by Mark Tufo
I squinted hard and furrowed my brow. “I…I don’t even know what I’m looking at. Are they randomly procreating? Can interspecies procreate? Because I swear, I see people down in there.” There was a large man; I couldn’t tell from this far away, but something about the size and set of him was familiar. He was, umm, how do I put this delicately? He was in the middle of a conga line; I wish I didn’t know what this was so I couldn’t explain it here, let’s see…he was getting it as good as he was giving it. Does that help without being overly graphic?
“It’s a version of one of the traps I was talking about. Those poor souls are forever locked in the act,” Tommy explained.
“Wow, talk about your vicious circles. Fucking bastards even make sex a horrible experience,” I said.
“They can never stop. They begin to…wear things raw.”
“Stop. Just, stop,” I told Tommy.
“Two minutes of elation followed by an eternity of pain and misery.”
“Didn’t I just ask you to stop? But there are demons in there as well. Wouldn’t they know enough to stay away?”
“Punishment for some crime or other,” Tommy said.
“How close do we have to get to that thing?”
“Close enough.”
“How do we know if we’re getting like, you know, too close?” I was nervous. I watched a demon the size of a water buffalo stick a penis the size of an elephant trunk into a small, winged demon not much larger than a deer. The damage was immediate; it was like he was sawing the other thing in half. He was bleeding, the other thing was hemorrhaging, it was..forget it. The deer thing was spun away when the water buffalo finished; there was a moment where everything began to heal up and then they were off, just like that, getting, giving, receiving, accepting…it was all a blur.
“Just don’t,” Tommy said. “I’ll lead the way. Walk exactly where I do, do not stray. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly.”
“I think I want to be in his pocket.” Linnick was pointing to Tommy as she watched my head involuntarily spin once again to the scene to our left.
“Traitor,” I told her.
“Can you imagine what would happen to me in there?” she asked.
That was all the impetus I needed to not look. I gulped hard and was boring a hole in Tommy’s back as my gaze never wavered. Well, not quite. Mostly, sure, but not quite. I needed just one more nightmare to wrap up the event. Tommy had just warned us that we were in a ribbon-sized safe zone not more than eighteen inches across, and that I should pay extra attention to him, when I heard a series of loud, human, guttural grunts.
It was Durgan. The man I had thought looked vaguely familiar, it was Durgan. I was as sure about it as I could be, as he was covered in copious amounts of blood and yeah, other stuff. Sure, he had shot at us at the hardware store, right? I’m not entirely sure; it was nearly two damn centuries ago. I do remember him being a general asshole and even getting into leagues with Eliza. Still, what had he done to earn an eternity of this? Odds were he had been a dickish bully his entire life up until the apocalypse, and that was when his gym muscles really let his inner demons shine. He turned to me; I don’t know if there was a spark of recognition on his face, but his eyes did grow wider and I saw a fat line of white all around them. Maybe he was pleading for help, maybe not. I turned away quickly, he looked to be in a misery I thought should only be reserved for those that hurt children. I did take a cursory look for a catsuit; if anyone might enjoy this lube-fest it would have been Fitzy of zombie-fucking fame.
“Mr. T! Mr. T!” I looked up to realize Tommy had got about ten feet ahead of me. “You are right on the edge—do not move. Do you understand me!?”
“Ah, yeah,” I told him trying to regain my wits.
“Tallboat!” Linnick bit my nipple so hard I yelped.
“Linnick!” It was all I could do not to slap her away.
“You were moving!” she admonished me.
My foot began to tingle something fierce, I looked down to see that it was embedded in Bill, then Tommy laid a hand roughly on my shoulder.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, honestly bewildered.
“We just need to get away from here,” Tommy said as he nodded to Bill to let me go. Durgan cried out in orgasmic damnation.
Chapter 11
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 9
I was starting to feel more like myself when we stopped for the day or night; there was no real delineation between the two.
“I think I was in trouble down there,” I told Tommy. He had started a small fire, though I have no clue what he was burning; there were no trees to gather wood from. I thought it might be bones, I didn’t ask.
“It was a trap and the lure was working.”
“What lure? I saw the misery those poor bastards were in. I can’t for the life of me think why I would possibly want to join them.”
“Pheromones. They take over the more base parts of you, overriding your higher functions. You most likely wouldn’t have been able to help yourself. Wouldn’t have even realized it until it was too late.”
“You, Linnick, Bill, how come you all were able to make it? None of you seemed in trouble.”
“Bill would have a natural defense. I think Linnick bit you because she was having her own problems, and me…well, I’ve been working for hundreds of years on the control of my mind and I’m sorry Mr. T, but I don’t think you’ve ever tried for one hot minute.”
“I’d like to tell you to kiss my ass for that comment, but instead, thank you.”
He nodded. “I had to. I can’t imagine what I’d tell Azile if she asked what happened to you.”
“There is that.”
Bill was away from the small flame, he had sort of just flattened himself out, I guess that was his way of laying down. At some point, Linnick had got down off me and formed a small divot in Bill.
“She’s got her own gel mattress,” I laughed. It certainly wasn’t the cutest sight I’d ever laid my eyes on, but there was a measure of comfort that was reminiscent of cuteness. We were four strong down here, and that beat being alone. I thought about using Bill as a pillow, then imagined my head sinking in and starting to tingle, then disintegrate. “Yeah, the ground is plenty comfortable,” I tried to convince myself. I slept for what seemed like days. I had, if I remember correctly, a steady stream of dreams. Though the only one I remember with any clarity involved Tracy and Azile. I remember standing off to the side feeling a might awkward about who I should go up to and give a hug and kiss. Occasionally they would laugh and look over at me like they had just discussed one of my idiosyncrasies and thought it was the funniest thing ever.
What I got from it all was that Tracy knew about Azile and was alright with it. Maybe she was now, but what were we going to do when we all got to Heaven? I mean, in the unlikely event that I could still make it, considering my present whereabouts. I believe the current theory is that you are reunited with your loved ones when you go past the Pearly Gates, but how does one define ‘loved ones’? There were plenty of girls I told that I loved at some point or another, and in most cases I even meant it. So, are they there, along with those they told they loved? I mean we were going to need a bigger castle in the sky if that was the case. It was going to get mighty crowded mighty quick. Was there a certain threshold of the intensity or the amount of time loved to qualify? Again, lots of questions but few answers when dealing with things outside of normal human influence.
Tommy was standing over me and had gently stirred me awake. Instinct kicked into high gear. It was punctuated when he placed his finger to his lips. I got up quickly, grabbing my axe. I shook off the deep sleep I’d been in as easily as a dog does bath water.
“Demon patrol,” he whispered.
I wanted to ask him what that even meant. Why would demons feel the need to patrol? Who fucks with a populace of demons? I went with a more pertinent question.
“How many?”
He held up three fi
ngers. That was four too many. Yeah, I know the math doesn’t work but I preferred a negative surplus of demons, that makes sense. I heard the smallest of rustling behind me, Bill was forming up. He had an outstretched…something. Whatever the limb was called, Linnick was in it. I grabbed her and placed her in my pocket.
“Be careful,” she said softly.
We were all crowded behind some old stone structure. Looked like something left after a significant Nazi bombing run–the ruins of an old church or something. I know that makes no sense, given the locale; just kind of gives you an idea of what we were hiding behind. I heard heavy footfalls approaching. Whatever it was, it was massive. Just once, I’d love to fight something the size of a Chihuahua. Sure, they can be a mean, little, dog, ferocious, even, that can deliver one fuck-nut of a bite, but still, it’s the size of a loaf of bread. Odds are if you’re not injured and stuck in a house with hundreds of them, you’re going to come out on top. But nope, everything I seemed to encounter was somewhere in the quarter to half-ton range. Hardly seemed fair.
There was grunting on the other side of the wall and I heard something thump to the ground with a solid impact. I about lost it when a bright red snake slivered over the lip of the wall. A three-tined forked tongue shot out of it repeatedly, sampling the air, I suppose. I saw no eyes, so we had that going for us. Tommy put his hand out to keep me from doing something. The thing was as thick as my forearm and less than three feet away; why the fuck wouldn’t I be doing something? Brown venom leaked from its mouth, sizzling as it made impact with the ground. Then the snake was shooting it right at us as a heavy stream blew out and past that tongue. We all moved away from the impact and splash area.
That’s when I realized that it wasn’t a snake. Not in the traditional way, anyway. That was a damned trouser snake. There were more footfalls coming and more grunts, but it had a cadence to it. It was their language and they were talking. The other two demons were coming and telling this one to hurry up with his piss. I don’t know if this one was ever going to be in a more vulnerable state. I should have felt bad for what I was about to do but, well, I didn’t. I moved with a quickness, bringing the axe up and artfully dodging Tommy’s hand as he reached out in vain to stop me. The blade of my axe head crushed down on demon dick and went straight through to the stone wall. The shower of sparks my steel made as it impacted the stone ignited the demon’s fluids on fire.
He was shrieking and crying out in anger and pain. His damaged dick was afire; he pulled away, waving the stump around in an effort to air out the flame. It wasn’t working. The fire quickly crawled up the base and started to burn his delicates. He was howling out what I would imagine was a string of demon swears. The other two demons were looking on with a mixture of shock and awe with a healthy dose of humor. Apparently, one of your mates having his dick hacked off and set on fire was some pretty fucking funny stuff in hell. I mean, I guess where else could you get away with that kind of behavior? Maybe they’d caught sight of his huge package at some point in the community showers and had harbored envy for years and now that he’d been reduced, so to speak, they figured it was all good. Not my job to figure it out.
I jumped up onto the wall and was swinging for the next brute. He was a mottled blue-gray color, nearly nine feet of pure, terrifying muscle. His face resembled something like a bird; a large beak dominated the front, though this beak was lined with razor sharp teeth. Small eyes atop raised piles of flesh and muscle, the face, I suppose, swiveled to take me in. My axe bit deeply into its chest as I hit him with everything I had, including my momentum. If he moved an inch backward it was due to the shock of my attack rather than the impact. He might not have staggered, but he was fucking hurting. He reached out and grabbed the back of me and flung me away. I had the good fortune to hit Mr. Flombay, and not the burning parts, either.
I righted myself quickly, as did the blue demon. Stumpy wings puffed out from its back. I think he was attempting to make himself look bigger, not sure why, he had me five times over. A luminescent blood flowed heavily from the chest of the demon, his eyes blazed with hatred for me as he dipped a hand down to the wound.
“I got some more for you if you’re interested!” I yelled at him. Something about his blood was working on my physiology. Without even asking them to, my fangs elongated and my pupils dilated. The demon paused to recognize one of his own, I guess, or maybe there was a pang of fear. Didn’t matter, gave me a second to take the attack to him. If I thought I had some savagery in my attack, it paled in comparison to what Tommy unleashed as he came over the wall. He sprung, he had talons to match the fangs; Wolverine’s cousin or something. He stuck his first claw-laden fist deep into the side of the demon’s neck, ripping sideways and putting a foot-long gaping hole there. The monster’s head lolled to the side as I buried my axe into its beak, shattering it into pieces. It shuddered and cried out as I toppled it over.
“Down!” Linnick cried out as I found my forward momentum going down with the demon, luckily, I might add, as a claw the size of a scimitar whizzed over my head. My head, still attached, landed next to Tommy’s. He seemed slightly dazed as he drank deeply and greedily of the demon. He was shaken out of it when he saw me; we both got up and at the ready. The last demon remaining was not the least bit deterred that he was outnumbered. Though he didn’t charge, he also didn’t flee.
It was this very moment in time that I finally and fully embraced the half of me that was a vampire; for in a way, I had come home. Born in hell to give hell. I grinned as I moved to the left, Tommy to the right. The demon kept its deadly claws up. Not at this exact moment, but I would think on it later; I wondered what the hell he did if he had an itchy nose or just had to, you know, wipe up the old rear-end after taco Tuesday. Those claws must have been murder on his hemorrhoids. Yeah, later I would think on that, but right now, I wanted to open him up like a fish and watch all his priorities spill out onto the ground. Tommy feinted forward and the demon reacted, turning away from me and to the perceived threat. He was in mid-swing when I launched.
I heard bones crack and break as I delivered the axe head into his rib cage. Fetid air from his lungs blew past my face as I dug my fangs deep into his neck. The loss of air, my collision into him, and the blood taking dropped him like a stone. I took my fill and stood, my chest heaving from the exertion and the thrill of the kill. The demon’s eyes were wide in fright as he stared up at me, his chest rising and falling quickly as the panic of death set in. I’d seen that look many times in my enemies and unfortunately too often in the faces of those I knew and loved. Everything we do in life mostly boils down to staying alive, so when that very fundamental tenement is threatened, there is a terror that must be met head on. We all pass over; it’s just that the transition from one life to another is anything but comforting when you meet it head on.
It wasn’t that I gave a shit about the demon’s suffering when I shoved the toe of my boot into his exposed rib cage; it was that he was making too much noise and I didn’t want him alerting any reinforcements.
Linnick watched as fat blood droplets fell onto my shirt. “Are you alright, Tallboat?” she asked tentatively.
It was a moment before I was able to reign myself in. My teeth slid back to normal and my eyes adjusted. “I am,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.
“Mr. T?” Tommy had bent over to get some air.
“I’m good.” It was then I looked over to see he was bleeding.
“I’m fine.” I had come over to take a look. “Just need a second.”
Not sure what he meant by being “fine.” You ever see those pictures of that famous Redwood in California where they used to be able to drive cars through it? Yeah, it was like that. I couldn’t tell for sure because he wouldn’t let me look, but I think I could see through his belly to the other side and out.
I dragged the still warm demon over to him, he fell to his knees and dove in. It was like watching a kid suck on a really good juice box;
the sides were collapsing in on each other and all that was left were rattling, sucking sounds as he pulled up airy liquid.
“Just need to rest for few minutes.” He was almost completely asleep as I dragged him away from the open area and back to the building. I was looking out at the devastation that was our battle; I needed to hide the dead demons or at least try, but I didn’t know how I was going to disguise the fact that gallons of blood had been shed here. It was Bill to the rescue. He came in like an industrial Hoover. He no sooner slid over the bodies than they began to disintegrate. He went through three huge corpses and most of the scattered carnage in under fifteen minutes. Yes, I watched! When the hell else am I going to see somebody eat nearly twenty-five hundred pounds of food in a quarter hour? The weird thing about it was he didn’t seem to grow at all from the bulk he was shoveling in. Like, he didn’t have an instant one ton pouch hanging from his gut. I eat a piece of birthday pie and I gain three pounds.
“Mmmmm,” was all he managed as he passed me by and went to join Tommy for a nap.
“What the fuck did we just watch, Linnick?”
“Not sure I like it down here so much,” she said earnestly.
“Yeah, me neither. Do you think he’s going to have to shit soon?” I felt like I needed to know. I mean if a creature near you needs to eliminate that much waste you should be prepared. It could become an evacuation type of scenario in a matter of moments. I didn’t want to be one of the next to get a Darwin award. Death by Rolling Waves of Waste; I could see the headline now. Instead of giving me a hard time about my thought process, Linnick urged me to sit farther away just in case there was a releasing of the chocolate hostages; we’d be able to have more of a warning. Those weren’t her exact words; I’m embellishing, but the sentiment was clear.
