Storm of the End: Book One

Chapter XIII.IV: The Sadist

The monstrosity from before stood at the top of the stairs, with its incredibly disfigured face staring right into my eyes. It held something in its imposing claws, something that I could not discern. It let out a sharp whistling noise in quick succession, a noise that I could only guess at its meaning, and tossed what it held in its claw. I recoiled in disgust as it landed with a splat on the floor in front of us. It took me a minute to realize exactly what it was... I only managed to recognize it by the small tufts of facial hair that jutted out of the deep red.

It was the decapitated head of the old man from the basement, but his face and skin were distorted and wrinkly, almost as if he had been entirely drained of blood. It didn't register at first, but I realized that for some reason, the skin itself was as red as blood, not because it was coated in it, but because it was actually colored red.

I heard a clang as Jared's gun hit the floor, and he scrambled to pick it back up. I tried to let out a wail, but all that escaped my mouth was a low moan. In an instant, our vigor and courage had been completely drained from us. The creature's mouth spread into an unnaturally wide smile, so wide that the skin in the corner of its mouth began to tear. Blood spurted out of the tear, and the creature's tongue lapped up its own blood. Then, slowly, it walked around the corner out of our vision, and extended an arm out into our view, beckoning us to come follow it.

There was no way I wanted to go up there. No sane human would willingly go up those stairs and follow that mockery of nature. But we had to. I tried to move my legs, but they moved at such an incredibly slow pace that it felt like they weren't moving at all.

Then, I was hit with a sudden realization, and I think Jared was as well. That thing wasn't invincible. As terrifying as it was, as much as it made us want to run until we couldn't run anymore... it could die. It must not have been all that strong either, because Jared had managed to kill two of them by only running them over! The only reason Jessica and the others were killed so easily is because they were taken off guard and they didn't have anything to defend themselves with! So with two guns, there was no way it'd stand a chance! It only looked imposing, but in reality, it wasn't all that much stronger than a human!

"Let's go, there's no way it will survive if we shoot it enough times, right? I must have just missed it in the city, yeah, it must have just been playing dead. Those other two died just as easily as any other living thing, so this one has to be the same, right?" Jared said, almost a bit too enthusiastically. I nodded in response; there was only one way to test our theory.

Averting our eyes from the old man's head, we both cautiously walked up the stairs, listening for any signs of the creature. Other than my heart pounding in my chest and the sound of our footsteps, I heard nothing. When we reached the top, we quickly turned to face the hallway. Naturally, it was empty.

All the doors were closed except for the master bedroom, which was wide open as if saying "Come on, I'm in here!"

"Do you smell that?" Jared asked me. I took a sniff, and nearly vomited. The smell of rotting flesh drifted from the master bedroom. Great, just great. More than likely there would be a gruesome surprise waiting for us. Steeling my nerves, I started walking towards the bedroom, following after Jared. We didn't bother to try and be quiet, it was obvious that the creature knew we were coming. But that didn't stop us from being any less cautious.

Jared jumped into the room, immediately firing the shotgun. I heard the sound of glass shattering, and then I charged in the room as well. Jared had shot the window, completely missing the creature. It stood in the far corner of the room, grinning at us as if the sickening scene in the room was hilarious.

The room was coated with blood, as if someone had taken some buckets of red paint and emptied all of them over the walls, ceiling and floor. On the bed frame where the mattress had been, there were dozens of chunks of flesh scattered around. None of it was distinguishable as human; it just looked like pieces of meat. A torn up blood soaked dress in the center of the carnage told me that this had once been the body of the old woman. Then, to my absolute shock and horror, the meat began to move. At first, I thought it was just my body shaking in fear, or the bed frame moving, or anything sane and reasonable. But that wasn't right at all. The meat was actually moving, crawling towards me and Jared almost like a slug.

How was something like this even possible? Just what kind of insanity was this, right in front of my very eyes? I heard Jared vomit next to me, but my eyes remained locked on the disgusting, pulsing meat as it slowly moved towards us. I heard the creature make an attempt at a chuckle, and somehow everything clicked in my head. It now made sense why the old couple attacked us in a frenzy before, it made sense why the other creatures had died so easily while this thing was unharmed. Whatever it killed, or maybe even just whatever it injured, it could control to some extent, or drive into a frenzy at least. I wasn't sure if that was exact, but it must be pretty close to the truth. The old man's head had been unnaturally red, right? Just like the skin of the creature. Now that I looked a bit closer, I could see that some of the chunks of meat that were the old woman had a few places where the skin was still intact, though it was wrinkled and red just like the skin of the creature. So those other creatures Jared had run over... they must have been humans at some point, too. Humans that had been transformed into monsters by the red humanoid. It only made sense that running them over was enough to kill them.

Did the same thing happen to Jessica, when this thing attacked her and the others? Did one of her co-workers get transformed into one of these horrific masses of flesh as they were cut apart by the creature? I imagined the scene as clear as day in my head. I imagined the human screams of Jessica and her co-workers transforming into the horrendous screams of the creature.