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The Twin

by

Michales Joy

The ocean of pain woke Stu, a spasm straight through his body like an electric current, so hard he jittered from the cot and hit the floor. He contracted like a deflating balloon, pulling tight against the pain. His mind had no thoughts, just blazing colors against his lids squeezed tight, and a ringing of jet engine proportion. Another wave and he flung his limbs wide. There was blood on his hands, on the cold linoleum, in his mouth. He couldn't even form the question in his mind: where was the blood coming from? Then another wave and mercy drowned him, the pain and dingy apartment sliding off his mind.

Stu blinked. He was twisted on his side, face pressed against the white and brown linoleum of his closet-sized bedroom. His body hurt, his guts were on fire, but the ocean has gone. He took a long, shuddering breath. He managed to move his hand. The blood was slightly tacky, so he hadn't been out long. He tried to straighten out and the ocean threatened to return. He swallowed bloody saliva, tried to clear his throat. The weak noise that slipped between his lips proved he wasn't going to be calling for help right away.

At the bottom of his vision, something twitched. He had to move his head to see and the world tilted on a falling plate. At the bottom of that tilt was darkness, Stu knew. Once he had started the tilt, nothing could stop it, and he even felt grateful because the tilting was horrible, maybe not so horrible the darkness. As the darkness reached up for him, he saw the moving thing near his knees. A gray and red clump the size of a heavy grapefruit, but not round, lumpy and distorted. It was unfolding. Then his vision melted and he was drifting in nothingness.

Pain woke him again. Only this wasn't the all encompassing ocean of pain. This was a sharp as a razor on fire pain in his gut. His eyes snapped open and he raised his head. A hairless cat was biting on his stomach. He slapped the cat away and it tumbled gracelessly, stopping abruptly at the open door into the rest of his apartment as if it hit a wall. The hairless animal raised itself and howled in a broken warble. It was not a cat.

Stu's eye focused on a length of some kind of rope that lay stretched between himself and the creature. It was the same color as the creature, all mottled gray and black and tinted red with dry blood. The creature tried to walk away on awkward legs and was held back by the rope, somehow attached to its belly.

“No,” he said as the truth began to settle on his mind. He looked from the creature and rope to his own gut. A gory hole was torn in his flesh. Loops of intestine hung out and lay on the floor like dead worms. From the midst of the dead worms came another worm of a different sort. It was the rope that linked Stu and the creature.

The scene was so horrible and bizarre he could do nothing. Even the throbbing pain seemed too stunned to make an effort. The creature had the wrinkled, thin skin of the hairless cats Stu had seen on the TV. It was crouched on four legs that had an extra bend in them and ended in grasping claws. The head was a rough triangle shape, had a long mouth filled with small teeth, and a set of spines that rose from the back of the head like a collar.

The creature tilted its head at Stu. It had three eyes, two jammed close on the left side of its head, and one dark and wet on the right side. The head dipped down and it bit into the cord.

“Shit! Stop!” Pain from across the room blazed into Stu. He snagged his boot with his finger tip and threw it. His strength was that of a three-year-old and the boot flopped between him and the creature. The effort caused his world to fill with fog. He dropped back and banged his head on the floor. Above him was the dangling, black cord of his telephone. The almost magical appearance drove the fog away. He hooked his fingers into the cord and drug the phone off the night stand onto his face.

He punched the numbers with bloody-crusted fingers. 9-1-1.

A line opened and someone took a breath. “What is your emergency?” The man sounded bored.

“I – I – ”

“Yes?”

Stu blinked at the creature as it kept sawing at the cord, driving shards of glass into his brain.

“I'm being eaten,” he whispered. “It's fucking eating me.”

“Sir, you have to speak up.”

“I – I'm in pain.”

“Okay. In your stomach? Have you taken any painkillers?”

“No, no, it just started like this. I'm covered in blood! It's my blood!”

“Have you cut yourself?” A small note of concern entered the man's voice.

“There – there was something INSIDE me.”

“Yes, you have a tumor.”

“I know that! I'm – I can see it! It – ” Stu shook his head to keep the fog away. “I can't make it stop biting me!”

“I'll send a helper. Can you unlock your door?”

Stu gasped as the creature tore away a piece and proceeded to eat it. “It's eating me!”

“It is not. Pain is expected with your condition. Try to stay calm.”

“How do you know? You aren't 911. I dialed 911.”

“Please stay calm, Mr. Tillson. I've sent a car. If you can unlock the door – ”

Stu dropped the phone. He reached up, and without seeing, wrapped his fingers around the object he always slept near, a folding pocket knife with a two inch blade. Stu snapped out the blade with a practiced flick of his thumb. He stuck the knife into the linoleum floor.

The creature looked up at the sound, a scrap of gray flesh dangling from its shiny teeth.

“Come here,” Stu said. He grabbed the cord at his belly and tugged it. The length went taut. He used his other hand to reel in about a foot of cord.

The creature stared at the moving cord, then yelped as it was drug along. Stu laughed at it. “Don't like that? Hurts? Come here, bitch!”

From the phone came a tiny voice. Stu kept hauling on the cord and bringing the creature closer. It was scrambling to gain traction with its claws on the slick flooring. Stu paused in his effort to stuff the phone between his neck and shoulder.

“Mr. Tillson?”

“I got it now! I'm going to cut this thing to pieces!”

“No, don't hurt yourself. I sent a car, Mr. Tillson. A simple shot will cause the tumor to relax.”

“Goddamn thing crawled out of me!” he sobbed, suddenly in tears.

“What?” the man's voice rose higher. “It's out? Repeat that last bit. Is it – is it alive?”

“Of course it's fucking alive!”

The voice shouted, but Stu could tell the man was speaking away from the phone. “Code eight! I have a code eight!”

“What's a code eight?” Stu asked.

“Mr. Tillson, do not – ”

The creature was less than five feet away. It was doing its best to stay away from Stu, claws slapping at the bumpy, plastic floor, an increasingly loud squeal issuing from its mouth.

“Mr. Tillson! Do not harm the subject!”

Judging the creature close enough, Stu held tight with his left hand and grabbed up the knife. The creature went berserk. Stu was laughing again as he raised the knife. A spray of warm liquid across the face stopped Stu's laugh. The creature raced away into the apartment. Stu blinked his eyes open. The cord hung lax in his hand. The end was leaking blood and milky fluid. The sight of the mixture flowing out of him caused Stu to drop the knife. The feeling left his body and his head thunked backwards. He faded into unconsciousness with the voice on the phone calling his name over and over.

When his eyes opened again, Stu saw the clock on the wall. He had been out for several hours. He sat up, peeling away from the floor with a sucking noise. His lower half was a mess of swollen flesh and dry blood. As he moved his legs, something tore inside him and blood started dribbling out of the hole in his guts.

Under his cot was the other work boot and a plastic tool box. He opened the box and dug around until he found a large roll of silvery duct tape. Stu took a deep breath before seizing a handful of intestines and pushing them back inside himself. Shaking and gasping he finished quickly, getting all the loops at least near the hole. It took him a moment before deciding what to do with the cord that had joined him and the creature. He finally wound it up like twine and stuffed it in, too. Using his teeth, he tore a strip from the roll. Looking from the tape to the hole, he suddenly laughed. He threw it away. This time he started a strip and didn't tear it off. Working laboriously, he wrapped the tape around and around his guts until the hole was sealed up.

“Bleed through that, fucker.”

A voice answered him and he jumped, wincing. He looked around and spotted the phone receiver on the floor. He lifted it to his ear.

“Mr. Tillson?”

“Yes?”

“Listen very carefully. The team we sent has run into … trouble. Did you hurt the creature?”

Stu looked toward the door. “No. It got away.”

“Thank God. And where is it?”

“How should I know?” He ran a hand over his face. “What did you people do to me?”

“Look,” the voice said low and conspiratorially. “I'm going to level with you. You need to get out of there. That team, they will kill you.”

“Kill me? What the hell for?”

“For being alive! Don't you get it? The Colonel put something inside you, some kind of monster he found or made or whatever. I'm just a tech. I never wanted any of this shit to happen.”

“I don't have much sympathy for you,” Stu said. He levered himself onto his cot, fighting down the pain. “Nobody had a gun to your head, I'm guessing.”

“You have no idea. These people are insane.”

“Shut up.” Stu stood up. “I'm still going to kill that thing.”

“No, don't! It's not what you think. It's not something easily killed. That's why he wants it alive. You're the only code eight we've ever had. All the rest died.”

“I don't have cancer, do I? You got to my doctor? You rigged all of this?”

The voice didn't answer for a minute. “Yes.”

“Well, fuck your creature and your code eight and fuck you, too. I lost everything fighting that cancer. My job, my wife. I live in a shithole apartment covered in cockroaches and rats. The drug dealer on the stoop threatened to kill me for looking at him. What was I before the cancer? What was I?”

“Mr. Tillson...” The voice sighed. “You were a paramedic.”

“So I know a thing or two. I'm going to die. That's for damn sure. That thing, blood loss, your assassins, whatever. Before I was a paramedic I was a boxer. I was a nobody, just another ugly fucker in the ring hoping to make a buck. I wasn't any good.” He chuckled at the memory. “But I'll be God damned if I walked away from a fight. You tell that Colonel I'm coming for his little pet.”

A deeper voice issued from the phone. “I'm right here, Mr. Tillson.”

“So all that buddy buddy shit from the first guy was a fake, huh?”

“Yes. But I'm not. I'm willing to make a deal with you.”

Stu squatted down and picked up the folding knife. He saw his reflection in the blade, pale and sweating. “No deals.”

“Sorry you feel that way, Tillson.”

“Good bye.”

“Good luck.” There was no hiding the smile. “You'll need it against my pet.”

Stu dropped the phone.

The kitchen was a wreck. The fridge was wide open and nearly everything had been drug under the two-person table. While everything had been torn apart to make a weird food nest, it was the empty packages of hotdogs, salami, and hamburger that told Stu the creature had a dietary preference. Cabinet doors were hanging loose, pulled off hinges, or splintered. The effort seemed impossible for a creature the size he remembered.

Stu kept his back to the wall as he sidled to the sink. In the midst of dirty dishes was a long steak knife. He snatched it up and had a knife in each hand. He moved passed the fridge and peered into the only place left the creature could be. The short hallway was empty. The front door was open.

“Are you kidding me?” Stu hissed. From the outside doorknob a set of keys dangled, a small silver cross as a keychain. He limped over and looked out, immediately recoiling from the sight.

A man lay in the hall, propped up against the far wall like he was taking a rest. The top part of his head was shredded away, exposing blood-stained bone and two empty eye sockets. Big chunks were missing from his thighs, and blood pooled into the worn carpet. Despite these horrific injuries, he still breathed. He was making a noise with each exhale, a series of b – b – b.

Stu went to one knee next to the savaged man.

“Harry? Oh, God, Harry.”

“B – b – b – Stu?”

Stu jerked as if slapped. He tried to reply and choked on the words.

“Stu, I can't see. I can't move.”

“I – I'm sorry.” Stu raised his hand to help, saw the pocket knife and tossed it away. Then he held his open hand near Harry, but could do nothing. “I'm sorry, man.”

“They – they called me – said you – danger – I came up – ”

“You came up to help me.” Stu hung his head. “Those bastards.”

“Thing – by the door – I can't see – ”

“You let it out.” Stu took Harry's hand firmly. “I'm going to kill it, Harry. I'm going to fucking kill it.”

Harry didn't seem to hear him. The repetitive sound started up again, a word that kept on starting and never finishing. When Stu got up, he looked back into his small apartment. Now that he knew what to look for, he found it right off. Amid the food nest was a bundle of shed skin and cracked bones.

“God damn thing is growing,” he muttered.

Stu looked both ways down the narrow hallway. On the door to the stairwell there was a blood smear on the foggy glass. Stu tightened his grip on the steak knife. Using the other hand to brace against the wall, he made quick progress to the stairwell door.

Right next to the door was a long, black pay phone. It rang just as Stu put his hand on the cold doorknob. He jumped away from the loud braying and struck the opposite wall. Pain fired into him and he doubled over. From a long distance, the phone kept ringing, only now it was competing with some inner ringing in his head. After a minute, he decided he wasn't going to die or pass out. He got back up. He lifted the receiver, took a steadying breath, and said, “Hello, Colonel.”

“Tillson, we selected you based on a hundred genetic markers, but you're proving to be far more than that.”

“Glad you made a friend.”

“How you like my pet? How much has it grown?”

“You know what I think?”

“I'm all ears, son.”

“You're trying to delay me.” Stu leaned his head against the cool metal of the pay phone. “Something went wrong and your team can't show up fast enough. It's got to be three hours now since I called you.”

“They're coming.”

“Not fast enough. Right? I've got a pretty good chance to mess up your whole day, don't I?”

“You have no idea what's coming. I truly wish we had met under better circumstances.”

“How big does this thing get?”

“We don't honestly know.”

From somewhere above Stu, a woman screamed, a short burst of terror.

“Okay, time for me to get on with it.”

“We know you don't own a gun, Tillson. What do you have? A bat? A hammer?”

Stu looked at his weapon. “I have a steak knife.”

“Amazing.”

Stu hung up. He pushed open the door. The single 40-watt bulb turned the stairwell into a nightmare of solid shadows. Stu looked at each stair going up. He took the banister and pulled himself one step at a time.

The next floor was quiet, but Stu saw feet. He leaned against the door jam and tried to focus. Fuzzy pink feet sticking out from an open apartment. It was old Mrs. Neel in her pink slippers and matching housecoat.

“Shit,” Stu said. He wobbled down the hallway. At the edge of the door, he peeked in. Mrs. Neel was spread open like a book. From her neck to her knees was a wasteland of unrecognizable body parts and gore. The creature had mainly focused on the breasts, guts, and thighs. Stu stepped around her carefully. She had brightened her apartment with pictures of rodeo clowns. The many scenes depicted in frames was so jarringly different from the mutilated corpse at his feet, Stu had a sudden feeling of unreality wash over him. He leaned back, taking long, slow breathes. His vision blurred.

From the kitchen came a small crunch of broken glass. Stu swung his head up, but his vision remained blurred out. Into the doorway came a gray blob. Stu raised his steak knife. The gray blob rushed at him. With a cry, Stu lunged forward. He felt his knife strike yielding flesh and heard the creature yelp. The gray blob slammed him back and a small table splintered under him. He landed in the remains, kicking his feet weakly and waving the knife.

The gray blob backed away toward the open door. It seized Mrs. Neel by the foot and dragged her into the hallway. Stu rolled over and crawled into the kitchen. The constant pain in his gut had bloomed into a fire. He grabbed the table edge and got into a chair. Blood was dripping down his leg from the duct tape bandage.

This time Stu did not jump when the the phone on the table rang. He fumbled it a few times before gathering the strength to get it to his ear.

“How goes the hunt?”

“How do you know where I am?” Stu asked, hearing the weakness in his voice.

“Tracking chip behind your ear.”

Stu laid his head on the table. The salt shaker had spilled and he felt the grains under his cheek. “Damn thing is fast.”

“Good.”

“I cut it.” Stu held up the knife. A smear of pale red was on the blade. “I got it.”

“What did it do?”

“Took Mrs. Neel and ran.”

“Nothing a little training can't cure.”

“It's an animal. Thinking with its stomach.”

“Not when I get done with it.”

“Colonel,” Stu said, “you're a real fucked up person.”

The Colonel laughed, a hearty, healthy, fearless sound. “Ready to give up?”

“No. I'm heading for the roof.”

“The roof?”

“That's the only place for your beast to go. No place else to hide. I've got it cornered now.”

“You know what they say about cornered animals, Tillson.”

“You should have thought of that before you cornered me.”

Stu hung up on the flow of laughter. He forced himself up. He walked into the hallway and followed the trail of blood. It went up the stairs. The door to the roof was already open, letting in soft breezes and mid-day light.

Outside, the creature wasn't hiding or cowering. It squatted on the sprawled corpse with the dignity of a king. Stu's eyes had quit rebelling and he examined it from a distance as he leaned against the metal door. It had gained a lot of mass from the bodies and fridge contents. It seemed impossible, yet he couldn't argue with the reality. Stu guessed it would weigh in at over 150 pounds. The shape had changed, too. The body was wider, the four legs angled out and down like a spider. A thick hump had grown on its back, giving it a vaguely bison-like resemblance. The triangular head had gotten larger and bony crests now adorned the back of the neck. The three eyes watched him with unreadable flatness.

“Out of room,” Stu said.

The creature tilted its head at his voice.

“You remember me? I'm Dad.” Stu tossed aside the steak knife. “I brought you into this world, and I'm going to take you the fuck out.”

Stu shoved off the steel door and leaned into a full sprint. The creature made no move to evade or defend. It stood a little higher, waiting, watching. When Stu hit it, his arms were low and he lifted the entire thing off the ground. One claw slipped up and sheared off his ear. Another claw dug to the bone of his thigh.

But Stu wasn't feeling any pain. His guts was a raging inferno and any lesser wound was being shouted out, like a cell phone at a concert. He kept going and three steps later he had reached the edge. He simply dove, holding tight, grinning into the three eyes.

It was seven stories down. Stu tried to twist to land on top. The creature suddenly started to struggle in earnest and kicked him away. The hump on its back rippled and bulged. The skin tore like hot plastic and Stu was falling and the creature was staying put. The creature had sprouted wings.

He managed to hang onto one clawed foot for a second before it slashed down and cut his shoulder. Even though he felt no pain, the arm went limp, his grip was gone, and he fell away. The landing was a jarring stop. He couldn't breath. He couldn't move. He stared at the sky and the sun.

A long shadow passed over him, blocking out the sun. The creature landed on him, membranes folding back like Chinese fans. Stu couldn't twitch a finger. The creature walked in a circle on top of him, a dog seeking the perfect place to nap on a pillow. It settled facing away from him and started chewing pieces off his thigh. A gurgling whimper escaped Stu's lips, and the creature spun about. It leaned close, his own blood dripped from the shiny teeth to dapple his face. The creature opened wide, lowering to engulf his head.

The gunshot sounded small and fake, a toy popper left over from the Fourth of July. The result was impressive, with half the creature's head turning into pulp. Three more shots and it was rolled off him and thrashing in the street. Two men came to stand over Stu, handguns trained expertly on the dying monster. When they both were convinced it was dead, they looked down at Stu. Dark suits, dark glasses, dark hearts.

“Extract,” one said.

The other man snapped out a curved knife and swung once. Stu was opened up from his sternum to his penis. The man roughly peeled away the duct tape. He half smiled at the wound.

“Hey, look at this,” he said, holding up the ball of cord Stu had put back inside himself.

“Yeah, convenient.”

The man pulled on the ball and drew more cord out of Stu. A new, stunning pain hammered Stu. It felt like being dragged by fish hooks. And then a great tearing, a pain with its own voice, a pain there was no coming back from. The man had jerked free a second gray ball that was attached to the cord. The man touched an earpiece clinging to his ear like a giant bug.

“Colonel, I have the twin. It's alive. What's that? Yes, sir.” The man went to one knee next to Stu. “He wants to talk to you.” He pressed the earpiece into Stu's ear canal. Both men left his vision, one holding a gun to ward off anyone curious enough to investigate too soon, the other cradling a ball of gray that was starting to wake.

“Tillson, don't feel bad. You couldn't win. If it makes you feel any better, you did mess up my day. A little. I would rather have both. One will do just fine, though. I really wish you knew what a great service you've done. I was beginning to doubt we were in the right until today. You've given me my hope back, son. I know you're in a bad way. Don't worry. My men have orders not to leave you hanging.”

A black van pulled away from the curb and ran over Stu, his head turning into a flattened mess of broken bones, spraying blood, and gray brains. Brains the exact same color as the dead creature next to him.

THE END

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

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