I’m Glad You’re Dead

by Hunter Blain

  In my best (given the circumstances) Bill Paxton voice I said, “Game over, man. Game over!”

  There was an impact on the lid and it moved slightly, then fell back into place. I lifted my burning head and screamed, “Da? Da, is that you?”

  I could barely make out a voice from outside the coffin that said “Who else would it be, you dolt? Now push! I can’t move this thing alone.”

  “On the count of three!” I yelled, gurgling water as it neared the top. “Three!”

  There was another impact and one of the hydraulics broke apart. Inside the coffin, I flattened my back which dunked my head under the corrosive water, placed my palms and feet on the lid, and pushed with everything I had left.

  My eyelids were starting to be eaten through and my lips were unable to hold their seal. Acidic water poured into my mouth, sending a renewed hysteria through my core. I shifted my hands and feet to the side that had the broken hydraulic and pushed. It was unlife or death. There was an impact on the bedroom floor that was felt just as much as heard, even with my ears submerged. After that, the lid came up easily on the remaining hydraulic.

  Da was peeking into the coffin as I was jumping out and I trampled him as we both fell into the water that was invading my home. I made my way to my knees and pulled myself up to wobbly feet. There was a giant boulder lying next to my bed with a ton of dark dirt everywhere. Looking up I noticed a SUV sized hole in the roof of my ceiling.

  Drunkenly I asked, “The fuck is going on, Da?”

  “We are being attacked,” he said while climbing up one of my drawers to dry his wings. “I think it’s Locke. Perhaps it’s time to test out your bat exit, yes?”

  “Wait,” I said while reaching back into the burning water of the coffin to grab a few bags of sealed blood. With them secure, I said, “Ok let’s go.”

  We made our way to my bookshelf, me stumbling like a Russian on any day of the week. I ripped open a bag and sucked it dry, feeling instantly better, but the damage was still severe. I needed as much blood as I could to fight off the detrimental iron particles that were making their way to my bloodstream. The blood wasn’t even a fraction as effective as straight from the tap, but anything helped.

  I drank the other bag, threw down the container and flipped the head of the bust on my bookshelf. Underneath was a button that I pressed. There was a click and the hidden door swung inward. We moved through it and Da closed it behind us, as I stumbled through the waist high water through the tunnel. It was big enough for two men standing shoulder to shoulder and tall enough to accommodate my six-foot frame.

  After 100 feet, it started to curve upwards at a slant. In short order the water was down to my knees, then ankles. Finally, we were out and still moving at an angle away from my home. My legs still moved as if fully submerged in water and the tops of my eye lids fought to hold the bottoms, like a scared mother and child huddling in the dark with iron grips.

  “How the hell did he know where my coffin was?” I drunkenly asked Da.

  “Probably because it’s the only spot in the compound that he couldn’t see,” he suggested.

  In my best Bob Peck impression, I said “Clever girl…”

  We made our way to the ladder constructed of 2x4’s and climbed the ten feet up to the cover we hid with a fake bush at the edge of the property.

  “Hey, what time is it. Do you know?” I ask Da, looking down at him.

  “Do I look like I wear a watch?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Mr. iPad,” I mocked.

  I placed my hand on the cover and lifted extra slowly. My muscles still had concrete inside them so I had to put some force into it. So instead of inching the lid up, it all of a sudden shot up when I put in too much, uncontrolled effort.

  Thank Lilith for the shade that the bush had provided; but the sunlight still shown through, scalding my face and blinding me.

  A scream escaped my mouth as my eyes melted in their sockets. I clamped my hands around my mouth to dampen the sounds and I dropped the metal cover on my head, knocking me down to the ground ten feet below. Da barely dodged out of the way with a curse, dropping down after me.

  “Are you alright?” he asked in alarm.

  “Sun: 2. John: 0,” I said, barely conscious.

  “I think it’s day time, John,” he remarked in response to me earlier question.

  My head slowly turned toward his voice with, what I imagined to be, an obvious look of annoyance.

  “Let’s just hope they don’t find my super-secret exi…” I started

  An explosion of wood sounded deep in the tunnel behind us.

  “You had to say something,” Da said with a sigh.

  “Well, shit,” was my only response. “What now? Grab a walking cane and attack Locke with it?”

  The sound of sloshing water was barely audible in the distance.

  “They’re coming. Can’t you use some magic to collapse the tunnel behind us?” he asked.

  “It’s day, man. I’m having trouble just staying awake let alone use any of my focus. Plus, being kissed on the forehead by light isn’t fucking helping at all. Not to mention the freaking iron dust in my Lilith damned body!” My voice started to raise at the end.

  “Alright. All right. Let’s calm down,” he begged.

  “Calmer than you are,” I said.

  “If we can’t use your magic, then let’s outthink them,” he said with hope in his voice.

  I heard tiny hands digging in the dirt about six feet away from the ladder, where it would still be dark even if the cover was taken off. I grasped what he was doing after a moment and blindly crawled on my hands and feet to where he had already dug, I’m assuming, an adorable little hole.

  My hands dug into the cool, damp earth which I scooped into a big pile.

  The sounds of trudging water became quicker as they moved up the tunnel into the shallows.

  “Climb in,” Da said. “I’ll throw them off your trail,” he said, “But first…”

  I heard him fly away and up the ladder. There was the sound of the cover coming loose. Warm light flooded the tunnel and stayed that way for a couple of heart beats. The cover was replaced and Da flew back to me.

  “Now, this may hurt a little,” he said before stabbing me in the chest with what I could only assume was a piece of molten metal forged in the depths of Mordor itself.

  With a pitch reserved for little girls, I sharply inhaled to scream again, but the agony wouldn’t let me exhale.

  “John, I need you to scream with all your might,” Da said, and then used another piece of white-hot metal to cut off my arm at the elbow. I obliged his request.

  The scream shook the walls and loose dirt rained down. The sound of footsteps stopped.

  “What…?” I started, at the edge of passing out.

  “I stabbed you with iron to prevent Locke from finding you via divination. Then I cut off your hand to place at the edge of where the light is.”

  “So, they think that I died trying to escape,” I finished through clenched teeth.

  “Exactly!” he said triumphantly.

  “I think I already had enough iron in my body to prevent that,” I remarked as he moved the mound of dirt on top of me, and then spread the excess around the tunnel.

  He briefly stopped. “Better to be extra sure then!” he said.

  After he was finished, I heard the plop of my arm and then the tunnel cover was opened again with the edge of the light searing the end of my arm to a smoldering ember. With that, he did his disappearing act right as the first goon made his way up the tunnel. The cover went back into place, leaving behind a smell of burnt and rotted flesh behind.

  The goon walked all around the tunnel, looking for any clues he could find. He stopped at my arm for a moment and then stepped forward to the tunnel ladder. I could hear his dull footsteps on the wooden rungs as he made his way up, then the sound of the cover moving. Another few moments passed before the goon moved it out of the way entirely and then cl
imbed back down, grabbing my arm. With that in hand, no pun intended, I could hear him retreat back down the corridor toward my underwater home.

  With the tunnel spinning and no longer able to keep my non-existent eyes open anymore, I succumbed and let the black tendrils of unconsciousness grab hold and pull me under.

  Jonathan. I heard in my dreams. I know you are not dead. Well, more dead than usual.

  I snapped back into reality, aware of a darkness near me.

  “John-a-thon...,” Locke purred, only feet away from me. “I can smell you, still. You aren’t dead, are you?” His footsteps wandered back and forth up the tunnel, stopping periodically.

  I kept as still as inhumanly possible, which was incredibly easy with the iron stabbed into my chest.

  He chanted something under his breath and I could feel an ethereal hand slide over me, without pausing. I felt it rest at where my arm was dropped. Freshly seared John flesh still drifted in the air where the arm was burned from the light.

  After a moment, Locke took in a deep breath and said “Well, that’s anticlimactic. Died like the coward you were. Your father would have been ashamed. At least he died like a man.”

  I was stunned by what had just pierced my ears and ricocheted throughout my brain.

  After realization set in, rage built in my chest and my remaining hand that was resting on my stomach clinched into a fist, moving the dirt as I did.

  Locke took notice of the sound, but couldn’t locate exactly where it was coming from.

  “I still remember how he begged for your mother’s life, and yours. He didn’t care how much we tortured him, if we let his wife and son go. I lied, of course, and promised I would free the both of you the instant he gave me his confession. He gave me everything and more.”

  The weight of what he was saying crushed my chest and turned my guts into sludge. The only reason I wasn’t shaking with anger was simply because I had nothing left in me, plus the iron that had eaten most of my skin and pierced my chest kept me barely not-alive. All I could do was lay there, listening to his taunts about how he killed my fucking family.

  He continued. “After his official confession, I leaned over to where we had him strapped to a table, and whispered in his ear exactly what I was going to do to your mother. I’ll give it to him though, Jonathan, he did not cry. He didn’t even tear up. Your father simply turned his gaze to the ceiling and stayed that way, jaw set, as we pulled his intestines out inch by agonizing inch.” Locke finished and stood still, expectantly.

  Pressing his point, Locke continued, “I still remember the smell of searing flesh as your mother screamed and clawed, futilely,” he was almost laughing as he spoke, giddy with delight.

  Tears welled at the bottom of my eye lids where the light had just stopped eating my flesh, mixing with the dirt. My bottom lip trembled slightly.

  “It was an amusing game, the cat and mouse we played. But then, one day, you just stopped playing. I was so disappointed. Didn’t you get all the clues I left for you? No? You don’t think,” he gasped in mock surprise, “that your companion, Ulric, found them before you and hid them, do you?”

  Everything went still in my mind. My body went numb. I saw Ulric in my memories, always insisting on spreading out when searching for information. The only good leads coming from what I had found. I knew he had prevented me from discovering the passage of time, but to actually hide information from me… to prolong the chase intentionally. That was a fresh bag of bull shit.

  “Hmm, oh well. I suppose this game is over too soon as well,” he said, and then started to make his way to the ladder. A foot stepped on my face, packing the dirt and mud into my empty sockets. I heard him climb the ladder and remove the cover. Then he was outside.

  His words were running through my head over and over, etching themselves permanently in my brain. That son-of-a-bitch had killed my mother and father. Tortured them first. Gave my father false hope before crashing it down and prolonging his death. I finally found my parent’s killer that Ulric had denied me for so long.

  The sounds of the night filled the tunnel. I needed fresh blood energy and it was blinding. With Da still M.I.A., it was up to me “blood” to get myself out. I started moving the fingers on my stomach to move my hand like a man crawling on the ground “kill”. It took what seemed like forever “hungry” until I reached the white-hot iron that was stabbed into my chest. It didn’t budge “Now! Now! Now!”. The thirst was too much to bare “throat— anyone’s throat— everyone’s throat.” It was getting increasingly difficult to focus “feed, feed now”, but I managed to push one of my nails underneath the metal sticking out of my skin and lift it forward a fraction of an inch. This gave me new vigor and I moved my hand closer for better leverage, placed my finger underneath it again and pushed with all my strength. The nail popped out and a rush of energy flooded my body “Kill now! Kill now! Eat now! Eat now!”

  PS shoved me aside and grabbed the wheel, daring me to try and take it back.

  I burst through my cavernous grave, oriented myself toward the ladder, and jumped through the ground, exploding onto the surface and into the air for several feet. Once I landed “blood nearby, find, kill, eat” I smelled what I craved for survival.

  My eyes were still gone, but my other senses were sharper than any mortal predator. I used them to guide me. When in full hunter mode, I can see the blood of my prey in any light. The energy and heat given off pulls at my senses like a snake tracking its next meal.

  “Hunt. There! Kneeling at the cold rock, holding the strong-smelling plants. Eat her.” I got closer, stalking from behind. I leapt through the air and tackled my prey to the ground from behind, sinking my teeth into her neck. I wasn’t delicate and bit through half her neck. Blood sprayed out, coating the headstone. Even in my literal blind rage, my conscious, which had been thrown into the back seat, could read that the headstone was for a young man of about twenty-five due to the outline of the still warm blood.

  Changing position and moving my mouth to better catch the arterial spray, I drained every, last drop. That wasn’t enough so I pushed on the gaping hole in her neck and sucked with everything I had. Her body shriveled in my hands. I had to spit out chunks of vascular tissue that were ripped out and dropped the body. The hunger still had control.

  There was a car running on the path and I leaped over to it, grabbing and then ripping the door of the hinges. My eyes were growing from the fresh blood, as was the stub at the end of my arm, which was growing longer by the second.

  As my eyes coalesced, I could make out a child sitting in the backseat holding a super hero action figure. He lifted the hero out in defense, eyes wide and streaming tears. Snarling, I ferociously crawled into the car and reached into the back.

  A small, powerful hand grabbed my belt and yanked me backwards with enough force to send me tumbling in the air several feet away. The seat I was clutching came with me, ripped from the metal frame of the vehicle.

  “John!” Da’s voice screamed at me. But not just at me, inside my head. I always hated it when supes did that.

  The booming voice stunned me, allowing my conscious to wrestle the wheel back and gain control of my body. The horror of what I had just done started seeping in as the primal part of me receded into the corner of my mind.

  In a booming voice, Da commanded, “Look at me, now!”

  I lifted my head to see Da, glowing white with plumes of energy blooming off of him, arcing upwards like a Jacobs ladder.

  He. Was. Pissed.

  My eyes had fully healed, allowing me to see as my blood rage wore off. I turned my head and spotted the shriveled, mummy of a corpse sitting in front of…

  “Her husband’s grave, John. In front of their now orphan child no less,” Da scalded. The child was whimpering in the back seat. The air carried the smell of urine, furthering my shame. “Now this boy will have to endure losing both his parents with what you did this evening, causing untold psychological damage. You,” He pointed right
at me, “are a monster.”

  I sat there with my blood-soaked mouth hanging open in wordless surprise.

  “I...,” I started.

  “Don’t, you, dare!” Da screamed.

  There was a flush in my face and I wasn’t positive if it came from the fresh blood or my overwhelming feeling of embarrassment and shame. With my tail tucked between my legs, I stood up and started walking away, head hanging low. Tears brimmed my eyes as the surreal events that had taken place were cemented into reality. It was all too much. Locke surviving the centuries and revealing Ulric’s betrayal sat at the forefront of my thoughts, making me dizzy.

  I stopped walking and looked up from the ground with an expression of anguish blossoming on my face. I had just done to that boy what Locke did to me… Locke had made me into a monster.

  No. I did that on my own by letting PS off his leash. In my mind’s eye, I turned to stare at PS who was hiding in the shadows. Only two rubies glinted where his eyes were. He was regretful, but for the same reason a dog is after being punished by its master for chewing the couch; he didn’t know what he had done wrong, only that the master was angry.

  I looked up into the sky and vowed to never let PS take full control like that again. I would also have to find a way to ensure that child had a good life, delegating it my responsibility to make it right.

  With both of my hands in full functioning order, I placed them in my pockets and sullenly walked away from the cemetery toward the church.

  A montage of thoughts rushed into the theater of my mind and I bared witness to the complete puzzle, now that the missing pieces had been found. Ulric hiding valuable information from me, knowing Locke had survived the centuries if he had, as Locke had stated, left clues.

  Locke. My modern-day bully. The pain in my ass that no cream would calm. All of our interactions since my move to Houston back in the early 2000’s. He had to have known who I was and what he did to me.