Feathers That Won't Fly

Chapter II A Tomb and A Bar

Haddix took up one of the gardening tools off the ground. He pierced the creature that had consumed his mother's body. In blinding fury, he maimed the arch-human. The rake entered its body several times until the creature was minced. After that, he stuck his hands in the creature's guts and bathed himself in it. The other's gagged, for their stomachs did not agree with their eyes.

"What are you--?" Azlyn started.

"Disguises! It doesn't work that well, but it will fool them for a while. If we mask ourselves in their scent, they will think we are evolved. I read it in the black book," Haddix replied before the question was finished. He held up the book as proof.

Azlyn followed Oliver's lead, smearing the slimy, dark blood over her face, hair, and sticking it on her clothes. It smelled like iron, similar to human blood, but with a hint of the pungent odor of an un-deodorized armpit. Regardless, it was necessary for survival. Oliver applied the sticky blood on Lilly, who cried in protest. Mr. Haddix gingerly covered himself.

The group walked in the direction of the city's closest elementary school, hoping to obtaining bikes for faster transportation. Every so often, an arch-human would snarl with a smile in their direction. None of them were the original furry creatures from the library. They had all changed into a human form.

The group tread heavier with each new step they took. The sidewalk equally reacted with their steps, pushing harder as their feet tread heavier. Azlyn held her breath every time she walked passed an arch-human, hoping that the smell wouldn't wear off.

When they approached the elementary school, Azlyn's knees turned in. Her face paled, her lips pursed, her brows knit, and her face grew beads of sweat. She dropped onto the hard asphalt of the school's basketball court. Her eyes closed as her soul left her body, entering another's.

Azlyn was in a female's body. The female's heart was racing, she was definitely human. Beside her was a man with black, thickly matted hair. He stood, poised, with a knife in his right hand. The two of them were standing in a graveyard. The man pointed at some steps leading down into a vast tomb, which was dedicated to some rich ancestor who supposedly deserved a nicer place of rest than any other dead person in the yard.

"There," he whispered. "There's an exit out on the other side that leads to the outside of the city."

"But Tom, what if there are monsters in there?" Azlyn's host body asked.

"There won't be any Lisa, I promise. They would be above ground looking for meals," Tom replied.

Lisa and Tom cautiously advanced down the marble steps. With every silent footstep, the smell worsened. The odor carried recurrent winds of the rotting smell of eggs and corpses. There was also the gagging odor that replicated the smell of the elephant house at a zoo that Azlyn had once visited with her real parents when she was nine. It didn't make sense. Why was the smell of corpses so strong when the tomb had been meant for one? Why did it smell so intensely of feces?

"What is that smell, Tom?" Lisa asked.

"It's a tomb Lisa, what'd you expect?" Tom said in an annoyed tone.

Lisa grabbed Tom's arm and shut her eyes away from the intricately tiled room. She dragged them both to the floor, their backs scraping against the old cement that was crudely stuck between the tiles. Lisa then resting her fatigue-ridden head on Tom's shoulder.

"How do you know about these things, Tom?"

"I hunted them," Tom replied stoically.

Azlyn's soul was excited. She immediately concluded that this man must be a perceptor. All she had to do was find him, and he could teach her how to control her visions!