CROC --- The beginning of a long story for my fiction writin

[Crawler]

Its not near done, nor is this really edited. This is what I pounded out one night, trying to get the story started. Its been edited since this, but as this is all I have access to here in the computer lab and the fact that I told some of you that Id post it, here it is. Dont be too hard on editing errors, because there are many.

It was the same as every other night. Rex watched through another’s eyes. His vision was tinted red and the eyes through which he looked seemed to reveal every nook and cranny of the darkened alleyway. If Rex could have winced, he would have, since he knew what came next. It had happened 21 times before, and each time it grew more horrifying as Rex grew more hopeless. He just wanted this night to be the last.

“Yeer a pretty li’l thang aren’tcha?” The voice came as if uttered by a snake with a cold. A massive, rough, calloused hand held the girl two feet off the ground as if she weighed nothing. Her face twisted in fear as tears poured down her cheeks. She tried to scream as she looked into the face that Rex had always watched from, but never seen. She couldn’t. The oversized hand crushed the sound before it escaped her throat.

Rex tried to look away, but couldn’t. He’d be forced to watch once again. Hopeless, helpless, horrified.

The vision blurred with motion trails as the hand suddenly pulled the girl so that her nose nearly touched that of her abductor, her legs swinging with the motion.

“I don’t like pretty things,” he growled. Her tears had already found paths over his hand, her mascara staining black tracks on his scaly grey skin. Her eyes, which up to this point had seemed to hold a will to fight, slowly seemed to glaze over in despair. Her lips trembled, the motion trails making them a blur of ruby red.

Rex watched as her dying eyes looked into his, and she seemed to see him. They all did. This being the 22nd time he’d seen it, he thought that it would be less surprising, but still, it chilled him to the bone. Her hands loosened their grip on the enormous hand as pale face twitched and she blacked out.

The entire alley flashed searing white as a car turned toward them. The head containing Rex’s windows slowly turned to the source of the headlights. The muscles of the neck groaned like steel cables, echoing in Rex’s ears. He would’ve smiled, if he’d had a mouth. Finally, Rex’s prayers had been answered. This would stop tonight. Above the two piercing white lights was a spinning set, the sight that Rex had been waiting for for three agonizing weeks.

“FREEEEEEZE!” The bullhorn blasted the electronically tinged voice. “Don’t move a muscle. We’ll shoot!” The massive head cocked sluggishly to the side, as if confused. The thick digits wrapped around the girls neck suddenly released her, her body falling limply to the filthy pavement. Leg muscles tensed, the whole world smeared, and Rex’s prison was on a rooftop, five stories above the policemen. Everything lurched again as the man, monster, whatever, began leaping from building to building, crushing television antennas and miniature satellite dishes beneath gargantuan leathery feet.

His eyes once again flashed white as the sun peeked over the horizon and Rex seemed to fall away, as he always did.

Hours later, Rex groggily rolled his small frame out of his ratty bed sheets. His body ached as if it had been him tearing across the rooftops of the city. He rubbed his face and stepped onto the cold, bare floor. He trudged into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of orange juice before plopping down in his favorite chair.

He sighed as his head began to shake itself loose of sleep and his mind cleared. He was still exhausted, though he’d been asleep nearly 12 hours. Just watching seemed to wear him out more than actually committing them wore out the monster. He was mad at himself more than the monster because he knew that he’d brought this on himself. He’d wished to be unordinary. He’d wished for power. He got what he wished for.

Rex figured that, by some freak of nature, he had been granted some sort of psychic powers that gave him this nightly mind-link with a killer. It didn’t give him a single ounce of control, in fact, it didn’t allow him anything but to see with its eyes and hear with its ears. Unfortunately, he couldn’t shut it off. Whenever he slept, he watched … and the person he had the misfortune of sharing a mind with had a penchant for killing.

The police had just begun to piece together that the murders were connected, as they were random, for serial killings.


(c) 2002 Christopher Stuck

[Bamfette]

oh, very cool, i like it! more please!

[Nightfollower]

Oooo, that's veeeeery goooood! more please?

[Slarti]

Well that's a neat idea! I like it. Keep us posted!

[Crawler]

No criticism or comments?

[Slarti]

You really want me to criticize?

I can do an all-out, no-holds-barred edit if you want, y'know....

[Crawler]

Sure. Go for it. Though I'm not much for reading right now (I read like 15 chapters outta textbooks a week).

[Slarti]

Okey-doke. I can do that....but it'll have to wait until next week.

Ah, reading assignments. I don't miss those. Of course, I generally just didn't read them....