Biter

Ground comes at me now. Try to fall right, on all four held out. Again, long/not long in mid-air. Always I think the ground holds back, waiting for me, thinking ‘this time Biter this time I smash you good’ even it pulls back some like a fist. Then hit. Kicks my breath out through my teeth.

Dusty down here. Bit myself. Go black a second. Noises.

Up.

Up Biter. Up. Up.

Sword!

Kill it kill it dead man swinging for me with his face gone. Glass shell, dirty brown and sword black. Go down. Block. Forward. Push, fast! Push!

Hit dead man. Faster, more weight. Put shoulder into him and dead feet slid on dusty ground. He goes down, me on top. Dead mans shell has an eye. Eye with lines or sliced in parts. Dead man strong like dead and still has his sword, arm wide. Grab!

I get his arm. Put feet on his chest. Pull pull pull pull pull.

So get that off, new blade. Smash cut the neck bone, kick off the head. Bones and body and skull all going still. Trying to get back in a gang and kill. Look up. What’s where?

Wall of dead men fighting slow. Some shelled in glass with the sliced eye, wheel-spoke eye, right on their shell. Glass has a skin of dust now tattooed with marks of fingers, bone. Rest shelled in steel and on the shell a steel river locked in a knot.

Left. Three river-knots climb a head-high stone face to pull down the glass eye standing on the top.

Right. Looks like tides of steel and glass, storming, or like sea fighting wind. Not that way.

Back. Clot of tangled fighters. Spears and dust through each other and stuck like a puzzle. Grating. Can’t pull apart.

Ahead. More knights of glass, five now, slow-stepping through the dust to kill me never knowing what a thing I am, only live, and shaped like them but not, and here. Same reason as always.

Faces and stone bodies are the floor. Like a food pile, but stone. Quite giants or sleeping gods. Floor is arms and legs and limb-cracks. Eyes and mouths. Dust fills every gap. White dust. Flowing and hissing, the dark parts where shadows should be now white. The stone dark against the hissing dust, moving as it will.

Sniff.

Bone meal.

The fighting men ground down. One day they will all be dust and the dust will be at war in the spaces where the statues meet.

Sooner now. Smash these five in, thick plates that bend the sight of bones underneath.

Som? Can’t see her. Go!

One closer than the rest. Two steps fast. Block. Hilt in both hands. Step in and down onto arm holding blade. Smash. Done. Now more come. Step round and push one-hand-man into rest on left. Spin. Come at two on right.

Too slow. Glass blade at me now. Back. Back Biter back back back. Sword is curved like an old moon. Say goodbye arm Biter.

Hurts. I use my real voice. Born voice. Make ClanFamily sound to let them know I need help. Fills this dark. Loudest thing here for a long time. Maybe dead men screamed before they died or friends screamed seeing them get back up knowing now this place is forever for them.

No-one to hear. No ClanFamily down here.

Arm still on. Cut made bacon of me but thick bones on Biter. Man was trained to fight men, not me.

Up Biter. Fucking fuck. Five still. Two up and coming, three getting up. One with one hand. Fucking dead man weak meat fucks. You kill? You kill this? Dead meatless glass men no. No no no no no. Go Biter. Hit! Go!

Left arm dead. Jump! Hit man fast. Strike, bash blade down. Teeth in dead neck. We both go down. Grrrr hard now Biter. Bite! Crunch neck. Rip (tastes bad). Head off but his dead arms still going. Lift body. Grab, swing! I knock the other down. On him. On top. Punching his dead face. Again! Again again again!. Face breaks. Dead man teeth stuck in my hand skin now. Grab arm and bite! Rrrr snap. Sword arm is mine now.

Three left. Charge. Duck low. Forward fast. Put sword hard through on the gap where leg meets hip. Crunch it hard through the hip-bone. Leg! Got leg.

Next.