Still In Progress
"What's wrong with me?"
The room swam but she was running on anyway, she had to catch up with him...had to find out what he did to her and her friend...had to find out where they took him...
The door locked behind her and she was trapped in the same room as HIM...instruments all around but she couldn't comprehend what they were..."Where is he?! What have you done to him?!" her voice sounded far away, but she fought to stay conscious, and she lunged at the man in front of her, laughing...laughing...pain, then black...
"It's time to sleep now...hehehe...."
She was drowning, it was in her nose, in her mouth, everywhere....all she could see was red. Finally she hit the surface and nearly flew to the rim of the giant tub or vat whatever she was in....red liquid pooled out in front of her, covered her...a pool of blood? The hands that scrambled on the slick floor, were they her hands? She looked back into the pit of blood and...strange organic parts, possibly body parts, and one nude male body floated in the sticky crimson fluid. Unfamiliar, everything was unfamiliar, wrong...she couldn't think, or couldn't remember...she thought she knew him but she could recall nothing...these hands weren't hers, these strange scaly, blood soaked hands. Staggering across the floor now, slipping....there was some kind of reflective surface on the wall...a demon stared back at her...she screamed....
"Don't look at me....."
~
She woke in a cold sweat in the dark place that she had made her home and yet every time she woke her mind lapsed and she forgot where she was. It was the same cold sweat and the same feeling upon waking that she had for the past years that she could no longer count. It was always the same dream, the one fragment of a shattered and missing memory; she didn't know how much was missing, how many days, years...she didn't even remember her name. She wasn't even sure how much time had passed since then as there was no sense of time here and now, the sun was nearly nonexistent in a sky thick with grey. The moon was slivers of smoky light underneath the perpetual sickly clouds that that hung thick in the sky. She crawled out of her makeshift hovel, built of random pieces of metal junk, three walls and a roof, and a dirty piece of cloth of some unknown origin covered the front and set between two small buildings upon a small hill. The world was still in the deepest throes of night and silent; the world was always silent absent of all normal life, there was not even birdsong. She looked over at the broken city with an absent expression; she never mourned it because she didn’t even remember if it was hers.
Early on she had found what has made everything so dead, what had made the planet barren and black…disease. A terrible destructive disease and it one fell swoop, it tore life apart. No one really knew who planted the first drop, whether it had been a government, an enemy across the seas, or perhaps it was a scientist testing ground. Whoever it was, did they know that it was going to devastating? That it would affect the whole planet from ground to sky? Questions that would remain unanswered, as all who may have known died long ago, the knowledge of the past, lost and not even the children of the survivors knew. Not that there were many of course, after the plague drifted through. Those it affected most, went mad, their brains literally rotting in their skulls. Gums turned black and teeth fell out, hair turned brittle as straw and came out in bloody chunks. It wasn’t radiation, it was rot. They had no purpose, no intent, nothing. They tore their eyes out, tore at their tongue, their bloody scalp, and each other until they were all oozing tattered messes. Those that were more resistant escaped the madness, but became something that you could barely call humanoid. Those their brains didn’t, and their hair didn’t fall out, their minds became devoid of higher function. All that was left was basic instinct; you couldn’t even call them savages.
Fewer still, were the ones who did not get affected at all. There were small bands here and there, forming together to make some sense of the mess, not that they were successful. Not even they could escape the sickness. Everything green withered and died in a manner of days and the disease settled on everything like dust. Windows could not keep it out, neither could refrigerators, stores or anywhere one might have food or water. Bodies of water turned black and thick, were like pure poison. Where the initial disease did not kill them, the residual effects did. The saturation of food, the polluting of water; they all slowly died. Some sooner than others, but the mind was always the first to go. It was like dementia and in the end they knew nothing, how to walk, how to talk…not even how to breathe. Finally the disease reached its half-life and died out, dissipated as if it was never there, but the damage was already done. The planet was scarred, it’s surface black and dead. The water still carried its dark hue, but it felt like water again, and was safe to drink, if a little dirty. The few who still lived, those that had even escaped the pollutants, were lost. No one knew how many years had passed, was it decades? Centuries? However long it had been it had taken its toll. Tall buildings left abandoned were now like giant metal skeletons, lost remnants overlooking the sad broken cities. Strange rusted curbed contraptions dotted the forlorn streets, taking on the appearance of the husk of beetle that had shed its skin. No one knew what they were, or who made them. The knowledge was gone, lost to the tides of time. Where had she been on this timeline? The only thing she had gathered in searching for lost memories was that she had been held in some kind of stasis. So she wondered…had she been alive before the world had been ravaged by disease? She remembered vividly, the day she had stumbled out of that asylum.
~ Somehow she had found the way out of the white tiled complex, sterile like a hospital, but empty...at least empty of the living. The rooms she looked in held parts and pieces of what had been something alive, blood painted the floors and medical tables. Finally she had burst out a door but not into beautiful freedom, no...it was more like hell; a strange and unfamiliar city, broken, dead and colorless. Crumbling buildings with broken windows, and giant structures that once held pictures were now only remnants of something long ago. Trash and random bits that she couldn't even guess littered a dirty, gravelly ground; there were no plants, no life save roaches. Worst of all...there was no light, just a haze of grey and brown and there was no sun. No real night and day...the only different was how dark it was, the air was always stale and never changed. It seemed like the world was dead...and there was nothing left but her...
That was not true of course. As she became more aware of herself and her surroundings, the adrenaline finally quick pumping in her ears and she was accosted by the baser senses…the sounds of movement, skittering shuffling and sounds of what she thought to be voices…and then there was the smell of living things, not just stale air and decaying flesh. Then she recalled that she was covered in blood, the thought disgusting her as she looked down at her hands once more. It mattered not that they didn’t seem real, only that blood caked her nearly head to toe and she had to find a way to get it off, perhaps some kind of body of water. She stepped lightly, gingerly out the doorway as if afraid to disturb a giant sleeping beast. Making her way through the darker areas and shadow, she constantly checked over her shoulder and jumped at every close sound. Soon the dark alleys gave way to openness, perhaps a street in the past, and she could cross without fear of shadows. Around her were the strange but yet familiar rusted metal creations, remnants of a vehicle or something of the like, lying about like giant empty skeletons; remains of a long dead beast. She stopped for a moment beside one such thing and peered at the forlorn buildings trying to recall some glimmer of memory but nothing stood out at all and any signs or words upon these buildings had long worn away and was illegible…
“If anything moves down there, let me know.” A rich baritone voice jerked her out of her reverie. She turned toward the voice and saw it was the only person she would dare call “friend”, if he could even be called that.
“I was just thinking…” she replied to him, her voice soft and pretty, despite her outwardly appearance as his was strong and rich despite his appearance.
It wasn’t that either of them were ugly, or monstrous but most judging by appearances would think them both savage and unintelligent, which they were quite the opposite. The man was huge; at least six foot four and had the body of one who worked with tools, or weapons. He had strong arms and strong legs, thick and muscular. His hair was a shaggy mane of golden brown. Perhaps he had been handsome once but now no one could even call him cute. His face, torso, arms and nearly all his body was amass with scars that crisscrossed over each. Some old, faded, and white…others knotted and more recent. His nose appeared to have been broken once…but his vibrant green eyes were bright with intelligence. He was a man who had seen a hard life not that was a great feat as everyone had a hard life nowadays.
She on the other hand could be called an exotic beauty…or a demon. Her skin was a smoky grey-black and she resembled perhaps a cross between a vampire and a succubus. Thick bony grey horns above her brow curled back over her head, almost like rams’ horns but not quite as spiral. Her hair was jet black and reached her lower back, her eyes, a startling violet. From elbows down and knees down, skin faded into scales like shiny obsidian. Her nails were long and sharp, almost like claws and her feet looked nearly dragon like, four toes in front with claws and a back claw. She also had a tail, a long muscular thing, scaled and with spikes all along the middle along the “spine”.
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