by Mark Anthony Pritchard (aka Rorshach)
Everything has changed.
'Get up.’ I screamed, as the creatures lurched into the room, dog-like paws grasping the window sill, lifting their large bodies through the battered frame, and revealing the hirsute forms behind the terrible eyes that had awoken me to their presence.
The creatures were different in form to the troglodyte monsters of my first night, but just as terrible. Seven feet (at least) in height, emanating a wet dog scent that I dimly recall from a brutalised memory of my life before this, standing on two crooked legs, the creatures formed a wall of assault, and prepared to attack.
Waking at my cry of warning, the sleeping people reacted as they did on the first night, and began to scramble for cover, heading towards the main door in the room. The beasts, angry at my warning cry, let them flee, and immediately set their sights upon me, striding awkwardly on two crooked canine legs towards my supine location on the damp mattress, their intent was murder, and I was to be their prey.
But, just as my bloody and violent demise seemed imminent, something most peculiar began to manifest itself, a sense of defiance that came from a place that I still cannot locate.
Whereas before, when confusion and fear took hold of me, and I ran with the others, this time, I refused to fly into the night, and instead made the immediate decision to stand my ground, and fight back against the intruders.
Why I chose such a seemingly suicidal course of action, I do not know, but my mind was made up. I would fight, and I would fight to the death. I would not run, and I would not cower in fear. I was going to take them down, one bloody beast at a time.
As amazing as it might sound, this is what happened next.
The first beast threw itself at me with the force of Armageddon unleashed, aiming for my throat, but in doing so took it’s eyes away from the pencil that I still held in my right hand, which I used to devastating effect. Side stepping it’s awkward, blood-crazed lunge, I deftly pivoted my bodyweight backwards, then violently forwards, thrusting the pencil through it’s left eyeball, a strike that elicited a howl of rage from the surprised beast, that rocked the room to it’s very foundations.
With the beast writhing on the floor, incredulous in pain that it had never suspected would be forthcoming, it’s comrades, equally shocked, howled to the ceiling in a gnashing wail of rage that spoke of utter surprise.
This was not supposed to happen.
Why was one of the victims fighting back?
Surveying the room, as my fellow refugees continued to flood through the door, and the motionless beasts slobbered and growled in stilted incomprehension, the one thing on my mind was, find a weapon, and use it, now.
There it was, on the floor, exactly what was required, a plank of wood, four feet long, and a discarded old T-shirt.
With a surge of aggression thundering through my body, a jolt of electric life that thrilled me more than I could ever possibly describe, I took the plank of wood, wrapped the shirt around it, and lit the cloth with the candle at my bedside. With fiery implement in hand, and with the beasts dithering with indecision, I set to the pack, determined to press home my early advantage.
The first beast, howling on the floor at the treatment I had dealt out, was my initial focus of attack. The thing was wounded, not deceased, and death had to be dealt out, as a warning to them all. Mess with me, and I will leave you dead on the floor, a bloody corpse of permanent extinction. That was the message, and I was the perfect vehicle of delivery.
Kicking the fallen form of the wounded beast square in the groin, a strike that elicited a squeal of complete surrender, causing it to squirm over onto it’s belly, I thrust the flaming torch directly onto it’s hairy back, and stepped back to enjoy the result.
The monster burst immediately into flames, creating a bonfire effect that illuminated the entire room in bright light, a fiery spectacle accompanied by deafening screams of the dying beast, a death cry rattle warning it’s brethren of what was to come if they continued their attack.
As the creature burned, a rage enveloped me, a ferocious frenzy that is beyond explanation, a blood-lust of violence for the pure sake of violence, and a desire to smash and burn until nothing was left.
Screaming my battle cry, a genetic memory from another time, another life, another existence, the beasts, seeing the madman roar before their fallen comrade, completely unafraid, began to back away. My immediate instinct was to charge, and so I did, straight at them, six awful beasts versus one ferociously determined man.
It was no contest.
Discarding all concern for their fallen soldier, the creatures panicked into a hasty and ill-disciplined retreat, and began to fall back out of the very window where they had made their initial incursion.
Shrieking, crying, punching and beating each other, they were a routed army in full desperate flight, it was each beast for itself. Comradeship vanished, and the desperate need to run and hide was now, finally, being experienced by the predators themselves.
Watching their retreat was not an option, and I chased after them, determined to wreak my violence upon them once again, which I did, catching one of the beasts as he fell onto the ground. With it’s large muscular arms raised in terrified surrender, I refused all notions of mercy and thrust my flame encased receptacle straight through it’s mouth, staking it into the muddy ground, as I roared my final victory song at it’s fast retreating, escaping troop.
Now, an hour later, with the adrenaline of battle slowly subsiding, I sit comfortably in the centre of the same room, two dead predators cooking on a bonfire outside, a meaty feast for my hungry human companions, and everything has changed.
The people, individuals no more, they want to talk to me now.
They have wanted for me to talk to me for a while, but first, they must wait, as I write, and record, the great victory of today.
In a few short sentences my pencil shall go down. The pencil is a weapon, and the lesson here is to use it well. There is blood on my hand, on the page, and my rage is simmering down. It is time to address my tribe, and this is what I shall tell them.
When attacked, you do not retreat, and scurry away as individuals to be picked off by the advancing tribe. Do so, and you lose, and losing is no longer an option, not here, not now that I am fully awake. The time for retreating is over, now is the time to attack.
I look now upon this bloody stump of pencil, extracted from the eye of a dead monster, and finish the final line of my journal, before the speech is made.
It’s time to talk to my men, to feast on beasts, find lieutenants, and plan for the next stage of our joint operation. For together we REFUSE to lose, and together we violently, aggressively, triumphantly RESIST.
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