Sep. 21st, 2011

[identity profile] sotongeistooc.livejournal.com
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He was running, hard, lungs burning, spit roasting in his mouth, breath staggered and stumbling to a wheeze. Si was fit, impressively so after all the running he did before his shift. The best cure for the Underground was a quick burst of night air, the cold tingle on your skin as the wind whipped around the pool of London. Working nights meant he could run when the park was deserted, near enough – during that 9-11pm spell when it was too late for everyone else save a few addled smackheads.

Or dogs.

They'd been following him for the past week. Every so often a stray would wander up, rubbing past as he rested between farklets. He'd never seen them before, but then he wasn't that surprised, either. With all the effort going in to make Stratford hospitable, it was inevitable some areas would be sacrificed. Chasing Blackheath strays fell into that category.

But we wasn't running from a single stray. This was a whole pack of them. Twenty hounds, baying, salivating, barring their teeth. Giving chase. Chasing him hard as he sprinted, snapping at his heels when he eased for desperate breath. The hounds seemed to want to devour every ounce of his flesh, rend him to the bone, leave him nothing but a stripped, simplified skeleton. And now, in the silent ink of night, with no moonlight to even let him see where each stumbling step landed, he was running for his life.

Running hard, across Blackheath, through the Shooter's Hill traffic, through the deserted shell and comforting pitch darkness of the park. Across Greenwich and through the Naval Academy, footfall snapping against gravel, padding on grass, thudding on pavement and pounding on macadam as he shot up toward the Greenwich peninsula.

And then the dogs were gone.

===

He blinked, panting. He stood outside the off-white expanse of the O2, its surface resting like the pronged top of a baseball that had been thrown into the ground by an angry giant. It was still well lit, bathed in the melancholy sepia of street lights.

O2. Jubilee Line. Next stop Canary Wharf or Canning Town.

He dropped to his knees, wheezing. Blood trickled from his mouth, where the exertion had caused him to bite his own tongue. He spat, the clear, congealing mass flecked with crimson. He sucked in breaths, deep, one after the other, wondering where the dogs had gone, afraid they would reappear.

“Oi fucker.” A throaty voice penetrated the night, rich with confidence and vigour. “Put you wallet out or I fuckin' sick you.”

He turned. Five against one. Not dogs this time, but teens. Vandals, hooligans. Muggers with knifes and bikes. No wonder they were confident. But fuck them, he wasn't going to give them it... fuck them... FAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKDEEEEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Jaw in agony. Skin ruptured. Shredded clothing. Mine? Theirs? Knifes flying. Bodies flying. Theirs? Mine. Claws, scratching, scraping, tearing. Blood in the night. Blood for the Moon. Eyes that glow. Leaps. Human skittles and beastly hide. Hairs. One hair. Ten hairs. Hundreds of hairs. Thousands of hairs. Bristly, thick, black hairs bursting through flesh, beads of sweat, cloth, air. A mighty body, six foot, seven foot, eight foot? Bite and tear. Punch and impale. Sanguine glee. Running. Running. Harder. A fist smashing into a gate. Theirs? Mine! Metal flying. Concrete against nails. Nails against concrete.

A howl. A single, bawling, mighty, irresistible, irrepressible howl that thundered and rolled and refused to bow until all time in all centuries in all places and all worlds heard this call and knew that the predator had at last been set free and would howl and make all cower beneath its rumbling pitch and majesty.

===

His eyes shot open. He was in the black again, definitely the Underground. He could see a red junction light; line not in use. He tried to focus his eyes in the gloom, rolling onto his side. He felt the cold of the tunnel, the uncomfortable pain of the hollowed rock upon which he lay, naked, caked with decades of disease, dirt and decay. He heard the whispering scuttle of rats, tasted the heavy, hostile air, smelt the grease of fingerprints on the metal of the junction box lever.

His gaze showed him all in the tunnel, including the wrecked flesh of his own nakedness.

There, beneath the Thames, strewn in the depths of the Jubilee Line, he howled. It came out as more of a fear-soaked scream.
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