The Man on Little Sweden

by Sam Harding

  He pulled his hood back and unwound the scarf from his face. He hung the scarf from a hook on the door and then hung his coat neatly over the scarf. Reaching into the coat’s pocket, he removed the blood-soaked knife that he’d used to kill the old man nearly an hour earlier. The sticky blade gave him a jolt of excitement, the kind of jolt he could only get from doing what he was meant to do. What God had sent him to do.

  “For Glory,” he said aloud to himself, studying the crimson blade.

  After removing his boots, he strode across the living room almost with a dancer’s grace. He didn’t have many obstacles to avoid to get to the kitchen, just a worn leather recliner in front of an old TV against the wall, and that was pretty much what made up his living room. He had no photos hanging from his wall, his only true decoration was a large wooden crucifix on the wall opposite the TV near a window overlooking his tiny backyard.

  Once in the kitchen, he held the blade of his knife under the sink until the warm water had cleansed the blade of the old man’s blood. He dried the blade with a rag hanging from the oven door and was very careful not to leave a drop of water on the razor-sharp blade in order to avoid rust or corrosion. Once the task was complete, he gently placed the knife on the counter next to the sink and abruptly left the kitchen.

  For him, entering his bedroom was always a relief. What the living room lacked as far as imagination and design, he’d thoroughly made up for behind the privacy of his bedroom door. It was the room in which he could truly become himself, where he felt safe from the evil forces of the outside world. His living room and kitchen had to look “normal.” Any attention from the outside world could jeopardize his mission and forgo his place in heaven next to God. But his bedroom was safe. Here, in the small space, cast in the orange glow of candlelight, his walls were entirely covered with paintings. Copies of paintings dating back as far as the renaissance, depicting the battles of angels and demons, God and Satan, good versus evil. A glass display case against one of the walls showed off a variety of weapons ranging from broadswords to battle axes. Nearly each of the weapons in the case had been cleansed in his kitchen sink at one time or another.

  Closing the bedroom door behind him, the man slowly began to disrobe. Godliness was orderliness, and so, as with everything he did, he undressed systematically. His shirt came first, revealing a skinny torso covered entirely of jagged scars and religious tattoos. To the Demon Slayer, the scars were individual pieces of art; reminders of the pain and suffering he had gone through, just as Christ had done so many years before. The tattoos were mostly copies of the paintings on his walls, a mural of battle between darkness and light enshrouded in a web of scars.

  Next, he removed his pants and his underwear. As was his upper body, his legs were also a mural of ink and scars, but that wasn’t all that separated him from most people. When he was a little boy, his mother had forced him to go about his day with a clothespin clipped firmly to the base of his penis. The idea, although painful, was to ensure her son’s body wouldn’t properly respond to any of his unclean thoughts. The damming of his penis’s blood flow had seen to his healthy avoidance of unclean women and thoughts, and so, he continued to wear the clothespin. The path to hell was paved with unclean thoughts, and he was not going to let something like the temptations of the flesh lead him down that path.

  Now, fully naked, the Demon Slayer moved to his dresser against the wall and opened the top drawer. Seated amongst his neatly organized clean socks was a device many had taken to calling, the cat o’ nine tails. The Demon Slayer was very familiar with this device; the multi-tailed whip had served its purpose on multiple occasions. Today, it would do the same.

  The Demon Slayer gripped the whip’s handle in his right hand and removed it from the dresser. He stepped back in the middle of his bedroom, just at the foot of his bed and straightened his posture. His knuckles whitened around the whip’s grip and he could feel the leather straps of the nine tails tickling his naked thigh.

  “I give myself to Thee,” he said in a whisper, violently raising his right hand across his body and slinging the whip across his left shoulder. There was a sickening smack as the leather contacted his skin. He nearly fell to his knees, but he forced himself to remain standing and didn’t dare cry out in pain as fresh welts appeared over the tops of ink and scars.

  “I am Your instrument. I am Your warrior.” He hit himself again, this time even harder than before. His fresh welts split into cuts and blood began tricking its way down his back.

  “I repent my sins. My thoughts and my actions are my own. I ask for Your forgiveness. I give myself unto Thee.” Again, he struck himself with the whip. This time, the blow was so hard he couldn’t help but drop to the ground. The blood poured more freely now, but still, he stood back up to continue his ritual.

  He was about to go into his next verse, when a knock on his front door stopped him cold. The knock was void of the pattern he keenly listened for, and he thought perhaps it was a neighbor that would go away, or a mailman merely knocking to announce the arrival of a package. The Demon Slayer waited nearly a minute and was about to continue when another knock boomed through the trailer.

  The Demon Slayer closed his eyes and released a long, tired sigh. He understood what this meant. As much as it displeased God, he would now have to continue his ritual later, from the beginning. With a heavy heart, he gently placed the nine-tailed whip back into his sock drawer and slowly redressed.

  He put his underwear and pants on first, and then his shirt. Putting the shirt on, however, was an incredibly slow and painful process. Halfway into it, the knock on his door came again, this time even louder than the first two knocks, and the Demon Slayer felt himself growing angry. Once his shirt was on, he opened his bedroom door and stormed into the hallway with an angry stride.

  When he reached the front door, he ignored his baser instincts of wanting to throw the door open to confront the interloper and stopped just long enough to get a look through the peephole. In a split second, his breath caught in his chest and his anger evaporated like water in the summer sun.

  Standing on his front porch was a beautiful blonde with pigtails and a button nose. She wore a knit cap tight over her head and a thick snowsuit covered a body the demon slayer knew he shouldn’t think about. He felt slight pressure around the clothespin, a reminder from his mother that he ought to behave himself.

  He reached for the doorknob, and then paused. For a moment, he couldn’t think of a reason for her to be standing on his front porch, and then it hit him. They had a date today, and he’d totally forgotten.

  “No,” he whispered to himself. “No -- how could I have forgotten?” But he knew the answer to his own question. He was doing God’s work in killing the old demon in the park. It was understandable that he place that over needs of the heart.

  Killing demons was all that truly mattered. But, didn’t it also matter that he’d finally found a soul amongst the demons? Because the woman standing on his front porch wasn’t a demon at all, but an angel sent from God. The only problem was that she had yet to find that out for herself.

  Someday, the Demon Slayer said to himself. Someday I will show her what my mission from God is. I will show her, her true purpose in this world, and together we will be unstoppable in the fight against evil. Another knock on the door brought him from his thoughts and he quickly opened the door, afraid she would give up after her last attempt at reaching him.

  For a precious few seconds, she only looked at him, clearly confused as to why he’d taken so long to come to the door. And then, a smile came to her face and she giggled. “You totally forgot.”

  The Demon Slayer blushed. He wanted to lie, but he knew he could not. “I’m so sorry, Mary. I got distracted with my work.”

  “Your art?” She asked, standing on her tiptoes in hopes of catching a painting in progress.

  “Yes, my art,” he replied, not really counting the statement as a lie. Although he did not paint, as she thought he did, h
e did consider what he did in the name of God as a form of art. “But, I am done for the day.”

  “I like your haircut,” Mary said.

  The demon slayer put a hand to his short black hair and blushed again. “Really?”

  “Really, really.” She smiled again. “Are you ready to go?”

  The demon slayer leaned behind the door and grabbed his coat and scarf from the hook. “I am now.”

  Mary held out a gloved hand. “Good, because I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” the Demon Slayer said, taking Mary’s hand into his own. Again, he felt pressure in the area of the clothespin. Mary was clean, but nonetheless, one wrong move could change all of that for both of them. The clothespin was important.

  She put her head on his shoulder as they descended the icy steps of his front porch and onto the shoveled walkway. “I’m glad we could do this today, David.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Shit Hits the Fan

  I decide to drive home from the diner before taking a trip up the mountain. I know Dr. Shultz is expecting me, but he hasn’t left his home since his son’s death, so I think he can wait just a little longer for me to do what I need to do. I hit a little black ice as I break on the highway, sliding my Bronco a couple of feet before turning onto the side road that feeds into the forest. My driveway is about a half mile in on the left, my property virtually invisible thanks to the wall of frosted evergreens surrounding the place.

  Fear is what drives me now. I’ve been afraid ever since the Christmas Eve Butcher came to my home three years ago, but now I’m really afraid. I just agreed to hunt him again – to poke the bear in hopes that this time I actually catch him. Or better yet, kill him. This thought brings me some satisfaction, a glimmer of hope in my fog of anxiety and permanent rage. That thought is what brings me home.

  I pull in front of my house and put the Bronco in park without killing the engine. I hop out and head to my front door. It takes a second to fumble with the three locks but once that’s out of the way, I enter the house and head straight for the bedroom.

  Although there is a firearm in virtually every room of my home, the one I’m looking for now happens to be tucked away in my bedroom closet. From north end to south end of my house, there are AR-15s, 12-gauge shotguns, and a variety of pistols ranging from 9mm to .45 caliber in hidden areas, strategically placed so that if someone uninvited kicks in my door, I’ll be ready to fight back no matter where I am inside the house. They say a home is a man’s fortress, and I take that mantra seriously.

  Once in my closet, I turn on the overhead light and push a bunch of clothing aside on their hangers revealing a gun-safe built into the wall. I kneel down in front of the metal green box and punch in the code, when the lock lights up green, I open the vault-like door. There are two weapons in the safe amongst piles of boxed ammunition of all sizes and calibers. One of the weapons is a black Savage .270 bolt action hunting rifle my mother had passed down to me from my grandfather. The second weapon is a DS Arms SA58 FAL Rifle. It’s the new and improved version of the legendary battle rifle made by FN Herstal that had been used all over the world, most notably in the bloody African bush wars. The new DS Arms version is still chambered in the powerful 7.62 x 51 round just as its predecessor is, but has an thirteen-inch barrel, an extendable folding buttstock, and a Picatinny rail system – and those are just a few of the new features.

  I pull the FAL from the safe by the stubby Magpul fore grip on the bottom rail and look down the ELCAN combat scope mounted on the top rail of the weapon. Once satisfied the optic is in working order, I cant the weapon to the right at a 45-degree angle so that I can check the canted red dot optic mounted to the left of the ELCAN scope. Again, satisfied my optics are working, I then check the function of the Streamlight flashlight mounted on the rifle’s left rail. A pressure switch under my right thumb activates the light, casting my closet in a blinding 1200-Lumen glow. I put a loaded 20 round magazine into the rifle and rack the charging handle, seating a round into the chamber. I grab three more loaded magazines and set them along with the rifle on my bed outside the closet.

  Maybe I’m being paranoid, I think to myself as I look at the rifle on top of the bed. I’m gearing up to go to war, and yet my mission is only against one man. But that one man has already beaten you, hasn’t he? I close my eyes and take a deep breath, the image of Thomas’s innocent face floods my thoughts. No, I’m definitely not being paranoid. I’m just preparing for when shit hits the fan – and if history even comes close to repeating itself, shit will hit the fan. Only this time, it won’t be me who loses.

  I can’t lose. Thomas is counting on me to win.

  “You will win,” Dani says as I go back into the closet to get the rest of what I need from the safe.

  I stop moving for a second, but don’t dare look in the direction her voice is coming from. Every time I do, she disappears and I don’t hear from her again for a while. “I know,” I reply, grabbing two Kydex magazine pouches for my VP9. I clip them to my belt on my right hip and then insert two pistol magazines loaded with 9mm hollow point rounds into the pouches. “I have to.”

  “None of this is your fault,” she says, her voice seeming to echo through the bedroom.

  “Then why do you tell me otherwise in my dreams?” I ask, grabbing my black molle Safariland tactical vest from the shelf above my hanging clothes. It’s the vest I’d worn when I was working on patrol a few years back. The bulletproof inserts in the vest are rated up to .45 caliber rounds, but it wouldn’t hold up against a rifle. It’s got extra magazine pouches for a single rifle magazine, three pistol magazines, a radio pouch, and a handcuff case.

  “You need to forgive yourself,” Dani says.

  “I can’t,” I say, grabbing the loaded magazines I need from the safe and then placing them where they belong in the pouches on the vest. The handcuff pouch is already filled with a set of Smith & Wesson hinge cuffs, so I don’t need to worry about that.

  “Thomas doesn’t hate you.”

  “I’m afraid he will.”

  “Because of what happened?”

  “Because I couldn’t protect you.” I leave the closet and go back into the bedroom, not daring to look at Dani.

  “This isn’t your fault,” she says again in her soft, soothing voice.

  I put the vest on the bed next to the rifle and turn to face the bedroom door, taking the risk I know will not go in my favor. As always, I only catch a glimpse of my dead wife before she disappears into nothingness. No matter how hard I try, I never see her face before she vanishes, and that alone kills me a little bit more every single time.

  I realize I’m either talking to a ghost or to my own self as I slowly lose my grip on reality – but I don’t care. Dani doesn’t come to me often, so when she does, I make sure not to ignore her. The first time she came to me, I curled up into a ball and cried the entire time. Afterwards, I was so afraid she’d never come back that I promised myself I’d never act like a little bitch in those circumstances again. Thankfully, she’d returned since then. But it’s never for long, only long enough to give a few encouraging words, but never long enough for a proper conversation.

  My eyes suddenly fill with tears and I nearly lose control of myself for a moment. I take a deep breath, fighting the urge to break down. I sniff hard in a failing attempt to keep my nose from running and wipe my face with the sleeve of my plaid shirt.

  Get your shit together, I tell myself. You’re about to go see a client. A very rich fucking client. Act like a professional, dammit.

  I force myself to stand up straight and get my breathing under control. I push my combed hair back and run my hand along my beard to make sure no stray strands are sticking out. I then look down at myself, assessing my attire from my brown Rocky boots, my dark blue jeans, and my red plaid over-shirt atop a gray t-shirt. This is a typical choice of clothes for me, which, like my hair and physique, feel like a barrier to keep the real me hidden inside.

  As satis
fied as someone like me can be, I lock my gun safe back up, grab my gear, and head back out to my Bronco. I put the vest on the floor behind the front seats and stow the rifle in a custom-made rifle rack built into the backrest of the front passenger seat. The design is so that if I need to while driving, I can simply reach back and snag the rifle as quickly as possible to defend myself. Considering the FAL only had a thirteen-inch barrel and a folding stock, it made for a perfect car gun.

  I return to the house to lock it up and then climb back behind the wheel of the Bronco. Out of habit, I glance in the rearview mirror, hoping maybe I’ll catch a quick glimpse of Dani, but she’s not there.

  Somehow though, I know she’s always with me, even if I can’t always see her. I just hope she’s okay with what I plan on doing once I find the man who took her from my life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mary

  DAVID.

  He couldn’t help but smile at that. Not many people in his life had called him by his actual name. Growing up people at school had given him plenty of names, but his real name usually wasn’t amongst the ones used. Between the bullies and those who just never got to know him well enough to actually learn his name, David had spent the majority of his life as an outcast, a ghost.

  Mary was different. She held his hand as they walked the frozen streets, and as far as David could tell, she was happy to do it. She smiled at him, laughed with him – not at him – and always made sure to ask if he was doing okay. Nobody ever cared to ask if he was doing okay. On top of that, she was virtually without sin. David’s job in this world was to cast it of its demons and sinners, but Mary was not among them. She was clean, and pure, and full of life that could only come from God Himself. David knew if he was to have a queen by his side during his fight for good, that Mary would be that queen.