The Aberration Read Online Free

and spattered with black blood.  Another knight stood with him, silver-haired and eagle-eyed.
    Guy’s eyes never drifted from the dark walls of the castle.  “Are you sure this is the location, Antenor?”
    Antenor’s gaze was sharp, his long hair rustled in the wind.  “Positive. The resonance is almost overpowering.  The Others are near.” 
    “When does the Aberration begin, then?”
    Sir Antenor unsheathed a two-handed longsword.  “It has already begun.”
    At the castle, massive iron doors groaned as they slowly opened.  A towering black-armored figure strode out of the gloom.  It was humanoid in shape, but the deeply shadowed face appeared to be anything but human.  It hefted a rusted, jagged blade over its massive shoulder.
    The reverberation was deep as it thumped its armored chest and roared in some guttural tongue.  Vapor billowed from its mouth, exposing jagged, uneven teeth.
    Antenor turned to Guy.  His voice was cool as though he was relaxed in his garden back home.  “As we practiced.”
    Sir Guy answered with a wild yell and charged with his sword pointed at the looming creature.  It roared in anticipation.
    The savage swing from the grotesquery almost split Guy in two, but he managed to spin away at the last second.  As the creature tottered off balance, Antenor dashed in and stabbed at the giant’s midsection, right between the joints in the armor.  The bestial figure toppled, crashing heavily to the earth. Sir Guy swung his blade downward viciously.
    Black blood spattered his chest and face as he stabbed again and again…
    ~*~
    Guy’s chest heaved as he leaned against the railing of the inside stairwell.  His breath punched from his lungs in slow gasps and his vision flickered like a faulty television as he sat down and cradled his head.  It took a few moments before the world coalesced to normal again.  He took a deep breath and blinked open his eyes.
    It was only by chance that he saw the drop of crimson beside him.
    Hesitantly he reached out and dabbed his finger.  It was wet and looked suspiciously like blood as he smeared it between his fingertips.  He shakily stood and examined the stairwell.  Higher up he spotted another drop, then another.  He rounded the corner to the sixth floor.
    Drake huddled into the corner of the wall as though he meant to burrow through it.  His fingers were painted red, haphazard lines streaked his face from hysterical clawing.  His shoulders shook uncontrollably as he stared from a waxen mask.
    Guy took a hesitant step forward.  "Drake?"
    Drake gave a wild start and pressed himself even further against the concrete wall, mewling incoherently.  His bloodied fingers left crimson stripes from his torn and jagged nails.
    "Drake, are you hurt?  It's me, Guy.  What happened to you?  I saw blood…"
    Drake's lips trembled.  "It's not… it's not…"
    "Slow down, Drake.  It's not what?"
    "It's not… not… my blood."  He pointed a torn, quivering finger.
    Guy followed the gesture, as a sound like splattering slop assaulted his ears.
     

Disintegrating Lucidity
    Rob was whip-thin, nervous-natured, and had a bad habit of not making eye contact.  So Fran was not surprised that he talked to the wall when he entered the lab. 
    “Uh, Fran?  Do you have the moisture numbers for, uh…that last run?  I was planning on uh, going over them before I left.” 
    She hated his tendency to stammer.  It made her façade of respect hard to maintain when looking him in the face.
    “Right there, Rob.”  It was past time for her to be gone.  She should have left as soon as the police cleared them.  Reese’s death was hard enough to deal with, and she had other things to do.   Her forlorn apartment awaited her arrival where she would follow her normal routine of watching reruns of Friends and drowning her self-contempt in a half-gallon of double chocolate chunk.
    Rob picked the papers up, pushed his glasses up on his nose and scanned through