Darkman took a long sip of coffee. He hated drinking coffee late in the day, but with this job he didn’t have much choice. The security cameras switched scenes in a completely unsynchronized fashion. For some reason, that had always bugged Darkman. Little things like that pissed him off. Like staircases with uneven amounts of steps. He HATED those. All the little things like that added up: the unsynchronized screens, the uneven steps, the elevator that was never properly aligned with the floor. He hated his job at the Museum.
Darkman’s eyes roved from screen to screen. As usual, absolutely nothing interesting going on. A curator warned a child to keep back from the Egypt exhibits. A young couple made out behind the building where they thought no one could see them. An elderly man slowly made his way across the hall with his walker. Every time the scene switched back to him, he was only about 2 feet further. The security cameras did provide that amusement, at least. Viewing people’s lives. They were unknowing actors. This job also made him hate security cameras. He couldn’t go to Wal-Mart’s anymore.
Inevitably, Darkman’s eyes shifted to the WWII exhibit. He chuckled at the way teenage boys were constantly, subconsciously gathering around the guns on display. A bunch of the guns weren’t even authentic. Hell, they had just bought the M1 Garand on display a few weeks ago. Darkman stared into the screens, bathed in blue light that filled the small security office. And, almost suddenly, the coffee dropped to the floor and Darkman fell asleep.
OOC: Most of this was finished at the same time, but I've broken it up to make it look less dense...
A few hours later, his head jerked violently back up.
Aw, shit. Boss is gonna kill me! Someone’s gotta have realized my shifts over by now. Darkman thought as he checked his watch. He looked up at the screens. This wasn’t the first time time had slowed down for him. But it had never felt like this. His stomach seemed to drop into a pit. His eyes focused on one little detail on the main hall camera as it flicked on. A walker, lying in a pool of blood.
Oh. Oh God.
Darkman slowly got up from his seat. Time began to return to normal. On every screen, the rooms were covered with blood. Mutilated bodies were strewn across the room. And then, something moved. Slowly, it the side of the camera. The scene changed. Darkman stood still, staring intently on the screen. The image came back. It was a corpse, it couldn’t possibly be alive. It had died of a missing throat. But here it was, walking across the screen. It was a curator. Moving no faster than the man on the walker, shuffling slowly across the screen.
I gotta get outa here. I gotta run. They’ll kill me. I know they will.
Darkman bashed open the door and jumped out with a ferocious yell swinging his fist…the shout echoed down the empty hallways. Nothing was there but some shredded bodies. A weapon. I have to get a weapon. There are lots of weapons here. The WWII exhibit. The Garand’s new. We were cheating people. We shouldn’t have done that. They’re all dead now anyways. Who cares. Darkman walked with perfect, even steps down the hall. He felt nothing.
His hand reached out and pushed open the door to the exhibit. It was dark in there. Darkman didn’t want to go in there. He stood for a second expressionless. Silently, he drifted forwards into the darkness. And suddenly, he felt something. A feeling he was familiar with. A slight, bitter laugh escaped his lips. What the joke was had nothing to do with his laugh, it was always bitter. Darkness, Darkman. Oh, what irony.
He strode confidently through the exhibit. There’s nothing else here. They’ve all left. The thing on the screen was probably one of a kind. It must have killed them all. He stopped for a second and looked into a display case. He knew the trench knife in here never saw service. It was combat worthy, and undamaged. He punched through the display case. The sound of the alarm caught him off guard. Somehow, in his mind he had assumed it would remain silent, him being a security guard. He took a few deep breaths. His heart was pounding. And then, something stirred. It was moving quickly. Darkman’s face took on an expression of panicked concern. He tried to listen to where the sprinting footsteps were coming from, but the exhibit was dark and the alarm was going and – something smashed into him with incredible force.
He was thrown backwards onto the ground. Glass shards cut his back. Above him, he saw a gaping maw, coming down to consume his, to destroy him, and this was it. Was this to be his end? He had lost contact with his body. He supposed that it felt pain, but he had no wish to associate with it anymore…and then his body did something unexpected. It killed the bastard. The spike was driven through its skull. Something warm and sticky soaked Darkman’s jacket. A chunk of grayish slipped from the punctured head and stuck in the blood. Darkman softly laid back his head and sobbed.
Okay, it didn't feel like letting me break it up.
Edited by Darkskul, 11 January 2007 - 03:34 AM.
