Façade (DISCONTINUED. Revised and redone as a webcomic)

Chapter 5: White Lie

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Day 002 1:11pm
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"You know, I think you and Memory should be dating."

Aspen commented unexpectedly as we started heading back towards the recreational facility.

I choked on my iced tea, coughing. Triumph laughed in response to my reaction, which prompted me to glare at him briefly. Once he held his hands up in mock surrender, I looked back at Aspen.

"What makes you say that?"

I asked her while still keeping Triumph in my peripheral vision.

"Well, I can tell you both really care for each other. That much is pretty obvious, but it's just the way you two interact and your chemistry with each other that makes me so excited about you two being together!"

She replied, grinning.

I didn't reply. Mostly because I didn't know what to say.

Aspen took this as a hint to stop, so she just threw an arm around my shoulder and laughed.

We continued walking down the same route we'd taken on our way to Starbucks, chatting, laughing and just having a pretty good time overall. I was enjoying myself out in public for a change, and that was incredibly nice. I had more friends than just Memory, and I'm not saying I was bored of him...I was just happy to have a few more.

I should've known better.

I'm not allowed to be happy.

As we passed the back doors of an old bar with a mountaineering theme, there was an ear-splitting shriek that stopped the three of us in our tracks. A young, male bartender burst out of the bar, tears streaming down his cheeks and a fair chunk of flesh torn from the side of his neck. His own blood sprayed out, and I immediately recognized that as a torn jugular vein. He wouldn't last five minutes. He was screaming into a cell phone, presumably yelling at a CEL call receiver.

"I FOUND THE CHIMERA! IT'S KILLING PEOPLE OF ALL SORTS IN THE WILDCAT BAR!!"

I was almost distracted by the irony of the situation taking place in a bar with that name, but the young man saw us and screamed,

"RUN!!"

Aspen and I just stayed still to process this, but Triumph immediately started to rush towards the young guy.

Triumph was ten feet from the guy when the doors flew off their steel hinges and a creature I'd only seen pictures of in the newspapers staggered drunkenly out into the open. It looked like an emaciated young man, bleeding from the nose, mouth and eyes. From the elbows down, it's arms were furred and the nails had become claws. His canine teeth had been replaced by fangs, his mouth hanging open, and his ears were slightly pointed. His hair, presumably a tawny brown colour, was now streaked with white from the stress and pain of suffering through the virus he'd contracted. The sclera of both his eyes had also gone an oily black.

This was a Chimera.

It grabbed the young bartender's shoulders, sunk its teeth into his neck, and swiftly tore the guy's head from his shoulders with a sickening squelch and a series of crunching noises as the vertebrae shattered and muscle tissue was torn. Even the tough, ribbed trachea had been split messily in two. As the head rolled to a halt at Triumph's feet and the body collapsed, Aspen grabbed my shoulder.