SOUL ASSASSIN, Ry Kahl [sight word readers .TXT] 📗

hairs standing on end made me stop in my tracks. Suddenly I felt as though I had been plunged into an icy lake. The pain stopped me in my tracks. Terror surged though me as I found myself unable to shoot and unable to move. And at that moment I knew, the demons were here.

Instincts took over as adrenalin coursed through my blood. I stumbled into the crowd as I tried to blink away the ice crystals that were forming in my eyes. With my sight impaired, I let the cold spot guide me to where I needed to be.
A few feet from me, I could sense a menacing presence. A dark shadow stood before the bridge. It must have sensed me as well because it began to move at a neck breaking speed as it advanced towards me. I prepared to fire my gun at the shadow just as his face became clear. But it wasn’t a human face or even the rotting face of an Otherkin; it was the mask of pure evil unlike anything I had seen before. Shocked, I recoiled, stumbled back and lost my footing. I fell to the ground in a swift and hard crash.

The wall of smothering ice penetrated deeper, forming ice crystals in my throat and lungs. The air in my lungs left my body with a force so hard, so sudden, that it was as if I had taken a hard hit to the stomach. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and couldn’t move. Dark spots danced around my vision, slowly taking my sight completely. My heart struggled to force my blood through my body and the sound from the effort was deafening.
The demon stood over me and reached his clawed hand out towards my neck. I knew he would kill me without a second thought. While I still could, I raised my gun and fired. The sound seemed much louder than I had expected, as if several guns had been fired at once.
Slowly, mercifully, the cold began to fade. My sight slowly returned, but my vision was still blurry. Just to the side of me, only inches away from my body, laid the bleeding body of the demon. I’d mortally wounded him.
I thought that would make me feel better, make me feel like I could get up and hunt down the Otherkin assassin, but I still couldn’t move. The pounding of my blood pulsing through my body was almost inaudible now. But I could hear the terrified screams of the panic stricken humans around me.
I managed to incline my head just enough to get a better view of the calamity around me. My body lay on the road, in a pool of blood, in the midst of mass chaos. Just past my body I could see the Archdukes vehicle. A man franticly pulled the lifeless body of the Archduke from the vehicle. And then, I knew the reality of the moment—I failed. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated. Because of me, millions of people would soon perish and their souls would be lost to us.
Suddenly, my body convulsed uncontrollable and I collapsed back to the ground and began to vomit on myself. If I had to choose this feeling or the one from the demon, I would have been happy to spend an eternity with the demon.
A high-pitched ringing bore into my ears and I felt a searing pain, like a hot poker being shoved in my ear. I reached up to cover my ears from the pain, only to feel a hot sticky substance oozing from my ears. Shocked, I jerked my hands away and held them up for inspection. My stomach retched again. My hands were covered with creamy-grey flesh and blood.
As I laid there on the ground in a mixture of my blood and the blood of the demon, I realized I was dying. But worse than that, I had failed. With that realization, I began to cry hot tears of despair. I wanted to die and leave this god forsaken planet; I wanted to return home, return to Him.
The images of this world quickly bleed together as I felt my soul slip away from my body. But even a soul feels and my soul felt as if I were falling to into a blustery abyss. Suddenly, several disembodied arms and hands began to grab me, pulling me further down into nothingness while the wind screamed my name accusingly. I tried to pull away in protest, but my actions only made the bodiless hands and arms increase their fervor.
Before the dark consumed me completely, I realized what would be done to me. I had no hope of finding peace and returning home, not yet. The world would have their retribution; I would experience the death of a million souls.
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Text: photo by Marta Dahlig
Publication Date: 04-07-2010

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