Hometown - Chapter 3: Amalgamate

Hometown – Chapter Three: Amalgamate

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	Kris closed his eyes and prayed that Mother would leave. She was circling the van outside, which was made clear by her heavy breathing and loud footsteps as she moved around. She made no attempt at charging the vehicle or even dragging the teens out, but Kris was in no shape to run, let alone strong enough to drag an unconscious Susie to safety. The human would have to bide his time.

	“Susie…” The human’s voice was grim and somber as he looked over at the dragon slumped against her window. There was a large, red handprint on the side of her face from when Kris had checked on her wounds. ‘I need to find something to bandage her up. Crap, I wish I knew where the first-aid kit was. Maybe I could use my sweater? No, that wouldn’t work. Oh, maybe I could tear up her—'

	Kris blinked, and when he opened his eyes again he was blind. Something warm and thick that smelled like rusted nails streamed down his face. ‘What is this?’ Wiping the liquid out of his eyes with his sleeve, Kris was able to look at what was covering him.

	He gasped. His sleeve was covered in fresh, wine-coloured blood. With a wince, Kris noticed that the side of his head was also throbbing in pain. He shuddered as he reached up to feel his wound, his fingers tracing the torn, swollen skin. As he brought his hand back to his sight, he saw that it was covered in more blood. He was bleeding. He was bleeding a lot.

	‘Ugh… Of course it wasn’t Susie’s blood – she’s a monster. Not that it'd be the first time today...’

	Kris wiped his hand clean on his sweater and examined his body the best he could in his condition. His clothes were stained red from an obvious source, and there were small branches and leaves strewn all over him.

	There was a whole forest of tall trees that swayed in the wind outside. The moonlight that came in through the canopy was inadequate for getting a proper view of his surroundings, but Kris noted that the van had landed in a clearing in a woods. Besides Mother and the wall of trees surrounding them both, there was nothing but grass and weeds around the van.

	More blood rushed down his face, and Kris turned his attention to the inside of the vehicle. He reached for the dashboard console and flicked a switch, illuminating the passenger seats in a dull orange light in hope that he could see an old t-shirt or rag that he could use on his head wound.

	‘I need to get this patched up before I pass out like h—’ Just as Kris was about to finish that thought, something massive struck the side of his van. The teen’s body shook so hard that he hurdled towards Susie and landed on her lap.

	Kris panicked when another blow crashed into the van. From outside the windows, he could see Mother pulling back and preparing for another charge. Kris could only hold onto Susie as Mother kicked up clods of mud behind her and slammed straight into the van again.

	‘D-Damn it, I need to get Susie out of here!'

	Kris unbuckled Susie before bracing themselves against each other as Mother rocked the van again. Even through all this Susie was out cold, and Kris knew he was going to have a hell of a time dragging her from the van, and that was ignoring Mother not crushing them both into paste.

	As he reached for the handle beside Susie to open the door, Kris spotted the revolver that was still hanging by her hip. There was a moment of hesitation from the human. ‘Should I use this? Could I even use this?’

	Mother made a horrible noise that echoed throughout the woods. It sounded like both a roar from a horrifying predator and the screeching of pigs having their throats sliced open. It was the worse possible thing the human had ever heard.

	Kris grabbed the pistol from Susie without further indecision. He never wanted to cause someone harm, but for Susie he would do it. He had to do it. He was dealing with a true monster that wanted to hurt them. With the weapon held in front of him, Kris turned to face the other side of the van before he froze in place.

	Mother was staring at him through the window opposite of him. She looked even worse than when he last saw her. Her entire face was caked in dried blood, and the hole she had for a mouth was turned into a permanent frown as if a terrible sin had been done to her. She stood there and watched him, her head twitching violently in an unnatural way.

	There was a sharp cracking sound as the creature pressed her face against the window. Kris aimed his weapon at her, but she continued to put more and more pressure on the glass until it shattered. “Come hooome, Krisss…” Mother said, her head poking through the window. Her voice was distorted in a manner incomprehensible to Kris.

	Mother tilted her head sideways, dark bile pouring from her mouth-orifice, as she reached out with a long, sinewy arm. Kris was so terrified that he had forgotten to breathe, and while he held the revolver tightly in his hand, he was having a hard time drawing up the nerve to pull the trigger. Mother was reaching even closer, and he could smell her rotten stench of spoiled meat as a grotesque claw came within inches of his face.

	‘Pull it! Do it!’

	Something deep down told him, no demanded him, to shoot the monster. For a moment, Kris pulled the trigger enough to feel that he was a mere hair-widths away from firing, but as he looked Mother straight in the face, staring at her black, empty eyesockets, his finger eased up in panic.

	With a sudden lunge, Mother grabbed Kris by the neck, and then like thunder there was a loud BANG that deafened the human. He had pulled the trigger, but it was an impotent shot that missed the monster so badly that it only made an air hole in the roof of the van.

	Kris couldn’t do it. As the hulking beast pulled him out of the van, he dropped the revolver behind him. Kris was ashamed, and he wanted to die for being such a coward. He failed to protect Susie because he was weak. He deserved whatever was going to happen next.

	Mother raised him into the air, the moonlight hitting the duo like stage lights. She had a vice-like grip on his neck as she choked him. All Kris could see as dark spots appeared in his vision was that hellish, haunting face staring back at him as he gasped for air.

	Kris made no attempt to fight back. He kept his hands at his sides, his legs dangled in the air, and he no longer had the strength to keep his head up. ‘I’m going to die,' he thought. He was afraid, but he accepted his fate at the same time.

	And as if Mother had read his mind, she loosened her grip around the teen’s neck. “You live…” she groaned at him, her mouth moving but out of sync with the words. “Girl doesss n-nottt… You watch…”

	Kris clenched his teeth and grabbed the hand that was choking him. If he didn't want to live for himself, he'll live for Susie. She didn't deserve to die because he was too weak to do anything. His nails dug into her skin, but even when he drew blood Mother remained unflinching.

	“You’ll n-nneverrr leave m-my ssiiight again, my child…”

	Then in one moment, all Kris could hear was a loud ringing in his ear. He looked with confusion at Mother’s face, which seemed to have gained a brand-new hole to its collection. Mother trembled, and he could feel her grip on him weakening.

	Kris heard another gunshot before Mother unceremoniously dropped him to the ground. He could see blood pouring out from the creature’s head as she held her face with both hands, staggering around in circles like a wounded doe. Kris gasped when he turned around and saw someone moving from inside the van.

	“Leave!” Susie fired a round into Mother. “My friend!” Another shot echoed through the woods. “Alone!”

	Mother wailed as black bile poured out from her body. She looked like a water bottle that someone had stabbed full of holes as she spread her pitch-black liquids all over the grass.

	Kris, with what little strength he had left, stood up on his knees and crawled away from Mother as far as he could towards Susie. He was still profusely bleeding from the head, and his vision was getting cloudier by the second. But he was so close. He only needed to hold out for a little bit more and he could be with Susie again, and everything would be alright…

	“Susie,” his lips muttered almost wordlessly. Kris looked at his friend, who was aiming down the sights of her revolver as she watched Mother moan in agony. In an instant everything went dark, and the last thing he heard before passing out was one last gunshot.

	…
	…
	…

	Susie heard a click as she pulled the trigger. She could have sworn she counted six bullets when she found the gun earlier, but maybe she was wrong. Regardless, she could see that the five she pumped into Mother was more than she needed.

	Mothered limped around and wailed before falling to her knees, breathing heavily as black blood spilled from her wounds. Susie wished she had a way to finish her off but approaching the monster even with a melee weapon would have been testing her luck. She needed to find Kris and get out of here. That was more important than anything else.

	There was nobody else in sight as Susie turned around. "K-Kris?" she asked with a whimper, cold sweat running down her body, a tremor of terror shaking her to the bone. She looked around the clearing, at the trees, at the empty van, even back towards Mother who was dragging herself away. Kris was nowhere to be found.

	“Kris? Where the fuck did you go!? KRIS!?”

	Susie ran over to the spot where she last saw her friend. On the ground were blades of grass covered in his blood, and there was an imprint that showed where Kris had fallen when he passed out, but otherwise there was no sign of him. 'There's no way he got far... He looked hurt, and wh-why would he hide from me?'

	On closer examination, Susie saw a trail of blood originating from this spot and leading towards the treeline in the distance. It wasn’t like the black bile that Mother had spewed all over the grass, but rich, red blood from a human.

	There was a sharp pang of fear as Susie realized that somebody, or something, had picked up Kris and dragged him away without her noticing. For Susie, perhaps that was better than Kris freaking out and running away from her. Susie shot up Mother good, and she knew how much Kris hated violence.

	'Maybe Kris finally realized I'm nothing but trouble for him. Fuck, this is all my fault, too.'

	"GOD. FUCKING. DAMNIT!" Susie shouted and threw her gun at the van, the weapon shattering another window on the vehicle. "Why do I keep fucking up whenever something good enters my life?"

	Susie wiped her hand across her eyes, drying her tears. 'This world is turning me into such a crying bitch... Shit, and I gotta go find Kris again...'

	“Kris, damnit… You better be okay, you little fuck...” Susie’s voice dripped with despair as she walked back to the van.

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	Kris awoke on a stretcher in the middle of a cold room. There was a single dying light bulb that swung back and forth like a pendulum over his head, making it hard for Kris to open his eyes.

	‘Where am I?’

	There was a dull, throbbing pain on the side of his head that made Kris flinch, and when he reached for the source of the pain his fingers felt the same wound from earlier, though the bleeding seemed to have stopped. It wasn’t anything serious as he had thought, but he’d need to find something to clean and disinfect it when he had the time.

	He tried to remember the events that led to him waking up here, but he drew a blank as if the memories had been erased from his mind. In one moment, he was with Susie, and now he was here. He needed to find answers for questions he did not know he had.

	Kris jumped off the stretcher and examined the room he was in. He had the only gurney that wasn’t thrown in a massive, mangled pile in one corner of the room. There was a horrible stench that smelled of urine and rotten meat from the center of the twisted mass of stretchers. Kris had no interest in determining the source of the smell. He really, really didn't.

	Across the room were stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling. ‘Well, these are more like stuffed monsters,’ Kris mused as he approached one of the toys: a small winged dragon that was attached to the ceiling by a rope wrung around its neck. It reminded Kris of Susie, which brought a smile to his face, but when the teen grabbed the stuffed monster it oozed out a foul-smelling liquid all over his hand.

	The stuffed monster seemed filled with meat instead of soft, cuddly cotton, and when Kris brought his soaked hand up to smell it, he recoiled back and almost puked. It stank like whatever had crawled into and died in the middle of those stretchers.

	Kris was not initially bothered by a room full of hanged toys, like most people would be, but the notion that someone had filled all of them with rancid meat did trouble the human. It did however make him think of a prank he could pull in the future.

	There was a door across the room that was wide open, leading into a hallway that was pitch-black save for a flickering light. From the sound of it, there were footsteps coming from outside, which frightened him, but he had no interest in hiding inside the room either.

	The more he stayed in the room, the more the walls seemed to close in around him. He began seeing faces and shapes in the shadows, and there was a strong sensation of being watched that chilled Kris to the bone. Whenever he turned around he was afraid of seeing a terrible, fearsome face staring back at him, and while he wanted to fight the edge to turn and look, the dread of thinking there was something behind him without checking was far, far worse.

	When in a haunted room full of meat-stuffed animals and broken hospital equipment there were no good options. 'I'd rather have nothing,' the human thought.

	After taking a moment to gather his bearings, Kris walked out of the room. It was even colder out here, and the hallway was so long that all he could see was fog at each end. Kris wrapped his arms around his body for warmth. Even with his sweater on he was shivering. His wounds might be taking a toll on his body worse than he thought.

	To the right, Kris saw someone shambling towards him. She looked like she was wearing a police uniform, but there was nothing professional about her. The buttons on her pale blue shirt were popped open at the top, revealing a pair of luscious breasts that Kris had a hard time pulling his eyes away from. An exposed cleavage like that probably broke regulation, Kris considered comedically.

	She wore a darker blue skirt that sensually hugged her hips and thighs, leading the teen’s eyes to wander downwards to the ripped pantyhose that graced her legs and the black high heels that clicked and clacked as the officer awkwardly stumbled through the hall.

	Kris finished admiring her body and stared at her face. Her entire head was featureless save for a pair of thick lips and a cap she wore that had a badge similar to the one Officer Undyne has.

	Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary for the officer, she looked strange but lots of monsters looked strange. Maybe he could talk to this one. Just as Kris was about to call her over, he noticed a faint glimmer in her hand.

	She was holding a large knife in her right hand, with her arm raised up in the air as if prepared to stab at any moment. Even worse, as Kris looked at the officer more closely, he had a hard time comprehending her true form and the way she moved. Kris could have sworn he saw an eye open on her face for a moment, and she shambled towards him at a speed that was inconsistent with the steps she was taking.

	'Nope.'

	Kris turned and walked down the left hall. He could hear the monster following behind him, but even while walking Kris could outpace her which pushed most worries out of his head — the wound on it still his number one concern.

	The hallway was dark in most places with the occasional pocket lit up by a dim light. Everything was dilapidated and covered in filth like the place had been abandoned for some time. The white paint that must have once made this building look pristine had almost entirely peeled off, and there was a… wetness to the floor that Kris could tell was not water but he had no clue what else it could be.

	Kris thought this place might have been a hospital, but there were no commodities for guests and regular patients that one might find in a normal health center. All the doors he passed with plaques on them that read “LABORATORY” also tipped him off that perhaps this was not a standard clinic.

	Kris stumbled onto two signs as he reached the end of the hall. In front of him was an old-fashioned elevator cage. There seemed to be at least one floor above him and one below him, as Kris couldn’t see a roof or floor through the cracks of the elevator. Stepping back to view the signs, he saw that the door to his left was the infirmary, and that the other sign referred to the room on the right as “EXTRACTION”. Whatever that meant. It didn't sound too good, though.

	Kris approached the room on the left and saw that there was a surprisingly solid metal door in his way. With a push, the door groaned open and revealed another dark room. ‘Great…’ Kris thought as he took a step inside.

	There was literally nothing but blackness in the room, except for one spot at the back that was lit up by the faint glow of a computer screen. Kris groped the walls beside him, feeling around for switch, and when he finally found a little nub to flick nothing happened.

	‘Figures…’

	With a steadily worsening limp, Kris made his way to the computer. There was a swivel chair by the computer and an office desk that had all sorts of papers and pens scattered over it, and he could see cabinets beside the desk and a sink to wash up nearby as he entered deeper into the room.

	‘There should be medicine in these,’ he thought as he approached a cabinet and whipped the glass door open. There was an assortment of bottles that Kris had no interest in experimenting with, but a small box labelled “GAUZE BANDAGES” caught his eye. ‘Huh, exactly what I need.’

	Kris reached in and pulled out the box of bandages and placed them on the desk. ‘I’m going to need some disinfectant, too, but if the sinks work I could at least clean the wound a little bit before bandaging it up.’

	Kris sat down in the swivel chair. He opened the box and pulled out a roll of gauze. ‘Oh, these aren’t adhesive.’ Kris took the gauze and unrolled a piece of it, cutting it free with just his hands with minor difficulty.

	Luck favoured the young human, as he noticed a bottle of rubbing alcohol by the desk. Though perhaps that was standard for any medical environment. He grabbed the bottle and poured its contents onto the side of his head. It stung as soon as it landed on him, but Kris figured that meant it was working.

	‘This should disinfect the wound, right?’

	Returning to the torn roll of gauze, Kris picked it up and began administering it to his head. He made sure to wrap it around his wound twice before tying a small knot to keep it in place. It was a sloppy attempt at bandaging, and Kris was sure there was a doctor somewhere feeling suddenly disturbed by this poor show of medicine, but he felt proud taking care of his own wound.

	His mother would always insist on taking care of even the smallest cuts and scrapes. “You’ll get sick if you do it even a little bit wrong,” she’d always say. “Don’t you want mommy to kiss it better, Kris?”

	Kris shook his head. “Mom,” he muttered. “God, I really hope that thing Susie shot wasn’t you.”

	Sitting in the office chair, Kris soon turned his attention to the glowing screen in front of him. The computer used an inferior OS to what Kris normally used, but he could manage his way around it. Grabbing a small trackball mouse and bringing the keyboard closer to his chest, Kris began fiddling with the computer.

	“Determination Tests 07.wrd, eh?” Kris dragged his mouse cursor over to the file, double clicking it open. A word processor popped onto the screen, and Kris read the first line on the top of the page. “The Injection of Determination and its Effects on Humans and Monsters: Tests 07 by Doctor M. H. Bridge.”

	‘Looks like research notes or something.’ Kris read further ahead, skipping the parts that were uninteresting or filled with too much scientific jargon until he stopped at one particular sentence.

	“The injection of 99% pure determination in monsters was a complete success, despite the protest from my colleagues. The results were unexpected, perhaps horrifying, but the radical changes that the, what we now call, Amalgamates endured during the examination period was miraculous. Immortality within the palm of our hands, and it was horrible. Those idiots chase determination for its longevity properties but fail to see the bigger picture.”

	Kris frowned. Humans experimenting on monsters was something he heard about now and then, and he always figured it was a tall tale to make children behave, but the proof was staring right at his face. He read on ahead, even if his gut was telling him to stop.

	“If determination is so powerful that it can override the entire genetic structure of a monster, then why not introduce pure determination into another human? There would be no cross-species complications that would sully the results. We might better study determination’s true properties once we can examine it in an uncorrupted host.”

	Kris closed the file and fell back onto his chair. “What is this place?” He stood up and pocketed the rest of the gauze, leaving the bottle of alcohol back on the desk because he had no room for it. Kris got what he came for, and he saw no need to loiter around for any longer, especially with that officer-thing around.

	Just as Kris turned to leave, the lights in the room flashed on, flooding the room in unbearable brightness.

	When his eyes adjusted to the light, Kris saw white… creatures of all shapes and sizes with their faces against a wall scattered across the room. He counted about twenty of them, all pure white with their backs turned to him like they were avoiding his gaze.

	Some of these creatures looked like giant blobs with multiple feet, while others looked more humanoid but stood on two gangly legs twice the length of their body. All of them were motionless and looked like they were melting, which Kris thought made them look like vanilla ice cream during a hot summer day.

	Aside from that humorous image, Kris was frozen solid. It was like his shoes turned into cinder blocks. He wanted to run out of the room and put this nightmare behind him as soon as possible, but he knew deep inside that there was no winning move.

	He knew he couldn't stay inside the infirmary forever, and with a sigh he again decided to leave the room.

	Kris took a step forward and everyone turned around. Before the human could even scream, the creatures were upon him.

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