Auria

Chapter 23 - The Alien Among Us

Gen's body laid pale and cold, strapped onto a leaning, metal platform.  A tall, gray alien on rear-facing knees knelt above his face, searching, listening, feeling for a sign of emotion.  Peaked ears tipped a huge snout, moving parallel back and forth over the human's features.  Then, it quickly rose and plunged a huge needle into Gen's chest, pumping red serum relentlessly into his dead or dying heart.  Long arms flexed silent fingers into the needle's piston while red liquid spurted everywhere, then seeped from the hole in his chest.

The human's head began to twist and vibrate, clear liquid poured from the nose and tears rained from cold, red eyes.  Fists clinched open and shut, eyes flickered.  A rough cough emerged to back the gray demon away, though it still pondered down upon an old-man's, scarred face.  He shook violently and, in some semblance of clearing vision, he saw the face of neither life nor death towering above him to personify anything and everything he'd ever hated.

“What the...” said Gen.  “How...  What...”

He wrestled and writhed inside long, taut straps, trying whole-heartedly to free himself from a hideous nightmare.  The towering creature neither moved, nor breathed, only contemplated a single thought.

'You've lost.' came a whisper deep within Gen's mind.  'Did you think... you could escape?'

He glanced the room, spying a nude Auria stuck taut to a metal rail across the way.  She appeared sleeping; wet with sweat and a generous amount of color.  He focused, trying to think of something but a relentless mind overpowered the ability.

“Release me,” whispered a tense Gen, “before I kill you.”

'You cannot demand.' the thought replied.  'You have... nothing.'

“What gives you the right to do this?”

'What gives you...' came a repeating thought from multiple voices.  'What gives you...'  'What gives... you?'

The tall, snouted faced peered into Gen's eyes, causing wave upon wave of pain to bellow and boil from spine to brain, back and forth across skin and deep within bones.  It felt, at first, a numbing wave, though he soon found it intensely wrenching and insatiable, incomprehensible.  Gen tried to slow his heart-rate by meditating but found it a useless endeavor.  The ancient beast knew pain.  It knew unforgiving pain.

“Kill me... but release her.” screamed Gen.  “She's done nothing.”

'She is your victim.' came the thought.  'She is human, a speck of dust.'

“Search my mind.” gasped Gen.  The awful pain ceased momentarily.  “Search her... story.”  A touch of sweat ran down a tired jaw-line.  He took a second to appreciate the dulling numbness, knowing the demon turned attentions away from conjuring the agony within.

'You are a speck of dust.'

“But, she is...” gasped Gen, exhaling and drooping facial features before shutting eyelids, sending an alien mind to want for control.  It huffed, knowing its moment of pleasure in doling-out pain would be surely missed.  Gen's chest sank into the leaning bed, then a sour face emerged and rolled to the left.  Suddenly,  eyes opened wide, black as night and cold as space.  A dribble of spittle slurped between blue lips as the aura of death graced his body with speed and second sight from a hovering soulless wonder.
“You snoozed.” he spat against glossy eyes.

Gen slipped himself into an awakened, enlightened, clarity.  The heart rested, the chest collapsed, veins bulged and shrank but, the straps tightened.  Seeing his wakened senses and temporal self-shock, the gray demon moved to counter Gen's gift of death - that singular moment when everything ceased to move, yet he moved still – stuck half-way between the living and the dead.  Straps stiffened when the chest collapsed, but pulsating muscles surged and tensed, not once, but twice, then three times and the chest-strap burst on his left.

Another movement.  He twisted, almost breaking bones while tensing a massive, fore-arm muscle to expand and contract until he wiggled and slipped it from beneath binds.  The alien turned slowly, reaching for something at its back.  Gen continued to pulse veins with dark energy but felt the time-value had already changed, shifting away from his two-second, ethereal existence.

A boom echoed throughout his body letting him know the gift would end quickly.  He'd miscued and mistakenly forged another heartbeat.  Pushing forward, Gen leaned his top-half as far as an 'almost-breaking' back would allow.  Reaching and grabbing the surprised interrogator by the shoulder, he'd succeeded; all the while a cold, gray arm slowly raised overhead, a shining, unsheathing sword in hand.  Gen released a snapping tension in his back, pulling the alien and the armed hand against his leaning bed.  The arm curled across, the silver sword swooped down.  Gen twisted hips to the right, feeling another snap.  It was the freshly-cut strap holding his torso, popping and setting his body mostly free, except for two, secured feet.

With an arm around the alien's neck from the side, he contorted, twisting hips to spin round again, pulling the armed arm into his crotch and grabbing the sword by the blade, writhing it inside the demon's own curled fingers.  He rocked the gray-beast's entire body back and forth twice until its neck touched a razor-sharp blade, spilling blue sap across silver blade.  Gen grunted and heaved the monster away in a cursing shout, thrown the span of three men to fall over another leaning bed.

The sword edge reflected only partially in an open hand soaked in blue, red and pale fingers.  He grasped the hilt and swung to cut both feet free, stood, closed eyes and bowed a concerned gesture to his interrogator.  The door slammed shut in a whooshing thud behind a pair of rear-facing knees.

“Get up.” yelled Gen.

He ran toward Auria and slapped the sword across taut straps, furiously chopping and pulling to free arms and legs.

“You didn't see me.” said Gen.  “I bested him and you didn't even see me do it.  Wake up, so they might kill us... proper.”

He slapped Auria's face, shook her from both the shoulders and the side of her thigh where he slapped repeatedly.  Hips and face reddened, letting him know she lived.

“Join me in death.  You need to wake up and stand with me.”

“Why?” growled Auria.

“I don't know.  Because, I said so...  Get up...  Now.”

The lights grew dim while metal walls reddened.  A fog forced itself inside from vents at both the ceiling and floor, filling the room in dull smoke.  The chilling frost swept the floor, followed by a stinging, searing heat wherever white smoke touched bare skin.  Gen pulled Auria to him and hugged, holding her aloft for both to witness each other's smiling, sad eyes.  In the redness, a small shadow slowly grew larger.  The fog rescinded around the two, pushed back by a circulating wave of air.  Gen accepted the shadow's hand, hoping death would be so kind as to personally greet and take him to hell.  Auria and Gen were gone.