Free Spawn of Man by Terry Farricker Page B

invisible presence was depriving him of breath to facilitate his drowning in its world of blackness and wretched grief. Robert gasped, throwing his head back, staring wildly and gasping, ‘Alex! My God, help me, Alex!’
    Then he was painfully aware of his chest expanding beyond its capacity in an attempt to get oxygen inside its walls. It seemed as if he fought on the crest of an airless vacuum for an eternity before he surmounted the pinnacle and his chest fell again in the relief of achieving a breath.
    A doctor appeared, and even in his half aware state Robert was amazed that the man did not even pass comment. The white-coated man strolled past as if this was a dream and Robert’s behavior was normal, and the doctor’s reaction was fitting because he was merely a character in the dream. Robert looked at him and he continued for two more steps before stopping and turning slightly.
    The man peered back over one shoulder of his white coat. But it wasn’t a man. Or a woman. The thing that now stood half-turned and gazing at Robert was inhuman. Something flawed and defiled. Something despicable. It was in the form, build, and attire of a man but in those only. There was the rough outline of a head, a general shape and size, but there was no definition of hair, features and skin. In their place there was an indescribably rapid sequence of violent, spasmodic imagery. An ill-defined, jerking blur of movement.
    And an odor accompanied the spectacle; a slight burning or smoldering like the smell that emanates from an electrical appliance as it begins to overheat. It did not overpower or suffocate, but as the smell materialized, it instilled a sharp, metallic sensation in Robert’s mouth. Robert tasted his fingertips and his saliva had turned murky brown like the fluid that issued from a dead battery.
    Amongst the accelerated vibrations of the thing in the corridor there was a face. The features could almost be glimpsed but only as one might discern an object that was massively out of alignment and viewed from behind a sheet of heat haze. The whole head seemed to be trying to adjust or tune itself into a frequency where it could sustain a stable condition. There was a whirring, buzzing noise accompanying the frenzied shifting of the head’s outline coupled with an eerie and strained gargling sound.
    Through the mesmerizing, frantic shuddering of the head, Robert caught a glimpse of its true form. For one brief moment the movement slowed sufficiently for Robert to discern a malevolent, malformed, heinous lump of flesh sat atop the shoulders of the humanoid frame. Unseeing eyes slid in liquid rivulets of filth and oozed bubbling into a cavity that once may have housed a nose. Teeth sharp and dangerous were protruding at impossible angles from behind wet, engorged, purple lips that spilled a bile-like substance over a long, pointed chin. As the grotesque head slowed its vibrations, the whole body stooped into a crooked, bent pose. And its progress was now hampered by one leg having grown fully ten inches longer than its opposite limb. It dragged this cumbersome, heavy extremity behind it now, as it fixed its sunken, black, empty eye sockets on Robert.
    And a thick, guttural voice escaped its quivering mouth, ‘You see me…’
    Robert screamed in horror as the thing turned to continue on its way, head thrusting at fantastic speeds and moaning wetly as it shook. Robert realized he was now standing and he suddenly felt fully and acutely aware again of the corridor and his reason for being there. His face carried the pale, bleached pallor of gravestones, painted macabre white by a fluorescent moon.
    His forehead was beaded with an icy cold sweat that seeped through his pores to give the porcelain texture of his skin a strange luminosity and he fell back into his chair, bent his head into his hands and sobbed, ‘I’m going mad, dear God that’s it, I’m going mad.’
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Alex awoke.