Hybrid

Chapter 7 : Loosing Control

The fog releases you in Midwich Elementary school's garden. The pain vanished but you keep feeling an odd discomfort that you can't explain with words. Your whole body doesn't feel the same, as if it wasn't yours.

You make a first step, then another, and another... Finally getting the rhythm and walk into the building, searching for a friend.

After a bit, you cross Yoichi's path. As you approach, the young man shows a terrified look and runs in the opposite direction.

You begin to run after him, wanting explanations for his behavior. But the more you run, the more you feel the urge...

The urge to hunt him down, to make him bleed, to gaze over his agony.

What are those thoughts? This isn't you, you would never think such terrible things.
And yet, you're craving for it. You want to hurt him badly. You can't think straight anymore, it's like being possessed. Sharing your body with someone harboring horrible desires and gruesome needs. And this person, this 'thing', is gaining control over you.

You can't do anything anymore, and can hardly think for yourself. You're becoming the spectator of your own acts.

You watch your body, animated by something evil, running after your Japanese friend before pouncing on his back. You bite his neck. Not to feed on him, but to inject something. You feel a thick and viscous liquid flowing through a canal inside your fangs. It feels so odd and yet satisfying.

The poor man wails and limps heavily after you release him. You are not following him... yet.
You hear a generator above you and want to pay a visit to your upstairs neighbors. 

What's happening next doesn't make sense to you. You feel 'that thing' in your back, stretching up and now you're glued to the ceiling, facing the ground.
You proceed to... Walk? Crawl? Slide? Whatever you're doing, you're moving on the roof floor by your spine.

You reach promptly that generator and find Dwight and Laurie working on it.
Why are they not flying away? Can't they hear you?

You let yourself fall on the blondie, pinning her to the ground and clawing her back severely. While the pizza boy cowardly runs away, you pick her up with your three hands.

Three?

As you're recalling the assault on Laurie, you perceive two hands maintaining her on the floor and four other hands damaging her flesh.
And you saw them all as you put her on a hook, confirming the count of six arms and two legs. A total of eight limbs.

Once the word 'spider' echoes in your mind, you notice that the whole ceiling of the school is coated with a thick layer of a web that creeps down in the corners.
You can't observe your surrounding more as you hear Yoichi's screams afar, which provoke a jolt in your corps and you move forward until you find him.

The unfortunate boy is lying on the ground, trembling feverishly and desperately trying to get up on his legs. However, it seems that he is numbed and all his efforts are in vain.
You try to catch every little detail in this scene to understand better what happened exactly.
You suppose the poison you injected him earlier has a kind of paralyzing effect since that is the most logical way to explain his state. Something shiny grabs your attention on your left, where Yoichi's looking. The web conjoints in this specific corner in a weird shape cluster. After some examination, you rapidly understand that the cluster is a rotten body, wrapped and twisted in a dense coat of threads. The body is wide open in its chest, showing a large amount of black-greenish sludge. In the middle of that gooey mess, stands a glossy yellow gland that is the size of a kidney.

You hurry to cover it back with more web, before grabbing the poor survivor who didn't make it to the antidote in time.

After you put Yoichi on a hook, the rest of the trial doesn't show anything new. Biting, crawling on the ceiling, catching survivors off guard, or after they succumb to your poison. You kept track of every hook and generator done. So far, you're winning. Or at least, the thing possessing you is winning. Yoichi and Dwight are dead, Nancy is almost struggling on her hook and you are chasing Laurie in the library. She might survive since she is at one of the best loop areas with two palettes upstairs and two, easily accessible, downstairs.

She is making a good job at countering you with all the technics she learned from you. But whatever possesses you, it knows your secrets and learns fast and it becomes tougher to dodge you, especially when you try to use the web above you to ignore the loop and pounce at her.

Finally, Nancy is harvested by the entity and both Laurie and you hear the hatch opening underneath the staircase. Last chance, Laurie grabs this opportunity to slam the palette on your skull and rush for the exit. Unfortunately for her, jumping down the floor made her slower and you rapidly catch up on her.

You strike one last hit and get her down before she reaches the chiming pit and closes it under her nose.

You think it's over. Laurie will be hooked and sacrificed and that's it.

How wrong you are.

You wrap the woman in your web. Just enough for her to see what's happening without being able to move. Then, you get horrified when  your torso opens in half, from your chin to your pubis, showing a gigantic mouth ringed by sharp teeth and glowing from orange to a bright yellow at the core. From the center of the mouth break out several spider legs, that look the same as the entity's claws, catching the final girl and dragging her to her final breath.

Your astonishment is so strong that you don't see the fog enveloping you out of here.

You get teleported back to where you were, near the killer's campfire, out of the trees cover.
They promptly surround you again, most of them curious, others fearful and few show respect and admiration. Nobody try to talk with you yet, as they are not sure if you can talk or not.

It's when Herman, known as the Doctor, touches one of your extra limbs that you panic and run back into the forest.

You want to see your friends. Feel the warmth of the campfire and their smiles.

You feel the adrenaline rushes in your veins. The forest dizzyness has no more effect on you.

You want to apologize for killing four of your mates. It wasn't you. It wasn't you!

The thing that was in your back just fall off. Your pointy teeth are falling to give space to your regular ones.

You know who is the new killer. You know it too well. You wish you didn't know.

The four additional arms rot rapidly and turn into dust.

You're so scared. Of what you've become. Even more of what the others will think.

Your whole body shrinks back to its normal size. It should be as painful as the extension but the adrenaline gets the pain away.

You see the campfire. You are almost there. Did you run very fast, or is the time and space that much broken? How could you be there yet?

Your skin is gaining more life and you soon get your natural skin color back to normal.

You don't care about metaphysic questions. You just want comfort.

You burst out of the forest for everyone to see you sweating and crying in panic.

Nobody is questioning your absence for now as everyone tries to cheer you up. It's good to be back home.