The Life of a Messenger

I gaze down the cliff, still three hundred feet below us. I can’t tell if there’s anyone down there, or if there’s water or spiked rocks awaiting our fall. A gust of wind blows out of the desert, knocking us hard against the edge, and I almost lose control of the ropes again.

I can still hear the deep, mocking laughter, though it’s a little put out from the gust of sand ripping around Malay and I.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

We both look up and see the head of the blue bull watching us, blood from Malay’s leg dripping from the bulls left horn. A drop lands on my face, and I flip the bull off.

The creature reaches for Malay, huffing from the frustration of not being able to grab either of us with hooves, and it backs away from the edge of the cliff so that neither I nor Malay can see it anymore.

“Why does it want us so damn bad,” Malay screams against the air but gets choked up as her throat fills with sand and instead, blatantly points out in her thoughts, as if we hadn’t just been chased by a raging blue bull for the past mile and a half.

I f*cking hate shape shifters, I blame you Aria. Why did we have to take this message through a desert? She winces from the gash in her left thigh, and the searing pain leaves her mind a mess of cuss words that would usually make me smile, in different circumstances.

“Stop complaining and start thinking!" Malay whips her head down glaring at me, but I continue, almost screaming to get past the wind, “Can you see the bull anymore?!”

Malay lifts her head up, straining to see between the specs of swirling glass, oh no.

“What?! Tell me what’s happening Malay!”

Just then the rope, hopelessly tangled, snaps, and gives way. Malay screams as her invisibility shudders at her nervousness, she goes in and out of visibility gripping on the rope tighter. Her ability doesn’t fail her as she becomes completely invisible, but that won’t help her as she plunges to her ultimate demise. I reach out for the wall of the sand cliff, but I realize we’re out of time. I look up, to see a large blue hawk, it’s razor slick talons are what cut the rope, I assume. So, when I read its mind, I know it was the shapeshifting blue bull as it echoes over and over.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I close my eyes as we begin to fall, expecting death, expecting something tragic. We could only bring the message so far; I'll just have to hope that someone else will bring — at that exact moment I was ripped from my thoughts and strangled by those talons, the back one covered in blood, Malay’s blood. A small scream slipped out of my throat before I was face to face with the black beaked hawk, my face instantly became red, and my hands automatically reached up to try and pry the claws from my esophagus. Malay was still falling to her death, and her screams didn’t stop, till the quiet thud of her body against the rocks was heard.

The shapeshifter, two feet from my eyes, laughed as it pinned me alongside the sandstone wall. Each word painfully slow and concise, as it pauses in strange places, “There, goes the whiney one.”

I try not to shudder against the breath of the shapeshifter, and instead reach out and clutch its blue neck. Believing that I could strangle this creature, would be a fool’s errand but I had to do something. The shapeshifter tilts its huge head, and smiles with razor sharp teeth, thinking to itself, my, my what, do we have here? A, fighter, I presume.

I try to wrangle myself out of it’s grasp, but the shapeshifter only tightens its grip, I choke out some words, but even I don’t understand what I’m trying to say, and I let go of its throat. I reach down my right leg, pulling my foot up to meet my hand and snatch the blade from my bootstrap, I fling it towards the shapeshifter, who catches it with its beak, crouching down, it snaps the metal in two. I roll my eyes which makes the creature in front of me soar with glee, it thinks but says two different things.

Changing form, it twists and rolls inside of itself declaring, “Always being, underestimated.” But it’s thinking something entirely different, silly child, don’t go for the neck, go, for the heart.

The ripples of skin stop and what was left, flashes a grin stained with wickedness, and I find myself smiling in return.

“Malay, it’s nice to see you again,” I swallow the bile rising up my stomach, “you look great.” Though this version of Malay had inexplicable wings behind her, holding her up. These were made of human skin, bone, and muscle, straining with each movement. I look at its head, thinking about how to kill it.

The hand, Malay’s hand, tightens its incredibly harsh grip around my already failing voice box, as the shapeshifter lifts up Malay’s eyebrow and thinks, so easy to trick half humans. While it brings the other hand around its own neck as if to shield it from any more of my attacks, and I finally realize it’s trying to get my attention away from its heart.

With that I wheeze out, “Please, release me.”

“To fall, to, your death?”

“Please,” I pretend to start passing out, my eyelids flutter dramatically and the shapeshifter frowns, looking displeased, but it releases some of its ridiculous grip on my throat. In that instant, the desert above us gives another haul of dangerous wind and sand, allowing me the split second it would take for me to reach down, bring my left foot up, and grab the other knife. Placing it in my right palm, I shove the blade forward into Malay’s heart. It screams, eyes widen and shoves me into the sandstone, but also I'm let go.

“How?!” its shrieks down at me, eyes glaring, overflown with rage and confusion, its thoughts screaming in my head, you would kill your friend?!

As I fall, the shapeshifter falling too, I splash into a river. I expected to meet the same fate as Malay, but fortunately as I crawl up the shore, my clothes and hair soaking, I hear the shapeshifter groan a little above me. Its blue body disheveled as it twists into gills, horns, and claws, bleeding out at the heart, it slams into the water and mixes with blood. I sigh and look around spotting Malay’s mangled body. A gash bigger than a basketball, pierced right through her stomach, a metal cone which connected to the exact thing we have been searching for.

I smirk and with a sort of ugly chuckle, knowing we have succeeded, I look at Malay one last time, internally thanking her for her sacrifice. I put my hands on my knees and gasp for air, then, after a few seconds, I listen for the shapeshifters excruciating cries.

Mine. Messenger scum, belonged to, me.

Then silence, as I look over my shoulder to find the river sweeping the creature away, the liquid turning coppery, filled with its rotten blood.

Lifting my head up, standing. I cross my left arm over my body and pull the tiny, rolled tube from my side rib cage pocket. Holding the message in my wet hands, I pull it open and clear my throat. I read it out loud, to the people perched quietly in the ship, decorated with Malay's corpse.

I do not ask questions and I am not afraid when someone or something behind me, rakes a blade into the flesh of my throat. Blood pours down my back. I hardly notice it, as I finish the last words of the message, and fall to my knees.

I’m soaking wet and yet, I’m lit on fire.

The evidence and I disappearing forever, the life of a messenger.