When I came to, my hand was still grasping the spike. It was slick with blood.
My leg was bleeding, a lot, but quite a bit less than I expected. From what I learned from my mother, if it had been squirting blood I might as well have accepted that I was dead. It wasn't nearly that bad right now.
'What am I doing again?' I was feeling lightheaded, probably from a mix of blood loss and the painkillers.
'Oh yeah, I gotta dress the wound...' For some reason the pain was almost faint now, an echo at the back of my mind. Maybe the bleeding was worse than I thought. Dread started making its way down to the pit of my stomach. I slapped myself awake.
'Fast! I need to act fast, damn it!' First I sprayed a lot of iodine in and around the wound. There was a throbbing sting when I sprayed it in, but I was almost thankful for it. It kept me in the fight, not letting my mind slip again.
I then tried to tape the wound shut. To no success. The blood wouldn't let the tape stick. I packed as much gauze as I could into both ends of the wound, cut a long strip from the sheets I was lying on, and wrapped it around my leg. Tight. Very tight. And then I waited for any sign that blood was still coming through the makeshift bandage. It didn't. Maybe I had succeeded. Hopefully I had.
I started to feel drowsy; fatigue, hunger and thirst were all setting in. I rummaged through my pack. I had a candy bar, half a sandwich I hadn't eaten (packed for after training), less than half a bottle of water, and... the cherry sports drink.
I reached for the sandwich, only to realize I still had the gloves on, covered in blood. I took them off and tossed them aside. I didn't even taste the sandwich; I focused more on the hunger easing. I decided to spare my last bit of water. 'Ice Cherry it is...'
Unfortunately, even being half-dead and half-asleep didn't deprive me of the ability to taste the disgusting fake cherry. But I chugged it down.
With my good leg I propped myself up and fell back onto the bed. It was heavenly, probably the most comfortable bed I had ever lain on. Lying my head on one of the pillows, I looked at my hands. Dried blood covered my fingertips and palms, drawing hypnotic contours around my fingerprints. I was lost in the spirals and curves, pulled into them, and into a dark yawning sky full of stars.
ººº
We were in the countryside. Aiden had just gotten his driver's license and decided to take the three of us on an adventure. It was just before summer break ended. I had been pissed about missing training, but now, with us lying on the open bed of his father's pickup truck and looking at the stars, those thoughts drifted away.
While my father was still alive we traveled a lot. We had lived in America, Greece and England. We spent a year in Seoul, and there was even a season when my father trained with Chinese Olympians. That is to say, I had seen many beautiful sights in my life, but nothing quite took my breath away like that night on a truck bed under the starry sky with both of my best friends.
I felt free, almost like I was doing something wrong. Like the adults would scold us when they found out we snuck away at night, or that an angry farmer was going to cut our time short at any moment. But they never did. I felt like only the stars could look back at us in that moment.
I missed that feeling every day when I went back to training, when I put myself through hell to shave a second off my time. My life had been a cage of my own making, and deep down I yearned to be free.
Suddenly I was alone on the truck bed, and the stars seemed to judge my loneliness with oppression and mockery.
This was not what I wished for.
ººº
I woke up still staring at my hands.
Rolling over on the bed, I noticed a window I hadn't seen before. The curtains were still, the window closed. I considered opening it to air out the strong smell of blood in the room, but decided against it. The skinless creature apparently had a good sense of smell, and I didn't want to attract it again.
Wait. Why the hell did I assume the last one couldn't just come back?
I had to leave this house. By the work of a miracle nothing had happened while I slept, but I wouldn't be so lucky for long. I searched for my phone in the pocket of my old pants. It still had battery; the screen was cracked, but it turned on.
'No signal, of course. 38% battery left. 3:42 a.m. It was about 5 p.m. when I went to Auntie Lu's... Everything that happened after couldn't have taken more than an hour, so I slept for what, nine hours? Damn.' I fished out my water bottle and took a drink. I hope Auntie Lu is okay...
I started packing up, doing my best not to put any strain on my injured leg. The improvised bandage hadn't bled through, so I'd been successful. I couldn't push it at all, though. Ideally I shouldn't even be walking, but we were so far from ideal that even thinking about it felt silly.
I pulled on the mangled pants. I wasn't about to go out in my boxers.
'What if one of those things finds me? I'm not about to be a body wearing just underwear for someone to find later.' It was only half a joke.
I left the improvised cane behind; it made too much noise. I unlocked the door and peeked into the corridor. It was incredibly dark, so I lit up the flashlight on my phone.
'Empty.'
The office ahead looked just like earlier; apparently the monster from yesterday hadn't come back. There were two other doors I hadn't checked, so I moved to them. One opened to what looked like a child's bedroom, with exquisitely crafted toys strewn across the floor. There was a toy of what seemed like a wolf, a bird that didn't look much different from a seagull, and a big land bird, like an ostrich but with a large beak.
There were many books in the room with colored images; the pages each had texture to them. In one of the drawings, a kid who looked almost human but with much longer arms ran along with a wolf-dog. It seemed like a fairytale. There were words on the page, but they were written in letters that looked almost runic, nothing like the alphabet I knew or any language on Earth for that matter.
I closed the book. 'I can explore this later. I need to go now. I don't have that much battery left.'
Making my way to the last door, I opened it to what seemed like a bathroom. There was a faucet, and I immediately tested it for water. A black, tar-like substance started flowing from the tap. 'Hopefully it's just mud'. It eventually gave way to clearer, but still dark, water.
I seriously considered filling my water bottle with it, but I had a weird gut feeling that whatever that black stuff was looked way too much like the creature's tar-like saliva. I closed the tap and moved on. I would have to find water elsewhere.
Going downstairs, a doorway opened onto the living room. Or what remained of it. Everything had been thrown around and any semblance of order was gone when the front door had flown in, smashing furniture. A candelabra, half broken but still attached to the ceiling, swayed slowly with the gentle breeze coming in through the smashed doorway to the street. The pieces of glass on the floor and the disjointed furniture cast long shadows on the walls.
There was a door to the right. It was open, leading to a dining room. I walked in slowly, using the walls for support. The glass crackled and popped under my feet as I crossed the torn-up carpet.
'If there is a dining room, there must be a kitchen...'
The dining room seemed almost intact. The table was set for three; all the furniture looked very expensive, with silverware, even covered in remains of rotting food, shining under the glow of my flashlight.
'I have to keep clear of the windows.'
Finding another door in the dining room, I opened it; it led to a kitchen. The counters had cupboards under them, most haphazardly opened, and there were sacks and wooden boxes on the ground. It looked looted. The back door, open and slightly moving with the breeze, reinforced that impression.
I tried searching around without much luck. What hadn't been looted had insects crawling on it: old, moldy bread, blackened grains and rotten remains of what had once been fruit. However, I did have one lucky find: a long chef's knife. It looked bigger than one a human would use, and despite a little rust it was still sharp. I poked my head out the back door and turned off my flashlight.
It was dark, but even through the cloud-covered sky a reddish light bled through, casting everything under a red curtain.
There was a little patio here with brick flooring. At the center of the patio was a raised piece of ground, circled by a small brick wall. On it once stood a tree; now its leaves had long fallen and turned to mulch. The night was silent, with barely a breeze caressing the dead tree's branches. The patio was empty save for a few rusted, decayed benches that once overlooked the center, no doubt used by the families of the houses around the patio.
There were also the doors to the other houses. Two seemed open already. The fourth and final house with a view of the patio, counting the one I was leaving, had its door closed. It was probably locked, but I decided to make my way to it anyway. It was my best chance to find something to eat and maybe water to drink.
I hobbled across the patio, doing my best not to make any noise, sometimes failing and letting out a small grunt of pain.
I tried the door. It was locked. I turned my flashlight back on and peered through the back window. I could see a small living room on the other side, and then I noticed the rusted lock.
'Maybe...'
I lodged the knife between the window and the windowsill and tried prying it open. Once, twice... and the lock gave.
I slid the window open and climbed in.