"The Claws of Time" pt 2 by Lemon Bloody Cola

The Beast In Me

Later in the day Kyle and Craig are sat in a café enjoying fish and chips when Kyle notices beneath the sleeve of Craig’s hoodie a number of laceration marks that stretch out like lines on a treasure map. But these cuts don’t not lead the way to untold riches, instead Kyle knows they have but one destination. The hollow hum of teenage desolation. Craig notices Kyle has clocked his cuts.
“Yeah I’m a cutter. So what? A lot of kids at my school do, some of them for fashion and to look emo but me I keep it to myself. It helps me get some release from the pain of being bullied and my Mum’s death. Most people can never understand what it’s like to not fit in.”

Kyle’s eyes fill up with kindness,
“Look I know what it’s like to not fit it at School. I loved my painting when I was your age but it wasn’t seen as something lads from my estate were meant to do, I go sick of getting battered so I jacked it in and joined a gang. Eventually I hardened, violence and crime came to be the most important things in my life. It’s a bad road and it’s one I walked until your Uncle saved me and showed me there’s more to life. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and stop myself ever stopping painting though..”

Kyle and Craig’s bonding is violated by a gang of hooded figures rushing into the Café and pouncing on them. One of the figures renders Craig unconscious with a nerve hold. Seeing his new young friend treated like this causes Kyle to lose control and he flies into a berserker rage, leveling one of their assailants with a headbutt square in the mouth that dislodges his two front teeth. The teeth hang in the air almost gracefully like a brutal anatomical ballet.

Kyle continues to throw expletives into the air while punching, kicking and butting the hooded figures like a man possessed. Kyle grabs one of the men and begins to pound his face with his fist in a relentless pivot motion, each swing seems to send the man’s face into a gruesome mush.
“Who ****ing sent you to attack us? You best ****ing tell me or you’ve breathed your last ****ing breath!” The man weakly begins to speak blood gushing out of his mouth with every strained syllable, ”hail the cult of the Reapers!” “What the **** is that?”“We follow the great winged ones, they visited the Earth in 1987 and we we will once again bring about their coming. To purify the earth with their mighty claws”
The man then fades into unconsciousness, Kyle surveys the broken bodies, furniture and terrified onlookers that scatter the café. He also sees Craig has awakened and seen his interrogation. “K-k-kyle you were like an animal!” Kyle beings to sob hopelessly “I haven’t lost it like that in years! It ISN’T ME IT ISN’T ME!”

Meanwhile, Jack and Ben have arrived at Skullmoor school to a most macabre sight. The playground is scattered with the corpses of students and teachers alike, in a pool of crimson and disembodied internal organs.Ben stoically quips in a sombre tone "reminiscent of Picasso's Guernica.""Yeah I knew Pablo, he was a bit of a lover man, but this isn't the time for joking we need too.."
Jack is broken off by a claw just missing Ben's head. The first of a swarm of hungry Reapers swooping down to attack the two men as if Hell had belched out it's foulest vitriol.

TO BE CONTINUED.