The distant rattling within the small tunnel was like the chattering of milkteeth, the cold, shaky breath of small lungs reached their ears, until Rhiannon listened closer. She saw the thing hunched in the corner, shivering but not flinching or running, as if it were glued to the side of the graffiti-ed wall. She has a tight grip on the edge of the wall, the mouth of the tunnel as she leans further in to look closer. Its lit from the back, the blinding white light reflecting off the puddles on the concrete floor
“...Hello?”
The thing grumbles, its eyes shining wetly. Then, it opens what seems to be its mouth and lets out a howl. Pained, awful sounds like a foghorn got torn up on the inside spill from its lips. It keeps roaring, and roaring, and her hands fly up to her ears and she turns to Keilan, who’s gripping his gun like a madman who doesn’t realise that shellshock is settling in.
“SHOOT AT IT!” she screams, but he doesn’t move, and she looks back and the thing has grown in size, stuck even further up the wall but starting to tear itself away, like gum off a shoe.
A split second decision runs through her mind and her hands are moving towards Keilan. She rips the gun away from his hands and pulls it over her shoulder, flicking what she assumes is the safety off, she feels around for the metal stick and shifts it around until it locks into place like she’s seen Keilan do.
Rhiannon whips around for one last cry for help as the thing wails again, but Keilan hasn’t budged, his hands are still holding an invisible gun. It’s up to her to shoot it. Shaking, always shaking, she raises the heavy thing and aims as best as she can, around where the glare of the water is the least bright, and pulls the trigger. But there’s no big bang. No smoking barrel. It didn’t go off. ...Fuck.
She tosses it down and runs forward in a last ditch effort – knife in hand – straight for the gooey, sobbing mess that sits almost twice her height in the corner of the tunnel. Plunges her knife into its belly until something liquid spills out. It’s hot, it steams, it burns her, it’s not blood but it should be, by the way it screams like a little kid. It locks eyes with her and cries. For a moment she stops, mid-slash into its neck region and she remembers to breathe in.
The thing finally locks up into an agonised pose of its last moments as a human, and it dies.
The hand holding the knife falls to her side and she looks down at the fatty mess on the ground. It’s slipped off the wall into a pile, sloshing in the wind with the water around it.