Much as he didn’t want to, John could imagine what the cashier girl was seeing right now. At the other end of the alley way she’d just desperately tried to escape into, she’d be treated to the sight of a skinny, pale guy wearing a black hoodie and faded jeans as he came spilling out of a tipped-over wheelie bin and scrambled across the dirty pavement on his hands and knees. Whether she remembered him from the restaurant was irrelevant at this point—her opinion of him would surely be plummeting anyway.

  Frankly, her attention wasn’t his highest priority, though he was sure this moment was going to keep him up at night on many occasions in the future. If he survived. Right now, he was more worried about the basketball-sized eyeball with spider legs sprouting from the top of it that was looking right at him. It shuffled around on its red human legs like it didn’t know which victim to go for.

  John rushed to his feet, doing his best to square his shoulders and stand tall. Even though his heart was pounding like a jackhammer and a cold sweat was pouring down his back, he forced himself to look the monster square in the eye.

  It made a little keening sound. Its legs reached for him like antennae, but it stayed in place, indecisive.

  Clenching his fists at his sides and squaring his jaw, he glared it down. “Come on then,” he shouted, and was shocked to find his voice didn’t break. “Show me what you’ve got!”

  His stomach did a flip. It took all his will to keep his expression straight.

  Holy shit that was so lame. Why did I say it like that? There were so many ways to distract the monster, and that’s all I could come up with?! It’s probably laughing at me right now!

  However…

  +100 Aura

  Seriously? I got Aura for that?

  Either the monster understood him or simply reacted to the sound of his voice, because it seemed to make up its mind at that moment: with a long sigh, it charged.

  Task accomplished, John turned and ran away. He heard the girl call something after him, but he didn’t dare look back. He could hear the rhythmic slap of the eyeball monster’s bare feet on the pavement as it gave chase, and nothing in the world mattered more than that.

  This time, he made sure to keep his expression neutral, no screaming, no wide eyes, no panicking; generally, he did his best to make it obvious he wasn’t making a desperate escape this time, even slowing to ensure the monster was keeping up. No, he had a plan in mind.

  The chase didn’t last long this time. It wasn’t meant to. John had already forced himself far beyond his physical limits in his initial escape from the restaurant. He knew he was going to be dealing with horrendously sore muscles for the next few days if he survived this encounter, and if he pushed things any further, he was liable to pull a muscle, at which point he’d be giga-ultra-omega-dragon-kraken fucked. Surviving the apocalypse didn’t seem likely with an injury.

  And besides, there was going to have to come a point when he needed to build his Aura up into the positives again, sooner rather than later. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever was doling out the stuff didn’t like him running away, but was very much a fan of him standing up for himself in some manner. The idea that his survival depended on standing his ground rankled. He’d never been a fighter. Unless you called receiving a punch to the face from some douchebag a fight, he’d never been in one.

  But the undeniable reality was this: whatever Aura was, it was obvious he’d been gaining it when he did something ‘cool’—for lack of a better word—and losing it when he acted lame.

  Now, it had to be said that John was the most non-badass man that had ever lived. He was the type of guy who couldn’t talk to a fast food worker without tripping into a social blunder. He was a black hole of charisma. A social clutz. The personification of awkwardness. The anti-charmer.

  Giving him some kind of superpower that depended on being cool could only be a cosmic joke. Something somewhere was laughing its ass off right now.

  But when life gives you lemons, and all that. One of the few things about John that made him just like anyone else was the simple instinct for self-preservation. To wit: he didn’t want to die. If he had to build up Aura by pretending to be some kind of badass in order to survive, then he’d do it whether he liked it or not.

  And he very much did not like it, so he made sure the monster followed him through a winding route through a few streets and alleys until they arrived at an out-of-the-way lot of garages/storage units hidden behind a few houses.

  With a clarity that came from being so overwhelmed with terror that his mind somehow factory reset to some strange sort of calm, he’d recognised where he was back in that alley with the cashier girl. It wasn’t the most familiar neighbourhood, but he’d been able to navigate to the garages where he’d used to play with a few of his friends in primary school.

  It was a dead end, but that didn’t matter. There was a garage nestled in the very corner that had sported a broken lock for years the last time he’d seen it, and he knew the owner was too lazy to get it fixed. It opened without trouble. Inside, sure enough, was exactly what he’d been expecting to see. The bag was even dustier than he’d last seen it.

  John reemerged from the garage with a nine iron gripped tightly in his hands. The eyeball monster wasn’t the most graceful creature, but it had managed to keep the chase up for the most part. It was hardly going to lose sight of him, with an eye that big.

  It came stumbling into the garage lot. Its eye narrowed on John, its spidery legs stabbing towards him accusingly, as if it couldn’t believe his nerve for running away from it.

  John adopted a casual stance, resting his golf club against his shoulder and affecting a yawn. “So you’ve finally arrived,” he drawled, pushing his voice as deep as it could go. “I was starting to worry you weren’t coming.”

  +200 Aura

  It was all he could do not to shrivel up like a raisin and throw himself into a puddle of mud. If anyone saw him now, he was sure he’d die of mortification. There was a reason he’d chosen to flee to such an isolated place, and it wasn’t just because he knew he’d be able to find a blunt weapon here.

  ??The monster crept closer, seeming to move on its tippy toes like a ballerina. Its spider legs swayed like an octet of scorpion stingers, and John could see that they tapered to a sharp point at the tips. He had no doubt the monster would stab him right through the moment it got the chance.

  He forced himself to smirk. “Oh? You’re approaching me?”

  +200 Aura

  The moment those words passed his lips, he had the idle thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to let the monster kill him, as at least then he wouldn’t have to live with the memory of saying that out loud.

  It was gone as soon as it came, though. Suicidal ideation had never been able to gain purchase no matter how many embarrassing incidents his lack of social awareness had put him through, and it wasn’t going to start now, even at the end of the world. John could be stubborn when the occasion called for it.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Still, he surreptitiously checked the houses that loomed behind the garages to make sure no one was watching him through the windows. They were all blank, luckily. A few were smashed, even, though he could hear no sounds of a struggle nearby. There was plenty of conflict erupting more distantly. Crashes and bangs and shouts. Even gunshots, he reckoned. Maybe more people were fighting back, like he was? Well, like he theoretically was, anyway. He hadn’t actually gotten to that yet, and wasn’t at all looking forward to it.

  The monster kept edging forward, eyeing him with utmost focus. It seemed coiled like a spring, ready to lunge but holding back, for whatever reason. It couldn’t have been intimidated by his atrocious bravado, so it must have been wary that he could escape again, obviously having seen that he was much faster and nimbler than it.

  John considered that, tilting his head and observing the creature, tapping his golf club against his shoulder a few times. The thought that he could still run was an appealing one, even now. His resolve to fight was far from adamant. If anything, he was feeling more and more trepidation over fighting this thing with every second that crawled by. Those spider legs looked sharp. The method by which they’d been covered in blood was all too obvious. His heart lurched to and fro.

  +100 Aura

  He blinked, momentarily thrown off. What had he gotten Aura for there? Whatever was working this system evidently couldn’t read his thoughts, because he definitely hadn’t been thinking anything cool just then.

  Shaking his head, he focused on the task at hand. The eyeball monster was less than ten paces away now, and edging closer and closer by the heartbeat—which was saying a lot, since John was surely surpassing 150BPM at that moment. The spidery legs sprouting from the top of its head were all rigid, reared back like cobras ready to strike. It came to a stop, bending its legs like a man who was about to do a standing high jump, angling itself towards him.

  John took his golf club in both hands and held it before him like he was wielding a sword. His heart was thundering. His chest was too tight, snakes of fear constricting his lungs. It felt like there wasn’t an inch of his skin unmarred by sweat. He was worried the club would slip out of his grip. Every muscle was tensed.

  Swallowing as inconspicuously as he could, he decided to throw in one final quip: “Well, if you want to die, I suppose I’ll oblige you.”

  +300 Aura

  Evidently, this Aura thing didn’t care how hoarse his voice was.

  The monster had apparently had enough of his bullshit. With no warning, it leapt with impossible agility, its spider legs held out in front of it like spears, aiming right for his heart.

  What happened next was part luck and part anticipation on John’s part. He could claim no skill in how he managed to avoid any notable injury in the opening exchanges of the bout; all he did was throw himself bodily to one side, as he’d been ready to do from the start. There was a rush of air as the monster sailed through the spot he’d just been standing on, and another internal rush of air as the wind was knocked from John’s chest when he hit the ground. The rough gravel scraped his elbows, stinging. He rolled to his feet with the momentum and brought up his club.

  Oh my god that was so close what the fuck I almost died I should run away.

  Even as panicked words were rushing through his mind, his body was rushing after the monster with his club held over his head. It wasn’t the most dextrous creature, its eight spider legs making it top-heavy, but its jump had taken it almost to the other end of the courtyard. John sprinted, heart jackhammering. He let loose a roar of defiance, channelling every bit of rage that had accumulated in his life.

  In the monster’s place, he imagined his bullies. He imagined all the people who’d been mean to him, who’d wronged him, who’d laughed when he’d blundered into some social mishap, and beyond that, all the horrible people he knew were out there, the psychopaths and the sadists and the irredeemable assholes who seemed to live for the sake of hurting others. He imagined this monster was a representation of all the worst kind of people. And, for good measure, he had plenty of rage for a monster that wanted his death in and of itself.

  Indignation filled his swing. It impacted the monster with a meaty thud just as it was turning to face him once more.

  +200 Aura

  The monster didn’t die immediately. John’s full body weight packed into a golf swing threw off its already-shaky balance, and it tumbled over. He followed it, cocking back and throwing another blow before it could recover, aiming for roughly the same spot he’d initially hit. Its eyelid made to close as if to protect itself, but he managed to catch it right in the iris before the skin could fully seal.

  It trembled, and its spidery legs snapped out, striking blindly, but John had anticipated the move as soon as he saw its eye closing, and he darted to the other side of the creature. Using the momentum of his jump, he reversed the course of his previous swing, aiming a backhand blow at the other side of the monster’s eye-head-thing. One of its spider legs happened to get in the way as it writhed around, but his club was evidently the stronger of the two, and the leg gave way with a satisfying crunch.

  “You like that, huh, you ugly little fucker?” John bellowed as he began to rain down reckless blows on the hideous creature. “How many people have you killed today, you piece of shit? How many people’s blood are on your fucking spiky legs there? This is for them! I’m the angel of fucking vengeance, and this is your day of judgement!”

  +500 Aura

  John hadn’t even been intending to show off and gain Aura there, he’d just been mad. But he’d take it. He kept screaming insults as he beat the monster down, systematically aiming to break all its spider legs. His club was mangled by the time he’d done that, so he switched to stomping, first making sure its red human legs weren’t going anywhere.

  Crunch.

  “Man, I really wish you could scream right now,” John growled as he brought his foot down on the monster’s other knee.

  +200 Aura

  All it was doing so far was sighing, as if getting beaten to death by a human was a huge bother it didn’t want to be dealing with. Well, this wasn’t what John wanted to be doing with his day either, so they were both going to have to be unhappy about it.

  Soon, the monster was a quivering wreck on the ground, bloody and broken. John loomed over it, chest heaving. Adrenaline thrummed through his veins like a roaring river, so powerful he was sure he could hear it in the back of his head.

  The monster rocked back and forth in place. Legs broken, but still alive.

  John had to resist the urge to spit on it. He didn’t know whether the Aura thing would find that cool or not.

  “Oi,” he growled, resting the sole of his boot on its closed basketball-sized eye. Might as well get all the Aura he could out of this creature while it was helpless. “Open that fucking eye. Look at me. Look your death in the face.”

  +200 Aura

  Stuffing his hands in his pockets and adopting a casual air, he drawled, “This is what you get for messing with humans, monster. You should take a look. Seriously. I want you to see what’s going to happen to all your other monster friends before you die.”

  +200 Aura

  The urge to slump his shoulders and go hide his face in shame was strong. He never would’ve been able to do this if anyone else was watching. Any human being with even the slightest bit of awareness would’ve been able to see how lame he really was.

  Still, he had to do it. Surviving whatever was going on was at the top of his priority list, and Aura was the obvious path to that. He’d gotten lucky with this monster. It wasn’t a particularly strong one, evidently. If he’d been up against something like that thing he’d first seen in the restaurant, or its oily minions…

  Yeah, I would’ve been fucked, he thought, pausing to look up at the burning sky.

  It was so wrong, that sight. The blue roof over the Earth had been omnipresent for eons before humanity had even come along. What these bastards had done to it was the ultimate violation.

  Righteous fury burned in him, and he directed a glare back down at the pitiful monster beneath his boot. It was barely moving now. Time to end it.

  Crouching down, he pinched the edges of its eyelids and pried them open. Its eye was cloud and unseeing, but it still swivelled to face in his general direction.

  John found he couldn’t come up with anything witty or “cool” to say. Fury tied his tongue. All he could see was the burning red stretching overhead, reflected in the glossy eyeball.

  Standing back up, he positioned his boot above the monster, then brought it down with all his weight. There was a sickening crunch followed by a squelch. It was like he’d stomped on a crusty slug. Gore splatted everywhere.

  He spat on it for good measure. It felt so damn good.

  +100 Aura

  He stood there for a long time, staring down at the monster’s remains, his lungs working overtime to draw in enough oxygen. He felt light-headed. Goosebumps were spreading along his arms. His hands trembled, and he clenched them into fists.

  Right then. Time to figure out what this Aura stuff can do.