by Max Jager
"If you can't do your job then I'll gag her." He said.
"Why? Why not just send her off? We can do it quick" Another said. His voice was firm, booming. A natural orator. The mayor perhaps? Commissioner? What little importance, the sin was just as grave for either.
"Fuck you." Aleistar screamed. "I need to keep her quiet."
"You can't keep the dead silent." Sophie shouted. Aleistar reached for where he thought her neck would be but could not figure, he grabbed a nose instead, a head that kept slipping from his grip. He pulled her. She wrestled him. His mask fell off again. His hair broke. Chaos, a tussle between the weak old man and the young girl. Lunge. Punch. Headache. Pain, slow, pain. Sharp.
He finally took the sack from her. He hesitated. A young girl, just a young girl. His eyes narrowed. Her fierce expression changed his consternation. She had their eyes, the hunters eyes, though human. She had that resolve or seeming resolve.
"No one forgets. The world doesn't, you'll see." She said. "You'll face judgment, everyone does."
His heart raced with that same worry and he reached for her mouth to shut it. The rope from her arms now dangled from her, the other eight stared in that Mexican standoff, unsure if he could handle such an unruly child.
He got close, inches. He felt her bitter breath down his wrist like the hot knife. Up his sleeves, nothing hid.
She shouted. She revealed the glass knife. She cut him. The world shook.
The ground, the table, the bones, and candles all went dead and the room was filled with a renewed darkness that swallowed them instantly. It was a pop, a large jump that made them all fall. All furniture was pushed outward like an ocean wave had just washed them out and away. They rubbed their heads, all nine and looked around. The girl was gone. The door was rattling violently from its broken hinges like saloon doors. She was gone.
"I'll go catch her." Aleistar rubbed his scalp.
"What was that explosion?" One of them said. Another looked outside, put his hands on the bars and faced down. The whole second floor was erupting with flames from the windows with the fury of Vulcan's furnace. Something was being worked, they all heard the noises of steel and of flesh and of mighty shouts.
"Don't worry about it." Aleistar said. "Just get out, any way you can. There are plenty of escapes, you know them."
"And what if we can't?" A young woman said.
"Then you do whatever you can to preserve our security." His eyes looked cold in the darkness. "Anything."
One of them raised his head and stepped forward
"Paradise waits for us. Why worry for any temporary suffering?" He reasoned.
"That's right." Aleistar said. He rubbed his nose, blood was leaking. He walked up shaky like a pyramid of cards desperately trying to rebuild itself. The parts would not click. He fell, shattered. His face landed down, towards the cup and he felt it in his hand. Goblet in hand, he composed himself, his courage was with him. He felt it, a guardian devil over his shoulders. He walked out the door. On one end were the sounds of violence, of hounds and man. On the other, nubile footsteps. He retracted a knife from his belt and went to work.
1:16 AM
Darr
July 20th, 2017
1:16 AM
Darr heard his gun drop before he felt the bite on his shoulder like a bear trap had been clapped on the bone hinges of his arms and left there, to bleed him and to drain him and to leave him weak on one side. A bullet shot off as the gun landed on the floor. It made a hole through three walls, through pipe and concrete that spilled dirty water all over the floor. Darr pointed his other gun towards himself. He screamed, he aimed it at his shoulder and felt the beast fly off. Chunks of his body went with it. It did not die. It shook its wide, misshapen head, like a giant fan those Egyptian kings and queens used to satisfy themselves in heat.
Darr could feel the air it blew, the smell of its rotten skin and then heard it growl. His arm was teetering. He could not move it.
He shot at air, the smoke and the sound filled his ears with buzzing and made his nose stuffy. He turned his head to see where the creature ran as it dodged. It bounced around, it blended in with the darkness of the room and when he finally got a sight. He pulled. Click. Nothing, his gun was empty. From a distance, he could see the creature growling, four yellow eyes facing back. It looked like a piece of the darkness, a cancer that grew out from the corner of the room it hid in. It was facing him, he could see it and the intense expression on its face like Lucifer's wrath.
It did not let go of its gaze. It kept its lock on him. Darr looked down, he searched for the other gun that had slid away a while back and now he was searching the floor for nothing. A piece of wood. Darr's face tightened. His legs locked, his knees were bent. He could feel cold from his legs to his thighs as if he had been submerged in the ice-topped waters of the arctics. And the mass had broken. He was sinking. His body felt colder.
The dog lunged. The air whistled as its sharp face headed towards Darr. A torpedo, a giant nuclear warhead dedicated to Darr's complete annihilation. Slobber, hunger all over the dusty air. Dust shot out, it painted the windows brown.
"Ass. Down." Ajax shouted.
Darr ducked. It was easy, his broken shoulder was already weighing him down. His whole body fell ragdoll like a puppet cut from its strings, he just laid there. He saw the giant sword in the air, spinning, like helicopter blades. He saw it hit the dog and go further out. Go through one wall, two, before landing in a hall, have submerged into the asbestos and the cheap wood. It exploded. A torrent of fire ran out.
Darr could see it, go through the ceiling and the pipes. It looked like an engine exhaust, the way the flames flew out from the holes like clarinets filled with glycerin and brimstone. They made no beautiful music though, Darr covered his ears. It was nothing but crashing and violence and the explosion of metal and the ricochet of that metal. The shock wave made him deaf.
When his eyes woke up he looked to where the blade had been shot. Ajax was coming up. Both his arms were in rags, of skin and of suit. He was going through the holes and now shot out smoke. He disappeared in that darkness, his outline becoming a deeper shadow in the pillars of smog. The fires were just beginning to grow. And from one of the mighty torrents, from one of the waves and licks of the fire wisps, Darr saw a philosophers stone thrown out. It broke off and Darr eyed it. He ate and when all limps and weapons were accounted for, he ran through the fire. It felt like a carnival game, the burning ring. He wished it was just a ring. But every inch of the second floor seemed about to be swallowed. Glass broke from a distance, the floor was holed up and he walked on thin planks. It felt like an ocean vessel, tipping and cradling a wound that had destined it to sink.
"Where's the other dog?" Darr's eyes skidded. His posture became low, again.
"Who knows. We really can't go back now" Ajax said. "This place is going to collapse."
"Then let it, we're demon hunters, not construction workers. Let's go hunt." Darr said. He ran to the stairs where the fire had not reached.
"Take it easy. I'm sure he'll be up there, with his master. They'll all get theirs. Trust me." Ajax said. Darr eased. He coughed a bit.
"The Priest won't like any of this." He said.
"Fuck the Priest. We're not here for him." Ajax said.
"You're right. You're right..." Darr's eyes came up to the third floor, small clouds of black smoke were finding their way through the broken windows of this particular floor.
"I want them, to let the people sleep easy for one night. If I can at least do that, everything would be worth it." Darr said.
"I just want to get the fuck out of here already. The sooner the better." Ajax said.
They surveyed the land. They pressed their ears against the walls, they could hear the fire eating away at everything. But Darr heard something else. Coughs, choking. And he smiled.
"They're like bees." Darr said. "A whole lot of fuss until you smoke them out."
Ajax scoffed. They put their wrists
to their mouths and walked.
1:21 AM
Sophie
July 20th, 2017
1:21 AM
It was a long struggle Sophie put up before she came to the spot of her death. Though she did not know it yet.
For at the moment all she knew was the sharp pain in her lungs from cold air. It transformed, it went to her lower body from a stiffness of her ankles and difficult twist as she came around a corner. She fell. The glass knife in her hand cut her palm. She switched hands, rubbed her ruined skin on her garments and wrapped it with a piece of her sleeve. So much of her body ached, it felt pricked and prodded as if returning from duress in an iron maiden.
"Where are you girl?" She heard in the distance. An echo of an echo, her body slow and steady as it came up. Her bruised knees were made to shiver and she looked side to side. Half the wall was ripped and laid to ruin to her right. On her left was a small hole in the wall, she ran into it. A toilet blackened with the years lay on its side. Its contents spilled, tar or coffee looking fluid that smelled of something septic. She crawled away from it. In front of her, there was another door or the door frame at least. There was nothing there really, just a small stake on the side of the wall. There were stalls and there were sinks. And she ran past them all.
"Come back sweetheart, I need you." She could hear him. Closer now, a voice that boomed and seeped its way through every nook and cranny. She swore she heard something else, a bloodhound. Tender steps of something tactile slapping away at the floor. She came to the cafeteria, it was down the hall from the bathroom. Some tables were still there and the plastic bright blue colored chairs were there too. They fell into clutter and she held her breath for fear. Sophie looked back to the halls. She couldn't bear the thought of watching him come through the hallway. She ran for the kitchen. There was a bar of sorts, a serving station that separated the two areas and she hid behind, where the rusted metal ovens now slept.
She passed her hand past a handle. She jumped.
The oven door opened and the pilot light rolled out. She could hear her heartbeat, felt it too, in giant pulses through her veins.
He was coming. Running, screaming inside. She raised her blond head and saw through the broken glass of the food concession stand. It was empty, most of the kitchen was stripped. There was a hose, like a snake, dangling from the wall. A few pots laid about.
"It won't hurt." Aleistar screamed. "I won't hurt you, I promise. I'm just going to slit that tender throat of yours." His hair was wild. His face, a blustering mess of grunts and deep breaths.
Sophie held her mouth again. She begged her body to hush. Past him, past the madman, she saw the dog. The dumb faced lazy legged dog. Wide and grinning, slobbering over the floor and biting the concrete floor into granite. The mass of tendril-like hairs and darkness. It was tasting for her footsteps. Her body felt torn, tackled in two directions. To fall, to run. A seizure of her heart.
She stepped over the pilot light. Oh, how she cursed, fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe they hadn't seen it? They turned. They knew it, though they could barely see her form and the fear shot into her skull, two wide, white bullets where her eyes should have been, they knew it.
She ran for it. The metal sounded off like a barrage, like a coming army onto the fielding. Canon fire, the screams of the dead and dying.
She ran to the exit. Ran past the leaking restrooms and the despondent libraries and the offices of writers and of editors and past the ocean of desks now breathing dust into the air.
She ran to a window. Thought to jump, saw the smoke and the flames and thought otherwise. Fine then, up further, up as high as the sky. She ran. The stairs nearly fell on her but she ran anyway past the shattering floor and its shifty steps. The rubbled she shot down sounded off like a rolling rock down the great temples and mountains.
The fire exit lay ahead. She pressed her body. Screamed.
"Open." She yelled. The doors budged, the moonlight came in and her vision blurred. She fell and crawled a bit before her vision of twos cleared, zeroed in.
Aleistar was there. All the loose robes and gowns on him pushed west. He looked like the dying sail of a sinking mast, the ship sunk. Her heart sank. She looked back. She could see four yellow eyes in the now obscure darkness. She didn't know how she managed to run through the nothingness, she didn't realize how bright the night was.
"It didn't have to be you." Aleistar said. "You were just the one most convenient to us."
She punched the floor.
"You shouldn't have snooped. You should have just let things go. Don't blame me for this." Half anger, half morose. Aleistar's voice died and inflected with the confliction.
"Your murderer." She said underneath her breath. Aleistar leaned in.
"Wh-what was that?" His hands shook.
"You murdering son of a bitch." She repeated. Her nose dripped, her eye lids felt hot as if a hot ring was pressed against both sockets.
"I do what I do for who I love." He said. He was screaming at the sky. "This isn't the end. Trust me."
"Shut up you liar. Shut up, shut up, shut up." She stood.
"There's more past this, you little parasite. And it's more than you deserve." His mind was made up. His guilt and his fear shook off, Aleistar gripped his knife.
Sophie gripped her own. Glass, just a piece. She felt the weight in her hand and repeated as she had done on the school grounds, with the other bullies. With Pip.
She cocked her shoulder back, she brought her arm down and with one final throw, chucked it at him. The knife cut Aleistar across the cheek. She cut the sympathy from his heart.
"Where are you looking at?" She asked. "You freak."
He touched the line of blood. His blood must have been glycerin, gasoline, something explosive because his face was red. His head, shaking and on brink of exploding.
"You ruined my face, you bitch." He said. He came to her. And she stood still, proud for a moment, that she was not begging. Not in fear, and only just beginning to cry.
She felt the knife run through her. A warmth came to her that spread across her body. A strong sting spread across her belly. The air made it worse. She put her hands up, they fell limp after a while though she did not know why. Her brain and body struggled, split. She wanted to talk, couldn't. She wanted to move, but her limbs refused. The struggle ended after a while and she fell, face first. But it didn't hurt. Nothing much hurt. She tried moving her face, nothing. She was becoming a statue, a museum piece locked into some stubborn pose. It was all guesswork after that, to see what moved and what didn't. A toe, fingers. That didn't last long.
And she went stiff.
And the burden of life seemed cut from her. The bark and the fire, the moaning and the screaming. Faded. Color faded. Of all things to last longest, she was glad it was her memories and her imagination and her dreams and her feelings.
The grainy film of memories in her head didn't know where to go or stop. So she thought of her mother and grandfather. That kept them focused and she was happy. And she was frustrated. A little worried and very sad.
Sad, but relieved, that she was cold now, cold and calm.
1:30 AM
Ajax
July 20th, 2017
1:30 AM
"You're surprisingly calm." Ajax said.
"Well, we're working, aren't we? I've already messed up enough to know what it feels like to get burned." Darr came around the corner, barrels pointed to the hallway.
Ajax turned as well, finger pointed to his lips. They both stood on opposite walls, ears to the walls. They could hear breathing. The house was alive. They opened the first door and looked around the room so dense with darkness and mold that breathing felt difficult, it was the dusty wreckage of the years harassing him.
"What're we doing here?" Darr asked. "The fire is rising."
Ajax hushed him again. They both looked around the room and the curtains that wafted lazily, they hung by one metal ring and dragged across the floor. Ajax watched them again, e
yed them, and the contours they made. He came up to them and they breathed out. It was a quiet voice, like a mouse, an auxiliary creeping. He dragged the curtains out and watched them fly towards the hallway centerfold. A man was behind it, his suit ruined, he was on the floor with both arms to his face.
"Look at what we found." Ajax said.
"Oh, you're in trouble." Darr rubbed his chin.
"Don't you dare, I'm being watched over. He'll punish you."
"Who will?" Ajax laughed.
