Edge of End (6 page)

I guess I stared at her without any
expression in my glassy eyes because she slapped me across the
face.

“
Ugh!” I exploded, finally
conscious. “What the–”

“
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,”
she muttered quickly bringing her hand up to her mouth. “I thought
you were dead.”

“
I’m alive, okay?” I
grumbled. “My God, what a day! Stop hitting me. First that monster
and now you?” I complained as I struggled to get myself into a
sitting position. She held my arm and helped me up. “What
happened?” I asked anxiously looking around in search of the
monster. “What did you do to that thing?”

“
I did
nothing.”

“
Don’t tell me it left me
alive and strode away.”

“
That wasn’t me who made
it let you go,” she sat back.

“
Who then?”

“
A man emerged from over
there,” she indicated the nearest house on my left. “He was as
strong as you were in the house. I think that the monster
recognized him, it was afraid of him. It left you lying on the
ground and retreated. He saved both of us.”

“
What did he look like?
Where is he now?” I interrogated.

“
He looked weird,” she
confessed cocking her head. “He was older, in his sixties, I
guess.”

“
And half his face was
wrapped with a rag, wasn’t it?” I cut her off with a sarcastic
smile.

“
Yes, do you know him?”
She asked.

“
We met once. He likes
drinking.” I recalled the taste of the nasty drink he had bought
me. The sheer thought of it sent chills through my body and I
shuddered.

“
I’ve never met a human in
this town before I met you,” she muttered in a low
voice.

“
Nothing to be surprised
about,” I mumbled. “Not many people can survive these monsters,
indeed.”

She regarded me curiously. “Can you
stand up?” she asked.

“
Yes, I guess. I feel
dizzy though. What is it?” I followed her gaze. Now she was
suspiciously watching the nearest house.

“
There were several
scary-looking dogs across from us. Seeing that man, they also
retreated,” she explained tonelessly. “I can hear strange voices,
and I daresay they are waiting for us. We’d better get
moving.”

I stood up. My body still ached, but I
could manage it. I held out my hand to aid her.

“
What do you think? What
kind of things are these creatures?” she hissed, looking towards
the house out of the corner of her eye.

She was nervous, shocked, her eyes
wide. It was the first time she’d seen the monsters too.

“
No idea,” I replied after
a moment.

The street was empty, but it wasn’t as
silent as it had been. She was right; there were some kinds of
creatures lurking out there.

As I looked up the street, not far
from us, several dogs appeared in my view staring in our direction,
but they clearly had no intention of attacking us, just watched us
having the look of guardians rather than attackers.

“
Let’s move down the
street and get out of this town once and for all. What do you
think?” I said lowly staring at the beasts.

She peeked back over her shoulder and
jolted back shrieking. She cupped her hand over her mouth in
horror. I grabbed her by the shoulders.

“
It’s okay, look at me,” I
said loudly, trying to get her attention, but nothing was okay, it
was far from okay. When have you ever been okay seeing
monsters?

“
They are there, they’re
coming for us…” she stammered jabbing her finger towards the
beasts.

I caught her outstretched hand and
lowered it sternly. “They aren’t coming, calm down. But we’d better
get moving before they change their minds.”

She nodded. “There is an endless
desert out there,” she reminded me. “Where are we supposed to
go?”

Right.
Had she come from the desert too? Or she had tried to escape
the
town
before.

“
That’s better than here.
I’m not going to try those bastards’ patience,” I turned back and
made my way down the street. I heard her following me
obediently.

But she wasn’t the only one walking
behind me. We were being watched by someone or something that was
lurking behind all those unattractive houses we passed.

“
This town, do you live
here? What has happened here?” I asked curiously.

“
No, I don’t live here. I
saw this town when I woke up in the desert recently,” she picked up
her pace and caught up with me, her arms folded across her chest to
hide her breasts. “I had nowhere to go.”

As did I.

“
And you don’t remember
anything, do you?” I cut her off.

“
No,” she smirked. “You
too, I guess.”

I nodded reluctantly. For a minute or
two we walked in silence, my ears strained for any odd sound. There
were some that reached my ears, but my eyes weren’t properly sharp.
They saw only the empty street and dusty houses.

“
I wonder what kind of
town this is. There are no residents; it’s full of monsters and
abnormal dogs all around,” I muttered to myself.

“
Don’t you think it’s odd
that we’ve both been sent here without any memory?” She interrupted
my thoughts.

“
Yeah, it is weird. We’re
both in the same situation,” I mused letting my eyes drop to the
ground. “Why me? Or you?” I questioned myself. I stopped and
finally looked down at her dumbly. She was a pretty woman, her kind
eyes and soft frizzled hair, made my stomach flutter. She wrapped
her arms around herself as though she was cold, and my eyes
instinctively fell down to her breasts.

“
What are you looking at?”
she asked ashamed, a confused smile appeared on her face as she
covered them.

I took off my shirt and handed it to
her. “Put it on.”

She took it. “Thank you,” she muttered
modestly, quickly pulling my shirt on. I stood before her with just
a white vest on my bare chest. “By the way, thank you for saving me
from that monster.”

“
Never mind that,” I cut
her off with a gesture. “They are still following us,” I noted,
glancing back. Several doglike animals, keeping their distance,
were on the street watching us. “They don’t attack us. They just
want us to go in this direction,” I told myself.

“
I don’t think they’re
doing this for our good, though,” she muttered. “Maybe they are
pushing us into the trap?”

“
You want to turn back?” I
asked.

The look my words put on her face
instantly read otherwise. I wondered what she was afraid of–facing
the beasts or staying alone, without me.

“
I didn’t say that,” she
said sounding resentful.

I sighed. “Okay. Let’s just figure out
what lies outside the city and start over this craziness from the
beginning of the town.” I smiled at her slightly adding,
“Again.”

She answered my smile. I
peeked back again. The light coming from the sky had laid some kind
of brightness onto the
town
. The dingy grayness hanging
above us became bearable.

“
I have never seen such a
phenomenon in my life,” I remarked pointing at the fiery
light.

“
It’s a really weird thing
indeed,” she murmured forcing me to rest my eyes on her again. I
chortled. “What?” she asked me.

“
Everything is weird in
this place, don’t you think?”

Her face lit up with a thin smile. The
corner of my mouths twitched, but I held my smile, and we started
off.

“
Do you have a name that I
can call you?” I changed the subject.

“
Elizabeth, yeah, you can
call me that,” she said dubiously. “You?”

“
Jonathan.” At least the
woman in my mind had called me that. “Why did you enter that house
Elizabeth?”

“
It felt familiar to me. I
saw a man and a girl at the house door who called me in. I was
confused and remembered nothing.” Elizabeth paused, pursing her
lips. “I needed help,” she added vaguely.

“
Didn’t you notice the
guard dogs when you entered?”

“
There wasn’t any,” she
said quickly. “The whole street was empty, no living soul nearby. I
was scared, and, seeing a man, I hurried to him for
help.”

“
But the house was empty.
I didn’t meet anybody but you and that monster inside,” I
remembered. “From what you’ve told me, I saw only a photo album on
the table.”

“
I didn’t find them inside
the house either,” she swept her hair out of her face, allowing it
to fall loosely on her shoulders. “I wandered into the house in
search of that man. I tried the telephone, but it didn’t work.
Then, I just, I…” her face crumpled as she looked at one of the
houses, her thoughts drifting back.

“
How long were you in the
house for?”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “I
don’t know. I had no strength to get out. The house seemed to force
me to stay in. It had a strange influence on my mind. Every time I
reached the door to get out, several mysterious pictures flashed
before my eyes, probably from my past, but they were
torturous.”

“
What did you
see?”

She averted her eyes aside
and trailed off. I was pretty sure she was crying soundlessly. I
heaved a silent sigh and glanced back again. The dogs were still
following.
Don’t you have anything else to
do?
I thought arching my
eyebrows.

“
I was upstairs in the
study looking out to the garden,” she resumed without facing me,
“The monster sneaking into the house unnoticed and pounced on me
from behind. I wonder why I didn’t faint just from seeing it. It
was the worst nightmare that could even occur.” Elizabeth trailed
off tilting her head.

Inscrutable silence fell
upon us. Even the sound of our footsteps deadened a bit. Nature
seemed to be a living and mindful thing in the
town,
watching our every little
step, our every move and listening to every single word we
exchanged.
Could it be?

“
I think we’re in some
sort of experiment,” she rubbed her eyes as she spoke. “Evidently,
this town is meant for abnormal creatures, I suppose, we might be
here,” she paused, her voice becoming fainter, “to see how average
people would react after finding themselves in this hell. The
people, who built this place, might be watching us secretly now so
they can work on their creation.”

“
As a matter of fact, I’m
not a normal man anymore,” I added flatly. I could feel an
unfamiliar power flowing through my veins. “You saw what my strikes
did to that monster in the house. But I have been thinking about
the hell you just mentioned. We might be dead, what do you think?”
I deduced.

“
Dead?” she screamed out
appalled. “You think we’re in hell? I mean in the real
hell?”

“
Look, both of us woke up
remembering nothing, who and what we had been before, not a single
piece of shit from our past. What was waiting for us in the
desert?” I demanded an answer from her but didn’t wait too long and
continued. “This damned town.”

I could clearly see the fear twinkling
in her shocked eyes. Hadn’t she thought about the idea I had just
given her? She was walking next to me, but her thoughts were far
away.

“
What have I done to
deserve an afterlife in hell?
” she
murmured under her breath ruefully.

“
That’s the question we
might not be able to solve, ever. Sometimes we do things we’re
sorry for later. That’s if we ever remember those things,” I said
miserably. “Maybe the answer is somewhere there,” I pointed back
towards the light peeking out from under the gray sky.

“
We’ll never get through
this town and its beasts to reach it, though.”

Deep inside, to be honest with me, I
shared her supposition. I had barely defeated one dog, let alone a
pack of monstrous animals, or abnormal creatures created by some
crazy scientists. Whatever, they would surely tear me to bits like
piranhas do to their poor victims that have chosen the wrong waters
to pass.

“
We can’t get out of the
town if we’re dead,” Elizabeth said. “There is no turn back from
hell Jonathan.”

“
Yeah, right,” I murmured.
“We have to check it anyway. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“
You definitely are. For
me we’ve been abducted and sent to here. Whoever is doing this,
they may erase our memory by some powerful poison and threw us
here.”

“
Maybe,” I sighed
mournfully. “What about the sunless sky? You think they covered it
by enormous monitor? Like a cupola over the whole town?”

She didn’t answer at once.

“
We might have been
captured by aliens and moved to another world or planet.” I
understood her; she stubbornly wanted to avoid the death theory in
any possible way.