The thing that forced into our pristine hallway used to be human. I could see pieces of what it was, a school uniform, though it was so soaked with blood and worse that the colors had gone brown and black. Hair that might've been blonde before it got matted with gore. But everything else...
Its left arm bent backward at the elbow, the joint snapped and twisted so the forearm dangled behind its back. Bone stuck through the skin in white splinters that caught the flickering light like broken teeth. Its right leg dragged behind, the foot turned completely around so it walked on what used to be its ankle.
But the face. God, the face destroyed what was left of my sanity.
The lower jaw had been torn open, split like some nightmare flower. Teeth hung loose on strings of meat and gristle. Its tongue was black and swollen, hanging out of the ruined mouth like a sick slug. The eyes were milky white, but they tracked movement with the intelligence of something that knew exactly how to hunt.
The creature's head swiveled toward the nearest student. Yuuto Kurota, honor roll, debate team captain, supposed to study law at Waseda. Its ruined mouth opened wider, impossibly wide, showing rows of broken teeth and something that might've been its own jaw bone turned into extra fangs.
Time slowed down. I saw everything too clearly. Yuuto's eyes going wide, his hand reaching out like he could push away this moment.
I opened my mouth to scream a warning, but the sound died as the thing launched forward faster than any human being.
It hit Yuuto like a truck, slamming him to the floor with a wet impact that echoed through the hallway. Its claws, raked across his chest, shredding uniform and flesh. Blood sprayed across the white walls.
Yuuto's scream was terrifying as he desperately struggled around, as the creature's broken jaw clamped on his throat. I heard the crunch of cartilage, the wet tearing of flesh, like drowning in their own blood while still alive.
I felt sick to my stomach from the strong smell of copper. I saw Yuuto's eyes dim as his body continued to twitch, and the creature's throat worked as it swallowed.
Panic exploded.
Students screamed, shoved, and ran everywhere with the blind terror. Someone tripped over a chair and went down hard, skull cracking on the floor. Others slipped in the spreading blood, their designer shoes finding no grip on the slick surface.
I should've moved. Should've run. Should've done something, anything, to bring order to this chaos.
But I couldn't move my body from terror.
I just watched... frozen, paralyzed... as the thing hunched over Yuuto's twitching body slowly raised its head.
There was a wet, slurping noise, followed by a squelch as a torn muscle gave way beneath its shifting weight. Then came the crack of something dislocating, its spine, bending at an unnatural angle as it turned toward me.
Its mouth was a ruin of shredded lips and broken teeth, smeared in a thick paste of flesh and blood. Innards dripped from its chin in slow, heavy drops of blood, pat-pat-pat, staining the floor beneath.
Its skin was gray and blotchy, stretched too tight in some places, peeling away in others. One cheek had been torn open entirely, exposing muscle and tendons that twitched independently of the rest of its face.
But it was the eyes that truly terrified me, milky dead. They locked onto my eyes across the ruined room, and for a second, time stopped for me. I couldn't breathe and I couldn't blink.
Then it smiled.
The expression was horrific on that destroyed face.
"Sera!" Aoi's voice cut through my paralyzed mind. She stood frozen by the door, hand still on the release and her face white with shock. "Oh God, Sera, what did I—"
The creature's attention snapped to her. It rose from Yuuto's corpse with grace, blood still dripping from its claws, head cocked at an angle that would've snapped a human neck.
"Aoi, RUN!" I finally found my voice, but it was too late.
The thing moved like a blur, flowing across the blood-slicked floor impossibly fast. Aoi turned to flee, but her feet slipped and she went down hard, her cry cut short as the creature landed on her.
This time, I saw everything.
Its claws punched through her ribs like paper. Her blood fountained up in a perfect arc, spattering my face and white blouse with warm drops that tasted like copper. Her eyes found mine in that split second before the creature's teeth closed around her face.
The sound she made wasn't quite a scream. More like a sigh, the last breath that her lungs made that'll never work again.
I watched Aoi Fujita die.
I watched her die and did nothing.
My hands shook as I raised them to my face, and I realized I was screaming, a sound I didn't recognize as my own voice, raw and broken.
The creature finished with Aoi and turned to me again, its ruined face now painted with my friend's blood.
I backed up, legs trembling.
Then...my heel hit something solid. I looked down.
A glint of black and steel stuck out from beneath a fallen storage locker, half-buried under papers and shattered safety glass. Emergency gear. Someone must've tried to reach it when the chaos broke out... and never made it.
I dropped to my knees my fingers fumbling. The casing slid free with a magnetic click, revealing something sleek and heavy.
A Stun-Tonfa.
Carbon-alloy body. Underside trigger. The kind they gave to on-site security for riot defense.
I gripped the handle and twisted. The shaft extended with a low fzzzzk, blue arcs of plasma crawling along the conductive edge as the weapon hummed to life.
My heart pounded louder than the growls of the monster. I stepped forward, and swung.
The arc of the tonfa met the side of its head with a crack of thunder, light exploding from the point of contact. The thing jerked mid-motion, electricity dancing across its jaw and eye socket.
It crashed into the wall hard enough to leave a dent but it didn't stay down for long just a second as it rise up again.
It turned to me with that same horrible smile.
I swung again, and again, and again.
Each hit rattled my bones, but the creatures kept coming. Kept smiling. Kept reaching with claws that dripped with the blood.
The tonfa slipped in my bloody grip as I dragged myself backward, leaving a gore trail across the polished floor. My designer shoes squelched in fluids I didn't want to think about.