The world has different smells. I live in my head to run away from you all. And now he was forced to face reality. Head on, and in the form of a murderous titan.
It was still there. This titan fiend. It wanted him dead. And it was a violent thing, this creature.
The titan fiend shuffled in steps, its blue glare was directed at him. As if waiting for him to muster the courage. The courage to make the next move. Like a head start.
' I hate my life. But I'd hate dying more '. He felt like his emotions had reached a conclusion. He felt that conclusion. Scared of death so you run faster through your life, and since you're running there's just no time to enjoy it. Was it his fault? That he was a dying loser.
Regardless, self loathing wouldn't keep him alive nor the scurrying poor people below. If I'm fast enough to run away from death.
Then...I'll prove it here and now. Nothing mattered at that moment to Theodore than living. Or at least, dying noble. Noble and all alone.
Run
'Faster than you've ever run in your life'.
Theo took in a deep exhale, such that his ribs expanded like a sprawling. And they were visible through his pale sweating skin.
RUMBLE RUMBLE.
Did the titans mouth gape open like taunting yawn.
I feel no fear
And
I'll feel no fear.
The deep exhale came out slow. He could feel the salty sweat trailing down his cheeks to fall down his chin. Trickle, trickle till a drop. One of his bare foot shuffled forward, small sands grouped themselves in clusters–they laid in the spaces of his toes. Sweeping feet. One foot__in front of the other.
One foot.....
In front of the other.
He ran towards the broken balcony, towards the creature. What was he running to. A life he never loved. Forced to endure. And what was he running away from. A fiend. Death. An option his pride bade him to never consider.
Then he leaped
Wait wait. This is way too high. I can't fly, fuck. He knew he had to do it.
'I'm getting too old for this stuff'.
Theo stared down the broken balcony. There were panicked people and small fires everywhere. Pandemonium like he'd never seen before.
Some people were already dead, A lot of em. Burnt to molten flesh. And mercy on the poor souls who were burnt__but still alive.
He forced himself to stop looking. Where did it come from. Fiends don't just spawn randomly. At times they do, but only those who could teleport. This titan didn't seem like it could.
A resigning breath. Certainly not understanding how this was all possible was among the least of things to ponder upon. He raised his right leg over the balcony.
He left his other leg to hang, before maneuvering till he was sitting on the rail__keeping himself up with his arms.
He dared to look forward to it. Boy did this titan want to kill him. that blue flicker was growing brighter. But it just stayed there, walking side to side as if it was stopping itself from attacking. 'My head's start is only that long huh'.
At that moment Theodore looked down. Then back up. His own blue eyes met the titans. Those great impenetrable dark scales rose as if they themselves laid upon breathing muscles. It was static when their eyes met.
There was no hesitation. And there was no shred of fear for his own well being. Just stubbornness.
Theo forced himself to look back down. Closed his eyes, he let out a deep uneasy exhale. He raised his left hand up and so he only supported himself with one arm. A shaky arm, stiff and sick. While his left shot a middle finger at the fiend. But he wasn't smiling. Isn't that a dream.
' I lived ', opened his eyes, ' to finger a titan '. When his eyes had been satisfied with the sight of the titans bewildered ugly maul. They closed once more and his right hand grew weak.
He let go
He fell.
Letting his body plunge to the floor like a rag doll.
Not long enough in his plummet did the poor winds of Thunotun force his eyes open. He was naked and falling. How free you've become.
Theodore saw his own. His own decapitated head in pieces on a broken glass hanging on a broken beam.
So that's what I look like. When my face is destroyed.
His Luscious but ungroomed brown hair bellowed and howled.
This was by far the worst way to lose a hangover.
And when he looked back down, tears were forced out of his eyes by the aggressive wind. He saw the ground. Getting bigger. Coming at him.
He held on to his core and exerted all his muscles preparing for... 'The pain of falling 70 metres down would be nothing compared to what that thing did', He lies to himself. He was preparing for....
Impact.
His body thuds to the floor and breaks splashing blood and bone all around.
Ahhhahhhhhh Shiiit!
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK_ FUUUUCK!!"
He screamed again. A naked man screaming. It regenerated of course he tries holding in his screams. His crying only Intensified. For a few seconds he could feel a complete lack of breathing. Likely his lungs, being ruptured.
" Hhhh-hughhh ", gasping. And gasping with no air.
He grabbed his chest violently trying to force the pain away.
Theo raised himself up holding on to his back even though it has completely healed.
The pain from breaking your spine and lower legs doesn't go away no matter how hard you bite your hand Theo.
He walked slowly stumbling side to side, waiting for the pain to just go away. Crooked legs.
As he shuffled step after step, staggering right and left holding his mouth and bleeding from his eyes, many people were running and screaming for their lives.
Theodore looked up and the flaming melted pile of rubble that was his apartment building.
The black smoke turned the sky to a terrible gray colour.
Likely it's Archaic dominion, some sort of exploding punch,l enough to level a house in seconds.
He squeezed his stomach harder just as he laid eyes on all the dead who were now burning to ashes.
He couldn't take it anymore. His knees gave out from fear and Theo fell down hard on his shins. The concrete roads of Thunton scraped layers of skin. Violent wound. But again it healed.
He's just a regular sad guy, just a regular guy whose family threw him out and lives alone. Loneliness isn't something you get used to but at least it doesn't hurt this much.
No one stopped to see why a large slovenly man was wallowing in his own blood. They were either running for their lives, trying to find their children or sadly trying to find their parents.
Wine heads? They were just people.
Theo sat on the destroyed road watching the chaos as it came to him. He knew what he had to do. A plan that involved an unimaginable amount of pain. He might not even survive it
A lot of pain huh. That was something he was willing to take.
He got up and he ran____but not with the crowd. Away, as fast as he could. Away from the civilians. He was crazy to think about it.
Theo was faster and stronger than a regular human. He could not outrun a hypercar but he could still reach 160km per hour barefoot. But the lingering pain all around his body forbade him from reaching his top speed. So he could run only a mild 90km.
Like a bullet train. Stampeding against the stampede. A seditious sprint. He made sure to evade all obstacles. If not he'd trample on the people
He ran and he ran and he ra_
BOOM. The sound caused a repelling shockwave that shattered windows miles away.
So it seems, his headstart was over.
" I'm so sorry ", his voice shook on the verge of breaking.
He had to guess that the last punch took the lives of fifty people.
Another hit
And another fifty people. The hits were getting closer. It was looking for him. These things. These Fiends, they don't deserve to live. They don't deserve to fucking live.
" Boom ". The dust poisoned the air with the of the dead.
He heard another explosion. Louder than the two.
There was so much, just so much. In a second, two hundred people breathe their last.
BOOM.
The blows were landing nearer now, like footsteps of a vengeful giant hunting for him through the city's curved streets.
He staggered through Thunotun's warped shapes. They all blurred along some line of sight. Eventually he was just running blind. Blind and naked.
He veered into a narrow art-twisted alley. And it was by sheer smell, he came here.
When he could finally see again
' I see gray walls '.
What do they look like
___. ' What do they_
' their bending inward '. Shivers. Shivers. Shivers
' like they were eavesdropping '.
Baring witness to what was about to happen to you. You would have no saviour.
BOOM
The ground kicked beneath him. Screams folded into the smoke rolling over like a living shrou_
DOOM.
Another explosion.
Closer and oh did it split the morning.
A breath, then silence falling like soot. Ringing. Ringing. Silence. 'Ringing in my ears '.
He knew it would not take long for the vengeful giant to find him. He sat and held on to his head, closing his eyes and crying swinging forward and backwards clinging to his skin as hard as his nails could allow.
Tears dropped down his face. A plan where he simply sat and took it. No pain that he'd ever felt in his life could hold a candle to what was coming.
BOOM.
The coming silhouette in the sky. Small at first then getting bigger. Falling in speed from the apex of its leap. CRASH. The titan fiend landed.
Its distorted grunts made the air so heavy Theo could not get up. He could only sit there waiting for the monster to find him and keep beating him till everyone was evacuated.
A self sacrificing plan. A very painful one.
The creature sniffed the air and it was getting closer to its target. Theo could hear the massive footsteps as they came. Closer and closer. Beastly feet hitting the concrete. Impending. Impending.
It walked two steps past his field of view. Three. Four. I know you. Stopping and walking back. Four steps. Two. One. Now I see you.
The light that illuminated the alleyway...
In its place was the vengeful giant. The titan fiend. He saw it in all the horror. It'd found you were you hid.
Theo's eyes were infected by red veins that hit his blue iris__like the roots of an evil rose. The fiend hesitated. For just a second.
RAAAAA!
It is the pulsing growl. The REVERBERATION that shattered all windows.
The roar caused a shockwave that blew away everything within 20 metres including Theo, skin and bones. It's all gone.
The monster appeared instantly to his back. Theo didn't know what was happening. Why it moved so fast. But even while his skeleton was visible. While his skin was blasted away. He smiled.
Even if he died, what had his life ever amount to. His loss would be nothing compared to any of the people running and screaming. Any of the lives it took just to get to him.
Dying would be a small price to pay.
The fact that he wouldn't die and would only feel pain made this not a heroic sacrifice but a way to give value to his sad life. He died to give his life meaning.
That was how Theo saw it.
The first punch crushed him completely that he looked like a worm only with broken bones protruding out of it. He was about to scream but the second punch took off his head. Immobile and squelching. But his one hand moved up and curled another middle finger. Torn off to nothing but mesh by the third blow.
Then the flurry began.
The Titan was punching harder, faster than Theo could regenerate. There was enough blood around to drown a person.
The buildings around them were all rubble. Theo was in a state of consciousness and unconsciousness. Transcending from the present reality and the dark dream world.
He would take this beating till a hero came. Or
He would just take it. Just take it. At least like this no one has to die.
He couldn't even scream. Even if just a millimetre of his teeth formed, it would be destroyed again. So how could he form a mouth to express his pain.
Minutes passed and the Titan showed no sign of slowing down. It was punching Theo till he was a mixture of paste and fragments of bone then till he was just blood, just liquid With each punch the depression in the ground doubled in diameter. Forced to give way to the unrelenting force. The violent pounding.
It's fist drenched in Theo's blood, drenched in theo.
Now a whole valley of crumbled stone formed. Art destroyed to bring way for the only thing more ancient than human expression.....Wrath.
The bloody valley expanded with each blow. Formed In completion. And in the centre was a pool of red blood and the vengeful giant's sickening fists that caused it to splash. Everything was dyed in red.
After some more, everything went black for Theo. He was now away from the present and in the dark dream world.
He was asleep. None existent. If the creature stopped punching his being would form but slower. When he slept his regeneration was 50 percent slower. Or....nay. he might have already been dead
The dream world was how Theo lost consciousness. When he received more damage than his body could heal at a time.
When his body was in a lifeless state. Say he was disintegrated or made to a pool of blood then he entered a dream...'when I die'.
Usually he would see glimpses of the time he had spent with his family. Glimpses of his younger brother Baran.
Or he would see a fake world where he wasn't such a sad loser. Where they never disowned him.
But now the dream was different.
He was in a dark world. There are dark valleys and howling dark hills up in the sky.
It seemed like there was a whole new world upside down where the sky should be.
There was no sun only a monolithic glowing moon. Illuminating the ever night world. Wolves the size of mountains howled from the upside down seas. A sound that was the silence itself in this place of dark dreams.
Vast. The goliathine waterfall of blue sea connected the sky worlds to the terrain which Theo lay.
The mountains all-round were black and the ones in the sky land were covered in fog, or were they clouds.
Theo was on the grass plain. Laid on his back
Possessed by the awe of the spectacle.
Eyes. I see eyes. He saw eyes. Arrayed upon the mountain peaks of the upside down worlds.
Their faces, he could make them up so well. Each of them holding the other up. One of them grabbed a vine from the giant tree and leaped down a purple cliff towards him, swinging to and fro till the vine swung no more.
She swung back and forth and when the vine paused. She looked at Theo and extended her hands to him.
He thought he saw their faces, but hers? He couldn't see. Just a blurry picture. As if an artist used a water brush to fade her features away. So he couldn't make up her face. Only her hair was longer than the ever night world itself.
Like a god swinging through its domain.
Theo raised his hand to hers. Accepting her offer.
He knew what he wanted. A being, an angel, anything to take him away. People his age don't suffer this much. This was salvation. An end to it all
When they finally touched...,
Theo rose up from his sleep. He was in a cold sweat. He looked around. It was a hero hospital. He rubbed his eyes and rubbed his whole face. Felt like he was still being punched.
He touches his right shoulder and after a second the pain there was gone.
Hospital beds always suck.
He held on hard to his temples trying to get out of the stinging pain. The pain as memories of his dream were playing in his head. Much worse than a hangover.
When was the last time he had such a vivid dream. For a second the prospect of dying seemed hopeful. But, he sighed. 'I'm alive'.
He tried to stand up but ended up coughing blood. Wet sounds and gruff sounds.
His patient gown was white but the type that had small blue squares spread all around. Well now it has the blood of the unkillable on it.
His body was still regaining it's strength and trying to stand was a losing battle so he just let himself fall back down into the white hospital bed.
The room had all blue concrete walls but the ceiling was white. There was a cold AC that made him wish hospital blankets were longer. The cold caused his skin to turn rough.
He coughed again and bit his lip as his body repaired his internal organs.
Then Theo turned up his head to his right. There was a curtain there. Transparent enough that he could see a shadow of another patient but opaque enough that that was all He could tell. He didn't want to think about where he was, who the patient was, what happened to the titan fiend or how many people died. All he knew was that he was alive as always and he was tired, really really tired.
Too tired to acknowledge tragedy, yet too tired to deny it.
He looked at the table to see if any letters or flowers were sent.
Sure enough there were none.
He wouldn't expect any more than none.
He looked backed up and wiped his eyes. Then he let his head fall to the left and slowly closed his eyes. He held his bedcover hard and squinted his eyes harder making the tears trickle down his face and fall off his chin.
" I'm sure_.
He couldn't speak. He just gasped and shakily rested his eyes. Then He fell asleep.
( A dream within a dream )