Sunkissed Innsmouth
Part twenty nine
Felecia got turned around in the muck with her back to the door of the shack. Another hand came into view and she used her knife to make it go away. A kick came from the right, no fair, the side she couldn’t see from. Her shoulder went numb and then another kick sent her arm landing limp against her chest before it slumped and landed in her lap. She started trying to push inside the shack but there were more kicks and more hands. Too many to take careful swipes at with her knife. She avoided some attempts, pulled out of the grasp of others, she kept digging her heels into the muck and pushing her soggy ass through the door of the shack while the doorway served the purpose of keeping many of the hands at bay, for a time.
The world was narrowing, growing darker, the one eye she could still see out of was turning from a hue of blood red to a foggy grey. She could feel her head dropping against her chest and she could still hear them shouting, jeering, calling for her to be calmed, made peaceful, put down. Someone stepped through the doorway and she slashed at their knees. A cry of dismay and pain filled her ears and someone she didn’t know landed on the muddy ground in front of her. The man’s fishy face was distorted in anguish, he was holding his hands over twin gushing wounds drawn across his knees.
Soon enough that man was replaced as he was pulled away and back into the angry mob. Someone else tried to come through, feigning to the right in hopes that Felecia would over extend but she kept her composure and ignored the tactic. Another man tried to come at her feet first, kicking at her wildly, until she drew her knife across the top of one sandaled foot. Someone else upped the game by driving the handle end of a shovel or a broom into Felecia’s chest. The initial blow nearly toppled her but she was quick to avoid the next jab, giving up some of her space in the shack doorway.
A familiar voice filled the air then, Phillip was bellowing. The command was obvious and deafening over the din of the crowd. “Back up! Back away or I will cut the lot of you down!”
That command got some of the surrounding voices quieted while still others answered it with threats of their own. Another familiar voice sounded out, much closer than Phillip’s. “Fuck that, and fuck this little bitch!”
Felecia coiled her left arm up and prepared to stab at the lout as he came at her again. She stabbed at the first thing that came into her limited view and realized someone was still trying to spear her with the dull end of a shovel or a broom. She slashed out at the stick and felt a hard blow land against the already ruined right side of her face. Her left arm went as limp as the right one and her head hit the floorboards of the shack dizzyingly.
There was no sound then, not of the crowd, or of Phillip howling his commands at the crowd. There was also nothing much to see, a foggy grey view of the warped, water damaged ceiling of a tar paper shack. There was no movement, no sound, nothing except that foggy grey ceiling until Felecia felt herself being pulled by the collar of her sweater. The lout was standing over the top of her, he was pulling her up and leering at her ruined face.
“This is for my balls, you stupid little bitch!”
The lout tightened up his bloody fist and drove it right into Felecia’s remaining good eye.
The foggy grey world went black and all Felecia could do was listen as the lout kept speaking, “And this is for my fucking hand!”
Felecia’s head hit the floor of the shack and there was little else after that. Another punch, some more words, another punch after that as the lout kept on talking but she couldn’t make the words out. Felecia could feel a magnificent weight land on top of her, she could feel his hands digging into the collar of her sweater, she could feel those rough hands reach around her throat and begin to cut off her air.
The strike was just as quick and blind as the kick she had landed into the louts crotch before. There was no thought, no planning ahead, just reaction to being threatened, to being hurt. Felecia swung her numb arm up and felt a sudden river of hot, sticky blood wash over her ruined face. Everything after that was only the wet, endless flood that threatened to drown her and the awful weight that fell upon her, cutting off her air completely and sending her spiraling into the unconsciousness that had been looking to claim her all along.