It stayed there, staring... Just staring him down. There was no motion for what seemed like an eternity. He kept his eyes on the beast, unblinking for fear of its immense unstoppable powers.
And then the second of peace was over. He reeled back, shock rolling up his arms from the knowledge that he in fact, no longer had fingers with which to grasp the beast as arm's length. The black pit of teeth consumed the digits and sought more. Clutching the stumps to his chest, the victim scrambled for ground; an escape from the vivid Death that lapped up...
The room kept spinning for the delicate human. You could tell by the way it swayed in its place on the floor beneath the feet of the beast. It only had seconds to live before the creature dug into its chest cavity for meat. "M-make it quick..." the feeble meat-sack uttered in its primitive language.
The demon snickered in its own language and burrowed its snout into the stomach of the human, tossing blood-soaked pieces of security guard this way and that. The animal was a mad thing, unknown to any kingdom or phylum on the planet, Earth.
And it...
The rain had been pounding the east coast for days now. Floods crept closer to our compound, but for now, the levies held. For all intents and purposes, it was a good day. Just once, we had not had any incidents with any of our items. No alarms, no casualties, and no Class D riots.
But, we could only be lucky for so long.
It was late afternoon when the first anomaly appeared on the security screen in front of me. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye, but it was clear as day the second...
"It was just like all the others.
"Fear. Defense. Anonymity.
"Just enough of the subject's face had been blurred so we couldn't discern their identity. Another one of the Foundation's pieces of work, no doubt.
"It was just too much. Too many people had turned in photos like this. The same damn camera, and the same damn style. Always in the middle of nowhere, with one person fearing for their life, as if the camera itself were the entity attacking.
"There were other varying problems with this one, that the other pictures did not display. This subject's head was turned...
It was the one. He had to be. There was no one else in the room who dared to stand against the flow of society. It had to be him. He was it. It was now or never.
She pulled back the flaxen tendrils from her narrow face, and inhaled nervously. The thin frames of her glasses made her crystalline blue eyes glisten. With one single glance, anyone around her could see the fear and predatory excitement that tugged at the corners of her defined lips.
But no one would look. She was the no one of the assembly. Literally....
Through the files, there were instances going as far back as ancient Egypt. This creature had been in the human world for centuries. Amut, the Heart Eater, fated to consume the hearts of men who were evil and corrupt.
All across time the demon roamed, scraping its existence into the memory of mankind. But something was off about this log file in particular. 'Encounter Log No. 682-426-1991' it read. Where did this page come from, though? It was not in the database, nor in any files that had been scoured previously.
It had the normal redacted information for security measures,...
What? No... It was impossible.
The sirens blared violently in my ears as our company raced to the breach. A creature, unlike any I have ever known about, escaped. Twice now, just this month. Something was off.
We rounded one corner after another, the vivid fear of each of us almost tasteful; a bitter copper mucus that stuck to every inch of our mouths. This creature in particular... Not two days past did it kill another researcher who was new to the facility.
And there it was, hungrily tearing asunder the last group sent in. Why? Oh... Oh god why?...
It was only the briefest of interactions...
The beast lay in its containment chamber, loathe in the fact it was once more dissolving in the volatile concoction of hydrochloric acid. Viscous fleshy chunks pooled off his rapidly decaying hide, his keratin-enriched mane already microscopic particles in the vat. Bone was visible on its face, iconic to the images the public knew it as.
Reptilian eyes watched me as I entered the containment room, blatantly conveying its want, need, and desire, to kill me. The only words I could get out of it were "Die, now." And then the fun began....
And so another group assembled. The moon shone like the eye of a great forgotten deity, peering down on the hooded figures who worked tediously on the pyre between them.
Old branches, gnarled and bony, reached into the pyre as more hoods broke into the meadow. No one knew why they had been gathered here, in the deep wood that bordered the black lake. But, like their ancestors, the call to arms was one they could not deny.
And as sudden as they all appeared, a creature formed from within the darkness, dark green flesh glimmering with the faint caress...
I had already been running for way too long. Over rocks and streams, around trees, it didn't seem to matter. The maze of the landscape seemed perfectly clear to me as I forced myself through the forest.
The only things I knew for sure were that I had to get away from this thing and that the only advantage I had was my familiarity of the land.
The beast was definitely faster than me. And hungry. Those two things together weren't making things look good at all.
Why did I have to go into its territory and steal food? Why...