Tales of the Bounty 8:36 Part 2

The blood drips down her chin in a thin tiny line. It accentuates her youthfulness. She starts slowly backing up. The big guy laughs slightly and walks towards the stairs. The room shakes slightly. There is a table beneath the stairs covered in miscellaneous crap that Zen has been too lazy to pick up. A thick cloud of dust and spider webs mushroom up as he wrenches the table out. The room shakes, causing to people scream and run for the door. He holds the massive gun up lazily and shakes it at the onlookers. They herd away from the door towards the few tables. In a casual swing, he throws it across the room against the door. I jump up off the stool as he does this and hit the floor abruptly, as if the stool had been high up. She continues to smile at me.

She walks towards the center of the room slowly and with a slight stagger, begins losing her strength rapidly. The little color her skin had began to drain from her body.
"Stop Lilly," the man barks walking over to her slowly. He has something white in his hand, It glows against the dull backdrop of Zen's Grill.
"Let me draw the mark for ya girl don't call him yet," he mumbles.
He walks in slow circle around her, people clatter and pull themselves back against the wall. The trains never want to run when you need them to.

As he walks in the circle, he sprinkles the crushed chalk residue. I am not sure where he had time to do that so quietly. Not that any of what has happened makes any sense. The design of the debris makes no particular shape just an irregular circle all around her. It is very inarticulate. After he finishes, he laughs wildly and staggers over to the block entrance. He sets his gun down and crosses his arms leisurely but sternly. I want to grab the gun. The place is so small that I probably could. I begin to sweat heavily.

The room begins to shake immediately. The floor creaks and the iron behind the bar groans. People begin to scream and holler. I back up against the bar harshly and I feel the bronze rail jamming bluntly into my back. The girl crouches down on one knee and places her forehead on her fist. She reaches up to her shoulder and presses a button. The black plate that covers her shoulder folds up instantaneously, it must be some expensive armor. These are no jokers.

There is a tattoo on her shoulder in black ink. It seems to be some sort of face, but I can't see it completely. There is more rumbling. The room is shaking, as if all the trains in the Falls were running at one time. The man stays steady at the door, he is a statue, unmoving. He has the gun up not pointed at us, but at her. There is a flash of light as something falls through the roof. I fall down. Things bend and twist. My tongue feels heavy and my gums taste weird.

Nothing, but black.

I wake up promptly with a pain in my left hand someone is stepping on it.. My eyes focus and see it's a man with a suit on just like me. His chest is filled with chunks of wood and table. They stick out in odd angles with circles of blood around them. The blood from these wounds drip down onto my face in thick drops. I scramble away on my back, the man's chest convulses, he is still alive. People are screaming, there is dust everywhere. My hand feels stretched. I stare at it quickly. There are splinters, so many that the skin in between looks out of place.

I keep backing up until something hits my back hard. It trembles and something hisses. A chair falls down on something and the room goes quiet. Someone laughs, a quiet little laugh. Something heavy lands on my chest, I am in the air and a light bumps against my head. Something is looking at me, something I have never seen before.

It is not a man I am looking at, even though it is built like one. It is about seven feet tall. Its skin is coarse like sandpaper and grey. It bulges up at certain points in almost a design, some biological pattern. Its head is smooth, hairless, and as grey as rest of its body. There is a horn jabbing out from the center of its head, bright like a piece of scrap metal. There are no eyes, no light, just darkness. It has no mouth, no ears, nothing else.

"Break his arm, no!,..... tear it off", she says.