The Other One

Excerpt from The Other One, a Family Guy fanfiction idea.
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“You and I are going to get to know each other. We are going to get as close to each other as two people can get. We will know each other's secrets, and be each other's shoulder to cry on. We will be as big a piece of each other's lives as our family and closest friends. And then you're going to see a part of me that I don't like other people to know about. A part of me that usually drives other people away. When that time comes, you will have a choice, Meg: accept me, the way I've accepted you, or shun me, as the world has shunned you.”

“I could never shun you, Beta.”

“You haven't been given that choice yet.”

Poyo!

It didn't take us long to realize we were not alone on this night.

It started from the outskirts of our town, walking right up to our patrolmen and attacking them without any provocation at all. A slight sound of a gasp, and the guards were gone. The creature never even left them time to scream.

It made its way through our town, devouring children and adults alike. The more important the person, the stranger the creature became. Its costume would often change, taking on some of the looks of the figure it had eaten. New crews tried to keep up with the horror, but they wouldn't last two minutes after the beast got wind of them. The longest video footage seen on television was a mere three minutes long, after the crew's horrific deaths were edited away.

I lived near downtown, with my mother, my father, and my baby sister. According to the path the creature was taking, our house would be one of the last ones hit. There wouldn't be enough time to pack up and leave, try to get away from the city; with road construction going on right outside the house, and two apartment buildings being built on either side of us, we were kind of trapped here.

It took an hour, but the beast arrived at our front door. There was a knock, then another, then once again. Then silence. My mother peeked outside of the house and gasped in horror. She turned quickly from the window and rushed myself and my sister into my bedroom, while my father grabbed for his shotgun. Then my mother rushed downstairs to help my father.

She had left the door open, and I, stupid as I am, opened it to see my father be my hero. I watched as the door was pulled from its frame and outside, splitting in two as it went. I stared out the door and the blackness of night stared back. Silence.

Then a noise. The barely audible sound of something heavy beginning to lift its foot and step forward from out of that heartless night. From the darkness crept a pink blob, about four feet high, with two black eyes and a humungous mouth. It moved through the doorway and immediately eyed my father, and I sucked in my breath as I silently rooted him on.

I saw the pink creature open its mouth, its jaws unhinging without a hint of pain or discomfort. My father lifted his weapon and fired once... twice... there was no effect on the monster. My mother looked on in horror as the beast began to suck inwards with a horribly supernatural force, and my father was swept off his feet by a chair, being pulled from the den. He rode that chair into the beast's maw, stopped only by holding on to its lips, desperate for freedom.

But freedom would never come. The beast, with a seemingly never-ending lung capacity, increased its force of suction, and my father disappeared into its mouth, his body bent in half to fit. The last bit of my father I saw was his pained expression and his blood pouring from his mouth, before the thing closed its lips and swallowed.

My mother was next, rushing at the monster with a meat cleaver she had purchased the week before. It stuck into the creature above its eye, and was seen briefly before being sucked into its mass. My mother collapsed to her knees and uncontrollably as the monster again opened its deadly jaws and sucked her within. Then it turned its eyes on me.

My sister was crying as loudly as possible, no matter what I did to try to console her. It was just as well; I was only eight years old and had just seen my parents get devoured. The creature began to walk towards us, and I closed the door and took my screaming sister with me to the back of the room, as far away from it as I could get. The door creaked as the monster began to suck in air, and soon enough the door was ripped from its hinges, straight into the beast's mouth. I closed my eyes and prayed for an answer.

"Poyo!"

Something Waits

'It burns here.'

That was my first lucid thought, as I gazed over the field of green before me. Bright sky, green grass, fresh air... a paradise, right?

No.

"It burns here. It hurts to breathe, I can't keep my eyes open," I said to nobody in particular. "I feel... heavy. Like it would take all my might to lift my foot and take a single step, and I don't have any might left to do so."

There were no trees here, no foliage other than grass. There was a light breeze blowing, brushing lightly against my skin and making me wince slightly in pain; I wasn't used to wind. In the distance I could see a storm brewing, no doubt bringing stronger winds and piercing rain with it.

I wasn't in my home any more. The portal I had stumbled into had closed behind me and I exited through it, leaving me standing here, lost. No longer was I surrounded by fire and debris. No longer did the peaceful screams of various lost lives pierce the air around me. Gone were the joyous sounds of explosions, wrath, and chaos. Here, there was nothing to make a sound besides myself.

Silence is loud; the lonelier you are, the louder it is, and the more it hurts your ears. I dropped to one knee, not knowing whether to scream or cover my ears.

'It hurts, it hurts...'

"WHY DOES IT HURT?!"

My scream did nothing but turn down the volume on the silence while the echo still lingered in the air. As the echo disappeared there came a rumble from the distance. A gaze towards the sky showed the storm to have moved a bit closer.

I was on both knees now, clutching my stomach in pain. I knew not where the pain came from, only that it was there and it HURT. I felt like the grass beneath me was cutting into my body; like the flowers were delivering masses upon masses of paper cuts in a desperate bid to reunite with the sun in the sky above.

Back home, I knew nothing of this sensation of pain; back home, I could not be hurt. It came with the territory: those born of the land could not be hurt by its innumerable tortures. Those foreign to the plane spent their days screaming in agony as the rest of us looked on with joyful faces.

Another breeze caught me, this one stronger than the first. I curled into a fetal position and ended up on my left side on the ground, writhing in anguish until it passed. The effort to guard against the pain took its toll upon me, and my eyes closed in exhaustion.

Dreams...

My kind don't dream.

But still, here I was, returned to my home, but feeling the same anguish as the strangers around me. As if I was too a stranger in my own home. The tortures of the land lashed out and caught me, like whips, lashing me to the ground and inflicting horror upon horror on my body. Fire burned brightly above me; instead of casting its normal healing warmth over me, its flame charred and boiled my flesh. I made to scream for help, but a mysterious aura slipped into my throat as I opened my mouth, grabbed hold of my throat from within, and started squeezing, cutting off my supply of air. I wanted to die.

My kind don't die.

Even without air, I remained alive and lucid enough to experience the barbarity of the actions against me. Others of my kind had gathered around me, pointing and jeering. One, brandishing a knife, stepped forward and grabbed a hold of one of my ears. I felt the blade against my skin briefly as he who I thought was my friend quickly sliced through my skin, severing my ear from my head. He flung the cartilage into the air, what little blood contained within splattering around, some catching me in the forehead.

I managed to open my eyes to reality once more. My forehead still felt wet. I was on my back in that accursed field, staring at the purple sky above me.

Lightning flashed above me, and I felt more wetness against my flesh. Rain... it had finally begun raining. I wondered just how long I had been asleep.

'My kind don't sleep...'

The rain continued for hours, and I remained still for the entire time. My position prevented the flowers from cutting me, and I felt no pain. The rain eliminated the silence that had permeated the field around me. I don't know yet if I fell asleep again, but I no longer dreamt.

Perhaps the being responsible for my displacement considered me punished enough, for as the rain ended, lightning struck the ground at my feet and opened another portal, the other side showing my home. What I thought was my home.

I stood at the doorway to the portal, watching lonely souls being tortured, feeling the fires of Hell once more beckoning me with their friendly grace, but I could not step forward.

'I still can't...'

Snippets 1

She wasn't that hard to spot, you know. Freshly 18, all tied up with a bow and a label, waiting on my doorstep that one fateful morning. She had a note attached, but to be honest I never read it. Perhaps that one misstep is what eventually led to my current situation, but you know what? If I knew then what I know now, I still wouldn't change a damned thing.

Just turned 18. She was still a kitten, and she was labeled for me. What had I done to deserve such fortune? Of course, her captors had drugged her, knocked her out, and had her bound tightly with silk ropes, so getting her into the house was a bit of a struggle for me. But it was worth it. Once I had cut the rope away from her body and gave her a good, long look-over, I definitely believed the struggle was worth it. 'My very own catgirl,' I thought to myself. 'Perhaps my luck is starting to change.'

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Blood. I hate it. The smell. The feel. The power. The 'bond.' No matter the color, it all still spills the same, for the same nonsensical reasons. It is the one thing that makes all races equal: the spilling of blood. We all do it.

War continues. It shapes planets, changes landscapes, breeds greed and power, anger, fear, weakness, death. Always death, never life. War is the end-all, be-all, gain-all, lose-all. Find something with which to end war, another begins to brew. War itself never changes, just the means. The outcome stays the same.

Blood in my palm. Sweat on my brow. The feeling of steel in my grip. His life, his legacy, his rule... his life. One life like a single drop of rain in the desert. Whether or not it survives its descent into madness depends on my mercy. But shall I relinquish mercy upon one who does not contain it?