It was uncomfortable to force myself forward in the confined space into the open air. It was a difficult abdominal hold and I scolded myself for ignoring every gym teacher and foster parent for never going to the gym. It seems that Alice continues to be correct and in my vision, not more than thirty meters to my right, was the playground. Despite the dark night, I could easily find Sofia and her opponent. Mulch flew in the air as they traded blows. I watched as Sofia jumped backwards, away from my direction, after dodging an attack by the woman who seemed to be attacking on all fours like a rabid dog.
Sofia had barely touched the ground before she jumped forward at her quadruped opponent who seemed to be caught by surprise by the sudden movement. Her speed was unlike anything I had ever seen. Both moved in flashes that made my vision question its validity from the darkness affecting it. With no doubt though, these two were highly skilled and if either wanted me dead, I would be before I can register the necessity of fleeing. Sofia used her left hand to stab her but she leaned back towards a more advantageous bipedal position for defense. Sofia left herself open though, with the long steel claws, her opponent reached forward and stabbed into her left side, a direct hit into her intestinal region.
I nearly yelled out. It is a natural human reaction to feel shock when seeing a person you know be stabbed. My logical ability luckily came to save me. ‘If you yell, her opponent will make you next’, it told me. But with Sofia being injured, how can I get to her bike and get a weapon to defend myself. As I was calculating mentally whether I had the athletic ability to jump down, cross twenty meters, jump the fence, grab the gun, all before this rabid creature chased me down and made me next. Doubtlessly this wolf woman would devour my flesh, like the wild animal she behaved like. Alice spoke before I could make a decision.
“D-Don’t worry about Sofia. She’s not in t-trouble.”
I was physically shook by this answer and nearly turned my head towards the phone just to stare at it confused. Blades the length of my fingers just entered Sofia's side and she was currently leaking large amounts of blood on the mulch and I could hear wet sounds as chunks of flesh were cut like scissors on paper. If it were brighter, I probably could have seen thin tubes of intestines slowly falling from Sofia’s gut. It was a few seconds before either Sofia or her opponent moved. I was expecting Sofia to scream at any moment. Instead, the sound that escaped her is not something I had expected to hear.
“Uhhhhhh!”
She moaned. The high pitch pornographic sound could only be described as such due to no other appropriate nouns existing in the human language. It felt as though a third of it was a scream purely due to its volume and absurd pitch, a stereotypical feminine sound from an otherwise hard and tough character that was Sofia. Another third was definitely a moan of pleasure, the same sound you hear from a plastic surgery-covered unnatural beauty found in pornography and its overly male-oriented audience’s expectations. The final third held that mystery, another note of pleasure but something else which made the noise almost scary to hear.
Sofia looked up from the wound and was now facing the bitch which dared to stab her. She was smiling. Not the sly or amused smiles which I usually saw from her tonight. Instead, it was most similar to the one I saw when I told her I found Roxane. It was unnatural and held this terrifying presence which told you that not all was right in her mind. I was not 100% due to the darkness, but I swear she was blushing a red hue that her pale skin easily let through. I watched dumbstruck the entire time. My mouth was slack jawed and a fly could’ve easily mistook it for a cave due to how far it dropped. Alice luckily was quick enough to not leave me confused this time. I heard her snicker something unintelligible first though, surely laughing at me.
“Sofia can’t feel pain. Her c-contract makes all pain feel like p-pleasure. She might as well be getting f-fucked when she was s-stabbed!”
Oh yeah that makes sense. The fuck do you mean her contract!? What attorney was able to whip up a contract that could make something so obviously impossible happen. Was it the devil she made a deal with? Don’t answer that. Actually, please do. I’m confused.
The predatorial creature tried to reel in its hand which was lodged in Sofia’s guts, but found herself unable to. Sofia was flexing her unnaturally strong core and was able to hold the blades inside of her. With a sadistic glint in her eye and a masochistic curl to her smile, she pulled back her right hand into a fist. The force which came down on the girl’s face must have been equivalent to that of a carcrash. She was sent flying ten meters through the air before landing outside of the soft mulch onto the dark dead dirt. It was a display of strength that I had only ever seen in movies and comics. The girl was punched closer to my location, but she wasn’t rising immediately. Foolishly, I assumed that such a strike must have surely killed the bitch.
I pulled myself out the tiny vent and managed to jump down on the ground. The dirt was soft enough to cushion the impact. I looked briefly to my right where both Sofia and her target were. Sofia was walkingly uncomfortably towards the girl who was now trying to stand up. I didn’t bother to see whether she could, I simply started running towards the fence. I wasn’t holding the flip phone on my shoulder anymore and moved it into my right hand. I had closed it when dropping down. It was difficult to maneuver with it remaining there, so I pocketed it.
Thirty meters is not long. It is roughly the distance of a standard basketball court. A majority of humanity can make that distance in less than ten seconds. My assumption was that I could easily outrun that length and scale the fence before she could begin to pursue, assuming Sofia allowed her to. My start was strong and the dirt lacked any slippery grass or other plants. By the time I was halfway there, I began to hear a panting noise behind me and partly turned my head to see what could be happening. I would assume that she was regaining her strength and was possibly beginning chase or restarting combat with Sofia now that she was injured despite an increased strength that came from the wound thanks to her ‘contract’. To either answer, the conclusion would be that I need to stop looking behind me and hurry.
What I was not expecting was to see the white of her eyes. She was mid-lunge with a single claw swiping towards my face. She never left her quadrupedal position and began to chase from it. No human being could move more effectively on all fours as opposed to their two legs. Humanity has spent multiple millenia evolving to optimize this build for the purpose of replacing the animalistic form she had chosen to undertake. Despite this scientific impossibility, this bitch had managed to outrun my full sprint from a prone position while on all fours. She was now less than a foot from my face with a long iron claw about to reach me. For a microsecond, my brain proposed that this was not a human being but instead a tiger which had simply evolved to appear like its prey so that it could more easily hunt. For the purposes of my fate, whether she was a human or tiger was irrelevant to the physical fact of the sharped blade aiming at me.
Right as the bitch was about to make contact, she was suddenly pulled back. Sofia had managed to grab onto her leg and pull her back before she got too close. I saw as her widened pupils narrowed at the realization. She was no longer gonna land her attack cleanly. I never stopped running and with her losing ground she was frozen as I escaped her range. She brought her claw down hoping to do as much as possible before I could leave. I felt it move right past my eye and land on my right cheek. It was not a deep cut and at the moment I was not aware that she had even cut me. I only could thank my luck and Sofia for protecting me.
She landed on the ground and turned around to strike at Sofia. She still held her leg though and managed to force the bitch into an ineffective game of continuously reaching as Sofia forced her away from the fence and me. I finally reached the gate and was able to force myself over. Any previous struggles with fencehopping were suddenly no longer an issue as it became a matter of life and death to scale quickly. I landed on the other side and quickly dashed towards the parked bike and the neutralized car.