"God! You're so!"
Thwack.
"Fucking!"
Pow.
"Stupid!"
Zaroshi grabs the door handle, his face bruised up from the captain just gave him. The passengers are starting to whisper about them now. Noting the glances, the captain turns away and pinches the bridge of his nose,
"You're lucky we're not too far yet. The next station this train stops at, we're getting off, meeting up with Ellisa and your supervisor and deal with this issue then," he sighs, "go fix your face until, then." He leaves to make a call.
"Yes, Sir.", Zaroshi moves over to his seat and sits. As he's applying bandages, Alex joins him.
"Want me to help?", he sits beside him.
"No, thanks." They sit quiet for a while before Alex speaks up,
"You know, I didn't think you'd actually do that...," he seems guilty, "it's my fault, isn't it? I shouldn't have said what I did back then."
"Shut up, Alex. You know I don't give two shits about your opinion."
"Alright, alright," he grins and then says solemnly, "You did the right thing, though. Atleast now she's going to work under someone who can actually help her, protect her when needed...," he winces, squeezing his fist. Zaroshi glances at him, confused. "Oh, and don't get too mad at the Captain, he's really just trying his best. We might get a slap on the wrist as punishment but he'll probably get demotion or something if things go south." After a while, zaroshi sighs and begins,
"You... you know, ever since I got that... eye from the researcher, I... I've been seeing things... I can't make much sense of it yet but I do know that out there, in Winqis, there are those... things that- demons-"
"You're referring to the Residues, right?"
Zaroshi turns his head to him so fast, it hurt a little, "How did you know!?"
Alex leans back, ready to start his story telling session, "I guess it's alright to tell you now. First off, yes, they are real. How do I know that? Well, my family is-"
All the lights turn off and the sudden, the train speeds up at remarkable rates. The passengers are thrown off their seats due to the sudden leap of speed. Some start grumbling and shrieking. Alex and Zaroshi put on their night time eyewear as they regain their composure.
"The power went out!?"
"Probably not, the train is going too fast for that."
"Speak louder! I can't hear you over the noise!"
Sigh. "Let's just go to the captain and Amanda first."
They walk around the cabin, trying to find him among all this chaos.
"I don't think he's here!"
"Check the bathrooms!"
While Alex check the bathroom, Zaroshi check the cabin's doors. Locked from the outside.
This... movement, it feels weird, lighter than a usual train...
Slash, slash, slash. People are full on screaming now as blood spreads on the floor.
So there's a psychopath here, too? Just my luck.
He groans before setting off to find the cause of this disruption. His eyes land on a peculiar teenage girl with a knife in hand. She seems to be smiling but her eyes are overflowing with tears. The moment realisation dawns on him, he reaches out but it's too late. The girl has already slashed her own throat. The moment she falls on the floor, a thick stream of nerves grabs Zaroshi from behind, the main hold being mostly on his waist and arms.
"Ah, fuck! Captain? Alex?", he screams.
A football sized eye attached to the nerves simply by a few strings appears,
"You're a peculiar one, human. That eye, it's not yours. Better return it to her before it's too late." It's apparently speaking with it's eye.
"Where are my friends, you monster!"
The eye stares at him. "Everyone here is dead."
Zaroshi's heart sinks. In the heat of the moment, he leaps out, his muscles ripping all the nerves that were squeezing him.
"A ballsy one too, huh."
He unsheathes a knife from his wear and jabs it at the eye but as soon as he does, the eye blinks. The iris is now replaced with a mouth skin to that of a blood sucking worm. It grabs hold of his wrist, swallowing his hand completely.
"Aaagghhh!!", he shrieks. The pain is just of a different life. He feels as thought he's being wripped in half horizontally over and over again. He just wants to get this over with now...
Slash. The mouth gets cut in half from the behind
"I'm late, aren't I?" Alex grins, blood splattered on his face. He helps Zaroshi up.
"Got any idea what we're dealing with? All I know is that it's a Residue, it killed all these people by possessing a passenger and now it's after us, well, mostly me, cuz of my eye. I'll fill you in on that later. It's probably going to reform in moments, so we don't have much time."
"Right, so, I went to the bathroom and guess what? Captain's not there, either. Also, one passenger must still be alive, for the residue to be this overwhelmingly strong. And get this, I checked the windows and apparently, we aren't on the ground. Our cabin has been flying up alone in the sky. Hell, we might have crossed the borders too. It seems super weird, I know, but it sort of explains how a Residue managed to do so much-"
"So much what? Damage?", the Residue has reformed by now but it's not just an eye and some nerves anymore; the nerves has enveloped itself around a human body, the eye having replaced the face of that human. But there's no way either of them could mistake the mullet the head has.
The only passenger on this cabin with the mullet was the captain.
Zaroshi and Alex mutter at the same time.
"It's him, isn't it?"