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runsforcelery
First Space Lord
Posts: 2425
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:39 am
Location: South Carolina
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Okay, I warn you before you read this snippet that it constitutes the real climax of the action in the short story. It doesn't really constitute what the story is about, in my opinion, but it does . . . finish the explanation for why what the story is about happens.
Rose, put away the sharp pointy objects.
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Later, in the nightmares, she would remember her own primal scream, the fury and the hatred and the grief and the cruel, devastating loss. She would remember the sudden alarm in his eyes, the way he stopped in his tracks. And she would remember the baton licking out from her left hand like a viper’s tongue, the vibro blade coming out of her pocket, screaming to life with a fury and hatred of its own as she sent it to its full, illegal length. And she would remember stepping into them like the angel of death herself.
She remembered very little after that. Not in any detail. Not until she caught the last of them halfway out the door. In the end, he’d turned to run, but the vibro blade swept effortlessly through his right thigh and he smashed to the floor, screaming, clutching at the blood-fountaining stump with both hands.
“Please!” he screamed. “Oh, Christ, please! Please!”
She paused, glaring down at him, realizing her stolen jacket was sodden with other people’s blood, feeling it hot and stinking like molten copper, oozing down her face, dripping from her hands. She drew a deep, shuddery breath, glanced over her shoulder, and wondered with a sort of lunatic calm why she wasn’t gibbering in horror.
There wasn’t a single intact body.
She noted a pair of pulsers lying on the floor, one of them still clutched in the fingers of a detached hand, but she had no memory of seeing the weapons or the hand before. In fact, she realized, she didn’t remember actually seeing any of the Hellhounds from the instant the vibro blade came live. But now she saw everything. Saw the severed limbs lying in bits and pieces in thick lakes of blood. Saw a head lying on the floor, staring at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. Another head, split vertically from crown to clavicle. A torso sliced cleanly in half, spilling organs and blood and a sewer stench.
The vision engraved itself forever upon her memory in the flickering instant before her eyes swung back to the ganger in front of her.
“Please,” he whimpered his voice weaker as the blood continued to pour from his thigh.
“You’re no fun anymore,” she heard her own voice say calmly, conversationally. “No reason to keep you around any longer.”
“No, pl—!” he screamed, and then Kevin’s gift silenced him forever.
"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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