I Am Chosen

Wreck Room

The problem was that they all attacked at the same time.

Kacey blew a hole through the head of the woman directly in front of her, who wore a maid's uniform. The lower half of the woman's face had a massive, wriggling black tentacle emerging like a giant tongue. Her lower jaw, as far as Kacey could tell, was gone. Black blood covered the freakish servant's neck and chest, and where there should have been eyes, there existed only black holes.

The Winchester bullet added another hole, right between them. Kacey worked the lever.

Swinging the rifle to her right, she was able to blast a hole into the chest of a butler, whose bald head had opened like a cracked egg, revealing a skein of large, bloated, pale maggots. The butler flew back into a pool table, where the worm-things spilled onto the green felt. His/its upper body then pitched forward, the legs gave way and the creature crumpled to the floor.

That left three more staff members, who had already closed the distance. Hollis grappled with one, a woman in chef's clothing who had apparently grown two extra, though smaller, arms.

The other two people-things fell on Kacey just as she worked the lever once again. Her closest assailant, a male, was shirtless. Running down the center of his chest from just under his throat to his beltline was one long gash. As he drew in and grasped at her, that slit opened. Oily black tentacles squirmed free, wrapping themselves around Kacey's wrists; a large one groped for her throat. The man's black eyes drew close; he opened his mouth and a triple-pointed tongue emerged.

Kacey scooted down onto her back and kicked upward between the man's legs, hoping that not all of his anatomy had been altered. A low groan escaped her attacker and the tentacles loosened just enough for her to jam the Winchester under the man-thing's chin and pull the trigger.

Bits of skull flew upward, accompanied by a black fountain of blood. It was then that the man-thing was swept aside by the next attacker, a dark-skinned freak who not only possessed black eyes, but had grown additional orbs-two more on each side of his face. The man's right arm was a large, fleshy club. It was this blunt instrument that had knocked away Kacey's previous assailant. Lashing out with his left, mostly normal hand, her opponent grasped the rifle barrel and yanked it from her grip, tossing it clear across the rec room where it collided with a Lamborghini poster and fell to the floor.

Kacey utilized the split-second distraction of the man-thing throwing the rifle to regain her feet and try to get around her foe. The attacker spun and swept his club-limb in an arc, and though Kacey pinned her arm to her side to absorb the blow, the impact still sent her flying up into the air and then down onto the pool table, spreading the guts of one giant maggot as she crashed atop it.

The larvae began crawling toward her and it was then she saw that they had small, circular mouths ringed with needle-sharp teeth. Heavy footfalls also warned Kacey that her opponent was barreling toward the table. Looking over, she saw him charging, club arm raised for a bone-crushing blow. Kacey rolled up onto the billiard table rail, tumbling off and onto the floor just as the blunt limb came smashing down, splintering wood beneath the felt.

The attackers were hideous, unnaturally strong, but fortunately, they weren't very bright. Mister Club Arm had tossed Kacey in the same direction he had thrown the rifle. It lay less than ten feet away.

Lunging, Kacey closed her fingers around the grip, pulled the rifle to her and cocked it as she rotated her body to face Club-Arm. The man was there, inches away, bludgeoning limb descending with deadly force as Kacey pulled the trigger. There had been no time to aim, but luckily the bullet tore through the man's neck, just under the Adam's apple. He jolted, then toppled forward, his arm smashing into the wall under the Lamborghini poster and just above Kacey's head.

Regaining her feet, Kacey spotted Hollis and set off. He was just outside the secret doorway. The female chef had Hollis pinned to the floor, holding his arms down with her normal arms, and trying to choke him with her smaller arms. "Hey!" Kacey shouted. As the woman looked up, Kacey stopped, sighted the woman's head in, and put a .44 caliber bullet through her skull.

The woman-thing fell to one side as Hollis hacked and huffed and drew massive intakes of air. He scooted away from the corpse as Kacey rushed to him, asking if he was okay. Hollis gave a thumbs up and croaked out a "thanks." It was then that Kacey heard a voice coming from her cell phone where she had tossed it atop the air hockey table. She retrieved the phone, hearing J.D. saying "If you can hear me, I'm hanging up and calling 911-"

"No!" Kacey said into the phone. "No, it's me. I'm okay. We're okay-"

"I heard gunshots. What the hell is going on?" J.D. sounded more concerned than Kacey had heard him in a very, very long time.

"I'm fine. Look, we should meet. Okay? We should meet... and I'll tell you everything."

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It's so hard to find good help these days. Especially when they into hells nightmare-creatures.