honeyboy-85

[honeyboy-85]

Ichor Noire (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/story/376209873-ichor-noire?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_myworks&wp_uname=honeyboy_85 Based on a nightmare I had. It's the 80s, there's a pandemic, and the world is coming to an unknowable end. There may be vampires involved.

[honeyboy-85]

Ichor Noire

Central Park welcomed me with the bite of its 15 degree frost-laden air. I was in the throes of delirium, with only my ex’s flannel for warmth, and socks that were already tattered during my brief flight from my apartment, back over on 5th Avenue. My muscles burned in protest, and my extremities stung with numbness, but my home was no longer my sanctuary. Emanating from my flat, the police station, Coney Island, and through every congested street of the city, was a pall that hung in the atmosphere. Somehow I could just tell, this biohazard was an event that was going to change the course of humankind; even if that meant we were careening to a dead end. My mind was erratic with the terror a cat might experience while fighting its way out of a burlap bag, after being hurled into a lake. The human faculties that proudly developed over the course of 6 million years flickered in my being, like the ostentatious Sony billboard that could be seen all the way from 42nd Street. I had to find some place to hide in this squalid, rectangular woodland. Existential despair threatened to halt me in my tracks, but I pushed it to the gnarled, ugly cellar of my disintegrating mind. My feet might be taken by frostbite before sunrise, but I didn’t feign a flowery smile through years of fear from Russian ICBMs, only to fall apart before this new, shapeless fear. Or was it actually new? I guess I should start from the beginning. My name is Ellie Marsh. I grew up in Winnfield, Louisiana. I thought about going to Tulane for Journalistic studies, but decided New York City might be the change of pace that I needed. Summer and Fall ran their courses, and even though the city was ragged with homeless colonies and needed a fresh coat of paint, there was a certain rugged hominess to this crazy, neglected city. I felt like here, history was constantly being rewritten. What more could a journalist ask for? It was shortly before Valentine's Day, when entire cities became derelicts. First, it would start with a few missing persons cases; a drifter here, a few college students there. Through the course of several days, the population would plummet by tens of thousands. Downward that number would spiral, until it flatlined. This happened all over the world, too - Hong Kong, Morocco, Shinjuku, Dallas, Rio, Birmingham, the list went on. Police were stretched tight enough to snap, trying to address the disappearances while also maintaining order among the destabilizing populace. Looting reigned supreme, between the business and residential districts. Arson, murder, and a general state of anarchy danced over the jaded cityscapes. The police couldn’t even bother with the blockades for the highways leading out of town, which allowed the smart residents to escape.

Later on, deserters would be questioned by authorities, and their testimonies would make no sense. Regarding family or friends that didn't escape, they wanted those people dead instead of rescued. Media experts were blaming it on a mass psychosis, a symptom of the as yet unexplained phenomena that was striking cities on a global scale.

There was no pattern to how these cities were hit. No cult had this level of mass influence. No known virus could cause this, no matter how unstable the mutation. It seemed the only alternative left was too preposterous for me to entertain.

As soon as New York's population began to get culled, the other field journalists and I set out to investigate our scoops. Was this really how I was meant to get my Pulitzer? By leveraging an international panic and attaching it to an alien invasion? I went to the police, just to look into missing persons cases.

Much of the force was out in the streets. They screeched away from West 20th, in the direction of a plume of fire that sprouted northwards. Every car I passed was free of tickets; apparently the police actually had real problems, for once.

I entered the station’s foyer. There were so few cadets and interns compared to usual, but the air was frenetic and tense. The receptionist was livid with stress as he was keying data into one of the latest IBM computers. He was terse and completely disinterested in indulging me with any sort of interview or comment. As I was being turned away though, I spied some officers going through the fire escape with tall stacks of paperwork. I trusted my intuition and came out to the side of the building.

 I bumped into a young man, possibly too young to even drink. He was quite apologetic to me, even though I was the one that sent his stack of paper and files tumbling. I knelt down to assist him, but also took the time to skim his paperwork for anything of interest. The idea that lept in my mind was rather mean, and might even cost him his job in a typical crisis, but I had to get unfiltered and reliable information. Thankfully the others were too wound up to assist him as I had already volunteered for it, and they dashed back into the station to fetch whatever remained of their files to be stored in the armored van next to us.

Taking my share of his papers, I placed them on top of his stack as he held it in waiting. Then, I leaned in close and left a light kiss on his cheek, telling him to keep up the good work in my best Southern drawl, before I teasingly dragged the brim of his hat down over his eyes, using his brief surprise to reclaim the stack I gave him.

The cadet let his stack tip over again. Perfect.

I promptly left the station behind me. My heart was racing out of control as I took the papers to the nearest alleyway. I sank against the wall, waiting for my palpitations to calm down, gripping the wadded up notes in my fist. There was a hobo curled up beneath some newspapers, but I wasn't too concerned about him ratting me out. Trembling, letting my breath get steady in the cool air, I finally sorted out the notes in whatever passed for sequential order.

There was a healthy garnishing of the usual destabilizing incidents that characterized this panic. However, two detective reports that made me stop breathing as I read were the following - One, Mayor Cochran had apparently murdered his entire family at his estate. He had been moved to the hospital to be treated for his injuries before awaiting questioning from authorities. The other was an unexplained wildfire that was currently razing Yankee Stadium to the ground. There was much less information available on this fire, but judging from the clouds turning charcoal black on the horizon, that seemed to be from Yankee Stadium.

It was clear at this point: I had to assume I only had the time to chase one of these leads. With the nature of the emergency at the stadium, everyone in the city would probably be clamoring to get a look at the action. Naturally, any sports journalists that were in the area would already have a front seat to their scoop. It seemed like it would be a wasted gesture to report on it from the back of the crowd, only to write on what most of the other editors would already be preaching at greater depth; I'd be stuck with crumbs whether I went there or not.

The mayor's family massacre definitely made for a byline that would practically write itself as a virtuoso. But getting to question him held an equally steep level of difficulty to the stadium, though with far fewer elements - he was under armed watch as the key suspect.

Stopping briefly at a local bistro for the strongest cup of Colombian coffee they had, I gulped it down with cream and made my way back to my apartment. I phoned up a friend of mine that worked at the hospital as a registered nurse, named Alison Sinclair. The incredulity of her voice was not hard to pick up on as I asked her to lend me a nurse’s uniform, so that I could sneak into the Mayor’s hospital room unopposed. I knew quite well how much I was jeopardizing her career, but I was amazed to see she relented. Perhaps she was also curious as to the nature of the Mayor’s meltdown.

Taking the time to grab a curly dark wig and set it convincingly in place on my head, I left it messy in front of my face and took the next taxi to Kings County Hospital Center. Making my way through the lobby, it seemed to be too much a scene of pandemonium to keep track of a girl just wearing street clothes. Good. I crept into the bathroom and, locking myself in the stall Alison told me about, I reached into the unlatched vent and retrieved the nurse’s uniform she left for me. Hurriedly changing into it, I came out, approached the mirror, put my hair in a bun, and applied some light makeup. I had no idea if my clothes and wig would remain undiscovered in the same hiding place, so I had to make this count.

I came out from the bathroom, with Alison casually waiting and bantering with me about how I’d forgotten the badge she handed me. I gave a quick glance before clasping it to my collar - Susan Greer, Dietician. The hospital barely had a little more than half of its usual staff to address the patients growing by the hour, and I tried my best not to let myself blanch at the thought of having to do anything related to medicine. Apparently Susan’s tag was chosen because the Mayor was also being treated for gout.

Some rather unpleasant thoughts caused me to stumble a bit on my heels. I caught some curious looks from hospital personnel, but I did my best to simply look like I was exactly where I belonged. My attention turned to my surroundings, however; the patients that got priority seemed to be in a state of despondence. No, not despondence, more like detachment. I could hear doctors as we passed by, asking the patients if they had any sensations despite not having a pulse. One of their answers was a little on the cryptic side: “We feel everything. It’s actually your pulse we feel, Doctor.”

What a time to not have my notepad out. I couldn’t be seen with it though. I didn’t want to attract more attention than I’d already done. But one woman in particular had a strange series of….stigmata, on her skin? As the doctors restrained her, I found myself lingering a bit to watch the phenomena dance on, no, out of her skin, as they began emergency treatment on her in the middle of the hallway. Her blood ran in rivulets down her throat, but it also seemed to oxidize in contact with the air, dancing like some strange green cosmic fire. The doctor, only briefly daunted, tried to snuff it with the white towels that would have been used to operate. I saw the markings creep out from under the cloth, however. And it seemed to manifest as some strange black vines or ivy. It was beautiful, but also ghastly in its predatory dexterity, lashing the doctor’s hand.

My thoughts were jostled by the touch of Alison’s hand on my shoulder. She nudged me back to our task. She was right, I should not be so carefree about this ruse. I followed her, making the mental note to perhaps approach the intrepid doctor later for comment. His groans of pain faded behind us, and we finally approached our destination, guarded by three uniformed officers.

The mayor was right in front of me, in room 422.

I tried my best not to avoid eye contact with the police. They were incredibly on edge with everything they’d witnessed in this hospital, and they’d be more perceptive of suspicious behavior than even the staff. I told them that the patient had gout that would likely cause his state to deteriorate, and we were going to weigh different nutritional options that might speed his recovery. They slowly nodded, their gaze not breaking from mine as they let me in the door. Alison stayed outside to chat with them, likely to give me extra time to squeeze whatever details I could from the suspect Mayor.

I swiftly slid out my notepad from beneath my dummy patient notes, and pinned it in place on top of my clipboard. My breath caught in my lungs though, as I saw Mayor Cochran sitting up at the side of his bed. He seemed to be basking in the moonlight that streamed in through his window. There was a strange tightness in the room that made it seem much more narrow than it actually was. He turned toward me, the age lines etched deeper in his features than what I had seen on the television, just the other day. The things he spoke did not seem to pertain to any questions I posed to him. His sanity seemed fractured, steeped with anguish over what he did to his family, what they had supposedly become. He spoke of the fire at Yankee Stadium, and how so many more blazes just like that one illuminated the planet like candles in the blackness of space. He dug his fingernails into his cheek as he spoke, growing agitated as he described a certain entity that had orbited our planet for some time, using the sun itself as a blindspot to avoid detection from our satellites and telescopes.

A scratch at the window interrupted his stream-of-consciousness rambling. A small yelp escaped my mouth as I tripped backwards. Three silhouettes loomed well in front of any potential footing that window ledge may have offered. The Mayor cried out in a peal of uncanny horror I didn’t expect to hear from a man. The figures reached to the glass, sliding their fingers through. What caused my brain to start doubting itself though, was that the slender fingers parted the glass, as if it had the same substance as a curtain. It was the Mayor’s family!

They had phosphorescent threads hanging over their heads, stretching out into the endless night sky. And hints of the same strange markings I saw on the earlier patient.

Wrenching the door open and entering, a guard from the group outside opened fire. While the bullets sent fragments of their heads and clumps of their golden hair flying, the gun ultimately proved ineffectual as the Mayor’s wife and daughters were already in much worse shape. Did Cochran fire at them with a shotgun, back at their estate?? I edged my way along the wall, only now realizing that there were gunshots popping from outside the room, as well. I may very well be wandering into a death trap, but every instinct in my body was telling me to vanish from this situation. One of the daughters pinned the cop to the floor. Despite her face being ghoulishly half-erased from buckshot, it was still quite sufficient in taking a bite out of the officer’s throat. The other two crawled onto the Mayor’s mattress, crooning at him as his cries of terror were reduced to the whimper of a dumb animal. I slipped out the door, the death-rattling screams of the two victims following me out.

Vampires. This was the secret behind this world-threatening event - vampires?

The lights were still on in the hallway. I found myself very appreciative that there were no floorboards to creak with each careful and deliberate step I took. Wheelchairs and drip stands and gurneys were turned over, as if a hurricane had torn its way through the hallway.

My thoughts were racing, but also sticky. Should I go for the slower but more discreet exit down four flights of stairs? Or should I stress test my already rotten luck with the elevator? My cup runneth over with all these delightful decisions!

A ceiling panel came crashing down, just behind me.

I froze. My heart thumped harder than the speakers at the Danzig show I went to a couple months back. The dust from outdated insulation spread around me, which caused my knees to bend lower. I hoped like mad the dust was making me just a tiny bit closer to invisible. The animalistic rasping betrayed the presence of something behind me.

Slowly, slowly my head turned. More ceiling fragments fell down, but mixed with that was the sing-song giggle of a little girl. I spun, and at my feet was Alison. She let out a whimper, as the child I heard sat beside her, dabbing her fingertips with blood from Alison's throat. She then folded open a coloring book, scrawling the blood from her fingers within the flowers illustrated. Also, the child's mouth and chin were caked with blood.

She asked me to help her color the roses. They were always best when they were red.

I knelt down, reaching for a white towel lying nearby to compress Alison's wound. The child snarled, with the lines in her face briefly warping into something that didn't even vaguely look human, before reverting to a firm and forceful child’s scowl. I froze, and forced myself to nod in compliance. I reached down, smothering my nausea in my stomach as I allowed a couple rivulets of blood to dab on my fingers.

I brushed my fingers on the page. Alison was going cold.

As the child busied herself with her little tapestry, Alison gestured to her own hand - she held a shard of glass, concealed under her wrist. With the most invisible and static of movement, I slowly took the glass piece while my free hand continued to draw whatever strokes of blood that hadn't dried from my fingers.

I blacked out for a fraction of a second, as I watched the little girl feed off the bite wound from Alison's throat. I leaned back behind the girl, ready to put this crude and ugly implement to work to save my friend. Before I touched it to her throat though, I saw what seemed to be an ethereal circuit running from the girl's head to the night sky, outside the broken window.

I grasped the cord. So the threads hanging from the heads of those women weren’t just a hallucination. The girl's head jerked back, her eyes rolling back in her head. Two needle-like fangs stretched out of her mouth as her guttural deluge of agony rang through the halls. The pure and dainty innocence of this child was erased in the concussive roar of a creature that one could only describe as rabid and not of this planet. She - it was seized in pain, but there was no way I could let it go again. Its feral arms flailed and the skin rushed with blood beneath skin that became less opaque.

I drew the glass across the cord. Like a puppet relinquishing its strings, she crumpled where she sat on the floor.

The skin rapidly turned to cinders, and I pushed the horror and dread of my experience to the back of my mind as I knelt down beside Alison, letting her walk me through the steps on how to treat her wounds. Thankfully there wasn’t much beyond applying some antibacterial ointment and dressing her up with bandages.

She leaned on my shoulder as I guided us down the stairs. We thankfully had no more insanity to encounter, at least while on the premises. We got in her car and drove off to my apartment, where I got her some food to regain her lost iron and let her rest in my bed.

And there I was in my office, making the final touches on my byline with an old analog typewriter, beneath the glow of a few candles I had in my wardrobe. Electricity went out for the block a couple hours prior. I sighed between cupped hands and leaned back in my seat, staring at the ceiling as I sucked my cigarette down to its filter. I went through whatever extra care and steps I could to treat Alison’s injury, but the glow of the cigarette’s cherry reminded me of how the child erupted with cosmic energies, as if a filament had burned itself out within her. Gore and disintegration blossomed in the peripheral vision of my memory, and I tried to pretend the ashes were just dust from the insulation, and my instincts as a journalist fought for but a glimpse as I carefully wrapped my friend’s throat up.

What was even happening to me. I had no time to think about what side of me this crisis was bringing out before I felt a movement in the office doorway. Alison stood there, a calm and pleasing smile on her face, and her lips a more stark crimson than I’d ever seen on her usually peach-hued mouth. Her skin held a serene glow in the candle light, and she asked me to change her bandages. It was but a flicker, but I saw the thread-like cord hanging above her head. It was at this point I dove out the window, landing on the fire escape on the rickety old balcony. I had to run - Alison had been infected.

Central Park was my last place of refuge. I could only hope that running and hiding through the park would buy enough time for daylight’s salvation, just as it was in the movies. I ran for refuge at Belvedere Castle, feeling my extremities start to shut down in the cold. I reached down as I moved, grabbing a bunch of newspapers to wrap around myself for any extra bit of insulation I could manage. I shut out the thoughts that I was going to become one of them, and hobbled my way to the antiquated tower.

4:55. That was what the clock hands read. The daylight would be here very shortly.

The door creaked open before my hand touched it. Alison stepped forth from the pitch darkness, grasping me before I could do anything. Her arms snaked around me, and she trilled in a low voice about how sweet my blood smelled.

I told her she should let me go and hide back inside, and she giggled playfully at the idea. Was she seriously not scared of the sun? It couldn’t be true, but she held my head up to look at the sky. Backlit by flashes of lightning - no, missile fire from both fighter jets and anti-air turrets, there was an unimaginably gargantuan mass of what seemed to be….aquatic muscle? Tendrils flicked out and stabbed down to the ground. The gunfire that erupted was not pointing upwards, but rather level to the ground.

This thing, Alison’s sire, was not of this world. What concern was the sun to this monstrosity, when it drifted through space to visit us?