THE SPRINT


I flee.

My shadow follows. His - Its? - pursuit is like that of a rabid hound aware of fresh preyscent pervading the periphery.

"BREAK YOU! FUCK YOU! BREAK YOU! LIGHTS OUT! LIGHTS OUT!"

Quaint.

Dead laughter. The electronic distortion marks it closer to a howl. I catch a fading glimpse of his countenance in a puddle. My eyes register grievous lacerations. Tacit comments emanate directly from a warbled voicebox that blinded by chase haze reduced to surrender even rational thought for pure apoplectic fury. A monitor half-buried inside the cranial cavity flashes between static and portent imagery. Down to cracked bone and peeling skin it's all wire and tubing. Hunter-killer, very likely roided up on an adrenaline cocktail that would give an elephant cardiac arrest.

The practicality of such a messy installation hard to determine. Maybe upgrades don't come cheap and I'm looking at the work of a modern artist. Or it could be I'm just supposed to piss myself.

That my reaper could be the sniveling sycophant I'd once looked on with pity was another layer of irreality I could barely parse. The Amphitheater held no mercy for weakness. Contestants like him were weeded out in the preliminaries.

So how?

Be it luck or some sincere latent aptitude whoever he struck down permitted him the means to turn his vessel into a living razor. The danger of his new anatomy readily apparent.

Hence, escaping with wild abandon in the hope I don't get sliced to ribbons.

Somewhere along the way comes a slowing.

Dreamlike calm dulls my senses. Everything around me is crystal but the mental presence to acknowledge the falling dew drops in the air and the pebbles stinging my soles is absent. Every step an eon. Thoughts surface, aren't internalized, then dissolve to dust.

The forest swallows us both. Weaving between boulders and pines. There's a brief perception of respite and weightlessness. My legs leave the ground. I'm falling. I connect in a three-point roll and in a fluid motion dash around a wallface.

Lightning pain inundates my nerves with agonizing feedback. The realization that my ankle is bent askew.

A scream escapes my lips. Rising in crescendo with death right on my heels. For the trouble of shooting a glance - a branch achieves contact with my face at a velocity that stings like a slap. I spit out teeth. Then I collapse.

"EAT YOU! BREAK YOU! FUCK YOU! CUT YOU! GONER!"

I lean backfirst into a ravine trying to not choke on my own spit. My good friend makes landfall by scuttling in from the cliffside still blaring obscenities and threats I don't expect will soon remain unacted on. Monitor's lower mandible cuts the link with a power drill whirring. Patching and hanging cables spill out from his maw. His spine has telescoped into a constellation of crawling appendages and bionic hooks that drive his neoform onward. Undulating. Crawling. Rusty subdermal saws spring to life. It'll all be over soon.

I slowly raise a dirk to my throat. I will not be butchered by the corpsemachine. Take my heart, rip out my lungs, dissect my brain; but I refuse to meet an end on its terms. My life is mine and mine alone to do as I will with.

The fatalism is replaced with clarity.

Lazily, the blade is sheathed, and I'm at peace.


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Pub: 31 Jan 2023 14:33 UTC
Edit: 31 Jan 2023 16:50 UTC
Views: 474