Habit Stacking

From the direction of the heaving black mass, scatters of sunbeams penetrated thinner parts of its body, glowing through its interwoven threads of sludge and hair, giving the appearance of a rib cage protruding from its chest, and long, willowy fingers that dragged thick, congealed nails across the wall. 
I suppose that unbearable noise had been a mixture of those and the drawn out, guttural straining of vocal chords, reverberating visibly beneath the translucent black.
It looked like a corpse.
Immediately, I was ready with my lighter, already having forgotten its uselessness against something dripping with water.
However, rather than continue trudging towards me, the monster seemed to sway restlessly on its feet (which I was unable to see through the thickness of the sludge falling from its waist, but I assumed were the reason it staggered forward in such an unnervingly human fashion), and instead turned to the side, peering over the edge of the open hallway.
Not wanting to take my eyes off it, I only vaguely stepped to the side, trying to see what it was that had caught its attention without giving it much room to escape my notice.
At that moment, there was a loud crash, almost as loud as the monster's wails, and beneath it, the balcony churned into thick cubes of concrete and metal, swallowing the monster in dust and debris, sputtering a haze of cream dust into the air between us.
I ran over to where the black mass was still flailing against the momentum of the drop, before hearing a wet, gross squelch as it fell to a lower layer of the apartment complex.
Emerging from the cream haze like some kind of musician strolling on stage through smoke machines was Sorrow, brow tightened as always, and eyes clenched downwards with stress and an ever-present discomfort at things not having gone as planned.
"Why are you here."
"Nobody else can hear its screaming."
"I see. No call for backup, then."
"Ahahah..." I sputtered, at which his eyes glanced up with distress and consternation.
Luckily, before he could comment on my behaviour, his words were eaten whole by another bout of howling from below.
"Take this" he muttered, hurling a batch of tattered photos neatly tied with a string in my direction.
As I caught them, I glanced at the one at the top of the pile, a generic family shot, with a son and mother and probably aunt, and no father, all posed in front of their son's school, with confetti getting in the way of the shot.
There's not questioning that there's a use to this, Sorrow wouldn't have bothered otherwise, but whatever it is, it's beyond me.
We both leaped down, sorrow piercing the torso of the monster with his blade as he dropped, but the liquidity of its body meant that the metal dug into the concrete below, sending shivers of reverberation up his arms and tensing his muscles.
Really, what an idiot, did he always have to make cool moves like that? Serves him right.
Without time to recover fully, he bashed the midpoint of the blade with his foot once, then twice, and it finally snapped in two, bits of metal shattering into the air and clattering against our feet.
"Grah!"
With a pained moan, he sliced his palm, running the scarlet along the hilt and up towards the rough, shattered end, where, trailing his palm wet with blood, it regenerated, almost looking like some magic trick where he was pulling the blade from his sleeve.
Of course, being a professional, he didn't just stand their idly while it all happened, but was already mid swing, bringing down the new blade at the moment of regeneration, slicing into the monster's chest, this time hitting some kind of vital, which sent heavy black fluid spraying in a semicircle as the monster turned wildly away from the danger. 
Planting his foot firmly between bits of rubble, Sorrow's mind was racing, firing on all cylinders as usual, and that tiny clack of concrete against the tip of his show was sufficient for inspiration.
Before the monster could turn back to face him, it was already being pelted with stone kicked from Sorrow's feet, one rebounding off the wall to the right, catching the creature off guard, and sending the thick arm it had brought up in protection swivelling sideways.
Another bit of inspiration.
Now, the bits of rubble had changed trajectory, and just as the monster was beginning to deflect the shattered clumps of stone, Sorrow's blade gleamed against the sunlight, catching a wave of cool summer breeze against its back, whistling sharply with momentum, and his wavy black bangs danced wildly against the wind.
With a howl, the blade was brought down against the undefended side of the monster, but that wouldn't be enough. Hissing, almost like he was mimicking his blade, Sorrow clenched his teeth, and before the monster could regurgitate more sludge to cover its gaping wound with, it's now vividly crimson, wildly beating heart in full view of the morning sun, threw the blade against the wall, pinning the monster by one of its hard ribcage-like structures of what was probably real bone, and clutched the disgusting mass of flesh in his hands.
"Now!" he screamed, but I had already caught on.
Just because I'm not as flashy as he is, doesn't mean I don't have anything to contribute.
Already halfway there, I took the final leap, crashing into the gross lumps of hair and flesh and liquid, and only now realised that, with the sword firmly lodged in the wall, we had not way of slicing open the heart before us.
...
God dammit!
Clenching my eyes in disgust, digging my fingers deeper into the bone in trepidation, rooting myself in some moment elsewhere, some different time and place, trying to let my soul leave my body before it had to witness, to feel something so disturbing, I opened my mouth wide, and let those long, sleek fangs to their work, tearing into the tiny veins littering the thumping, translucent veil of muscle, and letting scarlet shower me with its warm embrace.
From the corner of my eye... Sorrow looked down in gratitude and pity.
With a whole torn wide enough, I slipped in the group of photos, all the while still struggling against the writhing monster, who, like the button pressed on an automatic fan, slowly began to fade into stillness, its heaving growing slower, and breathing more relaxed.
We both collapsed on to the ground, covered in thick black blood, Sorrow only partially splattered with scarlet, while my entire face, neck, and the inside of my mouth were stinging with heat and sensory overload.
I couldn't help it.
Tears began to pool against my eyelids, which I continually tightened shut, trying to keep their cascade behind shutters.
My mouth opened and shut relentlessly, trying to escape the sensations and smell and taste.
Worst of all, my throat gulped in hunger, and my body felt invigorated, driving all my functions to the maximum with desperation.
Sorrow was, out of consideration, looking away, down at the heaving mass of whatever it was crying itself into a pool, until all that remained was a set of floating photographs beside a man, face calm with the kind of serenity that comes from a lifelong hardship that's turned out to all be some elaborate joke, and a tear running from his closed, peaceful eyes, losing itself in the puddle.