Damsel in Distress by Michael Mulcahy

Damsel in Distress by Michael Mulcahy

Mark followed the woman from the cafe, something his therapist was sure to discourage at their next session. She had burst into the shop and scurried straight to the corner, away from the paneled windows. The movement had distracted him from his book, and once he looked up, he was unable to look away. 

She was a blonde bombshell, like the gorgeous women in the movies who were stalked throughout the city by a troubled man or monster who found themselves obsessed. When she caught his eye, for the slightest moment, panic was wiped from her face and she offered a small smile. By the time Mark was done melting, she was out of the cafe and hurrying across the city streets. 

Mark’s therapist would explain to him the dangers of delusions of grandeur, viewing movies as an unrealistic expectation of real life. He could hear the droning voice in his head, explaining the desperation of clinging to fantasies with strangers. Still, his therapist had been the one to encourage these “outdoor sessions,” so Mark chalked this up to following the process. 

The woman rambled throughout the city for what felt like hours, no discernible path that Mark could grasp. He occasionally dove into several packs of people to avoid being spotted as she continuously looked about. Mark’s surroundings grew less familiar as they traveled, buildings shrinking as he followed her through the city outskirts. He found his imagination getting away from him as they continued their journey. Perhaps she’d come to a stop, and he’d ask if she was ok, noting her distress. She’d say something about a stalker or a crazy ex-boyfriend, and yeah, she could use some help. They’d talk and he would bring back that smile, make her laugh and calm her down. They went back to his place, where she thanked him profusely in more ways than one. 

His therapist had warned him about the daydreams, how often they stripped away the world around him, offering something more comforting and yet altogether not real. They’d been working hard to dispel these notions, push him further and further into reality, and Mark already dreaded their next appointment where he’d be compelled to tell this story. His therapist would say they’ve taken a step back, how disappointing this all was to hear, and how they still had a long way to go before Mark could consider himself truly in recovery. 

The woman rounded the corner of a small brick building into an alleyway, and when Mark turned the corner after, he saw she had come to a stop. She was about ten feet in front of him, facing the opposite direction. Ahead of her, at the end of the small lane between two structures, were dark shadows, and red dots shone through the air before Mark lost sight of them as they focused on the woman. 

They were all wearing tactical gear, helmets and kevlar and other furnishings. Each one had a rifle of some kind trained on the woman, several pistols strapped to their belts, and another rifle slung over their shoulders. One of the men in jet black gear approached the woman with a hand raised. She gave no reaction to his advance. 

“Ms. Davos,” he spoke in a low, gruff voice. It was slightly muffled by the visor he chose not to raise. “Stop running. We have to bring you in. It’s not safe out here.” 

Mark took to a hiding spot, a large blue dumpster just to his left. He thought about fleeing the scene, forgetting about all of it, but his feet offered no cooperation. He was with her to the end, if that’s what this is, and his therapist could whine about it at his funeral all he wanted. 

“Not safe for you,” the woman replied, her voice coarse and rather unbecoming of someone of such beauty. “And you, only.”

Mark watched in horror as black, pincer-like limbs shot out of the woman’s clothing, stretching across the open space at least a dozen feet long. There were eight of them in total, and each one chose a helmet to tear through, taking bits of flesh and brain and discarding them on the gravel. A few men charged forward, brave to the end, and each one was decimated to pieces by the rapid movement of her new appendages. 

There was a bursting sound that filled the alleyway, like balloons constantly popping, and he noticed the woman’s skin changing. It stretched into something rigid, rough like uncured leather. There were thousands of tiny black divots checkering her body, and her hair had disappeared, skin rising to form a sort of flat-top helmet on her head, the divots sticking out like a crown of thorns. She was a beast of some kind, not human at all, and as Mark commented to himself…she was rather marvelous. 

The last remaining soldier fired his weapon, but the bullets simply bounced off of her and fell to the ground in a rhythmic clinking of metal. He took off running in Mark’s direction, walkie in his hand, shouting something about reinforcements. As whoever was on the other end confirmed they’d come straight away, they just needed his location, he was unable to answer as he ran over Mark’s outstretched foot. His face took a nose dive straight into the concrete. Mark heard the shattering of the man’s facial bones and the frazzled disconnect of the walkie. 

The woman crawled toward the fallen soldier, and used one of her new limbs to sever the head completely. She turned to Mark, poised on all fours, and he could see bright glowing embers for eyes, her grey exterior covered in the gore of her victims. The scene behind her was one of mass carnage, limbs and organs and blood and all, and it’d be sure to impress even the darkest of minds. Mark could feel bits and pieces inside of himself that were terrified, screaming for retreat, but once again, his feet remained stout. 

With his therapist’s words in his head performing an endless carousel of doubts and frustrations, he expected at any moment for this creature coming towards him to disappear. Or, perhaps more fitting, for it to destroy him as it destroyed so many others, one last big joke of his irrational daydreams leading him to a timely end. However, as she reached him and stood up, pressing her body against him, everything else melted away. Her head worked its way around his neck, sniffing him, and the pincers poked and prodded his body up and down. After several moments, she opened her mouth, forming a smile, and a hundred tiny fangs came spilling out of her mouth, washed in blood. Mark didn’t move a muscle as she did her work, and when she stepped back from him, there was a faint sound of stitchwork as human-like skin molded itself to one of her arms. A hand resembling that of a young woman’s reached out to Mark.

He wasn’t sure when the loneliness vanished; he carried the weight on his back one moment, and the next he was free. The small parts of him that had struggled waned and dissipated, and he could sense a warmth emanating around him, wrapping him up in some euphoric cocoon. He had been right to hope, right to dream, and all those thoughts and feelings he had been told would lead him down some dark path had instead led him to the one thing he wanted. He reached out and took the woman’s hand. 

Mark and his new girlfriend exited the alley and walked back into the city, two lovebirds ready to shake up the world. Mark called his therapist and told him he had to come over straight over. He had someone he wanted him to meet. 

—

Michael is a thirty-something somebody living in the bowels of Pennsylvania. He lives with his small (but growing) army of chihuahuas who are trained in the arts of world domination, and he enjoys writing about bad things that happen to good people. His work has been published by Eerie River and The Sirens Call, and he is currently working on a full-length manuscript.