Some Nonsense Was Real
"Fuck!" Killjoy screamed as he fired a round at the beast.
The bullet hit the grotesque monster square in the face, causing it to stop for a small moment. But its head only jolted to the side, more akin to being jabbed in the chin than anything else. The beast's empty eyesockets widened, stretching its black voids for eyes. It turned back and curiously looked at Killjoy and his gun.
He could not believe it. The bullet just flew off its face, like it was nothing!
The monster then screeched as it continued to pounce towards Killjoy. Killjoy pushed the bolt forward, down, back up and reeled it back to reload the rifle and shot another bullet.
Again, and again, Killjoy emptied his magazine one by one, frantically reloading the bolt. But the monster still inched closer and closer. It shrugged off each bullet, not even giving the courtesy to slow down.
Killjoy stepped back and tried to fire one more round, but the only thing he heard was just a mere click; the rifle was empty.
He reached for his sidearm, taking his eyes off the monster for just a split moment. But in that split moment of weakness, something emerged from the peripheral of his vision: it was right next to him.
The monster reeled its left arm like a wild monkey and smashed it into the small human with a petrifying scream. Killjoy could do nothing as he was tossed into the air, at the mercy of its strike, the oxygen whipped out of his lungs.
He landed on a patch of dirt, his back breaking what could have been a lethal fall.
The rifle fell to the side, and Killjoy groaned as his chest burned from the strike, barely allowing him to breathe. Not even a bear could have flung someone into the air with just sheer force: that damned thing was stronger. It took the wind out of him.
Killjoty mustered up some strength to sit up, though barely, and squint at the monster. The skeletal-looking zombie was squatting down on the snow, like some sort of dog, as if it was waiting for something. It then snapped its gaze back at the downed hunter. As it noticed the human was finally up, the monster rose itself and began pacing toward him.
It was as if it was playing with him.
The hunter struggled to unholster his gun, his right arm buzzing from the fall. He swung the pistol haphazardly in front of him, and fired at the beast, even if it was in vain. If a rifle cartridge did screw all against its skin, the broom handle would do absolutely nothing, but it was something.
The bullets merely flung off the monster's head like darts, but with each step it took, the more it got irritated, snarling like an annoyed dog.
Shooting it wouldn't stall things forever, though.
Killjoy pushed himself off the ground and reached for the woods, grabbing his rifle by the barrel as he did. He stumbled into the maze of trees, stumbled because he did not know where he needed to go, he just had to go, to get away. And when half his attention was on firing his pistol at the pursuing monster behind him, it made it difficult to find even footing. His shoulder hit a tree, and then his other bumped into another, but he kept running.
The giant corpse of a thing lurched against a tree, then shoved it aside to continue chasing Killjoy. The wood snapped to the side from the monster's weight, pieces of bark flying off the crack. The beast mounted the ground and hopped like a gorilla, chasing him like a sweet snack.
What would happen if the tree was Killjoy instead? He did not want to wait to find out.
Pulling his firing arm back, Killjoy tried to fire, but there came the empty click again. Killjoy slowed down, craning his eyes at the pistol as he squeezed it again and again, trying to fire, but it just wouldn't shoot.
"Fuck!" He exclaimed, trying to find extra clips around himself. He couldn't run out of bullets now, it was the only thing slowing down that zombie of a thing!
Wait, the zombie? He had kept his eyes off it again.
Killjoy snapped back and saw the same husk of a face mere inches off. It groaned loudly as it jerked its right hand towards him—no, his head—so fast it was like a blitzing train.
Killjoy tried to duck to the side, leaping off the thin snow that almost pulled him in.
The monster's claw managed to gash through Killjoy's right shoulder, the force making him spin in the air. He yelled; it burned as he felt it tore through his shoulder and neck, the blood spewing over his coat.
Killjoy landed on his other shoulder, hissing in pain and grabbing his injured side. He barely managed to breathe. It hurt like hell, but it was that or his head.
He immediately got up with his rifle and stumbled back, intending to keep running the opposite way, but as he glanced back at the monster, he noticed it was still.
It had landed on itself, but it froze on its hinds, inspecting something on its hand. It was covered in blood, bits of the fluid dripping off its palm and staining the cold snow below.
It was his blood. And the monster was smelling it.
A million thoughts ran through Killjoy's head, but none was more rampant than one uncertainty: what if it got a taste for his blood? Did that mean the monster was only chasing him up to now purely for sport? Did it consider Killjoy, one of the most infamous in the West, a plaything?
Not even bears so much as agitated Killjoy.
But that thing was no bear. Killjoy gritted his teeth as he looked on at the monster, scrunched up against its overgrown knees with its bony body, licking up the crimson blood drenching its hand. And then it smiled. It craned its head to the hunter with such glee it was like a dog greeting its owner.
That thing was no bear, nor no animal. It was sadistic, oddly human in that way.
It was a demon.
Killjoy chuckled nervously, returning a grin of his own, a smile that never reached his eyes.
The monster let out a roar that deafened Killjoy's ears, a screech that was much wilder, more desperate than the first time. If it roared to simply scare Killjoy before, it was howling to satiate its hunger now.
Not feeling very welcome, he finally found a clip in one of his pockets and pushed it inside the empty pistol. Killjoy summoned the courage to stand his ground and aim his lead-laced bullet centre-mass at the ghoulish beast of a corpse. The man squeezed the trigger, shaking like it was his first time shooting a gun, yelling as he did.
The gun blasted, the recoil jerking Killjoy's grip into the air. The bullet flew straight at the monster, though he doubted it would do much if it couldn't even scratch its skin. But then, a loud squelch rang from the beast.
Its head yanked back, the monster's empty eyesockets almost bursting in shock. The gaunt mass collapsed on the ground, letting out a disgusting moan in unfamiliar pain. The monster raised its long skeletal arms around its throat and jaw as if trying to massage an injury.
Killjoy was stunned, not knowing what to make of it. All of his other shots did not even penetrate its skin, so what changed now?
Every instinct in his body was yelling at the man to get out of there when he still had the chance, but his mind was telling him that there was a secret to be found. A secret to kill this monster that he could not let go.
He scanned the monster as it groaned hoarsely in pain, still holding its throat. Come to think of it, Killjoy could not see any visible bullet wound anywhere, was it an internal injury? Did that mean it was vulnerable from the inside?
So his bullet hit the insides of its mouth when it was open. The beast was bleeding from the inside. That's it: it was like one, big mollusc or turtle, with a durable shell but a weak interior..
Killjoy raised his pistol once again, levelling his sight at the beast's void, empty eye sockets. Now that he thought about it, it was just one large target, and if he shot at it, perhaps he could get to the brain; would it even die from brain damage?
Only one way to find out.
Killjoy shot at the monster, with renewed vigour. If there was anything he was ever confident in, it was his aim and how he was true to it. And if that was all the veteran hunter needed to take down this beast, then was there anything to have worried about? It seems he overreacted for nothing.
He would have smiled had that bullet been all he needed. But that would-be grin soured to a gritted frown. Killjoy's sudden hope collapsed once more into a reality he wouldn't have ever thought he'd find himself in. It was the hunter becoming the hunted.
Like a blur, the monster flicked its bony hand in front of its eyesocket, catching the bullet, like instinct. As if it knew the danger it posed, the consequence of letting its insides be damaged… as if it learned.
Killjoy trembled, stumbling back, unwilling to comprehend what happened. The monster learned, it learned to protect itself.
Throwing away the shell of the bullet, it covered its eyesockets with the palm of its hand, the fingers latching onto its skin. A rip and the monster tore its hand off, the limb still attached to its face and sealing its eyes, like a makeshift blindfold.
Its other hand fell to its side, the gaunt ghoul moaning under its breath, its usually agape jaw now closed to a frown. The monster's head shook, and so did its left arm, and from the point where its hand was torn off, masses of flesh began to spurt out from it. The icky thing formed a slimy appendage, a veil of substance coating it. It then broke out of the cocoon, revealing a new hand.
Killjoy began to steady back further, still trying to make sense of it all. No, none of it made sense: not only did the monster seal its own eyes by using its ripped hand as a blindfold and keep its mouth shut, but it somehow regenerated its lost hand. And if it regrew a fresh limb in a matter of seconds, then what about the internal injury the hunter inflicted?
It defied everything he knew. And Killjoy thought he knew everything, that anything that existed outside of his knowledge was knowledge not worth having. Myths, legends, primitive beliefs among them: he thought it was all the work of humans.
But the thing frowning in front of him now was a work of the devil. What animal could learn as fast as it did? What human could do the feats it had done?
It was neither. Perhaps the miner was right: some 'nonsense' could be real.