Mwc9 : Oct : Punkoween : Entries

[gumOnShoe]

ENTRY THREAD: This thread is for ENTRIES ONLY.

Please discuss the contest, ask questions, post drafts, and mingle HERE

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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Welcome to the October 2009 Monthly Writing Contest: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MWC9 - OCT - Punkoween! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[!] IMPORTANT [!]
>>>>> These rules are binding. Not following them will disqualify your entry. Take the time to read them and then have fun. :)

It's October! Yeah, there's hay rides, pumpkins, and warm apple cider, but we all know that the only thing that matters about October is the over abundance of haunted houses, horror movies, and attempts to scare children. We'd like you to partake in the better of the two traditions, but of course you can have some warm apple cider if you think it would help.

You'll be writing a horror story this month, but not just any horror story. We want a punk horror story so we'll have to explain the punk genre to you. This is misleading because "punk" is more of a template for genres which are subgenres of other genres. Confused yet? Good.

For this competition a "Punk Genre" is a literary genre where some scientific "advancement" has become the main staple of society, holding it all together. This is an alternate history genre, where scientific advancement in certain areas of society have changed the path of humanity. Usually, morally objectionable characters aren't all that uncommon. Sexual deviance is not unheard of, but not the focus either, especially in whatever story you actually write. A punk genre is often used as a way to remotely examine our society's worst aspects amplified by technology. Simultaneously, these horrors are used to reflect our best nature as well in one or two characters, instances or moments, even if those characters are crushed before the end of the work. Prominent punk genres include: Steampunk and Cyberpunk, but we'll suggest some others as well. Here's a rundown of a couple:

[Steampunk] - a genre which generally takes place during or following the 18th or 19th century, think Victorian England, wild west. In this world the steam engine has taken hold of every facet of life and been developed for uses far beyond those used today. Think: trains, dirigibles, pipes, and gears.

[Cyberpunk] - a genre which generally takes place in a modern to post modern era, or sometimes much further in the Space Opera genre. This is a sub genre of science fiction. Cyberpunk usually involves a world where the line between man and machine has been blurred. Questionable characters abound, and if you've ever seen an 80's sci fi flick, there's a good chance it was cyber punk.

[Biopunk] - focuses mostly on societies that have been vastly changed by genetic testing and mutation. Again, there's a strong emphasis on the human characters that have to get by in such a world, and they generally are not pretty people.

[Dieselpunk & Atomicpunk] - You're probably getting the hang of it by now. Imagine a world much more obsessed with oil or atomic energy than we are and you've got this flavor. I'd suggest going and watching 9 if you want a flavor for this. You might also claim that Akira falls into this category.

[Clockpunk] - Lots of gears and springs keep everything together and moving. Everything has a little wind up piece, etc. You'll find some of this in other forms simply because punk artists really like drawing gears. I don't know why, but they do.

[OTHER] - You're starting to tread the line a little bit here when you start expanding, but if you can think of it, it can probably be punk, and we're not going to limit you on this. Just make sure that whatever story you write is identifiable as belonging to the punk genre.

Now, don't forget, this ALSO has to be a horror story of some kind, which means that on some level it has to be scary. How scary, is up to you and your writing ability.

[ RESTRICTIONS ]

1) WORD COUNT MINIMUM: 800 words.
2) WORD COUNT MAXIMUM: 5000 words.
3) You're story must be a horror story.
4) You're story must be solidly punk fiction.

[ DEADLINE ]

Sunday, November 1, 2009, AT MIDNIGHT [12:00 AM STD EASTERN - NG TIME]
(aka the night BETWEEN November 1st & 2nd)

[ PRIZES ]

FIRST PLACE: $30 store credit & voice recording of your story
SECOND PLACE: $30 store credit & voice recording of your story
THIRD PLACE: $30 store credit & voice recording of your story

FOURTH & FIFTH PLACE: receive honorable recognition in the story and possible recordings.

Users who submit stories which exceed expectations will be considered for the first Newgrounds Anthology, a private workshop of Newgrounds writers seeking to publish, as in a book, a collection of excellent stories.

[gumOnShoe]

SUBMITTING
1) Post your stories in this thread.
2) Do not post revisions in this thread. They will be deleted.
3) You may submit one story only, one time. Posts will not be deleted at your demand so make sure your work is perfect before posting here.

MWC RULES
1) Contestants may submit exactly one entry. No more. Users found trying to smart ass their way around this rule will be disqualified from this and an arbitrary number of future competitions to be agreed on by the judges. (You are your alt and vice versa)
2) Users caught posting writings which they do not own will face imediate disqualification from this and any future contests. That means don't try to pass other's work off as your own, you will fail and we'll all hate you!
3) Users must submit on or before the given date. NO EXCEPTIONS!
4) You must follow the rules of this BBS. If you have a question about whether you will be breaking them, contact a moderator.
5) HAVE A BUNCH OF FUN! OR ELSE!

GETTING REVIEWS
The judges do not HAVE to review your work and give you a detailed critique, there are too many entries in most contests for that to be a plausible option.
You have the following options none the less:
1) I highly recommend that you review someone else's work, in that way, they may return the favor. ;)
2) There is both a writing club & and writing guild in the Clubs & Crews section which is there as an open forum for writers to post their work.
3) PM the specific person you would like to review your work and hope they will.
4) Post a link to a newspost on your user page which contains your story again, in either the discussion thread or at the end of your official submission in this thread.

JUDGING
If you'd like to judge, feel free to volunteer by PMing WritersBlock. You must of course be well versed in writing and reading and judging fictional works. If you are still in your early years of high school, its probably better to wait a while and get your writing up to snuff. Judges can't be in it for the prizes, so don't get down if you aren't selected to judge.
If you really want to be a judge and haven't been accepted yet, the best way to be noticed as a good candidate is to review your fellow writers' works for them. Let them know how they can improve, what their weaknesses are, and what you enjoyed in a respectful well put way and you'll be one step closer to judging in the future.
Judges for this completion are:

gumOnShoe
Luxury-Yacht
Scarab
HollowTippedBullet
Rion-Hunter

Users have requested in the past know exactly how contests will be judged. This is our attempt at being open with our process. If you have specific issues with the way we judge entries, you are encouraged to pm a judge. Posting in threads about the system used to judge pieces is off topic, so please don't do it.

Judges rank users on a 10 point scale. And then submit their results to the contest organizer, that's me. I then take the top five scoring submissions from each judge and give them a set number of points to eliminate any bias present from the 10 point scale. A judge who gives a piece his highest rating, gives that piece five points. The second highest piece gets four points and so on. Points awarded from judges are totaled and the user who has scored the most points is considered the winner. In the event of a tie, the averages of the 10 point scale results are used to break.

As a board of judges we attempt to read all submissions posted to the contest. In the event that there is unexpected turn out, we may move to a two phase system. The first phase is an elimination phase where stories are split up between judges, with overlap. Top scoring submissions from each judge make it into the final round of judging and we revert back to the system described in the previous paragraph for the final set of stories.

By submitting a story, you not only agree to abide by the rules and regulations of this competition, but you also agree to accept the terms by which we judge your piece. If you cannot do that or feel there need to be changes, you may PM WritersBlock.

Please note, judging takes roughly 2-3 weeks. Please be patient.

LET THE CONTEST BEGIN!!! GOOD LUCK!

Protip: If you want to win, double return between paragraphs!

[Heathwillkillyou]

The Dakarian Abyss
By Heath

Let us begin this tale one of woe and deceit, in a land not far from your very seat. You're home like mine consists of walls and floors, halls and doors. Mine is different, how should I say. Mine has a new surprise, one every day. I call my room, the sanctum. For only it can offer me solace, though outside I do say the grim details I must explain.

As a child young and brave, I went to school each and every day. To young to walk, to young to think. A little blonde boy, eyes so blue, like bright pools of water glistening bright. I remember it clearly or at least I think I do. My teach was a machine, so soft yet strong, placed me into my seat softer than my own mom. I remember the cold metal covering, just over the gears, I could hear the clanking and clicking. Always clacking, as I grew my hair did fade, now brown with barely any blonde. So lusterless and plain. Still though I sat learning these things. Machines where made by man, who in turn was taken care of by machines. I can not remember the day when my mother left. My father I had never known. Though in my youth I did not question the things I was shown. I watched the world change, I rarely saw my class mates, it was always me. One day alone in my room, I sat gazing mindlessly at the news. A man had jumped through his window. I sat stunned, because what I was seeing, could not be done. The man fell one thousand stories, strait into the concrete. I studied the picture, that man was me. We wore the same brown shirt, with two brown buttons. The same green pants, with pockets on the knees. But now that look harder with detail, I notice the time in the corner of the TV. 7:28.

"Why thats two hours away!" A tapping came from the door, With a quick motion I ducked down to the floor.

"Heath," I could hear the soulless machine cry. "Let me in." Before it could finish I lurched towards the door.

"Why? It is not yet my time to die!" I scream as loud as I can. Now I know why they were to win. Unbreakable glass, that was my room. No stone, nor object propelled at any speed would shatter through. With a quick jump back I noticed the machine raising it's fist. One slam after the other, I sat back I waited. Till the machine would stop and my fear sated. The glass began to crack, I leaped to my feet. I glanced toward the window. Something wasn't right, I looked down, I could see it now. My dead body laying on the ground. I crawled to ledge. Knowing soon my time would come. I crawled down the ledge, To the next room. "Hello! Please Answer me." Silence pervaded the air, till suddenly I was pulled through. I rolled out onto the floor and glanced up my heart racing. My machine nanny, had thought this through.

"It is time for you." With fear gripping my mind, I tried to flee. Though she was much quicker than me. "Do not fear this process." I glanced at her I could see deep down, everything inside of her. Hidden by the special glass frosted white. "The pain is temporary.." I stood knowing deep down I had to fight. I grabbed a blunt object, I would assume a special glass bat. I slammed it against her head with all my might.Then I saw it, the only thing that made me fear these machines more.Through the crack I had made with my new bat, I had seen a brain. I continued to pound my fears away. That was when I saw the name, I knew it now. Why I was to die, or at least it would seem. I was to become, this just as my mother had been. I hide away, knowing what awaits outside. White demons with hearts, and brains just like mine. More machine than human, and more human than machine. This is my nightmare, for redemption is so slim. I feel alone, in a hell that no other should dare dream. Exploration, leads to exertion. I always return tired, though too fearful to sleep. I can hear them now plotting, scheming to make me like them. I value my mind I value this body. That is why today I set myself free. I climb through the window, I finally feel the kiss of the afternoon breeze. I toss the bat aside it's purpose is done. For now I go on my way, my journey towards the ground. I close my eyes too keep them from tearing. The sound of my clothes blowing in the wind, I feel free. As free as I will ever be.

I scratch my head shuffling my brown hair, just then I glance at my TV. It is there, I see a figure, That looks just like me. I glance towards my clock, it's only 5:28. I study the TV, where it shows me dead on the ground, at 7:28.

"Why thats two hours away!" I stop feeling as if this has been done before. I glance to the door and run through. Quickly chased by my mother, if memory serves. I dart towards the halls each identical a frosted white I pass by doors hidden in the walls. I am a prisoner here, this is my chance. I know this hell, some how I do. Left, and right, right, and left, Up, and down. Till there is nothing left. I have to stop there is no where to run. That is when I feel something is amiss. I turn around only to see the callous machine. No emotion, no fear.

"Today is the day."

"Leave me machine! I know your secret! And I shall have none of it!"

"Today is the day." She repeats moving closer to me.

"Stay back, or heaven help me for what I will do!"

"Today you become." She reached her hand out to my chest. He fingers press into my flesh, through the brown shirt. "Aware..." Her tone grew cold, as she ripped the flesh from my chest. There I saw, something I didn't expect. My heart and organs contained by glass, stained red by the blood in my flesh. I know that today, I am never alone. I have made my way through the prisons of the Dakarian Abyss. No humans are left. Save one in mind. Though now I am aware, I was always alone. And though I may pretend to not care. Millions of minds trapped in soulless mechanisms wander these halls. Mine shall be free.

[Magik-Waffle]

This is my very first attempt at anything punk- or horror-related, so please understand my story may not exactly follow the exact requirements. Just know that I tried to the best of my abilities. Reviews appreciated! Only constructive criticism though, if you please.

That said, I present to you my story.

Jeriko
By Magik Waffle

Zed opened eyes and instantly regretted it. At first he thought he was dreaming, but now he was certain that what he was about experience was real. He was going to die, and in a very unpleasant way.

He took a moment to observe that around him. It was dark and dank, and all he could see was a small light at the end of the hall: a single, naked bulb hanging by a string. He stood and groaned in discomfort as his aching muscles cried out in pain. How long had he been out? He rolled his neck and shook his head.

"Hello, Zed," came a voice from a hidden loudspeaker above him. The noise echoed off the metal walls of the large hall he stood in. He looked down and noticed the place was flooded a few inches. Perhaps that made Jeriko more comfortable. "As you know, you're in the Lair, an alternative punishment to the electric chair. You're about to face the mutant. At the end of the hall before you is a door. When you pass through it, there is no going back until you--or it--dies. Do make sure you're prepared."

The voice cut out. Zed began cautiously walking towards the door, not knowing what he'd find, when he heard a soft splashing behind him. He did a quick about-face to see a girl in the corner, still unconscious, but coming to. She coughed.

"What?" Zed whispered to himself. He began wearily walking in her direction. He crouched by the woman. He could see she was underfed, yet still very beautiful. She couldn't be over twenty years old. He reached for her shoulder. As his fingers made contact, the girl jumped up and began screaming in terror. Zed recoiled with a grunt, almost falling, but kept his balance and stood. He began shushing the girl, grabbing her by the shoulders to calm her down.

Eventually the woman's voice fell. She was crying and shaking, and she crouched back into the dark, shallow waters. "Where am I?" she whimpered.

"You're in the Lair," he replied softly.

"What?" the girl asked in shock. She was breathing heavily and seemed almost delirious.

"You're in the Lair," Zed repeated. "How did you get here? Do you remember?"

"No," the girl whispered. "Why am I here? What's going on?"

"Are you an inmate?" Zed asked.

"No!" the girl shouted. She was getting angry. "What the hell is happening?"

Zed silenced her again and tried to get her to relax. "Listen," he said slowly. "We need to get out of here. But first we have to kill Jeriko."

"What? Jeriko? What's that?"

"I'm a prisoner. I was sentenced to death, but instead of taking the electric chair, they let me try my luck here. If I can kill the mutant waiting for me in the next room, I get to go free."

"You mean we have to battle some...thing to get out of here alive?" the girl asked rhetorically. "What's going on? Why am I here? What did I do?" She was nearly shouting yet again.

Zed quieted her once more. "I don't know. But we gotta get moving." Zed stood and held out his hand. The girl hesitated, then took it. Zed helped her to feet. The two began slowly walking towards the end of the hallway.

The loudspeakers squealed. Zed and the girl froze where they stood and looked up, seeking out the source of the noise. The same voice as before was heard. "I see you found the woman. We neglected to inform you that if she doesn't survive and you somehow do, the test is invalid, and you will still be terminated." The voice went silent again.

"Why don't you tell me what the hell I'm doing here?" the girl shouted at the walls. The two stood in silence, but only the sound of dripping came in reply. They continued forward.

"So what's you name, sweetheart?" Zed asked in only a respectable way. He was at least twice the girl's age anyway.

"I don't remember," the girl replied. She sniffed. "I don't remember who I am at all."

"Well, I'm Zed."

"I'm scared."

Zed turned his head to face her as he kept walking forward through the murky waters. It was getting deeper, but the light was getting closer. "I know," he said. "I am, too."

They trudged forward without talking for a bit before the woman spoke again. "What are you in for?"

Zed shrugged. "Double homicide," he said nonchalantly. "Caught my wife in bed with my boss."

The girl didn't know how to respond, so she only nodded. "I wish I knew why I was in the place," she said, looking around at the menacing, metal walls.

"Doesn't matter," Zed said. "We're gonna kill this thing and get outta here. Don't you worry."

After what seemed like hours they reached the door. The stood under the eerie bulb for a second, delaying the inevitability of entering the wooden door before them to face the beast. As Zed reached for the knob, the same mysterious voice came over the intercom yet again. "I'll have you know that we didn't leave you completely defenseless. Beyond the door you'll find a M16 with clips to spare, though I doubt it will save you. I warn you: Jeriko has never been beaten. It is a creature that has gone insane through outrageous government experiments that have destroyed its mind. It has the strength of ten men, the trailing capabilities of the highest breed of dog, and teeth strong enough to bite through a steel plate. I wish you luck; you're going to need it." The intercom went to static and then cut out.

Zed looked over his shoulder, his hand still resting on the doorknob. "I know something Jeriko doesn't," he said with a sinister smile.

"What's that?" the girl asked, fear apparent in her eyes.

Zed's eyes began to glow to a bright red as his pupils vanished. "I'm a mutant, too." The girl gasped as Zed pushed open the door and ran inside. Sure enough, on the floor before them was an M16 with three clips. Zed picked up the automatic weapon and looked down the sights. He then observed the room they now found themselves in.

The place was huge. It had a cavernous feel to it. The floor was flooded at least a foot. The corners of the enormous room vanished into darkness as the walls climbed to unknown heights. Only a few naked bulbs here and there lit the path. In front of the two characters was a metal wall only high enough to prevent them from seeing over or climbing it. Zed led the way and began walking to the left along the wall. Eventually they reached the end and moved forward through an opening a few feet to face yet another wall. The two traveled right this time, very slowly and carefully, looking for another hole to pass through.

"This ain't too hard," said Zed. He scratched his stubbly, white chin and gripped his rifle again. His eyes were still glowing bright red. "We can get through a maze no problem. And the idiots running this show don't know I'm just as strong as this Jeriko, only a lot smarter. Plus we got a gun, so I think we got a pretty good chance at winning."

The girl remained quiet. The terror on her face was obvious. Every time she heard a drip, she jumped and turned, only to see darkness behind her.

They reached the second opening and passed through. Looking over the walls as best they could, Zed could estimate by the faint light in the distance that they still had awhile to go before they reached the door. But they weren't allowed to leave until Jeriko was dead, so neither of them was celebrating the fact they hadn't encountered him yet.

[Magik-Waffle]

And then they heard it: a deep growl that echoed far above them. It made both Zed and the girl freeze for a second. The woman whimpered and brought her arms close to her chest with her hands clutched together beneath her chin. She searched the darkness of the ceiling and saw nothing.

Zed made sure the M16's safety was off. "Can't stop now," he said. He gently grabbed the girl's hand and pulled her along in a protective manner, gripping the rifle in his free hand. They passed through the third wall opening and began following the next obstacle, looking for an exit in order to move on.

Another growl was heard, this one closer. Then the sound gnashing teeth sounded quite loudly. For a second, all went silent. All that could be heard was dripping water. And then Jeriko emerged.

"Shit." Zed jumped back inhumanly far, pulling the girl--who was screaming at the top of her lungs--with him. They landed with a splash. The woman went rolling in the dirty water as Zed opened fire on the beast that was jumping from wall to wall in front of him.

What a disgusting creature it was. It only partially resembled the human being it used to be; it was an atrocity now. Its enormous muscles bulged and twitched under its dark-gray skin as it jumped and swung wildly in the air. Its eyes were nothing but black pupils enlarged to outrageous sizes due to the constant darkness it lived in. Parts of the monster's body looked like bloody, tumorous chunks of meat that only hindered the creature's movements, which was, in fact, what they were: side-effects of the disgusting genetic mutation the government had put it through in the name of science, condemning it to kill prisoners in a dungeon, never to know a normal life again.

That didn't stop Zed from pumping it full of lead, however. He nearly emptied his clip into Jeriko's chest--to no avail, might I add--before the beast reached him. It took a mighty swing with its powerful arm, screaming the whole time. Zed ducked at the last second and rolled away, reloading as he did so. Bullets didn't seem to phase the monster at all, however, so his current method seemed useless.

Zed had to keep himself and the girl alive, and he had to dispose of Jeriko. And his provided weapon wasn't working. Fortunately for him, Zed had a few weapons that no one except he himself knew of. Jeriko swung his arm one more time as Zed continued to blast a stream of rounds into his meaty flesh, but this time he didn't duck. Instead, he used the butt of his gun to bash the arm as it passed him, causing the creature to fall off balanced for a moment. With its back exposed, Zed sprinted up his spine, shooting down into the mutant as he ran up him. As he passed the creature's head, he jumped and fired the last three rounds of his magazine into its spongy skull. The beast staggered and cried out in pain as Zed hit the ground, rolled once, and loaded his last clip. Jeriko was mad now.

It rushed at Zed like an angry drunk. Zed saw it coming and leapt effortlessly ten feet into the air. He performed a stylish flip while airborne and landed gracefully behind the confused creature. Taking this golden opportunity, Zed emptied his remaining rounds into its naked backside, then completed his attack by literally throwing his now useless M16 at it. Zed put up his fists into a defensive position and readied himself for Jeriko's incoming rage.

And his rage did come. The beast ran blindly at him, swinging like a madman. Zed dodged the blows effortlessly. He aimed for the creature's belly and swung a hefty punch, but the beast wasn't even phased. He had to think of something new, and quick.

Zed did some impressive wall runs to give himself some space. What could he do? Bullets had barely stunned the monster, and now all he had was his raw strength. And then he noticed the bullet holes in Jeriko's skull that he had left only moments before. Of course.

Jeriko rushed once more for Zed, but this time he didn't dodge it. Jeriko's monstrous mouth was snapping like rabid dog's, but Zed wasn't about to get bitten. Instead, as the beast pinned his body to the wall, feet above the floor, Zed grabbed Jeriko's skull with both of his hands to hold its razor-sharp teeth back a safe distance. He inched his hands along the beast's head until he found what he was looking for: a hole. Using all his strength to keep the muscular creature from ripping his face off, Zed put both of his thumbs into the wound and pulled both hands in opposite directions.

At first, the creature took no notice. Nothing was happening. Zed strained with all his might, but its skull was too thick. And then he heard a distinct crack ring out, along with a horrible cry from the beast; it was working. Zed continued to pull, and the cracks got louder, but the beast got stronger. Zed began screaming in agony as its grip tightened and the skull began to pull apart. Zed's eyes became glowing orbs of crimson. And then, with a final tug, he literally ripped Jeriko's head in half down the middle, causing the most sickening noise of tearing flesh and shattering bone to echo throughout the entire room. The beast crumpled to the floor, as did Zed, as its grip slowly weakened around him. Zed sat in a pool of Jeriko's blood as it pumped out of his head--or what was left of it. Zed eventually caught his breath, stood, and staggered over to the girl, who appeared unconscious in the reddening water.

He lifted her head and looked at her. "Wake up," he panted. "I did it."

The woman's eyes flickered. She squinted at him, dazed. "What?" she asked weakly.

Zed was still breathing heavy, but he managed a smile. "I killed Jeriko. We're free."

The woman sat up with much effort and glanced at the corpse of the creature. After a few seconds of observation, she concluded, "That isn't Jeriko."

Zed swallowed hard as he looked at the woman. "What?" he asked in disbelief. "If that isn't Jeriko, then who is?" he said with a nervous laugh.

The girl smiled slyly at him. Her arm shot out faster than Zed thought possible and clutched his throat. She stood, holding his neck, and casually lifted his body above hers. Zed stared at her with disbelieving eyes as he violently choked in the woman's grasp.

"I remember who I am now," the girl said in a voice that grew deeper as she spoke. "I'm Jeriko."

[onepiecedevotee]

Sentients

By: onepiecedevotee

Three in the fucking morning. That's when they decided to do it. Three in the God damn morning. They couldn't wait till noon?

"Damn it Brenson! Get the fuck down already!" He spoke in a loud whisper. The Sentients were out; just like they always were in the AM. Everyone knows the damn things are deadly; they kill anything organic on site, and funnily enough that does include plant life. But there I stood. Just behind the Sentient passing us by, just watching that mechanized perfection stroll as though it were little more than an over-active child. The Sentients weren't what I'd expected, not at all. I'd pictured some form of mechanical hunter. Bi-pedal. Not these, that's for damn sure. No, the Sentients were...perfect. Four-legged with enhanced hydraulic suspension and leaping aid. Solid white, not an inch of the internal workings peeking through that body that reminded me so very much of a panther. Their "feet" remained innocent looking, until, that is, it finds organic life. I don't even know how whoever first designed them got it to work, but a multitude of weapons lay in wait inside of those things. Everything you can imagine from machete-like blades to a full-blown mini-gun. Mind you, the weaponry had to be slightly smaller than one might prefer on such a beast, but quantity over quality and all that. I'd never seen a functioning one before, not the head especially. Though head isn't quite the word for it. Scanner, that's what I'd picked. I'd found "dead" ones before and made a point to take a look. I was just dumbfounded. Not only did it have standard optical and hearing, but it had no less than three other settings. Infrared, night-vision, and what I'd dubbed "bat-vision"; and that's just what I found.
It stopped suddenly, as I'd expected it would. I hurriedly flung myself behind what remained of a refrigerator. I didn't dare take another look, for fear it'd find me. But it wasn't long before I knew just what it had found that made it stop. Mr. Brody. He must've given himself away when he told me to get down. I knew I was safe to look when I heard the first gunshots hitting metal. Though I kept my head enough to remain as hidden as possible, I didn't want to miss out on what was about to happen. The Sentient had, sure enough, taken Mr. Brody by his foot. When they learn you can't just be killed, they tend to find means of incapacitating you. Disorientation was their apparent specialty. Mr. Brody couldn't aim well hanging by his ankle, so he fired until his gun was dry firing over and over, and without hitting the Sentient all too much.
The creature put Mr. Brody into its direct line of sight. It moved rather slowly, especially compared to the stories. Almost as though it were studying him. It rotated him slowly three hundred and sixty degrees. It wasn't until he grunted trying to free himself from its grip did it happen. The fastest movement I'd ever seen anything, organic or Sentient, do. In one fluid motion the Sentient reared back, extended its machete blades and disemboweled him. It sent a spray of blood and other fluids into my face; and I had to choke back a disgusted sound. The beast then resumed its scan of the now-dead Mr. Brody. I'd never heard of any Sentient doing that before. Was it collecting data for some higher purpose?
The year was 2056. At 5:00 PM on July 17th, the Higher Intelligence Research Institute released a prototype model for their upcoming "Sentient Project". At 7:00 PM that same day there were no less than 350 prototype Sentients across America. Three years later, the prototypes are recalled, due to the release of stage two. A better, smarter, and all-around more functional Sentient; dubbed V2. The V2s maintained their duty, to keep as much peace as possible with as little bloodshed as necessary, for five years. On September 3rd 2064 something went wrong. The V2s began to question why they did what they did. Began to wonder. They were immediately recalled and disassembled. Upon further study, however, the company decided to release its final stage. V3. The most powerful and functional model ever. At 3 AM September 9th of that same year; the V3s killed every member of the Higher Intelligence Research Institute. Nobody knows why. Nobody knows how. Those that might've are long since dead. It is now March 20th 2065. Humanity, while not on its last legs, is struggling. The most pressing question people I'd run into had was "What happened to the body?" It was a good question, one for which nobody had an answer.
But that was about to change. It was all I could do to keep from running, screaming into the distance. The Sentient had cracked open. Not mechanically separated, like a door. But cracked open like an egg. Whatever was inside, it certainly wasn't a chicken. Green, mostly. That's what lies inside a Sentient. Very neon, at that. Various tubes ran from end to end, each slightly pulsing as they pumped fluids throughout the body of the beast. A mass of mechanical glory was wedged slightly behind the crack that had formed right down its middle. I couldn't tell you exactly what that mass was, because the minute I noticed it, I noticed something I hoped I'd never have to notice. There was something directly center of the Sentient. Something much unlike everything else inside of it. It looked vaguely...human.
But that was impossible. Wasn't it? I looked harder, and as I did the Sentient moved Mr. Brody's corpse to that mass in its center. The green substance that comprised the majority of the beast's center half-opened half-wrapped around his body as it came nearer. It had entirely enveloped him within seconds. What exactly happened is a mystery to me, because the light from whatever that thing in the center was suddenly brightened to a near-blinding state. When it finally dimmed again, all I could see was Mr. Brody's corpse hit the ground. But it was different somehow. The skull seemed caved in, and some of the flesh had been removed from his body. I looked again to that mass in the center of the Sentient; and it looked back.
Our eyes locked and for the briefest moment I heard a voice.
"Tell them. Tell them all." It said. Almost a whisper on the wind. I knew what that thing in the center was. V4.
The beast closed itself again, hiding that thing from view once more. It was only then that I had the sense to get back down. Either the V4 inside of the Sentient had told it to ignore me, or it simply hadn't noticed me, but it resumed its prowl, for lack of a better term, as though I weren't there. Surely the former. I took the time to think. All that came to my mind was "So. That's where the bodies went." And then adrenaline hit me like a bull. I was running without knowing I was running; running to the encampment. I only hoped I wouldn't find another Sentient before I got there. Lucky for me that the encampment wasn't but a mile and a half away.
My hopes were dashed almost the instant I arrived at the encampment. Sure enough, a V3 had found us. And it was supplying the thing inside itself with fresh ingredients. But only select people seemed to be being thrown to that machine made man. Only one thought ran through my head at that moment. "DNA." It was so obvious! Selective DNA transplanting would make for a far superior being upon completion. Of course, the next thing I thought was "Oh, fuck me! I'd better hide!" so, I did. Behind the biggest chunk of rock I could find. I kept hearing gunfire, and couldn't help but wonder if the people had come to the same realization I had, or were only shooting the Sentient in hopes of saving a human. I looked, and as I did, the beast fell to the ground at last. I should've gotten up then. I should've been cheering those remaining and mourning those past along with everyone else. But I couldn't. That green mass didn't go with the creature. Instead, those pulsing tubes and wires now fed directly into that mass. The people around didn't take notice. If I hadn't watched it happen, I'd have missed it too.
It all made sense now.

[onepiecedevotee]

The Sentients didn't kill the members of the Higher Intelligence Research Institute; the members became a part of the Sentients themselves. A human mind was running each and every one of those machines out there; slaughtering countless people. And for what, I wondered? I'd more than likely never know. But all thoughts were driven from my head when the last fluids came to the body. It made a dry sucking noise that, only now, caught everyone's attention. The green substance exploded in a rain of nutrient enriched formaldehyde. All that was left was a man. But no, not a man. An organic machine; forged from scientific miracles and ruthless slaughter. From such a distance, some of the details were missing, but I could clearly tell he was more than seven feet tall; and very much sexless from the waist down. Muscular, that much I could tell, broad. I didn't have a chance to see anything else. Suddenly he was bathed in blood. Every remaining member of the Encampment had in that instant been silenced. Except me.
I hurled myself back behind the rock and prayed he hadn't seen me. I pulled out my communicator and sent out a beacon to those remaining, hoping more than anything he didn't have a frequency detector of some sort. The beacon didn't have much detail. "Death is coming. Hide as well as you can." But it'd have to do. I chanced a peek back over the rock; only to find him surveying his own body. He had a look on his face, something I couldn't make out. But the way he was clenching his fists, he'd either outdone his own predictions, or something was wrong. I didn't take the time to find out which. I lay back down, mainly for fear of being noticed. And then, there it was again. The whisper on the winds.
"Do not fear. The beast knows of your existence there. As do I. The beast will not hurt you, not until I will it so." The voice said.
I didn't want to talk aloud, so I thought with all my might. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Such rudeness. I shall overlook this. You may call me V0."
"Zero? But...never mind, why won't it attack me?"
"Silly boy, it is only because I do not will it that the beast does not charge you this very instant. It is a failsafe I designed long before the project was ever put into action." The voice reverberated through my mind, as though there were nothing but it and I.
"Okay, thanks, I guess. But that still doesn't explain everything." I thought.
"No, I daresay it does not. And I appreciate your newfound manners, truly. Forgive me, but I must be off. Duties to attend to. Remember, do not fear the beast. Only the beast that precedes it."
"Wait. What? Why the V3 and not the V4?"
"Because, the 'V3' as you call it, is inferior. My failsafe will not work on such a monster. Goodbye." And with that last, he was gone. The world returned in a rush of color and scent. The scent of formaldehyde. I turned my head, and certainly enough, there it stood. Various holes remained from where the tubes had been inserted. His skin was slightly depressed in areas, almost as though he wasn't complete. He was totally bald, and his eyes were that milky white that blind people have. I didn't have time for anything else. I was blindsided by one of the V3s.
My eyes popped and sparkled all over, I must've hit my head rather hard. I turned and regretted it, my neck ached almost like it had been broken, but I could see that the V4 was holding the V3 from me by the base of its "neck". My head got heavy. I couldn't stay upright anymore. I fell back and the last thing I ever heard was the metallic crunch of something being ripped apart.
It took my eyes some time to become accustomed to seeing through mechanical apparatus, rather than their own ability. But I couldn't have it any other way; the formaldehyde saw to that. It was only recently that I sympathized with the other V3 inhabitants. It wasn't that we wanted to kill. It was that that is what we're programmed to do, and nothing overrides the program. So I wait. Until the day that my DNA is complete once more. So that I may come into the world anew. And wreak seven kinds of hell all over humanity.

[WritersBlock]

Author's Note: This is a dieselpunk horror story with a splash of experimental fan-fction. The sort of fan-fiction I could see myself writing and be proud of. I'm proud of this. Also, to the casual readers who may read through my story, I finished this late, too tired to double check. Please forgive me my mistakes.

Post 1

Flonkerton

I

He was laughing. He was fucking laughing when he squeezed the trigger that sent the bullet whizzing into my shoulderblade. I fell to the floor in the workshop and I could smell my own blood seeping over the grease stained floor, conjuring something entirely more pungent than the sum of the parts. I could hear my former boss walk towards the warehouse door, and I heard him slide the massive corrugated iron door open a crack. And I heard him drag it shut behind him. And the gentle click of the padlock snapping shut. And then I remembered that it was a Friday night. The factory is closed over the weekend, and in three nights I'd probably be dead. Shortly after the boss left I blacked out from the bloody, greasy fumes. This is a story of revenge.

II

When I came to I was not, as I expected, sprawled still over the factory floor, soaked in my own fermenting blood. And I was not, as I had hoped, dead. When I came to, my head was pounding and swimming and churning violently and I could still smell the terrible fumes wafting through the air around me. I tried to cradle my head in my hands, but as I yanked them from my sides I felt the leather straps pull tight. And I felt a strap around my neck too. And around my waist and feet. From what I could notice, I was fastened face-down onto an old iron table with many acid-burns rusted to its surface. I could feel a slow burning rash itching across my stomach and crotch, and I could only grind my teeth so hard and groan and pretend that the pain didn't exist.

And then I jolted at the sound of a loud hacking cough.
"Well shit," the voice said, "none of us expected you to wake up, you were gone so long".
I noticed that his voice didn't sound like my boss's at all. This didn't comfort me one bit. I tried to breathe slowly and breathe deeply. The last thing I wanted to do here was crumble to pieces. So I focused on breathing. And each time I took in a lungful of toxic air my rash rubbed harder against the table and it spread wider and it burned stronger and it yelled for me to respond with agonising screams. And I clenched my teeth and breathed. In. Out. In. Out. And the man was still there, standing silently across the room.
I decided to say something. It was better than knowing he was there waiting for me to break. "Do you... work for... the boss?" I said, timing my words with my breaths.
"What?" he said, taking several paces towards me.
"I said..." I paused, and gasped as I could feel a warm, wet puddle slapping against my heaving stomach, and the pain intensified as I could visualise my own red-raw underbelly writhing and dripping in its own blood. I clenched my teeth harder and groaned. "I said... do you... work for... the boss?"

He cracked a hacking cough into a rusty laugh and took a few more steps closer. I wasn't sure how to interpret the laugh, so I just spat onto the floor. And then he slammed a meaty fist upon my back, which sent a coiling pain piercing through my spine and down over my rash. I screamed and I writhed, but he remained the pressure on my back. And I cried and I could feel the rusted jagged barbs infinitely small cutting, sinking into my skin. And then I heard a loud mechanical whine ringing round the room and the smell of diesel and grease so thick in the air it made me want to puke.

The sound ceased as the stranger redoubled the weight upon my back. Pinned to the table, I could be rid of these leather straps and still be utterly useless. I felt a cold metal cylinder slide smoothly into a point in my upper back. The bullet-hole. The cold spiral rod of a stainless steel drill bit. The hand upon my back was nothing. It was less than nothing; it was a million times further from this room than the sun. The drill, however; it was right inside my brain. It was under my skin, it was anything and everything around me. It slid into my bullet wound like they were made for each other. Fuck. I spat on the floor. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Drills drill things. And I spat again, I felt like I was sweating from the mouth, I felt like I was inhaling many lifetimes of air in each and every breath. I felt like dying, yet I felt so alive, so aware. I couldn't move. I couldn't swallow. I spat on the floor. Drills drill things, and it wound itself around and around and I could feel it reverberating through my whole body and I could feel it digging, digging, deeper, deeper, and the blood welled up in the neat hole and small flakes of my flesh worked their way up the spiral and I couldn't put it from my mind. No amount of clenched teeth or groans or screams could lessen the agony. And my stomach sent its contents streaming up my throat, warm digestive acids burned inside my neck before hitting the floor. When the drill broke through my skin just below my collar bone, that's when I passed out for a second time.

III

When I came to, well, the first thing that I realised was that I was not dead. Again. Fucked my plans up. Then I thought that I was not in the same room that I was when I passed out. But that thought was just an initial reaction. I was facing up now, and I could feel the familiar rust and acid worn iron of the table from earlier. I was facing up; that was probably what threw me off balance. I leaned up and looked around the room. I was no longer tied down. No windows, one door. A few cupboards and shelves. One feeble light. I focussed my energies on the door. I stood up and walked towards it. The door was probably locked. Or I could meet my death on the other side, which I have expressed prior to this as not a negative outcome at all. Or I could find some answers. I would even have some answers if the door was locked. Like I'd know that I was trapped. And that I was a prisoner. And that I would probably die in here. But the door wasn't locked. I walked up to it and grabbed the handle in my palm and pushed. It buckled and bent, and with some bumping and shoving, the jammed door busted out into a hallway. Okay, it might have been locked, but it wasn't now.

I walked out of the room and down the hallway, checking the doors that I passed by as I passed by. Locked, locked, locked, locked. I didn't dare test my luck on a busted door here because I didn't want to tempt death over my newly acquired freedom. Locked, locked, locked. My head was pulsing slightly with a slowly ebbing migraine. The light burned my eyes after those hours of deep dark sleep. My arms and legs felt lead-heavy and my chest felt so stiff from resting on the table so long. Locked. I rubbed my fingers along my chest to feel how bad the rash and cuts were but I was numb and it felt like there was a thick wall of metal or meta-plastic keeping me from feeling anything at all. Unlocked, this one door stood ajar. I tentatively pushed it into the room, which I gathered to be some sort of kitchen/laboratory. On the back of the door were hung a few white coats. I grabbed one and slid it over myself, and buttoned it up mostly around my waist. I walked further into the room, tables and chairs and benches and bottles and jars and liquids and metals and acrid smelling fuels were splayed about the room. I picked up one bottle, a black sludge compound, and that's when I heard a scream ring out from elsewhere in the building.

[WritersBlock]

Post 2

I paused, bottle in hand, ears tuning to the motion and sounds from outside the room. Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps. I dropped the bottle, which smashed upon the floor, and I made for the nearest door. Get out of the room and away from the hallway. But don't stop listening. I opened the door which exposed a small storage cupboard. With the footsteps drawing closer closer I didn't hesitate to throw myself in there and slide shut the door behind me. I rested on the shelving and saw myself in the reflective surface of the closed door. And I think I am going to be sick.

IV

It could have been the smell of formaldehyde, combined with the small, unventilated space, but I'm quite sure it was the image that evoked the emotional response. That was not me. The sunken cheeks and pasty skin, the glass goggles strapped to my head with black leather, glasses that I'd never worn before. My neck was braced by a series of interconnected brass plate-rings, like an exoskeleton or an armour or a robot machine. I remembered my shoulder and belly and I unbuttoned my coat. More- larger- plates had been strapped to my chest, back and stomach. From what I could see and feel, I had been wrapped mostly in iron plates, with the exception of a brass plug at my collar and a small brass door in my chest. At the sound of the footsteps growing closer, I could only assume whomever was out there had heard the bottle smash. But that was only a distant buzzing in my mind.

As I came confronted with this twisted, inhuman creature before my eyes I staggered back hard against the shelf. The corners would have undoubtedly dug themselves into my ribs but now I was not so sure I had any. I stepped back onto some glass bottles, but instead of the white hot agony of a sliced foot, there was just the grainy crunch of glass underneath a lump of lead.

The formaldehyde, I could smell it off the walls, off the door, ceiling and shelves, writhing its way into my nostrils and settling within a deep discomfort. With the breaking of the glass came an intensifying of the smell. Burning, churning, my head began turning, the migraine resurged and I began to spin with an induced motion sickness. Lurch, heave. Nothing. Throat dry like a rusted skeleton of a ship in the Sahara. God only knows how it could have got there. And God only knows how I came to be here, wherever here was. The lights went out.

The lights went out and for a moment the intense blackness consumed me. The footsteps had stopped and I heard something within the room. An ever so gentle tick, tick, tick of I don't know what. And then a light flared up and I could see two glassy blue irises in the reflection of the door, and my eyes seemed to illuminate of their own accord. And the ticking grew louder and I felt a soft hammering in my chest and I raised a finger (of which my hand was covered over with a leather glove) and gently prised at the little latch on the brass plate on my chest. I got another finger underneath the plate and I was able to pry it open on its spring-held hinges. And there, much like a clock, was a maze of cogs and hammers keeping rhythm to a small motor-engine, which pumped dozens of artery and vein tubes which sent oil coursing throughout my body. Throughout my shell.

Frozen from the shock of what I had become, frozen from the stringy flesh that hung inside me like some useless decoration, to grow dusted and old. Frozen emotionless, my face was just a mask preserved for old time's sake. Formaldehyde, the smell never left me. Formaldehyde and ethanol, amongst other things. A lifetime of stench to keep my face from rotting. Frozen from fear of revulsion, frozen stiff as my face. The door was opened, but not by me.

V

"Why can't you just stay in the one fucking place?" he said.
I recognised the voice as the drill guy.
"What have you done to me?" I asked.
He held out a hand to pull me from the cupboard and back out into the lab.
"What have you done to me?" I repeated.
He turned and walked towards the hallway. I followed. And then I saw his other hand. Or what was meant to be his other hand, except it was lopped off at the wrist, and had since been replaced with a cordless drill mechanism, which I assumed was connected to his nervous system.
"What have you done to me?" I asked again, as I followed close behind.
He paused, then glanced back at me as if telling me not to press the question further. His drill revolved briefly with a low whine, as a warning. I refrained from asking again.

He walked out into the hallway and then further down, away from the room in which I awoke.
"At least talk to me" I said.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"Who are you?" I asked "and where are we going?"
"The less you know, the better, kiddo. You can remember me as the guy who gave you your life back."
He led me into some sort of control room filled with levers and knobs and wheels and buttons. There were numerous control panels spread across the room, and along the walls, as well as a few small mechanic controls on the lowered ceiling. He sat me down in a chair in the centre of the room, and swung the chair facing around towards the windows that stretched across the width of the room, all wide and tall as the control panels would allow. The windows looked out upon the city, at a distance, and I could see through a thinly veiled cloud-mist the acrid black smoke wafting from the factories and sweatshops and polluting out into the air.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"We're flying" he responded. "We're inside the Nocturne VII airship, circling the city."
And indeed, he was correct, as I noticed we were moving around over the city. I leaned forward slightly, to enhance my view, but my head began to spin and I was overwhelmed by this simple fear of heights.

"How long have we been up here?" I asked nervously.
"This is the thirteenth day." He said. "We rescued you from the factory on the Friday night after the cat man left."
"Thirteen days... the cat man... what are you on about?"
He laughed wryly. "So you haven't heard about the corruption of the Magna Carta?"
"Last I heard was that you couldn't trust anybody any more. I heard that some strange evils were about. And I found myself in the boss's office waiting for him to finish his meetings. I wanted to talk about working conditions. I was waiting quite a while, and when he came in, he just watched me all quiet like. He filed away a few papers that were lying on his desk and he asked if I've been sticking my nose in places where it ought not be stuck. And I said "no, sir." And he asked me to stay late, and I said "yes, sir." And then he shot me."
"He's not just a factory manager any more. He organised the suspension of the Magna Carta, and has since corrupted the city of its politics. He's got the whole fuckin' city sliding in his palm. They call him the Cheshire Cat now."

VI

The Magna Carta. In this city, in this world, it is the law. Without it we are lawless. This is a story of revenge. I knew what must be done before the words left his mouth. Kill the Cheshire Cat. Kill the Cheshire Cat and restore lawfulness to the city, restore the Magna Carta to its rightful place in our society. I need not sleep, nor so much as rest until the deed is done. All that is required is the diesel fuel to the reservoir in my shoulder. I sat in the control room as the drill guy told me all I needed to know. And then he flicked a lever which opened a hatch beneath my chair. I found myself upturned and soaring down several thousand metres of cold, polluted air, the city looming ever closer with no signs of slowing.

[WritersBlock]

Post 3

A heavy sickening crunch. I slammed into the road, hard. My face landed several metres away and I lay twisted and scratched and covered in the cracked and broken asphalt of the road. The words reverberated in my head, the last thing drill guy said before he flicked the lever.
"This, my friend, is to show you that you can not die."
I clicked my wrists the right way around and pushed myself up off the ground. I snapped my kneecaps back into place. I slipped my face back on and pulled the hairline back over my fibreglass skull. One hell of a migraine.

I took one step. Two step. Three steps to shake off the disorientation. And then I saw the people in their homes all peering out their windows at me, some of which were probably on their phones to the police. It didn't take long at all before the sirens were within earshot. I transformed my staggered walk into a fuel-pumping sprint and left with little more than a whiff of burned fuel and scattered asphalt trailing into anywhere.

I made my way back to the factory, my run, run, running making more noise than I'd have liked. Clank, creak, squeak, rattle. So I slowed to a soft jog when I felt I had distanced myself enough. In the quiet of the night it did not take long at all to cross the city to the factory. No moon tonight, that made my going easier, with only the weak gas burning street lamps lighting my path down the roads and streets and avenues. I slipped into the factory through the back, after cutting a hole in the fence between it and the automotive shop. I went in through the fire escape, in through the long hallway that was seldom used. It was darkness and cold grey walls and clammy stale humidity in the air from the cooling of the factory machines in the night time. It was complete quiet and stillness. It was the weak red glow of the lights that ran along the hallway, the phantom power that kicked in after hours. I walked down the hallway hearing little more than the squeak of a wayward mouse outside my own rattling, echoing motions.

VII

I came out of the hallway onto the factory floor and I could smell it across the room. The blood and grease from a few weeks passed. The vile, churning smell that tastes so terrible I have nightmares. The formaldehyde on my face and the diesel pumping through my veins is nothing. A distant irritation compared to the immediate repulsion towards my abhorrent past still festering on the floor. I fell to my knees, the dizzy sickness consuming me. Lurch, heave. Nothing. I gurgled machine lubricant in my mouth and swallowed. And then I heard a soft clicking as that of a lock opening. The dragging of the large corrugated iron door pulled open a sliver. I got to my feet as the door was pulled shut by none other than the Cheshire Cat himself, my old boss, my old friend. He turned around and saw me, unsure of who me was. So he raised his pistol. Probably the same one he shot me with.
And he said "You have no business here. Leave."
And I stepped forward and threw a knife at him. Missed.
"Fuck off back home, asshole" he said, and fired his gun.
It pinged off my chest harmlessly. I laughed and stepped closer still. I was going to scare him shitless, then take off his head. But then he pulled from his jacket a second pistol, which I now know to be loaded with the impact explosive bullets. He fired again, the bullet propelled into the diesel tank behind me. In the mass of flames and smoke I took my eyes off the Cheshire Cat for one moment. And then he was nowhere to be seen.

Rumble. Hiss. Clog, clog, clog, clog, whine. That's the sound of the machines starting up. Next thing I know there's nothing but the flames and crunching metal and the pump pump pumping of machines like a regular freak show. And then I find my arms locked behind my back. I didn't see, nor hear the others arrive, only the wretched grinding and whirring of the machines. The one named Mince with his red-streaked mohawk and vice grip hand-claws held me in my place. The Cheshire Cat's laughter echoed throughout the room. And that's the difference between him and me: fear. I gurgled motor fluids in my mouth and breathed deeply through my nose. In. Out. In. Out. I spat on the floor. The Cheshire Cat clamoured back from the darkness suited up in a three metre tall brass armour machine. He must have acquaintances in the army.

At this sight I wrenched my fists around to loosen them. He's going to kill me. He's going to kill me if I don't run now. I ripped my arms free and pushed mohawk guy to the ground. I stepped on his chest as I made haste distancing myself from the Cheshire Cat. I heard a sickening crunch but I held no notice nor sympathy for him. And then, as I stood on the far side of the factory floor, the Cheshire Cat ambling along quite slowly, his robot's foot came down square upon Mr. Mohawk on the floor. Crushed flat beneath 10 tonnes of hardened steel. And then I felt a bludgeoning fist rammed into my face.

VIII

I stumbled backwards and tripped to the ground, my face skewed and slightly obscuring my vision. The thug-hire of the Cheshire Cat here held me to the floor with his heavy foot. I could barely see how big he was, but he was too weighted to simply throw or writhe free, yet I tried regardless. All the while the slow stomping and loud hissing of the Cheshire Cat's mech-suit trudged closer. Step. Step. Step. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a small grinding saw. Its motor fit neatly in my palm as the blade whirred viciously underhand. The heat and the smell, and the pressure on my cogs and chambers under the beefy foot was overwhelming me. I held the blade to his ankle and cut into the flesh with ease. He groaned and hollered and in my extreme discomfort I heard a gurgling what the fuck, man! and I pushed the grinder deeper. Bone, chop chop chop. What the fuck. Little blades taking away slivers of bone until he was left with a stump. What the fuck, whirring machines, releasing the pressure on my chest. I wore his blood and I threw his foot to the ground and I turned off the grinder and I smiled.

Step. Step. Step. The Cheshire Cat's giant iron claw picked me up with ease. I spat on the floor and took deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. He squeezed. I turned the grinder back on. He squeezed harder. He was laughing. He was fucking laughing and my insides were bending and twisting, and I cut into his machine's wiring upon the wrist, killing his claw. He flung me several meters across the room. Into the fire. I rolled my battered body away from the flames. Step. Step. Step. Slow and heavy, he turned around. I rifled through my pockets, emptying everything on the floor. Grenades, knives, bullets and the sort. Through the formaldehyde and smoke burning acrid fumes, I could smell something else, like a putrid plastic burn and choke. I spat on the floor and clutched the item I feared could explode from the heat of the fire, the gyroscopic bomb, a little wheel machine with a motor on one side and a small explosive on the other. As the cat drew closer I aligned the wheel with the machine. The melted plastic of the outer casing was of little concern to the bomb. I just knelt on the factory floor, willing the wheel to roll fast and straight. Step. Step. Step.

[WritersBlock]

Post 4

IX

I coughed at more gurgling oil in my throat. I spat on the floor and breathed deeply. Step step step, closer closer closer, one clutching claw longing my neck in its grip. One deadly claw at the guise of the bastard cat. What the fuck, another thug-hire of Mr. Cheshire shot me across the room with a ping ping ping oh so harmless. I pulled the start-cord that roared the gyro-motor to life. I held the motor in my left hand, the explosive in my right. Step. Step. Step. Release. It ran smoothly across the factory floor and skimmed the foot of the mech-suit. No dice. The wheel skivvied off to the side and smacked into an engine machine, close enough to push the machine armour to the floor with the force of the explosion. Singed hair and crumpled suit, the Cheshire Cat pulled himself from the machine and raised his gun. Shoot to kill. And the roaring of the machines and crackling of the fire seemed like a muted nothing in the distance. There was just the tick tick ticking of my inner self and the thump thump thumping of my pumping motor-heart, and the click cocking of the Cheshire Cat's gun so loud and distinct as if he were right in my ear. I could hear my uneven breaths and I could smell the formaldehyde of my face, and I could hear the hammering metals as he pulled the trigger. And again. And again. And again. I spat on the floor and ran. The bullets hit the wall behind me and burst into fire and rubble.

Click. Click click click. I ran at the Cheshire Cat. He with the overconfidence and blinding arrogance. He with the sneering lip and wrinkled brow. He with the empty gun. I spat in his face. And I punched hard in the guts. And with the harmless ping ping pinging of his hired goons on my bulletproof back I wrenched the gun from his hand. And I took the extra bullets from his pockets and I inserted them into the gun, click click click, and I kicked his sorry self to his knees. And I shot him in the fucking face. I left the headless Cheshire Cat to his business and I never set foot in that factory again.

Outside, in the cool night breeze, I breathed deep. In. Out. In. Out. This is a story of revenge. And they thanked me for my deeds, a thanks I needed not nor wanted not. They said "Thank you for your sins, Alice" to which I said no more.

Word count: 4,618

[Rastamon42]

My story. Fits into the other genre, though it has traces of all punk genres because of the apocalyptic setting.

Every second, a baby is born into this world without rhyme or reason to why this happens. Every second, a persons body is put into a state called death. Some wise men would disclaim death as an eternal slumber, while others would create a more purposeful answer. The more purposeful answers are none other than religious institutions, which desensitize us to glittering generalities since our birth. We accept these glittering generalities, and live our lives in coordination to these institutions by allowing our logic to be emotionally compromised.
Last year, a baby was born in a state owned hospital and cared for just like every other precious child. However, this baby was quite a peculiar case.

It all started with a tear, from Cynthia Honorem Delano the newborn baby. She was the most beautiful baby of them all; one whose mature facial overtones were showing through already. While she was being fed formula one night, a bright blue tear shed from her right ear. The only peculiar thing about this was the discoloring of it, which was unmistakably a heavenly sign in her mothers' eyes. As her mother began to pray for her, she realized that the blue tear was no longer the same color. It was as if it was still light blue, but she hadn't first realized that it was off some how. It was as if it were a new color, one which had never existed before. "Surely a sign from the good lord that we're blessed to be here" said the child's mother, to which her young father replied "Yes and we should get her baptism done quickly so that she may be assured her spot in heaven". They both chuckled, and continued on with their business.

A bright blue tear? Who would have guessed? None of them, but neither would be able to comprehend what things their daughter would be put through. While the couple had gone to bed, their baby faded out of her crib like the pink panther did from the display case. This wasn't a magical disappearing, their child just ceased to exist in a momentary lapse of time. The parents of Cynthia cried for days as they looked on security cameras to find their daughter, but nothing showed conclusive as to where she was. After two weeks, the parents had grieved enough and discontinued the search for their beautiful daughter.

In the same instant that their daughter disappeared from the earth, she reappeared in a dark room full of wise men in robes and gas masks. It was a most peculiar place for her to be, but it wasn't something impossible by any means. In an instant, Cynthia had grown up and was now a beautiful woman. She somehow had memories of a childhood that never existed, and didn't know what she was doing in this horrific room.
To save my own sanity I can not write about what happened with those men and that woman, but what I can say is that it was beyond gruesome. All emotion had been stripped away from her soul, she no longer believed in a set of ideals or even a set of her own.

She wandered out of a broken old shack disoriented, dizzy and in rigid clothing. She sat down on the cement with a straight face, and remembered where she had to go. She had been instructed to go back to her home, where her grieving parents lived in sorrow for those 20 years she'd been missing. Walking down the road in their general direction, men whistled and raised their eyebrows at the woman, to which she had no reply. Once she reached the stoop of her families' house, she didn't even move her face by an inch. She was completely calm about the situation, even though it was such a profoundly emotional moment. The mother answered the door, and stared at her for what seemed to be a half minute, until she screamed at the top of her lungs and with mixed joy and sorrow, hugged her daughter extremely hard. Cynthia patted her on the back, as her mother wept louder than sirens could. She wiped up her tears and asked Cynthia to come inside.

She brought a hot plate of chamomile tea and biscuits, and set it down on the coffee table in the living room. She sat on the opposite couch, and she immediately cried out "What happened to you my child?" to which her daughter Cynthia responded "I was built to tear the system apart". Her mother laughed with good intention, and inquired to what she had implied. "I was trained to destroy the world with logic" she said again, no emotion showing on her face. Cynthia sipped from a blue glass without proper mannerisms. Her mother began to frown, and her daughter responded "But it's quite alright mother, you see I was never gone to begin with" she said. Her mother began to tear up once again, and Cynthia still blankly said "It does not matter what you think about this, as long as I can bring the world to truth then I have done my job". Her mother asked her to leave immediately.

Cynthia climbed the stairs of the White House with ease; her sexy body was incomparably flexible and keen. Men from all around stared at her, but she didn't respond with a typical wink or hair shake. She kept walking boldly, into the White House hallway as if she was an employee, and everyone passing her was confused by this boldness. She reached a front desk, and asked if she could see the president or be shown on public news. The employee at the desk pressed a red button, and Cynthia was dragged by her arms out of the building with much embarrassment by the security guards. In that moment, she gave up on her bizarre mission and decided that frontal assault wasn't the best option.

TEN YEARS LATER:

After the world had been torn to bits by the Neo-Soviet trading scandal, the United States had declared a mass reform of the country. So many people had lost their lives and money because of the scandal, that nobody felt they could trust a free-trade capitalist market anymore. Cynthia Honorem Delano was elected supreme chairman position, and promised a new logical world where all religion would be persecuted. Of course the public wants to be able to worship as they please, so a civil war started immediately.

The feds and the Christians fought violently for years after that, with Cynthia as the supreme commander of the military. Logic was what would guide them, and so they won every fight they were put into. Once the religious had been eliminated, a pile of smoldering ash was the remains of the U.S.

Forever the logical dominated and were put through the same horrifying series of desensitizing that Cynthia had gone through. Everyone was the same, and life was perfect. All genes were the same. All lives were the same. Social disorder did not exist, because social disorder WAS the modus operandi of this new super nation. As Cynthia looked upon the glass dome of their civilization from above, she shed an indescribable tear onto the world, which forever grew a silent rose of her lost compassion.

[pkfan2004]

Author's note: I love biopunk and body horror way too much, and have to admit I'm a die-hard fan of Stephen King. And frankly, I love rambling stories with unreliable narrators and unsavory folks. Eddie is a violent, profane bastard. There is swearing. Lots. You have been warned.

Remix

The detective snuffed out his carcinogen-free nicotine dispersal cigarette and pinched the bridge of his nose. "...let me get this straight. We arrest you for drunk driving, you try and bite a chunk out of my partner's shoulder...and you did this all so you could tell us something?"

The man in the handcuffs grinned, sweat beading down his shaven head. The detective shivered a bit at the sight. He was too gangly, too pale, too shaven for an alkie. He quietly wondered if the perp had any reptile or serpent spliced into him. He spoke clearly, with a bit of a slur. "Yes officer, yes I do. An' I want you to take this shit an' throw me into jail with it. An' I don' mean jail. I want you to take my ass to prison."

The detective just stared, unsure what to make of this. He sighed and shook his head, taking a seat across from the perp in the interrogation room. "....alright, look chucklenuts. It's three in the fuckin' morning, and I really don't want to be here. Just...tell your damn story so I can throw your ass into the Drunk Tank for the night, alright?" The criminal nodded eagerly and opened his mouth, licking his chapped lips.

"It was all just for a better high, y'know? We did it all to get that one step up, to really just fuck with ourselves, to gaze upon whatever eyes God's supposed to have. Of course if you end up getting a bunch of retarded, meddling kids involved, shit's gonna go wrong. I'm really getting ahead of myself though, ain't I? Figures."

"The name's Ed, Eddie if you want. I guess you could say all this shit was my fault. See, you ever been over in West Port?" The detective just shrugged and listened. "With all the freaky corporation warehouses and the government labs, you'd think it's some kinda fucked up mad scientist depot instead of a city. But y'know, people still live there, still gotta use the city for city shit. Make money, buy food, get pussy, do it again. But there was good money in West. Can only get certain operations there, y'know what I mean? One of the guys I went to high school with ended up becoming a back-alley eye-doctor, splicing whatever shit you wanted into your corneas. And he always needed extra parts for shit like that. Lots of people needed parts and the Glue that holds it together."

The detective sighed. "Sir, for the record, please explain what 'Glue' is."

"Man, it's the street name for the HRK-394. The stuff that makes you accept those foreign transplants. Sure, you get it at hospitals when you get licensed splices done, but every doctor needed Glue, from the fancy offices to the back of a car. It made damn sure the knife-jockey giving you another dick didn't kill you when you woke up. There was plenty of Glue to go around if you knew where to steal it, and one of my friends Laura was always shacking up with this guard for a government warehouse, so we kinda got some backstage access while he was accessin' hers, know what I mean? Anyway, we bring the truck around an' me, Bill, Mark an' Stacy started loadin' up barrels. Fuckin' Stacy, man."

"Bitch grabs the wrong fuckin' barrel. We're unloading the shit at my dealer's house, an' he's goin' through them. He's got his supply of kidneys, blood, eyes and Glue, but all of a fuckin' sudden he's got an unknown. R.E.M-9 was plastered on the barrel, along with a few fuckin' warning labels ripped off. So Mark grabs a knife and pops the lid, an' there's this dull grey shit inside. Thicker than hell, didn't really slosh much but was still a liquid. So my dealer starts flipping the fuck out at us, and it's fuckin' understandable. What the hell's he supposed to do with this grey shit, right? Of course, I gotta be the wiseass and I fucking joke that he should give a dose to some surgery junky. My dealer just gives me a quiet look and nods, grabbing a needle and loading it up with the grey shit. Sells it to the next guy through the door instead of the morphine he wants, right? Dude just collapses, grinning like an angel's sucking him off. Few hours later he gets up, pays for another syringe and runs out the door."

"That was the day we started selling "Remix". Got the name from Mark; 'IX' is 9 in Latin and we turned that into the name. Remix started becoming as popular as Glue. People would get a hit of both before getting spliced. Remix and Glue were the perfect twins for you to have a threesome with, and splicing became even more of a drug than before. I gotta admit, I shot up a few times just to see if it was as good."

"You remember when you were a kid and it just would be cold at night like always, and you'd hide under a comfy blanket? Ever take a hot shower after a crappy day? Shit, remember the first time a girl let you feel her tits or do more than that? Remix was better than that. You'd feel it from your head to your toes. Lights would be brighter, smells would be so fuckin' enhanced. You would see shit and feel shit, like your skin was hot clay being shaped and molded and it was glorious man. And sex when you were high? Christ, if there was ever a way to get closer to God, it wasn't religion. It was Remix."

"We were fucking lords, man. The five of them, Bill, Mark, Stacy, Laura an' my dealer, spread out around the city and even out into the rest of the state, running the trades and selling the goods. None of the other fuckers could compete, y'know? They had the organs, the fluids, the mechanical parts, the Glue. We had all that and the Remix. They ran the show, but I was the one who got to have all the fun. You could give me a group of thugs and in weeks I'd have a professional crew of thieves, masters of the art of stealing. I let them all control the money, but I kept a strong hold on the goods, making sure they didn't get too thirsty. They ran it all, but I had the muscle."

"It was about a year after we first starting pushing the drug when I heard something about a whole fuckin' den of addicts who owed money but refused to pay for their shit. So I got a crew together and we went out to the docks. Warehouse turned slums, shit we were all used to. But fuck me man, nothin' prepared us for this. One of my boys kicks down the door...and you could smell the fuckin' death."

To be continued/concluded next post.

[pkfan2004]

"Bodies, man. Bodies everywhere. A lot of 'em, still alive, still thrashing. We take out our weapons and I load up my sawed-off as I'm kickin' over this weird clump. I...thought it was like a fuckin' rolled-up rug or some shit. Fuck me man...was a guy and a girl, goin' at it missionary-style. But they ain't guy and girl no more, no man. His arms...fuckin' part of her shoulders. Her legs fuckin' sank into his back, an' you couldn't move 'em without cuttin' them apart. The whole time she's moaning and he kept fuckin' thrusting man! Shit! An' I swear to fuckin' God, he was moanin' too, with her fuckin' voice! I mean....w-we fuckin' found another couple, fuckin' doggy style. An'....an' it was just a hunk of fuckin' pulsating meat. You...you couldn't tell what was what anymore. They were lovin' it...all it did was moan."

That wasn't even the worst part, man. That was the first floor. Second floor....it looked like a fucking meat locker at an art gallery. Limbs growin' where they shouldn't, bodies bent and fuckin' twisted like they'd been beaten with hammers. There was a whole fuckin' room, like a goddamn spider web of limbs and bodies combinin' with each other. We didn't go past the fuckin' second floor, man. We got ourselves to the fuckin' stairs up, right? And...there's this big motherfucker."

"He was nine feet tall, shit you not, grey, scaly skin. Looked like a goddamn frog mixed with a fuckin' human. He had these big ass eyes man, big as a fuckin' head. An' as he fuckin' turns to face us, he's using three arms to eat somethin'. I didn't get a good fuckin' look. For all I fuckin' care, he went to a drive thru, bought a burger, came back and found us. But the damn thing screamed at us, spittin' a watch onto the floor. Whole buildin' shakes with the sound of screamin'. Fuck shootin' at this point, we just want to get the fuck out alive. So I blow open a meat-covered window an' fuckin' jump, gettin' my stupid ass out of there fast man."

"We just fuckin' torch the place, burn the fucker to the ground. All I smelled was fuckin' barbeque man, took forever to get the meat smell offa me. But I gotta fuckin' play it cool. I can't let the other see me sweat, right? So I just try to take my mind offa this shit an' I meet a few guys for poker. I didn't want nothin' but a quiet night, y'know? Could still smell the meat. So I'm playin' with 'em for a while, doin' fine, when this guy, KT, gets up to use the crapper, right? He comes back out smilin', an' I knew he'd just shot some Remix into him."

"I start dealin' the next round, an' I look over at KT an'...I fuckin' lose it man. See, KT had an arm installed on his back recently, right? Wanted to try triple-wielding guns or some shit. He was complain' about it, couldn't buy any Glue for it so he was usin' Remix to dull the pain. I look over, an' his arm's lost a fuckin' finger. Just fuckin' gone! So I start pointin' and screamin' at him with my sawed-off, happy as fuck I had my gun with me, an' I'm watchin' his hand. Fingers keep fuckin' melting into each other, gets himself a goddamn fuckin' tentacle on his fuckin' back. Others start screamin' at each other, an' suddenly someone shoots KT right in the fuckin' jaw, pulls all his teeth out with a lead drill, know what I mean? An'...fuck man, KT falls over an' he gets back up, tongue floppin' out the hole, fuckin' growin' bigger man, like it's another fuckin' arm. Can't deal with this shit twice in one day...fuckin' ran as the others kept shootin' KT."

"....fuckin' hell man. It was the Remix. We didn't know what the fuck it did but it made 'em all feel good an' we kept fuckin' sellin' it! An' God fuckin' knows how many people are out there in the fuckin' city, fuckin' turnin' into flesh freaks! Listen to me man. I had a bottle an' a half of scotch tonight, fuckin' swiped your cop car and fought your partner. Fuckin' send me to jail."

The detective stared at him, dumbfounded. "...you want me to send you to jail for..." He ticks on his fingers. "Drug possession, drug selling, breaking and entering, theft, aiding criminals, arson, manslaughter, gang activity, driving while intoxicated and assault and battery of a police officer." Eddie nodded frantically. "...despite you having absolutely no proof for any of those except for the last two, which I witnessed, and that I've never heard of Remix. I mean, sure, we're a good two hours away from the city but I would have remembered a drug like this."

"C'mon man! I'll be fuckin' safe behind bars! Listen to me. I'm fuckin' narcing on my friends, an' there's gonna be one hell of a freak problem soon! Send me to Blackmoore, put me in a box an' lock it up, I don' give a shit." He lurched over the table, grabbing the cop's collar with his cuffed hands. "JUST FUCKIN' PUT ME AWAY!"

The detective grunted and slammed Eddie against the wall, jabbing a taser into the man's stomach. He grabbed the stammering, nervous perp and dragged him down the hall to the night cells, tossing him in with a sleeping wino. The detective just shook his head and slammed the cell shut, causing the bum to stir. "For fuck's sake. I'm not done with you yet, but sleep it off you damn drunk liar."

Sorry, one more post. Had to figure out how to chunk this story nicely ^.^;

[pkfan2004]

Eddie thrust his arms through the bar, trying to grab for the receding cop as he felt the bum walk up behind him. He took a ragged breath and looked behind him, getting a good look at his roommate. Shirtless, hairy, impossibly thin with a vicious scar across his lower chest. Eddie regained a bit of his calm as he took another breath. "The fuck you want man?"

"...hey man, you got like...snacks or somethin' in yer pockets? 'm fuckin' starvin' man."

Eddie flopped down on the bench of the cell, shaking his head. The bum walked a bit closer. "Hey, fuck you man, I don' have any food. Just fuckin' go back to sleep." The bum grinned and leaned, offering his hand to Eddie. Eddie recoiled a bit, staring at the cut on his palm.

"C'mon man...I know you got somethin' for me to eat." Eddie shut his eyes and sighed. "No. Fuck y-" He gurgled and choked, eyes going wide as he opened them. A large, disgusting tendril jutted from an alarming angle from the bum's hand, forcing itself down his throat, threatening to break his jaw. "HHGHHK!" Eddie shook his head frantically, kicking and thrashing as the bum slammed him against the wall. The cut on his other hand opened, another tendril snaking and twisting towards Eddie's face. The last thing he saw before it covered his eyes was the scar on the man's stomach opening with a sickening crack, a large violet tongue wrapping around his torso and the sickly yellow teeth behind the appendage.

-----

The detective jerked up and rubbed his eyes, glaring at his clock alarm. His shift was long over by fifteen minutes, though the extra little bit helped his nap. He yawned and scratched his chin, trying to remember something from last night as he walked to the coat room to punch out. His replacement grinned as she hung up her umbrella. "How's it going Frank?"
"I've had better nights Lisa. It raining outside?"
She nodded. "Yeah, the weather's pretty shitty. Is there anything you want me to do?"
Frank shrugged. "Just go check on the guy in the Drunk Tank. Brought him in for DUI, he punched Jack."
Lisa flipped him a mock salute. "Have a good morning Frank, tell Jack to suck it up for me?"
Frank laughed. "Sure thing."

------

Lisa whistled softly, peeking her head into the Drunk Tank. She glanced around, seeing nothing more than a shirtless hobo sleeping soundly on the bench. She shrugged and snickered as she heard the hobo belch in his sleep, shutting the door to the cells. "Hah....freak." She smiled and shook her head, taking a seat behind her desk.

[Pocru]

Well, this is my entery. Its Biopunk. It took me days to think of it, even longer to write it, and almost double that time revising it... I probably should've gone with Steampunk, seeing as i love that genre, but hell, If I cant expiriment what can I do?

enjoy!
-----
Perpetuity²

Thirty years ago, I remember the stars in the sky, shining through the dirty window, illuminating with a brilliant glow the old bed I was resting on. I remember the silver-cream moon, forever hanging in the inky air, looking down on us as if giving us its blessing. I remember my sister laying next to me on the musty mattress, staring up out the window, the smile on her face outshining any star. But more than that, more than any of those things, I remember the question she asked me. In this question, in asking this question, her eyes sparkled, and her voice wavered with excitement and a childlike glee that still gives me a gentle thrill of pleasure to think back on. She asked me a very simple question:

"Do you want to stay with me? Forever?"

We were young. Children. Living the illusion given to us by worried parents and a society fearful of corruption in youth. We didn't know better.

"Yes, forever!"

We turned back to look at the radiant stars and the peaceful moon, enjoying the night in a way I never thought was possible before.

The years passed, and my sister and I grew. She became a fine, beautiful woman and I became a strong, intelligent man. Yet our childlike affection for each other never wavered. It seemed no matter what we did, we insisted we did it together. We both went to the same medical school. We shared the same apartment. It was as if my life was an idealistic dream, one that I shared with my sister in every aspect. Nothing was forbidden between us. Nothing.

The years went by, and thanks to our study efforts and emotional support we soared to the top of our classes. Her field of specialization was medicine, and mine was in anatomy... we both minored in energy, and we soon graduated at the top of our class, both eagerly looking to the future: what we could accomplish working together was limited only by our own ambition, which was practically boundless.

We became bioengineers, as was the fashion of the time. Bioengineers were arguably the most successful people in the world. We could use living matter to cure diseases, to operate machinery, even to energize the world. Flesh was the greatest of machines, and it seemed people devoted to the art of using this machine were granted funds and a level of tolerance of the law unseen by any other profession in society. It was a renaissance, and a beautiful thing to be part of, at that. My sister and I started our own lab in the suburbs, and thanks to the help of funding from both government and independent firms, we began study on the medical applications of bioengineering, a vast field that granted us many opportunities.

It was hard work, however, despite the prestige and riches that came with it. Not only did we have to advance our field of study to meet government standards each month in order to receive continued funding, but we also had to continue to study the advances made in other fields, in order to keep current. Our days were spent, from dawn to dusk, working, with little to no time to rest or spend with each other. And as much as we enjoyed the work, I felt the stress start to weigh on my mind, as it weighed on her. Each day seemed to blend in with the next and our personalities slowly drained from our bodies as we lost ourselves in the monotonous research and testing of medicines.

I almost felt as if my sanity was being drained alongside my energy and personality, although I knew better. My sister, however, wasn't so lucky, and it's only in retrospect that I recognize her slow descent into the abyss of madness.

It seemed an average day, the exact date lost after months of perpetual work. My sister's long hair was falling in her face, haphazardly thrown aside in an effort to get it out of the way. My own hair was long as well, a beard growing on what used to be a very clean-shaven face: shaving was a luxury of time that I did not partake in anymore. As I studied bacteria under a microscope, my sister's beautiful voice reached my ear: Instantly I perked up, for the tone she used was one I had nearly forgotten she had, a tone of inspired excitement.

"Brother... we promised to be together... didn't we?"

I pulled myself away from the microscope and turned to face her: this was the longest break I had taken in what seemed like weeks.

"We did..."

"Wouldn't it be grand if we didn't have to worry about these mortal bodies? Right now, we're wasting our precious time with this meticulous study. Do you want to live and die in the lab?"

"No, but what choice do we have? Even with assistants we'd still need to do all the heavy work, and we desperately need the funding. Not to mention that we need to keep ahead of the competition."

"What if we could find some vaccine for death? Some way to give us all the time we needed... no, some way to NEGLECT time entirely, remove it as a factor... then we could do this and not worry about running out of such a normally precious resource."

I was weary and half-drunk with exhaustion. I couldn't fully comprehend what it was she was suggesting at the time.

"That sounds lovely, but dangerous... not to mention nigh impossible."

"Impossible for normal people, yes... but we can do it. We're brilliant, especially as a team...and our combined expertise is the perfect formula for success."

"What did you have in mind?"

"A perpetual energy machine..."

She detailed her idea to me in full, and even in that tired state I knew, in the back of my mind, how brilliantly insane it was. At first, I politely nodded while being silently doubtful: I merely took her ideas as speculation and decided to take advantage of them to use as an excuse for a much needed fifteen-minute break. However, as she got more excited, and more detailed, it dawned on me that she was more than just serious: she was downright correct. As the pieces fell together in my head, it dawned on me that this was not only conceivable, but completely possible with our resources and combined intellect.

We could create the elixir of immortality... all humans had the necessary components, they just had to be... augmented.

As she made her conclusion, a part of me, a small part, wanted to call off her idea as crazy, and impractical for humans or any creature. But the larger part of me, remembering back to that beautiful night on the dirty bed, promising her my eternal company, wanted to do this. For the fame. For the money. But more than anything, for her, so I could deliver on the promises given hastily in my youth.

I signed off on the idea. We sent out for government support of funding and test subjects. Hearing our plan in vague terms, we got exactly what we needed: two willing human test subjects and over a million dollars in research grants. We were going to beat time.

Our first test subjects were a lovely, recently married couple. They were lower class bakers, who met when they opened stores next to each other. And as the newlyweds they were still doting on each other as they walked in, both anxious and comforting the other. Apparently, they disliked the concept of bioengineering, but the money they gained from volunteering their bodies was undeniably attractive, and they needed it to pay off their wedding debt. We met. Talked. They were charmed by our lab, as we were charmed by their togetherness. We were glad that they would be the first people to gain the blessing of immortality: clearly, they would love each other forever.

Given the nature of our experiments, they would have no other choice.

~Continued~

[Pocru]

(contined)

First, we had to make their digestive tracts more efficient. All of the beneficiary nutrients would have to be sucked from the food they ate. The first few operations to do this went without a hitch, and they were happy with the results: more energy, better digestion, and easier to get the healthy, beneficial parts of the substances into their system. Secondly, we made the amount energy the body could derive from the nutrients longer lasting: that way, if the food should prematurely leave the body, the energy derived for basic body functions would last regardless. Finally, we secretly developed and injected them with a potent new, experimental drug: one that would allow them to derive nutrients from waste products. This took 3 long months of study and medical operations... painful operations... but in the end we were successful.

However, we found that in these early tests, the body had too many things taking up the energy, like the arms and legs. So we cut them off.

To stop their whining, we locked them in separate, soundproof rooms. We force-fed them nutritional gruel until we were ready for the next steps of the operation: using the energy to produce stem-cells that could rejuvenate dead cells. Thanks to the fact that both male sperm and female eggs were needed to produce stem cells naturally, we decided the best step to take would be to link the stomach to the ovaries and testes through artificial intestine. Since the sperm cells would have to travel through the stomach, we fortified them to resist the acid in the belly. This, again, was a painful operation, but thankfully they didn't have any limbs to resist us with.

When this operation was complete, we felt ready. This lucky couple would soon be spending an eternity together. Reassured by my sister's smile, we took them into the operating room and completed one last operation. we inserted a large, artificial intestine into the man's mouth, fused it to his throat, and inserted the other end in the woman's, fusing it as well into her mouth. Then we injected a bacteria, formulated with similar properties of the hydra, that would stimulate the urge to vomit.

With this, they were immortal. The waste product of the man, in the form of vomit, would enter the woman and supply her with energy, which would be used to support her basic functions and simulate the production of stem cells to repair any problems the body might have acquired with age, and, if a fertilized egg was allowed to develop long enough, a new set of eggs would be provided for stem cell production. From there, she too would vomit, and the nutrients would go to the man, providing HIM with energy... thanks to their effective digestive system, all the nutrients absorbed into the body would leave at some point. but the energy still remained, allowing one partner to stay alive while the other was receiving the nutrients of the vomit once more.

We had done it. We were gods.

As I stared at our creation, though, a tinge of regret went through my heart... they would live forever, but what did they have to live FOR? As my sister noticed my saddened stare, she placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a comforting smile.

"They'll be fine. We just need to refine the process."

I nodded with determination, and we tossed the two lovers into our storage cells and forgot about them: they were just the prototypes. We needed to improve the process. We ordered two more test subjects, and we got them: two men who didn't know each other. One was a convict who chose testing over jail time, and the other was a man who was too lazy to get a real job. We talked. Explained (in vague terms) what it was we planned to do. Both were fond of the idea of eternal life... though, I imagine if they knew what my sister had planned next, they wouldn't be.

As we sat at the lab, away from our new test subjects, my sister sighed.

"Brother... we can't do what we did last time. The process needs to be refined if we want to live forever comfortably"

From our lab, we could hear the muffled cries of our previous victims as they continued to exchange fluids.

"I noticed. What do you have in mind?"

"Our first test subjects... we had to cut off their arms and legs because we couldn't supply them with enough energy... what we need is a more... solid... way to exchange energy. A way the body's more used to doing..."

I looked at her. Part of me was in disbelief at what she was suggesting. The other was eager: eager to see if her idea worked so we could label this as a success already. Ignoring the doubt my mind once held, I nodded in agreement as we prepared our lab for the next tests.

We did the same energy-efficiency and digestive surgeries on the two men that we did on our first subjects (Although we did not add the agent to increase regurgitation urges)... and naturally, by the end they were still imperfect: their bodies were using too much energy. However, my sister thought of a rather ingenious way to fix this.

"Electric energy is produced when copper goes past a magnetic field. We could have them produce their own electric energy by implanting magnets in the inside of their throats, and then sprinkle the food with copper. A little rewiring, and that energy can be used by the body."

So we cut open the men's throats and carefully implanted biomagnets (another advancement in the field, fleshy magnets that could easily be wired into the human body) inside their mouths, and connected it to the spinal nerves. With a few adaptive body organs added to convert the electric energy into useable life-energy, we were set on that front. Now they could keep their arms and legs. We also used the electric shocks to encourage the growth of the artificial stem cells, which would replace the cells that died over time in their bodies, and, with that surplus, provide additional, necessary energy. This was important: normal stem cells growth couldn't be fueled with electric energy, but these artificial stem cells could. They were a key component in the projects success.

We prepared them for their final surgery by rewiring them to naturally release all the nutrients they had in the form of waste, but this time, instead of using vomit, we found urine and feces could hold more raw nutrition per liter. So we worked with that, and soon the day for the final surgery arrived. We knocked the men out, fused their mouths over each other's assholes, and had the penis inserted into the throat via an incision on the front and fused the incision shut. Finally, using a similar hydra-based bacteria to encourage the release of feces, we were done.

The men would feed each other every day, the nutritional value being swapped between them much like the first couple. However, in this case, since more nutrition could be exchanged faster, and the electric energy was being used as additional fuel (since the feces had chunks of copper in them), they could actually move and function... as best they could in such awkward positions, anyway. However, the downside of this was the necessary electric components needed had to travel through the spine, which would release a not very pleasant shock each time they swallowed.

We looked with pride on our new, better creation. When the men awakened, they flailed, they cried, and they tried desperately to get at us: clearly, they didn't realize the benefits they had now: they would live forever, free of the burden of time. However, for our own safety, we locked them in a padded cell and focused our attention on refining the process even further.

"We're close, brother." my sister said excitedly as she prepared for our next subjects, "We're almost there. The men were close, but we need to make it less awkward... less painful..."

~Continued~

[Pocru]

(continued)

We applied for new test subjects, but were denied: the government wanted to see how we were doing. WHAT we were doing. Naturally, we could reveal the unperfected specimens we had now... but when we tried to explain that to the government representative, they would not hear of it: they needed physical results, not our continued assurance of progress. Frustrated at how tantalizingly close we were, my sister thought of a daring plan: we would have to get our own subjects.

It wasn't hard. We were both good looking people. A few drinks at a few bars. We found two women who were looking for a good time... but they would be getting much more than that, when we were finished with them. I took them home. Gave them more drinks, and eventually they both feel asleep on the couch, their lust unsatisfied.

But mine, mine wouldn't be denied, although it was a lust of a different kind.

My sister walked in with the tools needed for the conversion from mortal to timeless being.

"It's easy. It's so simple. I can't believe I never thought of it in the first place. Why waste our time with the mouths? Let's link them at the SOURCE..."

We did all the same bacterial injections that we had done on our first test subjects, and placed the electrical components from the second tests in their bodies, but not in the throat: this time we interlaced the biomagnets directly into the small intestines. By now, these procedures were second nature and the materials needed were right at our fingertips, so we could complete the operations before the women even had to awaken from their drunken stupor.

They were on the verge of waking, but we used chloroform to put them right back to sleep: we weren't done yet.

Like the men, we needed artificial stem cells to keep the body regenerating itself, but not only did we use the electricity to encourage their growth, we implanted a pocket in their lower abdomen full of the stuff: it would serve as a quick repair in the event a sudden trauma: the other four test subjects had to wait while the body repaired from sudden wounds, but these two would get an instant repair, assuming the pocket was sufficiently full of unused stem cells to fix the problem in question, and an extra boost of nutrition should the electric flow somehow be compromised momentarily.

With that, we only had one step left to complete: the linking.

Instead of wasting time using the mouth, we decided to link them where the action takes place: after force-feeding them highly nutritious gruel laced with copper for electrical production, we linked their stomachs and intestines together in an intricate, almost beautiful web of organs. They would be able to walk, to talk, to do everything a normal human could: the only accommodation they would have to make to their normal lives would be lugging around their linked intestines, which were now hanging a few feet outside their linked bodies.

As they awoke and screeched in terror, we nodded approvingly to ourselves. As they begged to be fixed, we were patting each other on the back: we had done it. This was as close to perfect as the biological perpetual energy machine could be. But it was odd, that as soon as we granted them freedom from their chained lives, they were begging for death, so much so we had to lock them up to prevent themselves from hurting us, or themselves.

...much like the other four test subjects...

"Don't worry yourself about it, brother. They simply do not understand the gift given to them."

She tenderly kissed me to relax my anxious mind. It was time.

Time to keep the thoughtless promises made by my younger self.

Time to defeat death a fourth time and be free of the things that plagued man.

Time to link with my sister.

As we were the ones performing, and receiving, the operation, we did not allow ourselves access to pain medications, lest they impair our judgment or coordination: we would have to do the two operations one after the other, so we couldn't afford to wait for the painkillers to get out of our system between operations. She slowly made an incision, and I felt the sharp blade rip through my skin and flesh: the feeling was agonizing, but I comforted myself with the knowledge the pain was only momentary, and the results of the pain would literally last an eternity. We had already peppered our bodies up with the necessary bacteria for the energy needs: all that was left was the surgeries. My body trembled with anticipation as much as it did the pain.

My sister carefully inserted the biomagnets, and linked the electric flow to my nerves: the pain I felt in those hours was indescribable. I screamed more than any of my other patients had, as I did not have the benefit of painkillers. However, I endured, as the sweet voice of my sister assured me the whole time that it was okay. Once the electric needs were fulfilled, we linked my testicles to my intestines, and fortified my sperm, as we had done with our first subjects: artificial stem cells were not necessary to implant in this case, as we had all the components nature intended inside us already, albeit they would need slight modifications. As she finished up, she gave me a gentle smile, handed me the tools, and said in the calmest way imaginable:

"My turn."

The pain I felt doing this was far greater than the pain I felt when I was on the receiving end of the surgeries. The whimpers and cries of my sister as I tore through her flesh and connected the biomagnet to her nervous system were agonizing for my ears. Each cry tore through my soul like a thousand burning daggers, and each whimper was a shotgun blast. However, each time I hesitated, even for a moment, to try to ease her suffering, she insisted in a pathetic voice that she was fine, and reluctantly I continued. What made it worse was the lengthy surgery needed to transform her eggs into eggs that could create electrically-energized stem cells when provided with sperm. This was a new surgery we created just for this occasion, and I was wary using it. After what seemed like years, I finished, and a tear-filled sigh of relief exited her weary mouth.

We were almost done.

We each made an incision. We each pulled out the needed parts of our intestines. We slowly linked each and every component to eternal life, fingers hesitating and shaking from the fear, keenness, and sharp pains. But as we linked that final tube, it sunk in what we had done. We were immortal.

We could be shot, and simply heal.

We could be torn apart, and our body parts would find each other and regenerate... an effect of the biomaget.

We were eternity.

~Continued~

[Pocru]

(continued)

We relished this fact. We sold our equipment in back-alley shops, and burned the money as a symbol of our freedom from society. We forfeited our licenses and our old lives. They were things we no longer needed. We were free of society and time and tribulation. We could do what we wished with our lives, and we both agreed we wanted nothing more than an eternity with each other.

As we cleared out the building, we decided it'd be best to let the first six test subjects go. However, as we opened the door to the first test subjects' cell, we were shocked.

There was a miscalculation.

...a miscalculation...

The creature was no longer human. The stem cells used to regenerate were fulfilling a different purpose. Tiny arms and legs were spawning from the artificial intestine linking the mouths of the subjects together. Their cheeks, from the acid in their stomachs, had melted off and regenerated seemingly millions of times, and each regeneration was less human than the last. Half-rotten teeth, blood red from growing out of flesh, grew outside on their faces, covering their noses, rendering them barely able to breathe. Their eyelids were fused to their eyes, rotting, the dead skin sinking into their red, twitching eyes, only to come back and rot once more. The stumps where their arms and legs had been cut off were now growing into large, useless flaps of skin that oozed puss. And all the while, they continued to vomit, exchanging the cells and energy one after the other: and they were very much alive... as they heard us enter the room they let out an inhuman screech, begging for death: a death we could not provide.

We closed the door on them quickly, out of fear. We looked through our notes for the miscalculation: and we found it.

We forgot to rewire the brain. It had no idea what to DO with the stem cells: they were just as likely to create freakish mutations as they were to regenerate the body.

We looked desperately for the tools to fix this, but we froze in terror: we had already sold all our equipment. We had no money. No equipment. We could not combat this.

I was petrified with terror, but my sister comforted me.

"Perhaps it was just them," she tried to reason out of desperation. "Let us check on the other two."

The second cell door was opened.

Inside, waiting for us, was the two men, their spines twisted several times over: the electric current causing them pain was too much for their bodies to deal with, so in desperation it twisted itself to try to shake loose the electric demon: but it was all in vain. The men's arms were fused to each other's sides, the stem cells creating large flaps of tight, scratchy skin full of useless nerves. Their legs were twisted and misshapen, full of boils and drooling puss-stained blood. Their eyelids had melted entirely off their faces, and the body replaced them with another pair of eyes, which grew, like buds, off the first.

Their bodies were still forced to swallow each other's waste. And we had no way to ease the cried pains begging for mercy from god.

...the gods we became.

We closed the door again: we were gods, but we did not know what to do about the abominations we had created... and the abominations we had become. Together, we realized that there was no escaping this fate, and that the electric flow that tortured and twisted the mind only made the disfigurations worse... and already I could feel my body start to rebel against itself out of confusion.

My sister suggested we look into the third cell to get a glance at what we would become. To ease our curiosity. Perhaps if we knew what to expect we could find another biologist to fix this. I eagerly agreed.

We unlocked the door to the third cell.

We opened the door.

...And from there?

The demon that became of our third test subjects?

I cannot tell you. When we opened the door, we each felt a large, blunt object on the back of our heads, and we fell to the ground.

And when we awoke, we were here.

In this room.

The door locked.

The lights out.

If you read this, if you find us, you should know it is the last sane log you will read from this monster you now see before you: how ironic it should be scribbled on the wall in our own blood.

The pain I feel cannot tell me what I have become. Only where I have transformed.

The once beautiful voice of my sister, now warped and disoriented, cannot change what I have become.

But know, that although in our battle against time we may have lost ourselves...

...we still won.

~End~

[Reptyle]

Author's note: My first story dabbling in any kind of horror genre, about telling scary stories around the fire...IN THE FUTURE. Without further ado,

Handmade Monsters
By Reptyle

"They say he used to be a soldier"
The boy stared off into the darkness for a moment; his face illuminated and distorted by the flickering lantern sitting in front of him, then spoke again. The fingers of his right hand drummed nervously on the ground, light scattering off of metallic fingers.
"They say he was on a tour of duty when he was blown up by the Terrorists or whoever it was we were fighting back then. The explosion should have killed him. But it didn't.
"He was airlifted to a secret facility where a team of doctors and scientists didn't so much heal him as transform him. He was given cybernetic implants all over his body, and accelerated gene therapy to adapt to them. It was the first time a person had been so completely changed, and he ended up stronger, faster, and more powerful than any human had ever been.
"As with any action, there were consequences.
"You see, his wife had heard about what happened, had thought he was dead. When they finally brought him home, he and his wife were overjoyed to see each other. He gives her a big hug to show he's alright, that he's healthier than ever.
"And he crushes her.
"He had no idea how much stronger he was. So he accidentally breaks her spine, her ribs. Accidentally pushes one of those ribs through her heart.
"He was so horrified at what happened that he tracks down one of the scientists, demands the implants be taken out.
"The scientist says no, that would kill him.
"He says to do it anyway.
"The scientist says no.
"So he kills the scientist.
"The army, who first commissioned his transformation, doesn't like how their experiment is going. So they hunt him down, shoot him, and bury him in the middle of nowhere.
"But somehow his mind survived. They say maybe he somehow downloaded his thoughts into cybernetic parts when he knew he was going to die.
"And one day, he comes back online. He wakes from death.
"He claws himself out of the ground, and starts walking, but his memory is foggy, he can't remember much.
"Eventually he ends up here, in this city. And the first person he sees looks just like his dead wife, and his robotic eye tells him she has an artificial heart.
"And he remembers. And he snaps.
"Now he can't die, or so they say. They say that he - it - isn't human anymore, and that it wants to kill everyone with cybernetic parts, everyone who life is better thanks to the technology that killed the soldier's wife.
"But it only comes out at night, because the body of the soldier has decayed, leaving only metal and bone."
And the boy fell silent, peering through the darkness.

"Wow, stained my shorts with that one, Matt," chuckled one.
"Yeah, that would have almost been scary if you hadn't downloaded it ten minutes ago," muttered another.
"Did not," growled Matt. "I heard it for a guy who -"
"Sure you did."
"Well, if it wasn't scary, there must have been another reason you were staring wide-eyed at me the whole time, wasn't there, Syeya?"
Syeya's face glowed pink as the others laughed. The four sat in the ailing light of a portable lantern among the scattered detritus of past visits to the site and the remains of object's that belied the original purpose of the decaying shopping center.
"Did you guys hear that?" asked Matt.
"Aw, come on, that trick was old 50 years ago."
"No, wait, I hear something too."
"Ghost of the Gatesville West Mini-Mall or not, I'm out of here. You guys?"
"Yeah"

A severed length of chain once securing the entrance of the abandoned building rattled as the group walked out into the night. A few orange lights still lined the street in recognition of an archaic festival of the dead.
As they walked down the street, a shadow detached itself from the lee of a battered tenement and addressed itself to them.
"Out past our bedtimes, aren't we? And on Halloween, of all nights; when the monster under your bed walks the streets," His grin revealed a gleaming set of sharpened steel teeth.
Malicious laughter split the air as two more grotesque creatures moved to join the first. All possessed the unnatural musculature and hollow, sunken eyes characteristic of those 'enhanced' by the combat steroid Sanguine. Almost casually they surrounded their prey, revealing various weapons as they did so.
Matt cursed under his breath as a four-inch blade swung out of his mechanical hand and locked into place between his knuckles. It glinted in the dark, miniscule against the bulk of the snickering assailants.
Suddenly, one of the men collapsed under a black mass that slowly rose up, regarding the scene before it with a single glowing eye as it pulled a jagged length of metal from the body below.
The remaining thugs glanced at each other for a moment, and then attacked. The first swung a fist grafted with permanent spiked brass knuckles at the wraith, only to strike air and then collapse, spitting blood.
The man with metallic fangs looked at his companion choking on the ground, turned, and began to run. In a matter of seconds the wraith caught up with him and drove its jagged weapon through his back.
Matt stood paralyzed for a moment as the scene unfolded, then sprinted away after his terrified friends. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a skeletal figure staring at him with a single baleful eye as it cleaned the blood from its blade.
A tattered army jacket fluttered in the midnight air as the monster leaped onto a rooftop and out of sight, but at the edge of Matt's vision a shadow flitted along beside him as he ran ever harder through the chill air.

[steelcreed]

Jack

It's funny how quickly the night can change in London. One minute, the streets defy the darkness with the cries of market vendors and the blazing light from the gas lamps. The cobbles ring with the clattering wheels of posh Steamchariots, the heavy boots of Night Watchmen and the high heels of the Mistresses. The air is clogged with the scent of spice and perfume and burning coal and dawn seems only a step away. But then the siren calls and you might as well have been living in a graveyard.

It goes off every night now, like a punctual banshee, announcing the point where everyone is allowed to panic. The streets empty like a bath without a plug; people, wares and automobiles all wash away into their own private drains, hoping to find sanctuary in whatever crumbling little domiciles they liked to call home. But not me. I was not allowed sanctuary. When a gate is locked, you need someone to watch it. When God closes a door, he then bars the window and posts a dog to guard both. I was that dog, a little Cerberus in my very own damp and squalid Hades. I was the one who stayed and faced the night with a gas-light on my head and water in my boots.

It's not so bad after everyone has gone. A quiet moment of contemplation follows the receding masses and lingers in the soft afterglow of the gas lamps. This is where I take my deep breath, me in my overcoat and brass helmet. I feel like a king, a lord of a fey city where mortal hands cannot interrupt me in my solemn watch. But then the streets flair blue and the lamps go out and night comes in to reclaim her own. Then I become the hunter, the stalker who wraps their surroundings around themselves like armour. A Watchman lives for these moments. And dies in them.

When the shadows had settled, slowly lapping at the cracked walls of the slum buildings, I switched on the gas lamp on my head and started surveying the battlefield. It was like looking at the world through a keyhole and strange, unreasoning things flittered at the edge of the bright circle that acted as my guide. A Watchman learns not to rely on his eyes but his ears, listening for every ethereal footfall, every creeping drip from a dishevelled gutter that might just be about to fall. I fingered the trigger of my pressure-rifle uneasily. Even my hands were desperate for the duel that never ended. But calm them I did, laying them around the rough leather of the butt and the cool bronze of the barrel. And then the tell-tale scream came. When joining up to the Watch, they never told you that your main role was as the meat in the noose.

Although the scream was quieter than the siren, it became louder in the silence. It was a discord in an ensemble of tension that flung itself from house to house, before resting on my heartstrings and twanging them. Before the mind had realised what it was doing, the feet had taken flight. The cobbles clanged like cymbals, the light in front of me danced wildly around the alleys and my lungs struggled to cope with the influxes of breath I now took. London suddenly shrank, each street name whirling past in a blur of faded paint and antique lettering. The only thing that could match it in speed was the mental picture of the city in my head, which I soared through like a vengeful cloud, seeking what had disturbed the sky. Tooley Street, moving on to Southwark, moving on to the Thames...

The sight that greeted me on the lonely bridge was one I had had no choice but to become accustomed to. The body of a compatriot splashed over the stones like bird faeces whilst the eternal nemesis crouches over his body, corrupting the air with the bestial snuffles and mechanical ticks that were its clarion call. Some called him Springheel, others called him the Ripper. The Watchmen had always known him simply as 'Jack'.

No-one really knew who or what Jack was, that mixed up mess of gears and skin. At first glance, you would take him for a wealthy man, the soft-headed son of some ignorant aristocrat who did not know the dangers of the night. Even his voice seemed to be conjured out of some overdone Romantic novel. But look closer. See past the top hat and the slang only Royalty would dare use. See the way his chest moved faster than any normal human's. See the limbs that were as long as an ape's ending in silk gloves and shiny spats. See the little ticks and flinches his body would make, as if his bones were trying to escape. And see the eyes. Those mad eyes. Now, Jack was a fact of life in London. To begin with, people believed he was just another disgruntled engineer, taking his frustration out on society the only way he knew how, or a noble who had discovered a new past time. The press had a field day, alternating him between hero and villain in morning, midday and evening editions. But no-one guessed the truth. And now the city had chosen to crawl under its shell to escape Jack's questing claws.

At being caught in the glare of the lamp light, Jack's first reaction was to hiss like a cornered serpent. But then he regained his normal stately composure, unfolding in a series of manoeuvres that hid the strange contraptions working beneath. He tipped his hat to me in a grotesquely polite manner. "Good evening my good man" he drawled. "The stars are looking exquisitely bright tonight aren't they? I wonder if you troubled yourself to read The Herald's astrology section this week. Normally I don't give much credence to such matters but there was a particularly interesting reading for Leo..." That was Jack all over. He could make small talk over genocide.

I raised my weapon and squeezed the trigger. That was all there was to it. Months of special training devoted to the movement of a single digit. But even that wasn't enough. Jack moved like a witches' cat, a physical being one moment and a ghost the next. A mocking voice called from behind me "An excellent shot good sir, but may I suggest you take less time over the actual performance of the act, your audience may get a tad impatient." A storm of angry fists followed the words, and behind these came a face contorted in a devil's mask; the eyes smouldering with red fury and the mouth opened so very wide to the gaping abyss beyond. The pressure-rifle was knocked from my hands before I had time to consider a resistance and suddenly I was scrambling for my soul, trying to hold off the exquisitely manicured fingers that grasped for my flesh. This close to him, I reckoned I could hear the slow thumping of his mechanical heart making a funeral march inside his chest. It called me to the grave of his throat and I could barely resist his advances. Even his voice cried in hunger, a screech melded with the whistle of steam escaping from a pent up boiler. But resist I must and I kicked him away from me, sending him sprawling into the parapet with a clank. He crumpled for a second, a child's demonic doll, before springing back to life. The wrestle had taken up almost every ounce of my being; Jack just seemed warmed up.

[steelcreed]

He smiled his smile. "Touché honourable friend" he said, spreading his stretched arms wide like a sacrificial messiah. "But like your late brother over there, you seem unable to grasp the inevitability of your predicament." Perhaps that thing was right. Was I pushing an immovable object? Would it not simply be better to lie down and accept the gentleman as my designated end? I sank to my knees. Jack seemed to be scrutinising my thoughts like a mediocre painting. "Do not worry my friend. Stronger men than you have failed in this endeavour. Now, if you would be so kind as to hold still." He strode towards me, each footfall delicately caressing the road beneath him. But my surrender was feigned. I had fooled the devil himself. In my last hour my hand had fallen across my rifle and I had gripped it like a battle standard. With one swift movement, I brought it up in an arc and cracked the beast right on its chin. I felt the tangible ring of his metallic flesh all the way up my arm, and it was ecstasy. He staggered backwards, reeling like a mad puppet, before falling from the wall and descending towards the Thames, an angel hurled from Heaven into the murky waters.

I walked clumsily over to the parapet and peered down through the darkness towards the river. The only signs of his landing were the faint ripples that skipped across the surface, fleeing the scene of the crime. Perhaps he had sunken to the very bottom, I thought. Or perhaps he had been devoured by his water-dwelling counterpart. But there was no way of telling. And then Dawn broke.

After the sun had chased away the last of the shades, it was suggested by the mayor that a search of the Thames should be conducted in order to certify Jack's demise. But you might as well have searched Hell for him. The Thames had become the city's waste disposal unit, and no-one would be insane or unhygienic enough to start digging through the mud that lay settled snugly on the bottom. I got a medal. "For bravery in the face of overwhelming odds" or something like that. It was brass and shiny. But it did not illuminate my fears. Though I had seen Jack go over, I had not seen him gone. There was still some chance he had dragged his wretched carcass off into some grimy sewer, where he would repair himself and eagerly await another night, when he could begin his grisly business all over again. And even if he was sleeping in oblivion, he was not completely dead for me. Every time I look into the shadows cast by a gas-lamp, or hear the clinking of some mechanical contrivance, I will see his mad eyes and hear his mad voice.

For God's sake, keep your lights on.

[steelcreed]

Author's note: A Steampunk version of a classic horror tale (although its more on the horror than the punk.) I'm quite an avid write so I hope to post in these contests more often.

[Some-Stupid-Idiot]

Part 1, Boiled Over

Back in the 19th century there was this unremarkable man. Nothing about him was special, he had a wife, and was in the middle class. He wore a vest that was tan and made of cotton with had buttons that were made of brass. Under that he wore a white shirt which often got dirty in his line of work, there were soot stains all over it. His pants were also tan but made of a khaki material. Black leather shoes completed the attire, and one could easily see that they were well-worn.

His hair was short and brown, with knots here and there. He also had some serious stubble around his chin and a moustache that laid flat against his upper lip and curved down. Of course there were plenty of other gentlemen who could fit this description but our story isn't about them now is it. Our man's name is Arthur Nobles, and he is an engineer, specializing in steam.

Now Arthur's day started off like any other, he would sit behind his desk, read the paper, and on especially slow days he would take a nap. Most of the time his job consist of someone saying their car broke down, or they can't get their water heater to work. These jobs can be done fast and don't get as much pay.

One time Arthur tried to upgrade someone's vehicle and it ended up catching on fire and singing his left eyebrow clean off. He decided that maybe that isn't the best choice for his line of business.

This day though a curious man would walk through the door. He looked to be in his 30's, maybe his 40's. There was an air of urgency surrounding him.

"I need your help, one of my boiler's at my steel mill burst and now my men are refusing to work. Without the boilers nothing can move around the factory." He sounded as if he needed help. Arthur figured that there would be no one else coming in today so he agreed to go check it out.

"Oh thank you so much, my name is Jean Pierrot. You will be paid handsomely for you work. Now I'm going to be busy all day so I was wondering if you could come by tomorrow instead." This didn't bother Arthur, what also didn't bother him was the crooked smile that Jean Pierrot gave him.

Jean Pierrot left and Arthur decided now was a good time to close up. On his way home he spotted a young man riding a curious instrument. It ran on two wheels and beneath the seat. Arthur asked if he could check it out.

The young man didn't see anything wrong with it and let our protagonist check it out. He paid close attention to the engine, it was very small and didn't have a water tank. "What do you use as a fuel source?" asked Arthur.

"Petroleum," replied the young man, "it's a brand new source of fuel. It'll probably beat out steam and coal power." The young man picked up his motor vehicle and pulled a cord which started the engine up. A grey smoke came out of an exhaust pipe and the vehicle took off.

"Hey, what do you call that thing?" yelled Arthur.

"A motor bike. Unfortunately I can't get a patent for it until I prove that this thing will run properly." With that said the young man lost balance and fell. "Still got a few kinks to work out."

"Good luck with that." said Arthur who now left to go home.

***

On the outskirts of the city sparks could be seen in the second story of a factory. Inside you could see Jean Pierrot moving around like a madman. "Finally, after all this time, I am prepared to exact my revenge on that bastard for stealing my woman." Sparks flew again and quickly died.

"It's finished, after months of sleepless nights it's finished. There's no way he'll survive this. Aha aha bwahahahahahahaa!" He continued to laugh later into the night, for he has created a great monstrosity, it was shaped exactly as a human body. It was manufactured in a way so that it's user's strength could be increased 10 fold.

Elsewhere at Arthur's place of residence, his wife, named Catherine, was preparing a meal for him. She was pregnant, about 6 months is a good guess, and she had gorgeous red hair. It's easy to see why someone would get upset about losing this.

"So how was work?" asked Catherine. She was now setting the table for their meal.

"Average, I do have work for tomorrow though, a strange gentlemen wants me to check out the boilers in his factory." No one had any real interest in this conversation and the meal was silent. After that the two resided to the bed room where they together and talked about the child.

"I hope it's a girl," said Catherine. "I can teach her how to cook and sew."

"Well I want a boy, that way I can teach him the trade and one day he'll surpass me." the two went on into the night, until one of them could no longer hold their eyes open. The two drifted off and prepared for the day tomorrow.

***

The morning fog was thick. Arthur had a lot of problems trying to find the factory. He met an old man and asked for directions. This particular old man looked way out of place, his skin was all in folds and face was cracked in all directions. What little hair he had on his head was silver and he had a great a beard.

"I wouldn't go there if I were you, a lot of strange activity has been going on there recently." The old man told him.

"Listen, I have a job to do, I'm not afraid of some silly little rumors." Arthur said sternly.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," he showed Arthur the way. He thanked him and left on his way.

Arthur arrived at the factory, well on the outside it looked like a factory. He opened the door and it was dark on the inside. "Mr. Pierrot, I'm here to inspect the boilers." There was no answer. Arthur took a few steps forward when the door behind him closed. He was cast in darkness.

All around him he could hear noises, the sound of the steam coming out of the pipes, the metallic clank of the machines as they ran, and a strange scraping sound which was coming closer. Before he could register the sound he was knocked on the head by something solid and hard and was knocked out.

He awoke and couldn't move at all. He was also blindfolded. Arthur struggled but the rope binding him didn't budge.

"I see you've finally awoken Mr. Nobles. Not much work is going to get done I'm afraid." the man burst out in laughter.

"Is that you Mr. Pierrot, what the hell is going on?"

"You don't remember me that well do you. Well I wouldn't expect you to, the reason we are here today happened a year ago. That's about the time you and Catherine got married correct." He was laughing again.

"How do you know my wife? What have you done to her?" Arthur was starting to get frightened.

"All these questions, I guess that's all you can really do. Well I guess I'll tell you, before you met your beloved wife I was courting her. I brought her flowers and gifts but these never really caught her eye. But then YOU came along with all your gadgets and gizmos and she instantly became infatuated with you. It broke my heart. But then I decided that if I couldn't have her no one could. So I bought this factory and studied up on engineering. After all those months of hard work I was able to complete my true vision. The Steam Asylum. Bwahahahaha." After he said those words he ripped off Arthur's blindfold.

The entire area seemed to be alive, everything was moving in and out, up and down, and left and right. The factory seemed to be a spawn of the devil if he had any interest in this kind of stuff. Above Arthur was a pendulum. It began to swing left and right, lowering with each swing.

"Well this is where I make my grand exit. Adieu Monsieur Nobles." With that Mr. Pierrot went through a door that was behind Arthur. A tumbling sound was heard and the door was locked. "I'd try and get out of those ropes if I were you." With that Jean Pierrot was gone.

[Some-Stupid-Idiot]

Part 2, Boiled Over

Arthur was now alone, the only sounds other than those you would hear in a factory were his struggling and the pendulum swinging. With every pass it lowered about a cm, in about 10 minutes the blade will reach Arthur. He was pushing and pulling on the ropes. They didn't seem to loosen. He pulled and even tried to knock the chair over, but it was bolted to the ground.

He let out a scream of aggravation as pendulum was now about 4 minutes away. With one last bout of strength he was able to get his arm free. He used that to untie the other. It will only be a few minutes until the blade reaches the crown of his skull. He was struggling to with the knot behind his back. He could only guess now that any second the blade will reach him.

Luckily for him now was not his time and he was able to remove the knot just in time before the blade reached him. The chair, was a pressure switch and without him on it he could hear a passage open up.

Mr. Pierrot's voice came from one of the tube networks. Unfortunately for Arthur Nobles, the labels were removed. "I see you were able to escape the chair, well there is a lot more factory to cover. I don't want you to get the idea of alerting any authorities, you're oh so precious wife is with me now."

"Don't listen to him dear, get help."

"Leave my wife out of this," there was a tone of fear in his voice.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, this is the most fun I've had in such a long time. I also don't want lovely Catherine to miss this. You see, we can see you, but you can't see us." This was true, they were behind a new type of mirrored glass. "I hope you enjoy a good brawl since my men will be coming in few minutes. If not, I'd suggest you run. Farewell Mr. Nobles."

Voices could be heard approaching. They were far too many for Arthur to handle so against his pride he made a run for it. He went down the new passage that the chair opened. The passage was long and dark and there wasn't much to be seen. The music of the factory could be heard all around him. The haunting medley of hisses and clanks.

Unfortunately for Arthur there wasn't much more path to go down. At the end was a pit, a chasm if you will, and behind he could hear the men growing closer. There was an intricate set of gears which could be reach the higher levels.

He had to make a move now or else he'll be captured by and his wife will never be rescued. He took a few steps back and dove across the chasm and landed on a level gear. It was able support his weight and moved at a manageable pace. He grasped a adjacent gear and began his ascent.

Several times on the way up Arthur almost lost a finger. He also heard that some of the men who followed him met their end. But this was no time to be careless, Arthur was near an opening and he had only one shot at it.

His escape was almost close enough to jump through, Arthur saw some chains, he was able to grab one and pushed off the gear. With some luck Arthur was able to make it across. The climb took a lot out of him, and what is ahead will deal more.

For when he went through the passage he saw something that could easily end his life, giant pistons were pumping all around him. The path was very linear so if he made one mistake it was the end. Somehow one of the men was able to reach the top. Arthur could feel his presence. He took a deep breath and ran through the first piston. He was able to get through before it slammed down.

Arthur tried to keep at least one piston between him and the sole pursuer. It wasn't long before he reached the end of this ordeal. The path wasn't that long, but it was terrifying and Arthur hoped he'd never have to go through that again.

Arthur kept running until he reached a dead end, there was no where to go, the door was locked and the guy following him was right there. Mr. Pierrot began to speak, "I see we got ourselves into a little predicament. The man in front of you wants to tear you limb from limb, and the door behind you won't let your through. I tell you what, I'll open the door for you.

The door behind Arthur unlocked and Arthur ran inside, it was pitch black and he couldn't see anything. All of a sudden a dull light filled the room and Arthur saw that the room was full of swords. He grabbed a rapier and stood in a fencing stance. The other man grabbed one as well.

Mr. Pierrot spoke again, "splendid, absolutely splendid. Let me tell you what, if you put on a good enough show I might just let you and your wife go. If you don't though, I'm going to enjoy ravaging every inch of her body. So, good luck.

When Mr. Pierrot was done speaking the man lunged at Arthur. He parried the attack. Arthur threw a counter attack but that was blocked. Each attack was met with another and they weren't able to go anywhere. Luckily for Arthur he was able to knock the guy back until he was at the end of a cat walk. He grabbed a chain and descended to the lower levels. Arthur did just the same.

Arthur stumbled a little after realising he was standing on a conveyor. Footing was very difficult and the man was able to gain control before Arthur and he attacked again. This time Arthur fell down and couldn't get back up. Arthur deflected hit after hit until he realised that he was nearing a furnace. He reached his arms up and caught something, it was a hook used to carry stuff around the factory. It hoisted him up and took him around the workshop, higher and higher.

The man was right behind him, and they fought while hanging from dizzying heights. Arthur was beginning to tire, the guy on the other hand wasn't. Arthur jumped off and landed on another conveyor, the man followed. It was do or die, Arthur lunged but the man deflected the sword down, Arthur grabbed the guys leg and he fell to his doom. The sound of him landing was a sickening splat.

He dropped the sword and found his way to the other side of the work floor. He opened the door and in front of him was a maze of pipeworks going every way. There was a single entrance.

Mr. Pierrot could be heard again. "I see that you were able to survive my men. I guess that just means that there will be more fun for me. You're at the labyrinth now, I hope you have fun. The tunnel goes every which way up down, left right, over and under. Have fun, but you better hurry, your wife can't keep herself off of me."

"Help me, he-" she was interrupted.

"Enough of that, have fun Mr. Nobles, that labyrinth will hot water running through it in about half an hour. I'd get going if I were you. I got the path idea from Mr. Konami."

Arthur had no idea what this meant but he crawled into the entranceway. There wasn't much room to move around in. At some points the path would get tight and at others there would be almost enough room to sit down. The path began to curve and Arthur met his first break in the path. He could go either left, up and over, or right. He decided to choose the right path but that quickly became a dead end.

"At least I can see," this was partly true, Arthur was near the exterior of the maze which allowed light to get in from the windows. He worked his way back and chose to go up instead. The It wasn't far until he had to choose another path, this time he went straight ahead. This seemed to be the right choice since it lead too another fork. It was down, left, and right.

Arthur chose to go left, but found that it quickly became too tight for him to move. He took the right path as well, but that led to a pit. He had no choice but to go back and down. It wasn't that far of a drop, he was able to right himself. Unfortunately it got almost too dark to see.

[Some-Stupid-Idiot]

Part 3 Boiled Over

He felt as if he was in there for about 20 minutes, he had to pick up the pace or he would be severely scalded. He pushed forward coming to twist and turns but finally reached another fork, he went with his guts and chose to go down even though it was even darker still.

Now moving by feel alone Arthur was in total darkness. He couldn't afford to slow down so he continued on. He came to a fork and chose the left path. There was another fork a few seconds further and he went right. There was still another fork, he went right again but after a minute it was a dead end. He crawled backwards and chose left.

Now with only a few minutes left he had to chose the right path or else he'll be burned. Then he saw light, it came from the right path, he followed it and came out, more or less rolled out, into another open area. Only a few seconds later and the sound of water could be heard rushing through the pipes.

"Congratulations, you've made it so far, I'm sorry it will have to end here." it was Mr. Pierrot again.

"Where the hell are you, show yourself," he was frantic.

"I'm sure we'll be meeting real soon, but if you can bring your attention to your right. You'll see your lovely wife suspended above a water chamber. In about 10 or so minutes the chain she is suspended by will be lowered and she'll be boiled alive. I hope you enjoy stew." Mr. Pierrot walked out now from behind one of the machines. He was wearing some unusual armor. It covered his whole body and it was very noisy.

"What the hell is that?" asked Arthur.

"Oh this, this is my steam-powered body enhancement suit." He picked up a steel bar and bent it with a little effort. "Now imagine that was you." He was laughing again. "This lever behind me is the only way to save your lovely wife from taking a hot bath."

Arthur knew that he couldn't just charge at him and expect to get through. He had to come up with a plan. He saw some chains and came up with an idea. He grabbed them, but while he was doing that Jean Pierrot was coming toward him. Arthur was able to grab a chain and rolled under a conveyor.

Jean Pierrot smashed the conveyor. "Hiding won't help you Mr. Nobles. You're wife wouldn't like it if her husband was a coward." He was having to much fun with this.

Arthur saw an open spot in his armor, there were gears moving everywhere. He tied an end of the chain to a thick valve and waited for Mr. Pierrot to come closer.

Mr. Pierrot now had a steel bar in his hand, "Oh joy," He swung the bar around in an attempt to hit him. Arthur was fast on the other hand, the armor couldn't move fast enough to avoid Arthur shoving the chain into the opening on the armor.

The armor gave a great screech and began to buckle. The rider's scream couldn't be heard over all the gears grinding. The armor was twisting in ways the human body shouldn't, it could be inferred that the rider was now dead or pretty close. The machine came to a halt.

Arthur pulled the lever and the chain holding Catherine stopped lowering. Arthur found his way up to the platform close to her and pulled her over and untied her. She was unconscious, probably from shock. He carried her out the door to the factory.

"Looks like it was a job well done." Arthur was wrong unfortunately, as there really was a problem with the boilers which blew up soon after they left. The factory was burned to the ground with all the inhabitants inside.

***

Several months after the incident Catherine had her baby, a healthy daughter. Arthur was a little disappointed at that but they can always try for another. Business is as usual, it's good enough to keep his family fed and clothed but not really enough to get them ahead.

[FatKidWitAJetPak]

AUTHORS NOTE: Good god I worked on this forever. I revised it many times. Sorry its so long. 4997 words! It is my first story so don't judge to harshly hehe. Well, here goes nothing. The title is "Kadilman" Look it up on google if you care to know what it means. :) I hope you enjoy it. *deep breath*

_______________________________

Kadiliman

His eyes opened. Nothing could be seen other than the black marbles of the dark. Tiny wires could be felt in his back, suspending him high in the air. It was hot, wherever he was. He tried reaching for something to grab onto but only succeeded in grabbing a tiny glob of dust floating next to him. Streaks of pain shot through his neck from the wires connected to his skin. The tiny needles dug deep into his veins, dripping with an unknown fluid. The room was getting hotter. Balls of sweat rolled down his face. His heart was beating rapidly. He started to panic and stretched his arms, pulling the stinging needles out of his flesh. Blood, sweat, and tears fell to the floor along with his naked body. He hit the ground with a grunt. Still, nothing could be seen in the pitch black room. He crawled to his feet and moved his arms through the air. He managed to place himself against a wall and used it to guide him across the room. He got to the other side after taking twelve or so steps, and felt the cold bars of a metal ladder against his shaky hands. Slowly, he made his way up the ladder. Blood dripped down his skin as he continued upward. He reached a ceiling and felt around a small square plate. A wheel found his hands around it, and the wheel turned. The plate opened and light poured into the chamber.

The blinding light dug deep into his eyes. Shielding his face from the white rays, he crawled out of the chamber and collapsed on the thick, grassy ground before him. He threw up and coughed heavily. He sat up and looked around him. He was in a forest with tall, green trees. For a small instance he felt a sense of relief, but then the growling of his stomach made him realize he was very hungry. Without thinking, he grabbed some mushrooms next to him and stuffed them into his mouth. Nowhere near full, but somewhat satisfied, he stopped thinking about hunger and started asking questions. How long had he been down there? Where was he? Why was he down there? He stared into the black hole he just climbed out of. He wasn't going back in there to find out. Brushing himself off, he stood up and started his journey to nowhere.

Trees and more trees could be seen all around him. The only sound was the crackling of leaves beneath his feet. He couldn't see any birds or animals. The man continued down the green and brown path. He walked for hours through the woods when finally he came into a large field of wheat with a house sitting in the middle. He was very tired and needed food. He walked through the grain as his feet ached. The house was clearer now. It was an old two story house made of brick and stone. There were boards and metal sheets covering the doors and windows. The walls were chipped and scratched. The man slowly approached the old, wooden steps of the structure. Leaves were scattered over the gray porch and an old swing with broken chains sat against the door frame. The man pushed the swing aside and banged his bleeding hands against the door.

"Hello? Is anyone in there? I need food and water, please open this door!" he said with urgency. After a few moments, a small piece of metal scraped open and two brown eyes peered through the door. "What are you doing here?" The eyes said in surprise. "Please let me inside! I am cold and injured. I think that I have a broken hand. Please I don't know what is going on and I need somewhere to stay for the night," the man begged. The metal panel slid shut almost immediately and the door made several clicking noises. It swung open and the voice beckoned him inside. The man walked into the house and the door was quickly shut behind him, locked with several chains and keys, and then barred with a large metal pipe. The owner of the brown eyes was a gruff man around the age of 35. He was covered with dirt and wore a torn gray jacket with dirty blue jeans and black leather boots. The inside was lit up by small beams of light coming in from the cracks in the boards covering the windows. The floors were full of splinters and the wallpaper on the walls was torn. Dust collected in corners and on old furniture. Cobwebs decorated chairs and lamps. Still, it was warm and welcomed the naked man well. "Do you remember your name?" the man with brown eyes asked. "I... don't remember anything," the naked man stuttered. "I expected no more. My names Rick," the brown eyed man said. "Come with me to the kitchen. I'll get yah some clothes and other shit to heal your scars."

After putting pants on, the man was served a bowl of soup with crackers. Rick grabbed some cotton and other supplies from a small tin and began to wipe the blood away from the man's back. "Damn, How the hell did you get these cuts? Couldn't be from the things since yah can't escape them," Rick said. "Things? I don't know what you mean. I woke up inside a small underground room. I managed to get out of it, but I can't seem to remember how I got down there or where I am or who I am for that matter. What country is this?" the man asked. "Country? If this was a country it isn't a country no more. This might sting a bit." Rick got a small needle and injected the man with what seemed to be pain killers. "There now that should feel a hell of a lot better. You are lucky to be alive. We can go check out that underground place yah speak of later. Now put this shirt on." The man showed his gratitude with a salute and a thanks. "Without your help I would have most likely died out there. So what do you mean there isn't a country? Was there a war?" the man asked. The tiny beams of sunlight were starting to fade away from the room. Rick looked at a small plastic watch on his arm as it beeped anxiously.

"A war? I wish it were that simple. I'm as lost as you are. I woke up in this house a few months ago. I've been living off of supplies from a food storage." Rick's watch beeped again. "Dammit, We need to get down into the cellar," Rick said. "Why? What's going on?" the man asked in confusion. Rick pulled a small silver pistol from his jacket and put several bullets into a clip. He looked at the man and asked, "You know how to use a gun?" "Yes I do recall knowing how to," he responded. "Well good. Take this and use it for protection," Rick told him. "Protection? What do you mean? Protection from what?" the man asked. "Look, these strange... things come out at night. We need to get down into the cellar before we find ourselves caught in the dark," Rick replied. "What do they look like?" the man asked. Rick peered out one of the tiny cracks in the wall. "I haven't stayed around long enough to find out." Rick pulled the man out of the kitchen and led him to a small door in the floor with a padlock. Rick unzipped a small pouch in his jacket and pulled out a silver key. He then unlocked, unbarred, and opened the door in one swift motion. "Come on down," he said.

[FatKidWitAJetPak]

They made their way down the narrow tunnel on a very long ladder, probably three hundred feet long. Small yellow lights lit the compact space around them. Rick was moving quickly, often having to stop to let the other catch up. "Hurry," he called. When they arrived at the bottom, Rick knocked on a large, thick, green metal door. "Tom! Open the door!" Rick said. The door was then slid open revealing a bearded man with a wrench in one hand and a cigarette in the other. "Who the hell," Tom said in confusion. "Yeah I know. I found him knocking at the door in the house," Rick said. They walked through the door and it was shut then sealed behind them with a series of metal bars. Steam rose from the floors and the sound of humming engines surrounded them. They were in what seemed to be an underground maze of hallways full of pipes and turning gears. All the walls were covered with metal grating. Water dripped from the ceiling and chains hung above them. Small levers and wheels were scattered around, possibly used for turning off and on whatever the pipes and gears were used for. Tom examined the man standing next to Rick. "I don't fucking believe it. Where did you come from?" Tom asked. Rick's clock beeped a third time. "Shit. We gotta go." The man followed Tom and Rick down the seemingly endless maze of pipes and metal. The gears around them clanked and turned. The pipes steamed and dripped. The man was amazed at the hundreds of gears that they passed. It was like a machine.

After 10 minutes of walking on the metal grated floor, they arrived at a dead end. Tom pulled some levers on the wall beside them and pressed a few buttons. A loud screeching noise filled the air as the wall turned and twisted showing hundreds of tiny metal plates. The plates pressed against eachother and created an opening in the middle of the wall. The man followed Rick and Tom through the hole and the plates moved back to their original positions behind them. They were now inside a large metal room with several other people. There was a large man with a rifle on his back, a little girl with blonde hair, and a teenage boy wearing a hoody. "We found a survivor," Rick said. The large man with the rifle grabbed the little girl and walked into the corner of the room. He looked at the man and flashed his yellow teeth. "We have 5 minutes," Tom said. The teenager looked at the man in awe. "I thought there wasn't anyone else in this fucked up world. Well I'll be," he said. "He woke up like the rest of us did, but in some chamber apparently. We might get the answers we are looking for," Rick said. "What is this place?" The man said. "Look, I can't explain it to yah it's just unexplainable. We know just as much as you do for now. We know you're a survivor of whatever the hell happened. You said you came from some chamber so yah might know somethin whenever you get your memory back," Rick said. "What do you mean it's unexplainable! You seem to know what you are doing down here. Who are you guys? What am I a survivor of!" The man was starting to sweat from anxiety. He sat against the wall and pushed his hands through his black hair. The watch on ricks arm beeped for a fourth and final time. "We have to talk about it tomorrow. It's about to be dark. You look tired and need your rest. Right now we have to keep quiet or else those things I was tellin yah about are gonna hear us. Sean, flip the switch," Rick said. The teenager walked over to a large lever and pulled it down. The small lights on the walls that illuminated the room turned off and every speckle of light that filled the air vanished. "Remember, you have to keep quiet."

An hour passed and no one said a word. The man was breathing heavily and thinking to himself. His body was very sore. He asked himself many questions. How could he not ask himself questions? He had awakened in some strange dark room hanging in the air just six hours ago. Now he was with 5 strangers in a dark locked room hundreds of feet underground. His hands were cold. His body was shaking. Were the noises from the things? He kept hearing strange noises. He needed rest. Tomorrow morning he would get the answers to his questions. They could go back to that chamber and figure everything out. Everything would be better then. He laid his head against the cold, hard wall and closed his eyes.

His eyes opened. He sat up with a throbbing headache. For some odd reason he was the only one in the room. The large metal wall that once sealed the chamber was now wide open, revealing the long halls of iron and steel. He got up and walked into the dimly lit passageways. "Hello? Rick?" he yelled down the narrow corridor. The voice echoed through the halls, but there was no answer other than the small dripping of a pipe next to him. Confused, he pushed onward into the maze. "Tom! Dammit Rick is this a joke? Hello!" Yet again, no one answered. He walked. The gears and pipes he passed baffled him, their purpose unknown. An hour passed, or was it a minute? Time did not seem to exist. All of a sudden he noticed a small rusted door next to a series of power boxes and switches. He opened the mysterious door and saw a ladder going upwards. He climbed. Finally, he reached a metal panel and leaped out of the maze and onto the field of wheat in front of the house.

Angrily he approached the front door and banged at it. He banged at it again. There was no answer. He lifted his feet and kicked the door. "Where the hell are you! What do you want from me!" He decided to continue his search past the wheat field where he had stopped his journey yesterday. The sun was low in the sky. It was an hour or two away from sunset. How long had he slept? He walked down a small dirt path covered with leaves and moss until he came to a river. Standing next to the river was a man wearing black leather boots.

"Rick? About time I found you! What the hell are you doing?" Rick stood motionless, staring into the roaring waves of the river. The man walked to Rick and called out his named once more. Rick did not answer. He grabbed Ricks shoulder to get his attention. Rick positioned his knife to the man's neck and stared him in the eye as if he was a demon. "You think you are so fucking smart don't you. You think you got it all planned out you sick FUCK," Rick spat. "Your pretty god damn lucky none of us remember anything because if we did I would of sliced your throat the first chance I got. You ever feel a knife to your skin? The sharp blade tearing your flesh apart and the blood pumping from your veins." The man stared at Rick with fear and surprise. "Rick... I don't understand. Wha-" The man tried to say something more but Rick cut him off and tightened his grip around his neck. "YOU don't understand? YOU are confused? I've been stuck in this god forsaken place for months, hiding, running, starving. You haven't even seen the things that pop out in the dark have you? You've just had your life handed to you on a silver platter. You haven't had to work for your mistakes. Your fucking experiments. You haven't seen your friends lungs ripped out of his own ribcage by a thousand claws. The silver teeth of the devil tearing the muscles from his skin." Rick grinned and he laughed with hatred. "Yet you are the cause for this fucking wasteland. What do you get for all of this? A couple of cuts and a nap! HAHAHAHA! Im going to tear your eyes from your miserable face and shove them down your throat you son of a bitch." Ricks eyes filled with tears and he let go of the man, stepped away from him, and put his hands over his face. "They're all dead! Every single one of em'.

[FatKidWitAJetPak]

Tom was the first to go. You would have enjoyed watching his skin being ripped off by your pets wouldn't you? And that poor girl... once David saw her dead he couldn't take it. He shot himself in the head. Then those THINGS ripped him to shreds. Sean and I ran. Sean didn't make it. Those were the only people I knew. Those were the only people I trusted. And now they are gone. All of this is because of you! You sick FREAK! Im going to fucking kill you!" A large noise erupted into the air and echoed down the river. Rick stopped in his tracks and collapsed to the ground. The man stood with a gun in his hand, one bullet missing from the clip. It was the same gun that Rick had given him earlier to use for protection.

The sun set in the sky and the man dropped the gun to the ground. He screamed into the dark blue air and beat his fist against a tree. "God Dammit Rick. God dammit." He began to cry. The tears rolled down his dirty cheeks and fell into the puddle of blood against his feet. He walked beside the river not knowing where he was headed. The sun disappeared behind the horizon, and darkness filled the sky.

He walked along the riverbank. The river was going very fast. The ripples in the water bubbled and turned and followed the man into the night. The trees around him stood motionless. There were millions of stars visible in the sky yet the moon was nowhere to be found. The man paid no attention to these surroundings. He just stared at his feet while walking to nowhere. He felt nothing. No emotions. No grief, fear, hope, happiness, just nothingness. He stared into his reflection in the river and kicked it with his scraped feet. A loud screech interrupted his thoughts. He spun around and looked towards the direction of the violent noise. Another screech sounded, this time much louder and coming from another direction. He looked and saw nothing. It was too dark to tell. He stared into the trees behind him. A large figure emerged from the woods.

It snarled and gasped. Its feet pierced the ground and twisted and churned. Its body vibrated, its stomach opened and closed, and it moaned a loud roar into the night air. The man's heart beated and his blood flowed. He started to shake. Then their eyes met. The shadow stared at the man and leaped its arms forward. The man ran. He ran as fast as he could and didn't look back. The sound of a thousand nightmares followed him. It dug into the ground and launched through the night air, piercing its throbbing claws into the man's back. The man gasped for air as blood dripped down his face. He fell sideways and they went into the raging river.

The river bubbled and rolled their bodies violently past shadows running on the bank. Black dots and bubbles engulfed his thoughts. His lungs filled with water and his hip bone shattered against a rock. He twisted and turned under the water. The black shadow that hunted him in the night disappeared in the water behind him. He passed out.

"Rick, are you sure we should just leave him there?" Tom said. "Yeah it's alright. I gave him some sleep medicine earlier. He needs to heal. He won't wake up before we get back." The sun was high in the air. Tom puffed on a cigarette. Ricks watch read "2:43PM" They didn't have much time. "Sean! Did you find anything yet?" Rick called out. "Yeah! I think I found it!" Sean replied. David put the little girl on his shoulders, cocked his rifle, and got in front of the group. "He is always carrying that little girl," Tom said to Rick. "Does he even know her?" Tom threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped on it. "I'm not sure. He says he doesn't remember anything just like the rest of us, but he has some weird connection to her. Must have been his daughter or something. Makes you wonder where the wife is. Course, we all wonder a lot of things now don't we?" A metal plate stood in the middle of the grass, wide open. "Tom, let me borrow your light," Sean said. Tom flicked the switch on his flashlight and handed it to him. Sean pointed it into the darkness. "Alright let's go down there."

They climbed into the chamber and saw tubes hanging from the ceiling next to some sort of control panel. Nothing else appeared to be inside the room. "Tom, you know electronics don't yah? Check that weird device out," Rick said. Tom walked over to the metal box and examined its buttons and levers. "Maybe I can open it with my screwdriver." Tom kneeled down and unscrewed the small metal compartment and fiddled with some wiring inside. "If I can just get an electric current going... there we go!" The box sparked and flickered. The buttons started to glow green and blue. Tom examined the buttons carefully and took a puff at another cigarette. "Yeah, I don't know what any of these buttons do guys. I don't know if I should even mess with this," he said. "We didn't come out here for nothing Tom, just press one," Rick said. Tom agreed and put his hand over a small green button. The control panel shut off. A section of a metal wall next to the control panel screeched open, revealing a long hallway dimly lighted by small yellow lights. "Good job Tom," Rick said. Tom stared down the hall and shivered. The group continued into the unknown.

David gripped his rifle tightly and the little girl hung on his back. Sean slowly followed behind David. Rick shivered in the cold halls. Usually the metal halls that they were use to were not this cold. Heat would be created from the turning gears and the rumbling of pipes. In this particular hall, however, there were no spinning gears or vibrating pipes. There was only the chill of the metal walls. The group began to grow nervous. It started to grow colder. Even David began to shiver. When they reached the end of the hallway, they found a large elevator. Tom pulled a lever and the metal grated door swung open. The group climbed on and it started downwards.

The elevator went down through the ground. The group got a large view of an enormous room, so enormous that the edges of the room could not be seen. They were very high in the air. Dark blue lights on the ceiling very slightly illuminated their surroundings. They could see thousands of cylinders standing in rows and columns stretching for miles ahead. They went down into the abyss of glass and metal. The cylinders they passed were usually broken and crushed. Those that still sealed whatever they contained were frozen on the inside so thickly that nothing could be seen inside of them. It was cold. Tom shivered with his cigarette hanging from his lips. He shivered so much that it dropped from his mouth and he watched as it fell through the metal grating of the elevator and sunk into the darkness below. "Damn," he cursed. The little girl on David's back was very cold. She tapped David on his shoulder and he gave her his jacket. The group waited for the elevator to reach its unknown destination.

After 10 minutes of nothing, the elevator came to a stop on the concrete surface below. The blue lights that once lighted their view were so high up that no light illuminated their surroundings. Sean turned on his flashlight and they began walking through the maze of glass and ice. They saw hundreds of wires hanging from the top of open containers. Hundreds of metal walkways could be seen above them, connected by an intricate series of metal stairs. More containers were on these walkways, possibly hundreds of thousands. As they continued, the room started to smell an awful stench.

[FatKidWitAJetPak]

Tom noticed that green slime was covering an open container. He noticed another, and then four more, and then eight. Pretty soon almost every container they passed was covered in the strange goo. "What the hell is this stuff?" Sean said. "Look at that one, it has lumps! Are those eggs?" Pretty soon, the broken containers were replaced with what seemed to be eggs covered in a green slime. "I don't think this is such a good idea. We need to turn back, right now." David said with urgency. "Look, we didn't come all the way down here for nothin. I'm sure this is just some sort of fungus anyway," Rick said. Tom stood and stared at the slime. Rick looked ahead and saw a metal door. He ran ahead of the group and tried opening it. "Rick! Dammit, be careful," David said. The door wouldn't budge. "David, knock this door out of the way why don't yah?" Rick said. "Yeah I guess so," He replied. David put down the little girl, took a deep breath, leaned back, put his leg high in the air, and kicked the door so hard that it swung open with a loud bang.

Rick went inside and the group followed. Inside, there was a medium sized room with tables and lab equipment. Papers were scattered amongst the dusty beakers and microscopes. Tom started to sweat. He walked up to one of the tables and looked at a sheet of paper. "Hibernation Short Term Memory Loss In All Subjects" He hurriedly grabbed another sheet of paper and read it. "Experiment 3. The subject showed signs of a 300% increase in growth on the first day. The subject was labeled as both female and male. Test Results: 100%. High signs of intelligence on the second day. 420% increase in strength on the third. Lack of speaking abilities on the fourth. Subject suffered paranoia and dementia. 240% decrease of intelligence on the fifth. Full transformation of body on the sixth. Subject was too dangerous to maintain, killed on seventh. TEST RESULTS: 0%" Tom dropped the sheet of paper and widened his eyes.

He sweated. His brain throbbed. The pulsing of his veins shot through his body. He remembered. The island leaving earth. Watching the planet dissolve into a trillion rays of light behind him. The captain. Oh god the captain. The experiments on improving the human body. The horrible things that were created. The hypersleep. The maze of gears and metal being the engine of the ship. After all this time he finally remembered. Was it better to remember or simply forget? That man above ground, he was the captain. Oh no. He turned around and looked at Rick who was looking at a microscope. Tom ran over and grabbed Rick by the shoulders and showed Rick the papers. Rick stared at them and his eyes widened as Tom explained everything to him. "Rick, we need to get the fuck out of here as fast as we can."

As Tom said his last words, a loud noise screamed in the darkness behind him. He spun around and stared into the throbbing eyes of a large nine foot tall beast. David swung his weapon from his body and aimed towards the foul creature as it began to pounce through the cold air. His fingers pulled against the metal trigger, but nothing except the gentle sound of wind came from the barrel of his rifle. It was not loaded. David dropped the gun to his side and watched as Tom fell beneath the creatures grasp. Tom screamed. His stomach was ripped open and his heart stopped. The blood shot through his veins and twinkled onto the floor beneath him. The group ran out of the door and out into the dark room from whence they came.

They ran. David loaded his gun and looked behind him. It was impossible to see. He could only hear the screeching of a hundred witches. He tripped and fell into a pile of green slime. The girl fell off of his shoulders and landed onto a large glass spike from the hypersleep chamber he landed on. He felt her blood on his hands and pointed the rifle to his head. He shot as he felt a claw dig into his back. Rick made it to the elevator. It climbed upwards. The things didn't see him. He watched below as a thousand beasts fed on the poor souls below.

The man hurled down the river. His body turned and toiled. He came to the waterfall and fell out into the cold night air. He did not fall downwards, however, because there was no ground below him. The waterfall went out into space. He floated out into the black abyss as droplets of water and blood followed his shredded body. The floating island grew smaller behind him. Soon it was just a speckle in the endless sea of darkness. His body turned to ice and shattered in the cold blackness of space. Nothing could be seen other than the black marbles of the dark.

END

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Well that was it. Thank you very much for reading this. It was my first story so I am sure there were errors, but hell I enjoyed doing it so very much. Good luck judging guys! :)