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An alarm clock beeped incessantly until a hand shot out
and knocked it off the small bedside table.
The figure on the bed groaned and
rolled over to the other side of the bed until a second alarm clock went off a
minute later.
The figure moaned to herself and sat up blinking.
Susan Adams looked around her tiny room blearily then
looked down at her hands. They were sticky with dried blood, she had even
managed to bloody the blanket she usually slept on.
She turned and put her feet on the floor not moving for a
few minutes as the events of the previous night played through her mind.
After
she stared at her boots still on her feet Susan levered herself up and dragged
off the ratty t-shirt she had been wearing. Looking at it she tossed it into
the corner of the room where a small pile of clothing had started to
accumulate.
She finished undressing and stumbled to the shower turning it on
until the water was the right temperature. She stood under the water for 20
minutes not moving much until the hot water started getting cold.
She showered and got herself dressed for work.
A simple
Metallica t-shirt she had bought at a thrift store, jeans and her steel toed
boots.
As she passed the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the
bed she looked at herself in the mirror.
Her hair was no longer black but now
auburn with streaks of red in it, since her father’s death the hair colouring
was something she had not been able to shake.
She picked up the Tibetan prayer beads from the table
under the mirror, sheathed her skinning knife at her waist.
Then put a long
bladed dagger in her boot and finally picked up a switchblade which she held in
her left hand as she picked her scuffed leather jacket up from the floor.
Putting it on Susan secreted the switchblade up her left sleeve.
“Not many people expect a left-handed weapon when you’ve
shown them you’re a righty,” her father’s voice said to her as she finished
securing the blade in its special sheath.
Susan looked at herself in the mirror again and sighed.
It had been two years to the day since she had killed the man in the parking
lot, the police were still hunting her.
But now she also hunted whoever or
whatever was after her.
She also went after whatever monsters she could find,
moving from town to town, city to city, not staying put for long.
Since starting her crusade she had collected a few new
scars to go with the three on her thigh where the bandersnatch had clawed her
all those years ago.
Susan grabbed her car keys off the table and left her
small room, slamming the door as she left.
She walked by the front desk and
looked in, the manger was sitting at his desk filling in a crossword. Susan
knocked on the door frame and as he looked up she threw him a wad of cash
rolled up with an elastic band.
“Another month’s rent, seems I’m staying longer,” she
said and walked out.
The manager awkwardly caught the money and looked up but
Susan was gone. Shaking his head at the strange woman he counted the money and
found there was more than what was needed.
As he stood up to catch Susan he
heard her truck start up, it was an old Dodge pickup that roared as Susan put
her foot down racing out of the parking lot. Grumbling to himself the manager
sat back down and picked up his crossword puzzle again.
Susan had about two hours before she had to actually be
at work but there was another job she had to finish first. It seemed that
another monster was having fun with local college girls at a club. Strange
stories of the girls disappearing after going club hopping, so the young woman had asked
around and two places kept on coming up.The Verge was one place and Club NOH3
was another.
So Susan had staked out Verge the previous night and had
found a man that drained people of their very life force.
She had managed to get
the drop on the strange creature and cut off his head which she had buried
outside of town leaving the body in the alley way.
So far it seemed it had not been found since no news
report mentioned any headless body.
Susan had to make sure so she sat in her truck watching
the club.
She glanced at the clock on her dashboard and saw that she would have
to leave soon, if she was late for her regular job people might start asking
questions and she did not want to leave just yet.
Just as she was about to start her truck a man in a suit
exited the club via the back entrance and walked down the service alley, Susan
ducked down and watched the man.
He glanced at the watch on his wrist and took
out a cellular phone from his pocket and dialled a number. Susan watched as the
phone on the seat next to her lit up.
After a minute the man in the suit hung
up and the cell next to Susan stopped buzzing.
“Gotcha,” muttered Susan to herself and exited the truck.
She reached into the back of the truck and removed an
iron pry bar that had been resting there.
Calmly she walked across the road
hiding the pry bar inside her jacket watching the man in the suit look at his
watch one more time.
Clearly frustrated the man turned around in surprise as the young woman slid the pry bar free.
“Hey,” she said and swung as hard as she could.
The man whirled around and stopped the pry bar a few
centimetres from his head, his hand started smoking as the iron ate at his
hand.
“Bitch, I knew someone was hunting us,” he spat at Susan.
Susan looked him in the eye and spat an iron nail into
his face, the nail seared his flesh as the man let go of the pry bar falling
backwards.
Susan dropped the bar and pulled her skinning knife free, which she
swung in a low arc gutting the man.
With a look of surprise he fell to his knees, “This won’t
stop me.”
Susan picked up the iron pry bar and said “I know” before
she swung it at his head as hard as she could.
The man went down and Susan kept on hammering away until
she heard his skull crack. Quickly she used her knife to remove the man’s eyes
grimacing at the messy job.
With the orbs clear she put them into a jar filled
with iron shavings and sealed it.
“Ugh, one energy vampire and one faerie dead,” she said
to herself pocketing the jar.
Susan felt around the dead faerie’s body and removed his
wallet and cellular phone, after a minute she removed his watch as well.
From
the wallet she took all the cash he had, which was a substantial amount and
threw it back down pocketing the rest of the items.
Looking around one more time Susan walked away from the
body and out of the alley and slowly got into her truck, after a minute she
drove off.
Susan’s regular job was at a butcher cutting and carving
large joints of meat into customer sized steaks and various other packaged meat
goods.
As it was she arrived ten minutes late but was luckily
not seen by her boss, so she shrugged of her jacket and put on her apron, her
hands still sticky from her earlier kill.
She washed her hands at the nearby
sink looking around for anyone that could see her but the shop was quiet and
her boss was in the back room.
So Susan quickly unpacked a large joint of meat and set
about carving it up with the butcher’s sharp knives.
She liked the job as it
was easy and she could let her mind drift while she concentrated on the job,
she almost entered a meditative state and could forget all her troubles for a
little while.
The day passed swiftly as the store got busy then emptied
in the early evening. Her boss said that she could leave early so the young woman hung up
her apron and was in the back room putting on her jacket when she heard the
door bell chime.
Frowning she went to the door and was about to open it
when she heard her boss talking, “Sorry but we’re closed.”
“… I am looking … For someone.”
To Susan the voice was strange, it had a stop in the
middle as if the speaker was not sure how to use words.
“Well it’s only me here, so I don’t think I can help,”
said the butcher, his voice firm and steady.
“He will be alright,” said Susan to herself, “He’s big
guy who knows how to use a knife.”
The strange voice spoke up again “I know Susan was… Here…
I can smell… Her.”
“There’s no one by that name… Sir I think you should
leave before I call the police.”
Susan eased the door open quietly looking through the
crack and saw a tall, pale man with lank black hair staring at the man.
“Oh crap, oh no,” whispered Susan, she knew what it was.
“Oh crap, oh no,” whispered Susan, she knew what it was.
She closed the door and backed away to the other door.
As
her hand touched the door handle she heard a sudden snarl and a scream that was
cut off too quickly.
She jerked open the door and ran out into the night not
caring to be quiet any longer. The door she had closed moments before banged
open and the tall man burst into the back room, blood covering his mouth and
hands but the room was empty.
Sniffing the air he growled and went back to his kill, he
needed to feed and the hunt was on.
Susan drove as fast as she could to her small motel room
and quickly gathered her belongings, she had got used to keeping everything mostly
packed or easily replaceable. The young woman grabbed another backpack already
full of clothes and items and grabbed a few things from the bathroom cabinet.
That done she ran back out to her truck and threw everything inside.
The manager came outside “What’s this noise?”
Susan looked at him and said hurriedly “Family very sick,
must go.”
With that she jumped into her truck and started the
engine as the manager looked perplexed saying “Oh… Have a safe trip?”
Susan backed her truck out of the parking lot and raced
away from the small apartment complex as the manager realised that she had paid
for an entire month upfront, with a shrug he walked back inside. As he sat down
he found himself rather worried for the young woman, he did not know why but he
was scared for her sake.
Susan drove as fast as she could but knew that too fast
and she would attract attention, so gritting her teeth in frustration she drove
just above the speed limit hoping that the town’s sheriff would not catch her.
She managed to exit the town without any incident and
breathed a sigh as she spied the bridge that crossed the river out of town.
She slowed the truck down to drive over the old bridge
when the strange man from the store landed heavily on the car’s bonnet, denting
the metal.
Susan whipped the wheel left and right in an effort to dislodge the
man but he simply punched a hand through the bonnet and held on.
The truck crashed into the railing, one wheel hanging
over the edge. Susan swore and looked up at the man who had raised his free
fist.
The young woman scrambled to get out of the truck frantically pulling at
her door. It popped open and she fell out of the truck on her side just as the
man’s fist smashed through the windshield.
Susan started crawling away struggling to get her feet
under her, she needed distance to figure out what to do.
Behind her she heard a popping sound, looking back she
saw that the man knelt on the bonnet. His body was changing.
His bones popped and his ligaments rearranged themselves
until the strange pale man was gone, in his place stood a huge hound-like
creature.
Susan gulped, this bandersnatch was even bigger than the last.
Drawing her skinning knife she presented it blade first
to the creature while she drew her other knife with her left hand from her
boot, this blade she flipped into a underhand grip.
“Well come on fugly, I don’t have all night,” shouted
Susan at the beast.
It growled and sprang off the car, its landing caused the
bridge to shake. Pacing towards Susan, the beast had an evil light in its eyes.
Susan let out a growl of her own and crouched into a
fighting stance.
The beast howled once and sprang at her. Susan waited for
a moment and dodged to the side throwing herself out of the beast’s path, it
hit the opposite railing with a crack, the old wood nearly giving way
completely.
Susan rolled and got her feet under her as the beast
sprang at her again.
This time there was nowhere for the young woman to dodge
to so she ducked under the beast and slashed out with the sharp skinning blade.
The beast landed on the bridge with an ugly growl blood
streaming under it and while the blow had hurt it, it did not stop it. Susan
faced the beast again and looked at her blade.
“Got you,” she said.
“Last blow counts for more,” replied the beast in a
guttural voice.
The voice shocked Susan so that she nearly did not see
the beast charge at her.
It came in low this time and Susan tried to dive to her
right but the beast clipped her left hip with its claws. The young woman landed
with a cry of pain as the shock of the wound did not allow her to land safely.
The beast quickly ran over and put its snout under Susan flinging her into the
cracked railing, it broke in two depositing Susan onto the hard wood.
She moaned as her ribs were bruised and the new wound on
her hip was torn further. Dragging herself up Susan saw that the beast had
shifted back into a man, torn bits of clothing hanging off his lanky frame.
He walked over to Susan and said calmly “You killed my
friend all those years ago.”
“Yeah well fuck you,” growled Susan through the pain.
The man kicked Susan in the face nearly breaking her
nose, she gagged as blood ran down her face then he simply kicked Susan hard in the ribs.
Susan gasped in pain and tried to roll herself into a
ball to escape the pain, the man looked at her and said “Pity, they said that
you were tough. Oh well, time for you to be frumiously dispatched.”
A siren sounded out in the dark and a police cruiser with
its lights flashing stopped on the end of the bridge leading into town.
“We had reports of some kind of disturbance, y’all right
here?” called a young voice.
“We are fine officer, you can go,” replied the lanky man.
“Y’all sure… Hey where ‘s your clothes mister?” asked a
young police officer as he came closer.
His flashlight picking out first the lanky man who was
almost entirely naked. His eyes caught Susan and the blood beneath her.
“What?” said the confused officer as he reached for his
gun but the bandersnatch was faster.
It charged the man, teeth finding the officer’s jugular
before the young officer even had a chance to draw his weapon.
He went down in a spray of blood as the bandersnatch devoured
his throat.
Susan heard the creature feast for a few minutes and
tried to drag herself up but she had lost too much blood. She fell back against
the railing with a groan.
The creature looked up from his feast and stared at Susan
for a moment. He stood and walked over to the injured woman.
“Well I will say this, you don’t give up easily.”
Susan rolled and pitched herself over the railing as the
bandersnatch reached for hershouting as she fell.
The creature stood looking at where Susan had been lying
for a long while before it got into the police officer’s car and drove off
leaving the corpse on the bridge next to the damaged truck.
He knew that no person as injured as Susan could have
survived the fall and he could report the success of the mission.
A few miles down from the bridge a body of a young woman
washed ashore at a bend in the river. Boots hurried over to the body and a hand
felt for a pulse, hands lifted the woman up and moments later a car door
slammed, tyres screeched off into the night.
