Stories I Never Finished

Tech Demons

Blood trickled over shimmering metal, a gleaming blade's reflective light dulled by the drool of such a deep red colour. Life wasted away like memories within its gentle flow, spits through gurgling squelches of flesh and blade becoming one splattered across the once clean tanned skin of the blade-wielder's wrist.

Splattered on the desert beneath two sets of black running-shoes, the red pooled like a waltz between Life and Death; their reunion of love and cherishing going silenced as long tattooed fingers unfurled themselves from the blade's curved handle.

"Rude." Once the hand had been taken away another came to replace it, two sturdy hands wrapping around the blade's handle and pulling its sleek bloodied frame from his body.

The man's grey eyes glimmered with amusement, holding the knife up to study within the blistering light of the sun high above the barren land of sand hills and desolation.

"I mean fair, but ouch." Niall Horan chuckled, passing his partner's knife back to the human who accompanied him. "Why'd you stab me?"

Amidst a pile of bodies, white robes lathered in blood and limbs mutilated from their joints, Zayn Malik roughly snatched his blade from his co-worker's hand with a scoff of irritation.

"You were three seconds away from mauling a dead man." Zayn gruffly said, unimpressed. "I had no choice."

"Could've killed me." Niall's response was chipper, his memory of a slaughter laid upon five men wiped from his mind as though he had never been the one to kill them; even though the blood on his hands and clothes spoke otherwise.

"Is it even possible for you to die?" Zayn wiped Niall's blood from his weapon using the black cotton of his singlet; pulling fabric from beneath his heavy bullet-proof vest and array of weapons strapped to him.

"Duh, of course it is." Niall brushed his bloodied hands over the beige of his cuffed pants, glimpsing unfazed at the blood staining his white singlet.

Holding his hand over his eyes, he strained against the sun's powerful rays, peering across the desert where hooves of frightened horses had galloped across in their escape. Killing their owners had been a bad move in front of them now that Niall properly thought about it.

Footsteps in the sand tore his attention from the orange glowing horizon, his gaze falling back to his heavily tattooed friend as Zayn sheathed his knife back into its holder on his hip. A scratch of blunt nails dragged through his stubble beard, black hair cut short both on top of his head and across his chin now sweating under the sun.

"So uh... How are we heading back?" Niall followed Zayn's lead, their path short to reach their destination.

Thirty six hours of teamwork, brawn and brain had brought them to this moment in time; sweating their clothes to their skin as they trudged through a desert Niall had forgotten the name of already. The moment their shoes stepped upon hardened stone, plotted and engraved with precise design, was when their hard work had begun to pay off.

"Boss'll pick us up." With a smack of his palm, Zayn loaded the clip of his handgun after pulling the weapon from its strapped place on his shoulder. The safety trigger was switched off as two sets of eyes gazed upon the glory of the ancient temple. Grey stone loomed overhead, sand threatening to pour down its beastly existence and join the orange hue piled by the closed stone entrance.

Threading his fingers through messy blond hair, Niall peered curiously at the head of a strange mythical creature settled above the entrance way; overseeing all who dare to travel thus far into the desert, unfazed by the harrowing tales of curses and evil that plagued its existence.