Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26453640-20150813032751

Jeffries shambled down the center of the dark road, his light brown, dead eyes cast straight out of their sunken sockets but processed none of what the took in. His worn clothes hung loose on his gaunt frame such that the dark orange shirt stained here and there with dark smears seemed a size or two larger than need be to cover the frail man. His pants, likewise, seemed much too large to provide any sort of comfort, it was almost a wonder the dirt grey pants hung to his legs as well as they did. His bare feet made a soft slap on the hot tar beneath them, with each step tiny rocks dug deeper into his ripe, irritated flesh. A trail of blood followed the man, not that he seemed to notice.



                 A howl behind him, the city screamed in unison around the homeless vagabond. His ears twitched, monkey like, at the explosion of noise before it faded away again into that dull buzz. Jeffries long, thin, brown beard was matted with spit, blood, and sweat and clung to his grossly thin neck. His hook nose drooled snot and blood into the mustache that covered his upper lip, a dry streak of blood leaked out of both corners of the mans mouth, his cracked lips burst   apart with an especially large breath. A hat covered the bald spot that grew larger every day, what little hair remained was cropped to hang slightly above his shoulders. The man’s sickly face was covered in bruises, scraps, cuts, and smears of blood.



                 Someone ran past and ahead of the shambling man, jumping his shoulder and momentarily pulling him from his trance. The old man blink, summoning tears that created streaks of clean flesh down his face, he made no move to wipe the streams of salt water from his face and instead allowed them to drip onto the shirt. For the first time in a while, Jeffries looked around himself, the city was engulfed in flame, a man pulled himself off the street and continued to run, a window shattered as someone wearing a bandana around the lower portion of the face brought his arm down from the arc and made a sprint for the now open store front. Jeffries looked down at his emaciated arms, they hung like noodles, he lifted his hands and analyzed his wrists. No more than flesh covering bone.



                 The homeless man looked over his shoulder when his eyes spread wide with fright, he broke into a weak run before, snap, his bones broke under the force of his body. He screamed out in pan and collided with the hot blacktop. His hands and forearms split almost on contact, ichor spread out beneath him even as his body began to tingle numb. He pulled himself onto all fours and crawled away, his eyes frantically dancing for something to hide. If he could just hide. Hide!



                 Pulling himself onto the concrete of the sidewalk, the bearded man let out a small grunt as his muscles strained to pull the rest of his body forward. He crawled into the alcove of a doorframe, some store front with a depressed frame. Jeffries pressed his back against the door and panted in silence as the city erupted into sound. Alarms, car alarms mixed with stores alerting others to their intrusion, sirens ranging from cop cars to fire trucks to ambulances, a tornado siren sounded loud over the commotion but nothing could drown out the screams. It sounded like the entire city was made of people and it was all screaming for dear life. It was almost deafening to Jeffries and he soon found himself longing for that dull buzz.



                 And then the bellow. Like a howl, something sounded off loud enough to drown out the alarms, the sirens, the tornado warning, even the screaming. The sound ripped through the air, an explosion meat with an electrical surge, like lightening exploding. The noise frayed the ends of Jeffries’s bread and set his skin ablaze and then it passed. Jeffries sat, in a trance again. “Jeffries,” the noise called out long after it passed him, “Come, Jeffries.” A puddle of piss formed beneath the homeless man as he slowly stood, oblivious to the pain that threatened to consume his leg. He dragged the limb back towards the street before looking at the center of the downtown area.



                 Floating above the city, eclipsing the sun, sat an irritated wound in the fabric of reality. Roughly triangular in shape, the wound had several long tentacles flowing from its underside like water. They moved through reality like water, sending ripples of invisible potential that would eventually forge mountains, topple empires, or destroy the sun. Jeffries focus waned, his eyes averted, his gaze fell to his feet. Staring into the infinite blackness of the thing drove a spike between Jeffries head, blood rushed from his nose and flowed from the corners of his lips like a river busting through a dam. A tentacle shuddered and the city behind the breaded man erupted into fire, and then collapsed in on itself, the fire spread, shaped, and then a single flower bloomed, the fire vanished.



                 Another bellow, the air around Jeffries was active with lighting, it surged around him, it even entered the man through his unfocused eyes and surged from the back of his head into the ether. “Jeffries,” the voice came again this time almost mimicking one of Jeffries children, “Dad, come.” Tears streamed down the poor man’s face. His eyes, large and irritated, were encircled by fresh wounds, like a thousands razor blade cuts. He looked up at the thing as it came to a rest, his eyes kept trying to make a pattern in that infinite dark – and then it consumed it. He was crushed under an infinite dark, Jeffries felt his body as it was pulled apart atom by atom, pain the likes no human should or could know. So why him? What did he do to deserve this?



                 Slowly the man pulled himself up, blood and more piss mixed beneath him, tears stained his bread and cheeks. “Why – why me?!” He demanded. The thing’s retort was only the breeze. Then a tentacle twitched and Jeffries vanished.

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<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:left">                 He returned under its bulk, surrounded by the other population of the city. A scream sounded out and was cut off. “Dad,” his first born, Samantha, “Daddy,” his baby girl, Johanna, “Jeff,” his wife, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...”

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<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:left;text-indent:.5in">“M—Mom?!”

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<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:left;text-indent:.5in">“Jeff! You pathetic –“ his father.

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<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:left">                 Around the man were strangers, no bodies, people he’d never seen but who he could see wehre looking for their own loved ones. One looked up, then another, and another, Jeffries looked into the underside of the wound in reality and he let out a long cry as he held out his hand “Mom! Tracy! Sam and Johanna!” They were all there, all waiting for him, none where ashamed of what he’d become.

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<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:left">                 And then he was consumed in light. <ac_metadata title="The Wound (first draft, criticism welcome.)"> </ac_metadata>