by Bruce Blake
“Whoa. You want my money, you need my wallet.”
The tip of the knife waggled in the air, gesturing for me to continue. I stared at the point of the blade, at the man’s fingerless glove and the way he’d chewed his fingers until they looked painful. Beyond his arm, I thought I saw a smile hidden in the darkness beneath the hood.
I sighed, a shuddering breath lamenting how little my wallet contained for them to steal as much as it did the fact they were stealing it. The man behind me snatched it away before it cleared my pocket, his nails raking my wrist, and rifled through the meager contents. He snatched the three bills it contained, made a face at the fifteen bucks, and then took the VISA card I’d fought so hard to get after ruining my credit a few years back. Joke’s on him if he uses it, they’ll probably ask for a payment first.
He showed the sparse loot to his partner.
“Fifteen bucks? That’s it?”
“Look at this.” He’d dug out my driver’s licence. I knew this would happen. “The guy’s name is Icarus Fell. Icarus, like in the Iron Maiden song”
“Yeah,” I said. “The guy who named me didn’t like me much. Call me Ric.”
“Sure, Icarus,” the guy holding the knife said in a schoolyard-bully lilt. With a name like Icarus Fell, I’d heard that tone enough to recognize it. He stepped toward me, blade extended to within an inch of my face. I wanted to take an equal step away, but knew his partner wouldn’t like that, so I stood my ground, hoping to look more brave than stupid. “What else you got?”
“Nothing. That’s it.”
“Check his pockets. He put something in his pocket.”
The man tossed my wallet onto the grass where it landed with a mucky-sounding splat. He advanced on me and this time I moved. He grabbed my arm, pulled me toward him.
“Don’t do nothing stupid.”
Why didn’t he tell me that twenty-five or thirty years ago?
He patted my pants pockets first--the most action I’d seen in a while--then moved to the pockets of my suit jacket; the right hand outer one produced a hollow, plasticky thud. I cringed.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” I said inching away. “A game for my kid.”
“Give it up.”
“Guys, really. What are you going to do with a video game?”
His fingers dug into my bicep. “Give it to me.”
“I already missed his birthday. Can’t you let me keep it?” I yanked against his grip knowing I shouldn’t--people got killed for less--but I couldn’t let Trevor down. Not again. “Take everything else. I won’t tell anyone.”
“There is nothing else. Give it to me,” the knife-wielder demanded.
I wondered what Rae would tell Trevor when he didn’t get a present from me again. Probably that, since someone else was his ‘real’ father, I didn’t care.
Adrenaline flooded my brain, but it didn’t heighten my senses the way they describe in books. Instead, it made me stupid. Before I realized what I was doing, I swung at the man holding my arm, my fist contacting his nose with a satisfying crunch. The move surprised both of us and he lifted his hands to his face.
It took a second to comprehend that he’d let me go. My heartbeat quickened, pulsed in my ears. I ran, or attempted to: dress shoes aren’t made for sprinting on wet grass. Both men jumped me before I got going, riding me to the ground like they were the cowboys and I was the calf. A knee pressed into my back, an elbow in my ear as my cheek sank into soggy lawn knocking breath from my lungs and hope from my heart. My clothes soaked instantly, plastering cloth to skin, the smell of wet earth filled my nose, literally.
“You stupid bastard,” one of them said, but the mud in one ear and elbow in the other precluded me from identifying which one. “Couldn’t give us the stupid game, could you?” He yanked it out of my pocket.
The pain of the knife’s tip pushing through the flesh of my lower back into my kidney hurt more than I could ever have imagined. The shock of it made me suck a mixture of cold air and dirty rain water through taut lips and expel it all in an agonized howl. The knife rose and fell again, then again, perforating my internal organs, each stab more painful than the last. Each time it pulled free, I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in that it would end, that I would get up and hurry on my way to see Trevor.
My body jerked and spasmed beneath the men straddling me, my bladder let go. After the fourth time the knife entered me, my flesh went numb. It may have pierced me a few more times, but I lost interest in counting. I gasped air in through my mouth and the breath tasted like the black crud scraped off bread left too long in the toaster. And blood.
“That’s enough. Let’s go,” one of them said, presumably the one not engaged in shredding my bowels.
Their weight lifted off my back and my mind told me to roll over and sit up, defend against further attack, but my muscles would have nothing of such a proposal, so I lay on the wet grass doing the only thing I could: bleed. Maybe I wept a little, too, but who can tell in the rain?
“I guess Icarus really did fall, didn’t he, Ric?”
Their laughter didn’t sting nearly as much as the knife, and it dissipated much more quickly as they ran off. I was used to being teased but couldn’t say the same of being knifed. After they left, my ragged breathing and the sound of rain pattering around and on me became my world. I never realized how much noise rain hitting grass made until my ear was pressed to the ground with no choice but to listen.
My stomach knotted as the gravity of my situation set in: after eleven on a Wednesday night, bleeding on the lawn outside an empty church in the kind of downpour that convinced people not to venture out for a chat with God.
Did I mention I was bleeding? A lot?
Water pooled in my ear canal until the unnaturally loud plop of rain drops splashing into the tiny pond drowned out even the sound of my breath. Not steady, metronomic drips like I imagined a water torture would be, but an uneven patter that, should I live long enough, would likely prove equally effective at driving me crazy.
“Help.”
In my head, the single word came out a scream, shaking trees and rattling windows, attracting the attention needed to save me so I could see my son again, even if it was for the last time. In reality, it was more of a peep. I closed my eyes and sucked dirty water through my nose then coughed it out my mouth. The pain it induced in my back and side hurt worse than the original stabbing, like someone stood over me with a hot poker pressed to my side, except I was cold and wet and bleeding to death, too. A hot poker didn’t sound so bad.
“Help,” I peeped.
###
Icarus Fell Book 2 also available: All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel #2)
"This book is a top-notch sequel to the trials in the life - or afterlife - of Icarus Fell. Without question, this is a triumphant return to the story of a man reformed as he struggles to survive in the space between spaces. Bruce Blake is fantastic with his ability to weave so many elements, twist and turns, into his work and there is no way any dark fantasy reader would not enjoy this second book."
If we're good, we go to Heaven; if we're bad we go to Hell. No one wants to go to Hell.
Except one man who wishes people would just remember to call him Ric.
In the aftermath of a serial killer's murderous spree, souls who didn't deserve damnation went to Hell. The archangel Michael doesn't seem concerned, but Icarus Fell can't bear the guilt of knowing it's his fault they ended up there.
But how can he save them when the archangel forbids him from going and his guardian angel refuses to help?
The answer comes in the form of another beautiful, bewitching guardian angel who offers to be his guide. They travel to Hell to rescue the unjustly damned one by one, but salvation comes at a cost and the economy of Hell demands souls.
Is it a price Icarus is willing to pay?
About the Author
Bruce Blake lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. When pre
ssing issues like shovelling snow and building igloos don't take up his spare time, Bruce can be found taking the dog sled to the nearest coffee shop to work on his short stories and novels.
Actually, Victoria, B.C. is only a couple hours north of Seattle, Wash., where more rain is seen than snow. Since snow isn't really a pressing issue, Bruce spends more time trying to remember to leave the "u" out of words like "colour" and "neighbour" then he does shovelling. The father of two, Bruce is also the trophy husband of burlesque diva Miss Rosie Bitts.
Bruce has been writing since grade school but it wasn't until five years ago he set his sights on becoming a full-time writer. Since then, his first short story, "Another Man's Shoes" was published in the Winter 2008 edition of Cemetery Moon, another short, "Yardwork",was made into a podcast in Oct., 2011 by Pseudopod. His first Icarus Fell novel, On Unfaithful Wings, published to Kindle in Dec., 2011, was selected as a semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Review Best Indie Books of 2012. The second Icarus Fell novel, All Who Wander Are Lost, was released in July, 2012, and Blood of the King, the first book in the “Khirro's Journey” epic fantasy trilogy, followed in September. He has plans for at least three more Icarus novels, several stand alones, and a possible YA fantasy co-written with his eleven-year-old daughter.
Connect With Bruce
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Copyright 2012, Bruce Blake & Best Bitts Productions
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form of by any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review,
This is a work of fiction, names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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