Something Eternal

  “Goodbye, Sophie.” Emma ignored her tearful, frantic pleas. “I’m getting out of here now.” She puffed. “Funny how life works out sometimes.”

  Grinning wide to each of her ears, Emma had all but turned to walk away when, sussurrah, sussurrah, the whispers of many voices from all around the catacombs and tunnels mumbled confusing gibberish. Multiple voices whispered at once, but not a single word was distinct.

  Skrrreeek! Grating nails scraped along nearby walls and accompanied the loud, vulgar murmurs. Suddenly, the babbling whispers were joined by growls, clicks, clacks, and tapping of footsteps from every surface and unknown direction. Emma frantically turned every which way, flashing her light up and down, but the tunnels were empty, and would not give up their hidden, impending secrets to her.

  “Don’t leave me here like this! Not like this.” Sophie used all of her strength, grabbing pieces of the adjacent wall, while pulling the top half of her body up off the ground as best she could onto her stiff, mangled, and bloodstained leg. “Oh, no! They’re coming! Don’t leave me!” Her body shaken, her eyes shifted. Sophie whipped her neck from side to side. “PLEASE!” she strained her voice to a hushed, fraught screech.

  Emma cowered. Her head shrunk between her shoulders. Again, she looked behind and in front of her, now overcome by dizzying speed from each rapid turn. The whispers became louder by the second. Emma trembled as she backed away. Sophie pitched herself up and toward Emma. In a moment, each briefly glanced at the other. An unspoken doom repelled one, yet drew the other with a dreaded forethought of unwavering, fixed eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I really am, but you’ll only slow me down,” Emma lowly muttered.

  Sophie continued groaning on her rise to a stand. “No! Please!”

  Shakiness in her voice, Emma crudely replied, “No!” She ever so slightly quivered her head from side to side as she gradually backed away. Yet with eyes connected, she inched her hand, reaching out toward Sophie for a kind of vain forgiveness.

  Sophie, almost to her feet, winced with great pain and unsteady gait. “I can do this!” She slipped, and fell hard, hitting her face. Sophie quickly glanced up, locking eyes once again with Emma.

  “Oh, no,” Emma spoke to herself. She looked around at everywhere except at the only thing visible, a flailing and helpless Sophie.

  Sophie thrashed, pulling herself up from the cool, muddy ground once more. Struggling, she rose with exertion, until tears overflowed and filled her bottom lids. Moaning through clamped teeth, she was at least half standing on her one good leg. Sophie was ready for that all-important first hop toward Emma. Not caring whether she liked it or not, Sophie was determined, with a streetwise resolve to find Maurice, and together, they could make it out of the catacombs alive.

  Sophie smiled with a cleansing exhalation. She reached out for Emma’s hand. Then a high-pitched screech interrupted Sophie’s triumph, causing a skittish Emma to jump back and off the ground. Emma shined her flashlight on Sophie, who had insufferably fallen again onto the muddy, cool, hard ground.

  On her stomach, Sophie rolled back and forth, attempting to hold her mangled leg as fresh blood streamed through her fingers from this newest trauma. She mashed her eyes downward, her nose creased upward, her cheeks tightened, and she bit her lips until her teeth broke her own skin. She grimaced, while moaning, yet still gazed up toward Emma with a desperately awful realization that these were her last moments of life.

  Sophie, reluctant to let go of her injured appendage, reached up, but before she could utter a single word, she was abruptly snatched, dragged backward into the darkness of the catacombs.

  An unknown force pulled Sophie away so quickly, that if not for the rearward stretching bloodstain, it appeared as if she had never existed at all. Emma, briefly paralyzed by extreme fright, spun the flashlight up in the direction, down the dark tunnels in which Sophie had been taken. However, only an empty tunnel, along with a smeared, bright red, vivid streak as long as the beam of light remained.

  Emma’s adrenalin jolted into overdrive. Her breaths sped shallow and sharp as beaded sweat enlarged from her forehead.

  Emma swiftly turned, burning a path away from Sophie’s bloody trail. She ran with a single thought and purpose, to avoid what grabbed Sophie at any cost.

  At first, only Emma’s heavy respirations were audible to her, yet the muted, loud whispers returned. They had quieted for a short time, but now reprised with a lurid chase upon her. She blocked her ears, still running away from the horrible undertones of death.

  The whispers appeared closer and closer by the second. Emma, unable to think anymore, ran, but felt as if she were traveling in circles. Her beamed light bounced up and down from floor to ceiling inside the tunnels with each resilient, fast step. The muck, so thick, clung to her sneakers and collected inches of slowing tread. She slipped and fell, while the gun flew like a broken boomerang from her hand. Where her only weapon landed she knew not, but she knew she needed to get it back, and in a hurry.

  While on her hands and knees, she scrambled through sand and watery dirt, shining her flashlight, while floundering about the ground wildly. She brushed the barrel and metal trigger just a short distance away during one hand sweep of the area. She crawled and reached out for the gun, pointing her light in its direction, but a filled pair of shoes accompanied the weapon. She had not felt them when she reached out for the gun at first, but dreadfully she recognized to whom the shoes belonged.

  “Hello, Emma,” a drone, chilly male voice said.

  Emma swiftly grabbed the gun, stood, and aimed it at the person standing before her. “You’re one of those things, aren’t you?” she shouted.

  “Hey, relax…besides, one of what things?” He raised his palms up, before pushing his arms back down to their sides. “It’s just me, you know…Killian.” He merrily dipped his head with a smile. “So you can put that gun down.”

  Though she had never held a gun before, she aimed the weapon straight at his chest. Emma’s hands tensed and trembled around the handle and trigger. The gun nearly shook from her slippery fingers again. Along with a sigh, she flashed a glance of relief in his direction, followed by a sideward gaze of uncertainty. “Oh, yeah, well where the hell have you been this whole time?” Emma wished she could fall into his safe arms, but still, she kept her distance, and with scant trust, her eyes remained asquint on Killian.

  He briefly peeked rearward. “I…um…I got lost.”

  “What!?” Emma rattled her flashlight. “Didn’t you hear all that screaming…the whispers…the horrible beating heart sounds!?” Her pitch rose with traumatic gasps of anxiety. “And something just…Never mind.” She quickly closed her eyes and shook her head at the mere thought of Maurice, Sophie, and the beast.

  “Um…yeah, that’s how I found my way back to you.” Killian reached out but quickly pulled back his hand upon her low snarl. “Hey, are you all right?”

  Emma calmed herself for a moment. She narrowed her eyes, looking him up and down. He did not have a scratch on him. He seemed like the same exact person she had joyfully toured Paris with earlier in the day. He was still clean, and from where she stood, just a few feet away, he still smelled great.

  “Yes…I mean no!” Emma shut her quivering eyelids. She was tempted to catch a drop of sweat that dripped down her nose, but kept the gun pointed straight despite the consuming urge to relieve the tickle. “I’m not all right,” she said weakly. “We’ve got to get outta here.” With exhaled release, her knees buckled inward. “And why aren’t you worried about all those screams?”

  “It’s okay.” Killian slowly approached her. “People scream all the time down here. It’s usually just kids playing games.” He neared her and the gun she held. “Listen, whatever this is, you can trust me.” His palms faced her while hoisted back into the air.

  With a forlorn glance, Emma gave a solaced shrug. She lowered her weapon with tears
and overwhelming emotions of which she was not familiar. She leaned in tightly, hugging Killian.

  Of all the weird sounds in the tunnels and catacombs that evening, a strange plopping down by her feet caught her attention most. Emma tilted her head, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at Killian. She instinctively waved her flashlight down, back, up, and over, before shining the light directly at Killian’s face. Something was amiss. Emma felt unsettled because something was different. Something was absent. And despite wanting to trust him, something did not make sense.

  A chill vaulted shivers down her spine. She instantly tore away from his embrace. “Oh, my god!” Emma struggled to get words out. “One of your…one of your…you’re one of them! You’re…what are you?” Emma raised her forearm and covered her mouth. Without blinking, she gawked. “Your ear, it just peeled away and fell off!” She shined her flashlight at the missing piece of his head, and then down where the ear had plopped onto the ground.

  “No,” Killian replied, still reaching toward her for a kiss. “Your eyes are playing tricks. You’re just seeing things.”

  “Don’t tell me that!” Emma shouted. “I’m looking right at a perfectly formed ear at your feet. And you happen to be missing one all of a sudden.” She shone her light on the ear, which now appeared like a wax chip from off a figurine. The ear lay in a shallow pool of dirty water on the ground. Emma’s face bleached with horror. “Your ear just fell off. Oh, my god! How does an ear just fall off!?”

  Killian patted the sides of his head. “What’d you say?” He laughed. “I can’t hear you.” He sulked, flipping his hand at her. “That joke’s wasted on you.”

  Emma quickly raised up a straight-arm, pointing the gun toward his chest again. “You got Killian just like you got Maurice and Sophie, but you’re not getting me, you…you demon.” She clamped her teeth. Her eyes had an uncanny focus as her lids drew tightly inward.

  “I didn’t get anyone. Besides, not just like me.” Killian briefly paused. “Like we. Like we. Us you mean!” He corrected her. “We got Maurice, Sophie, and now…well…you, my dear.”

  Like a Potato Head doll, Killian pulled off his other ear. Emma’s respirations increased threefold. Breaths were shallow. Her heart pumped rapidly. Again, she hated watching, yet again, she watched in horror, this time as he unhooked his nose before removing it like debris.

  “I don’t actually need these to hear.” Killian displayed his human ear and nose in cupped hands before her. He then tossed them to the ground like unwanted garbage.

  It seemed unreal to Emma as the tunnels appeared to spin around her. Killian continued. “This body you’re looking at…” He grabbed chunks of skin, and pulled large sections from his face and hands. “I took it, you know. I took this form last night, well before I even met you up there when you were with your mother.” At a steady pace, he removed bits, pieces, and chunks of his humanity while addressing his audience of one. Emma was unmovable with indecision, but kept the gun, shaking as it was, directed squarely at the deconstruction unveiling before her regretful and repulsed senses.

  Killian casually talked. It became a one-sided conversation. He removed more and more parts of himself, occasionally cracking a lopsided, terrible smile here and there. He forgot it was skin at times. He forgot what skin meant, so Killian kept removing layers as if it were everyday clothing. “Hey. You ever heard that ol’ saying, ‘curiosity killed the cat?’ Yeah, well like I was saying, there was some dumb, curious kid outside a nightclub last evening, so in essence, you could say I killed the cat and took its fur,” he plainly said with a what-do-you-think type pout as he gestured from his shoulders down to his feet.

  Shock gave way to denial. Emma settled on the meaningless, babbling forth a host of chaotic jargon. “Ew, so gross!” She wiped her lips, thrust out her tongue, while jetting her brows downward. “You’re disgusting. I can’t believe I kissed you!” She tried to find something clean to scrub her tongue against. Instead, she spit all contents of saliva out her mouth.

  At first unsmiling, Killian let out an amused grin. “Yeah, well that’s part of the curse. It’s kind of like this reverse Cinderella thing.” He scratched his head and clumps of hair fell out in large piles onto his shoulders, after which, tumbling down, and dusting the ground like balled weeds from the Great Western Plains. “If it makes you feel better. I was human…for a short while anyway.”

  Emma gulped. A dazed shock halted any rational thought. “How can you live like this, it’s horrible, you’re horrible.” She puckered. Her intestines grumbling and unwell, she attempted to lurch the contents from her belly.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Killian casually replied. “It has its benefits. We have extra human speed and strength. Yeah, and did I mention that I’ve lived for over three hundred years now.”

  With each layer of humanity Killian shed, another piece of his repugnant true self emerged. Forgetting what he had previously looked like, he eyed a cockroach scuttling up beside his arm. He tried fighting the urge while in front of Emma, but impulsively, he quickly snatched the bug up, crushing its hard shell in his hand, then he shoved the bug’s runny, yellowish green guts into his mouth. He munched on the insect with a loud chomping, before he noticed disgust mixed with revulsion altering colors across Emma’s face, so he simply swallowed the rest. His neck ballooned with a protruding lump as the half-chewed bug made its way down. However, at a certain point, something inside his throat seemed to reach up and yank the bug down his stomach. Almost like a vacuum, it sucked downward before his neck returned to near normal size and shape.

  Killian smiled, his teeth soiled yellowish green. He endeavored to lighten the situation by telling his made up, untimely joke. “And the French say they don’t have any cockroaches in Paris. HA!”

  Queasy, Emma began to hear the whispers creeping up on her from behind again. Afraid of Killian, she attempted to look over her shoulder, while keeping the person she thought she knew in the corner of her eye, and though her hand trembled, at times shaking violently, Emma kept the gun aimed always at Killian’s chest or head. Troubled, her diverted attentions were unnerving.

  Emma, now distracted by fear from every direction, turned aside and shone her light down through the dark tunnels, catching only skulls and bones in the distant catacombs. Her breaths uneven, they faded in and out, up and down, low and loud. With the thing she thought was Killian before her, she did not know where to focus her weapon. She waved the gun, targeting the barrel frantically around the tunnels, and then back squarely upon Killian.

  “What’s going on?” Emma’s voice shook. “What are those whispers? What are you? How many are you?”

  Killian blankly stared at her. The last of his humanity peeled away until only his eyes and lips remained.

  Emma’s arms shortened, gathering themselves closer without conscious thought. Her tightened muscles arrested movements, decreasing her space until she nearly dropped the flashlight. “What’s going on?” She backed against the wall. “I can’t breathe!” Her hands shook madly. She could not blink. Her eyes stung as they grew wider. “Oh, my god! OH, MY GOD!” she screamed.

  With a swing of the flashlight, suddenly, Emma glimpsed many Dwellers silently closing in on her from the tunnels in the distant dark. The four walls appeared to close in, constricting Emma, pushing her downward. “This isn’t happening,” she mumbled repeatedly. Emma folded her hands over her ears, while closing her eyes. She shrank, sliding her back down the wall, pulling every limb in near her body. The mounting pressure and panic crumpled her into a contorted ball of fear and dread.

  A ravenous swarm of hostile-looking creatures lumbered toward her with a single-minded goal. Some crawled spiderlike. Upside down on the high ceiling, their heads flipped completely around while eyeing her. Their necks twisted backward, growling, while their long, narrow, pointed tongues licked between their razor fangs.

  Other Dwellers zigged rapidly as they
zagged up and down the sides of walls, clinging to hard rock with relative ease. A few Dwellers crouched down and hunched over as they steadily paced the ground like a troop of soldiers, each carrying a hungry, determined guise.

  The Dwellers coveted with menacing, hideous black eyes squarely set. In unison, they navigated toward the fresh meat. All of the lifeless, hideous black eyes, like doll’s eyes, fixed squarely upon Emma. The swarm converged ever slowly in on top of her trembling place.

  Emma struggled to gulp, but even in the moist tunnels, her mouth dried, and her throat knotted up. Her eyes shifted briskly about at the rotating threats hovering in, around, and almost on top of her. She looked for a way out, yet none could be had. She hoped to reason with them, but unlike her bright, sparkling eyes, theirs were filled with only blackness, death, and unreasonable fervor. Emma reflected uniqueness found deep within her soul, yet their black saucers mirrored an apathetic starvation, accompanied with nothing more than the image of what she had to offer them, a tiny bit of meat, from her skinny, little frame.

  The whispers of gibberish became louder as the Dwellers approached. At first, the mixed jumble of murmured nonsense was just one of many other sounds displaced among the catacombs, but now they deafened her senses with angry tones, and with an increasingly rapid, nonstop succession. One in particular, repeated the last few words of every sentence, which was all Emma understood among the babbling nonsense.

  The voices spoke different languages, yet soon, they fused as one, and as a solo hostile voice, they drove onward ever methodically.

  The Dwellers advanced toward Emma with nary a shred of alarm or conscience. The garish whispers continued. Their bodies contorted in unnatural shapes as they crawled along, now close enough to reach out and touch her tender skin.

  Emma shivered. Tiny hairs prickled up her arms. She wished to speak, yet fear had captured her tongue. However, it mattered not, for nothing gave pause to the Dwellers in their imminent pursuit of the impending wicked deed they prepared to unleash upon her, which they relished the thought of very greatly.