The Aberrant remained unsteady on its feet, like a newly birthed calf, its thin needlepoint limb unable to retain traction, skittering and scratching against the hard floor. We were frozen, staring at each other, like we were unsure of which one of us was the predator and which was the prey. The scratching felt like it was inside my head, the needle of a record player caught in a loop, playing the same thoughts over and over. Her name was Cinthia. She was human a second ago. What changed, exactly?
I had never made the distinction before, but staring at the strange skeleton that had erupted from the split human, I now knew the difference between gold and glistening yellow.
I need to handle this. But my body wouldn’t move. There was the terrifying thought that half of her might still be human.
“Ah…” I exhaled, unable to form a word.
It was so easy to just focus on the normal looking half, with its frozen expression of serenity. I could see the pupil jittering. She could still see. Wait, it was seeing. What if-
A sharp point stretched towards my eye as the Aberrant lunged. Reacting too slowly, I barely tilted my head to avoid the strike, the metallic point sliding across my cheek. Antlers exploded out of my neck and chest, driving away the deadly limb before weaving into a shroud of armour.
Tink. Tink.
The Aberrant’s leg plinked against the floor. I couldn’t see it, antlers crowding out my vision in my panicked attempt at self-preservation. I shuffled backwards until the back of my helmet hit the sink, then I reached up and started to break off the antlers that were weighing down my head. Which way would it attack from?
Tink.
It sounded further away. As I cleared away the obstructions, I saw a brief blur of movement at the exit of the bathroom. The door opened letting in the sounds of the club, before they became muffled again.
It fucking ran?
Scrambling to my feet, I headed to the door before halting. I couldn’t go out looking like this. At least not until things looked unsalvageable. The last thing I needed was to be mistaken for the monster. Blood was pounding in my ears, out of sync with the bass boosted music. Easy does it. I slowly absorbed the armour back into my skin, leaving me feeling particularly vulnerable. The cut on my cheek burned as I pushed open the door.
My eyes swept over the crowd, searching for yellowed bone, listening for screams of horror. Nothing. Zola was talking to an irate-looking man, holding his hands up placatingly.
“I work for Sullivan,” Zola explained. “We needed it for a moment.”
“I don’t give a shit,” the man said angrily. “You can’t just use this place as you please. Sullivan should have told me if he was going to interfere with my club like this.”
Zola glanced towards me. “Nick?”
The fact that nobody was freaking out meant that the Aberrant had slipped past.
There wasn’t time. I took a deep breath before entering the crush of bodies. The smell of sweat stung my nose as I pushed past people who were swaying to the beat of the music. My head cranked side to side, desperately searching for a hint of where it had gone. All that did was amplify the movement of the crowd, making me feel like the ground was shifting under my feet. Seasick, feeling nausea well up, I squeezed my eyes shut.
I can do this, I told myself. It’s been a while since the last one, but I can handle it. I’ve gotten stronger. This Aberrant, the Cloven, I decided to call it, it looked scary but it was much smaller than the last one. I could do this if I just focused.
Through the deafening wall of noise, I plucked out a thread.
“Damn! That’s a sick costume!”
My eyes snapped open and I pushed forward towards the voice. There. A soft shoulder with locks of hair spilling over it. Something gleamed in the shadows. If the thing turned, I would see the skeletal half.
I crept closer, then paused as it turned…
It was just a person with elaborate makeup and a half-mask made of gold foil.
“Shit!”
Someone bumped into me as they backed away from something. A few others had alarm on their faces.
“Someone call 911!”
I moved against the flow of people, making it past the corner of the dance floor, where a few tables were pushed out of the way to make room for a person who leaned against the wall. A black stain was slowly spreading out on their chest. They gasped for breath, sweat shining on their face.
I stopped for a moment, puzzled. It didn’t finish the job? It was staying on the move, hiding amongst the crowd and striking before slipping away, a strategy that seemed to indicate a level of intelligence I hadn’t seen before in the Aberrants I’d encountered.
Time to change my tactics in response.
I jumped up onto a table, trying my best to ignore the cheers and demands for me to do a flip or take off my clothes. While some heads turned towards me, others didn’t. It was impossible to use flashes of reflected light as a tell, too many people were wearing gold on their bodies. But then I noticed that there was a man who was supporting his friend, keeping him from slumping over entirely. He seemed confused as he pulled away his hand and noticed the black stain. I spotted the Aberrant moving away, its head a mix of hair and shiny yellowed shell.
Making haste, I jumped off the table and made a beeline towards it.
The drumming bass of the music was building as I got closer. Spotting it again, this time only a few paces away from me, I waited for it to move closer to the edge of the dance floor. People started to cheer as the bass reverberated in my bones.
Now.
I tackled it from behind, clamping my hands down on its spiked arm and sweeping its malformed leg out from under it. We toppled to the ground. The yellow eye fixated on me and it took everything I had not to be bucked off. I wrenched the limb across my body and we rolled. The beams of multicolored light from the ceiling were cut off by the surface of the table we rolled under. I bumped into a leg of the table and a drink smashed near my head, spraying my face with neon green alcohol. It stung my eyes and I lost my grip.
The Cloven tried to get away, but I seized its human leg. People were cheering and a few had their cameras out to record what they thought was just a drunken brawl. Fuck, I can’t assimilate it here. That’ll end the negotiations.
The Cloven screamed. Ragged and very human sounding, strangled and wheezy like it couldn’t breathe properly. A chill ran down my spine.
“Hey! Let go, man!” one clubber wearing a glowstick necklace shouted. “Let her go!”
Others moved in to pull us apart. Not good.
I looked around, desperate for something to save me. A white sign saying “Staff Only” was the only thing that stood out on the wall we were close to.
Just as the people reached out to grab us, the lights went out and this section of the venue was plunged into darkness. People screamed and laughed.
I felt a cold blade settle into my stomach. Big mistake.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I seized the limb with both hands and threw myself backwards. Searing agony flashed across my chest and back as we crashed to the ground once again. A fluorescent bulb lit the hallway we had fallen into. The sound of a door swinging shut was my cue. Staff only.
The Cloven ripped out its arm out of me, painting the wall with my blood. I gasped and let armour spill out over my body. The monster skittered for the door and I intercepted, slamming it into the wall. It squirmed, sliding out from under my armored palms but I caught its arm and threw it back into the other direction.
It struggled to get its mismatched legs under it as I rushed it down. The Aberrant’s jaw dropped slightly, one side of its chest expanding as it drew breath in to let loose a scream.
I slashed my own sharp point across its neck and the scream guttered out inside the throat.
It’s not human anymore.
I repeated this mantra as it retaliated, slicing my arm, straight through my armour. It moved fast, unbound by conventional muscles, each stroke was deadly and inerrant. I fought back, cutting into the flesh of the human side, its vulnerable side. The blood that sprayed out was dull and thick. My skin absorbed every drop that spattered against it.
It wasn’t enough. Both of us were weakening. The background was a mosaic of dirty unwashed walls and lively red. Then it slipped, the human leg sliding on a wet patch of floor. I lunged forward, seizing the Aberrant in an embrace. Spikes raked across my back, but it couldn’t do any damage that I couldn’t heal.
I pulled, taking in its flesh, using every available inch of my skin I could press into it. My own wounds began to close and I could almost feel my veins refilling with warm blood. The Aberrant struggled weakly for what felt like minutes, convulsing in my embrace as I sapped away at its life. Then it was gone, as if I’d smushed it into the stains on the wall.
My panting breaths echoed in the small space as I leaned up against the wall, appreciating how distant the din of the club sounded in here.
I chuckled weakly. If only my sister had been here to see that.
I snapped out of that foggy thought. I didn’t have a sister. Yet the fondness was right there, waiting to be recalled.
Oh. This had happened before, after the last time I’d eaten an Aberrant. I’d acquired the memories of my victim again.
It wasn’t exactly like the last time. There was no ghostly figure waiting to teach me some important lesson. The memories bled into me with each second, like I was digesting them from the flesh I’d consumed. It was terrible and wonderful at the same time. Flashes of experiences I’d never had, moments of defining emotions I would never forget.
Cinthia was a sister. She had worked in social services. She loved her job. And the kids she helped loved her.
It wasn’t even close to a complete library. There were so many gaps, so many things that had been turned to mushy, incomprehensible fragments by time or from the transfer.
I staggered back into the club, holding my head. The lights had returned and no one seemed the wiser as to what had just happened. Just a few questionable stains under a table. I was on my way back to the bathrooms when Zola intercepted me, grabbing my arms to steady me.
“Are you okay?!” he shouted. “I saw you rolling around on the ground with it. I just cut the first wire I found. Got lucky.”
“Thanks,” I breathed, gesturing towards the bathroom. “We need to take care of the body.”
Zola’s expression turned confused. “What body?”
I stared at him. “The Aberrant split off from half of the victim. The other half of the corpse is still in there. I can absorb it if I have to.”
Zola shook his head. “Nick, there is no body in there. I went in after I finally appeased the owner. There was nothing except for a little blood.”
The gaps in the stolen memories suddenly felt like ominous shadows.
Where had it gone?
I turned back towards the dance floor and started through the crowd with haste, Zola tailing as I weaved through the nightlife.
A man was sitting in a chair, head lolled way back, mouth open. I moved over to him, then quickly moved on as I heard him snoring.
Then, at a table where the light barely reached, a woman was slumped over, her hand still resting close to her drink. I touched her skin. Cold. Grasping her wrist, I felt for a pulse.
Nothing.
I gently pushed her upright and saw the round wound in her chest, right over her heart.
It didn’t make any sense. This wasn’t even close to the path the Cloven had taken through the club. There hadn’t been enough time for it to do this. I’d been hot on its trail the whole time. Only, there was another answer.
“Fuck!” I shouted and turned back to face those who were just partying their worries away, oblivious to the danger that was among them.
Zola caught my arm. “What? What is it?”
“I didn’t get a good look at the other half,” I said as I scanned the crowd. “I was so distracted, I didn’t even check.”
“The other half?” Zola asked in horror.
“Yes. I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I think to check? The other half is also an Aberrant.”
The Cloven had two halves. And the one that remained had gotten a head start.