Other Side Tales - The Fifth Turn

Other Side Tales - 5th Turn
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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.

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.