I've been in the mood to write lately, so I thought it would be cool if I wrote a bunch of horror stories for you guys, each one inspired by a different member, and then posted the stories in the days leading up to Halloween. But in the end I doubted that anyone would really give all that much of a s
hit about them, so I just kinda scrapped the idea. Before I did, though, I wrote a few, and the one below is my favorite of the sordid bunch. So here, have a horror story, and have fun trying to guess which member it was inspired by (there's one line in particular that I think really gives it away):
Legend’s Folly
He shot her twice in the chest. Stumbling backwards, she fell against the wall, her weeping back adding to the splatter of blood behind her as she slid down to the floor. Her face contorted in pain, she opened her mouth as if to scream, yet made no sound. Looking up at the man, she tried to stand. He shot her once more, and she fell back to the floor. Looking into her eyes, the man said “It’s done.”
The woman let out a bloody gasp that sounded somewhat like a laugh, and somewhat like a cough. “It’s never done,” she replied in a weak voice, through a mouthful of blood.
The man slid his gun into the holster under his left armpit. “I know all about you. I know what you are. And I came prepared.”
As he looked into the woman’s eyes, in his mind the man saw the death gaze of his brother. In life, he had been a proud man, a warrior, passionate and assertive. He remembered walking into an ambush with him. Two men step in front, with shotguns. A car skids to a stop nearby. The windows roll down, and two more men, armed with dull black submachine guns, open fire. His brother laughs, and takes out his pistol. No caution, no cover. And yet, thirty seconds later, they walk from the scene, without a scratch on either of them. His brother smiles. To see him in that warehouse, most of him unrecognizable, and much of him simply gone, had been almost too much to bear. Images flashed through his mind, as rapid, silent, and glowing fragments. Joining the family. Drinks and laughter. Summer days on the boardwalk. The heat of life, frantic and biting. His wedding. Unexpected. His funeral. Inevitable.
The woman closed her eyes. Her face briefly twisted in pain once more, before settling into a calm and tired expression. “I’m sorry,” she said, opening her eyes and looking up at the man. The setting sun cast a rich, orange light on the both of them. The man looked away from her. Though he had finally claimed that which he had sought for so long, standing over the bloody and broken body of a twenty year old woman, he could take little joy in his revenge. His brother’s eyes returned, a hazy mental imprint that hung over his vision. He suspected they would seldom leave. Taking a deep breath, he turned around, and began to walk away.
After taking a few steps, however, the man stopped. Partially looking over his shoulder, so that he could address the woman without truly looking at her, he asked “What’s your name?” He didn’t know why he had felt the need to ask such a question. Perhaps, he thought, it would give him an odd sort of closure. It had been two years since his hunt had begun, and yet never in all that time had he learned her real name, only her false identities. Or perhaps he simply wanted to show a little kindness to his quarry. After all, somewhere inside of her, there was still a human.
The woman breathed in through her nose, taking in as deep of a breath as she could muster, and slowly replied “Sophia. And you?” Her voice was quite weak now, so that it was barely above a whisper.
The man glanced back at her. “Daniel.”
Sophia looked closely at his face, and gave him a weak smile. “I remember you,” she said. “You were following me. Lots of people follow me, but I remember you. In San Fran. Tried to shoot me. Missed. Guess your aim has gotten better since then.”
Daniel smiled weakly and nodded. “That’s right. Wasn’t my fault, though. Would have hit you, if some bystander hadn’t pushed my gun out of the way, trying to save you. He didn’t know what you are.”
Sophia gave him as much of a shrug as she could bear to make. “How could he?”
Daniel smiled and nodded, as if conceding the point to Sophia. After looking down and thinking for a moment, he turned to face her completely. “When did it happen?” he asked, once again unsure of why he felt the need to converse with her, but nevertheless feeling practically obligated to.
Sophia looked to the side in thought. She saw the woods at night, the moon rich and swollen alongside a full regalia of glittering stars. Completely alone, and free from the constraining binds of company. A sound in the distance. A silhouette, massive and yet lean. Stepping closer, fascinated. An outstretched hand. A whirlwind of force. An explosion of the senses. A burning pain in her right shoulder and arm as the claws and the teeth sink in. Falling down, the autumn leaves catching her as she hits the ground. The figure springs away, dashing through the trees. It bears little interest in her. It has already eaten, having left the ragged corpses of a large family of deer not far from where she has fallen. But she had come too close, and wild animals, whether fierce and brazen or of the meager sort that crawls and hides from that which it is unsure, will scarce suffer the touch of humans. Sophia smiles. Truly, it had been a bad idea to try to pet a werewolf.
She falls asleep there, lying in a bed of leaves. And when she wakes, and examines herself, her tattered shirt proves that it had been more than a dream. And yet, the flesh beneath it was without injury, save for a few minor cuts. She thinks back on the previous night, looking at her right arm before passing out, and remembers having seen bone. She shudders.
“I was sixteen,” she replied. Daniel looked down in thought. Sophia coughed, before continuing. “It’s been four years since then. I was only able to control it for one.” After thinking for a moment, she smiled, and shook her head. "No," she added, "not even one. Thinking back on it, though, I figure it must’ve been close. It's just... I hadn’t been keeping much track of time ever since... well, you know. So it's hard for me to tell. And near the end of my time with my family, things just started to pass by in such a blur."
As Daniel listened to Sophia, memories of his teenage years flashed across his mind. The smell of his mother's apartment, the lonely warmth of a summer night, the feeling of hunger gripping his stomach tightly, the faces of those he had known. He saw Andre and Luke, his only real friends, though sometimes they played the role of bitter enemies as well. He saw Boss Wise, cleaning his shotgun religiously with his monogram cloth, and nodding as Daniel dropped the take on the foot of the sofa. He felt an echo of the adrenaline rush that had coursed through him during his first kill. "I get it," he said at last, in a worn voice.
Sophia narrowed her eyes. "You don't. How could you?"
Daniel shot her a tired smile. "I may not be a monster, but I sure as hell know what it's like to get caught up in things."
"Caught up in things," echoed Sophia in a weak voice. Nursing her wounds tightly, she tried to shift into a slightly more comfortable position, wincing in pain before settling back against the wall. "It's more than that..." she said in a broken voice, before stopping and looking to the side. "You can't know. Not unless you've felt the bite. The power. The cravings. Hiding myself away in the woods when the full moon came, so that I could let it feast on animals at it’s pleasure."
Daniel looked at her curiously. "You didn't think to try locking yourself up?"
Sophia laughed weakly through her nose. "Oh, I did. Bought a big ole cage from this guy, good at getting things for people. Said it was used for containing bears. And then I picked up some nice, solid chains, too, from the sex shop downtown. The next full moon, I set it all up deep in the woods. Useless. Tore right through it all. I tried a few other things after that, but nothing worked. It always roamed free. So, I figured if...
it... had to roam free, then I might as well let it. Just... go as far into the woods as I could, and let it hunt."
"And I'm guessing that didn't work out too well?"
Sophia shrugged lightly. "It worked well enough, for awhile. But one evening, an hour before sunset, after I had set out for the woods, my parents checked my room. They usually didn't. Most of the time, they just... let me do my own thing. But that evening, I don't know, maybe they felt a little guilty for yelling at me after I failed my history final. Wanted to say something to me before I went to sleep, to be nice. They saw that I was gone, and called the police. Curfew, you know? I got picked up. They took me home. And then... it happened."
Daniel looked to the side. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," replied Sophia.
After thinking for a moment, Daniel pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Retrieving one of them and placing it between his lips, he lit the tip with his faded blue lighter. After taking a drag from it, he motioned it towards Sophia and tilted his head. Smiling, Sophia shook her head lightly. Daniel took another drag from it, before looking at Sophia curiously. "How did it first happen, anyway? I mean... how were you turned?"
Sophia cleared her throat before replying. “I was attacked in the woods,” she said, her voice somewhat stronger than before. “It mauled me, and left me there.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes. “So it was a wild one? I’ve read that most of your kind are changed because of spells, or as part of cult initiation rites.”
Sophia shrugged. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read.”
Daniel laughed. “Well, you’re lucky to be alive. I suspect wild wolves don’t usually leave enough of a person behind for them to change.”
Sophia looked hard at him. “Didn’t really seem like luck to me. Not after I ate my mother… my father… my brother…” She stopped for a moment and coughed, before continuing, a tired smile now on her face. “Didn’t eat my sister, though. I was full by then. Just played with her a little. Took her with me when I bolted, after more cops showed up and I got the hell out of there. A snack for later. Cop cars are pretty fast, but catching a werewolf once it gets going, especially after it finds a forest to hide in… well, I don’t have to tell you how hard that is.”
As Daniel looked down at Sophia, he felt a powerful sorrow for her, such that he almost regretted mortally wounding her. Almost, but not quite. “What happened next?” he asked.
Sophia, in a very matter of fact voice, as though she had become completely desensitized to the atrocities she had committed, replied “When the morning came, I woke up in a prairie twenty miles outside of town. My sister was there too, lying nearby. I had been pretty rough with her, but I think that she had survived the trip, since it looked like she had tried to crawl away from me as I slept. Bled to death before she had gotten very far, though. I threw up a few times. Waking up with the taste of my family on my throat, and seeing her like that… I couldn’t take it. And that’s when I decided that it had to end.”
“What do you mean?” asked Daniel, looking at her curiously.
Sophia shifted, her bones making a strange sort of sound, as her shattered ribs finished setting themselves back into place. “I decided to kill myself, the best way that I could figure,” she replied. As she began to stand up, the silver bullets that had pierced her chest were pushed out of her healing wounds, and let out a bright metallic song as they clattered to the floor. “I bought a silver knife from an antique store. Hell, I bought three, just to make sure that at least one was real. I stabbed myself, through the heart, with each of them. I had hoped that would be the end. But like I said, you shouldn’t believe everything you read.”
Daniel pulled out his pistol, and emptied the clip into Sophia. She let out a cry of pain as she fell. Lying on the floor, her body began to twist and writhe, and her flesh bulged and tore, for the sun had finished setting, and the beast within her would be restrained no more. Screaming as her bones snapped and reshaped themselves, and her flesh warped into that of a monster, her eyes became a pair of piercing yellow lights that fixed on Daniel with the hunger of a predator. Daniel turned and sprinted away, letting his gun fall from his grasp, as it had proven to be all but useless. Ere he had gotten far, he felt the full weight of the beast bear down on his back, as Sophia tore into him with her ferocious claws. Tumbling to the ground, he withdrew a dagger from his coat pocket, and sank the rune-etched blade into Sophia’s chest with as much force as he could muster. Ignoring the pain, Sophia knocked Daniel’s arms away, and looked into his eyes for but a moment before sinking her teeth into his throat, effortlessly ripping it apart as she greedily devoured him. The hunt would continue yet another night. And Sophia had long ago surrendered to the fact that, for her, it was a hunt that would never end.