Fighting the Slender Monster

It was there that I finally got to see the thing – a tall creature standing straight with its bipedal legs, and also having a pair of significantly long arms. The creature must have been more than eight feet in height, but no more than nearly nine feet. Otherwise it would not be able to stand still in the sewers.

It had a grey skin, a large head with a wide-sized forehead, a pair of big red eyes with no iris, and a narrow mouth. I could not see if it had a pair of ears and a nose, as I could not see it clearly from where I was looking, but I could clearly saw a pair of narrow holes from the middle of its forehead, as well as a pair of large fin-like thing from the side of its head.

Its body was slender, but muscular, while covered in thick scales, and might have the length of around 4 feet. Its right hand was holding something looked like a short rifle with a big barrel, and instead of another hand, the lower part of its left arm ended with something looked a big mace made up of giant and sharp bones.

Its legs were slim, but with many spikes coming out from them. Compared to its arms and torso, its legs might have a similar length of around 4 feet. It was at that moment I assumed the thing must have been an alien-like creature.

The alien looked like it was searching its surroundings for something. Most probably, it was searching for the loud noise caused by my handgun dropping earlier. Suddenly, it focused on something on the ground – my footsteps. I just realized that my boots were still pretty wet, as the footsteps ended to where I was standing at that moment.

Realizing my mistake, I started to walk slowly towards the middle of the sewers which had a lower ground and one foot-depth water with the intention to erase my footsteps, but apparently the alien started to follow the footsteps in a quick pace as I could clearly hear loud steps coming towards my direction.

Believing I could get myself killed if that monster was to catch up with me, my feet carried my whole body and just run away from the imminent threat without concerning about my running steps anymore by following any turn that I came up with as I ran from the alien. The first turn was towards my right side, then I encountered another turn to my left side, and another left side.

'Great! I should have realized about those footprints much sooner!' I thought to myself as I also relied in my lungs ability in running as fast as I could.

Just as I made my way towards another turn, my heart dropped in an instant upon seeing that the whole path led me to a dead end, literally without any means of escape or other way out as far as my eyes could see apart from a completely solid concrete wall. My hope was restored a little bit when I noticed that there was fixed ladder, although very rusty, installed on one of the corners of the concrete wall. Although shaking a little, my feet made their first steps, and then the second, and the third. Within every next step taken, the pace was getting a bit faster than the previous ones.

'Crkk… CRANCCKKK!'

For a moment, time felt like it had stopped itself when my body was flying in mid-air caused by the sudden fracture of the rusted ladder steps. Aches could be felt all across my back for a brief moment as my body finally hit the wet grounds of the sewer.

'No! I have to keep up! I have to know what on earth is happening up there!' I said to myself as I brought myself up and went back to where I had come from.

As if bad luck had latched itself onto me ever since the alien entered the sewer, it turned out to have already caught up to me just as my whole energy had returned to my body again. There, finally encountering the alien directly face to face, with only about 10 feet apart from each other, it quickly aimed its rifle towards me. As it fired to me, I strafed to my right side to dodge the beam that came out almost instantly from the barrel, succeeding with barely a near miss.

'What the–that really is a laser beam?! Just what kind of equipment do they bring with them to attack us with?!' my thoughts were running wild with those questions as my feet went running as fast as they could, back to the very first T-junction where I had turned after I had realized that the monster noticed my presence. Sweats drenched down my back, and countless gasps went out from my breaths uncontrollably as my mind forced me to distance myself as far as possible from the impending doom.

My memory could no longer remember which path I took with every turns that emerged right before my eyes. All I had in mind at that moment was that no matter what happened, I had to take the dry path so that it would have a harder time tracing my footprints since it could only rely on its hearing.

'I really hope that its hearing was not that good…' my mind kept telling me as I kept on forcing myself to rush towards the path up ahead of me, ignoring every echoes that were made with each loud footsteps that I created. Not too long after, I could hear some uproar in the distance coming from the direction above me. The noise was gradually becoming louder until my eyes could finally point out where it was coming from – the gaps of the grate bars on the sewer ceiling.

"Wait! Please! Help me get out from here!" said a voice which most likely belonged to a man, begging someone else near him to probably remove whatever it was that made him stuck.

"Hang on! Urghh-" responded another, most likely also a man who seemed to be trying as hard as he could to help the other in escaping something that I could not yet see.

But then, all of a sudden a loud thudding sound was heard for a brief moment from the exact same spot, as if some sort of a blunt large object had hit something very hard after it was swung very powerfully…

'TWBOOOGG!'

and in an almost immediate time, the first man sounded like he was terrified to what he had seen right before his eyes…

"W-wait! NOOOO!!!"

'TWBOOOGG!'

only this time, a portion of the ceiling caved in very shortly after, bringing down the two men that I had heard just earlier. Both of them were all blood red from their head to their feet and also having a few holes on their heads where gushes of blood kept on pouring out profusely.

"Hurgkhh… S-save… m-me… please….." begged one of the man who was still barely breathing upon noticing my presence nearby as he reached out his right hand towards me.

My heart might have stopped a beat upon witnessing what was shown right in front of my eyes. It was not the sight of those bloodied men, instead it was a purple beam shot coming directly from the street above, piercing the head of the dying man clean off. What shocked me most to the cores of my spines was that the shot seemed to have left a mark on the sewer ground where it had gone through. I had both of my legs weak for a short while there upon seeing the menace that were terrorizing the citizens above. Just then, I heard fast approaching thudding sounds that were getting progressively getting louder.

'It is still on my tail, is not it… I have to keep moving unless I want to end up like these men…' I thought to myself as I forced my feet to rush away from the lifeless bodies.

There was only one turn at the end of the path, and just as my eyes looked upon the next path surroundings, I immediately realized that the path on the other side was blocked by a large gate. I tried to knock it down, but the gate would not budge even a little as it was considerably still in good shape. By the time I realized that the only option was to reverse to the way I came from earlier, the alien had already caught up to me.

I opened fire several rounds with my handgun towards the alien, but it did not give out any reaction as if my handgun was not doing anything to it. Then, it attempted to hit me by charging me with its mace-like left hand. I dodged it again with a near miss, and it hit the wall and stuck its hand instead.

It was an opportunity for me to attack the alien, so I moved closer and opened fire again towards it until my magazine was empty. I reloaded my handgun, readying to shoot the alien again, but just as I was about to aim, the alien swung its left hand as it broke free from the wall, hitting my handgun and throwing it away down and hard in the process.

Apparently, it broke some of the sharp bones on its left arm in the process of breaking free from the wall because I saw less sharp bones after it threw away my handgun than before, and sure enough the alien seemed angry because of it.

It fired its rifle three rounds towards me again, but with a faster rate than before, thus making me harder to dodge it - I even nearly got hit by one of them. It fired another round until it was finally doing something of what seemed like reloading its rifle in a hurry.

'Now!' I screamed on the inside after deciding to fire my submachine gun towards the alien at that very moment, with no concern of hitting any parts of the alien as long as my rounds hit. At first the alien did not budge at all while taking fire from my submachine gun, but then suddenly an explosion came from its rifle, knocking it down.

It gave out several loud and deep gibberish voices while trying to get up again as I rushed towards it and reloaded my submachine gun. I got on top of its torso, holding its right arm with my left foot and emptied the magazine by firing it at almost point blank distance directly towards its face, and screamed spontaneously while shooting.

"Graaaaarrrhh!!!" I screamed as loud and powerful as my lungs could make me spontaneously while the behemoth was being sprayed by volleys of bullets fired from my submachine gun.

By the time the magazine was already empty, its face was covered with many holes from its eyes, forehead, and several on both of the tip of its fin ears. A black viscous liquid also emerged from the holes, which led me to assume that the alien had a black-colored viscous blood, and strangely the blood gave out a sweet aroma.

The alien was no longer moving at all, so I decided to get down from its body. When I got down, I heard a large creaking noise followed by a loud banging coming from behind me. It was the sound of the large gate earlier knocked down. Supposedly, the large gate was knocked down due to being shot by the beam rifle fired by the alien earlier that missed me because I saw a large hole on the upper hinge of the gate. If anything it had just given me my way out of the sewer.

Unfortunately, the slide and trigger of my handgun had been broken when I wanted to grab and pick it up again. Thus, there was no choice but to leave it and head straight towards the other side of the gate, looking for another way of exit from the sewers as my head was just getting heavier and dizzier in with each seconds passed…