by Max Jager
"Astrix. The king, he knows and his eyes are everywhere. His form everywhere, he is the universe."
"Right." Ajax looked around at the silence. "You worship demons and you're telling me he's everywhere? Ready to strike?"
"Yes." The man spat at Ajax's shoes.
Ajax kicked him with it and rubbed it in his face. He dragged him out and towards Darr, threw him. He cupped his hand and put it to his ear.
"I can't hear his voice. I can't see his face. I can't feel him onto him. Well, shit, I think you just got conned, buddy." He twisted the sole of his foot into the man's belly and watched the breath come out of his lungs.
"It's time to get judged." Darr lifted him. He put him over his shoulder and felt him slump.
They came out of the room. It was a small study, was, now it was torn and thrown along and soon to be burned along with the rest. The stained books and sheets of wood would go with the building, they knew as they looked out to the window and the weary fire now growing.
They came to a corner where the smoke was dense and saw someone trying to run. Desperation was in his eyes, he held a white cloth over his mouth and kicked the rusted knob of a window. It would not lift. Ajax came closer to him and offered his hand, he broke the lever and broke the glass and reached his neck around to meet the man's horrified face.
"You looked like you needed a hand." He said. The man screamed. He fumbled towards his belt and took out a knife, dropped it, picked it up again and looked to stab Ajax. He was inches deep into Ajax's body. His scream was wild, a doe caught out in the woods on some maze of branches, with the bristles choking him out.
He looked up to Ajax's mask, a little proud. He saw nothing. No pain on the dark, lines around the eyes, nothing on the white porcelain. Ajax simply removed the knife and chucked it out. It fell. It clanked when it hit the floor. And the second man began to sink.
"Say." Darr said. "Do you think he knows where the rest are?"
"That's a great question. It really, really, is."
They both looked down at the slunk man and his sucked-in face. His neck was fat and he looked like he was frowning three times over.
They were done. Four of them were caught, three in a rusted chain, bound together and hauled around like cattle. Ajax held the chain. The other was hog-tied on Darr's shoulder.
"This one went better than usual." Ajax said.
"We burned a house down." Darr climbed upstairs to the final floor, and from there, the exit at the rooftop.
"Yeah, those things happen in this line of work."
"I'm just glad we caught them."
"I'm just glad we'll have someone else to talk to when we get back." Ajax grabbed one of their chins and rubbed it like a small child, an encouraging nudge.
"You're not going to torture them, you hear me?" Darr said.
"No, no. I promise." Ajax yanked on the chain. "It'll just be a firm, very firm, interrogation."
"Please, stop." Darr shook his head.
"This could have been done sooner if you didn't lose your cool the first few times we came up against their little monstrosities."
"Well, I kept my cool today."
"Only because I was here every step of the way. I doubt you would have done it yourself."
"Why can't you just appreciate some good fortune for once?" Darr pumped the head of the man on his shoulder. It knocked him out. "See what you made me do?"
"I'm just glad that soon, I won't have to see your ugly mug ever again. We'll finally be leaving. I can taste it."
"You're already assuming one of them will talk. I hate that arrogance about you, it's uncouth." Darr walked up the stairs.
"Oh, trust me, they'll talk." Ajax stopped at the fire escape door. The rooftop was in front of them.
"After you." Ajax pointed the way. Darr rolled his eyes. He put one hand on the door. He pushed. They were silenced. The fire burned diligently, it ate and ate and in the quietness, they could hear the digestion of the building. It sounded like brimstone, like hell.
In front of them was the last hellhound and next to it, they saw Sophie. And in that burning heat, in the smog and smoke, in the warping fumes of the flames of the fire, they both stood still. Frozen.
"Darr." Ajax grabbed Darr's shoulder.
But it was too late. All he saw was red.
And all Ajax saw, beyond in the horizon of the dark, was the blue meteor bullet shot out. It lept from building to building, eviscerating them with its fury. It stopped, finally, at a sign. A man holding a donut, and it exploded into a swarm of sparks. Like a migration of red doves had finally made their stop and scattered.
It burned. And the destruction was laid out in front of Ajax. He tried lunging for Darr to stop, in fear that it would not end with just the wreckage. But he was punched, hit in the jaw and he laid on the floor, absorbing with red eyes, an oncoming darkness.
He was unconscious and stayed that way until Darr was done with his maddened massacre.
Episode 4 - July 24th, 2017
This had been the first time Jeronus would see his partner since he was nearly killed and it frightened him. He had thought about leaving four different times on the way to the receptionist desk. He had hidden inside the restroom on the way to the room. He had stared at his feet for half an hour at the door, the big '601' in black letters, and he had memorized the number of black tiles in the checkerboard pattern underneath his feet as he opened the door.
The first thing he heard was the strum of a guitar out of tune and how it made a hollow, low pitch note, like a bellow or a boat creak. He looked immediately from left to right. Everything was white and blue, clean and cold. He heard the noise of a machine and what it pumped into Officer Harde's tired lungs. He looked stuffed like a turkey roast, tubes and tape and bandages all over him to keep him from falling apart. Jeronus dropped a bouquet of flowers he had bought for the occasion. The laid on the bedside.
His injuries felt small now that he looked at his partner, an injured arm, some cuts, that was it. He could not think of any of his aches as any kind of meaningful pain. He felt small in front of the man lifeless on the bed. And then he heard the guitar again. He looked to his side, his mouth was open and his face searched for the noise. There was a little person, quivering, strumming.
Beady eyes looked back, they felt like bullets. It was a small face of a boy and he put his so close together as to seem like one small black tree brush, his hair like dead leaves, muddy, straying out.
"You must be his son, your mom told me you'd be here. How are you holding up?" Jeronus said.
The boy did not talk, only stared. It made Jeronus feel cold.
"You're here alone? I know your moms working but don't you have any relatives?" He asked again. Nothing. Jeronus smiled, it was fragile.
"I was his partner. He was very kind and brave, you're dad that is. Funny too!" His face felt weak. "I'm just here to pay my respects."
The boy nodded. He stared and when it felt like Jeronus could not bear the judgment of his glare any longer, he started counting tile again. They were two mutes bound to by a respirator that was too oppressive for them. Jeronus couldn't look without being disgusted. None of what he suffered was enough, not enough to this coma. He clenched his fist and felt his stapled hands bleed. His knees shook. Then he just held his breath and the snot and tears that began to ride down his face. The beeping was so low but it felt like a hammer on his heart.
I wish I was on the bed instead.
He moved. He ran out. He would have reduced himself to a puddle if he hadn't. The thought was too heavy. He put a stray rose into the sink and let it drip water that carried the aroma out the room, out the receptionist office, out the giant glass sliding doors at the front. The boy, the doctors, the crowd stared and he wanted to rip his eyes out.
I know I'm terrible. Stop looking, I know.
"Fuck. Fuck." He told himself. A pair of doctors, smoking, moved aside as he came through the street. The hot air made his eyes burn and he just let go, all the way to his car, h
e wept. All the way to the liquor store, he wept. Through the day, through the night, he wept.
Drunk by his sadness, drunk because of his sadness. Bottle after bottle, he hed himself the shots.
Now, this is medicine.
He was parked by a sidewalk. A giant man holding a donut hung leered overhead, an empty box of donuts rattled underneath him. He moved his hand across his face to see how bad it was, he counted twelve fingers on one hand.
"I should have manned up. I shouldn't have let him take the lead." He remembered the night, the bird that made his shoulders shiver. The darkness, the spear, the fear inside of his gut. He could not find a single scene of heroism from himself, not even on the ride back. Or in the medal of honor lying on the passenger's seat. He remembered his urine stain, he remembered that.
Nothing felt good inside of him.
An hour into the stupor he had the idea to look outside, it was getting too hot and he opened his mouth thinking it would cool the burning in his throat.
"I need to let go." He told himself. His face was strained like he had eaten something sour. "Why the fuck should I feel guilty. I only did what was normal, what anyone else would have done."
He pulled his wheel and nearly stripped it with his mad grip.
"What the fuck do you expect of me. Huh?" He screamed at the sky.
He looked up, proud of his outburst almost. His eyes kept to the slow-moving cloud and stars that looked like streaking lights in his blurred vision. They made lines of bright white and he followed them, followed them and where they lead. He faced the west, his upper half was hanging outside the window as he followed the light. And then he realized there were no stores. That these lines were not still, that there was a light dragging across the sky. He saw it. A comet tail, azure like a bright blade of water cutting through the dark horizon. He followed it to the donut man and his giant, plastic, smiling face. Then he saw the donut man, the statue of him, decapitated. The head, blown into molten, dripping plastic. Jeronus laughed. Until the head fell on the rear of his car. Then he wobbled. Then he cried.
The metal was bending above, it anchored over him and he leapt out of the glass. The weight collapsed on his empty car and he crawled away, dragging his weak legs through the broken pavement. The light posts came down, the whole street looked like it would burst open and he found a nice corner, near a fence, to fall into fetal position. He kept his eyes shut as he heard the explosions, as the metal fell and collapsed and when it was all done, when all he heard was a raging fire he opened his eyes. The street in front of him, his car, were all swallowed into the sea of fire. There were people with him, looking, then firefighters, then paramedics.
"He's not hurt, just drunk." A paramedic said.
Hah. Only drunk.
The police officers looked at him, some of them familiar with his face. When it start, when did it happen, they asked. He did not know. He couldn't explain much. He only knew what they knew. The street was filled with brimstone. And the lake of fire had tried swallowing him whole.
7:03 PM
Darr
July 24th, 2017
7:03 PM
He grabbed her by the mouth and looked like he would not let go with that iron grip pinching the corners of her moaning gasp. By the fifth thrust, she began to wiggle away. By the seventh, she had enough and with one hand against his chest, pulled him out of her and let him stand in the naked, cold air. Erect and sweating.
"Why are you rough today?" Aurela threw a wet pillow at him.
"What do you mean?" Darr went towards her for a hug. He thought, at least, that it was just play and crawled back on the bed with his belly and elbows. She pushed his face back, kept the predator look at bay.
"I mean what I say. You're rough. You were much more gentle the first time. Now it's just…like a god damn dog, what the fuck?"
"I'm just, distracted." He looked down. "Some things in my mind have come back up."
"The things that made you come here?" She nodded her head. "I knew it. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew the moment I saw your crying, moping face."
Aurela stood up and reached for her clothes that hung by the edge of a bleached-oak countertop. A tank top, some pajama pants. She started working her hair into a bun and Darr just stared, with the rose water smell in the air and the velvet underneath like smooth, warm sand, his fingers dug into it and the mattress and he watched. He was naked, flaccid, and outstretched.
It was cold.
Amongst the hot room, amongst her radiated warmth, that made him think that her pink cheeks were some kind of candle flame (for they looked the part in the way they bloomed), he was feeling cold.
She turned around and sucked in her lips. She could only massage her scalp as she looked at his sullen expression. He looked like a child, some lost animal wandering and shaggy with the dirty look of the streets caked like mud on his face. A heavy mud, a mud that made him downcast.
His forehead, his nose, his eyes, all down. His breath, sighing.
"Before, I didn't ask you why you came here." Aurela said. "It just sounded like you needed a place, and I owed you one. But now you've been here for four days and I'm starting to get the idea that you don't want to leave. So I have to ask, why are you here? Where did you come from?"
He looked at the pretty cabinets and the reflection of the pleasant pink lights radiating from the corner room, a giant fixture in the shape of a salt rock or a totem. He couldn't tell. His clothes were in a corner and in a square plastic box, the faux-lion carpet beneath his feet felt comfortable, a massage of fur for his toes and a panacea for the growing tensions in his muscles that made his calves spasm.
There really isn't a cure for nervous ticks though. Just suppressants, but no cures.
"I don't want to tell you why I'm here." He said.
"Yeah, you said that." She turned away, opened a drawer and took out a cloth. She left for the restroom and seemed to take the glow of the room with her. Darr put a pillow against his face to suffocate, it seemed, the last of his hope.
"I'm sorry I put this on you." He muffled.
"Why?" Aurela asked. "I made the choice just as much as you did."
"You're married though."
"Was planning to marry, actually. And you were depressed and I was stupid enough to give into that maternal instinct of mine, and well, here we are." She said. "You can beat most things, not biology though. It follows us from the womb to the grave. A slave master, a whip, and a reaper all at once."
"You're starting to sound like someone I don't like. Please stop." Darr said.
"That Ajax guy?" She said. He groaned.
"I'm sorry I ruined your marriage, is what I want to get." He said.
"Don't feel guilty. My ex, he's probably fucking some other girl too. He usually does. Cat calls he calls business trips. There isn't a whore moan in this city I can't trace back to him, like a radiation trail. You find the hints over time, hairs, smells, neck marks. Then you confirm it, for me it, it was just a look. Or the lack of one. Like he couldn't even tolerate to look me in the eyes like the space between us grew, centimeter to centimeter."
She threw water at her face. Darr saw her imperfections. Freckles, a lazy eye, the years of strife on her forehead that made her wrinkle early. Imperfections like anyone else. And it made him sad to ever think her anything else but human.
"You know? When you helped us at the club? I kind of wish you didn't. I wish my shitty man, if I could even call him my man, was beaten up just a bit more. Just enough to let him know how I feel, even if only vicariously."
"You don't mean that." Darr said. "You're better than that."
"I wonder." She said. She rubbed water on her face. She walked back in and sat next to him and rubbed his cheeks with tender hands. Then frowned. Darr went forward with puckered lips, she pushed his shoulders back.
"I'm glad you came, really." She smiled. But he knew what the tone meant. "You made me realize I wasn't ready for marriage."
"With him, right?"
Darr asked.
"With anyone." She said. He frowned.
"But. We've, well, we've been together?" He asked. "It's meaningful, what we've done. It's the consummation of love, you know? It's sacred."
He put his sad mask on again, the face he made that made her think of the night four days ago. The wrangled dirty boy. It was an innocent sadness then and it looked like it again, now.
"Darr. We had sex a couple times. That's it." She said. "You haven't even told me who you really are. You said you were the son of a pastor, here to sell bibles."
"I am. I'm selling something, I guess. Was..." His hands fell.
