Page 102 - Secondary School BEATS
P. 102

Shadows of Skull Drain










        It all began with a single body. Some                   The man was lying dead in a corner, his
        businessman working for Babel Corp. went                blood oozing onto the ground, and upon
        missing one night and turned up dead in                 him lay a creature more horrifying than one
        an alleyway a few days later. A few random              could ever imagine. With my own eyes I saw
        murders were a thing to be expected in a                an extremely tall, skeletal being, draped in
        city with such an active nightlife as Babylon,          gray skin, tearing the corpse apart with its
        but this one was different. When I found his            razor sharp serrated claws. Its eyes, no larger
        body, it was as pale as winter snow. All of his         than a walnut, innumerable in number,
        blood had been drained out, his tendons                 shone with a light that cut through the
        slashed with a serrated blade. Whoever the              darkness around it. I was certain that they
        perpetrator was, had clearly intended to                showed nothing but the being’s immense
        torture their victim.                                   hatred for all that is living. No weapon of
                                                                any kind could kill this beast.
        My detective’s intuition led me out into the            Within a second something changed within
        night to look for more clues myself. For a              me, as if some primordial fear had awoken
        fiend such as this, one victim would likely             itself. I began to run away, caring naught for
        not  be  enough.  For  five  nights,  I  loitered       the cover of shadows. The further I got, the
        around the darkness laden alleyways of the              more the dread set in. My body realized that
        city. For five nights, I saw nothing. On the            it had already seen me.
        6th night however, something happened. A
        drunk old man walked into an alley that led             - Anonymous
        to a dead end and never walked out. In
        suspicion,  I dove  after  him,  slipping from
        one shadow to another to avoid detection.
        Yet, what I saw made me regret this very
        choice.












                                                                                                                                    ARTWORK BY


                                                                                                                                    SHREYAS GHOSH


                                                                                                                                    (DP 1)





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