A SILENT NIGHT (FOR A DEMI-GHOUL):XIII

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter XIII

Feel It Like A Scientist

“What the fuck is happening,” Corman repeated over and over like a cowardly, stuttering stunod.

 Doc Chorn unlocked the doors of the truck, telling them all not to look at the thing. Julie and John listened as they quickly grabbed onto one another, face to face, each beginning to kiss the other, eyes wide and looking into the soul of the other. Then, a tight and head-covering hold. 

 Chorn himself braced, grabbed the handle of his door, suggesting his colleagues do the same. Only briefly would Chorn dare look at even the vile red fur on its torso, merely to keep an eye on its whereabouts as it tore its way to the Hummer.

 But not Corman. He looked. He began to go stark crazy, flailing in the car like a dust-addled geek, gouging at his own eyes and face, blood beginning to pour from the freshly self-shredded skin. He screamed that he could feel the drain, the withering. Chorn did not help him, knew it was too late, and really felt none too bad about it, deep down. The bastard deserves what he gets.

 Chorn roared “OUT,” and John, Julie and himself rolled from the doors to underneath the Hummer as the beast landed on the hood and ripped through the glass and framework to get to Corman. The zookeeper cried like a baby as the behemoth began to tear now at his face, grabbing Corman’s skull tightly and nearly cracking it in two off of him, sucked at and slurped the freshets of blood, and left the heartless, faceless bastard somehow partially alive, though he really should not have been. He was merely now a shrieking skull-being with a hole in its face, screeching like none of them had ever witnessed before. 

 They heard the beast tear through the metal of the vehicle, and sensed it continue to cut a swath through human flesh and bodies just outside as it growled and moved off into the distance. 

 They rolled out from under the car.

 “Now what?” snarled an exhausted, pissed, and genuinely terrified John. Julie, after snapping the occasional cell-phone shot and jotting notes in her little book, clutched John tightly, sickened as she was.  It was almost as if she could feel a certain portion of herself desensitizing, and at the moment, was none too bothered by it. 

 Chorn said exactly what she was hoping he would. “Follow it, brother.”

 “I’m fucking tired,” John bitched.

 Julie kissed him, looked in his eyes and demanded, “Baby, wake up.” 

 Julie's grip tightened on John’s arm, and they followed Chorn carefully through the wreckage of labyrinthine gore the beast had left behind in its wake.

 Strangely, or maybe not so much, it seemed to Julie that Chorn was no loon, and knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, it seemed like he’d done this, or something similar, before.  She couldn't help but think there was something more to this man, this Dr. Chorn.

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Chapter XIV