User talk:JackCainiac

''' Judgment: Part 1 '''

   

             I perfectly remember the day it all started. A certain panic seemed to sweep over the world overnight. It… I don’t know how to explain it all. It began with a small fraction of a video clip that began online and escalated to being aired on national news almost every night. Doomsayers took to the streets, preaching of the apocalypse. Within weeks, it happened again. Another one of these… these things were spotted. It wasn’t long before it all intensified into disappearances and killings that crept their way into the back pages of local newspapers. People prepped for the end, gradually becoming more paranoid as time went on. All this worry had become a plague, infecting everyone that heard of the events. I tried not to think about what may happen. I turned my head as I passed the callers on the gradually emptying streets. Listening only reignited the fear that lay deep inside my already fragile psyche. It wasn’t until the fifth month after the original video was posted that I finally had to give in to these fears. There was a sighting, along with three killings, only 150 miles away from me. The city emptied. People recognized these sightings as a real threat, and left without any word. Any small sound made would create a booming echo through the streets.

             I had seen these things from the video. They… they weren’t natural. Their limbs seemed boneless, dangling from their unnaturally thin torso like wet scraps of cloth. Their pale, grey skin stretched taught against their set of uneven and jagged bones. They seemingly unhinged their jaws when they attacked, letting out an earsplitting, gravely screech. I hid in my home the first time I saw one in reality as I watched it stalk a cat that wandered clumsily after a small bug floating lazily in the air. It moved silently, bending down on all fours as it peered from behind the trunk of a leafless oak tree. I blinked, and the thing was upon the cat, thrusting its arm into the cat’s stomach. It was dead before it even realized what had happened. I could hear the grinding click of the jaw as it slid out of place. It dropped the cat in, and scrambled away bipedal. I gagged. A small puddle of blood rolled down the slant of my driveway until it spilled into the sewer grate. The creature was now out of sight.

             Military officials scavenged the city for any survivors in the days that followed. They were able to find me after they had engaged in a battle with of group of the creatures on my street. Several soldiers had been slaughtered, yet enough remained to escort me out of my house and to the base. A colony of survivors now lived there, each with their own attitude towards the crisis. Many tried to smuggle weapons out of the base and fight the creatures on their own, while others huddled under the sheets of their cot and tried their best to wait it out. The only window we had to the outside world was a small antennae television in the break room. It struggled to pick up a signal. The few  times it was clear enough to get a news network, they only told things we already knew, with the occasional update on how scientists thought they had gotten here. The crisis had now become worldwide. It seemed we were only one of many small surviving colonies scattered around the globe, yet the population of the world was now down to an estimated 500 million. These creatures had become just as populous as the living, and were named “The Tall Men” by our colony. There were several sightings a day, and the soldiers began enforcing curfews to stop people from wandering off into the arms of their unfortunate fate. It was one of these prematurely ended nights that it all happened. I lay awake in the darkness of the sleeping quarters on my cot. I heard the door open, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. Soldiers often came in to check all of us were asleep. However, there was something rather odd about this visit. The unidentified entity closed the door, and didn’t appear to have a flashlight in him like the others. It stayed for a while. I eventually lost sight of it as it slipped into the shadows of the opposite corner of the room. I felt a certain sense of security, knowing there was a potentially armed man watching over us as we slept. I was finally able to fall asleep as the knot in my stomach loosened, and I felt a certain ease that I had not felt since before the crisis.

             I awoke the next morning to the door opening violently. The sound of hurried footsteps echoed throughout the cramped room, followed by gasps and snorts of dissatisfaction. I was shaken out of my tired stupor by one of the soldiers, who took my shoulder and led me towards the exit of the room. Many other soldiers did the same, ushering their exhausted individuals to the door. I glanced over at the corner of the room, past the group of people crowded around the wall. A woman, one that I had seen before around the base, was tacked to the wall with railroad spikes gathered from the tracks that ran behind the building in a crucified manner. There seemed to be some sort of text scrawled into the wall next to her. I focused hard on the shaky writing, curious. It simply read “I’M GOD NOW”.