A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2)

by Tony Faggioli

  “Please, God. Please. No. Help me. Please, help me.”

  Echoes of closing gates rattled through the air, the drapes before him parted and hell, Kyle Fasano’s own personal version of it anyway, came to life. Beyond the drape was a dark hall where three men in black robes waited.

  Their faces were pale and grossly disfigured. The man on his left was heavier than the rest, but it were as if someone had screwed a much smaller head onto his shoulders. He was disproportionate; with eyes bulging like black lemons, almost alien in appearance.

  Kyle had barely survived the memories provoked by the hornets at the gate, but as the fat man levitated swiftly across the room, his feet inches off the floor, and grabbed Kyle’s head between his hands, it was readily apparent that this was going to be much, much worse. He reached into Kyle, pushed a “play” button, and the moments of an entire life began to stream.

  As a child, his earliest nightmares were of aliens, who not coincidentally had similar faces to the creature attacking him now. The nightmares had been relentless and filled with thoughts of abduction and torture, but back then, in his earthly life, they were detached vapors of reality that dissipated upon each awakening.

  Here, though, they were real. Spikes from the creature’s fingers jabbed into his ear holes, eyes, nostrils and mouth. He was being probed and dissected, like a frog in biology class, and the agony only stopped when he felt his mind going pitch black beneath the pressure of the creature’s evil hands.

  Caitlyn Hall, if the truth be told—and even here, in hell, the truth had merit, if only because it was used as just one more blunt instrument—had only been the latest woman he’d cheated with. There had been a good half-dozen others too. The difference was that with them, the affairs had all been confined to his mind, where the skinny wooden blocks of lust, fantasy, sex, possession and abuse had been stacked, like in some mad game of Jenga, in staggered rows that could not hold. Each sinful thought just one more nudge closer to the fall.

  All the while he hadn’t comprehended what he understood now: each of those women had been a rehearsal for that fall, a preparation for what would and wouldn’t work in seducing someone at last, past the ring on his finger and into bed.

  Preparation for Caitlyn. Who was a grown woman, but vulnerable too, looking for love like everyone was. Yes, she made her choice. But Kyle had been the one who had given her the option to begin with. The option to join in his sin and the false option to ever find any happiness there.

  Because he would never love her. Because it had never been about her.

  It was all about him.

  Hadn’t The Gray Man said this, from the start, in that diner when Kyle had been trying to duck and run from what he’d done? To Caitlyn. To Tamara. To Seth and Janie. To… Victoria.

  “Stop,” he moaned. His temples were being pressed so hard that the pain in his eardrums was vibrating against the molars in his upper jaw.

  Knowledge. He was being collapsed with it.

  He’d treated people, most of his life, with complete disregard. His own special-needs brother saw him once a year. His father had died alone because Kyle couldn’t handle being there in the final hours; which had meant that he’d even made his father’s death about him.

  And what of Tamara? Who had blessed him with a life and a family, who had tried to lead him to faith in God, and was thanked with betrayal?

  Kyle kept moving through the memories until he arrived at the sweet, bespeckled face of someone who had never let her guard down for fear of being hurt: Victoria. Now he remembered her father, a mean drunk who never hit her or her mother with anything but his words.

  But, oh, how words can be the worst fists of all.

  His high school sweetheart—the girl he’d wanted more than anything— who’d opened herself up to him at last, against all odds. He convinced her, with love and whispers full of promise, to let that guard down. That he would be there, to help her get past those harsh words that she’d allowed to define her for so long, to help her find a new meaning of herself. Then? He’d traded in their love like a one dollar lotto scratcher, on the take for someone new.

  For someone off at college. For someone, wrapped around a body part, who could meet a need. His need—primal, instinctive, yes. But a need meant to be subjugated to a soul called to evolve and care.

  A soul called to love.

  Brain bruised, spent and horrified, he was finally dropped to the ground. The creature stood looking down at him for a moment before it stepped back. Looking up, Kyle saw past the creature’s head to the ceiling of the chamber, where hundreds of bodies were hanging, necks stretched, arms limp, in various stages of decomposition.

  He could barely breathe and he didn’t want to see what was next. Instead he kept praying, and before long he felt the second creature coming towards him; like a wall moving through the room, it displaced the air before it and created a heavy breeze.

  Without any warning at all, it began to beat him, in violent, vicious blows… of shame and self-loathing.

  It used the truth of his selfishness to now create lies—of who he was, what he believed and what others thought of him. The agony that tore into him, of not being worthy of anything or anyone, or even of love, was something this place had used since the beginning of time.

  Because he knew… the creature that ruled this place knew… if you could get one of God’s creatures to believe that it was not worthy of love, then it was a short step indeed to get it to believe that it wasn’t worthy of a soul, and then it would surrender it without it ever needing to be stolen.

  Kyle kicked and flailed, scrambled and scratched to get away, banged his head viciously against the floor, inflicting pain on himself to distract himself from the pain being forced upon him. He was willing to do anything to end it, even if ending it meant bashing his brains in.

  No. He realized that he couldn’t give in, not if there might be the minutest chance of escape, because on some level he was still alive, still sentient. But if he actually died here? Then this was it: this place, and this room, for all eternity.

  Kyle stopped and tried to breath. The creature was now folding up his eyelids using pricks in its fingertips, forcing him to pay attention. Crying was a bad idea, but Kyle couldn’t stop himself, and the salt from his tears burned his bleeding eyes. He didn’t care. It was a pain that helped distract him. Slowly, the pricks were removed from his eyes and he blinked a few times, feeling blood wet his eye sockets.

  “You are a millionth?” the second creature asked in a hollow voice. “Hmm.” Then it released him, turned and walked away.

  The third creature walked slowly and methodically towards him, its slender eyes twitching with madness as it rolled its jaw from side to side.

  “Time to pay your wages…” it sang, wringing its hands excitedly, almost violently, knuckles popping. Kyle knew that he couldn’t survive whatever was coming next. His heart would give out, or his brain would clutch up in a stroke. The walls of the chamber began to shimmer with black dots that spilled from cracks in the bricks; spiders, tens of thousands them, scuttled up the walls, across the ceiling and then down the chains from which the bodies above were hanging, to feed on them.

  Kyle hated spiders, so when he saw many of them begin to rappel down from the ceiling, down thin lines of webbing, he knew who they were coming for. His vision grew blurry for all the lines falling towards him.

  He opened his mouth to cry out to God one last time but his throat betrayed him. He’d been screaming so loudly that his vocal cords were raw and frayed.

  “Pay, pay, pay, pay, pay, pay…” the creature murmured gleefully, bearing down on him, its fingers like bird talons, splayed wide to dig into him.

  Turning his face from what was coming, Kyle tried frantically for a few utterances, working his tongue to voice them. They would be his last words. He knew it. And all he wanted was to be able to say them.

  At last, barely, they came. “I’m sorry,” he squeaked.

  He s
aid it to all the hurts and tears he’d ever caused, known and unknown.

  And it was as if the words were notes played by a distant, lonely violin, begging for accompaniment by an orchestra in a faraway place.

  The room stilled.

  The creature stopped in his tracks.

  And the music came, a sweet song from heaven.

  Like an old friend who, arriving on a sad day, brings good news.

  The blue started first as a tiny marble in Kyle’s chest, then swiftly became an orb, and then expanded, within to without, in a swift process that was actually as painful as it was exhilarating. Kyle could almost feel his ribs groaning as his bones stretched with power and he was filled with the blue. Cool, sacred, refreshing, healing blue.

  Powerful blue.

  Liberating blue.

  Kyle smiled weakly and humbly.

  Even here, in the depths of hell, God had answered his prayer.

  The creatures, masters of their domain, looked at him curiously at first, and then looked to one another, confusion rippling across their scared faces before their cheekbones and chins began to crack like clay masks that swiftly fell apart, their noses and eyes dropping clean off.

  Behind their faces, in the empty space of their skulls, was darkness. Nothing but darkness.

  The room rumbled and buckled, some of the bricks in the walls clattering like loose teeth down to the floor, as Kyle got to his feet. The spiders were no longer moving in unison, on the march, but now swarmed in panic, in all directions, undulating in waves.

  All of Kyle’s wounds were shut and healed, from the holes in his eyelids to the remaining hornet sting on the back of his neck. His very skin vibrated with energy, and as he stretched his fingers, he felt the deepest, greatest and most glorious healing of all: the healing of his mind.

  He had given most of his life to himself, in a desperate, selfish reach.

  Now, finally, truly, he was ready to give it up for others.

  The power surged and coursed out of him, forming a massive, expanding blue dome that evaporate the three creatures, the spiders and the entire building around them, a shock wave that gave birth to a sound wave of deeper proportion. The surrounding buildings outside shook, a few of them tumbling, as the sky above seemed to blur and scream.

  There was a pop, and then he was moving through space and time again, colors oscillating as he traversed The White City, to move from one point within it to another.

  When the subway through hell finally stopped, Kyle was stunned to see the figure standing on a street corner, right in front of him.

  It was The Gray May, staring back at him just as stunned.

  HIS BAGS ALL PACKED, The Bread Man made his way out of the living room, through the kitchen and out the back door, the screen door banging behind him as he stumbled across the lawn and to the garage. As he unlocked the soundproof door, he could already here their stifled screaming.

  They knew he was coming and what was coming.

  Too bad. Bitches deserved it. They’d both been nothing but trouble. He would start with the mouthy one: the waitress with her trampy tattoos.

  He closed the garage door behind him and was about to lock it when something hit him in the head. It was a glancing blow, but it still had him seeing stars. He heard a bang as whatever it was that struck him bounced off the wheelbarrow hanging on the wall next to him and clattered to the floor. He watched it skitter to a stop: it was a hammer, of all things.

  Looking up, confused, through a haze of pain, he could see the waitress smiling at him as his knees went wobbly. She was still chained up, but she’d somehow managed to get one hand free of its shackle. Based on the amount of blood on that hand and over her arm, she’d pulled some meat off the bone to do it. Since she was chained against the wall nearest the door, she was in his blind spot when he’d walked in. He was lucky. If she’d caught him flush, if her free hand wasn’t so injured, or if her other shoulder had been freer to allow her to put more momentum into the swing? He’d be dead now.

  He always hung his tools on the wall areas around them, for easy access while he worked. That’s how confident he was of how secure they were when he had them shackled. Never in a lifetime did he expect someone to wrench their hand nearly clear off just to take a shot at him.

  Even now, as Pretty Ashley kept screaming her damn head off, the waitress glared at him defiantly.

  He glared back. “Bitch. You… crazy bitch. You die first now, for sure.”

  His head wasn’t right. The shot had brought back his migraine with a vengeance and there were black spots in his eyes. Still, he drove himself forwards and grabbed the waitress by the throat and squeezed. “Fuck you,” she squeaked between gritted teeth, and then she hit him with the heel of her hand, right on the bridge of his nose.

  Upon their collision, simultaneous cracking sounds split the air as both his nose and her weakened wrist broke.

  She screamed in pain; he yelped, covered his nose with his hands and stumbled backwards, warm blood spilling over his lips and chin.

  “Kill him, Jasmine! Kill him now!” Pretty Ashley yelled.

  The Bread Man locked eyes with Jasmine as he sat down on his haunches. There was blood pouring through his fingers and onto his shirt now too, but he told himself not to panic. The bleeding would stop in time. All he had to do was wait for his head to calm before he settled this. Jasmine could barely look at him. Her free arm was useless; her hand was bent at an awkward angle to her arm, and a tiny bit of bone was sticking out of the skin.

  She’d given it all she had, and it still hadn’t been enough.

  “I’m still here, you little whore,” The Bread Man growled.

  Jasmine’s face drained of resolve. A lame arm. The other arm and both her feet still shackled tight. She was done for, and her eyes said she knew it. It was a look The Bread Man loved. A look they all got in the end. A look that said, “Go ahead, get it over with, take me.”

  Just like with sex.

  He stood and wiped his nose with his forearm, leaving a blood slick there. Still dizzy, he got to his feet and grabbed a knife that hung by a wall hook next to Ashley. She went hysterical, screaming and convulsing violently in her chains, her chest and waist rocking back and forth as she tried to struggle free.

  Her eyes were as wide as saucers and the terror in them caught his attention. He decided he would kill Ashley first after all.

  As he moved towards her and her eyes went wide, the other bitch spoke up.

  “Me first, you dickless fag,” Jasmine grunted.

  The Bread Man blinked. Did she just call him a—

  “C’mon, you fairy. I bet they messed up your circumcision and just left you with a nub, huh? C’mon. Show it to me so I can laugh at it.”

  Rage thickening in his blood, The Bread Man spun and advanced towards her. He was feeling stronger, so he placed the knife to a spot along her jawline, the tip actually nipping at her earlobe as he leaned in close, and took a good look into her eyes. The usual fear was there, yes, but it was swimming in something else.

  Was that glee?

  She wrapped her free arm around the back of his neck and pulled his face into hers, and then, beyond belief, the crazy bitch started chewing and gnashing at his throat like a fucking vampire. And it hurt. Shit, did it hurt. Dropping the knife instinctively, he tried to pry her loose, but she had a mouthful of his flesh and wasn’t letting go.

  Instinctively he jerked back and a bolt of horrendous pain shot across his neck. She’d got a good bite in, but that was it. No jugular. Too bad for her. Gritting his teeth, he head butted her, three times, square in the face. Now it was her turn to scream and bleed, first a river of blood from her nose, and then more out of her mouth.

  It was beautiful.

  But the head butts had made his migraine detonate like a bomb, right behind his eyes.

  He stumbled again and fell over into a pile of boxes and bags of his mother’s old clothes.

  Looking up at Jasmine, he could see tha
t the gash on her forehead from the mirror at her house had reopened again. She was blinking violently, as if she were trying to keep the blood out of her eyes.

  Good. She was still alive. They both were. That was fine. He’d get them, in a little while. Right now, though, he had a bigger problem. An old, familiar gust of heat combed through his mind.

  The images came upon him from The Other like a flash flood, and he could hear himself talking aloud in gibberish, bits and pieces of his mission slicing through his consciousness. When they stopped, The Bread Man smiled. He had to hurry and finish these two, because the next one was going to be delectable. She was a preacher’s daughter. In Canada. The Bread Man wondered if it was anywhere near Manitoba, where a cousin of his lived.

  The Other jerked violently in his mind, and The Bread Man screamed as his migraine formed like a mushroom cloud.

  Okay. Okay. I’m sorry for losing focus. Go on. Go on. I’m sorry. Please.

  Her name was Tammy. Tammy in Canada. Yeah.

  “And she’s got that old world religion! By golly! That old world religion where they take ya down to the water and save ye soul, ah yes!” he yelled deliriously into the stifling hot air of the garage. Then he laughed hysterically for a while, because it felt good.

  His head hurt… No, his actual brain matter was hurting.

  “Stop it,” he whined to The Other. “You’re melting it!”

  He began to claw at his face. Image upon image of his mom and dad spilled out of his head and across his eyes. Desperate to stop it, he took three fingers of each hand and pressed hard on his eyeballs, trying to short-circuit their faces.

  It worked, but only slightly. He tried to talk but only more gibberish came out.

  He was gassed up. He was ready to go. He just had to get his shit together, get up, slit their throats—there was no time for any fun now, it was all ruined—and get out of here.

  He heard a car pull up in his driveway.

  It was his worst nightmare, come true. Someone was here, on the property, and the side door of the garage was still open from when the bitch had attacked him on his way in.