Okay, look. I wasn’t paying attention. It was late. I wanted to get home. I went a little over the speed limit. It’s not like I was actually speeding – not properly. I didn’t see her in front of me. She might as well have appeared out of thin air. It was dark and one moment the road ahead was empty and one moment it wasn’t and I hit something and it wasn’t my fault.
I got out of my car, leaping out, yanking the handle so hard I felt an unnatural jolt in my shoulder that I’m sure wasn’t supposed to happen. I expected a little muntjac deer or a pheasant or something. Worst case scenario was a human person. Or so I thought.
My eyes settled on the scene on my front bumper and all at once my mind froze, the panic and the shock mixing in my stomach, echoing in the form of bile through my body and up into my throat.
I’m not sure what I saw initially. Her voice was what struck me first – before I really got a look at her (I may have been sick in a bush). It was like it was split in two. Angelic and rough in equal measure, the heaviness resounding underneath that airy voice sending vibrations through me.
“Ugh,” she groaned, picking herself up off the floor. Literally.
Smooth shattered pieces the same tone as her skin littered the floor. Some of the larger shards were the size of saucers, others nothing but splinters. I want to say the material was ceramic or maybe plastic but I couldn’t say.
“Look at the mess you’ve made.”
As she moved to stand, more parts of her face fell to the ground. The patches without that… shell revealed horrible meaty insides. All that flesh and viscera and gore made me so nauseous I nearly threw up again. I tried to speak, but my vocal chords froze up with the rest of me.
“Well? Come on, then!” As she spoke, a gaping hole just to the side of her mouth revealed a toothy maw moving in time to her words – the unnatural baritone to her otherwise human voice.
Slowly, I bent down to pick one of the larger pieces up. It was hard, cold, the mere touch of it sending shivers down my spine. Before I could further examine it, a hand (or maybe the word is claw) snatched it away from me.
“Give me that! God, you’re useless!” I looked up at her again as she fitted the piece neatly into the slot in her face, finally covering up those horrible jaws. I mostly just watched as she patched herself up. The pieces were a little loose and she was missing a few flakes, but otherwise the repair was unnoticeable.
After that distraction was gone, I was finally able to focus on the other parts of her – no, her chrysalis. Half-shaved hair, a jawline sharp enough to kill a man, more piercings than I could count. Her dark, catlike eyes glinted iridescently when they caught the light of my car headlights as she placed a pair of sunglasses over her ‘face’.
“Sorry,” I choked out.
“Whatever. Thanks for hitting me with your car.”
“Sorry,” I repeated.
“Look. I’m going to go and – for your sake – forget this ever happened. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
We stood there, staring at each other, like time wasn’t even passing. One. Two. Three.
Then, so quick I didn’t know it was happening, she lunged for me, a claw reaching for my face and[1]
And gently pushing my eyelids shut.
The moment I felt her touch lift, I quickly snapped my eyes open again, gaze flitting from side to side as I searched for her.
God, you’d think I’d have realised quicker – such an obvious cliche.
Blink and you miss it.
