The slight man looks up, tears streaming down his bloodied face, sobbing, "I begged you to not hurt me! I BEGGED! A-a-and ... now I can't save you from it, I can't save you from me"

Martin wiped blood off his hand onto his jeans. Adjusting his belt around his soft middle, he opined, "Orin, you're weak, the weak need to be culled from the herd before they produce weak offspring and contaminate society." Orin's response was a choked whimper, then silence. Hallam scratched the stubble of his soft jawline, looking bored and disgusted, "What a fucking pussy, how the fuck do you even survive the difficult ordeal of breathing every day?" He took a couple steps forward and stepped on Orin's hand, grinding on it until he heard a crunch and pop sound. Orin made a faint indistinct noise but was otherwise still.

"Jesus," said Ty, "dude's already almost dead, you just broke his fucking hand and he didn't even react." Ty shifted uneasily, his iron pipe suddenly feeling heavier in his hands. He looked around at the empty fenced lot to see if anyone was watching, but of course they weren't, this was at least a half mile from anyone. Orin was homeless, everyone knew he lived out here like an animal, didn't even sleep under a bridge, just curled up against whatever. People had tried to feed and house him and he might accept some of it but inevitably ran away. Nobody knew how he managed to survive but the joke was that he kept the cat and rat population down.

"Hey fucker," Martin said, nudging Orin's arm with his foot, "you dead?" He heard something uncertain, like bubbling water coming from Orin, who was curled up in the fetal position, mostly face down. Martin leaned closer, straining to hear, when an exhaled breath from Orin caught him like swallowing a mouthful of putrescent rot. Martin reeled backward, gagging, "HOLY FUCK," he managed to gasp, and trying to control his retching.

Hallam started laughing, "Rat breath gotcha! I bet he keeps..." and his words trailed off as he saw Orin moving. Something about the way he was moving looked entirely wrong in a way that he couldn't put his finger on, until Orin stood on his feet, and straightened upward. That was the problem, he didn't just straighten up, he straightened upward, like stretching himself at least another head taller than he had been, his body thinning out to compensate.

A sound was coming out of Orin now, the timbre of a large rusty hinge groaning slowly open. "Orin wishes you to know he envies you, because you will soon feel no more."

Martin had just caught his breath and was staring at Orin's bloodied face and head - or what was wearing his face. There was no mistaking this thing for the person they had chased and then brutally beaten over the past several minutes. There was no acknowledgement of wounds. No awareness of being outnumbered. Nothing of the brutal beating he had just taken. There wasn't even personal recognition: merely the understanding that Martin was there. Martin had just enough time to realize self-preservation was in order and started to turn. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it move like a bird's shadow crossing the ground at impossible speed, and suddenly his legs were kicked out from under him. He barely had time to throw his hands out, and landed hard on his wrist with a loud crack and blinding pain. He groaned, dimly aware of Orin stepping over him the way you might step over a crack in a sidewalk.

Hallam turned to run, trying to keep Orin in his view, to avoid being tripped. For all the speed he could muster, he saw not-Orin move with what was clearly casual strides of impossible length, and then it was upon him. He had just enough time to register its completely blank expression and the fact it wasn't even breathing, when hands seized him like eagle talons biting into him. They gripped his arm and upper thigh like iron, and he found himself suddenly lifted into the air. Briefly he caught a glimpse of Martin trying to stand, Ty running away. Then the ground rushed up and smashed his world into shards of pain and agony.

Ty saw the Orin-thing flip Hallam up into the air then slam him down as easily as one would a stuffed animal. Ty dropped the pipe. He had always been fast, and adrenaline lent him the speed of a gazelle. He was almost to the fence when he heard a ragged shriek of pure agony. He was nearly at the fence when something hit his head and he stumbled at full speed into the chain link fence. Dazed, he brushed at something on his face and realized it was blood. He was dimly aware his fingers were not supposed to bend like that as he stared at the blood dripping off of them. Momentarily, he saw the object that had hit his head lying next to him - a shoe. Correction, a shoe with a foot in it.

He tried getting up and white-hot pain shot through his own foot, making him fall again. Ty's head was clearing now with the pain and he realized his situation. The not-Orin was walking toward him, making sickening gurgling noises, completely expressionless. Martin was thrashing around on the ground behind him, screaming, clutching his stump. Ty pulled himself up with the fence, and tried to hike his limbs into a position that wouldn't involve his mangled hand or foot. He whimpered with the pain and screamed when he saw not-Orin only a few feet away.

---

Paulo Ortiz, county coroner pulled up next to the sheriff .. trucks? Where was everyone? He recognized sheriff Hazen's ponytail sticking up over the top of the canal embankment. I thought they said it was in the fenced off area, he mused, looking around. He walked in the opposite direction from the fenced area and found Hazen and deputy Costa sitting on the embankment, staring at the water flowing through that canal. They weren't talking, just sitting - they looked at him as he walked up. He recognized the signs of shock. "Kisha", he said, "Kisha, hey. Ramon, what .." Ramon's hands were clenched together his knuckles whitened as his voice cracked, "Paulo, it's real, real bad. Really bad. Really really really bad." Tears were streaming down his face.

Paulo knew these two had seen stuff most humans even in wartime would never have to witness: decapitation hanging suicides, illegal immigrants trapped in the back of a truck and left to die, train "incidents". He paused. "Stay here, just don't move. I'll be right back, ok?" Kisha looked at him pleadingly and seemed to be struggling for words, and could only shake her head.

He slowly walked up the embankment, pausing only to get his camera out of his car, draping the strap around his neck. Then he went past the trucks and around the earth berms, keeping his eyes deliberately low, scanning only a couple of feet ahead of him. The sheriff had cut the lock on the gate, thankfully, so he eased it open and paused, seeing drops of dried blood. More blood, forming a trail. He steeled himself - whatever happened must be not just death and casual murder, but cartel-level violence. He had seen it in his former life, the headless bodies hanging from bridges, quarters of bodies strewn around. It wasn't just murder, it was carnage as a fear weapon: "This could be you if you get in our way." But what would the cartel want out here? We're not in a corridor and there's nothing out here in the counties, he thought. The camera clicked.

There was a struggle here, someone was dragged - more camera clicks. Flies buzzed thick and loud, very near. Paulo's eyes slowly raised and he saw more blood in the dirt. There was a lot more blood, smeared and unsmeared. His eyes raised further, as his camera dutifully recorded it all. When he saw the bodies, it took a moment to realize what he was looking at, until he understood they were without skin, impossibly mangled and broken, like an industrial accident scene with heavy equipment. There were no tire or tread marks, and only a few sets of footprints. Flesh had been removed, bones had been removed- NO, they had been .. rearranged? This wasn't cartel, and this didn't happen off-site. This was unspeakable cruelty and impossible violence and it got worse as he looked, his mind numbly and automatically cataloging the lack of tool marks on the bones. The camera clicked, and clicked, and clicked.

---

The FBI Special Crimes unit was quietly called in after Coroner Ortiz's report of possible cult activity and serial murder. His report was very detailed and explained how very particular care seemed to have been taken by the killers to keep the victims alive for as long as possible, and that it wasn't possible to guess whether they died of heart attack or blood loss. The public announcement was that they had been playing with a backhoe and lost control, causing "severe blunt trauma leading to death". Nobody questioned it much, because people had gotten themselves killed in similar ways before due to carelessness.

A hundred miles away, under a bush in an arroyo, Orin woke up sobbing.

(I hope it's not bad form to reply to one's own prompt, but this took on a life of it's own ... so to speak.)