Title:           One of Us--Part 2:In which we start at the beginning
Author:          Lithonius
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/Mcp6s1qV
First Edit:      Saturday 2nd of February 2013 03:58:17 AM CDT
Last Edit:       Saturday 2nd of February 2013 03:58:17 AM CDT

Part 2: In which we start at the beginning
 
The old CRT monitor flickered in the dimly-lit room, giving whatever low self-esteem criminal who must certainly be targeting this mall a few seconds of all-clear to break in and start taking all the nice jeans and suits and shoes inside. Perhaps they'd set the whole place ablaze when they were done to secure an easy getaway in the meantime. Or maybe terrorists would do it.
At least, that's what Anon hoped would happen. Nothing ever happened here.
He licked the plastic spoon again and stuck it to his nose, keeping the monitor in his peripheral vision. He wondered if this trick worked with plastic spoons, or maybe they did something to their nose when they did it on TV. The spoon precariously held, and Anon began, ever so slightly, to let go of it with his fingers.
>"Hey Anon!"
He flinched and pushed the spoon up and off.
>"Hey, caught some movement in camera 8, back by Receiving." Bob had walked silently into the room while Anon had been concentrating. Anon swiveled in his chair.
"Yeah? What does it look like?" he replied.
>"Eh, looks like another bum," he said before pausing to take a sip from his giant coffee mug, "Go check it out, shoo him away." He seemed more interested in the last donut in the box, which he pulled over with a finger. Anon raised an eyebrow.
"Alright, I'll take care of it. Sure you can handle all this by yourself?"
>"Yeah," he said, then took a giant bite. "I got this." Crumbs flew from his mouth.
Anon sighed and got up, taking the maglite from the rack and putting on his jacket.
 
The cool night air seeped in through his sleeves as he walked through the empty halls to the back of the mall. When he first started this place felt like a ruin after all the people had left and the lights shut off, but he had become used to it. There was a full moon out tonight, and the sky was so bright and cloudless he could almost see the whole place without artificial light. He held his flashlight up anyway and scanned the place, but the beam didn't fall on anyone, so he walked over to the trash bins on a hunch.
Sure enough, he found a cart filled to the top with grocery bags, with some hanging off and filled with smashed soda cans. Not too far away some bagwoman was scribbling chalk on the ground and muttering to herself. She stopped like a rat when the light found her, but she squinted and soon returned to drawing lines on the ground. Anon stepped back and looked over her vandalism for a moment, sizing up just what he was dealing with here. A large intricate chalk circle full of symbols and connecting lines covered the concrete on the side of the building, while another on the cement wall that surrounded the bins. The woman with the rats-nest hair and the tattered clothes was working on the one on the ground, entranced by her work like he wasn't even there. Anon called her in over his radio to Bob, who only told him to get rid of her.
"Alright lady," Anon started, returning the light to her face. She lifted a hand to cover her eyes while she focused on the lines. "You can't be drawing on the walls here, that's vandalism. Even if you can wash it off."
>"Must be here," her voice was hoarse and quick, "ley lines, there," her fingers darted to the walls next to her before shielding her eyes again, "and there."
"Look lady," Anon walked closer. He recognized some of the symbols in the circles from some animu he had seen. This woman was obviously crazy. "I don't want any trouble. Just pack it up and move along, someone else will clean this off in the morning."
>"Be done by morning. Must be tonight."
"You're going to have to leave. You can either leave now, or I can get the police to take you away, but you gotta go." Anon put his hand on the cart and turned it out to face the parking lot. Perhaps she'd chase it and leave.
Like a bird, the woman looked up at him, her eyes locked with his the entire time she jumped forward. Anon stepped back and reflexively took a swing, but she ducked and danced under it, stepping around the side of the cart and grabbing something from the top. She was back in the center in two steps, placing the grocery bag on the ground in a heap. Anon could see her spindly bird arms and legs come out from under her tatters, and the way she hunched over her bag in her chalk nest made her look like one. He chuckled and stepped away to push her cart, letting it go and slide out into the sloping lot. She didn't notice.
Anon walked back, shaking his head at being scared of this frail woman,.
"Ok, time for you to go be crazy somewhere else," he said, stepping into the circle, "can't you go find a bridge like a normal-"
The woman shrieked and clutched her hands at his throat, covering his uniform with chalk and filling his nostrils with the stink of months without a good toothbrush. The tiny bones of her fingers dug into his neck, her uncut fingernails scraped and dug at his throat, and she was much, much stronger than he had thought. Her arms pumped back and forth and she screamed in his face.
>"You've smudged! You've ruined! You've spoiled! I'll eat your heart for this! I'll have your soul! I'll have-"
Anon grabbed her wrist, trying to wrench it free, and brought his flashlight up to strike her on the side of the head. Her temple caught it, but it only served to tilt her head as she screamed. He could feel her knee slamming against his thigh, then pulling back again to aim for his crotch. He bent his knee over to cover his pride, but the two of them lost balance and rolled onto the bag at the center. Anon heard something like christmas ornaments breaking inside it as they rolled onto it, and heard his radio open too.
>"I've called the cops, Anon," Bob said over the radio, half laughing at him, "but if you get knocked out by a homeless woman I'm putting this on youtube."
Anon could feel the little shards of glass cutting through the back of his shirt and digging into his back, muttering what a fat useless fuck Bob was. He slammed his flashlight onto the side of her stomach, eliciting a gasp from her. Her grip weakened and he pushed against her own throat his hand, pulling her hands from his neck. A moment of shrieking was his only reprieve before she slashed her fingernails across his face, letting blood flow down into his eye. The pain his back began to burn, which was an odd sensation to Anon, since he had been cut in an accident before, but through the blinking he could see wisps of smoke rising from around him.
The bag woman had straddled him, her freakish strength clenching her thighs together. Another swing with the flashlight missed when she arced her back like she was dodging bullets, and Anon connected with his other hand a punch into her side. She snapped back Anon could see the pinpricks in her eyes lock with his again, just before she smiled and straightened her hand, like a judo chop before crushing someone's windpipe. Anon brought his free arm over his neck, ready to give her face the elbow, but the chop never came.
His breath left him when he felt her hand plunge into his stomach, her nails punching through his uniform and into the soft flesh below. It hadn't been deep, but enough to draw plenty of blood.
>"Blood!" she cackled, "It needs more blood! You've spoiled it!" She pulled out her fingers and rubber her hand all over the wound under his shirt, the iron clamp of her spindly thighs squeezing out plenty for her. "You'll pay! You'll pay!" One of her hands returned to his neck. She stared into his eyes, longing to see them vacant.
Anon's punches against her sides and blows against her head only serve to reposition it like some sick doll. The hand withdrew only long enough to smear his blood onto the chalk and pavement. Anon could feel himself passing out when her hand poked into his stomach again, going a little deeper each time, smearing a different line here and there.
>"Oh shit, I'll be there in a second, Anon," Bob called over the radio again. As his mind became more and more detached from what was happening Anon noticed that Bob sounded like he was winded. Maybe he wasn't a fat useless fuck after all.
And he wasn't. A few seconds, a few years maybe, Anon opened his one good eye and in a bright light saw Bob's fat arm wrap around her, followed by Bob's fat body, in a feat he had never thought Bob capable. Even the woman's freakish strength was no match for the football tackle of what Anon was sure to be 350 pounds of flesh, donuts, and coffee. The light from the circles illuminated her satisfyingly shocked face, but the death-grip her legs had on Anon's stomach twisted him over, scraping the burning shards of glass across his back. Separated from the events happening to Anon's body, Anon's mind saw that he still had grip of his flashlight, and that the glowing circles were getting brighter. Maybe the cops had finally shown up and he'd be OK. The paramedics would be there soon and he'd finally get some sick leave that Bob never allowed. He laughed silently at himself that Bob would probably just rig the monitors up in his hospital room and bug him there.
It was the last thought Anon had before the peace of sleep took him.
 
The pain in his stomach and back were there to remind him that he was still alive and wake him up. He opened his eyes to see tall grass surrounding his head under a tall canopy in a strange-looking forest.