Awaken

[This is Not… the end…]


Weakly I groaned.

Last night had been a rough one; I still could feel the after effects of the party echoing in my bones. The bouncer had done a number on me and everything was sore, it had been a night to remember.

Thank goodness that I’d already forgotten it all.

[] My name... I shouldn’t forget my name...

Still my head pounded like something was playing baseball between my ears, and my mouth felt dry and fuzzy. I didn’t even want to question what the OTHER taste that sat beside the alcohol on my tongue was, like an old fat cat on a breaking branch. I think the less about last night I knew the happier with life I’d be. And the less said about what the first filtering peeps of sunlight did to my eyes, the better. Every indication said that it had been a bloody wild night, though somehow I’d managed to get home safe and sound.

If needing to head off to the bathroom...

[] The fuck I’m still (man/woman) right?

Fuck my life... the other sex probably has it easier.

Fuck... I needed to use my eyes now. The process of opening up my peepers was painful, but I endured, bit by bit. Slow going when your head feels like someone’s playing the bongos on them and every bit of light just makes it louder.

Success!

...pain...

I looked at the clock, still groaning. Nine fifty am, November sixteenth.

Great... I couldn’t help but sigh to myself. I was already late for work, and I seriously doubted my tightass boss would accept ‘but last night was my birthday and I got stinking drunk trying to drown my loneliness and sorrows. Fucking things learned how to swim anyway. I hated the way my mind swam after a night like this, resolved every time to never do this again, a lie every time and I knew it.

My life was just too pathetic to endure without the good nights. Even if they made the mornings even worse, it really didn’t matter much anyway. Dead end job in the local Bestbuy, no prospects, couldn’t afford college, couldn’t afford to even try to for something like a scholarship. Fuck I didn’t even belong to this godforsaken place out in the middle nowhere: American version; shipped out her to live with a local aunt who couldn’t even begin to give a crap about me.

All in all, a typical day in the life of a typical deadbeat with typically below average prospects for ever making something of themselves. I was worthless, I knew it, my neighbors knew it, and the whole bloody world knew it. But for all that, it was still going to be another typical day of me apologizing to my boss like crazy, and promising to do over time without pay to make up. Already in my head I knew the words I’d use to sweet talk the self-important bitch into letting me keep my pathetic job...

Already in my head I knew how my day was supposed to go...

Which was why when I turned on the TV, I couldn’t even begin to fathom what the news was telling me.

“... believe my eyes. Ann... In... This is still live right? Just film it. Just... This scene is where only hours ago New York City suffered a fatal blow, hours ago a series of shining lights opened up above the skies and creatures began to pour out. What’s more reports have been confirmed in every major city as military response has been heavily mobilized. But these brutal and unexpected attacks have already devastated half the country... Fuck... Look if there’s ANYONE still out there unaffected by this Im telling you now, bunker down, find someplace safe. We’re being invaded by fucking Demons. I don’t know what else to call them, but that’s all I can say. Just, I want to call this a fantasy but I’m not joking. This is as real as it gets and if it was CG, then that shot there was an entire movie budget. And they’re fucking murdering everyone in the street they meet, everyone. This is not a fake this is not a show…” Wait what?

I’d been reaching into the fridge idly, just returned from the morning business, listening only as was my routine. For a moment I wondered why the new channel had been acting out a radio drama... then I glanced at the screen, a chill settling though me as the image of the reporter’s desperate face stared back, partially blocking a scene straight from out of some kind of nightmare.

In the background... things... raged, their bodies sinuous, sleek and yet, utterly alien in ways that I could only begin to quantify, and atop them rode beings akin but not quite like men, clawed hands holding devilish looking blades as the charged.

The military were there, fighting.

Dying.

Men and women fought with tactics custom made for fighting men against men, but these were monsters, and even under heavy spray fire, they were not going down. Some of the creatures actually deflecting the bullets as they charged, others outright ignoring the spray of fire except for a few times I’d noticed them twitch, flinch or act injured. Twice I saw the screen flash back to parts of the fight where one of the creatures which had flinched would go straight for the one which had injured it.

*Knock Knock Knock*
My door... I let out the breath which I had not even known that I’d been holding. My heart thudding within my chest at the way in which my world had suddenly changed, hangover forgotten as a strange rush of adrenaline clarity washed over me. Somehow I could feel it; in my gut, in blood, in the very air.

Questioning what I’d just seen hadn’t even occurred to me as I started to move.

“Come on, open up the door.” Angel? “Open up the door you idiot. They’re fucking coming!”

Wait what?

I hurried to let her in, fumbling slightly with the latches as she burst impatiently into the room, dark skin and darker eyes ablaze with... something. I couldn’t tell just what, only that there was something imperceptibly different about her, my best friend technically.

What was she even doing here? Normally she wouldn’t even visit for months; her commute was completely out of my way for a normal week day. Then why was she barging into my doorway?

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck... Fuck it with sledge hammer. Fucking Sideways” She was pacing, nervous and her face betrayed just how spooked she was. This bitch had been the toughest person I’d known for years. Her being worried, made ME worried. “Grab your stuff; we gotta get out of here, Fuck it. We have to move now. I only barely fought my way out. There’s a portal out there; close, too bloody close, need to get moving before they start spreading into this part of the city too. Before they come and find the car and total it to keep us from getting away.”

“Wait... what portal what?” So sue me my brain was still sluggish from last night I didn’t know what the hell, and it took me a few moments to connect what she was saying to what I’d just seen and heard on the tv.

“Invasion force, it was all over the fucking news... Don’t tell me you... dammit look, just... We’re under attack. Don’t doubt me, listen and move. Pretend that I'm right and don’t talk back.”

My head throbbed once more in sequence with her words; something feeling like it was pushing into my brain. Still I’d heard the news, and if it was a prank better safe than sorry. And Angel wasn’t the pranking type.

“Ok.” I accepted, only to have her fingers curl around one of my arms, then spin me around grabbing the other. “Hell, I though you wanted me to go get ready to leave?”

“When did you get inked, and why is it glowing?”

I frowned in confusion. “Inked? I told you already I wasn’t ever going to get a tattoo... no matter how much you...”

Then for a moment more I stopped... and looked down upon my bared arms.

What the fuck did I do to myself while I was drunk?

All along my arms they ran, across the inside of my forearms following the veins and back around to the back of my palms. On my left hand glowed blue, something like Celtic knots, twisting, churning, intertwining... beautiful. On my right glowed red, it was jagged, Gothic in look and just as intertwining as the other, but there was something... an almost imperceptible ugliness inherent in its beauty.

Equal and Opposing forces.

I hadn’t seen them before... but now that I had, I could feel them, there was something intricate to these patterns, something utterly and unnervingly powerful.

The glowing intensified as I brought them into proper view, examining them... entranced by them.

I could still hear Angel speaking, her voice distant, getting farther by the second.

My eyes suffused with a brilliant glow... her cries lost amid the noise of limitless light.



I Awakened.




~/|[*]|\~


Your eyes open and before you a vision appears... a memory...

Of you at your worst.
[] Blood in my eyes... red and sweet. The crunch of my knuckles Visceral against his smug teeth.
[] Writhing, moaning, the taste of other; penetrate, pierce. Slipped in as the world slips away. We shouldn’t... but it felt so good.
[] A moment of Triumph, accolade won, however small. I was BETTER than they had been.
[] Why couldn’t it have been me, why do these fat fucks get to have everything?
[] Fuck it, I didn’t care anymore my stomach ached, I’d probably be fired for eating it all... but it tasted so good.
[] ... No work. Not to day. A hassle. Not like they needed me there anyway.
[] No one would notice when I took it. That I took some every day. No one would notice, and if they didn't then it was MINE.



Of you at your best.
[] I could take her abuse. I could take it all day. I wouldn't flinch and she couldn't make me. I was bigger than that.
[] No... I walked away, the sex... it could have been hot as hell, but it wasn't right.
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