Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

“Uh, I’ve always been with them,” he answered, trying to regain his composure. “I’m the OG, girl. I’m with the Brigade from the start. Been to a hundred fights and, uh, I killed a lot.” He paused, and after some thinking, added: “Don’t mess with me, all right? So, who are you and…”

“I see,” she said, and the tone of her voice made Desecrator stop talking. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that she had just passed his sentence. “Then what are you waiting for? Run to your people.”

Desecrator was befuddled. Did she really expect him to run to them when those monsters were there?

“What?” Was all he asked.

“Run,” she repeated, and glanced at something to their side.

Desecrator suddenly had a very vile feeling. He turned his head, dreading what he was going to see there. Yet no preparation could prepare him for the reality.

One of those creatures was running toward them. It was far away, and the long, graceful leaps of its stilt-like legs made it look like it was running in slow motion. But Desecrator knew: with each leap it was getting fifteen feet closer to him.

He turned around and started running toward the base. The girl stayed where she was, but somehow Desecrator knew that the creature wouldn’t harm her. He was running as fast as he could, to the place where just a minute ago he thought he wouldn’t approach, because he knew: his only salvation was there. If we were to run away from the base it would catch up to him. His only hope was that somebody would see him running away from that beast and spare a few bullets to save him.

You can’t lose if you don’t play. Sadly, not playing wasn’t an option for him anymore. At that moment, as he was pushing himself to run at his limit while hoping that he wouldn’t tumble, he wished that he had raced with the boys instead. Perhaps they also had it rough, but there was no way their situation was worse than his.

The roars and squeals of his otherworldly pursuer were making his hair stand up; strange and unknown to his ear, they nevertheless sounded similar to a human voice—making its screeches even more uncomfortable. The boy was not looking back as he ran—he knew that the sight of that monster, the visual confirmation of the fact that it was chasing HIM of all people, could drive him crazy. He was not in the same situation as those adults he had witnessed dying, he told himself again and again. Bad things were happening to other people. He couldn’t be in any danger. He was supposed to live to be a hundred years old and die in his sleep.

Driven by such thoughts, he was putting everything he had into running. He was doing his best not thinking about the fact that the monster’s screeching was getting closer. And, as the buildings of the old warehouse and other structures adjacent to it were getting closer, the boy started to hope that he could make it. That he could outrun the beast that was hot on his heels.

And then, he actually did.

The building closest to him had its windows on the first floor broken, leaving only dusty shards of glass. It was Desecrator’s chance to survive, to try to change the pace and surroundings of their chase, but more importantly, the boy heard shots going off inside that building—meaning that there were other soldiers inside. Meaning they were armed. Meaning they could fight back. Sure, it also meant that at least one of those creatures was inside, but he already had one on his tail. His situation could hardly get worse.

Like a bunny escaping from a wolf, the boy charged toward the window—his small rabbit hole—and in one jump he clung onto it, pulled himself up, and crawled through. Later he would find out that a dusty shard of glass had sliced his ear, almost cutting his earlobe off, but at that moment he didn’t feel any pain—it was extinguished by adrenaline.

The beast behind him roared in frustration, and the boy could hear its pitch change as it sped up and charged toward the window, hoping to catch him. He jumped forward onto the floor, hoping to do a roll as he landed, but in his panicked state he lunged forward with too much strength, and his roll devolved into a clumsy fall. He winced and hissed as his shoulder blade hit the corner of an old clerk table. A moment later, a loud strike echoed through the room; the creature had crashed into the wall, failing to jump through the window after Desecrator.

Desecrator didn’t want to look at it, but he did anyway—if only to get a handle on his situation. What he saw horrified him—not because the sight of it was so outlandish, but because it confirmed his deepest fears and concerns.

The creature had a human face.

The left corner of its mouth stretched back all the way to the ear, making the thing look like it was wearing a goofy apologetic smile and revealing strange bone-like growths; it seemed like the creature had wanted to grow extra teeth, but had only a picture of a coral reef as a template. A piece of glass was sticking out of its bleeding (and very-much-human-looking) eye, but besides that it was the normal face of a male in his thirties. Even if the monster wasn’t a human, it definitely had been in the past.

Further confirming the boy’s theory, its intact eye spun in its orbit until it could look straight at the boy, and the creature stretched its mouth further. Desecrator was not sure if it was meant to be a smile or a snare.

“Rhinoceros Beetle,” The thing suddenly spoke. Its voice was low and raspy, like that of a smoker on his deathbed. “Peeking Princess. Unlove.”

There was cohesion in what it was saying. Whatever its message to the boy was, it was lost and confused in translation as the creature was not experienced with the tongue it had inherited from its past life. It had the different pieces of the mosaic, but the glue to keep them together was missing.

The boy shook his head, trying to get rid of that image. But despite his protests, it had already anchored itself in his psyche. Till the end of his days, he would remember that conversation with the stranger in the window.

He jumped to his feet and rushed for the old door at the end of the office, blindly hoping that it had some sort of padlock on the other side.

“Legless Sunset?” He heard the question, before the shard of glass started rustling and breaking as his pursuer started pulling his body through the window. Just when the boy reached the door, he heard its body hit the floor.

He grabbed a handle and pushed at the door with his full weight. The door was locked but the old cheap plywood it was made of didn’t offer much resistance, and he swung it open, leaving the lock where it was. For a second, he panicked that he had no means to close it behind him, but the solution offered itself almost immediately; the door led to a narrow corridor and, right across it, along the other wall, stood a large dresser.

The boy swung the door closed, but as he did that he turned around—just in time to see the creature rise to its feet. At three meters in height, its head almost touched the ceiling, and the length of its arms and feet gave it that uncanny resemblance to an insect that Desecrator had noted before. At the same time, unlike the other creatures, this one was completely naked, and its uncovered privates were another disturbing reminder that the creature in front of him was once human. The skin on its long, thin, multi-jointed legs was stretching to a point where the boy could almost see through it, and it was even tearing on its left disfigured calf, hanging from the muscles like an old, overused sponge. In fact, due to its unashamed nakedness, the boy could see in great detail that many spots on its body were losing their coloration, becoming almost see-through, opening up the opportunity for an onlooker to gaze at the inner workings of the processes that were molding the body into a fearsome killing mechanism. Processes far too disturbing and complicated for the boy to describe.