Lily rounded a brick wall, and a voice called out to her. For her entire life things had been rather normal. She'd never killed someone or stolen a car. Her taxes were filed on time, and she'd been late on rent only once, because she was too sick to cross the hall to her building's office. Like a good person, she checked for explosives under her car before starting it, and she got up in the middle of the night to recheck the deadbolt on her front door. Sometimes, she'd even take a photo of it, just in case. She investigated all the noises in her apartment with an axe in her hands. It was still shiny and sharp, but she couldn't be too careful.
Her work life was just as normal. She'd been let go from several jobs for accusing people of watching her, and confronting them. If they didn't want to be confronted, then they should have stopped watching her.
At one time, she'd had a couple of friends, but they'd gotten loose from the apartment and joined others in the street. She got tired of feeding them anyway. Never though had she heard a voice calling her name.
"LILY!" The voice yelled. She looked over her shoulder and no one was there. No one had been there, she checked several times earlier. "LILY!" The voice yelled again. Her ears were free of devices, and there wasn't a cord sticking out of her brain stem. This was an occurrence happening now. "DUCK!" Lily, wholey trusted the voice, so she did as she was told. She ducked down just in time for a piece of shrapnel to smash into the bricks. Bits of red dust fell in her hair, but the shrapnel itself didn't touch her.
To her left was a black SUV with its front bumper lodged through the back of a blue sedan. A man in a black suit and sunglasses kicked the passenger door off the SUV and darted out of the wreckage. He was nondescript, white with a spiked hair style. He could have vanished in a mall and no one would be able to tell who he was in a line up. His eyes locked into Lily, but he growled and turned his attention back to the sedan.
He raised a weapon ahead of him and followed his line of sight. It wasn't a pistol, but some sort of solid piece of metal. "The Sliver," the voice said. The man twisted the sliver towards the passenger side of the sedan. The interior of the vehicle was dark, but he fired two shots through the glass. The bullets passed through and illuminated the inside of the car, but no one was there.
Onlookers began pointing, staring, calling the cops, and Lily considered running, but she was mesmerized by the events unfolding around her. The man in black fired five rounds into the onlookers, and bullets passed through them too. The onlookers took final looks and lost the will to continue watching. He locked eyes will Lily again, and she could feel the cold calculations, but he didn't fire.
"It is escaped," the voice said. A freezing chill grazed by Lily, and she popped her spin spinning around hard enough to see who was there. "It has seen you. It knows of you."
The man in black was too preoccupied with his search of the vehicle to see Lily follow the shadow into an alleyway. "It cannot know of us," the voice said.
Lily was estranged by the retreating shadow, and she followed it even as it passed into something more than an abandoned alley. Here, the walls shifted with black and red miss that spewed grey smoke into the air. The road became slick with moldy spores and hot light. The area stung Lily's eyes, but she couldn't bring herself to blink or stop following the shadow. Even as the world behind her vanished, she ran after it. The spores stung her arms and lips, burrowing into her warm flesh for a place to rest.
But they weren't spores, they were tiny creature feasting upon atom after atop of her being. "Stop. This will not end for us." The creatures gnawed further into Lily's body, but her determination was singular: catch the shadow. She rounded another corner and the creature was there, standing against a wall, watching her. It had the shape of an amorphous dog that shifted with each step to another quadruped. The only constant was the bloodied light pulsing from its face.
"Go no further. The creature wants death, no less," the voice said to Lily. It was far too late. The creature dashed towards her, shifting with each step to a larger creature. A dog. A puma. A lion. A bear. Until it was an unrecognizable monstrosity unhinging its jaw. It's teeth reached out for her, arms with hooks tightening around bits of her skin.
"But it's so beautiful." It wrapped around her, tearing at bits of her body with it's hooks. And as it did so, it began to take her shape. Tugging and pulling, but tightening in, becoming her. It consumed her completely and shifted into her being. Death was all that was left. She took in a hesitant breath, and she was rounding the corner of the brick building again.
"Duck." But this time, she didn't. It may have been the complete disbelief, but she stood still. The porting of shrapnel caught her across the torso, cutting into her. And very quickly, all that was left was death. She took in a shuttered breath again, and she was rounding the corner.
"Duck." She did so. The car accident happened to her left again, and the man in black exited the vehicle with the sliver pointed out. He shot the window of the sedan, shot the crowd, and the shadow ran around Lily. This time, she did not follow it.
"You are doing better maybe. We are proudest of this."
"Who are you?" The man in black said to her.
"Me?" Lily pointed to herself, despite knowing that she was the only person other than the man.
"Yes," the man in black said flatly.
"Run. You must run. As fast as you can," the voice said. At first, Lily didn't listen, because she was mesmerized by the slivers sleek surface. It didn't occur to her that it was pointed in her direction. "Too late," the voice said.
Lily took a breath in. This one was salty like the ocean, and she as her eyes cracked open like green hard boiled eggs caked in frost, she saw that she was on a cliff face, overlooking the icy ocean. Her hands were stuff at her sides, and she couldn't hear anything. She couldn't say anything. The shadow that she remembered before was at the bottom of the cliff staring into the sky. A planet was there, small and luminescent like the moon. The shadow howled at the sphere, shifting more until it had the appearance of a wolf.
"The zin. It needs something from us," the voice said. The mist and haze cleared up until Lily could see that the sphere in the sky was Earth. The zin leaped into the air, transforming into a bird, and flew off. Where was she? But before she could get any idea, a burning flame caught her in the chest killing her instantly.
She was rounding the corner again, and the SUV rear-ended the sedan. This time she ducked because of pavlovian trickery. But this time, a normal human being got out of the SUV and went to make sure the person in the sedan was okay. There still wasn't anyone in the sedan. He looked around, but there was no trail of blood or person running off. There wasn't even a shadow in the distance to chase after.
From there, Lily went on with her life. She had jobs, a family, lost her family in a plane crash from a freak accident, moved to the country to raise chickens, lost her chickens in an unexpected fire, and took up sewing. She had always expected that the instance all those years ago, fifty to be exact was caused my a combination of the flu and dehydration. She hadn't even told her late husband about it.
Now, in her 80s, she spent her time alone on her farmstead, staring into a field of wild corn, sewing biblical scenes onto hand towels. It was a cozy life that she expected was the best life for her, but there was no was to know.
"Just close your eyes. It'll be over soon," the voice said. She hadn't heard that voice in so long. The voice took physical form and grabbed her hand. It held her as she took her last few breaths and passed away from the world. One more for the depths of heaven. One more good person. A good tasty person with plenty of meat on their bones. A feast of a person really. Plus, she had spicy blood that would go well with more people in heaven. Jalapeno spicy and no cinnamon spicy? No one ever found Lily's body. She didn't have friends. Her family was gone, and even her chickens left after the fire. Seemed as though they had learned to fly to get out.
That isn't to say nothing found her body. Just no person. A spider of bones and agony drizzled in the shadows of children and the blood of night creaked through the dying wild corn. It's mandibles dripping with anticipation.
Lily rounded the corner.
