Noir

Chapter Six – Waiting for Godzilla

Waiting for Godzilla

The lobsters eyes fixed me, as time and space melted about us, the darkened room dissolved to reveal the hell underneath.

“Use Claude’s magic flippers,” the phantasm implored as I clasped at my ears, trying to block the demonic shrieks that pierced my waking nightmare. “It is like a game, non?”
The bitter irony coursed its way down my throat, choking as my body convulsed yet again.

I found myself underwater, gasping for air. As the demon-figure muttered on in his alien dialect, I tried to raise myself to the surface and failed, instead falling onto my hands. My hands…
My hands had become flippers. I tried to scream but could not, and instead the lobster continued to converse at length with a ghostly fish. And all about them, Peggle. I wanted to cry, to force tears from my dry, aching eyes.

As I looked back up, the lobster seemed to tower above me. Around him, Peggle, a shield and a weapon, striking at the heart of the city, entering its bloodstream and rendering its defences helpless. People fled and I wanted to join them, but could not. I had become the demon I feared the most.

Flailing, I grasped at the nearest solid object, but my cumbersome claws slipped, and I fell back, staring into the face of the apparition.

What do you want? I cried wordlessly, my mouth failing me. As if by way of answer it attacked, giant, dripping jaws tearing at my carapace. In panic, I flung my arms in front of me, flinching from the unending torment.

Then, as if upon the wings of an angel, a light crept into the room. Gradually, the torment abated, as the light filled the room, bringing clarity to the world through my stinging eyes. Without a sound, the demon turned, and slipped beneath the waves of my turbulent subconscious, leaving only calm as the sun rose to drive the cold, screaming night away.

I do not know how long I lay there, but it was fully day by the time the door creaked open, and a silhouette reached for the light-switch before noticing me on the floor, cowering and dishevelled.

“Oh, you poor thing,” it said. “You look like hell. Let me have a look at you.”
As it happened, the nightmare had only just begun.