raw, animalistic weight that permeates like heat itself, bearing down on tiny ants it only considers worthy smiting.
The electric gun almost drops from the man’s hand.
“Don’t move,” Lia breathes. “Jonathan, don’t--”
“I’m not moving,” he hisses, one foot inching backward.
“Yeah, don’t-- *pant* let it-- *pant* kill you, BEFORE I GET TO,” I wheeze, shouting from down the dock. They shift gazes to the obvious strange dent in the ocean water, the ears that poke up into view, and the small nub hand that reaches up on the edge of the wood. A struggling, small robotic body heaves itself onto the wooden planks, the column of sand built to raise me up sinking back and the water finally closing underneath me. I wheeze still-- why am I wheezing I’m a robot-- and slowly stand straight, shaking from the weight I’m still holding. The wood at my feet cracks.
“You really can’t fight this thing?” I call, barely able to glimpse the enormous bulb through all of the spastic glitches in my eyesight. I figure: why not? “HEY!” I scream, lifting the corpse the boat so generously lent me into the air, and smack it into the Parasite to get its attention. “YOU FAT--” smack “UGLY--” smack “BALLOON--” smack. “I would really appreciate you leaving the killing to ME!” I throw the corpse meters away into the dune, and watch the Parasite grind in a circle to face me-- clearly not interested in the month’s old corpse, and rather the thing made with the materials of its preferred diet. Acid dribbles from its mouth, its body heaving, and I can tell, somehow it’s shifting its weight to lurch at me.
“You think you’re going to kill me?” I sneer, shaking. My gaze flicks at the man, that jolt of raw feeling trying to force it away, but for a moment I catch a something similar from him. Something that paralyzes him now being before this creature, and something that, seeing the boy, seeing him helpless, pushes me forward. The man is--
The word fear flickers through my thoughts for half a second, a word I’d forgotten, a word only said once before the world went black the first time, fifteen years ago. A word I tried to forget, to shut out, but pierces me now. Cautiously I pull it back, pick it apart, feel it around my actions, my reactions, to him-- and I realize: he is as much afraid of this thing, as I am of him. I take another step, the dock splitting from the weight. I growl, hands clenching: “Really?” I’m able to look at the man now. He stares at me, wondering how stupid I could possibly be. “This little thing?” I step again. Finally, my movement seems to register in the Parasite, and having no sense of self-preservation, explodes at it, vomiting acid. Where I would normally grin, I scowl, stop moving, and make no movement to save myself. Instead, I watch with soured contentment as it heavily sprints toward me, and cracks through the jetty, through the first holes it made going down. The dock splits, almost giving way underneath me, but adding more weight to the one I’m already holding feels like nothing all of a sudden. The will to live, to see the boy is enough to keep me standing, enough to lift one hand, enough to send hundreds of splinters driving into the Parasite before it can even think of drowning. Acid gushes from the wounds, hissing against the water and consuming the monster in itself until its pathetic screeches wail into silence. I lift my head, still scowling. “You.”
The boy instantly disappears below the lip of the speedboat, whimpering to himself; but I’m glaring at the man. So much fear-- the word hurts to think-- leading to so much… stupidity. So much that stopped me from being able to even look at him without feeling like my body was splitting at the seams. Part of me is convinced the only reason I’m able to look at him now is because I already feel like I’m falling apart.
I lift my hand again. The man fumbles with his gun, struggling to break from paralysis and stop me from doing anything-- the corpse comes flying back from the sand and bullets into him, sending him flying off of the dock past the woman and into the water. It pins him down, and I push him to the sand where I feel him struggle to fight, clawing at the body to get off of him. My tiny fist closes, expression seething, my attention split between the row of boats pushing harder and harder to fall, and the man I want to feel struggle until he stops moving. Until I know-- until I KNOW-- he can’t come back. All of my anger, all of my hate pushes to keep him stuck there, as much as it hurts, as much as I can start feeling the joints at my arms bleed, as much as my sensors scream to stop before I overstrain my limits. I push harder, screaming in rage, screaming out of everything this man did-- everything he has been to stop me, not just now, not just everything that’s happened in a few days-- but for the past fifteen years. I push at his lungs, never so much rage and pain built up to kill.
I hardly notice the woman snatch up the gun where the man dropped it. She sees the boats hanging above, glances at the boy. She looks at the generator on the speedboat, whips back to me, and curses. “He’s going to short-circuit.”
She sprints off the dock onto the sand, nearly slipping as she tries to make it to me, and I only catch her at the last second before she grabs my cabinet, and forces my arms down to their sides.