Page 23 of Taken to Kor
5
Deena
“Deena, where are you? What are you doing?”
Run-crawling. That’s what I’m calling it anyway. Because there’s a pounding in the tunnel behind me that sounds like I’m being chased by a bomb with feet. It’s neither timed nor predictable, rattling with an unsyncopated beat that could loosely be classified asjarring. Another word would besoul-killing.
For reasons passing understanding, I start to scream. Well, I do understand the reasons. They resemble frustration and rage and just…irritation! How did I survive rotations of Mathilda only to end up on a ship of creatures that want to eat me? Do the gods that run this universe really hate me that much?
Problem with screaming at your enemy is when the enemy starts to scream back.
“Blaaaaaaahhhhh!”
And he’s close.
Way fucking closer than I thought he was.
And where am I? I’m making progress, but I’m not sure it’s the kind of progress I want to be making because I’m nearing another grate and this one looks like it leads out of the ducts and into a corridor full of beings waging war against one another.
Feet are pounding, bodies are falling, carpets are shrieking, orders are being shouted in Meero. It should give me confidence to hear Meero, but it doesn’t. It won’t until I’m sure that they’re winning. And I can’t exactly help the cause when all I’ve got to defend myself with is a metal stick with a jagged end that I snapped off from the tunnel grate that led me here.
“Deena!” The voice comes through my token, but a screech incinerates my response along with whatever reservation I carried about entering the war through the grate. Because that scream is even closer than it was before. In the narrow space, I crane my head around, bending it so hard and far I feel like my neck’s about to break. I let out a wild shriek as I see the lunatic rug that’s been chasing me just a body’s length away from my toes.
“You stupid goddamn carpet!” I bellow, energy sweeping my entire skeleton that makes me feel like I’m caught in the vortex of a tornado.
Rage.
Panic.
Fear.
These all fall. What rises up in their place is the lunatic that I am deep down inside.
Only this time, I don’t fear that lunatic. I own her.
The thing screams and starts to claw its way forward, jagged claws sinking deep into the green gunk as it uses the calcified shell surrounding us to drag its way towards me at an impossibly fast rate.
I turn awkwardly around in the impossibly small space until I’m facing it. As I move, blood comes off on my hands and face, smearing the groove-covered tunnel around me.Grooves made by nails. Not claws, fingernails.It’s alarming, knowing that a little of the blood may be mine — okay, alotof the blood — but it also makes me strangely proud.
“I’m proud of you.”That’s what he said and maybe I’m a sucker, but he sounded like he meant it. Nobody’s ever been proud of me before. And why was he proud? He’d been proud of me before for fighting. For surviving. And I’m not going to let him down now.
I amnotgoing to fucking die here.
The hysterics choking me solidify into a solid mass that’s impossible to cry through. I can feel it in my arms as I wriggle my way backwards, farther and farther until my feet finally hit the grate. I kick. The thing screams and dives.
I lift the metal staff in my hand and release a battle cry so loud it makes my entire body levitate, “I’M NOT GOING TO FUCKING DIE HERE!”
The screamed reply makes me buck and torches my eardrums, but my arms are steady. No, fuck that shit. My arms aren’t steady but what’s steady is my will and tenuous dose of pride.
I kick the grate behind me at the same time that the carpet creature opens its ugly mouth and I stab. I shove my makeshift spear forward as hard as I can. My arms are shaking and I nearly poke out my own eye when I draw it back.
Speaking of eyes, I manage to hit it in the eye — where its eye should be. It looks nonplussed by my efforts. Rhork is somewhere in my head shouting my name, but he’s gonna have to hold on a hot, shitty second as I bring my arms back and stab it in the other non-eye.
I scream the entire time. “You are a fucking ass hole carpet!”
And, “Carpets are for walking on!”
And, “Carpet rhymes with fuck you!”
