Semblance

by Logan Patricks

  While the White Crow continued his threats, I saw Shadow sneaking up behind him concealed in a blanket of darkness.

  I allowed my eyes to divert away from the White Crow and looked over his left shoulder while I let out a sigh of relief.

  The White Crow grinned.

  “I see what you’re getting at,” he said, “Sadly you need a better poker face.”

  He spun to his left and fired off a quick shot, but was surprised to see that no one was there.

  “Wrong side asshole,” Shadow said as he blindsided the White Crow from the opposite direction and drilled him in the shoulder with a two-by-four, causing the assassin to drop his weapon.

  The White Crow growled like a wounded bear, taking a step back while clutching his arm.

  “Ugh, what the fuck,” he cursed. “That hurt like hell.”

  “Nothing compared to this,” Shadow said as he lunged at the White Crow, hands still gripping the large piece of wood.

  Despite being wounded, the White Crow’s reflexes were bursts of lightening. He was much faster than his brother, dodging Shadow’s attack and retaliating with a boot to his gut. Shadow dropped to his knees, writhing in pain.

  “You fucking coward,” the White Crow spat. “This is what fighting me fairly actually feels like.” He followed up with another kick to Shadow’s ribs. I heard a sickening crunch.

  I couldn’t stand here like a useless damsel in distress and watch Shadow get pummeled. I scoured the ground for the closest weapon and discovered a full bucket of primer lying mere inches away. The White Crow continued his assault on Shadow, who struggled to get to this feet but was struck back down to his knees with the White Crow’s heavy fists.

  “This is what you deserve for trying to be a snake,” The White Crow continued taunting. “I can do this all fucking-”

  Before he could finish his sentence, I took the opportunity to attack him with the bucket, swinging it awkwardly with two hands, and managed to catch him across the side of his head.

  “Argh,” he screamed, clutching his head. “Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Stop fighting like cowards.”

  I came at him again but had the wind knocked out of me when he countered with an elbow to the soft spot of my stomach. The pain felt like an electric shock, originating from where he had hit me, all the way to my fingertips as I struggled to suck in air.

  The White Crow picked up the paint bucket with one hand, raised it over his head, threatening to bring it down on my skull.

  Shadow snuck up from behind, a hammer in one hand, and grabbed the White Crow’s wrist—still clinging onto the bucket—with the other. He pulled the bastard’s arm as far back as he could and delivered a punishing blow to the assassin’s elbow with the hammer.

  The White Crow howled in pain as Shadow crushed the bones in his arm.

  “You murdered my friend,” Shadow said as he continued his assault, driving the hammer into the White Crow’s kneecap, smashing it to oblivion.

  The killer’s howls intensified as he took a few staggered steps back. Shadow continued the attack, making contact with every swing. The White Crow shielded his arms while backing away in retreat. The two were drawing closer to the edge.

  “Shadow, watch out,” I cried out. My warnings were ignored. Shadow was too focused on obliterating the White Crow to pay any attention to me.

  One of Shadow’s blows landed on the White Crow’s head and I thought for sure that was the deathblow.

  Astonishingly, the White Crow failed to stay down and instead—with a surge of superhuman adrenaline—charged into Shadow like an angry bull. Shadow tried to get out of the way but wasn’t quick enough as the White Crow barreled into him, sending them both flying over the edge.

  “Shadow!” I screamed, rushing towards the spot where they had both fallen over. I couldn’t stand the thought of him dying on me. I needed Shadow in my life. He was all I had left in this world and I loved him.

  He was clinging onto a flimsy piece of scaffolding gutting out of the side of the building. The White Crow was gone, reduced to a smear on the concrete. I hoped he was with his brother, dancing with the devil in hell.

  From the creaking of the scaffolding, it wouldn’t be long before it all went tumbling down.

  I lay flat on my belly, just at the edge, and reached out to Shadow. He extended one hand upwards but we were still inches apart.

  I willed my body to stretch further, hoping to defy all physical odds written by the universe. The tips of my fingers touched his and for a moment, I thought I could do it. I thought I could save Shadow’s life.

  One of the bolts securing the scaffolding to the side of the building came undone under the stress of Shadow’s weight. I was devastated as Shadow sank a few inches further away from me.

  He drew his hand back.

  “What are you doing?” I cried. “Don’t give up.”

  He shook his head and smiled at me sadly.

  “I’d never hurt you Aria,” Shadow said. “Never in a million years.”

  He was referring to the moment when he had the knife in his hands and I thought I was a goner. Had Sinister waited for the full three seconds, would I still be alive?

  A loud creek came from the scaffolding. Any second, it was ready to give.

  “Shadow, please,” I said, reaching out to him again.

  “Just tell me you love me,” he said. “That’s all I need from you.” His face was red from strain, his voice hoarse.

  “I love you,” I said without hesitation.

  I saw peace on Shadow’s face as he closed his eyes, accepting that this was the end. If he was going to die, I wanted to join him.

  “I love you too Shadow,” came a third voice. The sight of Lincoln lying down next to me, reaching out for Shadow made my heart sing. “Now come on, hold my hand damn it.”

  A smile crept across Shadow’s face as he nodded and extended his hand upwards. I was relieved to see that he was able to grab Lincoln’s hand, and just in time too. A split-second after Shadow released his grip on the loose scaffolding, it came crashing down, plummeting to the ground below.

  “And to think, I used to get teased for my gorilla-long arms,” Lincoln said. He clenched his teeth and using both hands, pulled Shadow up and back onto solid ground.

  Shadow collapsed onto his back and sucked in a heavy breath of air.

  “Remind me to fire the construction crew for installing such shitty scaffolding,” he said. “No more cash deals, ever again.”

  I dove on top of Shadow and pelted him with a hundred butterfly kisses.

  “Maybe you two should wait until the hotel is finished and then get a room,” Lincoln said, wiping sweat off his brow. The right side of his face was swollen and his lip was fat and bloodied.

  “You look like shit,” Shadow said.

  “My abilities to stay beautiful seemed to have deteriorated with each subsequent attempt on my life,” Lincoln replied.

  Above, the sounds of the helicopter blades were growing louder. The chopper was fast approaching.

  “The helicopter,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Well ahead of you,” Lincoln acknowledged as they both rose to their feet and bolted for the stairwell that led back to the helipad.

  “Sinister’s mine,” Shadow said.

  “Leave a piece for me,” Lincoln added. “I want the softest and fleshiest piece.”

  By the time we reached the helipad, the chopper was already on the ground and Sinister was entering into it.

  “No you don’t,” Shadow said as he began sprinting for the chopper, leaping over the unconscious bodies of the two guards that Lincoln had dispatched.

  Shadow was fast, but when it came down to man versus machine, the latter always won. By the time Shadow reached the helicopter, it was already fifteen feet up in the air.

  “This isn’t over,” Shadow cried out to him.

  “Of course not,” Sinister shouted over the noise of the spinning blades. “This ha
s been too much fun. I’m glad you survived all of this Shadow, I really am. You may not believe me, but I still do love you…brother.”

  And then the chopper was gone. Sinister’s final words reverberated in my ears.

  Brother?

  Shadow stood on the helipad, his eyes staring into the distance at the chopper which had become a speck in the sky.

  “It’s not her,” Lincoln said, his voice pulling Shadow’s attention from the city skyline back down to us. “Thank God, it’s not her.”

  “What?” Shadow asked.

  “It’s not Calisto,” Lincoln repeated, cradling the dead woman in his arms, knife still buried in her heart.

  I had a look for myself. He was right. From afar it was easy to be fooled.

  With a new hairdo and a gag over her mouth, it was easy to transform Bria into a Calisto look-alike.

  The poor girl didn’t deserve to die like this, despite her antagonizing me. Bria wasn’t a bad person, just confused and misunderstood; and now she was gone.

  Lincoln laid her body back on the ground and then stood up. In his hands was an electronic tablet.

  “I found this next to the body,” Lincoln said.

  Shadow’s eyes narrowed when he saw the tablet. He took it from Lincoln’s hands, tapped on the screen and saw that it was loaded with a video.

  The screen image was of Sinister, sitting on what looked to be a throne.

  Before even watching the video, I already knew that Sinister’s message was not going to be good.

  Shadow held the tablet out for everyone to see and hit the play button. I held my breath and listened to the bastard’s words, which I knew would change us all forever.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Despite the shitty quality of the tablet’s speakers, the true voice of Sinister was unmistakable. With the voice scrambler removed, we ended up listening to Calisto’s delicate falsetto instead of the deep baritone drone of Sinister.

  “I wish I could say I know what you’re thinking at this very moment Shadow,” she said in the pre-recorded video, “But the truth is, I don’t. But God, I wish I was there to see the look on your stupid face.”

  Calisto removed the mask and revealed herself to us. She had a smug look on her face.

  The three of us congregated on the helipad, huddled over the screen, absolutely dumbfounded. I turned to Shadow and saw the hurt on his face.

  I reflected on my own emotions and discovered only hate for Calisto. She had murdered Justin and for that, I wanted her to die.

  “The first question that must come to mind is regarding the death of mommy and daddy,” she continued. “Yes, I take full credit for that one, though I know it’s probably hard to believe. How could a ten year-old girl have the mental capability to commit murder that has baffled police—and my stupid brother—for over thirteen years? The answer is simple.

  “I’m smarter than all of you. I always have been. But seeing as how mom and dad invested all their time on you, Shadow, I was always on the outside looking in—like a forgotten puppy left out in the cold on Christmas Eve, staring through the windows while everyone else feasted on their fat Christmas turkey.

  “I was the one deserving of their attention. I was the one that was always smarter, and I was the one that listened to everything that our parents told us. I should have been groomed to be the next leader of the Midnight Society but because I was born with no balls between my legs, I was regulated to the sidelines like a second-rate hack.

  “No matter what I did, it always failed to impress mom and dad. While you were drawing stupid stick figures on snot-stained pieces of paper, I was composing ballads on my violin. But did mom or dad care?

  “No, of course not; they ogled over your imbecile drawings and told me to hush my playing so you could concentrate on studying the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso. Do you know how I felt being second to you Shadow? Do you know how it felt being second to someone who was mentally inferior?

  “It’s pretty amazing how much hate a ten year old can develop. Let that be a lesson for all parents—don’t neglect your kids because you’ll never know when they’ll murder you for being an asshole parent.”

  “This brings us to the night that has altered the shape of your life forever, Shadow. You were asleep, if I recall. Dad was in the study; deep into his after dinner drink. I remember him passing out in his favorite arm chair; his head tilted back, neck exposed while Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody played. It was easy to sit in his lap and stab him in the jugular with the box cutter.

  “Oh the blood, you should have seen the blood. It was brilliant. It was magnificent. What really made my day however was watching his eyes loll over to me in complete and utter disbelief. I stabbed him again, and the gurgling sound deep in his throat was the true music in the room, overshadowing Franz Liszt.

  When dad was dead, I decided to saw his neck open with the box cutter. I didn’t know why at the time, but it felt like the right thing to do.

  “Daddy’s death deserved to be gruesome. It deserved to be horrific in every sense. After all, he was an asshole. After I was finished with dad, it didn’t take long for mom to enter the study to investigate what my crying was all about. She screamed like a banshee when she saw dad lying in a pool of blood. She completely ignored me—as she always did—and ran to dad, cradling him in his arms.

  “I surprised her with the blade from behind, giving her the same treatment I had given dad.

  “When the deed was done, I hid the box cutter along with my blood-stained clothes in the large stuffed bear our grandma had given me on my fifth birthday. I hated that bear, by the way. It always reminded me that while you got the shiny new bike, I got that furry oversized piece of shit—though it did come in handy in disposing the evidence.

  I cleaned myself up along with any evidence that I had been in that study that night, and then I went to bed and slept peacefully for the first time in a long while.

  “The next morning, you found their bodies. I thought it was ironic, yet sweet how you were trying to protect me from seeing the crime scene, despite the image already engraved in my photographic memory. I created the masterpiece after all.”

  “My God,” Lincoln whispered out loud.

  Shadow said nothing and continued watching the monitor.

  Calisto sighed. “After killing our parents, I thought it was the end of my blood lust. I had tried my hand at murder once and once was enough for me. Soon it became a fond memory, one I occasionally would replay in my mind and smile. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, all those times you caught me in a daydream smiling and I told you that I was thinking about some cute guy I had met off the streets. Well that was a lie Shadow. In reality, I was thinking of mom and dad’s blood-soaked corpses.

  “So while I moved on from that night, you were possessed by the incident. I have to admit, I didn’t think it would haunt you as much as it did, but at the time I was young and I didn’t understand the concept of emotions as much as I should have, and I underestimated just how much like our father you truly were. Whereas father obsessed over Julia’s death, you obsessed over father’s demise. It was very poetic.

  “To this day, I sometimes find it hard to understand the emotions of others. I guess that makes me a sociopath doesn’t it?” she paused. “So this is the part where my confession gets a little sappy. Believe it or not, I care about you Shadow, and I never wanted to hurt you—physically that is. While mom and dad treated me like I was some bastard worth forgetting, you treated me like family. The only reason I discovered love was because of you. Yes—though you may not believe me after all that has happened—I love you Shadow. You are my twin after all and we share a bond that only other twins can understand.

  “I’m still smarter than you, apply myself much better than you—but I’ll never hate you because of your stupidity or naivety. You’re probably wondering why I decided to do all of these things to you if I loved you so much.

  “It’s because I wanted
to recreate you; give you a new life. Let’s face it, the murder of our parents turned you into an empty shell—and I seriously felt guilty about it. I couldn’t just sit here idly and watch you waste your life away, trying to bring their killer—me—to justice.

  “A few years ago I read how the Incata, an aboriginal tribe living in the remote rainforests of South America, believed that the sins an individual committed over their lifetime possessed your spirit and your body, transforming a person into a walking monster. The only way to be cleansed was to be stripped of everything you owned and take a pilgrimage deep into the center of the rainforest where a certain purple plant grew. This plant acted as both a powerful hallucinogen and a strong poison with its beauty being its defense mechanism.

  “The sinners were to pick this plant and bring it back to their village as the first part of their absolution. Many of them ended up dying in the jungle from starvation, dehydration, or killed by the wildlife inside. Only a few returned back to the village, where the final step of the cleansing involved ingesting the plant and dying for a brief period of time. During the transition between life and death, the village elders resurrected the sinners by some voodoo magic, which suspiciously looked like CPR to me. If a person survived, only then were they were deemed fully cleansed and alive again.

  “Shadow, this is what I have done for you. In order for you to be born again, I needed to strip everything away from you, which I have done. The leadership of the Midnight Society has been destroyed and all its past members now belong to me. It wasn’t difficult convincing them that under your leadership, the Midnight Society was going to crumble. After all, you broke a sacred tradition and allowed a common whore—Ms. Aria Valencia into our organization.

  “I anticipated you choosing her far in advance. How? Well for the past year, I’ve been fucking with your mind. Before you went to sleep at night, I drugged you and with a little help of some subliminal cognitive hypnotherapy, I was able to mold the ideal woman in your mind—every single detail including her height, her weight, her characteristics, her interests. I even went down to the finest details such as her speech and her mannerisms. For the past year, I’ve been constructing your dream girl, and that girl was Ms. Aria Valencia. She was someone I chose at random while enjoying a free piano concert at the University one evening. I admit, I will miss her lovely music.