by Max Jager
"Are you sure you're ready? It's only going to get worse." The Hyena's tail wagged. "You don't seem as convicted about this whole thing yet, too."
"Well, what the fuck. You were complaining only a moment ago." Ajax said. "I got beaten up. I got blown up. And here I am, wide awake for the annoying drill sergeant. This isn't enough conviction, for ya?"
"Any man can suffer if he's forced to. It takes another kind of man to see the light at the end and to hope for it and to run for it. It seems to me that you're not that kind of man."
"To be honest, no." Ajax rotated his neck. He felt it crack. "I felt like an idiot coming in and I still feel like an idiot. The only way out is through Astrix. Kill him, drain his blood, leave. It's a simple a goal anyone can have. I know that's what I need to do, but I just can't imagine myself actually doing it. I guess you can say I have no hope. But I've always been like that.
"I'm a practical man. And what makes a practical man is his ability to reason, under any circumstances. Because reason and logic are there for you long after hope dies out. So I figure, I either spend the rest of my existence here in this dark place or I go out. Maybe I pick someone up along the way, maybe not. Maybe I die buried in sand, maybe not. Taking any chance is better than having no chance."
"You? You're taking a chance? That's strange. Very strange. I thought you were the kind of man who would enjoy eating crabs in a dark cave for all of eternity." The Hyena walked up with that cold and bemused veneer. "Isn't that what you said? That you did not enjoy being disturbed. That you never wanted to help anyone, because you never wanted the burden of their expectations. And by extension, to have nothing mean anything to you. Didn't you want that kind of ghostly existence?"
"How do you-" He eyed the Hyena. "What? I said that a while ago… How would you?"
"Back in Horston in your shabby shack on the third floor, with the clogged shower drain and noisy neighbors. With your small computer and your small snacks and your small time detective work."
Ajax hid his surprise. He closed his eyes, took a breath and made his face stiff and dull.
"I won't even ask anymore, Creature. Guide. Demon." He steadied his shaking arms. "You wouldn't even give me an answer if I tried. No. I won't bother, just tell me how to get out and where to go, that's all I want from you."
The Hyena picked up his tongue. He stared a bit at Ajax before turning, pointing to a small patch of darkness, indiscernible from the rest. There were a few bugs roaming around, giving off auras of green light like small neon orbs. Some of them settled on stalagmites and some of them floated aimlessly like cheery drunk patrons.
"Call me what you will." The Hyena started to walk. His form absorbed into the shadow of the end of the cave. "Guide or Creature or Angel. Call me any of those, but do not call me demon."
His voice echoed as he went further. Ajax waited a bit, looking around his shoulders. He gasped, held his breath, and let go. He followed the Hyena, limping and dragging until he himself became indistinguishable from that wide stretch of darkness.
Darr III
Darr
They circled the dinner table round and round the feast of fruit and meat, round the thin dim light of the candle, and among the crackling wood, grew a hostility in Darr. He looked to the door and to the stranger and although not knowing who he was, felt his gut shift up and down.
Perhaps it was the way Aleistar stood that made him off-putting to Darr. How his shoulders hung and rags pulled like a fresh poach or how his eyes blinked, small and beady like rats of mice. Maybe it was the pudgy feet and hands, the long hair and the unshaven face. He did not know why he felt the growing contempt, only watched.
"Who is he?" Darr asked. Astrix walked towards Aleistar and wrapped his arms around him.
"He's a friend and more importantly, a normal person," Astrix said. "One of those people you've sworn to protect, right?"
It should have been easy. He was just a man, after all. But he couldn't compel himself to agree. Darr eyed Aleistar. His face seemed bitter, not defeated or victorious, just bitter. His face was old and wrinkled and his body was worn.
"Again. I'm here to be humiliated, again." Aleistar said. He didn't look at anyone in particular. He stood lopsided and dull and stupid.
"No, you're here to appease, like a whore. Though of a different kind of seduction." Astrix looked back to Darr. "You know this man. You've known each other for a while now, behind closed doors. You've heard of each other, smelled of each other, but never, ever, have you seen each other. Until today."
Darr's hands clenched into fists. He was expecting something. He could feel it coming like flood waters and him a lone tree at the center, torn and stretched and ripped out from the roots.
"Who. Is. He?" Darr asked.
"Go on. Tell him your name." Astrix moved his hands up Aleistar's forearms almost in comfort, before he stopped on his shoulder and his neck. He rubbed them. Aleistar showed no signs of resistance.
"Why should I?" Aleistar asked.
"You're being defiant again?" Astrix tapped his fingers along Aleistar's nape like a spider crawl. "Don't defy me. There are worse things than death that I can show you if you compel me enough. So it's in your best interest to listen to me. Tell him your name."
Aleistar rubbed one of his elbows. He looked around the room towards a servant holding a jar of oil in one corner, then to two soldiers standing by the door, spears in hands. They breathed heavily. And at last his face went towards Darr, who stood furthest from him, behind the colorful table. He was neither interested nor confused by the man and simply assumed he was either another victim or another of God's abortion. Aleistar tightened his face and said briefly, with an annoyed tone almost, "My name is Aleistar."
It was enough to make the room silent.
Darr felt his hand hurt. It felt like every blood vessel in his body back up all of a sudden, halted and started production on his adrenaline filled body all at once. He felt the blood, like small marbles of anger-laden blood, were forcing their way through his veins, into his head where he felt them break and scatter amongst themselves. It felt like they were crashing and scattering, those marbles of his, in his brain. He felt pain and an intense blood rush and a light-headedness all at once. The first dimmed for a moment, in fear almost and their tongues receded back to the ashy wood.
"He's not saying anything," Aleistar said. "You've brought me here to meet a mime. Why do you waste my time like this?"
He shook his head and turned to go out the door. Astrix stopped him.
"That's the second time you've acted without my say so. I'll admit, you have courage. But watch. Stay quiet and watch." Astrix held him by the arm in that iron grip. It looked like his hand would turn blue. Aleistar turned again, back to stare at Darr. There was a moment in that silence. He didn't feel much but looked around to see the expressions on everyone's faces. Some of them were smug, others afraid, Astrix's was only curious, with one raised eyebrow and his yellow eyes thinned to slits.
And the room became quieter and quieter. And Aleistar aroused now, awoken from the lull, waited. They saw Darr shake, they saw his leg tap into sporadic beats. They saw the fire rise and the stoker collapse and the burning logs roll out into livid white pools of ash. Darr brought his face up again. It was horrifically featureless. Neither strained nor joyous nor sad. His eyes were red, no different than the fire and they looked at Aleistar. And Aleistar knew at the moment, as he stared back at those eyes, who and what he was facing. In that brief moment, he broke away from Astrix. He looked for the door and thought, the bloodhounds have tasted me. They have searched me far and wide to see what they could have that Astrix has not taken.
He put his hand on the door and smacked it. Nothing but the loud banging. A guard grabbed him, put both hands behind his back and threw him to the floor where his face collapsed onto the tile. There was a knee on his neck.
Darr tensed his legs. He leaned forward. He flipped the table and thought to fly forward him, to leap and to rip Al
eistar's head off. All wine and manners of food spilled across the floor like a wrecked voyager, its passengers thrown, bludgeoned and bruised. Darr pounced towards Aleistar and he too felt the guards hands around him. Not without any effort on his own part to retaliate though. He squirmed and threw his head out and punched and saw the guards fall into a bloody-nosed mess. Astrix whistled. The doors flew open. Two more men came out. These ones didn't have noses, they had puss-filled wounds and gaps replacing features on their faces. They fell too, thrown against the walls and scattered. Armor clanking and helmets rolling like silver pots.
Astrix began to laugh. He clapped now. Five more men came in. That was the number he needed. And it was there, finally, after three of them laid on the floor with spinning heads, that Darr was finally restrained. One pair of bleeding hands wrapped around his chest and neck, a bruised knee was against his back. He was forced to the floor and forced to face Aleistar. Both of them in that wine-stained floor, where the food squirmed and flew out underneath their wrestling bodies.
"He'll kill me," Aleistar screamed. "You knew it. You knew he would kill me, you-"
He bit his tongue when he saw Astrix stare back at him.
"I'll do worse than kill you." Darr could barely hold his breath. His respirations were loud, quick-successive, sharp. "I'll show you my Hell!I'll bury you alive, shallow enough so you may hear yourself suffocate, deep enough so you'll know you'll have no chance to escape. You'll suffer alright. You'll suffer!"
"Oh, my," Astrix scratched his head. "Is vengeance part of Catholicism? Sodom and Gomorrah must have inspired you a bit too much."
"I'll kill him, I'll show him wrath." Darr tried to inch himself forward with his chin.
"You take those books too seriously, Christian. Why don't you relax?"
"Relax? Relax!" Darr closed his eyes. He grunted and began, with shaking knees, to stand himself against the force of the two men behind him. Then he was silenced.
Astrix punched him. He felt his chin hit the floor again and break the stone, his lower jaw leaving an imprint the shape of his mouth.
"I've brought him here to make a deal. You'd do best to listen. And the deal is, your life for his. Your life, for everyone else's. The innocent go free, the guilty-"
"Aleistar." Darr repeated with bleeding teeth.
"Yes, the guilty, I will up to you, as a gift if and only if you accept my terms of submission."
"You're selling me out?" Aleistar screamed. "You promised me a home here."
"And as your master, I have all the power in me to revoke that."
"Demon," Aleistar screamed at the floor. His teeth scraped and made a long, scratching noise. "Everything a lie. My wife, my unborn. My son."
Aleistar thought it over in that loud room, with the two screaming men and the laughing demon. He thought, It's been years and my eyes have been dried. It's been years since I cried. He felt his dry channels grow just as Astrix's roaring laugh grew, just as his dagger-shaped teeth widened into that grim smile. Aleistar cried. Two tears turned to two streams, his face contorted in between anger and regret. All a lie. All of it. Maybe he knew it, somewhere in his soul. His son definitely did, and he killed him for it.
"I'll kill you, you son of a bitch." Darr slammed his face into the floor and Aleistar could only repeat it in his mind, the words, I killed him for it. I killed my baby boy for this.
Aleistar sank. He couldn't lift his head. His muscles seemed lax. He stayed, face down on the floor, mumbling and crying. From the turned table, the wine spilled, flowing from its bottle down to the floor and into a pool. A dark, red pool, tart and deep, that swallowed his body, head to chest.
"Is this all you wanted? To bring everyone down to your level. To see me rip him apart? To see me sold?" Darr jerked his head back. It hit someone. He felt a punch back.
"Get off me!"
"Is it really my fault?" Astrix put his palm up. The demon with the bloody hole for a nose stopped his assault. "Is it my fault I found something worth keeping, worth stealing and lying for?"
"Be quiet, demon."
"No. I'm no demon, only a man." Astrix brought his chin up. "A man with strange desires. If you could call any desire, strange."
"Don't act like you're blameless."
"Oh, but I am. For who was it that put those desires in me? I was certainly never asked. Is anyone really, ever, asked? No. And you of all people should understand what strange desires fuel men. After what I saw from you, in that small hole in the earth. The sewer, was it? Or that half-built sanctuary, a construction site was it?" Astrix rubbed Darr's smooth chin. "Aye, that's where I first came upon you. In those thrilling hours, with the inklings of joyous violence in you. Behind that mask of yours, I knew it, I could see it, the giant smile you wore. Didn't you?
Darr stayed quiet. He sucked his lips in and tightened his skin.
"How could you call me demon, how could you accuse me of any strange desires. You, you who lives in the shadow of your own vile nature. You, angry and toxic human, you. How could you accuse me of anything? Thankless, cur. I'm offering you your people back. I'm also offering you homestead, a warriors homestead. For where else can you exist? Certainly not back there, with the plain people and the plain laws and the plain morals. You'll never fit in. You know that, better than anyone else."
"You're not normal," Darr repeated. "Not normal. Not normal."
"And what is that? What would you consider the normal nature of man? Tell me. Tell me."
"Man is…" He closed his eyes to think, to deny. "Man is. Well. Man is…He's good. He can do good. He should be good." Darr shook, he was still in the twilight of his anger though. Still pulsing, still raging deep inside.
"He can reflect and grow." He tried to think. All thought, all vision, seem contaminated with a superimposed screen of red.
"Acts of charity are as obscene as acts of violence, both are done out of an inherent and arrogant moral superiority one person assumes over another. What else do you have?"
"You don't get it," Darr said. "It's about love. A person is here to love and to spread love. That's what it means to be good."
"There plenty of things one can love, truly, that would be considered sick obsessions to other people. What's the difference between the two, between a disease in the mind and love? Is it in the harm it causes to the self or the other? Any innocent love can do that. Is it in the causal origin of the love? Well then, take it up with God then. For that is God-given. Every miracle, God-given. Every tragedy, God-given."
Astrix walked back to Aleistar who was still moping.
"Look. See. Observe this fine specimen, Darr." Astrix grabbed Aleistar by the hair and raised his face. "He follows your aesthetics to a T. He thought what he was doing was good. He thought he was helping others, himself. You should have seen the men and women he employed, the sick and lonely he comforted in his little club. All of it, out of a love. And what great love it must have been! Killing your own son, that's something even Abraham couldn't muster.
"You killed your son?" Darr asked. His voice sounded broken. Aleistar couldn't say much, only mumbled incoherences.
"Yes, yes he did. And what immense strength of will that must have taken. Can I blame him then, for being stronger than the weak? Can anyone blame him? No. He took, and took, and took. And the weak either joined him or feared him, neither did anything to stop him. It took another strong will, your will, to end him. Can I call anything you did, necessarily evil or good? No. None of it was sin. It was just war. Just war…"
"It's wrong. It was all wrong."
"You're saying that as the victor. I ask again though, who cares? What's wrong with any of your actions or any of Aleistar's? Nothing, really. Nothing really matters at all."
"Just wait until I break out of this." Darr tried to stretch his arms out again. The death grip tightened on them even more.
"Still throwing yourself around again? Good. That's what I like about you. That's what I love.
"How can you say he didn't si
n?" Darr screamed. The memory came back, the wildfire. "He killed children. Shamelessly killed them!"
"Oh? A child? Who decides why one life should mean more than other? Why any life should mean anything?"
"I do. You hear me? I do." He tried again. His knees locked and then he felt a fist come down the back of his head. It felt like it would dislodge his eyes and his vision scattered for a bit.
"Well aren't you a passionate tyrant. Well, okay. What was this child's name? The child that meant so much to you, seemingly."
They all stood quietly. Aleistar head fell back down as Astrix let go. Darr's lips fumbled and he looked around, hoping for some reason, to see Ajax. There was nothing, no one to even jump-start his memory. That foggy, blurred memory of his. His head spun and he closed his eyes to concentrate, to see hopefully, a snippet materialize in the darkness of his mentalscape. What was it on the news article? The television headline? The Internet article? What was her name?
