“Don’t worry about me worrying about you, you big goof. It’s what I do.” She took off the amulet decorating her collar he’d given her from their mother and put it over his head. He looked down at it resting on his chest, picked it up and examined it. “Here, hold this for me. And get some rest. I’ll be by in the morning.”
He watched as his sister left and took a moment to reflect on how much he revered her influence. She had a heart big enough for the both of them and he knew he wouldn’t be the man he was today without her. If it weren’t for Alex, he was sure he’d be just another bleeding scab on the itchy ass of today’s society like his bastard father. Of course, he may’ve just inadvertently proven to be that blistering, violent rash he’d tried so hard not to scratch. He killed a man with his bare hands today, and he’d never get that blood out from under his nails. His knuckles were stained with death and rage, and his mind had the perfect silhouette of a dead corpse burnt into the back of it. Whenever he’d blink it was like the image was painted on the inside of his eyelids and he’d see Le’Duprie’s lifeless body lying in a pool of soupy, red ice…
Anxiety started building in his chest while a blinding, white pain pierced his skull and shortened his breath. Again, his head started spinning and his vision blurred. Echoes of the sound of the crowd cheering him on bounced around his head as images of the fight flashed through still-frames in his mind like a slideshow speeding through a reel. Random pictures of bloodthirsty fans with excitement splashed on their faces were screaming for a vicious bludgeoning. Blood flew up from the puddle behind his victim’s head, spraying his face and those of the spectating referees. He could hardly recognize the features of the man he was beating to a pulp until he finally stopped hitting him long enough to see that it wasn’t Le’Duprie’s face he’d been pounding into the ice…it was his own…
In his mind, he leaned over his own dead body and looked into the reflection from the pool of blood surrounding his lifeless form. The reflection that stared back didn’t belong to him, but instead, to his father; the image smiling sinisterly with blood dripping from his chin and into the puddle…the ripples distorting the details of his father’s face.
In the hospital bed, he slipped from consciousness back into a deep, but unsettled, R.E.M. sleep. This time, however, his dreams were not of busty, bouncy women pouring drinks and friskily biting ears. They were of him as a child, scared and helpless, being hunted ruthlessly like a miscreant.
He spent the entire night in his mind running from his crazed father, fearfully pulling his little sister behind. He was searching in the dark for places to hide, symbolically fleeing from a self-diluted image he’d created of himself: a misconstrued illusion of the man he feared he’d become, conveniently wrapped in a familiar shell resembling his infamous forbearer.
As he found in his dreams, there is no easy escape from one’s self. The incessant chase was tedious and draining. Eventually, one would have to stop running, come to face the mug of the demon hunting him, grit down, stare that big bastard right back in the eyes, and kick him dead in the nuts. That is, assuming one was inclined to conquer the savage beast. There is, of course, the ulterior option of joining him, in which case a truce by way of handshake or some such would suffice.
Marty would face his demons in his dreams this night, and the outcome of that realization was a bouncing ball on a spinning roulette wheel, placing the fate of all men on a teetering balance, unknowingly wavering the world’s destiny toward an apocalyptic doom.
2
Smoke gasped for a breath of air from the blackness surrounding him but couldn’t feel his lungs inflate or any hint of life-giving-oxygen flow through his chest. He felt as though he’d been suffocating endlessly, but wasn’t allowed to die. It was as if he could smell the air around him, but didn’t have the option to breathe.
The last thing he remembered was the eyes of a repulsive, evil beast, and the feel of his life slipping away as his head was severed from his exanimate body. He remembered dying; suffocating in his own blood and vomit and hearing his dead sister call his name…inviting him into Hell…
He couldn’t see or speak, but could smell and taste his surroundings. He could feel the walls of the cage that entrapped him and hear the sloshing of thick, warm blood splash below his knees.
He reached his arms out blindly in front of him, judging the shape and space of his cell. The walls were only inches away in any direction and felt warm and humid, like raw meat lathered in mucus. The smell was of bowels and iron, the taste of spoiled blood. He tried to yell out, desperate for some element of control no matter how small, but not even the quietest chirp escaped his throat. The absence of his voice was enfeebling. He couldn’t cry for help or even scream to vent, and he never would’ve guessed how helpless that made him feel.
He put his hand to his neck to examine his throat and it felt as the walls around him did; meaty and raw. His fingers hesitantly traced the course of his body to find bony protrusions outlining his chest and ribcage. When his hands passed over his stomach, he could feel his intestines spilling from his body, slipping through his fingers and out his grasp, splashing into the swamp of organic mud at his knees. He franticly grasped in the dark, trying to catch his entrails, attempting to pull them back inside his body, but finally realized it was futile. He was already dead, he thought. What the fuck did he need his guts for?
Was this it? Was this really all that Hell had to offer? Sullying darkness, morbid sensations, and a bad taste in his mouth? Where the hell was his sister? Was the suspense and uncertainty part of his torment or was he some place in between death and damned, waiting to be sentenced at the mercy of some unknown, metaphysical ass-wipe whose job it was to pass judgment over the scum of the Earth?
He began assuming the worst possible scenarios, including an eternity of reclusion, alone in a rotting pool of sanguine fluids with only his panicked thoughts to keep him company. His own mind would undoubtedly drive him insane within weeks if not sooner… How long would he be condemned to serve in this prison made of sultry flesh and bone? Was this to be the extent of his continued existence throughout eternity? His own personal cage in Hell until reality and consciousness no longer had meaning and inevitably deteriorated into an endless dissonance of violent insanity?
Before any considerable time had elapsed, he was already prepared to agree to any deal offered to be free of this cerebral impound. He was ready to renounce his very humanity and wholeheartedly sell his soul to the armies of Hell just to not even have to consider the possibility of an eternity alone. Fortunately for him, someone, or something seemed to hear his traitorous pleas for mercy and was eagerly willing to deal—
The surrounding walls closed in, pressing against his front and back, and the swamp of cruor and guts he stood in ascended as high as his mouth, slithering its way past his lips; a metallic and rancid tang. His cage constricted with a heave as though it were attempting to expel him by force, and his body contorted unnaturally, trapping his arms behind him, his head then leading his ascent through a web of wet cartilage and sinew. It was a sickening sensation, and all the while he still felt as if he needed to breathe but was unable to savor any air.
Soon a sharp pain tore over him that ripped meat from bones, and again, as if he’d forgotten the effort was hopeless, he reached inside himself to let loose a scream. His voice he still couldn’t hear…but there was a sound that he could… One that sounded like something choking, or gagging…like Satan was coughing up his soul as phlegm.
Suddenly it occurred to him, between the strange sensations and the bits of memories he could piece together, that he was in the bowels of the monster that murdered him, being regurgitated toward the back of its villainous throat. He couldn’t grasp any reason why he was conscious – or even whole, for that matter, and not dead in pieces – but the fact that he may shortly be finding his way out was what concerned him most. In what condition would he find himsel
f if he did indeed make his way from the belly of the beast?
All coherent thought rapidly faded into searing pain when a blinding light emerged from a speck in front of him and grew into a ball of spinning, white flame. He could see now what was left of his surroundings in the mouth of this monster where rows of yellowish fangs outlined a path toward the consuming light. This glistening ball of fire pulled him from the demon’s throat and disintegrated his body into threads in the process, like a white-hole devouring his atoms one particle at a time.
When he finally emerged, he quickly realized he didn’t actually have a body attached to his pain and consciousness, but instead, was only a tortured essence of the person he was (the sensations he experienced just illusions spat from a panicking mind).
He took in his surroundings as he could somehow perceive them and witnessed what was left of his own dead and severed head laid to rot only inches away.
He found himself in a cellar where his head rested on a wooden slate atop a slab of cement with his body tossed in a corner like an old rug. The demon Tessura still coughed up and out the remaining torn fragments of his bartered soul while spewing what was left of it into the ball of light that hovered in midair over his offed cranium.
After regurgitating his spirit like food for a hatchling, the floating soul-fire that trapped him sunk willingly into the dead flesh of his disembodied skull. It saturated his brain through his eye sockets so they radiated with a white aura, then eventually dimmed to a flicker. When his soul finally settled into his dismembered skull, he blinked his dead eyes twice before looking around the room through dry and stiff, ocular lenses.
His vision was obscure and strange. He didn’t feel like he was looking through his own eyes, but through those of an automaton. The world around him was black and white with shades of gray that formed dull outlines of a life that was no longer his. When he’d blink, he could feel the rigor mortis in the stiffness of his eyelids as they’d scrape over his dead, black eyes, and could hear the ripping of muscles in his jaw when he first tried to move his mouth to speak.
But there was someone else in the room with him, looming over him, directly in his limited line of sight, specifically making her presence known…
A robust outline of a woman’s body blended into the tones of light and dark, but the rest of the world around her seemed to mean nothing, like a bland painting without form.
His scarcely conscious mind could see what looked like a large blade rooted in the blurred image of her right hand. He watched as the woman placed the knife against her wrist and elegantly cut open a two-inch gash…
Instantly there was color in his world when the beautiful sight of red plasma poured from her arm. The half-aware demeanor of his decapitated head perked up with want as she sadistically brought her gore dripping flesh within reach. She spilled her own life’s fluid into his mouth and eyes, pumping her fists for the flow, and he could feel its strength rush into his brain while its absorption lubricated the muscles in his face. The stiffness throughout his flesh softened and his vision became clearer. And the sensation he experienced was indescribable… But if you were to compare it to one felt in life, it might be something like a starving, dehydrated man being injected with a sustenance that delivered instant fulfillment and satisfaction. It was like giving life back to a dying man along with the most succulent flavor and agreeable texture anyone could imagine.
The life-giving juice soaking into his tongue and lips made it possible for him to move his mouth more fluently, but he of course couldn’t speak. The woman standing before him was almost a clear picture to him now, but still drawn in black and gray monotones aside from the ravishing color red dripping from her body into his.
She was impressive, and probably in her late thirties, with long black, wavy hair, outfitted in modern denim that accentuated her hips and a wine-colored top that exposed her shoulders and chest. She had full, dark lips and deep brown eyes that caged more than a mortal woman inside. There was a powerful force concealed within her stare that he could feel orbiting her when, consequently, he could feel little else.
The woman bluntly reached for his hair, clutched a handful, pulling at his scalp, and lifted his bodiless head to meet her eye to eye, her blood still dripping from the gash in her wrist, highlighting the contours of his face.
“Hello, Jacen.” She spoke casually and caught him off guard with her candor. “Do you know who I am?”
Smoke couldn’t speak or move his head because he didn’t have a neck or lungs. He could, however, move his eyes, and despite her oddly casual question, he had a hell of a time not paying more attention to the blood streaming from her wrist than to her words.
Her voice was matured, and she was full of herself when she spoke. She was confident in her every move and slightest facial expression freely laid out for the taking.
“No, of course you don’t. How could you? I made sure you wouldn’t.”
The presence in her voice was unavoidable, as if he had no choice but to listen. He continued lapping at the falling blood from his lips, and when he’d swallow, the excess would pass through his throat to drip from his neck and onto the floor. With every taste of her life he consumed, his mind’s eye became clearer and closer to forming solid, coherent thoughts. He was now staring at this woman who held his head in her grip, and he got the sensation that he knew her face. This unnerving feeling intruded on his cravings for blood, and suddenly he thought for sure he’d seen her before, or that maybe she reminded him of someone…
“Mmmmmm…” She saw the pieces of the puzzle arranging themselves as picture in his mind. “Even with the cloud of lies I surrounded you and your sister’s foster lives with, I can still see the growing twitch of recognition gleaming in your eyes. You do know me, don’t you? Or at least, you’re starting to realize you do.”
He pictured her face in his thoughts, superimposing the image of his sister with the woman in front of him. His sister wouldn’t have been any older than twenty, but this woman had an uncanny resemblance to who she might’ve grown to be.
His mouth moved in an attempt to form a word he thought he’d never say to another woman, but found himself trying to say it now. His dry lips pressed together to mimic the letter “m”, and the woman smirked perversely.
“That’s right, sweetheart…” She brought his head closer to her lips to whisper in his ear. “I’m your mother.” She smiled, mocking a caring expression. “…Welcome home.”
Smoke’s dead face and blackened eyes expressed the unlikelihood of this bizarre family reunion. Funny that his mother’s presence surprised him more than him being a reanimated severed head did, but after what he’d already been through, nothing could’ve come as more of a shock than to find it was his own biological parent who’d sic the beast upon him.
Before today, as far as he knew, his blood-mother and father had been dead for a decade. He never gave them much thought since they put him and his sister up for adoption at such an early age. It was this misfortunate circumstance that set him on a course in life to be brought up around people who only merely tolerated him. A mother’s love wasn’t something Smoke ever truly enjoyed, and so was something he never thought he’d have to face. It’s surprising to see what depth a man could sink when never having to look into the eyes of a mother who loved him. Ironically, he was not faced with that dilemma now, and if anything, his situation was more akin to being confronted by his mother’s wrath. And it was his obedience, not his love, she expected.
The smirk on her face spawned from a feeling of triumph over her mischievous child – one of anticipation for the consequences that him being reanimated would bring.
Her name was Imala, and she was an abomination.
In her past, she’d acted out such atrocities as the premeditated murders of her biological parents as well as that of her own sister, and in doing so, saturated her fiendish soul with a wealth of villainous pow
er that could only have been achieved through selfish acts and sinful deeds. Her bloodline was ancient – enriched with mysterious mystics and sorcery – and the immorality she fashioned her life around had tapped a more insidious source of wizardry that hadn’t been awakened for a millennium. The sort of wickedness she inspired in others was a gateway for her blood-magik to revel in terrible evils, and to harvest a type of power beyond that of mortal men. Imala was the reckoning the world of man deserved. She would bring about a plague of horror so devastating that Hell itself would emerge on Earth, and in the end, she would garnish its throne. Lucifer would kneel before her and call her queen, and God in all his glory would crawl to her, wallowing in sorrow, and beg her for her mercy.
She cradled the head of her newly resurrected servant, probing into his perplexed, dead eyes.
“I can see the questions stirring in your desecrated mind…but don’t feel obliged to answer them.” She was strong when she addressed him, as if he were an underling and not her son. “But…” A smile twisted the corners of her lips. “…it might entertain me to show you where you came from. It could make you…” She contemplated the words. “…a more devoted soldier to our cause.”
Smoke wanted to respond, but found not having a body to be a bit of a bump in that road. Oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid. It was strange, but fear didn’t seem to weigh on his predicament at all. Instead, he wrestled with an anxious sensation in his mind: one of an emptiness inside that yawned for his attention. A hunger was building in him that he couldn’t yet conjure a word to describe. He knew it began with the blood he’d tasted that gave him life, but he wasn’t sure where it would end.
Imala whispered softly under her breath in a tongue that Smoke couldn’t understand but seemed eerily familiar with as though it was agnate to his being. It sounded to him like a backward language – like it wasn’t a human dialect at all, but more along the lines of something else. It was dark and powerful. Elegant and dangerous.
Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell Page 7
