Edge of End (4 page)

Had I killed him?

With those thoughts in my head, I
reached the place where the girl from my dream had been standing.
Strangely the same house stood there–dark brown wooden walls and a
white door, but no longer vibrant. Instead it was as dusty as the
car parked in front of the path. I maneuvered around the car and
closed in the gates.

I didn’t dare to walk in the yard
straight away. Standing at the fence I surveyed the garden and the
windows, and like the previous houses, this house seemed to have
also been abandoned. I doubted anyone lived inside, however I
opened the gates anyway and cautiously entered.

The path was unstable, and surely
nobody had passed along it for a very long time. What had the girl
wanted me to find here?

I had barely taken two steps when an
angry snarl of a beast filled my ears. I stopped in my tracks, my
stomach turning to water.

Should I run back?

Definitely yes, but at that moment I
stood firmly rooted to the spot, straining my ears to better hear
that sound. A second later it came again. I looked towards the left
of the house, astounded.

I know what a dog looks like, but
believe me, what I saw was surreal: a dog-size animal without any
fur, radiant green eyes, like two torches pinned to its face, and
two sharp teeth grew from its muzzle. I wasn’t mistaken, they did
grow.

Who lived in that house and kept such
a hellish looking guard dog? Though at that moment I was so focused
on the beast growling in front of me that I didn’t give much
thought as to who might have lived there.

My eyes found the beasts legs. It had
much longer paws than the average dog, and its nails were like
knives as sharp and shiny. Nothing would remain of my face if that
monstrous animal swiped at me. My head would definitely be torn
into five pieces.

“
Good dog,” I stretched
out my hand trying to calm the aggravated beast. Instead, it
snarled again, lowering its body into an attack
position.

A voice within told me that there was
no chance of working things out civilly. I quickly looked around
seeking anything with which to defend myself, but found only dried
leaves and grass. There was a rake in the garden, but before I
could reach it, the beast would’ve surely torn me apart.

Running back out of the yard wasn’t an
option either; the fence was short, and the dog would jump over it
with ease. I didn’t come up with any plan; everything happened too
fast.

Holy crap!
The beast roared and began tearing up the ground
with its nails and rushed towards me.

Completely frozen, I lingered for a
moment just staring at it. The white door was the only salvation,
but it was too late now to run towards it.

I waited for the animal to attack.
There were two or three steps between us when it pushed itself off
the ground and jumped onto me with its nails outstretched. If they
pierced into my chest, the sharp edges would’ve been seen on my
back. That’s how long they appeared to be.

I ducked and threw myself to the side.
The dog flew above me. After the powerful jump it landed on the
metal fence that clattered to the ground completely
ruined.

I looked back in horror at the sheer
might that that hellish animal bore. Fear flooded over me. There
was no way to pin that beast down, not even with a knife in my
hand. So using bare hands made me a victim.

My heart hammering, I jumped to my
feet promptly and sprinted towards the door faster than I had
probably ever run. Within a second I was already on the steps. I
didn’t glance back, but I felt that beast hounding me.

My salvation was the white
door.

Please, don’t be
locked,
I prayed in my mind.

I was almost at the door when my eyes
locked onto another beast already in mid-air to my right. I hadn’t
noticed it deviously hunting me from the other side of the
house.

I had no idea what I was doing;
instinctively I punched it right in its face. The dog flew down the
steps and onto the other one behind me, and together they both
tumbled down.

I stood there flabbergasted. Who was
I? Where had such mighty power popped into me from? With one foul
strike I had hurled a heavy beast several meters away. Probably the
rush of adrenalin pumping through my veins had made me momentarily
stronger than the average man, but I didn’t have time to work it
out. The first attacking dog jumped on its legs and bit the other
angrily, and then, with its arching eyebrows, it stared directly at
me.

I placed my hand on the door handle.
Fortunately, it was unlocked. Faster than the wind I flew inside
the house and locked the door before the beast could reach it.
Leaning against the door, I held it strongly, the beast’s strikes
from the other side vibrating my body. I didn’t look around, just
kept the door closed, then locked it and stepped back. Malicious
knocks went on, one of the dogs wailed and then all of a sudden
quiet fell. Shocked I stood rooted and stared at the white door for
another minute. Finally, sighing in relief, I reached the door and
put my ear against it expecting to hear the beasts’ hoarse breaths.
Nothing.

I pulled myself off the
door and turned around to see a gloomy and narrow passage. Trying
to catch my breath, I regarded my surroundings–gray walls, no
pictures hung on them, nor did lamps light the way. The
daylight
never reached
it, although it wasn’t so dark that it prevented me from seeing to
the end of the hallway.

I sighed, my fingers trembled
nervously. My brain started processing the picture of the monsters
outside. Where was I? What kind of town this was? A place for
mutants? I recalled the ugly woman from the café and Malcolm, his
half of the face wrapped with a black rag. The only reasonable idea
I had was that this was a place of experiments on humans and
animals. Other than that I didn’t know what to think.

Now I was locked in this
house and didn’t know what to expect. Quiet fell in the gloomy
passage where I stood by the door and stared at the end of it. At
first I didn’t dare to move. Then I balled my hands and tiptoed
slowly so as not to make a noise, but the wooden floorboards were
old and creaked with my every step. The only door was at the very
end. It had tinted opaque glass, and I could not make out anything
on the other side. The door stood slightly ajar and the room it was
keeping behind it was lit by
daylight
.

I didn’t dare to open the door. I was
too scared of meeting more beasts, or maybe of meeting the owner of
those beasts. But there was no going back. Reluctantly, I pulled
the door open. A large and surprisingly comfortable room lay before
me. There in the center, a table stood with a vase of fresh roses
on it, a sofa and two armchairs to the left. The TV mounted on the
wall was off, and the floor was clean, but still there was no sign
of any living soul.

As I crept in, I noted a staircase on
my right side leading up to the first floor. In the far corner to
my left was a small corridor leading to the kitchen, and I stole a
glimpse of the gas stove and dishwashing machine.

My heart was still
hammering.

I spotted an album lying
on the table, opened, a large black and white photo pinned to the
page. I saw a man of perhaps thirty, clearly of Spanish descent
with frizzy black hair, holding a girl in his arms,
“
his daughter
,” I
thought. They both smiled at me.

Reluctantly I reached down for the
album. All the other pages were blank, so I flipped back to the one
with the man and his daughter and lowered it back onto the table.
Both their faces were unfamiliar to me. At least, I didn’t remember
either of them and my mind didn’t allow for any pictures of my past
to return. No sense of familiarity flirted inside me at the sight
of them. I didn’t feel the same as I had with the little blue-eyed
girl, who, by the way, had trapped me in this house with two savage
beasts on my tail.

The people in the photograph still
stared at me. Where else could they look? I was about to turn away
when a red drop slid out from the girl’s left eye. I bent forward.
The drop balled up and rolled down the page and dripped onto the
table leaving a spindly stream on the paper. Then another one slid
from her other eye like the girl was crying red tears. They turned
into two shallow streams washing over her face.

I shook my head in disbelief. I was
imagining this. Something was going on with my mind. I was in a
wrong place, in a surreal place. Nothing like this could really
happen.

I thought about picking the album up
again and checking what was on its back, but I was jolted as a loud
squawk sounded from upstairs. I wheeled around, trembling with
adrenalin running through my veins. The squawking followed again,
sound of a woman, a crazed woman, yelling and screaming.

You can lose your memories, but the
loss won’t make your identity change.

I wasn’t a coward, though I had just
run away from the beasts. I had assessed the situation right.
That’s why, without thinking of my next move, I bolted up the
stairs. The staircase was much wider than the corridor. On the next
floor I found myself surrounded by four doors, the woman’s voice
coming from the one directly in front of me. My hands trembled as I
opened it.

It was a study, not very large, and
the yelling woman was lying on her back on the desk with white and
ripped shirt, revealing her lacy bra. Her blue shoes were strewn on
the floor, and the papers off the desk were scattered all over the
place. With one hand she was trying to push back a man who had his
back to me and with the other she clasped onto her black skirt that
the man was about to rip off her body. I didn’t know what kind of
man I had been before, but I can assure you raping a woman wasn’t
in my character at all.

“
Hey, you, fuckin’
asshole,” I yelled louder than the woman’s voice. “Let her go.” And
with those words I boldly stepped inside the room.

The man let her out of his hold and
turned to face me–the fool who had dared to interrupt. I guess I
regretted that I had challenged him.

Though I wasn’t sure that the person
standing before me was a he or an it. It looked like a man, as tall
as me with human hair on his head (it was black), bloodshot eyes,
the skin of his face dark-gray and scarred. I had a feeling that
its face had been burned, but the ashes still hung from the
remaining muscles of its chin.

I thought it could be a human, but the
obvious tumors that jutted out from under its gray skin led me to
believe otherwise.

Dressed in human clothes–blue jeans
and a green T-shirt–the creature scowled at me and took a step
towards me with open palms as if he was going to grab me and wring
my neck.

“
What the hell?” I
spluttered. I stood appalled, out of the corner of my eye I seeing
his hands–as gray as his face.

As it reached for me and stretched its
hands out, I jerked aside. The humanoid monster angrily kicked the
door closed, and as it shut, it cracked and shattered sending the
pieces fly up into the air and then come crashing down. My hands
shielded my face instinctively so I wouldn’t be hit by the flying
shards of wood.

He came on me, gripping onto my
shoulder, and then I found my feet uselessly dangling in the air.
The monster was inhumanly strong and had seized me by one hand,
lifting me into the air.

I was watching him from above. It
drooled at the corners of its mouth as though I was a prey, fresh
meat for dinner.

I grasped the arm holding me, trying
desperately to release myself, but its long fingers were tightly
wrapped around my shoulder. It clenched its grip tighter, and I let
out a shriek in pain.

“
What the fuck?” I cried
out then with a painful voice. “What is this? Get over
me!”

On hearing me beg, a wide and
cheerless grin spread across the monster’s face showing its yellow
teeth, just like a man’s who had been chewing tobacco all his
life.

“
I’m dreaming,” I assured
myself. “I’m still dreaming.”

But I wasn’t. I was far from
dreaming.

I looked right into the monster’s
bloodied eyes then peered over its shoulder. To my surprise, the
woman hadn’t run away. She had taken a chair and swung it across
the monster’s back. The chair smashed into pieces, but the monster
appeared unfazed and unharmed. The pain in my shoulder lessened,
and suddenly I found myself on the floor again. The monster had
loosened its hold of me and had turned once again to the
woman.

It is fair to say the monster was
finally enraged. As it snarled, the walls shuddered, and both the
woman and I covered our ears trying to block out the deafening
rumbling noise.

Sitting on the floor, surrounded by
papers and the broken shards of the door, as the monster grasped
the woman by her neck and violently slammed her against the wall
leaving her breathless, I spotted a sharp piece of wood lying at my
feet. Grasping the weapon the next moment, I sprang to my feet. No
time to think, only to act.