Daryl and Gaines ran towards the track. Unlike the rest of the 001, the monsters had extra training. They were late. Daryl couldn’t even fathom what DS Foote would do to either of them. Gaines was literally going to be the death of him.
“How could you forget that we had extra training tonight?” asked Daryl as they ran towards the pull-up bars.
“Relax, Kerns,” said Gaines. “We were going to be punished anyway. We’re the enemy here.”
When I first met the priestess, I was just an aid in the Queen’s service… Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t know who or what I’m talking about, do you?
In the land of Musica, which is a place far from the land that you come from, music is everything. It IS. It is structure, chaos… every little thing in the world is music. Music is rhythm, emotion, it is everything in the land of Musica.
Those highly gifted in music are called artists. They travel the world performing and bring light into the world…
Daryl awoke on his stomach, his head facing the power plant. It looked better in the darkness. Encapsulated by the night made it look more peaceful, quiet; it looked more like a comforting place, away from people, away from the world.
Consciousness overcame him with pain and misery from his arms and stomach. The punch to the back of the head left him a little addled inside, but his fingers and wrist wailed the most. Moving them was difficult, and he could not lift himself up off the ground. Maybe it was best to just lie there for a minute… or eternity. What difference did it make? Soon he would be healed just in time to be broken again…
Then, like a power switch flicking on, a bright light beamed down on Daryl that filled him with dread. The hairs on his arms and legs stood on end and he felt a tiny surge through his body like every nerve ending jolting at once, pulsing electricity in bursts, pumping throughout until he finally turned over on his back.
His eyes gaped; if he hadn’t felt so wired he would probably have fainted from the shock and terror thumping in his mind. Hovering above him was something like a ghost, white, almost translucent, red glowing eyes, and a chattering set of insect mandibles.
Daryl’s body began to quiver and shake, but suddenly stopped as he heard a voice in his head.
Daryl huffed as he ran as fast as he could towards home, but he couldn’t help but be a little distracted by the buildings as he passed by. Point Pleasant, West Virginia, home of the Mothman and his… prophecies… and also the home of the annual Mothman Festival. Shop owners were busy hanging mothman streamers and flags. One owner had brought out a mothman statue made out of toothpicks.
‘Focus,’ thought Daryl, ‘Must get home before Kevin finds me.’
Daryl ran; he ran until his muscles felt like jelly, ready to fall off his aching bones. He was getting close. He was just outside of town, close to the abandoned power plant where the mothman was supposed to reside. Daryl stopped, looking left and right, he didn’t see any sign of Kevin. His head turned toward the power plant, its red brick, smoky from the years of disuse, windows broken and angry-looking with crooked teeth of glass and metal, boarded up doors, and lot of discarded materials littering the overgrown grass.
It looked so desolate and lonely…
‘Kapow!’
