CHUDSTORIES: EARTHLY POSSESSIONS

(From the "Demonic Poessession" Creature Features)

It came first as a headache. Puy rubbed her temple on the bus ride from the factory thinking the fumes had once again caused her migraines to return. When she reached her small apartment in the loud and filthy part of town, she popped some aspirin and prepared for bed. Same shit, different day right? Still endlessly better than China.

No, it was beyond that. Puy was lucky to be alive, considering she was the second child in her family, and born without permission. Many a girl who could potentially one day change the world had her life snuffed out before it started either by fearful parents or a culture that was many millions too vast. A stifling world to grow up, even in the remote area her family had built their tiny farm. The tendrils of policy had no limits, and through what must have been a miracle she was granted a chance to live. Her chances to succeed were another matter. They were comparable to her chances of even taking her first breath. A long shot wrapped inside of a long shot. That didn’t dim her ambition, though. Puy had seen what women could be in America. She saw television, films, and read books of the freedom and prosperity a woman could have in the land of the free.

Free. Such a word was often used by her leaders. If she hadn’t learned better, she’d believe the promises of freedom spoken from within China’s structure. Many did, and what was worse was that they felt the structure WAS freedom. Puy often thought she was born into the wrong nation and was amazed how many of her friends and relatives believed in the hollow rhetoric her nation sold as the truth. While she was lucky to even exist, Puy spent a lot of time thinking.

Thinking was out of the question on this day. As she lay in a bed that was magical in the fact that is was HERS, she forced a painful grin through the pain. Bought with her less than sufficient wages, and dragged up three flights of litter strewn stairs by her own hands, it was worth more than the most regal Chinese bedding in the world to her. Even in her bed, the aspirin were not working. She lay awake through the night trying so hard not to think, that her head filled with thoughts which frightened her nearly to tears. Images of bloodshed and carnage raced through her, and though she was powerless against them and repulsed, Puy knew they were there for a reason.

Weary, she eased out of the bed when it was obvious that sleep had passed her by. She sat at her tiny kitchen table which doubled as an ironing board and a desk, and waited for the sun to rise. Even as the warm light of the morning sun crept up over the tenements scattered just beyond her window, Puy could find no way to dull the sharp pain in her temple. Soon, she was back on her bus to work.

In the factory, she was important. One thing she gained for the schooling she endured through the age of twenty was an uncanny understanding of mathematics. Puy repeatedly had shown her superiors ways to improve performance through techniques as simple as checks and balances to intricate charting methods. The productivity increased overnight. Less than four months into her citizenship, Puy was a supervisor.

It was a change in title, a new identity for her, and though the financial side was still barely enough to survive she felt like she’d been blessed. Her life was better than she’d ever thought, and that evening on the bus ride home she realized the headaches were gone.

But they’d left a reminder.

On the top of her jaw line, running all the way into her short cropped hair, was a thin scar. No pain, and certainly no injury to cause it, just a small scar of unknown origin. It may have gone unnoticed had Puy not gotten doused with a spattering of grease in the factory when a new employee named Weng mishandled the folder near her desk. Later, as she cleaned the viscous stain off her cheek, she was surprised to see the mark.

Puy had no time for vanity, and was just glad she could regain focus.

She did. Fourteen hour days, weekends, and homework became her entire waking life, with trips to the market interwoven just out of necessity. She was drunk with work, and after another four months she had saved enough money for her first vacation. Normally the money would have been stowed away or sent to her family, but her superiors feared their sharpest mind would burn out and nearly demanded it. The holidays were coming and Human Resources insisted she stay far from the factory during those days. They told her to recuperate, but Puy knew that word only in name. The thought of stopping never entered her mind. There was too much to do in the window of life, so she decided to see a little more of this land of opportunity.

She decided on New York. No other city was as alluring to a child whose only freedom from reality were battered prints of American features, often set in the metropolis that seemed light years beyond her reach. As her bus came onto the Tappan Zee Bridge, she saw it for the first time. Even from a distance, that skyline was like a voice to her. Her work seemed like another life, even her beloved bed and home were tiny fragments in a much larger picture now. It seemed to call her in a voice that was so powerful her head hurt.

Again.

Pain careened through her head, and Puy crumpled in her seat. An elderly woman across the aisle went to help, but was stopped by Puy’s own hand. The pain was intense, but an even stronger force had presented itself.

“Never touch me”, the petite Chinese woman commanded in a voice alien from her own. The woman stopped as if pulled on a wire.

“But, you’re...”, the woman pleaded, only stopping once she saw THE LOOK.

Puy’s soft chestnut eyes didn’t stare back at the woman. Blank, milky white orbs glared back at her, the pupils gone. It was as if Puy had been emptied out of her own body, replaced by something formless and cold.

The look changed. The elderly woman saw it unfold before her. Puy’s eyes narrowed, and her forehead seemed to grow. Tiny veins rose from her face, giving it the look of a raised road map. The sweet, quiet girl became covered with the marks, and within an instant she resembled something out of a nightmare. The old woman had no time to elicit even a gasp as the creature changed, and her hand raised to defend herself as a stream of blood sprayed from the eyes of the monstrosity across the aisle, covering her.

In an instant, chaos erupted. Men, women, and children shared a combined scream as blood came out in twin geysers from the petite, but unholy young body. The bus swerved to avoid a station wagon, but could not avoid a taxi cab hidden in its blind spot. The sounds of terror were engulfed by the sounds of metal confronting metal, and the entire marriage of flesh and steel went up in flames when it met with the wall.

Officer Gary Sharpage was the first on the scene after a motorist placed a frantic call into 911. A veteran of countless auto accidents, he knew the paramedics had no reason to hurry. There would be nobody to save, and only an immense cleanup job to conduct. He laid out flares and called troopers in to keep the traffic moving in hopes of keeping things moving, and was completely surprised when the girl’s voice came from behind him.

“What happened?”, Puy asked, her clothes tattered and crusted dark red with blood. Normally the consummate professional, Sharpage had no logical reason someone could emerge unhurt from the nearly indistinguishable remnants of the vehicles comprised more of burning bits of metal than anything else.

“You were in the accident?”, he finally said. “We you thrown from the vehicle during impact?”.

Puy told him she had no idea, and before he could question her further she started to run down the highway towards the city. He chased after her, first politely asking her and then commanding her to stop as they sprinted away from the wreckage. Instinct took over, and he drew his firearm. He held it at his side for the time being, not wanting to escalate matters. “Miss, stop right now, you cannot leave the scene until we’ve gotten all the information we need!”, he pleaded.

Puy stopped and whirled around towards him. Once again, the eyes were pools of icy white. A deafening roar filled the air, and for just a second her tongue flicked out at the officer. It splashed across his face, leaving a sticky smear in its wake. As quickly as it came, it snaked the twenty eight feet back to its owner.

Sharpage froze. The rules of the game had not just changed, they’d been erased. Nothing he’d seen or done had prepared him for this. Fifteen years of hard street time with drug addicts, psychopaths, and every dreg humanity could offer up had made him strong and prepared. For almost anything. Almost.

He then decided to let Puy leave the scene and go wherever she damn well pleased. He returned to the smoking wreck and wondered how much effect his creative writing classes would have on his report that evening.

As for Puy, her head hurt more than ever.

She collapsed in a ditch a few miles away from her encounter with the officer and slept. She slept, but IT was wide awake.

IT knew Puy was a weak host. Her body was easy to control but far from the vessel IT needed. For centuries IT would awaken in a new host and blood would be shed without repercussion for years. The last time IT had lived was a half century earlier. The host was weak at first, but somehow the melding had brought about a great bond between the two. They had accomplished great things. Not the hundreds of deaths IT had grown used to causing. MILLIONS of bodies were laid to waste, and while IT could not remember exactly what, when, or who IT had occupied… IT knew the world was still reeling from the work IT had done.

This body was weak. Small. The soul stunk of something IT had never known. The body of a female was an inferior shell to inhabit. No longer could IT move freely without rest. New feelings filled the normally shallow interior of IT and caused an ebbing discomfort. The work would be hard, not easy like in the last host. The physicality, maybe… but not the mental strain.

This was a joke the DARK MASTER would never understand. IT wondered if this chance would granted again should IT fail.

Puy rose. Her body was sore, and the last thing she remembered was the view from the bus window. She began to walk in the first direction she saw. North. Up a hill, and through a landfill she walked as if guided.

There was a light up ahead in the near blackness of the night that had rushed upon her like a swarm of flies. The light didn’t come from the sky but from the ground ahead.

She entered a clearing and sitting in the midst of the hollowed out shell of a 50’s era muscle car was a man. A man, but not a man.

He looked pale, but the glow around him filled part of her with a warmth she knew only in the womb. Another part of her hated this man, but it was a part of her that seemed far away.

He looked at her, sad. She knew who he was but knew it couldn’t be true. He gestured for her to come to him and she did without hesitation. He caressed her face and embraced her.

Warmth filled her and the feeling was greater than anything she’d ever known.

Her eyes closed as her body grew too warm to remain alive. In a millisecond Puy was no more. Her body lay there in the rapidly darkening field, but the being known as Puy had moved on to someplace that could sustain her warmth.

IT awoke in the shell just in time to see the glow subside as millions of shards of cold stabbed IT into oblivion. IT too was going home.