Greg Goble: The Collected Works

Prologue
To Escape A Killer
Fear Attracts All
Fear,
Eyes roll back,
Paranoia sets in,
Time stops.

A species yet unnamed,
Crawls through the abyss,
In the spaces that were once the rational mind,
No place to run,
Save for the far reaches of your mind’s wall.

The barrier is set,
Your goals fade,
As the sun in the far West,
A proverbial shadow that might have been.

Fight as you may,
Its all the same to him,
He likes it that way,
The thrill of the hunt and the shrill cry of a tortured soul.

Mind pacing, Setting foot on forbidden soil,
The battle is won.

There you lay,
In a pool of blood and mental carnage where you realize,
Your time is done but not by any reason other than insanity,
Nothing is real in these realms.














To Escape A Killer

The moon shone brightly on that leery night. Out in the open air a man crawled in thick, pasty mud. He could not run, the pain in his leg seared and burned him until he wanted to scream. He dug in with his last reserve of strength making every effort to move quickly as his legs sank into the thick mud. The mud slowed him for several reasons. Not only did the mud and grime crawl all over his body and dig between his toes; but it was also beginning to mix with his blood and deteriorate his body from the inside out. His legs were barely functional anymore and the memories of what had happened flashed through his mind.
His sanity had burst this morning. He had had strange things running through his head. Pictures, colors, just anything at random. Then he got out of bed in a fit of rage and insanity, jumped up and twisted until his head hit the floor. He picked himself up, dusted himself off, and began to walk to the opposite side of the room. There he lashed out at the wall with inhuman furry. Each time his hands hit the wall he watched as each feature became defaced and cracked, as his hands and knuckles crumbled, shrank, and bled. Each hit caused bones to crack and knuckles to ache. Each blow brought him closer to new thresholds of pain, and then, for no apparent reason, he stopped. It was not to save his hands, but to chew on them. He used his teeth to tear away his own broken flesh and to feast upon his own blood. It was only when his knuckles were gnawed to the bone that the pain refused to let him continue. He watched the chewed flesh as it fell from his mouth to the floor. And then the floor changed. The trees and shrubs replaced what had once been walls, shelves, and a bed. Then he saw The Killer coming for him.
The Killer was a creature that he recognized the instant he saw it. It had a round slick head that was designed to cut through deadly foliage. The head gleamed a faint blue that accented that glare of its monstrous eyes. The eyes of the great beast were a sight of wonder for all that had beheld them. To look into those eyes was to become completely transfixed and captured by them. And as the victim watched those paralyzing eyes, The Killer would go to his sickening work. It would paralyze its victim with eyes that could almost freeze time. They sparkled with whites that, instead of being white, were an ever so light yellow which brought out his penetrating fury and the paralyzing stare of the eyes. They were the darkest of blues, shrouding pupils that dilated vertically unlike the rounding of human eyes. To look past the creature’s eyes was to see its raging soul and the monstrous teeth which made this creature The Killer. They were jagged, crooked, and had no set pattern as to how they were laid out. Each tooth seemed to drip with the unmoving blood and flesh of victims past.
The creature came after him. He tried to run but for every step that he took the creature would take three. As he attempted to lengthen his strides he turned to see where the monster was. As he turned the eyes caught him. His mind, however, was too crazy to be paralyzed, he lunged toward the creature, the pain of his broken and shattered knuckles were forgotten and lost in a pool of adrenaline. His screams were not heard or heeded yet he screamed at this creature and lunged with all his might. The sudden out- lash surprised The Killer, which stopped its assault on him and stood, as its intended victim made a foolhardy attempt to attack it. It reached out with one enormous paw and hoisted him level with its eyes. There was no remorse or pity in this beast, just pure hate. His eyes laughed and pierced every man’s heart. The eyes stared, cold and unrelaxing, with and unevenness that expressed only the nature of this creature’s name; The Killer. Then with a ripple of muscle and a twist of the wrist, the arm that held him in mid-air had suddenly hurtled him far away. After landing he felt his face with what little was left of the bone and muscle of his fingers. His nose seemed about three feet out of place. His legs were shredded from the fall. These, plus a broken forearm and losing most of his teeth, were the only injuries he had sustained during the attack.
Now The Killer has found him again. This time he cannot lash out, his weariness tugs at every muscle and the searing pain of each broken bone becomes accentuated as the creature picks him up once again. Now his breath becomes short and shallow and each rib is crushed in the powerful clench of The Killer. Here, he reads in its eyes what it wants, not food or blood but his death; plain and simple. He hears another bone crack and his body goes limp with the pain and exhaustion of pure and immense fear. The monster, now done with him, throws him away. He will die slowly, with intense pain, that is what The Killer wanted. He is hurled aside only to hit his bedroom wall, where he lies down to die.