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…And hell itself, will come to town.

BOFH666

2nd Level Red Feather
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
1,382
Points
0
Time stopped.

Literally.

Most people assume that time is a constant flow, rushing through the universe at a steady rate. They’re wrong.

Time is flexible, a fact most humans take advantage of at some point in their lives, albeit without consciously doing anything. You’ve probably experienced it yourself at some point, a feeling that time had passed far faster than it should have, or being able to do far more work than should have been possible in the time you had. Of course you’ve probably explained it away in your mind, most likely with the reason “I must have lost track of time”. This is a phrase that causes great amusement to people like myself, mainly because this is, more or less, exactly what happened even if you don’t realise it.

There are creatures on this planet that have evolved to live off and utilise every natural resource that is available, and time is no different. The creatures that fill this particular evolutionary niche however are like nothing in the normal world. Look back at human history and there is a remarkable propagation of certain ideas, certain theologies, all within a relatively small span of time. Most human religions have a version of hell, and there are certain sights, sounds, smells and sensations that touch something primal in the soul. All this is linked to these creatures, and their own limitations.

They exist outside of time as you think of it, almost as shadows of the human world, watching what is going on but being unable to touch the simplest object, not even themselves. Ghosts in all but name, they have never had the chance to truly develop a moral code as humans have, or to learn from their mistakes and revel in their accomplishments because they have experienced neither, with one exception. Once, for reasons that over a thousand years later we are still no closer to understanding, time stopped its flow and the human world mixed with theirs and became one. It lasted, in effect, for no time at all, and at the same time, for an eternity. We don’t know what they did but we do know it had an effect on the human race so profound it was written into our very essence, a warning, a memory for all who came after that this must not happen again.

Ever since there have been a few of us born every century, human in most aspects but with something else mixed in with our genetic code that allows us to exist as they do, to cross over into their world and, in effect, be scouts on the front line, a last chance for humanity if time were to fail again.

Through the years we have watched them, learning as much as we can while remaining hidden from their gaze. But recently, something has started to change. The first incident was barely a hundred years ago, 1901, when one of them was, born isn’t the right word, created with the same ability as we have, but reversed. It could become solid, interact with the world as humans do. Since then, there have been a dozen or more incidents of the same thing happening, each different in its location, the circumstances and the results, except for one thing.

Every single one of them has gone insane.

We believe it’s the overwhelming sensations that do it, the ability to touch and feel must be intense, and they lack the mental shields that humans build automatically to protect themselves from the realities of this world. In every case the creatures have slaughtered everyone they came into contact with, until people like us have hunted them down and stopped them.

We work in much the same way as any normal police team, each of us partnered with another, a defined area to work in and our own network of sources, information and the like. Most teams are mixed sex, mainly because there are some situations that respond better to a female touch, and vice versa. There’s also the hope, although this is never said publicly, that the members of that team will fall for each other and produce children. Inevitably these children have the same abilities as their parents, and as barbaric as it sounds, we need the recruits right now.

You see, about five years ago, everything changed. All over the planet time started to stop dead. We had no idea what could be causing it, we only knew that relatively small areas were ‘freezing’ and that it was too focused too targeted to be a random occurrence. I was working with a lady by the name of Elizabeth at the time, and we’d gotten quite close over the five years we’d been together. She was pretty, taller than me at six foot, and one of the fastest people with a pistol I’d ever seen. I was a good three inches shorter, but was far better at hand-to-hand than she was, and was a reasonable shot myself. We complemented each other well, and had worked together long enough to almost read each other’s minds in most circumstances.

When that first wave of ‘stoppages’ hit we were sent to investigate one at a local shopping centre. A stoppage is any area where time has ceased to flow, and it’s the strangest feeling you could imagine. Everything looks the same as it would normally, except the people, objects, everything are frozen in place. There’s no sound of course, although for some reason we can hear each other and the creatures during a stoppage. Most of us panic the first time we experience it, as the logical part of the mind realises there can also be no air to breathe. You get used to it quick enough; after all, logically time can’t stop in the first place can it?

Then you look at the people, and at their eyes, and you realise that while they’re completely immobile, and to all practical intents and purposes dead to the world, something in their minds is still ticking over, and is screaming to get out. Imagine waking up and finding that you’re standing on the ceiling, the sky a bright green and your feet and hands swapped. This is what it is like for those people trapped in a stoppage, but magnified many times over. The mind blocks it afterwards of course, but some part of them remembers every detail of it, and it doesn’t take much to inflict permanent mental damage.

We moved quietly through the centre, making sure to move around the frozen people, alert to any noise, anything out of the ordinary that might indicate something else was in here with us. We tend to think of these creatures as aliens, and really that’s just what they are, certainly they don’t look like anything you’ve ever seen before. The harsh neon lighting cast everything into sharp relief as we moved along the upper floor towards the central point of the mall. This particular mall had a large, circular area which contained a stage that various local businesses would rent for a time to showcase their wares to the shopping community. As we got nearer we could hear faint scratching sounds coming from the stage. We moved carefully out until we could see through the glass panels that acted as a safety barricade on the upper level down onto the stage.

It had been rented by a cloths store for the week, and there on stage were several racks of clothes, with 8 women acting as models. Six had been frozen as they walked, locked in mid-stride, all wearing short summer dresses that were designed to look great on fashion models and no one else. The other two has been in a small backstage section, which backed onto a solid wooden box that I assumed was acting as a changing room for the models. These two were wearing the latest in bikini bathing suits, and they’d attracted the attention of our quarry.

It was big, at least six five, covered in what looked like short, red fur. Vaguely human shaped, its arms were too long and thick to pass for Human in the street, and it had four of them rather than the usual two. Its legs were similar, thick and muscled, with hooves instead of feet. Each finger ended in a large talon, straight and pointed like an arrowhead. It was standing in front of one of the girls and running those vicious looking fingers over her body with a surprising delicacy and grace, staring into her eyes as if able to read her mind and obviously enjoying her mental reaction to what had to be an excruciatingly ticklish torment.

Suddenly it stopped and looked straight up, I still don’t know how it knew we were there, but we still had the drop on it. Both of us had our pistols out and pointed down, but it was already moving, ducking behind the frozen bystanders as it charged towards the edge of the stage. Damn it was fast, and Liz only managed to squeeze off one shot, nicking it in the shoulder but not doing much more than taking some fur off before it had disappeared underneath us. We dashed towards the escalator and had made it right to the edge when the creature burst over the balcony, a wall of red fury that knocked both of us down.

I realised afterwards that it had to have climbed up one of the supporting pillars below and jumped straight up and over the ledge, but at the time I thought it could fly. I ended up on my back about ten foot away to the thing’s right, Liz was about the same distance away to its left. We’d both dropped our guns and knew that even trying to dive for them was an open invitation to a broken neck. Liz made it back to her feet first and ran in, only to be kicked almost to the very edge of conciseness as the thing moved with impossible grace and speed to meet her. But I was barely a step behind and coming at it from the opposite direction. Even so it almost managed to turn in time, but not quite and I tackled the nightmare to the ground.

I had known this was risky just from looking at the beast, but its strength still caught me off guard. It got one hand on my chest and shoved me off, sending me flying back, my spine meeting the guardrail with enough force that I was seeing stars. I rolled to my right, avoiding a kick that shattered the glass and, with no time to affect it once the creatures own influence had pulled away, left the shards hanging there. I leapt up to the guardrail and jumped off towards it finally managed to land a solid blow, staggering the thing as my boot made contact with its head. I swept its legs out from under it and bounced back, I didn’t dare get within range of those arms again.

A second later it became a moot point, as the creature rolled back to its feet and moved towards Liz, who was still dazed on the floor and in no condition to defend herself. I ran forward, hoping to at least swing it away from my partner, keep it distracted long enough for her to recover and find her gun. I had just enough time to realise that this was a huge mistake before it swung round and picked me up easily, holding me high over its head with two of those massive arms as it walked almost casually towards the guardrail and the long fall to the stage below. In desperation I punched downwards but all I could hit was its shoulder, and the undamaged one at that. In response it reached up with it other arms, one hand closed around my bicep, the other on my shoulder and yanked. I screamed as I felt the shoulder separate, my right arm now quite useless as it hung limp at my side. Then the world turned upside down as it casually threw me into space.

Even though time was stopped, my own ability to move through it doomed me to a very long fall and massive damage if I hit the ground. My left arm somehow managed to grab hold of the edge of the upper level, and I dangled above the stage, able to support my own weight, but helpless to pull myself back up. I heard a muffled thud from above me, then the creature jumped off the ledge, landing perfectly in the centre of the stage, holding a now limp Liz in its arms.

It looked up at me, and then placed Liz carefully on the stage. I saw her eyes move and I realised that whatever it had done to her, it hadn’t killed her, or even knocked her out, just incapacitated her. It reached down and in one swift motion ripped away her uniform, exposing her skin to its touch. It reached down and started the same delicate probing we’d seen it use on the model earlier, except now it was torturing my partner, and apparently whatever had been done to her hadn’t removed her ability to speak, or to feel.

Liz’s mouth was locked open in a silent scream of laughter, which quickly broke down into hysterical squeals as the thing worked her body over from top to bottom. I was starting to find some leverage and inch-by-inch I managed to pull myself further and further up towards the ledge. Fixed in my mind was the image of Liz’s gun not five feet from the edge, if I could only reach it.

Below me Liz was in agony, and I could hear her begging me for help, each scream ripping at my soul as I put everything I had into one last effort. Finally I dropped back onto the ledge and crawled to the gun. Gathering it up I got my legs under me and staggered back to the ledge, holding the pistol in my left hand, keeping it rock solid as I stared down at the thing below me.

It had stopped its assault and was now standing upright, holding Liz in its arms like a baby, a baby which was in this case a very effective human shield. I didn’t dare fire until I had a clear shot, and it was moving about just enough to make sure I didn’t get it. Then, for the first time in my life I heard one of these things speak:

“This one is mine. Tell your people, we are coming for you, the world shall be ours again.” It was a voice from a nightmare so deep and dark it bypasses the mind and speaks to the heart, the bone and the soul. Death, decay, a rasping slithering voice that froze the blood in your veins, a voice born in hell. I didn’t dare wait any longer, and fired my one and only shot of the incident. Too late. The thing had simply disappeared, taking Liz with it, her eyes locked on mine, begging, pleading with me to help her, and right at the end I thought I saw a look of betrayal cross her face as she was taken away.

Five years. Five years since that day, and I still wake up every night screaming, Liz’s face staring at me from the dark, her body writhing under that things touch, praying for death to free her. Five years of seeing people I knew, people I called friends fall to these things. Five years of trying to turn back the tide, and seeing all those who tried fail. Some have been taken, but most are just killed.

And now, the ultimatum, the message that it was time for hell to be reborn. A simple message, written in blood on a wall of an otherwise normal train station in the middle of nowhere:

“God created the world for you in seven days, in seven days we will take it back”

That was a week ago, and now time has stopped once more, except this isn’t a local event. The entire world is frozen, and something is waking up. There are barely a handful of us left now, and only two of us have ever gone up against these things and lived. If they’re allowed back into this world, there will be no stopping them, humanity will be frozen here, now and forever, trapped in prisons of flesh, bone and blood, helpless before them.

I don’t know if we can stop them, but we’ll give them a hell of a fight. We’re standing on the cliff, hell in front of us, oblivion behind. Time to see if we can fly….
 
Oh oh, Very nice! Very nice! You're giving me inspiration!

I like that you have made such a clear and cleanly fashioned aura of the urgency. And the 1901 reference is a very nice touch as well. And the beast, I loved it, and it was perfect for the tickling.
 
Will there be a sequel of sorts. This is probably one of the best stories, not just tickling related, I've ever read.
 
Holy sh... umm, I mean, talk about a blast from the past. Almost five years before the first reply must be some sort of record surely?

As for a sequel.... i'm not sure. This obviously bombed big time when I first wrote it but some of the ideas I had from both this and possible follow ups are actually making it into a novel I'm trying to write at the minute. Uh, a non-dodgy novel I mean, something that can be published.

But we'll see I guess... flattery can get you a long way after all :D In the meantime thanks both, much much appreciated.
 
Holy sh... umm, I mean, talk about a blast from the past. Almost five years before the first reply must be some sort of record surely?

As for a sequel.... i'm not sure. This obviously bombed big time when I first wrote it but some of the ideas I had from both this and possible follow ups are actually making it into a novel I'm trying to write at the minute. Uh, a non-dodgy novel I mean, something that can be published.

But we'll see I guess... flattery can get you a long way after all :D In the meantime thanks both, much much appreciated.

You're quite welcome.
 
Man... If you are still around, this was riveting!

Excellent writing, period. I want more!

I have no idea how this bombed. I'd read a 100 plus pages of this!

:)
 
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