SPECIAL Agent

by Catlyn Ladd

Featured on Creepy Pod, June 14, 2023

Fast, so fast, under the strange orange volcanic sky, she ran. Exhilarating, the way her legs pumped and she glorified in speed. Her imagination took over, unable to resist the mood of the flaming storm sky. Breath quick and sure, she ran from monsters conjured by her vivid wit, horrible mangled things with foul breath and slimy hides and yellow demon eyes, a compilation of every horror story she had ever heard. Terror took over and she dodged into alleys, around dumpsters, over the legs of a homeless lump inexplicably ornamented with plastic baubles of unicorns and butterflies.

She was loosing them! Her sneakers whizzed over the pollution wet streets and she congratulated herself on her abilities. Street smart, wise beyond her years, she was agent, no, special agent, Laura Knox, running to the safety of her inner city base where back up would be waiting to swarm down and annihilate the menace, the enemy.

She actually heard the clicking of monster claws pacing her from behind, hear slobbering breath over her own gasps. Taken away by her dreams of special agent Knox, she reached for her gun; she would take out the enemy herself, there would be a ceremony in honor of her bravery. She would be the youngest agent to ever be so honored....

She rounded a corner, still breakneck, and stopped so suddenly that her sneakers lost traction on the pebbly surface and she slipped, losing traction on the alley muck, her head smacking against the wall. Green flowers blossomed in her vision.

Nauseated, she slumped, letting the pain pass through her, shaking it off as only a child can. Looking up, she saw that a brick wall blocked her path.

The jarring pain of her fall pulled her back to reality, though she still got up and spun around, certain that the monsters must be right THERE.... The street stretched away, empty.

Now that her running steps and gasping breaths were quiet, eleven year old Laura became aware of the silence. And the darkness.

Mere minutes before she had been on a crowded street blocks from her home, returning from Sissy's house, as a matter of fact, homework defeated and placed in the pack slung over her shoulders. Sissy's sister, impossibly mature at fifteen, had been watching the X-Files on Netflix and the two younger girls had decided on the spot that a career in the FBI was absolutely the only choice for their futures. Skully was the bomb.

In the dark and empty street Laura wished to be that special agent now instead of a small girl armed only with a backpack.

Where on earth was she? Her surroundings were completely unfamiliar, though she had only been running for what had seemed like a short time.

Having grown up in the city, living in the same house her entire life, Laura thought she knew her environment. She had been venturing out on her own since she was seven, walking to school, going over to friends' houses, even riding the subway downtown to the shops or over to the small textile store where her father worked. In the quiet dimness, the world seemed much bigger. Her head throbbed dully.

Straining her ears she could hear the city, a low rumble occasionally marred by the blare of a horn. These sounds should have been much louder. The lights reflecting off the clouds cast that volcanic glow; otherwise she would have been in complete darkness. There was no street light in sight. Laura realized that she had never been in a place with no street lights. Maybe she really was lost!

Telling her imagination sternly not to run away with itself, Laura spun around to examine her surroundings. She had run into a short dead end behind a building with no windows. She stood at the intersection between the dead end and the alley. Everything within her sight was either concrete or dirty gray brick.

Still not believing she could be lost (the only time she had ever been lost was when she was four and in a department store with her mother), Laura trotted back to the main street. Both ways looked identical at first glance. The head of the alley appeared to be halfway down the block and she saw T intersections in both directions. On all sides loomed dark buildings. Some windows had been boarded over; all others had been broken long ago and beyond the sills swarmed with shadows. Laura remembered of the photos she had seen of post World War II Germany and Poland where entire towns stood vacant, only the wind whistling through empty shops and homes where families had once cried and played together. Here, not even the wind dared tread.

Almost certain that she had turned right into the alley, Laura headed left to the intersection. She walked in the middle of the street to avoid passing too close to the gaping windows and dark doorways.

As she neared the corner she became aware of a change in light. Something appeared to be flickering and she wondered if a homeless person had set a trash can on fire the way they often did as fall crept toward winter. But the light was too cold for fire and Laura slunk closer to the building, staying well away from any openings in the dull facade.

She peeked around the corner and felt silly as she saw the source of the light: a street lamp with a broken globe sent staccato beams flashing down the street. Relieved to see a lamp, Laura turned into this new avenue and once again stopped to look both directions, scanning her memory to see if any landmark rang a bell.

There were few landmarks to be seen. This new street looked disturbingly like the old, terminating at either end of the street in a T intersection. She paused, reaching out with her other senses the way she and Sissy did when they were crossing the park at night, an activity expressly forbidden by parents.

The air reeked of old oil, burnt plastic, sewage, and rot. Laura turned her attention away from her nose. She still heard the distant city but could not pinpoint the direction. That made sense actually, since she must have simply wandered into an abandoned section zoned for refurbishing. The city would be all around.

Or something. Laura couldn't really decide how she had ended up where she was, considering that she knew her neighborhood like the nose on her face.

The idea of remaining in the middle of the street was absurd so Laura started walking again. She knew that one was supposed to remain still if lost, but no one would even know where to start looking for her, so she had to save herself.

She turned left again, passing under the stuttering street lamp and left again at the next corner. It made sense that, if she continued to make lefts, she would return to her point of origin. If no landmark had presented itself by the time she was back at the alley she would repeat the same pattern, taking rights. That way, she reasoned, she could cover a large area without getting more lost than she already was.

There was no reason this should not work. Every block was disturbingly like the last with no streets continuing farther than a block; all ended in a T intersection and every block was intersected by an alley.

Every street except the one that should have been her point of origin.

Laura stood in the street in the middle of what should have been the block where she started and turned in a circle. The alley was nowhere in sight. Only the dirty buildings lit by the eerie squall light.

Well, the stuttering street light should be at the end of this block. Laura's steps quickened as she ran to see.

There it was. So where was the alley? Or was this a different street light with the same dysfunction as the last? Or....had the alley disappeared?

Laura contemplated. This was not easy considering that her stomach was beginning to behave in a most peculiar manner. Her head still pulsed pain in rhythm with her heartbeat. The street seemed darker and the imaginary monsters from which she had fled bounded back.

She spun around quickly, almost falling again, certain she had heard a stealthy sound. Only the shadows.

She began walking again, more quickly now. She turned right, away from the stuttering lamp, and then left at the next intersection. This path, as the pattern was repeated, should take her as far away from her point of origin as possible.

Then she did hear a sound. A scraping shuffle in one of the buildings behind her, followed by a vocal hissing. There was something alive on the street with her.

Laura was running before she realized that she had decided to flee.

She ran until she was out of breath, until her side hurt, until tiny black spots swirled in front of her vision. In her fear she forgot her planned pattern but, when she finally stopped, she was horrified to see the stuttering street lamp. Had she run in a circle? Or was this yet another? Or...was she back where she had really started? In desperation she turned, running up the street to see if the alley was there...it was. But had that dumpster been there?

Despite all of the street training, regardless of her education from wandering the city, in spite of her dreams of being an agent on the X-Files, Laura felt like an eleven year old child, lost. She sank down next to the garbage and gave way to tears.

How long had she been lost? Long enough for someone to miss her?

She didn't know and that made her cry all the harder, muffling her sobs against her knee. She had seen not a single person. No one to help her.

Finally, her fortitude returning, she lifted her head. If she was going to escape from this situation she had to think clearly. She fisted the tears from her face like a little girl and stood up. She turned her attention to the buildings lining the reticent streets.

They looked like typical brownstones, some with abandoned shops gaping shadow. Four or five stories tall, they were framed against the orange sky, spouting twisted antennas and crumbling fire escapes. To Laura's imagination they looked alive with potential menace. It occurred to her that, from the top of one of them, it might be possible to see her fugitive home.

Without a flashlight she knew it would be absolutely impossible to set foot over a threshold. Not into the gaping dark. No way. She turned her attention to the fire escapes, walking down the street, scanning the facades on either side.

On the next block she found what she was looking for. One of the fire escapes dangled a ladder almost to the street. Scavenging a crate from one of the vacant windows, Laura was able to reach it with ease. Pulling herself up, she climbed to the first landing.

The escape was not in the most excellent condition. Flakes of rust embedded on her palms and the old metal creaked alarmingly.

Laura edged closer to the building. The window on this level had an old box spring pushed against it and was thankfully covered. The windows above, however, yawned darkness, occasionally framed by teeth of gagged glass. She would have to pass within inches of them.

Steeling herself, Laura moved up. The going was slow; she had to test every step before trusting her footing.

The window at the second landing was intact, reflecting only the orange light and Laura's pale face. She stopped for a moment to look into her eyes, dark and wide in her pale face. With dirt smudged across her nose and her jeans torn, she did not look at all like a Special Agent.

Something moved behind the glass.

Laura drew back. She glanced over her shoulder, thinking something might be behind her, reflected in the glass behind her own face.

Nothing.

It seemed to take hours to turn back to the window.

All was still.

Trembling, she advanced up the next flight of stairs, focused on the gaping window above. Her panic was back and she focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

The window below shattered with enough noise to drown her scream. The glass was in her head, clattering against her skull, deafening her. She felt it tear through the brain matter of her sanity.

Once again she was running before her conscious grasped the circumstances. Flying up the steps she seemed embedded in sludge, every limb weighted with invisible muck.

She didn't look back until the rigging below her gave way with a screech. The steps under her shrieked and lurched. Laura screamed, clutching the railing crumbling under her fingers.

The bolts holding the framework to the wall tore lose with puffs of brick dust and small bits of concrete that fell toward the street miles below.

The section to which Laura clung held for the moment but, looking down, Laura saw that the entire lower section dangled free, held only by tenuous segments of steps. And something clung to the rigging below.

In the gloom she couldn't see it clearly, only a dark shape with lantern eyes. And teeth. Lots of teeth. They caught the thunder light.

The hissing vocalization came again and then it howled, raging up at her as she hung.

She clambered up toward more solid footing and the metal screeched in pain, more of it tearing loose.

The roof was only two landings up and that edge became Laura's focus. The fear in her brain dulled her awareness of the horror below and her entire attention fixated on the roof line.

She climbed a lifetime, each heartbeat punctuated by the tremoring of the fire escape, until she grasped the edge and pulled herself over. Her hands were raw, seeping blood.

She crumpled onto the roof, gasping in a ball, so tired her eyelids seemed weighted. She lay lethargic, unable to summon fear or even curiosity. Terror did strange things to a mind.

Finally she summoned the energy to pull herself into a sitting position and peered over the short lip of the roof.

The bottom section of the rigging had fallen and the top portion twisted out of shape, barely clinging to the bricks like some alien spider.

The monster thing was nowhere in sight.

Laura pulled herself to her feet and peered around. In hope of seeing city lights in the distance, she turned in a circle. Only darkness in every direction.

She turned around again, unbelieving.

Something dawned on her, something that had been plaguing the back of her mind. Considering that each block should have been approximately the same length it was impossible for each street to end in a T intersection. At least some of them would have had to end in a four way, or at least a dead end.

She walked along the edge of the roof. Lightening flickered. She could hear thunder in the distance, getting closer.

The light, undulating though it was, provided the needed illumination to see the outlying blocks with enough clarity to make Laura gasp and clutch at the low side wall edging the roof. From her high vantage point it was possible to see the layout of the streets near her. About four blocks in front and slightly to the left of her the cityscape ended in a blackness. No, ended wasn’t right, it was as though the focal point was too far away to see. She was standing at a point that appeared to be near center of a giant vortex, a three dimensional cone of intersecting streets and buildings. Looking behind her she could actually see how the ground appeared to curve up, each block slightly higher than the last.

It was impossible and it made her eyes ache. What if, during her run, she had fallen through, down into a hole?

A howl sounded from below her and she tore her eyes from the horizon. The monster thing clambered up the bricks. She could see claws moving over the edge of the wall and she looked into the face of Hell, cognizant incandescent eyes, more teeth than she had ever seen, a face so different, so wrong, that she could not focus clearly. Breath like ice washed across her cheeks and she responded without thinking. She turned and ran, pumping her short legs, breathing in great gouts. At the edge of the roof she jumped without heed, and the street below passed in a blur. She landed on the next roof, still in full sprint. At the next edge, she sprang again.

She didn't realize that her path was taking her down, into the dark. She was only aware of speed, aching muscles, pounding heart, gasps of air, feet tingling from impact.

It was only at the last moment, when the darkness hung like a pool in front of her, that she realized. Her steps faltered.

Too late, she felt her sneakers slip on the edge of the roof. She fell.

The impact snapped her right wrist with an unimportant pop. Her face hit next and blood washed across her darkening vision. As the dark came she was aware of a woman screaming, and tires on wet pavement. The grille of a car loomed over her, broken tines, running with fresh blood. A man bent over her and the woman sobbed.

“I didn't see her. Oh, god help me, I couldn't stop.” The voice hitched and gasped.

The man touched her with gentle hands and she felt a blanket being wrapped around her shoulders. “You're going to be okay,” he said.

Somewhere she heard the monster scream in rage and disappointment.