by Max Jager
"Everyone thinks I'm funny. I swear baby, you'll think I'm funny too." He grabbed her neck. It felt slender and limp in his grip. He reached for her. "Come on, fight like you did before. Fight like your friend did."
She swung. Her mouth could not fight a finger to bite, so she swung. She couldn't reach him, but she swung. Nothing mattered much but the swing. Even as he laughed, as he felt her and pushed her further from him. She swung.
And eventually, he fell.
Face first into the mud, nearly dragging the girl with him. He shook violently a bit, his eyes rolled up his skill. A police officer with his flashlight lit her face.
"Are you alright?" He said. He dragged her out of the alley and towards the street where he screamed at the club goers. "Nothing to see. You hear me?"
Another officer went to the direction they walked from with cuffs. She read the name tag of the man guiding her, Officer Palas.
"He's yours." Palas said.
He took her to the car and sat her and immediately began typing on his computer screen. He wrote some things, heard the radio and slowly began to turn it all off until there was silence.
"I had a call in about a girl causing trouble at the Laundromat, then I got another from an anonymous tip. Apparently, she was watching the scuffle from inside the club. But not out of mind, I guess. I put one and one together." He smiled. "Glad we found you when we did."
"Me too." She looked down and her depressed arms.
"You know what freaks are running around town at this hour. Why would you think of running around like you did?"
"I'm looking for a friend. Or at least learning what happened to him." He presented the photo in her hands and let it droop like her arms. He grabbed it. His eyes widened, she saw and fell back to the wheel as he handed it back.
"I've seen him in reports. You must be the girl I keep hearing about, the mule, they called you." He started the car. "You're the one they couldn't kick you out? The one screaming at all the officers a couple days back?"
"I'm not ashamed. I was just trying to figure out what happened to my friend." She lied. She felt her cheeks go red. He laughed then saw her and stilted his humor with a cough. They went off and followed the golden-yellow lines.
"You should really let the police handle investigations." He started off with his arm dangling out the window. "Some answers aren't worth finding out. The truth hurts, you know?"
"I can handle it." She said.
"It's rare to see someone as young as you act like you do. You really are a mule." He smiled. "And that's a good thing. It's good to be tough and to be stubborn. Even if it gets you into trouble."
He looked at her, the red light reflected off his eyes. The air felt cold. His smile did that veer off.
"But boy is it stupid huh? To do something like that in public." He said.
She could not move. She was held by a fear as she looked at him. She looked at the badge and the numbers, she looked to the name and the face that looked excitedly out towards the street. She saw ahead, she knew they were driving but she did not know where.
"Don't you need to know where I live?" She asked. Her breathing stopped and she felt her pocket for where the knife should have been. He confiscated it.
"Homesick all of a sudden?" The windows rolled up, he threw down his hat to her feet. His arms looked flexed and the streets were empty. "I thought you wanted to know what happened to your friend?"
12:28 AM
Darr
July 20th, 2017
12:28 AM
Darr found Ajax winding around the corner. He hung by the dumpster and raced to the door.
"I always find you in the trash. I'm beginning to think you have a fetish for it." Darr said. Ajax fixed himself and checked his cuffs for blood.
"That's new." Darr pointed to the red polka-dot tie Ajax wore. Ajax was grabbing his scalp. When he grew tired of scratching himself, he slapped at Darr's hand. Then the dashboard. It felt like a carnival game and Darr would have laughed if Ajax's face wasn't so terrified. He must have hit it five times and activated the air conditioner three before he calmed down.
"You alright?" Darr asked.
"Just shut up." Ajax said. He was rubbed his face on his sleeve and dropped the knife hiding under his coat onto the floor. It slid and stabbed through the carpet rug, it sounded like the tearing of a leaf or flower pedal.
"What's that?" Darr started the car, he was growing antsier and shook his head across the window to search for the police he expected to be close by.
"Two men killed themselves." Ajax said. "Worshipers, they made it clear."
"The cultists?"
"Yeah, something like that. They mentioned someone, Astrix or some shit."
"What does that mean? I thought they'd be you know, Satanists or something."
"Me too. I guess they have someone else in particular that they've staked their desires on. They seem pretty convinced of him too." Ajax said.
"I'd think so, they killed themselves, right?" Darr rolled to a corner of the street and began to push the tires into stress. The floor cried out with each sharp turn.
"Where do we go? What do we do?" Darr asked. He was driving into a frenzy. "We should get fingerprints right? Or something, blood samples?"
"Does it look like I have a forensic lab in my back pocket." Darr said. "Slow down before you add two more to the body count."
Darr stopped. There was a red above him, he felt his neck shake forward and hit the wheel. Drivers around them were sticking their middle fingers at them.
"You act too irrationally, just relax. We won't be catching them until they're ready to be caught." Ajax said.
"What does that mean, you're talking like a damn monk. Just say it straight." Darr said. He honked the horn at an old woman in front of him who was lazily taking a left.
"I mean to say. There's nothing we can do to find them, so we have to wait. And I don't think we'll be waiting long." Ajax said.
"That means we're giving them a chance to hurt someone. Or worse." Darr bit his lip.
"Yeah. And that's all we can do." Ajax let his shoulder fall and nestled his hands to the side of the seat. He sunk inside, his body looked like black ooze dripping to the floor.
"We can't just wait."
"Well, I am. I need to look up this Astrix guy, I need to redraw some maps. Re-evaluate some sources." Ajax let his head tilt.
"Well, I'm not. I'll go out, I'll investigate." Darr pulled over. Ajax stepped out onto the noiseless street, a trail of smoke was warping the air and filling his lungs with the taste of tire.
"If you find something, I know I can't trust you to not rush in," Ajax said. "But can you at least give me a call before you do. Can you do that?"
"Alright," Darr said. "Are you sure you don't know anywhere they could be?"
"Somewhere with as few people as possible. Abandoned places. Which considering the state of this ghost town, might be very hard to miss." Ajax said. "I don't expect much from you, but be careful."
"You're not very optimistic," Darr said. "Have a little faith, wouldn't you?"
He went off. They shared the brief moment of a hand wave, the cut carpet floundered on the floor and reminded Darr every few minutes of a certain dread. The day kept growing worse. And nightfall came, and he was empty and he bit his nails and shed off the fear from his quivering hands. It was like that for a while in the silence of his car. Until he felt the feeling on his arm. Something brief, a flicker of heat like a lighter gently fanned across his fore arm. He shifted to gear and dodged three red lights. His arm felt boiling, his face grew worse and when he felt the most unbearable pain he knew he had made it.
It wasn't a factory, it wasn't an apartment complex. It had the rotten words of wood at the front of the two halved door, Cosmic Sun News. He looked inside and broke into a stressed stance. A pipe fell ill with patina. The rusted color leeched into the water and the cats that hung around stared high-shouldered to the Veron coming in. Darr was holding his arm that coul
d barely make it to his pocket. The pipe was still rolling, still spreading until it died in the murmur of its echo.
The shadow of moonlight cast out on the front desk. There was an old printing press, for show, adjacent to the empty secretaries desk. The knocked over typed writers looked small next to the giant machinery and its elongated metal hands, like puppeteer hands and string. He looked down to the shadow cast, to the long stretched lines like harp strings, they played to the orchestra of this sad song.
The cats hissed. They ran.
"Angel of God, my guardian dear." Darr stepped over glass. It cracked like a pained chuckle. "To whom God's love commits me here."
He took out his phone and typed out the number.
"ever this day be at my side to light and guard." The phone rung. "To rule and guide."
A rat walked under his feet, pale and dull. It looked up with a squeak and shook its nose to Darr. It watched him, stared and did not change its intense gaze.
"Amen." Darr said. He felt his hips and felt his guns for this lonely home felt of burial grounds, and smelled of death.
12:43 AM
Sophie
July 20th, 2017
12:43 AM
The first thing Sophie felt was the feeling of some rough blanket all around, like webbing. Then the cloth lodged in her to keep her quiet. It made her gag, it tasted of gasoline and salt. Drenched in her sweat, a suffocating feeling that sucked into her mouth and left her gasping. Gasping that made her choke. Choking that made her struggle. She looked like a silkworm in its cocoon as she wriggled to and fro in the back seat of the police car. Rope bit into her legs and arms. She could not see behind her, only felt that they were going over rough terrain and jumping and dragging something below the tires. Metal, a sheet, cardboard.
"Fuck" She tried to say. Her mouth coughed more than spoke. The car came to a stop and she rolled onto the floor and hit her head. It was a sharp bumpy pain across her chest and her head like jumper cables had been latched onto her face. It made her mad, much more than fear, she wanted to bust someone's skull open.
The laughing outside only made it worse. She tried standing but couldn't and when she nearly made it to her knees, she heard the door open. Never had she roared that loud before that her own lungs would break into pieces, like needles prodding her insides. She wagged her legs around. The rope was cutting deeper into her.
"Get off me." She said between the fits. She didn't know why she wasn't afraid. It was a surprise to her but hearing the laughing people, feeling her body dragged, it all frustrated her. Dust was rising, she could tell and she being dragged across the floor. It left her cloth brown and blackened her vision. Upstairs, she hit her legs across the sharp angled steps. There was loose wiring and wandering light bulbs that exploded underneath the footsteps of her kidnappers. She wasn't even grabbed by her body, they were lugging the sack around like a confused Santa Claus, a gift giver possessed. They threw her. She landed on, something. She couldn't tell what it was. A desk, the floor, she could feel something rough though, like splinters. It must have been wood, old wood. It was heavier than the cheap furniture they sold at the furniture stores, this was older. It felt it.
Sophie bit into her sack as the people wandered about, going in and out of the room with pacing steps. She ripped a hole open, swallowed the cloth and spat it out onto the floor. Her nose was out first. She was glad about that. The air was better outside, even if it was dank and dirty like wet dirt rubbed across her nostrils. Everything smelled of mold, asbestos, it wasn't just the desk that was old she figured. She lowered her head and peered her eyes. She wanted to take a good look at the monsters in the dusk. They looked human. Only looked. They spoke English, they breathed and were upright. Their mannerisms, their poses, human. She was almost deceived. But the laugh. The stuttering, dragging laugh was anything but of someone sane.
Hyenas, madmen.
She looked up to the grimly dressed figures, more so shadows in the light of the moonlight that seeped through broken windows. She tried to figure them out, they were wearing suits and above their noses, all across their foreheads and their eyes was a white cloth. Like guests at a ball, confused and blinded by handkerchiefs. She didn't want to look any longer or to their purple iris flowers pinned on their chests. She took a deep breath, they caught her. All three veiled eyes in the room looked back. She spat at them through the small hole, it hit one on their leather shoes. The person smiled, then ignored her.
"Was there supposed to be another one? Who's this extra girl?" One of them said. He had a birthmark on his neck.
"No. We already had what we needed but I can't imagine she would hurt." A woman spoke, her lips were yellow. A man nodded next to her, he had fat on his chin that shook with him, like a prideful turkey with its hanging neck.
"Do you think Mr. Aleistar will be happy?" The woman was more desperate, giddier in her speech. She lept over five panels of the ceiling, nearly dancing across the broken floor and through the door. They weren't just dressed for the ball party, they acted the part too. Cordial, terrifying dancers, drunk on the feeling of their faith. It felt like a funeral for her. She spit again. It hit no one. She felt her face go red and she wriggled, she slapped the desk and rolled down to the floor. Her left side hurt, but she smiled when it finally brought one of them close to her.
"You're just so obnoxious, aren't you? A young girl should be a polite girl." A man screamed. Sophie said nothing, only stared through the hole in the sack with the single eye. She laid on the dirty floor, she felt the broken tile, she felt the glass and stayed quiet. As the man dragged her feet, she stayed quiet. As the glass below her ripped her sack, she was quiet. Though bleeding, though angry. She was of mind enough to find a glass shard across the floor, and she was of mind to take it.
For she would need, wherever she was going. She worked on the rope on her arms and listened to the scurrying footsteps. The paths confused her through the loud halls, there were faint voices, like ghosts in the walls. The stairs hurt her body with bump, but she would be ready. Arms being freed slowly, she convinced herself that these people, if anyone, deserved to be hurt most.
She came to a stop. She heard four sets shoes clank, a unified tap dance. The blare of a voice burst through the corners of the walls, it was filled with static and was coarse against her ears.
"The hunters are here." The deep baritone voice said. "Do your business and do it quick, we need to prepare the dogs for them."
The whispered to themselves, they split. And with one twist of her glass blade, she felt her bonds break.
12:56 AM
Ajax
July 20th, 2017
12:56 AM
It was the good, old call of the fight. He found it rumbling in his pants, the bold letters that read 'Last Call: Darr, 12:45 AM'. He never picked it up, though he knew what it meant and looking at his desk he knew it would happen again, tonight. Another sacrifice perhaps, someone's death though he did not know whose. His mask was already laid out before him, his notes had been put to the side, the ceremonial dagger laid on the kitchen counter, sneering at him. His own sword, massive as it was, spilled quietly, chipped pieces of steel. He did not know how to fix it, the edge looked like an uneven set of toddler's teeth. Ajax nodded, it would do. He hid it in his coat, like a rabbit in the hat and strapped the mask to his face.
Hopefully, we'll catch him today.
He thought. His mouth salivated, his heartbeat. He tried swallowing his spit but he felt his throat stop like he had been punched in the neck.
I don't think we will, though.
He galloped along the buildings, his neck was bent over to the bottom as he looked at the street signs that read the small street. When he stopped reading signs, when the streetlights no longer existed and the road seemed like some shambled thing, he realized he was not safe. They were all empty, the homes and the apartment and the warehouses with their giant pipes that rotted and collapsed onto themselves. He could hear the rats scurry inside the smal
l holes. He dropped down the side of the building and ripped through fence link before he was at the spot. The sprawling, worn News Paper press.
"Where are you?" He was talking to his phone.
"I'm almost onto the third floor." Darr said.
"Wait there," Ajax said.
He went through the building and went over the small things laying about. The plastic pots of died trees laid on their side, the dirt was blended so well with the floor it was hard to see where it had spilled. But the flowers were there, their heads low and limp. Ajax stepped to the overgrown stairs laying on one side. There was cement collapsed into it, the stairs were blocked. He went the opposite end, looked at the machinery and was almost tempted to stick his hand and fiddle with it out of a curiosity. But there were worse things about, he went up a floor and met Darr half way who was running back, his guns drawn.
