Page 7 of Taken (After the End #6)
The monster doesn’t have any eyes, or a torso, or arms or legs to speak of, but has these enormous spikes sticking out of its gelatinous pinkish-gray sides that it seems to use to push itself around with.
It lunges at the fighters with its five-meter diameter mouth open wide, its tiny, razor-sharp teeth looking horrifying and comically small relative to its size.
Its red-and-black mouth is open, looking like it’s been streaked with paint using a free form method, flaps and tags of flesh just loose and rippling like pirate sails on each of its roars.
I can’t figure out what it wants, what is happening, where I am, what it’s doing, until one of the humanish males—the male who’d been holding me—stabs it in the side.
It rounds on him, finding him instantly, as if this was the moment it had been waiting for, and then rears up, lifting high, high, higher…
before throttling down like a roller coaster passing its zenith and devouring the male whole.
I scream. No, I don’t. I’m too shocked for that. I didn’t harbor any positive feelings towards the dude who damn near broke all my ribs, but I don't think anybody deserves to be eaten by that.
And the monster doesn’t stop either, but it continues punching towards the earth like it’s trying to worm its way back beneath the surface—and it’s succeeding.
It has half of its head—its front jellybean half—and all of its mouth buried in the sand before one of the demons—the largest one—leaps onto its back and stabs it with both of his daggers.
The beast lurches back up, but the demon is unseated.
He drags his blades around the creature’s head, swinging off the creature’s back and bringing his blades with him like he’s giving the jellybean a half Colombian necktie.
Wait—is that racist? Oh god, I can’t get eaten by a jellybean and be a racist.
I wail and watch as the three demons seem to form some sort of plan and attack the creature in waves, in a pattern, each one approaching the jellybean and stabbing lightly before quickly hopping back.
The humanish males are too slow though, and one trips when trying to retreat.
The jellybean rears its head back up out of the sand and manages to sweep that fighter into his massive maw.
I scream for him—for the horror—but the largest demon jumps onto the jellybean’s back again and repeats his Colombian necktie on the other side.
The jellybean tries to shake him off but is too busy fighting off the other two demons and the remaining humanish warrior. In a disgusting show of pink and grey guts, the monster is eventually beheaded by the big demon and dies.
The largest of the demons comes back around the jellybean, so I can see him clearly as he sinks some kind of a weapon attached to his forearm into the monster's side. He starts to dig with his claws in a way that makes my entire stomach pitch. The taste of bile floods my throat. The other demons do the same and, eventually, they’re able to pull out the two humanish males.
I’m shocked to see they’re both still breathing.
The humanish male who grabbed and tried to bite me looks injured.
I’m not sure how he’s injured exactly, but he is dragging his leg behind him and moaning in pain.
Other than that, it’s impossible to tell what’s his blood or not, with all the goop and blood all over him.
I do not like the guy, but gross. I shudder despite the heat of the day.
The insides of the creature are mostly grey and pink and oh, how they reek.
Que porra é essa?! When the smell wafts in my direction, I imagine that a Portuguese fishing crew got lost at sea after a major haul, the fish all died, the crew pooped all over the deck, then slit their throats out of solidarity with their fish friends and someone later came along and thought hey, this would sell great at the Centre Pompidou, and bottled that essence.
Something like that.
The two smaller massive demons seem to be bickering among themselves in a harsh language I can’t even pretend I speak.
The larger one has stepped away from the group of humanish beings that converges around the two goop-covered males.
It takes me a moment to realize between the shouts that they’re laughing, patting each other on the back, cheering and celebrating their victory.
The males—and a few females, this time—release these calls into the sky that remind me of the celebratory whistle my Tunisian friends would make. I never could quite replicate the sound, but this would give them a good run for their money. It makes me smile. It makes me laugh.
The large demon, still about half a football pitch away from me now, jerks.
His attention snags on me. His huge, taloned feet sink into the soil, and he starts toward me in a burst that I don’t understand for a second.
Then the noises of the world that I’d been blotting out in my effort to concentrate on the battle at hand come rushing back in one choppy shout.
“…Rhen…I believe it may be prudent for you to return to the Sucere Chamber…with haste.”
Oh my god.
“I encourage you to run…Rhen.”
He’s coming closer.
“While I do not have access to my full functionality in my portable module, I can assess that the incoming target is approaching at a rate of seventy-two miles per hour. If you move now at a rate of nine miles per hour, you will just make it to the entrance…Rhen…”
Am I sitting? No. I’m already up. I turn and start to run, but in my panic, I’m running toward the demon and now, he’s taken a flying leap.
“The target has increased his pace and is now approaching at a rate of eighty-eight miles per hour…Rhen. You will need to increase your speed to eighteen miles per hour in order to reach the safety of the Sucere Chamber…”
I turn and bolt. Am I going eighteen miles per hour? What the fuck is that in kilometers? Who built this ship? Who programmed Pam? With a name like Pam—could it be anyone else?
“Fucking Americans!” I scream at the top of my lungs. My vision is hazy against the dimming light, but I can see the entrance of the Sucere Chamber now shooting out of the ground like a sewer pipe, the top propped open like a lazy person forgot to close a manhole cover.
Me. I’m the lazy person. FUCK.
“The incoming target is now too close for you to successfully reach the Sucere Chamber. I recommend searching for a weapon to defend yourself with…Rhen. You will need to fight…”
“Fight a demon? Fuck you, Pam!”
“Apologies, Rhen, but I need to remind you that I am not a sexual being…”
The weight hits me from behind before I’m anywhere near the Sucere Chamber entrance, and I’m out before I have a chance to find a weapon and fight off the demonic horde as Pam suggested.