Daily Screams

The Hedgehog

An explosion of pain tears through her.
End over end she flips through the air. She's balled up tightly and can't see the whirling world spin beneath her, but there's that incessant tug and pull of gravity as the blood pools and drains from her head.
She smashes into the earth and instinct makes the split-second decision - unball and run or curl tighter and wait it out.

She tightens.

Above her, there's guttural shouts and shrieks of laughter. Brilliant flashes of light as half a dozen phones catch her plight.
There's a shock of red-hot pain and muffled crack as the next kick snaps bone. She rolls along the ground at speed, bouncing off the curb and slamming into a dustbin. She ricochets off the bin and spins against the razor edge of a tin can, slicing through her quills to the skin.
More shouts.
A cacophonous wall of sound that hurts almost, almost, as much her bruised spine.
She wants to vomit; there's a glob of bile and bloody mucus at the back of her throat that is making it hard to breath. But vomiting means unballing and that means unveiling her soft belly to the humans.
She whimpers; her nose pressed so deep into the sweat-soaked fur of her stomach that she can feel her squidgy insides. Layers upon layers of pain building up - there's the searing pain of a broken leg, the dizzying nausea of organ rupture, the sickly-sweet smell of blood clogging her nostrils. Somewhere deep inside her, a slippery coil of intestine is sliding against itself; twisting, knotting. She'll be dead before the tissue necroses, and, perhaps, that is the evening's only kindness.

She can't hear what the kids are hollering at each other, wouldn't have understood anyway. But the tone, ah, that she knows. There's a visceral blood-lust dripping from their words that every prey animal understands on a cellular level. Their voices pierce the fog around her mind with a triumphant swagger that she associates with a predator that's not even hungry, one that just wants to play, to torment.
She's spinning across the road again, the tarmac snagging and snapping her quills. She's never seen a pinball, but that's want she resembles as the kids kick her from one to another. They shout out points for how far she bounces off the curb or catches against the gutter.
A bottle drops besides her and broken glass and warm beer slosh across her back. Or is it her head. She's so tightly balled it's impossible to tell. A pungent, fetid smell joins the rest as one of the kids leans over and vomits. Cheap beer and vodka, even cheaper kebab.

Laughter.

The warmth from the beer disappears, cooling her skin too fast. The night air has a chill to it that will creep into her bones and kill her if she doesn't die from her injuries first.
There's a new scent, so strong she can smell it through her blood and beer and sweat soaked fur. A faint heat against her skin. A fizzling sound as the smell of burning keratin grows stronger.
She tries to whimper, deep within her ball. But the blood crusting her mouth as congealed and her lower jaw has snapped, one thick long shard jutting upwards through her snout. That clagging glob of bloody mucus at the back of her throat has wormed its way up, only to start slithering back down. Only it's sliding down the wrong way and blocking her breathing.

There's another whirling spin of gravity and she's airborne again. She slams into the dustbin and the metallic thud is drowned out with laughter.
Her quills are smoldering now; the fire not quite alight, but certainly not out either. The outer layer of her skin is blacken and blistering. Clumps of her quills are ripping away, charred flesh still attached. The raw pink skin underneath glows in the bright phone-light.

Faintly, oh so faintly, a new noise joins the throng. It's the undulating wail of a siren. And through her tightly closed eyes, the flashing light is so bright she can still make out the light-dark-light-dark-light merry-go-round of blue.
The police car comes hurtling up the road. Probably a resident had lodged a noise complaint, underage drinking on the streets again.
The kids bellow at each other to run. She's kicked once more, purely by accident this time, but she still goes skidding out into the road again; her raw flesh smearing the tarmac with blood and shredded tissue.

There's a dull thud and one last searing flash of pain as the police tire hits her and then, at long last, all is quiet.



Word Count: 777
Prompt: The main character is an animal.