You might be wondering, "what made you stop hunting nightmares?" Well it took something quite vile for me to stop this job. I can't lie; the pay was good, really fucking good. I'm talking about set for life if I stayed in for a year longer in my 20s. Then that probably has you confused or excited for my reasoning for leaving then. It's only going to be a matter of time before my employer hunts me down and hooks me in. You might be wondering why I'm telling you this, well I'd rather not encourage you to go down the same route. Now don't get me wrong; I partly knew I was working for monsters just not knowing how sick in the head my employers actually were.
I've been doing this for five years now; different partners and for one reason or another gone missing whether from being on a job with me or by a different partner on a mission. If this job is so risky, why did I keep working it? Simple; I get a thrill from it, something that keeps my mundane life from being anymore agonizing. It might not be hard to imagine who is attracted to this line of work; if I wanted some mundane good paying job don't you think I would've taken an office job by now? Oh and yeah again; the money like I said before.
Now it's unspringing that the technology that isn't supposed to be cleared for use; was just paid for to skip the line, this technology pushed through the door with little red tape and as much as I hate red tape; in instances like these I hate to admit some red tape would've done some good. As you can imagine; yes some hiccups with the machine has lead to some brains being fried and bodies taken care of by the janitors thankfully. Forgive my crass nature about this but I've seen this happen so many times, I've lost any care really. Hell; not like I didn't warn the bastards.
A part of me can't lie; I still love the fact I accepted the job offer, other half on the other hand... I do feel guilty for taking this job offer. At the time I was training someone who was nineteen, considering how reckless I was at his age; I wasn't looking forward to this.
At the time I explained, "this coil device; aim it, then fire. The nightmare will take damage, remember were trying to capture it not kill it. However if it calls for it; we kill it. That being said; less pay at the end of the day then. If we get separated press the button on your head, please only press it if we get separated, it's on a cooldown and the last thing you need to do is press it when you didn't need too. If you move too far from me, it won't work to press the button and you'll be stuck until you can press the button again. Do you understand?" He hesitates before he nods.
One look and I can tell he isn't ready, his body language shaking and filled with dread. The voice on the intercom goes off, "new nightmare to hunt ready, type feral lv 4" I groan at this and face palm. A quick turn on my heels to face him, grabbing the coil gun and dragging him with me.
I tell him, "come on; time to get you some hands on training."
he stammers, "w- wait shouldn't I get more training?"
The groan from my mouth to explain, "well this is your training; hands on training. You're the only one I got." He gulps hard with a questioning look on his face.
He sighs, "if you say so."
A sly look on my face, "besides; the gun will do most of the work; you'll be fine."
He questions me as he looks at people standing behind blast doors to ask, "isn't lv 4 seem dangerous?" I shake my head.
I laugh off the people behind the protection, "oh don't mind them! It's just for a just in case, a lv 4 is child's play!" In the back of my mind thinking, "lv 4 for his first job; he's likely going to die. Should I tell him this might fry his brain if it doesn't work properly?" We got hooked up to the machine with the kid on the other side of the glass, the kid couldn't be any older than 7. He seemed to have calm down once he noticed it's a 7 yr old, you might think kids are the best minds to travel into for nightmares, sometimes yes but depending on what or who is harming them... it's best not to think about, let's just say whiskey is pretty good therapy for seeing some fucked up shit in a kid's head when left with the wrong adults most of their life. The wires and metal in the back of our necks.
He asks, "what exactly are we getting hooked up too?"
I explain to him, "this is just to connect our nervous system and brain into the head of the kid." As we get armed and suited up; were dropped into the child's mind. The grassy field near a house were dropped near, Josh having an amazed look on his face with boredom for me already setting in, thinking, "where is the lv 4 threat?" I tether us once I notice he's heading off without me.
He protest, "hey why am I tethered!"
I scold him, "remember what I said about getting separated!" Yes it felt quite calming in here, that's no reason to let your guard down. As we head on north, slowly finding ourselves reaching a house. My only thoughts being, "this kid is far too innocent to be on a mission like this; it sucks that he's probably going to die here." As were approaching the house the sky changes, the whirling colors above us of black smoke. My heart starts pounding and pull the kid along towards the house.
He pleads, "can we go back, I think I changed my mind!"
I casually say, "oh sure; you can go back, just head south towards that portal and let me know if you make it home in a body bag or not." He gulps hard as he's staying close to me; both of us armed. As were making our way through the house seeing the dark entities he fires quickly; the figure drops to the ground with his gun still recharging his shots made contact. The creature turns into light dust and out from my wrist is a vacuum sucking up the dust. A heavy sigh leaves my mouth as I'm looking at my now sheepish coworker. A slow nod from me as I make way through the place with him.
That out from the corner of our eye multiple entities moving, swarming in on our position; again my coworker rapidly firing and what I notice is; only a few of them moving at a time then getting sucked up by me, some observing from the darkness. By the time the coil gun is on cool down; they whole room goes dark then strike, snatching him away into the darkness; a quick press of the button only to have it not work, where ever they took him, they were swift.
The dining room being blocked off from the family room so my best bet was to make way towards the kitchen. That or the threat was going to be the bedroom. As I'm making my way towards the kitchen, a smell of something cooking hits my nose; a smell I'm all too familiar with from being in those chairs, I rush towards the kitchen to see a large blacken feral beast standing on two legs and two sharp claws cooking my coworker in a boiling pot of water, the screams being muffled as the pot is shaking, the pot stops shaking only to tell me that they've finally unplugged him. That meanwhile I've been firing away at the creature; only for it to flinch a little, dread fills me as this realization sets in at most I'm pissing it off.
The creature swiftly moves in closer, moves unlike any other nightmare creature; the dance with the beast I'm bobbing and weaving around it's slashes with being acrobatic with my movements. The other pathways closing in as the windows are covered, removing more light with more swarming dark creatures coming in like a wave and they're not done coming for me, only one chance with a rope I was given to deal with the beast; as it lunges for me, I tie it's claws and jaw shut, dragging it out of the house, trying to do my best with getting this thing home with it biting and scratching away at me to no avail.
Every part of my muscles wanted to scream for me to stop but my mind fighting for survival to the best of my ability until I reach the portal. That myself and the creature drop through. On the other side I wake up and sure enough the creature on the ground squirming in a tank; trying it's best to escape and luckily; the only thing that remains of him is that boiled flesh smell.
Though the distress on the kid's face tells me, "this isn't over" and more than likely I'm going to be sent back in. They inject the kid with some black liquid; normally right now I'd still be knocked out but the machine had me awaken early. That and after seeing them inject the kid and having it where the child is now crying in his sleep, has me wondering, "what the hell are we doing?" I know they, "study" the creatures, whatever that's supposed to mean. So I decided to follow them, after all the guards aren't at their post and the scientist are busy wheeling the creature off.
The burning wonders in my mind that have to ask, "what is going on?" As the long corridors has security cameras going on, none of which I'm worried about if I act natural I know the guy in the office, around this time he'd be sleeping and why wouldn't he? He would get a beep if anyone not wearing a name tag or badge came through. That or someone would sound the alarm and he'd wake up. As I make my way through to find a space full of these creatures, the nightmare beast from my missions and others as well. I hide away behind some containers as this large burly man made of the same substance as the other nightmares walk by, putting it's hand on the containers, sucking in the nightmares and other nightmares feeding them, making them bigger.
Other people in rooms; with the same vacuum device we have and having coil guns shoot weak creatures to feed to stronger creatures on top of their existing diet of other nightmares. The room smelled of sweat, soiled garments and blood. My head spun as I stood in the room. Back to the nightmare before me trying to grasp it's true form.
That through the cracks of darkness forms white inky eyes from inside that shape into a sharp white tooth grin as he proudly speaks, "so this nightmare tournament will be a wonderful one; right on time for the schedule." Then other thoughts swirling around in my head, dread filling me and this sense of fear and excitement as if I was on a lv 7 mission, just looking at him gave me a high I could not explain.
One of the scientist say, "we've been able to increase nightmare production but we need other methods of extracting these things; using actual workers is far too costly and slow. If we merely went for something cheaper and streamlined host-" He falls down to the ground screaming, the black swarm of bugs buzzing from his limbs, causing the scientist to writhe on the ground screaming for mercy.
These events made me realize, "I wasn't hunting nightmare's; I was harvesting them for this demon." After that I slipped on by behind one of the scientist as if it was nothing with me following behind him. It didn't take me long for me to leg it, taking leave. After that; I had gotten multiple calls from my job; mind you I'm supposed to be on vacation right now which isn't like them to call, which considering what little of the messages I've listen to that I got from them, I'm not looking forward to dealing with them when I get back.
What's worse is the nightmares; the blacken humanoid showing me the boiled flesh of my coworker, taunting me with the rotten flesh and the smell of the body. What's worse is I can feel the pain, I can taste what happened and when I awake up from my nightmares I have actual human flesh in my mouth and sometimes even with bruises on my arms or badly bleeding. The nightmare calling me, beckoning me back to that job. The torture leaving me without sleep.
The worse part wasn't mine but dragged to see others nightmares, other victims caused by my actions; the hundreds of them left to be harvested like pigs that slowly die of stress or a nightmare finally kills them.
No comments:
Post a Comment