Hitting the water felt no different from hitting concrete. The impact was harder than being slammed by the grizzly bear. So hard that his face smashed into the glovebox and caused the airbag to eject, throwing him back against his seat. The rest was chaos. Icy water crashed, cargo in the back of the movers truck collided and sent them deeper into the water at faster speeds.
He sat dazed for a moment before coming back to his senses. More specifically, his new senses. His eyes burst open, glowing green and slitted. His muscles expanded underneath his darkening skin, freshly opened wounds closed and bruises faded. Quickly, the dark waters they sank deeper into began to illuminate in part due to his own night vision and the spinning chaos of lights above—
“Andre….Andre und—”
He stopped listening to his mother beside him when another two cars landed on the lake floor in front of them.
The lights were right on them both. His mother stopped talking as well.
The two teenage girls inside the closest car were so frantic they didn’t even notice the cat eyed mother and son in front of them.
The next car had a man in the driver seat, bleeding out over his airbag, his face was dented inward where his nose used to be. He hadn’t woken up. He wouldn’t.
Before either of them could react accordingly, a dark shape came cutting through the dark waters on the left— so large, Andre thought it was a shark as it crashed into the closest car. Bubbles and dirt rose in reaction to the impact.
The teenage girls only panicked even more.
Andre would’ve said it was a man. The hazy dark outline had arms and legs like a man, but he was huge— he moved through the water like it’s where he lived. His eyes glowed like the headlights. Big and yellow and devoid of anything. Machine-like.
In a flash, he grabbed the underside of the car and flipped it. From there, he hopped on top of the car and started to cut and tear through the bottom until Andre could hear the water rushing inside, drowning the girls slowly. They coughed as the heavy streams went up their noses and into their mouths. They couldn’t escape. They couldn’t get free. They didn’t even know what hit them.
Andre barely did.
And then his mother spoke.
“Rakshasa….”
She sounded scared.
She undid her seatbelt and began to shift.
“Azlan get ready! No matter what happens, if you can get away, do just that. Don’t focus on me. I can find you if we get separated. I will find you, do you hear me? Just be ready.”
Andre was petrified. He wasn’t ready. How could he be?
He was a child stuck in a truck underwater, watching a monster lift up a car and charge it straight at them.
His mother shielded him as the car with the dead man inside was slammed into their windshield. The crash was deafening. The water rushing in was violent. He could smell his mothers blood in the water as glass shards bit through her shirt and into her skin.
Before he knew it, he was under water, holding his breath instinctively. His mother floated in front of him.
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In a flash, a massive hand burst through the right side window, strapped with an inhuman amount of muscle. The skin was a tawny dark orange color with black stripes. The hand grabbed his mother by the throat and ripped her out of the smashed moving truck.
Andre roared and screamed for his mother, accidentally ingesting water and beginning to drown.
From the other window, someone grabbed him. Their curled claws dug into his chest. He was rushed through the water like he was being dragged by a boat. He drowned in the bubbling chaos. Past the bubbles and darkness though, he could see his mother fighting a giant. An underwater beast-man of impossible speed. She cut and clawed at the titanous shape. It did the same to her.
He did the same.
He flailed and slashed at whatever dragged him until he felt his claws catch flesh. Tough flesh. It felt like warm leather. He didn’t let that deter him. He pushed on. He moved so violently, he hurt himself.
He continued to claw and fight until he caught a leg. He held on and spun around, ignoring the claws ripping apart his shoulder. He was already drowning, he bit down on the leg and tore away chunks until he heard the screams under water.
Suddenly he was sinking as the assailant let him go and stopped it’s high speed swim.
The bubbles cleared and the dark settled.
He saw nothing. Nothing but the sinking rivulets of blood.
His skull hammered away as his oxygen deprivation became a matter of death or death.
Even so, he followed the stream of blood, spinning around to find a dark shape slithering after him with wild yellow eyes and stripped skin. It reached out for him with massive black-skinned palms and claws like knives
Andre caught the beast mid-charge. He wasn’t strong enough and was sent flying backward, smashing into a gate of sorts under the water. His spine spoke sweet melodies of pain to him— like what he felt wasn’t enough.
The Rakshasa— as his mother called it, held him against the gate with his arms pinned. For a moment, it simply looked at him in what seemed to be confusion.
He wasted no time. He was out of time. He was out of control, he lunged, biting into the beasts large throat. His fangs bit past muscle and felt the warmth of blood. The beast tried to disconnect but he wrapped his legs around it. All his bjj training with his mom gave him decent near death grappling.
The Rakshasa couldn’t escape if it wanted to. He bit deeper as it flailed. In quick time he tore it’s throat out. The titanous beast’s strength wavered until there was nothing left.
Andre dropped the beast and let it sink to the bottom of the dark lake.
It’s monstrous form faded. Limbs shrank. Skin lost its dark orange hue and stripes until he found himself looking at the mangled remains of the police officer from before. The big one checking out the back of their movers truck.
Andre swam for the surface despite his exhaustion. Despite the rapid release of blood from his shoulder.
He punched through the surface with a nasty cough. Water and chunks of skin flew out of his mouth. The glow of the moon shined on him and the rippling waters.
In the distance, he could see the highway bridge above. He could see the broken guardrail where their truck and two other cars were knocked off of. Other cars gathered. He could hear people screaming and crying in shock as they watched the waters below.
“The water…” Andre thought before yelling out, “Mom!!…..Mom?!”
He groaned in pain from his mangled shoulder. “Mommmm?!”
He took a deep breath and dove back into the waters, swimming out into the darkness.
It wasn’t illuminated by any sunken cars anymore. Only the cold white rays of the moon.
Panic filled him. His fur stood on end along his shoulders and back. His slitted feline eyes widened. He bared his teeth under the water— entering a wild state emboldened by adrenal—
Police sirens neared on the highway bridge.
Spinning helicopter blades from the sky sent rippling gusts of wind into the water that he felt.
More cops….. more guns…. more danger…. more Rakshasa.
He didn’t care. He swam on. He’d find his mother.
Then the echoes came. Almost literally, he could hear her words.
“If you can, get away. I’ll find you.”
He kept swimming closer to the cops and beasts and blood and death.
Her words grew louder. The sirens grew louder. Everything was so loud and painful.
For a moment, he didn’t even notice he stopped swimming. Even under the water he could feel his tears. Even in the cold blue, he could feel the heat of his shame. He could feel the colder presence of his fear.
He turned and swam, back to the gate the Rakshasa bashed him into.
He squeezed through it and kept swimming. He followed the sound and smells of the sewer connecting until the foul waste of the city was all he could sense and the sirens and spinning blades were a near memory.
Her words continued to echo.
“I will find you, you hear me?”
“She’ll find me…” He wore her words like they were a lifejacket carrying him through the icy city waters.
