Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24099053-20150807032411

Black Cobra’s eyes are shut against the rain, the cold, and the silence of the morning. His mind’s eye observes the dank streets around him, which are memorised and mapped precisely. In his trembling arms he clutches a black brief case, but in his mind he carries the darkest of crimes. He is Black Cobra, herald of darkness, and has been bestowed with the ultimate responsibility. He stands from his seated position, and brings the briefcase closer to him. The young woman emerges from the house. Her lilac scarf flows freely in the crisp wind.

Black Cobra observes her feverishly, noting the natural grace he had appreciated only a week earlier. The instruments in his briefcase are whispering to him, baying for the majesty. Although of steel, they are his fingers, his arms, his flesh and his blood. Such brilliance cannot be wasted.

Someone was following her. She knew it was a man, but that was about all. By sight, he did not seem friendly.

She wraps the coat around her shoulders, shielding herself from the bitter wind. The rain is beginning to belt down, indenting the frost which consumes the cobblestone. Her back pocket vibrates, but she leaves it alone. Her brother can wait for once. Dinner will not be served until she is home.

If she gets home.

Abbey tightens her lilac scarf, dodges a puddle, and rounds the corner from the store. No traffic passes as the city slumbers on. Abbey risks a glance behind her and checks her watch.

4 am.

There will be no taxis around in this weather, and at this time. Abbey clutches her handbag close, treads further into the heart of the city. There is no morning glow beyond the horizon. She quickens her pace and heads in the direction of her apartment, but it is as far as ten blocks away. She risks another glance behind her, and sees a slight change occurring – it's getting darker.

Abbey breaks into a slight jog, her heart beginning to thump wildly. Her handbag is swinging violently now, erratic with her thoughts. She senses that the stranger in the dark has been following her, probably since leaving her friend's house. She knows, without looking, that they are probably quickening their pace as well. She isn’t paranoid: she has a very bad feeling. The local market square begins to materialise from the gloom. She vaguely makes out shapes – people – going about their business. They are preoccupied around their produce, misting and cleaning. Abbey slows down and attracts the attention of a middle aged man. He looks friendly enough.

'Do you see him?'

'See who?' the man asks, mildly regarding her panicked eyes.

'The man behind me.'

The man tilts his head, looking beyond her shivering form. 'No man there. There’s just Suze, the homeless woman. She's always there.' The man shrugs, looks slightly concerned for her, and continues his business. Abbey glances behind her, past ‘Suze’.

Her eyes register a dark figure from the gloom. His thin frame is swathed in black. Scissors and cleavers, scalpels and needles are wedged in his flesh, glinting in the street light. Golden eyes squint, piercing her soul and releasing a crippling panic.

‘He’s there! Now!’ she shrieks, pointing desperately. ‘Are you ok, miss? It’s just Suze,’ the man assures her, gesturing to the scruffy woman who has awakened from the panic. The woman looks in the direction of Abbey’s fervent delusion, and abruptly gives up. She casually returns to her nap.

Abbey shakes her head, denying. She screams, both in frustration and terror of the impossible man who now strides confidently towards her. Abbey turns and piles on the speed. She continues along from the market stalls, her gut seemingly plummeting down to her feet.

The street lights begin to flicker. Her lungs are burning from the cold, her legs beginning to fail on her. The buildings around her begin to darken further, and become almost black. She glances back at the man striding towards her. He has stopped walking.

She turns back towards the path she is weaving, and he's standing in front of her.

His lips are bloody, his teeth freshly removed and cheeks slashed. His dark hair is plastered to his scalp with old blood, and his trench coat torn by all the manner of weapons. It is Wound Man, like those she has seen at medical school. Abbey screams, though there is little air to sustain it. The sides of the man's mouth rise into a bloody Glasgow smile. An arm, clothed in surgical steel, swings from his side and grips her forearm. He slowly steps closer to her. His pungent metallic breath is colder than the night.

She steps back, observing a cloud of his breath emerge from his jaws.

He actually breathes, Abbey’s mind shrieks, as she tries to break away.

His fingers begin to dig into her flesh. She looks down, past the cleavers and needles, past the scalpels and saws. Her arm: falling apart. Flesh tearing from the bones, blood spurting and running onto the pavement. No movement from his hand at all.

Her eyes widen in surprise, and then suddenly all is black – but she can still hear. There is a searing pain from her blood drenched sockets now, and the blood and eyeball fluids start to cascade down her face. Fear dominates her body, shaking her bones, crippling her mind. Abbey steps back, trying to escape the man. The searing pain is clouding her.

She senses that the man has come closer – his breath is more pungent. She cannot see her metamorphosis – not the shadows cocooning her body, or the glisten of steel. She does not see flesh stripped from her body, arterial blood spraying the wound man's trench coat. She does not see the wings emerge from her body – magnificent wings of surgical steel. She is a grotesque yet luminous blood angel, her torso crimson with lean muscle.

She was not his design.

The cadaver of Abbey slumps onto the ground, but her brilliance will endure perpetually in Black Cobra’s mind. There, she will not be wasted. He lifts the corpse to its feet, wraps a rope tenderly around its emaciated arms. He hoists it up onto a streetlamp, its glittering magnificence radiant before the eyes of the devoted.

Black Cobra leaves her mortality glistening in the light of the lamp. The cobblestones below her shimmer like the stars above. The shadows are his robe now, flowing alongside him as he strides along the street. For now, he will rest.

The apostle of darkness opens his eyes, his mind as calm as a millpond. Blinding white surrounds him. Figures are hunched around him, lights dance in his eyes, and flashes of green smock block the white. Eyes observe, murmurs reverberate against stone walls, and suddenly he is being lifted. Black Cobra tries to sit up, but he is stopped by an insistent gloved hand. Not soon enough to have seen the scalpels, saws, tweezers and needles engorged in his slender frame. In his stomach is wedged a kitchen cleaver and skull saw. He looks up at the figures’ faces, and sees the fascination. They are afraid, unnerved, and ultimately curious. He is the impossible man – the Apostle of the Night.

Black Cobra smiles and they suddenly pause, frozen. He feels nothing, and they know so.

The herald of darkness strides out of the hospital, surgical steel glistening in the sun. The bodies behind him in a place of healing are wasted – they do not deserve the majesty of the blood angel. They deserve no glory.

For now, his quest continues. 