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Last Words |
| Written by Paul Vigg | |
| Thursday, 06 March 2008 | |
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Share it:      Last Words, Scratched on Paper
Scratching these words on some filthy pieces of paper I stole from a corpse, I can scarcely believe what I'm going to write, if my destroyed nerves will allow me to hold the pen in place. Because of that I know that if anyone survives to read this, they won't believe it either. This is the god's honest truth though, you should know, I'm here, I'm living it. Read this and know how humankind was extinguished.
It was just like a nightmare, the way it began, exactly like a terrible dream. No one knew where they came from, no one could stop them. They had no name and they made no attempt to communicate with us. People called them demons, alien invaders; others said they were mutant soldiers sent by the government, or something else just as implausible, just as childish. I always hated those idiot conspiracy theorists that loved to blame everything on a government cover up, living in fear of something they created with their own minds. None of it mattered though, because soon we all forget about what we should call them, we were running from them, running for our very lives through the streets where our once safe and secure homes sat.
They swept across the whole of Europe in weeks, the States fell next, Russia, Australia, and then anywhere else that was left. Cities fell, houses cracked like matchsticks, everything became rubble and smoke and destruction. I was in London at the time, I saw Big Ben fall, and I saw the streets filled with the blood of millions. The highest mountain, the deepest valley, and the harshest weather, walls of soldiers or missiles, none of it stopped them. It was as if the Creator had simply decided to wipe us away with his hand. The human race was cut in to pieces by unnamable things against which we had no chance to fight.
I was close enough to one of them once to be able to write a description here. They are not totally unlike us; they have two arms, two legs and a head. They're approximately the same size as an adult man, but that is where the similarity ends. Their faces are always covered by jutting masks made of the bones of the people they have slaughtered, their bodies are clothed in leathery armor, almost like that worn in the Medieval period. The only parts of their bodies that are visible are their grey and skeletal hands and feet. They each carry a multitude of savagely shaped blades with which they hack and destroy anything they see. I don't make them sound so terrible, but believe me, they are. They're unstoppable. The one I saw was riding a burning car down the centre of a street, slicing the heads of all those running below off with a swinging sword. People who still had guns fired in to it, the thing didn't even notice. Half a building fell on top of it as an explosion swept through the streets around us; it shrugged the rubble and concrete off like a shower of water. I forget, I forget what makes them so awful. It's their eyes. Those yellow glowing, rheumy, insane eyes that are so filled with hatred. Those eyes would strip way all hope you have of escaping. And their silence, their total silence. They never utter a word, and when they move it's as if they aren't there. They are totally manic, puppets driven by some horrible unseen force that pushes them forward, hacking, killing.
How I survived that encounter I will never know, just one among a vast crowd of screaming people that were herded in to a line of the creatures, even as they were cut down in droves by the one atop the car.
If my tears stain this paper, forgive, because I can see them striding across the cracks in the walls of bodies around me, they'll find me soon.
They tried to keep it a secret, but they couldn't keep those foolish camera crews out, the ones that wanted a look at the real horror. It's what they do with the bodies that will boggle your mind.
People, before the world fell apart, took to calling them the dead trenches. The creatures, whatever they are, take their victims, the mutilated, the crushed, the still twitching bodies, and they make structures with them. They build little streets with them. Each corpse is covered in a white wrap, a stinking cloth that soaks up sprayed blood, vomit, urine and any other fluid that might have come from the body inside. They toss them in to great piles and then make streets within them; they construct walkways and paths with dead human beings, men, women and children. Once they had built these obscene passages no one knew what they did inside them. Any image my mind can conjure is too awful, so, to prevent myself from retching and being discovered before I can finish, I'll move on.
I lived through the deaths of everyone around me. I just thank god, who I have now come to truly believe cannot exist, that I was not with friends or relatives. To see them hacked down around me would have made the atrocity of it even more appalling. As it is, somehow they missed me; I lay down among the dead to save myself. I had been covered, and still am covered, in enough blood and gore so that I would appear wounded and dead to an observer. I witnessed, from inside, the building of one of those dead trenches, and when I opened my eyes I had to summon every part of my will not to vomit. I had been jammed among a pile of other corpses to form part of one of the walls. The stink is indescribable, it curls my nostrils and wrenches at my gut. After dragging myself out I sought some way to record my experience, for what reason, I'm not sure. Perhaps I have already gone insane.
If any person should live and be able to read this, know that if the creatures still exist, then run. Just run, don't think, and don't look back. You have no hope of defeating one of them; I have seen too many try and fail to contemplate the death of another foolhardy hero. These beasts, whatever they are, have caused the downfall of the human race within a few scant months. I only wish I had more time to tell you more.
I can't, you see, because one of them has found me. It hovers over the opening to the stinking, fly-filled air above. It thinks I don't know it's there. I will look up soon, and when I do then
Fragment ends.
By Paul Vigg, read more at www.freewebs.com/paulwhowrites
Copyright 2008 Paul Vigg |
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