Children of the Entity: Her Coin
In the wrong place at the worst possible time, only a miracle can save him now...
The cage trembled as the machine, and Mortalis Revenant collided. I don’t quite know how one side came into possession of the foul creature, but they did, and it soon went to work tearing parts off the machine with so little effort that most people were barely through their first drinks by the time it had become nothing more than scrap on the brown stained floor. Ever since the crisis of 1947, underground arenas like this one had begun cropping up all over the fractured states of America. The next challenger entered the ring looking much sturdier with four arms instead of two and had long curved knives embedded into two of its long forearms.
I tried squeezing my way through the tightly packed crowd in the hopes of getting a closer look at the next bout. While holding a drink in hand, I managed to bump into a woman wearing a white dress spilling the contents of it onto her and she must have been holding something too because now she was on her knees searching for it frantically.
“Terrible luck will come if I don’t -” She said as the lights flickered above us, “I must find it!”
I crouched down and looked around her until a glimmer caught my eye. A gold unassuming coin. Nothing looked special about it. I reached out and took it into the palm of my hand. It felt cold on my fingers. I rubbed its smooth edge and everything else around me slowed. My wish... The cacophony of grinding metal crashing as people cried out in rapture was now a distant affair. I hardly saw the creature flying over their gawking heads, aether tendrils still writhing.
“The coin,” she mouthed. “Toss it!”
I looked at her in a state of confusion. Now that I could see her more clearly in this slowed state of time she looked strangely out of place. What’s with that white powder on her face, anyway?
“It's life or death,” she said cutting through the silence.
The Mortalis Revenant had landed close by forcing a terrified crowd to push each other back in the hopes that none of them would fall foul of it. It soon returned to its full, tremendous height and bared its fangs in defiance as large thick plumes of black smoke fled from its still scarred but rejuvenating body. Our eyes meet for the first time and that's more than enough for it to decide that I'm next. I tossed the coin and time slows even further. It's held there suspended in that moment where chance can go both ways. Somewhere between heads and tails. Life and Death. A strong, chill numbed me. She's now at my side, her cold fingers pressed against the back of my neck.
Life or Death, she whispered into my ear.
My existence in this world, at the mercy of a single coin toss.
The next few seconds would decide everything. As the coin finished its final spin and landed back in the palm of my hand, I slammed it against the back of my other hand. I tried to lift it but to no avail. It’s stuck. I closed my eyes and with each thunderous step, that creature loomed ever closer. The noise, the sweat, and fear all fall away replaced by a sudden torrent of water as its coolness blankets my forehead. I opened my eyes and looked up to see the silver showerhead. This... This is my apartment... how did I?
The unremarkable coin was still glued to my hand.
Life or death? Who the hell was she? And what is with this coin?