Rebirth War. R Part 1. Prey / Accident Perspectives

Hello and thanks for stopping by. This is part of a 6 to 7 part series I am working on titled, "Rebirth War". This can be read on its own or part of the bigger project. Critiques are welcome. Special thanks to Sol acting as an editor.

T.W. Gore, animal mutilation, bodily harm.

Rebirth War

R Part 1. Prey / Accident Perspectives

How often is it that you're driving on a lonely road by yourself? With no passenger and nothing but the thrum of the speakers static while you enjoy a playlist. Gently mouthing out the words you knew were coming next with the bluetooth connection.

With a prospect of only recovering the memories of your direction. Going on the same distance, your familiar headlights high beam offers a clear vision of what's ahead of you.

It's easy to become complacent and allow your guesswork to define the vision. I've gone that road so many times now that in the late hours after work my only worry was if a turn became blocked off by the odd police intervention or a construction crew who so rarely use the shade of the night to perform their work.

It's relaxing really. The pressure of the office melts off your very spine. The weight that held your feet so hard to the ground that it hurts, has faded as you know the speeds. Applying the cruise control and just hovering over the break pedal at the stop signs.

I take the backroads home, so the route isn't much longer and about 10 to 20 miles slower. Yet another reason it's so easy to lull away the worries. Barely any patrol cars are hunkered down on those twisting lengths of cracked and sun aged asphalts. And the road lines are always worn out from the excess of use.

The whole experience is pleasant, softer and less demanding. More than any highway or freeway. Where hundreds of strangers are being Trusted to look before merging, Trusted to actually use their turn signal… Trusted to not ram into you.

Trusting that they don't abuse the speeds that mankind was only capable of sustaining with a gas guzzling beast of a car.

But that's why I was out there. That's why I always take that route. Patches of the road that way have the surroundings of wooded areas. Pockets of land allowed to grow over and thrive a few inches past where the black roads come cutting through.

They are older now. Crackling and decaying in the years of use since they were poured. They desire the attention of a jack hammer and a shovel of new dark melting stone. Hungry to be slathered over like a scab to already hardened skins.

That's what I was thinking about. How poorly maintained the roads are. For all the traffic and the day time construction. The repairs just didn't seem to work. I was probably next to boredom and annoyance with the uncounted potholes, when it all became this hazy memory, behind a world ripping thud.

---

It came with two yellow disks.

Like marbles rushing at the front right wheel. My body reflexively became taught. My arm's sung with a nasty pressure, my knuckles popping on the wheel. My throat emitting a nasty deepened "NO BUDDY!” as the impact shook the car. Bile rocking in my gut and my heart sinking like a wet brick.

The feeling of sickness wafting down my nerves.. the car coming to a stop, halfway off the road.. I struggle to remember where the hazard button is. The lights taunting with their red seething warning.

I see it. Framed perfectly in the center of the side mirror.. A dark red little trail leading to a darker mass of fluff and guts.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen or even caused some roadkill.

But this wasn't just a raccoon or an opossum. It was a cat.. colored like a mancoon. Guilt slid up and down my skull as I snuffed out the engine and got out to…

I had no idea what I was gonna do.. I wanted to.. help it? But it wasn't a cat anymore. Every step closer verifying that I absolutely brutalized this animal..

Pieces were so far out of place I didn't imagine it as a cat at a point. I wanted to leave.. to put as much distance between this and myself as I could.

I got back in the car and let the breathing go shallow. “It happens all the time… It's not my fault… I'm okay”.. But the little guy was not. That was the situation and I came to terms with it. Letting the engine roar on and my focus solidifies.

The incident faded and I let music blast away. A radio station harmony lulling my brain to other places. Love struck rock and roll, rowdy teens, Meatloaf and Dirty Deeds . Songs that have played and will play hundreds of times over.

It wasn't pleasant but it was loud and familiar to sing to and keep me awake.

Relief was a gift as I turned into the driveway, my complex still had an empty spot not too far from where my apartment waited. Sometimes you just didn't get that lucky and tonight's luck seemed to be changing.

Lunch bag slung over my shoulder and keys already being flipped through, I would have put the whole evening away as another drive.

“Meroooooooooooooooowooowww.”

Behind where I left the car.. was a wet sound… one that made my skin prickle… A cat? I remember turning and dropping my bag when a gag of sound escaped my throat. I was staring at a mass of disgusting flesh hanging from my car's grill.

The front right side was plastered with what must've been the upper half of the once stripped fluffy creature.. It was like something out of a raunchy horror movie. Something that defied the bone crunching death I'd forced on it and that had kept itself clinging to the holes in the material.

The guts swinging in the open air. The red sloppy mess dripping out of it was nasty. Fluid seeping out as its bits of boney ribcage rise and fall. And it kept moving and..calling out.

“Meeeerooooowoowwwoowww”

The sound lasts too long. Like putting a video on half speed .With wet popping bubbles as more fluid seemed to leak and sputter out of its broken teeth.

I covered my mouth with a shaky hand, now running to the trunk for anything I could to get it off. I found the folding shovel. Orange warning plastic with a metal lip. It's part of a car kit you can get to dig yourself out of the snow when your vehicle gets stuck. I supposed I was going to scrape it off.

“Merooooooooowowowowooo”

It hangs there taunting me. A nasty displayed corpse that I didn't want. The opposite of a proudly displayed buck for hunters to gawk at. It didn't seem like it was even in pain. But I couldn't look directly at it...As some paw flexed weakly, I had attempted to part it from the plastic.

The shovel’s metal tooth working between and slowly peeling it off like an old sticker that you know won't fully pull off, that it would leave a thin skin behind.

Dribbling, steamy, tube-like things surge out. The scent was horrid, akin to that of rotten moldy peppers. I felt the caustic bile clawing up my throat with chemical sheers, grazing the back of my throat as vomit.

I fell back with my poor footing and got it all over myself as I went down. The shovel clattering and a wet splat following as my ass hit the ground.

I felt disgusting and empty and nauseous and tired. I just didn't want to be there anymore. Attempting to stand, I put my arms out and placed my feet down firm...From below the animal cried out. “ HISSSSSS!!!” Sharp pain surging into my leg. Its body reacting to the distress of a shoe being sunk into its open wound of a body.

Crying out my own pain, I swung my leg forward and back trying to free its grip from where it tore into my ankle. The shape makes contact with the headlight. Chunky bits stabbed into shattered plastic as I mash it into an even worse shape. It was like a wet bag, fluid pockets along its body burst and red murky material splattered over my jeans.

Gurgling, guttural mewling was cut short and the thing finally let go, being flung away into the center of the lot.

I curse and grab myself, the white pain of its defending assault was nasty. My blood seeps out onto the concrete where it co-mingles with up-chuck and more blood.

Seeing the cat’s body trembling, still shaking… The shock stood me in place. There's no way in hell it was moving toward me. After being struck by a car, stomped on and slammed into the jagged pieces of headlight… it was still moving.

I had to just run from the situation, cursing and grunting as I drip from myself, my body rocking forward as I got to the apartment and slammed the door shut behind me, dead bolt reassuringly clicking into place.

I rushed to the bathroom, the adrenaline sweating me out. Lifting myself onto the toilet lid. I pulled up my pants to inspect the wound. Five deep holes sat in two rows. The flesh was tender and raised up around the punctures as if the teeth had not only pressed deeply within but had also made an attempt to pull off my skin with barbs. It gives off a twitchy sensation, like when you first get stung by a bee and your body understands that something is wrong.

Prodding the area made my back shiver, “Stupid little bitch.” I got my medical kit out and sat in the tub, cleaning out the marks with warm water and soap. I couldn't get the feeling of being dirty off myself until I'd fully showered off the vomit and blood. Afterward, I applied a white stinging antiseptic and wrapped my joint with bandage and gauze.

Going about the rest of my evening like it was all normal, proved to be difficult. Even with the curtains drawn and the door locked. The sense was like I was being looked over. I didn't have the energy to go back out there and verify that it was finally dead. Had to have panicked at the moment. The thrill that something so torn and busted could still move around.

Having heard stories of bodies still moving after death and frog legs twitching on a plate, I just wanted to shrug it off as some anatomical normality. Have dinner and go to bed.

I ate in front of the TV. Watching meme compilations on YouTube and just some general brain rot crap to distract myself. I kept kneeling down and adjusting the bandages. My ankle felt tight against the wrapping.

Cleaning up a single plate took no time and my bed was all the more welcoming than usual. Normally I'd scroll on my phone till sleep took me. But I was so exhausted that I passed out soon as I made contact with the pillow.

---

When I woke up it was dark.

Turning to my digital clock. There were no red glowing digits at all. The sound of dribbling rain outside, the gentle thrumming over the roof was pleasant . I swung myself upright in bed and went to turn on a light.

Immediately my body crumpled under my leg's searing pain. “AAAAAH HAA!” I cried out like an infant who'd been struck. My leg was burning and I curled up gripping at it. Something was wrong, violently wrong.

Years ago I twisted my ankle during a baseball game in middle school. It had swollen to twice the size then... This was so much worse. I felt like just laying there and crying.

I couldn't apply any pressure at all without gritting my teeth harshly. I had to crawl to the doorway where the light switch was and pull myself up to find that it did nothing. No light to show the problem.

I let my body fall toward the bed. Successfully crashing onto it with a bounce. Gripping my phone, I hit the power button only to find an ugly 2% battery symbol that I swear turned to 1% in a blink. “Fucking charger.”

I tried turning on the lamp but it was like the bulb had been stolen. The power was out. My ankle felt like it had been run over. I was so disoriented and scared in the dark trying to think. I got up and hopped over to the living room to get a flashlight. I swung the beam down to find a mass of myself where my foot used to be. Red and wet, puddles of blood and clear creamy fluid followed me to where I stood, “ Oh dear god.”

Hobbling to the bathroom I rushed to pull off the bandages, revealing my skin, a spreading purple dark bruise with patches of yellow pale pustules sprinkled around like a demented version of an anklet. A section of the skin had burst when I hit the ground earlier, and the gory contents seeped onto the slats in a gummy pile.

I needed help. I needed it now. I couldn't call an ambulance and I didn't have the internet to try and self diagnose the situation that looked like a teens health class book. The section that is all about sex before marriage and the dangers of not using a condom, but it was hundred times worse than that.

I remembered the emergency care was at the other side of my town. I could rush there in the car and.. and… it moved… My leg was twitching and convulsing.

I watched the muscle jerk and my skin rose as the veins surged upward like I was being filled with air. It was like many things were burrowing up my body, climbing along like worms in the soil.

I remember screaming and rushing for the door in the best hobble I could muster. All while wet, messy pustules began forming and bursting rapidly along my shin as I forced myself through the doorway and into the rain.

The weight of my limb weighed me down as I drug it harshly along the stone slabs that made up the sidewalk. It made my spine shudder with just how satisfyingly painful the popping of such massive zits could be.

The insanity of fear forced me closer to the car. And I quickly had to learn to drive with my left foot. Nearly hitting my neighbor's car as I sped off.

Sweat was soaking my shirt more than the rainfall at this point. A fever was quickly forming that full blast A/C could barely help with. The rest of the drive was uneventful.

And now I'm sitting in the doctor's office. They gave me this report to fill out. They wanted to know everything leading up to this moment.

The doctor gave me a look. It wasn't very reassuring. Neither was the fact that he slid this paper and the pen under the door. I can barely hear them through the door. Talking about contamination, quarantine... I think a nurse mentioned the CDC… I'm scared... Whoever is going to read this please, help me. Please just cut it off or give me chemo I don’t fucking care I just want it out of me.

I can still feel it churning in my leg, like teeth trying to chew from inside a sewn shut mouth. The burning swelling yellow bruises have reached beyond my knee. It's getting harder to see what I'm writing.

Just get it out please.