Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  “I think we should break up.”

  “You have a tiny spot of my father's blood.”

  “The Indian told me I ain't special.”

  “I didn't say it made you special.”

  “But, you say I can't die? That's not special enough for ya?” Billy was sure now this thing was a lying demon in a dirty dress.

  “Especially horrifying.”

  “Billy Purgatory ain't built to live forever. Daredevils never do.”

  “There's no end to this. Once you step onto the stage the lights never go down.”

  “I told you, cupcake, no forevers for me.”

  “You don't get to pick and choose your destiny. Your mother and father cast that when they decided to go against the order of the universe. You have no idea what you truly are, do you?”

  Billy sidestepped the tree in his path. “I'm pissed is what I am.”

  “An experiment gone wrong. Frankenstein's monster.”

  Billy thought about the scar across his face, and shouldn't have because the woman pick-pocketed the thought from his mind.

  “Do you know how you got that?”

  “Don't care.”

  “You're not supposed to exist, Billy Purgatory.”

  Billy stopped for only a moment, and regretted it immediately.

  “The world cleansed itself of things like you,” she went on. “You still came into it. Your parents have paid for that and you will continue to square this debt.”

  “I'll find a way to die when my work is done. I'm good at stuff like that. I'll fix it all if me being alive is such a mess that I've offended the whole universe.”

  The antlered woman called out to him before he vanished. “Karma will laugh hysterically at your grand apology, Billy Purgatory.”

  III

  Billy Purgatory continued walking in the ruins of the Brickstaff mansion atop the hill. He looked for Lissandra but the demon of the woods lied. He knew she had before he even came looking. There was no gypsy here, hiding in smoke. Lissandra was nowhere to be found in all this emptiness and ash.

  The stone of the walls and the support columns within remained, although blackened with soot. The interior was completely destroyed and crisped. Billy imagined all the expensive furnishings and fine woodwork that had sat upon this high crest guarding the family like a treasure. Keeping them all safe and removed from the unwashed who lived far below and across the railroad tracks.

  All that was left of this place now were bad memories.

  Billy wondered what happened to the Brickstaff family and their snotty perfect princess daughter. He wouldn't have lost much sleep if their charred remains were huddled together in here somewhere, but he didn't particularly wish them any harm either. To say he was indifferent was like saying the fire had been hot.

  Billy thought of all the things about himself that had also been consumed by fire. He thought about devils and demons too.

  Billy stayed in the high places until nightfall. The moon was full, and he knew the woods below would come alive soon as the bubble world of the city went into full-on coma. He had to keep watch on worlds that were not his own now.

  Billy would have to start living in places of shadow. That's where he would find his enemies, maybe even where he would find his only friends. If he had any.

  It was the only way he would complete his mission.

  He had no clue as to who his real enemies were. He didn't know what his mission was either. Just that he had them and one.

  Billy heard them first, but he really had to concentrate and listen to do so. They moved with slicked on silence, but he had the wood itself on his side. Twigs snapped. Leaves rustled.

  There were far too many of them to move in complete stealth. When that many made up the herd, the ground would betray them and tell the tale to anyone who stopped a moment. It was very hard for Billy Purgatory to ever stop moving. He hated to listen.

  Nature showed her face shamelessly though, and that face was as big as the low moon.

  There were hundreds of deer. He had never seen so many ganged together and hive minded in single simple purpose. Nothing had stirred or spooked them. Nothing chased them.

  They didn't run for the same reasons Billy did. They ran because it was instinct. They ran because there was no reason to live like men did. Closed down and oppressed, fenced in. They ignored the smart monkey's superior ways.

  The herd ran to be free. Maybe they did move now for the same reason Billy did.

  Billy gave chase to catch up with them. When he overtook them, he ran with them and he moved fast, not as much to keep up with them but as a courtesy to them. He didn't want to slow them down or get in their way. He never feared being trampled among them; he knew he was safe so long as he himself let the movement take him with it.

  Billy was faster than he had ever been.

  When he hit the old highway at the bottom of the hill, he threw down his board. Jumping on, he sailed down the slope with the herd. He adjusted quickly, even though he hadn't ridden that thing in years. So much had happened since then.

  He just let his own instincts take over.

  Billy thought of Mother, Emelia, doing her sword forms in the backyard. The only evidence he had that she had existed was the burnt strip of film in the pocket of Pop's borrowed army jacket.

  He was born with wheels of fortune strapped to his feet. He had no choice in the matter; he had to be fast and had to glide down these hills because the alternative was trudging up them with the slow burden of the problems of man's forgotten gods on his back.

  Billy kept up with them easily, skating down the center stripe of the highway. He watched the rest of the herd to his left, running against the trees.

  This was the night Billy Purgatory first skated with the deer. Billy knew if anything could lead him to Lissandra it had to be them, and lead him to her they did.

  IV

  It seemed inconceivable that so many massive deer could vanish into the tall grass of a field, but it happened.

  Billy knew that where he found himself wasn't their stop. They were moving to the lake. Following the moon.

  This was Billy's stop most definitely. Billy had heard of this place - the only man-made structure along abandoned Route 99, aside from an aging and long-dead gas station across the street, where Billy found himself standing.

  One pump and a cigarette machine with smashed glass was everything left of the Fuel Palace. Billy saw the price on the pump was still set to 61 cents a gallon. He couldn't linger long at the gas tomb, though.

  Billy knew that his Pop used to drink at the joint across the highway. Billy had heard a story about how Pop had broken a man's jaw. Pop's wooden leg had been the weapon of choice in doing the deed.

  The neon still burned and reflected in the pond-sized holes of the asphalt parking lot.

  The glow-neon letters were yellow and blue, declaring:

  THE BLACK ORCHID LOUNGE

  Motorcycles lined the front wall, only leaving enough room to move through them sideways and breach the deep purple door in the entry alcove. They weren't Lucifer's Circus bikes. The markings on the saddlebags were all wrong, not that Billy figured that gang was still around, or its leader Mudder Kelroy.

  The bikes didn't look desperately mean enough anyway.

  Muscle cars and rusting pick-up trucks filled out the blacktop islands of the parking lot between the lakes of mud.

  Billy walked, dressed in his black and camouflage, towards the door, Mom's empty scabbard sticking out of his pack. His skateboard was under his arm, wheels still hot.

  Billy smiled, thinking about Pop hopping around on his one good leg and swinging the wooden one at some guys head, and Billy wasn't at all shocked when a burly son-of-a-rhino with a torn right cheek that had been stitched up bad long ago stood in the entryway's yellow bug-light sheen.

  The grimace that always painted the lumbering titan's face changed to a revenge-infested glare as he shot his skull forward for a head-butt to Billy's forehe
ad.

  “Purgatory!” Old crooked-jaw had screamed. He had read the name stamped to Pop's jacket and somehow the collection of rocks and hammers in his head had made the connection as to whose boy had come knocking at the roadhouse door.

  Billy heard the big man's skull crack, and very likely, the amatuerly-set jaw break anew as it all collided with Billy's skateboard.

  Billy watched cartoon birds and skulls dance over the biker's head as his eyes rolled back and he led the trail of his own blood to the floor.

  Billy had his skateboard by the front trucks and held it aloft like a Spartan shield protecting his own forehead and offering a nasty stopping point for the doorman's head.

  Billy stepped over the mountain of bleeding flesh.

  “Whiskey,” Billy called over to the bartender. “Rot gut.”

  Fifty bikers slid their chairs out and rose across the room as everyone else ran to hide behind the pool tables.

  Billy watched the barkeep hold up a plastic bottle filled with cheap liquor for his approval. Billy nodded back to him. “Yeah, I wanna feel it burn.”

  The bartender shrugged and poured. Maybe it was to give the gang time to size Billy up or maybe it had something to do with mutual respect or professional curiosity. Could have been a lot to do with amusement. Billy Purgatory was, after all, turning a relatively calm Tuesday night into the chance to start a pointless bar brawl.

  Whatever the reason, the bartender didn't blink or balk and poured Billy a sampling of their finest Kentucky-adjacent whiskey into a semi-clean glass and slid it across the bar to the waiting hand.

  Billy held it aloft, silently toasting the assembled hooligans, while three of their number closest to the door hoisted broken-face from the floor and dragged him across the sawdust to an empty booth.

  “Purgatory,” he mumbled over the hernia groans of his friends. “He's wearing Purgatory's army jacket.”

  Billy tossed the firewater down his throat. It burned.

  When he placed the empty glass to the mahogany bar top he found a man with dark eyes and darker hair braided down his back standing to his left. He wore brass knuckles on each hand.

  “You lost, son?” the man asked with an evil grin.

  “Just following the moon, looking for a girl.”

  Billy's board sat on its wheels atop the bar between him and the bruiser.

  “That a skateboard you got there?”

  Billy nodded. “I'm a skateboarder.”

  Laughter broke out in waves across the dark room.

  Billy shook his glass for a refill and that's when he caught her reflection in it.

  He was sure it was her, and while he didn't truly divert his gaze to the raised booth she sat within, Billy just knew he had found the right place and the right girl, for once.

  She was watching him. All grown up holding court in shadow with the meanest looking member of this outlaw tribe. Maybe someone had claimed that sweet prize in Billy's absence.

  “You might wanna try a skating rink.” The man to Billy's left broke the spell of staring at the girl. “Maybe your girlfriend is there.”

  The bartender poured another as the long-hair readjusted the fit of his knuckle jewelry against the tarnished bar rail.

  “She's not my girlfriend.” Billy shot down drink number two. “My girlfriend is dead.”

  More laughter erupted about the room. “Then you came to the right place, cause you're about to join her in heavenly courtship.”

  Long-haired biker started to rare back his left fist. Billy saw his face favor that direction even before his waist twisted and the arm began to pull like a pinball plunger.

  Everything always started in the face. Pop had told him long ago, “Just follow their eyes, boy.”

  They were drunk and slow - Billy would have been right there with them, but the gang hadn't given him ample time to catch up yet.

  This punch would set the whole room in motion. Every pool cue and blackjack and crowbar and greasy fist waited breathlessly for that first punch to fly.

  It was tantric perfection.

  Long-hair twisted and let the dragon fly to the left, and Billy dodged and gave Mom's sword scabbard to him on his right. Billy cracked him so hard that the man went flying and rolling over the bar, landing at the bartender's boots.

  Purgatory, Jr. only hesitated that half-second because he was in awe at the force he had exerted. That pause was almost too long as weapons swung his way, but Billy shot up like an Apollo rocket and landed on his feet against his board atop the bar.

  Billy pushed off by kicking a man in the nose, and he shot across the bar, jumped the keg taps and slid towards the far end, ever deeper into the room. Billy laughed as he picked up speed and sent peanuts and beer bottles crashing.

  He dodged a pool stick sweep to his kneecaps and the heavy wooden sword sheath found three more snarling bikers before Billy jumped the trash can at the border of the bar. Billy took to the air, flying over the pool table and the screams of girls below.

  He landed on his knees atop the table of Lissandra's booth and with a fist firmly grasping either end of the scabbard, he pushed the wood center into the windpipe of the man she sat with.

  The face of the thing resembling a biker lord was covered on every square inch by either a piercing or a tattoo. Numbers, tribal scrawl, death's heads; this guy was maybe trying a little too hard to be wicked or maybe was trying to prove the adage about a mother's love wrong. He was ugly and had his canines filed down so he could tell people he was a vampire, but Billy knew for a fact he wasn't one because he struggled for air as his tongue shot out of his mouth with the force of Billy's blow.

  His tongue had been modified, an incision at the tip split it and made it forked. Not a vampire, but a snake. Billy hoped he called himself that, “Snake”. He almost wanted to let him go so he could ask him.

  As the biker struggled to push him off, Billy turned his attention to Lissandra.

  The gypsy rocked the scarf tied to her head and her left ear was pierced seven times with little silver barbs, an imaginative choice considering the normal uniform called for hooped gold earrings. Her features were more defined, but Billy could still see that little girl beneath them. The Lissandra that Billy had known was somewhere beneath those pretending to be unfeeling brown eyes and dark lashes. Her dress was blue and he made himself not check out her body just yet because he was kinda busy with the snapping-turtle jaw of the man she sat with.

  Lissandra had grown up nice though.

  “Hello, Billy Purgatory.” They were still thirteen and on the schoolyard, he guessed. She was acting just like she always had with him, a hundred percent unimpressed that he had just leapt across a bar at her and her date.

  The head biker pressed up into the table with his knees. Billy felt everything rocking and heard the rest of the gang running up behind him.

  Billy pressed harder, trying to choke the guy's air off. “Tell me you and this guy aren't…”

  Lissandra raised an eyebrow, “Aren't..?”

  “Come on?” Billy groaned. “Seriously?”

  Lissandra almost smiled. “He's an acquaintance.”

  “What does that mean?” Billy asked. The table was going to tip and the whole gang was going to pile-drive Billy into the floorboards. “Is his name, Snake?”

  The table flew up and the only good part about it was that Billy got that good look at Lissandra he'd wanted as he went crashing to the floor. She was completely amazing, there was no doubt left in his mind. He let his eyes follow her legs.

  She didn't wear shoes. He knew that was a bad thing to be focusing on at that moment, but if he was going out, he was going out happy, checking out the gypsy princess.

  “She's too hot for shoes.” Billy even said it out loud as his body smacked to a stop at her feet and the table rolled left.

  Snake was already standing and hissing over him, breaking off a table leg to beat Billy to a bloody stain. “It ain't a fake leg, but it'll do.” Snake was really pleased he
at least got a line in, even if his pipes were a little raspy.

  And yes, Billy Purgatory was surrounded.

  Snake pulled Billy up by the green collar and somehow put together another zinger to toss at Billy with his forked tongue. “Next time you come to a sword fight, don't forget the sword!”

  “None of you have swords,” Billy replied as Snake raised the table leg into the air. “It wouldn't be a sword fight even if I'd brought the sword,” and Billy wouldn't let it go and Snake was momentarily confused as his brain attempted to logic.

  The gunshot was completely too loud for Billy's throbbing head. It was close, too, because ceiling plaster rained down on Billy's face, like fairy dust.

  Everyone froze. Lissandra hadn't bothered to stand up: she just held the smoking pistol over her head and fired another round up into the dark.

  “I'll never read fortunes for any of you ever again unless this stops.” Her words boomed and took command of the room like a siren song.

  Billy rubbed plaster dust off his face and watched weapons drop to the floor around his head. Hands went into the air like the bikers had just turned a corner to find a hundred Federales smiling from behind a roadblock.

  Everyone backed up. Snake put down the table leg, mumbled a curse and slinked away too, like a broken toy.

  Billy watched those naked feet slip to the floor and walk delicately past his face and towards the door. Only Lissandra could walk through broken glass in bare feet and not give a damn.

  “What are you waiting on, Billy Purgatory?” she asked, tone quizzical yet uncaring. “An invitation from the gods?”

  Billy pulled himself up and followed that blue dress out towards what had become a big moon.

  V

  Billy and Lissandra said nothing to one another from the parking lot of the Black Orchid Lounge until they made it to the sparse wood clearing at the lake. The deer took no notice of either of them as they drank and played in the moon-glow.

  Billy had watched her walk though, never missing a step in her bare feet. She was one with the ground and with everything removed from the cities that Billy loved so. She was the anti-Billy in more ways than simply being a lot prettier. Billy was drawn to the rust and decay of what man had tried to piece together and never quite gotten right.