18 November 2012
A short loud whack cut through the silence and shattered it into a thousand tiny pieces. He dropped the gun to the floor, his florid hand still shaking, and stared; stared paralysingly into the unknown, and at what now lay before him.
The creature lay motionless. Only moments before its terrifying claws had been wrapped around his pulsating neck; his breath slowly being compressed between its potent grip.
It's hideous head now lolled to the side; its brow furrowed in confusion. The crimson blood oozed from the bullet wound in its chest, creating a reflective pool for the pale moonlight.
The midnight air was now biting; shock waves of ice were now trembling through his veins. The black t-shirt and jeans he was wearing when he left, was no protection from the elements and the threat of hypothermia.
Satisfied the creature was dead; shivering but focused, he returned to his car to retrieve his down jacket. He put the keys in the ignition of the Lancia and started the engine. She purred to life.
'The gun... I can't leave it' he thought to himself.
He crossed the moonlit forest trail to where its lifeless body lay; he saw the gun, but something made him stop, made him look again, made him watch.
It's features were no longer hideous or repellent; its animalistic form was slowly transforming; its terrifying claws were retracting.
He stood, motionless, under the light of the full moon, absorbed by unnatural scene before him.
He slowly bent down and picked up the gun; eyes remaining on the form on the forest floor.
What now lay before him was a woman, the most beautiful women he had ever seen. It was her. There was no mistaking those emerald eyes, that now pleaded straight through his heart. Her chestnut hair, curled, framing her delicate face. The tiny tattoo on the base of her spine.
'Don't follow me' she had said.
He dropped to his knees, empty, broken, and once again a short loud whack cut through the silence and shattered it into a thousand tiny pieces.
Broken • Opuss № I