Their fight…was ordained.
He stood watch over the graves of his friends beside him, waiting…knowing his new and improved hockey team from Hell was nearly ready to surface. And like burnt bread popping out of a toaster, 29 fists burst from the bloodied soil at J.C.’s feet, one after the other; the closest to him first (being the first of them buried) straight down the line of graves to the last. Hound, then Priest then Hound; alternating from one great team to the other, unifying them both in death through the twisted power of their demon monarch—
There was Staimos and Carl, Boner and Donny, clawing at the air above, ravaging through the dirt that covered their corpses.
Reed, Mac, Tobin and Bryan, clenching their fists over ground, grabbing for the throat of the world beyond.
Carson and Newhart, Suiter and Brooks – And J.C. stood boasting over the emergence of his undead family, his chest swelled with pride as stiff fists continued breaking through the Earth’s cage, Hound then Priest.
Zeus, Shye, Garcia, and O’Bryan, the ground rumbling at the simultaneous commotion of such great powers all erupting at once.
Thomas Hops and Jack Barley: two regular opposites who might prove to be a mixed brew worthy of the foul creatures spawned in this New Hell.
Jay Clayton and Trevor Lord: both “stay-at-home” defensemen who would find little use for prudence in their new roles, despite their professional instincts as men.
The first in the line of the New Dead – the 6’4” Spanish/Italian called Roman Staimos – thrashed about as his friends beside him followed in his lead, tearing through dirt tombs to lift their heads to greet the world…
Donovan, Orell, Cayman, and Comrie; their hands flexing in the night air, grasping at this curse obtruded upon them called existence while those before them grunted and spit at the unsatisfactory taste of oxygen.
Connelly, Mason, Bradley, and Cameron: Hound and then Priest and then Hound and Hound again (the unequivocal numbers botched without Jimmy and Terry as part of the lineup). These had been some of the county’s most unruly athletes in life, and in death, were likely to be the most uninhibited and brash.
And in the final grave – the last to be buried and certainly most savage – raised the Hell Hounds’ infamous goaltender; the barbarian of net minders; the brute of all goalkeeps; the scourge of the Mild Weather Goons Hockey League…
Sally. J. Thompson.
Also known as Sally the Terrible… Sally the Despised…
Yes…his name was Sally. And, yes, he was aware he was named after a woman – his great grandmother, in fact. And if he ever got his powerful hands on her decrepit, little corpse, he’d kiss her decomposing cheeks for bestowing upon him the toughest name a growing boy could ever have been bequeathed. For it was his namesake which drove him to be the most beastly goaltender in the history of the MWGHL. The most penalized, the most hotheaded, and the most recognized of his position by way of records set, trophies won, and fan-driven hate mail received. Sally…was the manliest of men on a team full of boys…and the only one still brave enough in this day and age to rock a multilayered mullet and a massive handlebar mustache.
All…hail… Sally the Terrible.
Each new creature found their own way from their holes and stood at the foot of their graves, looking at their dead bodies through dead eyes, sniffing the air with heightened senses, and eventually glancing over at one another wondering who among them would be first to speak.
Roman Staimos, being the earliest to rise, had the benefit of the most time to take in his surroundings, so was the one to notice Jean-Claude standing beside him, grinning sadistically at his own grotesque accomplishments. Roman took a second to recall his former life, and his last memory of his teammate tearing through his locker room and breaking the necks of his closest friends was what stood out most. Flashes of J.C. ripping their coach in half in front of them and eating his meat sparked mixed emotions upon seeing the bastard beside him. But out of all the twisted feelings rousing within, none were rooted in fear. His anger began boiling in his veins as he glared into Jean-Claude’s burgundy eyes.
“You…” The power in Roman’s voice stemmed from his rage and the need for chaos rising within. “You did this! You killed us… Killed all of us!!”
J.C. shook his head calmly. He understood his teammate’s rage and addressed it directly.
“No…” His voice was almost a whisper, but it was apparent his strength was greater than most. Before Staimos could even flinch, Jean-Claude had his giant, black hand wrapped around his throat. He stared into the eyes of his former teammate and showed him the power he now wielded in his glare. “…I set you free.” He squeezed his teammate’s neck until he saw the recognition in his eyes, then slowly let loose his grip and turned his head to address the others. “I set all of you free.” He looked down at the line of undead monsters before him and let them witness the power in his stare. “This new world… It is not somesing you would have survived, yes?” He gave them a moment to think about it. “Look aroun’ you… This city is dead. There is nos’ing left here but the Hell that we make. We are this world’s future… We are this world’s kings.”
They all listened closely – it was already in their unearthly nature to be obedient to those who showed power over them – and felt a kinship with his meaning that caught their interest. Regardless of their wishes, Imala’s corruption fueled the black blood that pumped through their veins and they grew hungrier by the second for mouthfuls of chaos and anarchy. J.C. knew they’d be feeling the urge for death, and he used that knowledge to help guide them to a position at his side.
“Can you hear her?” He walked down the line of his troops to be sure they all got a whiff of his strength while he spoke to the hunger in their bellies. “…Can you see her eyes? …Can you taste her power? She gives you this Hell that is our world… And gives me the strength to lead you.” He looked them all in the lenses to give them a type of controlling calm with his behavior as their alpha. “Mes amis! …My friends… My…brothers… I was your Capitaine in life…and will be your Capitaine dans la mort.” He always enjoyed throwing in a pinch of Canadienne-Francaise when speaking in front of a crowd. It made him sound so much more sophisticated. “Together…we will—”
“What about Marty?”
Jean-Claude snapped his head back at the sound of his adversary’s name to see who may’ve had the gall to speak it aloud. He glared down the line of dead-men behind him and skipped over his Hounds to single out the Priests who might’ve possessed the balls to talk out of turn. Inside his chest, his bones rumbled from the resonance of his restrained growl as he started back the other way, looking for the rebel culprit who he may need to make an example of.
“Marty?” The taste of the name in his mouth was like cold shit on an onion bagel and he spit the first time he let it escape his lips. “Marty?” The second time was like forcefully regurgitating a solid ball of razor-wire with a shit and onion bagel aftertaste. His stare was so intense it was actually giving off heat as he beamed at the L.A. Priests amidst his row of Hounds. He continued down the line until he stopped directly in front of the only Priest of the bunch who wouldn’t look him in the eye – the young, eighteen-year-old rookie, Bobby Shye – and he towered over him like a drill sergeant looking to break in a recruit. “Marty…is……DEAD!!” His roar in the young man’s face was so forceful it nearly pushed him back into his grave, but being an undead monstrosity himself, Shye’s own fortitude allowed him to keep his footing. “Marty turned his back on his own blood! His blood is what made us possible…and he has betrayed us! …We will hunt him down, break him branch to branch, an—!”
“Limb from limb.”
“What?!”
It came as a shock to everyone that the boy even spoke, let alone tried correcting one of the resident idiot’s idioms. …And J.C. was doing so well with his controlled and confident little speech…
“YOU FUCK THE SHUT UP, you…you PRIEST!!” He screamed his bassakwards retort and growled the word “Priest” like it was sacrilege to speak it, trembling in anger with its pronunciation. “I would feed your balls to petite pigs before I would let you speak that name to me again!” He spit when he spoke and the undead Bobby Shye grumbled back at Jean-Claude’s threatening tone… But he knew his place. It was engraved in his very being to obey and obey he would. “Mon frère… Marty…will be brought to our queen… She demands it.” He put his arm around the young winger and guided his body to turn toward the Spirit Fortress in the distance. “Open your mind to her will and you will hear it too… You know why we are here now, yes?”
Shye let his anger go and listened to the call in his mind. He saw the glistening black eyes of the Demon Goddess and the human misery he’d swim through in her name. His gut rumbled with a hunger he’d never known, and he smiled when he realized what it increasingly hungered for…
“…Blood.” He spoke with a growl that’s wickedness was matched only by the next of his kind to speak.
“Death…” Staimos spoke up when realizing what was calling to him was what drove them all, uniting them on a single side.
“Chaos…” Carl, the Priest with the collector’s edition Wayne Gretzky Bobblehead, growled in accordance with his zombie-hockey brethren, taking a step forward to propound allegiance.
“Insanity!” Zeus, the 6’8”, thin Greek with a full beard and giant lightning bolt tattoo inside his left arm shouted his piece with a cheer and his bolted-fist in the air.
“Hysteria!” Cayman, the second largest Hound, comparable to only the captain of the Hell squad himself, barked enthusiastically.
“Destruction!” Obie (short for Kacey O’Brian) joined in on the cheer.
“Pandemonium!” Mac: the curly-haired ginger with the flare for close-to-tasteless humor.
“Brutalidad!” Garcia: possibly the only Guatemalan ever to play the sport of ice hockey.
“Chaos!” Boner: nearly as sharp as a balloon smothered in Vaseline, only, not.
“I fuckin’ said that already, man!” Carl whacked the Hound next to him with the back of his hand and Boner whacked him back.
But the rumbling of Sally’s voice preparing to speak got both their attentions along with those of the rest of the men in line. Everyone turned their heads when sensing the small tremor that was Sally’s strength disturbing the soil. And when he spoke, his voice lingered in the air like a bad smell with his deep, powerful whisper of the word,
“…Terror……”
His enthusiasm was intimidating even among those who the word ‘timid’ could no longer apply, and Jean-Claude approached his goaltender, teammate, and friend with an inspired grin and a surprise for his old chum held behind his back.
“Sally la Terrible…” He put his free hand on Sally’s shoulder to experience his strength firsthand. “Sally la Sauvage…”
Sally’s body vibrated with power even without having ever taken a life to feed his own. The rule of this warped reality that now spilled over the city of L.A. was like an exaggerated example of “survival of the fittest”, where those with a unique and outstanding strength of character were met with a dark power to match. Jean-Claude was an example of this phenomenon in the sense that he was more powerful than the puppet-demons inhabiting the bodies of U.S. soldiers. As for someone like Sally…there was no telling where his strength would end. He shifted his eyes up without moving his head to meet Jean-Claude’s, who was four or five inches taller, and spoke one word at a time, struggling to keep some level of control over the explosive might he felt broiling inside.
“I…want…my…mask.”
He was referring to the goalie’s mask he’d become so accustomed to and that helped fuel his intimidation among even the boldest of players in the league.
Jean-Claude’s grin widened to reveal the gaps in his grill and he chuckled knowingly with a nod.
“Of course, mon amis…” He brought his hand from around his back and the infamous crimson-caged helmet with the snarling face of a black Rottweiler painted around it caught the eye of every dead-man that stood before them. “…I would no’ have it any other way.”
He handed the vicious goalie’s mask to his undead teammate and Sally looked it dead in its eyes. The black Rot’s blood-crazed stare sparked with a gleam of magic in Sally’s hands, and the crimson cage covering its front transformed in his grips to long, sharp teeth as if the mask had a mouth of its own. The rest of the men were surprised to see magik transpire before their eyes, but Sally looked as though he’d willed it to happen and expected nothing less. He slid the teethed mask over his heavily-haired cranium and slowly lifted his stare to beam at the world through his new veneer. All of his freshly undead teammates were impressed with Sally’s showmanship and display of mind-over-mater, but Comrie, the closest to him, was getting impatient and eager to get some feasting done.
“Yeah…the whole ‘monster mask’ thing is a great trick, Sal, but don’tcha think it’s time we find somethin’ around here to ki—”
Comrie’s final word was cut off by the act of his head being cut off by the blade of Sally’s goalie stick. He swung it so fast the rest of them wouldn’t have had a clue as to what happened if not for Sally still holding it to the side, blade parallel to the ground right over the Priest’s headless carcass which hadn’t yet hit the floor.
“My name…” Sally spoke while still holding his powerful decapitation pose, being sure everyone knew what his wrath incurred. “…is Sally. Not…Sal.”
All the Hounds’ players chuckled knowing what those of the Priests didn’t – Sally hated being called Sal.
“Go easy on the new kids, Sally. We’re all part of the same squad now.” Dev (short for Devon Donavan) spoke up impartially as he always had. He was the oldest Hound on the team, being 36 years old, and usually the most mature, as goes with the territory.
The enlarged, third-line centerman, Cayman, noticed Comrie’s corpse still hadn’t lost its posture, and he voiced his observation in the form of a question.
“Why am I still looking down this dude’s neck-hole? Is he gonna fall over sometime soon, or what?”
The Priests’ backup goaltender, the young Ian Orell, glanced back behind the erect body of his fellow teammate and caught a glimpse of his head set in the grave behind them. “Found his head! … And he’s…lookin’ at me…”
Dev looked around the Priest at his side to peer into the grave. “Holy shit… He’s alive.”
“Bullshit…” It wasn’t that Obie didn’t believe him, he was just surprised decapitation wouldn’t have finished him off.
“No bullshit. Look. He’s lookin’ right at me.” Orell pointed down at the head of his friend resting on his right ear, redirecting his eyes to see out of the ditch he’d fallen in.
Dev, Cayman, Orell and Obie all poked their noses over the grave to gawk at the living head before a few others showed up to partake in the spectacle – even Comrie’s own headless body turned around to pry. In the meantime, Sally had finally broken his pose and was wiping Comrie’s black slop from the edge of his stick on his jersey’s sleeve, showing little interest in the aftermath of his hack-attack.
“Oh shit…” Boner noticed Comrie’s lips moving and bent down further to listen. “…I think he’s tryin’ to tell us somethin’…” It looked like he was mouthing the words “a little help here” or something similar, but Boner couldn’t be sure.
Carl shook his head. “You’re not gonna be able to hear shit, dumbass, he doesn’t have any fucking lungs.”
“Yeah. Yeah…that’s right…” Boner decided he agreed with that deduction and voiced his support for its validity toward Comrie’s dome. “We can’t hear you, dumbass, you don’t got any fu
cking lungs!” He chuckled at the Priests’ predicament and looked over to the headless corpse standing beside him as if wanting it to share in his amusement. “Hey, do you think he can hear us?”
Carl thought it was a somewhat dimwitted question but decided to sarcastically play along. “I don’t know…” He put his hand up by his mouth. “Hey, dickless! Can you hear us?! …Blink twice.”
They all looked down to wait for Comrie’s reaction, and the head crunched up its brow in irritated disbelief and rolled its eyes.
“Did he just roll his eyes at me?”
“So, what do we do with him now?” Donny was curious to what came next, and as usual, Mac had a close to ludicrous idea to share in the name of foul humor.
“I say we find some roadkill, like a dog or somethin’, and sew its head on his body…”
“Dude…” Obie was getting a touch of déjà vu from Mac’s last great idea in the Priests’ locker room before they were all beaten to death by their newly self-appointed fearless leader. “What is it with you and roadkill?”
“Alright, fine… How ’bout we find a fat chick to decapitate and sew the roadkill’s head on her body instead?”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, it’d be great. Listen: that way we can put her head on his body, and his head on the dead dog’s, and they’d all have to hang out together since they’d still be in control of their own bones.” He was growing increasingly excited about this idea and displayed his enthusiasm with a wide-eyed grin.
Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell Page 36
