Echidna nightmare inducement

The school's bell tolled, oddly deep, with an echo that continued, unending. I couldn't see it through the cloudy haze that consumed my vision, but I felt as though the lockers were straining against their hinges in keeping with the rhythm. The same went for the floor tiles, and the hundreds of footfalls of the students milling around me. A pounding rhythm.

I couldn't keep my footing. I was blind, still, but that wasn't the source of the problem. It seemed vaguely familiar, the way every impact seemed designed to hit me where it hurt, to knock me off-balance and leave me in a state where I was spending too much time reeling and staggering to push back or find safety.

Someone tall shoved past me, and his bag caught on my nose. It tore at the skin between the nostrils, and I could feel warm blood fountaining from the wound. I staggered, bending over with my hands to my face, and someone walked straight into me, as though they didn't know I was there. My head hit a locker and I fell. Someone stepped on my hand as their vague shape walked by, and I could hear something break, could feel it break. The pain dashed all rational thought from my mind.

I screamed, brought my hand to my chest, cradling it. I was tougher than that, wasn't I? I wasn't made of glass, to have bone fracture or-

"You're so pathetic, Taylor," Emma intoned.

No. Not now. Not like this.

I could hear Madison tittering. Sophia was silent, and her presence was all the more ominous for it. I'd done something reprehensible to her. I couldn't recall what it was, but I knew she was here for retaliation.

They struck me, and I fell. Emma and Madison took turns kicking me, and every effort I made to defend myself fell short. It wasn't just that I didn't know how to fight, or that I was blind. It was somehow worse, as though every effort I made were being actively punished.

I'd reach out with my good hand to grab one of them and pull them off their feet, and my elbow would get stepped on, forcing it to bend the wrong way. I tried to push myself to a standing position, only for someone to kick me in the back, slamming my chest and face into the tile, hard.

I tried to speak and a kick caught me in the throat.

And all around me, there was the steady rhythm of footsteps and the bell's echo.

The point was clear. I was supposed to give up. I really should have given up.

If I wasn't able to do something on my own, maybe a weapon? Some tool? My thoughts were confused and disordered, but I searched through them, as if I could remember if I'd stashed some tool or weapon on my person.

No, something else, I was supposed to have another weapon, though my instinct told me it wasn't anywhere I could reach, and that was normal. I searched for it-

[...]

-and I couldn't find anything. I was unarmed here.

One kick caught me in between the eyebrows, and my head exploded with pain.

That spooked me. I had to protect my head. If I suffered another concussion…

That was the breaking point. My brain was more important than whatever else I was trying to protect. Anything else was fixable. I stopped fighting back, tucking battered legs against my bruised upper body, drawing my hands around my head.

Immediately, the assault stopped being an attempt to break me and destroy my every effort to stand up for myself. It became something more tolerable, with periodic kicks and stomps instead. The accompanying shame and humiliation was almost nostalgic. Horrible, but familiar.

Then Sophia stepped close, and I felt something sliding beneath my hands and arms, settling around my neck. A noose. She used it to lift me, choking, off the ground.

Madison opened the locker, and the rancid smell of it wafted around me. I would have gagged if I could breathe.

Sophia shoved me inside, planting one foot between my shoulder blades as she hauled back on the rope. My unbroken fingers scrabbled for purchase, found only trash and cotton that tore when I tried to grab it. Bugs bit at my flesh and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

Bugs? There was something I thought I should know, something-

[...]

-that eluded me, like the water that escaped the ever-thirsty Tantalus.

As I scrabbled for purchase, the contents of the locker shifted, falling and collapsing against me, pressing tight against my body, smelling like old blood and rancid flesh.

My heart skipped a few beats and I felt as though my blood was turning to sludge in my veins, slowing down. My thoughts dissolved into a slush of memories, speeding through my life in choppy, fragmented, distorted images. I felt momentarily disembodied, as though the line between myself and my surroundings, my mind and my feelings were all blended in together.

When it pulled back, I could finally breathe. I let out a deep, shuddering breath. I could breathe. I could think again.

I heard the sound of blades rasping against one another, the ringing of steel building with each repetition of the sound. I blinked, and the blind haze lifted as though I'd only had tears in my eyes.

Mannequin stood in the center of the room. He had four arms, each ending in three-foot blades, and was sharpening each weapon against the others without pause.

Around him, the factory. Machinery churned, pumps and pistons and levers moved, and furnaces glowed to cast long shadows, casting Mannequin in a crimson light. The people from my territory were there too, along with Sierra, Charlotte, Lisa, Brian, Rachel, my dad, and my teachers. Each of them fought to hide in the shadows and the corners, but there wasn't enough room.

I carefully assessed the tools I had at my disposal. My gun, my knife, my baton. In a more general sense, there were my bugs. I called for them-

[...]

-and barely any responded. A hundred? If that? The heat of the furnaces killed many of the ones who were trying to approach. It left me with a mere thirty-nine bugs. I might as well have been unarmed.

Mannequin extended one arm with the blade outstretched, pointing at the crowd. His 'eyes' were on me as he did so, moving the blade slowly. Pointing at faces that were familiar, but who I couldn't name.

Pointing at my dad.

And there was nothing I could do to save him. Not saving him wasn't an option, either. I drew my gun, fired.

Only one bullet in the chamber. There was a sound as it hit Mannequin, but he barely reacted as he turned toward my father.

I drew my knife and baton, charging.

Futile. He ignored me completely, raising one hand and then stabbing down. I couldn't even look at what was happening. Refused to look.

I struck Mannequin, aiming for the joints, the small of his back, his hips and knees. Nothing worked.

Without even looking, Mannequin reached over to one side and thrust one blade at me. His weapon penetrated my armor like it was Armsmaster's special halberd.

I screamed, but it was more rage than pain. I howled like I might against a hurricane, a storm that was destroying everything I loved, that I was helpless to fight. I battered him, struck him with my weapons, gave everything I had and more, to no avail.

He folded his arms around me in a bear hug, squeezed, crushed.

More of him folded around me, pulling tight against my head, my throat, arms, chest and legs.

My life flashed before my eyes, every event, every memory and recalled feeling distilled into a single point.

When the crushing sensation passed, I was left standing, disoriented, in the middle of a flooded ruin.

The momentary relief faded swiftly.

All around me, desolation. Blasted buildings, bodies, flooded streets. Graffiti covered the walls around me, the letter-number combination 's9' repeated in endless permutations and styles.

I flinched as an explosion took the top off a building two blocks away. Blue flames roared on the upper floors.

I couldn't breathe. My skin prickled, burned, just on contact with the air. I felt nauseous, disoriented.

Radiation? Plague?

A fleet of cockroaches scurried over one of the nearby ruins, like cattle stampeding away.

They were fleeing from something. Multiple somethings.

I took cover.

"Where are you?"

The voice might have been sing-song if it weren't for the filter that reduced it to a mechanical hiss.

"Where are you?" another voice echoed the first. Younger, female. A girl's giggle followed.

"Hush, Bonesaw," Jack's voice reached me, like a sibilant whisper in my ear. The water that flooded the streets served as a surface for the sound to bounce off of, letting it carry throughout the area.

My costume was more tatters than actual fabric. It wasn't like there were spiders anymore. Only cockroaches, and fewer than I might hope. The water that flooded the streets wasn't so kind to them.

"What game shall we play today?" Bonesaw asked. "Did you make anything? Please tell me you made something."

"I did," Bakuda responded. "I borrowed from your work for this one."

They were close. Nine of them. I couldn't run without making noise.

The cockroaches, then. I reached for them-

[...]

-and the cockroaches obeyed. They formed a rough human shape, then another. Swarm-clones, as close as I could get to making them, without a concealing costume for my real self.

And the Nine didn't fall for it. Bakuda turned my way, and I belatedly remembered the heat-tracking goggles. She could follow me by my body heat.

I ran, and I knew it was futile.

Night caught up to me first. It would have been a simple matter for her to kill me right then, but she had different aims. Her claw cut at the back of my legs, and I fell, crippled. My fear pushed the pain into a distant second place on my priority list.

In a matter of moments, I was surrounded. Night at one side of me, Crawler on the other. Jack, Bonesaw, Siberian, Bakuda, Shatterbird, Burnscar and Panacea.

- Scourge 19.1