Frames Per Second. Part 4.

“It’s how fast?” Jenny asked, a skeptical tone in her voice.

“I uh, I don’t know, really fast,” David said, “I’m not very good at explaining things like cameras, and to be honest, I wasn’t really listening when Gavin tried to explain it to me. You know how he is.”

Jenny nodded as she turned the SUV onto the next road, “Yeah, I do. I think I’ve forgotten more about photography than I ever knew in the first place.”

David cracked a smile and glanced back at Gavin, who was passed out in the back seat. “Well, he found something, and we think, well we know things are about to get bad.”

The sun was shining, people were jogging, or walking their dogs. It was a typical Friday morning in an otherwise normal college town. David couldn’t shake the feeling though, that just past the fringes of his vision, they lurked, waiting for him to put his guard down.

“He found something?” Jenny asked incredulously, “Something so bad that you stopped me from going to work, and dragged me out of the house in such a hurry?”

“Yeah, that bad.” David said and cocked his head towards Gavin in the back, “Its why he’s barely spoke to anyone. Hasn’t been able to sleep for four days straight. Plus, he about cracked me with a keyboard...” He motioned towards the windshield, “It’s your next left.”

David leaned back into the faux leather of his seat and covered his eyes with his hands. It had only been a few days since Gavin had made his discovery, and already he was drained. He felt heavy and weak, from lack of sleep and too much caffeine, not to mention the horror he felt as the distorted things pried themselves into the forefront of his mind. He could watch horror movies no problems, and had seen plenty of creatures who looked as horrifying as the ones that they saw in Gavin’s computer. There was something different about them though, they were just… wrong, in every sense of the word. They just didn’t belong, and on a primitive level, David felt that.

“Look,” David said as he forced himself to relax, “Once we get to my apartment, we’ll show you the pictures we have. We’re serious Jenny, we really think these things are-“

Instantly, David felt all the air from his lungs escape as the seatbelt dug into his chest and he was pulled to one side. Jenny gasped as she slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel, the SUV squealing on the dark asphalt, before coming to a grinding stop as the left bumper dug into the side of a parked car.

Gavin had slid off the seat and landed with a thump in a pile on the floorboards, he groaned softly, more the result of the rude awakening than being hurt.

Wheezing and trying to regain his lost breath, David looked up towards Jenny, who was wide eyed, and white knuckled as she clutched the wheel.

“Wha-, what is that?” She breathed out, her hands never leaving the wheel.

He panned his vision to where she was looking. Standing in the center of the street was Gavin. The unmistakable mess of dirty blonde hair atop its twisted face, the same red hoodie, emblazoned with the Faultech University logo.

The figure was slightly insubstantial, as if it were not wholly there, like a beam of sunlight passing through a dusty room. It’s head turned in jumpy spurts, as it fixed its jagged, wet eye holes in their direction.

“Back up! Back up!” David shouted, looking out across the hood and at the vehicle they had just crunched into. Jenny complied, throwing the SUV into reverse and hitting the gas. The SUV made a grinding noise, separating from the car, but still audibly damaged. They backed up in a tight arc, the back bumper smashing into another car on the same side of the street.

David pounded on the dashboard, “Shit, hold on!” He yelled out and threw his open his door. The SUV was suddenly flooded with a high pitched static noise as the door opened. It sounded like a mix of TV static, interspersed with whirrs and clicks. David tried to ignore it as he ran around the side of the SUV, where the fender had bent up under itself, locking the wheel in place.

He leaned back and stomped down on the piece of bent metal; it barely budged. Jenny screamed, and David looked up. The thing was moving, its arms were spread wide, edges blurry, as if it were slowly evaporating. It didn’t move like David expected, the staccato like jumps of its turning neck. It glided, legs stiff and unmoving, as it slid across the asphalt in their direction, aiming right towards David.

David swore, and held onto the hood of the SUV to give himself support and stomped again and again on the twisted metal of the fender with the heel of his shoe. It finally gave, and he pried it with his fingers, away from the tire.

The thing was just about to the hood of the SUV, the static growing louder and higher pitch in his ears. He turned, and threw himself in through the back passenger door, which Gavin had pushed open for him. “Go!” He yelled out, even though Jenny was already accelerating and swerving around the monster. It reached out, gnarled fingers passing through the side of the door and into the SUV, just missing Jenny’s face by inches. David pushed with his legs against the door, shoving himself and Gavin to the opposite side. The thing’s arms made it up to the elbow before the SUV drove past.

David watched as they passed, pulling his legs in close to his chest, and watched as the monster maintained its empty gaze with him through the windows. Dark fluid running in streams down its twisted and craggy face. Its head turning in sharp, quick jumps, and its normally screaming, wide mouth turning into a sharp, toothy gash.

“What was that?” Jenny yelled out demanding an answer, visibly shaking in the front seat, after they had driven a few minutes.

“Uh,” David mumbled, “those are the ‘things’ we were talking about.”

She spared an angry glance in the rear view mirror, “You could have mentioned there was a demented version of my husband running around the city.”

“We didn’t exactly have much time to get you up to speed on the situation.” He said, as he pulled himself away from Gavin. “Nobody else knows about them, and the people who Gavin did show, just brushed it off as a joke.”

“That’s all going to change now,” Gavin grunted, “Somehow, they’re starting to show up in our world, and it’s not taking them very long to figure out how.”

David turned and looked intently at the window, staring at where the creature’s arm had pushed, or somehow phased through the window.

They all sat in silence for a few minutes, until Gavin tensed up.

“I think we need to stay away from places they know about,” Gavin said gravely, leaning forward over the front seats and pointing out the windshield. They were driving past David’s apartment, and there was a figure standing on his front porch. As they approached the house, it was obvious that it was another one of the monsters. It stood, dressed in a no-frills business suit, arms spread out wide, palms up and followed their movement past with the same jerky head motion as before. Its mouth open wide in a sickening silent scream, lips pulled back tightly over its sharp, mangled teeth.

Jenny looked away as they drove past, silently wiping tears from her face.