The knife tears through the dark like a bladed whip manifested by formless creatures. From my waist's height, like an uppercut coming straight at the face...no, my thro...by instincts faster than a span of thought I arch my wounded left arm up by my ear as an unbeknownst weight almost bends it with a sickening ulcerative pain spreads as my head jerks back by reflexes. The blade's a karabit in a gloved hand in a single run of neurons, my fear vanished. As I know the monster has a physical body.

  Hip firing on my right but the 'face' in the dark simply turned inward at the same time a muzzle flesh happened, its torso was shined as standing sideways while the force on my left forearm changed its course to dragging the blade downward with the momentum of a turn, the sharp edge drags and narrows a deep cut upon my arm leaving a cross on it.

  The force changes in the air, drawing a V under my forearm. The fang leaves another cut on my wrist before the last pain settles as it dashes for my face in a second’s million pieces while I barely tilt my head to the right as the tip of the curved dagger flies by, and the blunt hilt immediately stabs accordingly to my left temple without a single wasted opportunity.

  My left eye closes as the impact gives me a spread of nausea, in retaliation I blind fire towards the seemingly vast darkness before me. The muzzle flesh caught the thing in another as the shot grazed the scorning 'face' in my slanted view and a loud 'plank!' was perceptible in steel and lead colliding and bouncing off to something else scattering pieces.

  The next thing I know, a run of silver was drawing in the dark by catching a glint in the hallway as it missed pair of sight by a breath. The face retreats into the dark of densely overlapping lines in the right main room. I take a shot in the dark at where it ran and another by the muzzle flesh and another for wishful thinking till the echo runs in both the corridor and my ears and the gun smoke leaves the rest... a revolting turn of my insides forced an itch and sputum up my nasal into a forceful cough. It is not caused by the shots fired. It's the fire, and the black mist is seeping through the floors as I'm inhaling more and more with my breaths on skates.

  Sprinting to the blonde kid lying in worse condition than me while keeping my aim somewhat fixed on one of the entrances in case of....whatever that was.

  The space between the doors seems to stretch before me as each step feels sharp and heavy against the ground as if walking on gravel. The blood leaves my messed up left arm in a trance as my palm crawls with the now apparent pain and the green LED light seems to double into its halo like a widening road leading up to the unconscious 10th street covered in a blazer.

  Smart fucking sociopath.

  And the candy man shows up. Its arm twists a turn above Budimir from within the door like a shade or crooked branch under the green light shook and bent like a twig in the bellowing wind with a glint in the center of my vision.

  The knife spins through the remaining meter in less than a blink, and a burn resides on the gap between my collarbone of the left shoulder as the knife falls onto the floor by indirect impact, but that was before the son of a bitch rushes out the corner.

  Blood on gloves glistening by the green lights behind as well as the edge of that hideous mask but not the karabit in its right hand. The blade's as quiet as the one at a distance where gun ain't as effective as bare palms, first shot hip fire in the last moment before it descends upon me almost as if some wild animal in a growling state. The bullet grazes the side of the killer's vest without a doubt works better than a punch to the gut but it does not stop. The killer uses the momentum to cross its right foot to my arm's reach shoulder turning by a forceful sway.

  45 degrees slash from my left thigh to my right arm as it crouches with a retract of calf like a rattlesnake. Second time in my life, a gun worked indifferently in close quarters.

  Left steps back by shallow cut weather by choice or reflexes as I slam the pistol down the trajectory of knife. The butt of its grip hits the killer's last two digits as the hooked tip scratches off the magazine and the base of my palm.

  The bastard didn't even scuffle.

  Its knife-holding arm hinges in a turn to push the muzzle off the line of fire as it pushes forward, next came the left arm. With a stretch and a pull, my gun hand's in a clamp as the killer rotates my wrist with pressure on both in a very unpleasant way.

  I can't let go, pulling the trigger won't help except hurting the bastard's eardrums. In a fit of rage and desperation I clench my bloody mess of left fist as each and every cut squeezes and stings by the contracting muscle. Waist to the half-suspended shoulder to the arm into a punch in the cunt's rib.

  And it shrinks for a second, before returning a knee buried into my belly with a pull of my right arm. Sudden burst of trauma almost made me puke and my vision contrasts the bare lights in the oval. The face turned around in my moment of delirious.

  Absurdly, it was the placement of its foot changing that gave my distorted mind a clear view of what it is trying to do.

  Ignoring the muscle and intestines wrenching and begging, I thrush my left knee up to its waist as I lean back with all my weight. Not much impact but it doesn't matter.

  Fun fact, shoulder throw can't be done without your waist's effort. And now is my weight against its two limbs.

  The mask turned like the only tangible object in the space narrowing by the hues of red spreading across my iris. And its black. There's no eyehole on the mask of the glower, just a sheen of Vantablack absorbed. Its brow drags on by the lines of red protruding; Its corner of mouth suspended in a drag to the tip not by grin nor laughter, but by livid anger of breaths seeping through few fangs drawn between the gauges.

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  It looks jaded.

  Like an irritated god.

  In a spin of movement, its leg lunges back at my standing foot in a back kick of incomprehensible reach as I'm tilted to the left by its push. In a loss of balance by pulling off my left knee, the killer ceases the opening by dragging the knife under my right arm leaving another mark while freeing the lock to catch my thigh in a hook while left palm's still clutching my gun, a simple lift of its shoulder tilt the already gone center of mass as I fall back in what feels quite like a slower world. Until my back hits the unyielding floor.

  It climbs over me before there's a chance to move my right arm the solid sole boot has nailed it in place as the killer gets in a crouching stance on top of me with the right knee on my chest, clawed dagger sending straight down my throat like a punch, my blood mingled palm feebly extends to block it. And it doesn't even register it in the line of stab. The overwhelming pressure falls and the tip of the blade is five breaths away from my vision as arm's stacked in the middle like a bumper and its closing in. And the face in shade as well, almost yearningly lowering to my last. The green light's at the bottom of my vision but somehow I can still see a round of halo around the mask, uneven, raven black seeping outward the mask. Shit, I can see that now.

  Merely 30 centimeters away, I recognize the face from old books of world folklore. It is Yakshini. Their finest vulture.

  I want to scream a bloody smile but none will see for this ragged mask upon my cheek, for the son of a reaper before me with a silver scratch on the forehead has no eyes, for I'm about to find out if blasphemous will earn me a seat by the devil or just pitch black snap of line.

  The mask grows closer as does the knife, inches turned to centimeters to a shorter margin by the wobble of some primordial understanding that there's no afterlife, there's only this and nothing else that matters. Not the people in my putrid life, nor the riches under my bed, or truth of some bygone questions, some I failed some I left I... am a selfish bastard. Cause I still cling to life like the last drop of rum down the drain into the sewer before ocean, as meaningless as it is, there's a portion of it declaring remanent.

  And by the Divine way of this absurd world, in this trance state between the last two milliseconds. I realize the Yakshini only has one knee on my chest as it is better for the elbow to push another pound of weight into the stab, but against a mount position, I can still move my left leg.

  By a roar of the first growl between us, my mask must have sunken a dent right under my eyes by how hysterical I am straining my jaws down as my sights are suddenly morbid and in high contrast to every bit of illumination.

  A breath in, with the last of my might, I push against the knife hand as the tip is gnawing into my flesh again, but this time I let the pain ensue the cry. What came through my throat was inhuman as a screech like the endless horizon dragging on and on and endlessly dismantling. And it echoes through the confines of this hallway as I gain back an inch and another, and before the fucking thing hinges its left elbow onto the knife. I stretch and pull my leg up.

  Couldn't kick its face, I make do with its armpit as I force the fucker away from me and what do you know? The hem of my trouser falls back by the gravity revealing a shining grip of my dagger on my ankle right where my left palm falls in this clutch. I hope under that forever enraged mask, you have regrets.

  My bloody palm clawed the dagger's grip as my left leg stretches over to get it off the sheath, before circling back the killer's neck, hooking it before the Yakshini could pull itself off the lock.

  Now's arm against arm, dagger at each other's face. I turn my wrist by a notch down that bulletproof mask, slanted at its defenseless neck like a race to death. And miner a longer reach.

  For the first time, I can hear its breathing under the violence. So is the pulse by its neck. It's a hunt, don't you back off just now.

  One eyeless, the other bulging out of the trim of badly woven wool. The pressure on my right-hand shifts a little but resolves before I can exploit it as the killer starts to wavers. Its entire torso's falling onto me trying to force the blade back but with each pound it adds, tenfold I return the pull while I wedge my right arm underneath the boot, not much resort, but it's distorting the bastard's center mass. But the blood keeps dripping down my arm on multiple open wounds while the adrenaline's only shortening the process and my bones feel like they're burning on the verge of broken. The stalemate wouldn't last, but I need it to make the first move.

  I let go of the pistol and push it off my palm with my thumb. My wrist's still being nailed, but with my hand free, the tip of its boot is just barely reachable. My fingers dig into the shoelaces.

  Steel tip of a callous angle caught the glint of the window side streetlight barely visible the sharp stab of my dagger and Yakshini's oxide black wiggling just above all the fatal arteries.

  I can see the changes in it, I can see the faltering line of defense like a crack on a frozen lake spreading as an on-and-off static, each more palpable than the last. It's an easy enough assumption to all the colorful unsaved of the world that none wants to die, especially here, as pointless, not even a legend's above mortality and on the fourth second. It gave up first.

  Its left arm pulled off in a flash like a lighting shooting back, across the belt under the vest and a push dagger materialized between her fingertips as the triangular blade shone by the mask in a clean trajectory to my chest, throat, mouth, eyes and this is my window.

  The force against my left arm greatly reduces me to redirect her pressure and my force simply with a bent of my forearm and a push of my elbow while my right hand grips the boot's laces and pulls coordinating the turn of my torso. It lost balance.

  With an animalistic rage behind my strength out of the thread of life, I turn the tide by flipping Yakshini's entire body off me and to the side, as I predicted the bastard weights no more than I can handle.

  By the moment we both tumble onto the floor we acted simultaneously.

  Right arm numb as a corpse's trailing the back of my waist into the welcoming grip of iron as the knife stab to the floor like a cane to get back on my feet.

  Yak shoots a kick in an incomprehensible angle onto my chest forcing my back to fall back onto the wall while the killer's struggling to get up with left palm on the floor, the blade sticking out between fingers like a nail.

  And another kick came out of nowhere as soon as it gets up, not a precise retaliation like what it's been aiming for all this time.

  The combat boot swinging towards my face came out short as I lower my head, lie back on the floor for a clear aim as I finally manage the colt 45 off holster.

  Arm extended to the fullest like the angels in some Italian fuck's drunken masterpiece. Calling out for the end and start and rescue and salvation and a moment of complete halt lasting 0.2 seconds before the hammer strikes the cartridges. Sending a .45 ACP on the mask of Yakshini.

  Like the slide racking back so does the killer's head. But amidst the smoke, I see no blood or limp. The kinetic impact forces it to back off two steps as I keep pulling the trigger in disarray before the slide locks back as it stumbles into the same room it came out. The second shot left a hole on the door frame, the third's untraceable.

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  This chapter was hard in construct but not in practice cause I basically forced myself to finish the entire fight in one go. But to actually choreograph a fight in mind was the hard part.

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  I don’t know why, I just few like it.