The cold morning comes in bone-chills. Forgotten hours come back to me in rays of light and the absence of another person stirs my shivering, unsteady body to wakefulness. My eyes search the tent mess. Food wrappers, empty bottles, old sweat. I clothe myself quickly and go out the front into the cold brush, leaving the tent flap open as I walk through the dirt and rotting autumn leaves.
A little sense comes back to me and I look for a sign. Shallow indents from feet trail away from the tent's entrance. Tossed leaves of canary yellow, blood orange, bright red. I follow the trail for minutes till it hooks round a great pine, its branches prodding at me, just at eye-level.
An elfin body lies slumped on the other side, pale and veiny from the cold. One leg is stretched, the other curled up and tucked under her. A head hangs to the side.
"Care!" I run to her.
Her ruffled hair covers her face, full of twigs and pine needles and silence. I fall to my knees and shake her. She grunts.
"Fooled ya," she groans. Her face suddenly fills red and she lurches to the side, spilling her guts over an empty bottle beside herself. She finishes her retching and lifts it with finger and thumb, looking it over, and tosses it. "Ah well."
Her feet are marred and blistered from a long night treading the icy forest floor, her hands are cracked and smeared with blood. "Guess it's morning."
"Come on." I struggle to drag her back to the tent.
I wrap her in both our sleeping bags, placing a flattened grocery bag next to her head to throw up into. She can't seem to keep her face over it but it doesn't matter, she doesn't throw up again, only twitches and shakes and reaches for a bottle that isn't there. I give her water. She snatches it greedily and gulps, suddenly becomes sick and falls back down limp.
"Almost time for the big bad business," she mutters, barely comprehensible.
"It can wait. Just rest."
She yawns and turns over. Her shaking seems to calm down. "Yeah, a lil' while I guess..."
Why did you...? The words never come. I sit in silent vigil, shaking in union with her tremors. My eyes droop.
I come to in a daze of flashing lights that coalesce into murky daylight in the soft, sour smell of the tent. Care is alive, breathing, and I am too. Shivering, I bundle up beside her. I catch a waft of dried puke. I want to prune her and clean her but instead fall back asleep.
Midday, a tease of mild warmth radiates through the tent. She is gone and I shuffle outward on all fours, the tent door half-sealed. Suddenly it zips open and she enters in carelessly, strangling a near-empty water bottle, plopping on the corner of stray sleeping bags.
Weary beyond comprehension, I patter closer on my hands, but she waves me off boredly.
"Just waiting for when you're ready." she yawns. "I can wait though."
I wait forever. Nothing seems prepared, least of all me. An ache in my chest and bones is all that comes, and a flurry of wants passing through my head. To leave the tent, to leave town, to be done with all of this, to make up my insult to her by finishing our escape and flying away together to some better place with no one else. But part of me is reeling from last night. Part of me almost hates... her... myself... I push it aside.
The things we did and the things we said tumble through my mind like mouse-bitten film, flayed pictures of joy and terror. A new future seems to shine ahead brightly, beckoning through murky clouds. I shake my head clear, hating my imagination for playing tricks on me.
This is reality. I snatch the 1911 pistol from under a pillow. "Let's get it done, then."
"Yeah?" she struggles to sit up. "Yeah, let's do it."
She reaches for the last bottle, a pint of cherry-flavored whisky. I rush over and find us staring eye to eye, each gripping the bottle.
"Don't," I say.
But I loosen my grip and she snatches it away, swigs. "You know what fuel I run on."
"You run on you," I go. "That stuff's a crutch, an excuse to be happy or upset."
She stands, wobbling back and forth, catching her balance. "I'll lean on what I can lean on."
She eyes me spitefully for a split second. I look away, ashamed and confused. She puts on acid-washed jeans and black socks that sting her cold-chapped toes. She lifts her worn purse with a groan and fits her denim jacket round tiny shoulders. She flicks the collar up, as if for one last show.
She bumps into me and pushes off abruptly, somehow heavy as a titan and light as a feather. "Let's get this over with." The whisky breathes its sweet, woody aroma. Goddamn her.
(...)
Torn charcoal streets with crumbling potholes, scattered with blood red leaves. The once-warm sky looms overcast, throwing a grim paleness over our silent journey through suburbia, shadows streaking through pocked brown telephone poles and silent grey houses.
Care's whisky sipping grows as we approach a looming three-story colonial house of mottled cedar siding, standing sentry amid the neighborhood of newer-style but dilapidated shanties. The wind whistles through our clothes.
"This is it," she says flatly, bottle in hand. "The guy we sell everything to. If he doesn't eat our lungs."
I look at her. She's holding back shaking, and it's not just from booze or the night in the cold. Fear.
"Stay out here," I say. "I'll handle this one, and we'll be done."
I step and feel a squeeze on my wrist. She's staring at the ground. "He won't deal with you without me. We go in... together."
Her grip loosens, arm drops. No convincing her. I sigh and rub around my lower back, where a gun hides.
"Keep your head then," I command, but in my mind I'm begging.
"Always." She gulps one last shot. I sniff annoyedly at the boozy smell emanating off her.
I walk toward the front door slowly. It turns to a stomp that pounds on the creaking deck. I rap at the thick wooden door, a flat dark grey with a dull silvery handle.
"Good. Sure he'll think we're selling cookies." Care's eyes roll.
"At least he'll know it's something else."
Silence at the door. A second knock responds with nothing but the chilly air behind us. I suddenly twist the knob and the door falls open to dim light. Care squeaks and I look at her, but she silences herself, squeezing her bottle in both hands.
I breathe deep and step inside. Quilted burgundy loveseats, polished mahogany tables and ornate vases and sculptures reveal themselves. An ancient marble bust. A dark suit of steel armor shining like obsidian, gauntlets crossed over the hilt of a longsword. Tan persian tapestries and rugs with rich red borders.
"Nice enough place," I whisper, to no reply. "Almost reminds me of the house Dryden took us to." She follows on the tips of her toes.
"Hello!" I shout, searching about the place, soaking in details. Old tomes, sets of leaded drinkware sparkling in the shuttered light, dustless old-fashioned mugs and souvenirs from faraway places, snowglobes and models of Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, other places I don't recognize.
"Snowglobes," I remember Dryden's penthouse. "What is it with these fuckers and snowglobes?"
"Kade, maybe we'd better go back..."
I'm lost in a trance as my eyes brush across the relics and follow into a kitchen-dining room with black granite countertops and table, six chairs and six stools. Spices lay across the spotless counter by a flat stove stop reflecting our wandering forms, eighteen dark bottles pointed at us from a full wine rack to our right.
Care's ever-heavier breathing follows our steps. Only a grim fascination makes me ignore her quiet fear as we enter a hall, and I'm drawn to a radiating warmth from my left. A doorway opens into what looks like a study. The room houses a blazing fireplace, the walls a deep red, adorned as the rest of the house or fancier, dripping with trinkets and ornaments and lined with walls of books on both sides.
Beside the fire rests a small, wide table, tall and dark. On it, three candles of different heights lit on each side, burnt down with grotesque wax brims. In the center, a dark glass dish like a punch bowl, but decorated with intricate designs that cast slivers of fiery demon light that dance on the wall like folktale stories.
"Kade, let's get out of here. This was a bad idea."
I nod but walk slowly to the table, a final indulgence of curiosity. In the great glass dish is a pool of black, no, dark scarlet touched with flames. I touch it with my fingertip and its surface dances, a drip falling back into the pool. A familiar scent. Iron and flames. I reach my hand in, connect with something. A soppy mass ascends from a mess of pouring blood. A ruined black-bound book, its cover marred ruins, its once-gilded pages melded together into abhorrent sludge.
"I keep it there so its lies will remain there," a thin man says, appearing behind Care. His hands are slender and veiny, his long pointed nails grasping her shoulder, holding her frozen. Her eyes are full of abject terror. His hair is ashy brown, falling down in curly wisps. A thin, black mustache frame his thin, chapped lips, and beard alike. He's wearing a tied robe of crimson velvet trimmed with gold. His pale legs peek out from underneath, covered with thinning dark hair and his feet are padded with soft slippers beneath.
"Welcome, my children. I see you've been taking in the sights?"
I look at the ruined book and drop it back in with a small splash that scatters drops of blood on the floor and my sweatshirt, my right hand pure, dripping red.
"Ah, don't worry. That stain I know how to remove." He chuckles. "Why do you delight me with your presence?"
"Drugs," I say. "A lot of them. We want you to buy them all."
"And what would make you think I'm interested in these... illicit substances?" he asks curiously. He sniffs, digging his nose into the top of Care's head, huffing. "Ah, yes, this one, I know her smell." She trembles.
"Then do you want them? We just want ten thousand. Easily double what they're worth." I try to keep my cool.
"That's a lot of cheddar cheese, my dear. If you have such an offering, you must present it."
I look at Care and nod. She looks up at me scariedly, tosses her stuffed purse into my arms. I place it on the low, black coffee table in front of the elegant sofa and lay out our bounty of stolen drugs straight across the top. Acid, ecstasy, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine, amphetamine, pharmaceuticals, heroin, crank, and the countless pills and powders that we could never name.
"Oh my... this is quite the collection..." He ponders, holding a savage talon to his pointed chin. "But is it enough for the bargain you seek?"
I eye him carefully as he guides Care over to an end table, unlocks it's drawer with a key produced from seemingly nowhere. "Is this enough?" He tosses a wad of bills my way and it slides toward me. I duck down to pick it up, finger through it. It's in fifties. It must be a thousand dollars.
"Ten thousand," I say sternly. "No more, no less. That's the deal."
"Oh... Well, is this enough?" He throws over another handful that lands in front of me, sliding close to my still-bent knee. The same amount.
"Ten thousand! Just ten thousand!"
"I'm sorry!" he chuckles apologetically. He begins tossing one after another, begging if it is enough. Each new stack of bills lands by me with a thump, till they begin to explode in scatters of cash. Fear creeps up my spine steadily, as his payment seems to surpass my demand.
"I'm sorry. You see, neither the greedy nor the lustful can be sated, and I am not greedy." His eyes hone in on me, growing thin. A twisted blade of mottled grey-black steel rises to Care's throat, scraping a trickle of blood down with it.
"Don't! Let her go!"
"Shh, shhh. Let's not jump to conclusions. I simply want that gun in your back pocket placed gently by your side. It's not so much to ask for a little trust in a trade between... new friends?"
My teeth grit uncontrollably as I sear him with my eyes, but he seems immune, as if forged from hellfire.
I pull the gun out, place it slowly beside me.
He giggles girlishly and pulls out more cash, tossing it into the air around us. Money that could feed thousands scatters all over the room, over the furniture, over his and Care's and my heads, into the bowl of book and blood.
"I must say, I never expected such a treat. Two dolls walking into my very own home with such a bag of candy. What fun we'll have!" His eyes thin again, his voice deepening. "In a cellar below, where wine mingles with blood, and toys of pleasure and pain blur. I will teach you the meaning of pain and the meaning of joy. And when I'm done with you..." His voice trails off for a moment as he sniffs Care's scalp deeply once more. "I'll taste you completely."
"Aaaaeeeyaaaahhh!" she screams, and a blast deafens the house. The gangly man lurches back and Care falls to the ground with a yipe.
"Such... beautiful color..." he reminisces, and collapses, his red robe darkening further with a pool of flowing life.
I dash over to Care, my trembling hands ready to hold her throat together. She looks up in pain, with a trickle of blood from her neck. "I'm okay."
We shuffle toward the door of the cursed study. The wooden floorboards whisper at us, hollowly echoing the patter of our feet, muffling the Devil's death throes, weak gurgles of bubbling blood.
The money!" she cries, and we rush to bundle up as much as we can with bloodstained hands, stuffing it into the drug bag- and then when it's full, our bras. "Let's get out of here!"
We rush for the door we came in. We open it, and a long hall stretches before us, lit by a hanging yellow light. Terror grips us.
"T-that's impossible!" Care screams.
The Devil behind us is groaning, struggling to his feet, and blocking the way to the back door.
"Wait!" I shout, as Care flees down the hall.
"There's gotta be a window or something, K!" The door slams behind us. "Fuck!"
Two doors line each wall, directly across from one another. We shake and tear at the handles, bash our shoulders into them. "Won't fucking budge."
She manages to open the last one at the far end of the hall. "Kade, this way!"
"Wait! maybe I can break this one," I plead, still jiggling the first door's handle.
"With him waiting out there? Let's go! It's dark in here!"
"Damn it." I fumble around in my pocket for the flashlight and turn it on. The hanging lightbulb bursts into darkness and slivers rain over the hard floor. With it, the torch in my hand dims, barely cutting through the fog of black.
"Come on!" I blindly follow Care's voice, trampling glass.
I slam through the doorway into her. We tumble into a void. Wooden steps creak and whine as we slam down, sprawled over the floor. Our small light bounces away from us, revealing a hall of ancient grey brick, thick with dust.
"Fuck..." her pained voice whimpers. "You okay?"
I sprint up the stairs two steps at a time. The door is jammed.
"This is bad." I kick it. Solid metal. "Down is not the way we want to go. Goddamnit, Care, Goddamnit!"
"I'm sorry, okay? Please just get down here. I can't see."
I stomp down the steps and lift her to her feet like a child, picking up our flashlight with her. The dungeon-like walls lead into seemingly infinite darkness, but there's nowhere else to go.
A few failed clicks sound in the darkness. Sparks from the lighter illuminate her face in tiny flashes. "It won't work!"
"There's something seriously wrong with this place." I take her by the arm. "Stay with me. We can't lose each other when we only have one light."
We follow along the rough bricks with our hands. I hear her trying the lighter again every few seconds. The sound reminds that she and the engulfing darkness are with me.
We half-blindly wander down the hall before we find a doorway that leads into a wide space lined with many more doors along a single wall, with one looming straight ahead. The doors could be infinite; the sides of the room are shadow.
"Straight ahead?" I whisper, holding the light to her terrified face. Her eyes are glazed over with fear. I pull her toward the door and we slowly enter. "Hold onto your gun." She nods timidly.
"And don't shoot me in the ass," I add half-seriously, trying to ease her nerves as we venture on. I keep my pistol tight against my chest, pointed ahead, my left hand gripping knife and flashlight.
We step forward, entering the room and the door slams behind us, making Care shriek. We find ourselves in a small room with a door on each side of the four walls. We open the one behind us again, where we just came from. Only now, the hall was gone. In its place, an identical room. Four walls. Four doors.
"K, how is this happening?!"
"I don't know." I scratch a vertical line in the doorframe with the end of the small metal flashlight and run back the direction we came. "But this might help." I scratch two more vertical lines beside the next door. "We have to orient ourselves somehow. It's impossible there's no way out. This is some kind of trick or drug. It has to be. We've got to keep our heads."
She squeezes my arm and we shuffle backward and backward, marking each way we pass through.
Each room we enter is the same. Four walls. Four doors. Old wooden doors with brass handles and grey brick walls. We halt as I make my sixth mark.
"M-maybe... we should t-take a turn in the next room," Care mutters. She anxiously strikes the lighter flint a few more times to no effect.
"If we go right or left, we may end up in circles. For fuck's sake, these rooms can't go on forever."
She's silent.
I take a deep breath and open the sixth door. Care is yanked away from behind, screaming out her lungs. The door slams shut.
"Care! CARE!" I kick at the locked door as her screams fade away. I shoot off the knob and kick it open.
The Devil stands before me in a hooded robe, a grim smile cut across his gaunt cheeks. Light flashes and a deafening blast sounds as I put two bullets in his chest. He falls back into darkness like a storm of crow feathers. Just then, I hear screaming from a few rooms behind.
"Care!" I dash through the seventh, eighth, ninth doors, marking along the way, but her cries only grow more distant. Doors slam shut behind. I turn back toward where I left the Devil, but as I open the door, I find an empty room, and no marks in it. Nor by what should be the eight door. Or the seventh.
"Aaaaaaughhhhhh!" I scream into the abyss. My torch flickers, creating ghosts of the Devil in the corners. I fire my gun frantically, but the flashes betray another empty chamber. Through the gunshot deafness I try to listen, but the sounds are like ringing, crying, screaming, and nothing. I try to feel her sound, if it isn't just imagination now, and take a side door toward it. I mark one diagonal slash through each one, running straight through the endless maze.
Time passes. Minutes?... Longer? I stand panting in the middle of the same place. "Damn it... damn..." I reload and train my pistol on each opening door and looking for any sign. After a few, my heart stops... horizontal marks, deep and long, six of them. They must be hers.
In that room, I open all four doors again. In a room beside, more marks, lighter and more scattered... twelve...
"Care! If you're there, make a noise! Shoot! Shout! Anything!"
Through muted hearing, a gentle sound. Cries like pups whining, far off. Then a great, dreadful scream from all directions. I turn and aim frantically, feeling only heat and horror and a pounding pulse. On the door are eighteen shallow cuts. My senses and I flee through that door.
Door after unmarked door, I run forever. Endless grey rooms in the musty dungeon. Minutes lose meaning. The terror seems forever. Now. Before. And projected ever into the future. Time fails me. Only fear-moments remain like frames over frames of the same endless nightmare repeating.
Suddenly I run into something in the middle of the room. Pieces of it clatter and fall.
Bones. A skeleton in tattered black rags, hanged by its neck by a tattered rope noose.
I reach to check it, and the hollow eyeholes point straight at me. I freeze.
Its jaw slowly unhinges. The skull laughs. It laughs and laughs and laughs through broken teeth and kicks and thrashes and falls to pieces. The laughter follows as I flee.
I run in an ever-growing spiral, shouting her name. One door, turn. Two doors, turn. Three doors, turn... fourteen... forty-nine... only the count keeps me half-sane. The laughter follows in an unholy choir.
More marks appear on doorways and doors. They grow in number, soon covering them. The wood grows twisted and ruined. The handles break as I kick them, or crumble and fall off before I reach them. The walls grow darker, jagged, misshapen. The doors turn rotten, and soon I can only smash through them, covering myself in moldy splinters and the stench of damp decay. Soon they crumble in all directions, leaving only black portals encircled with ruined wood.
A room of broken skeletons crawl and grasp at my feet. Another room, they line the walls in chains. A row of them stand vigil on either side, clad in ancient weapons and bits of ragged armor. Robed forms hum and incantate. A dozen hanged skeletons laugh and curse and thrash and scream from ropes and meathooks.
The tortured yelping of pups returns and grows. The Devil appears ahead in each doorway and scatters into shadows as I shoot at him. I begin to run straight through his forms, but his mimics watch from the sides in rows and from behind, surrounding.
Suddenly, I topple into one who stands in my way. My light and blade slide away from the floor as I dig my gun into his head and fire, fire, but the fire reveals only a shattered skull in black robes. Demon laughter surrounds. A lurking figure steals my torch, skittering to a room off my path even as I fire at it, crawling to my knife.
The number, the count, I almost lose it, almost become lost again. But I am lost. I get on my feet. Never lost. Reorient. Blindly, I listen through the shadows, roam through doorways, following the spiral path.
"Maybe..." I whisper, flicking my lighter. It sparks but makes no flame. I can hear the fuel inside as I shake it. I smell the butane it spits.
I sit and clear my core. I listen. I smell and taste. I feel.
In the darkness, sounds and voices sound afar off and close in. My eyes open. The shadows twist and take on nightmare forms of man and beast and unspeakable images, crawling and lurking all around. They moan and groan and curse in unearthly tongues in a chaos orchestra.
Slithering bodies and crawling things on the floor come over me, up my sleeves, down my collar, over my breast, into my pants. Hands tug at my garments, pinching and grasping my flesh. The voices shout and cackle and grope, seeking to fuse my senses. I breathe and find my center. Hands and claws all over. Growling, gasping, muddled weeping.
The creatures stir and rage in the darkness, circling and snapping. A shrill cry breaks through, seeking to deafen. A banshee's shrieking, rising like a storm over all things. I hear my breathing. I smile.
"Enough!" The voices and I shout in unison. And the noise and forms dissolve into darkness.
A sliver of light on the floor ahead, a gold glow beneath a door. I walk forward, tap it and feel it over. Metal, scratched and dented. It opens with a long creak. Care stands with the Devil's mottled knife in her hands, ragged and bruised. The Devil is gagged and chained before a row of six mirrors that partly encircle us. The fieldstone walls and concrete floors are lit with blood and gold by shining black braziers reflecting off of them. The room is wrapped in shadows.
"See you figured it out," Care says smugly.
"How did you...?"
"I'll tell you later. Let's finish him and get the hell out of here!"
I walk forward. Out of the corners of my eyes, snapping jaws and flailing chains roar and yelp. My gun jumps six directions but I hold back from firing. A pack of hounds thundering and clamoring for blood, the reds of their eyes and grizzled mouths glistening.
"Oh, them. They're our new friends. His new friends," Care says, swiping the tip of the blade across the Devil's throat as he struggles and whimpers. There is an oddly familiar look in those scared eyes. "Do the honors?"
I take the knife from her. An ornate kryss of Damascus steel shining with a mottled water-like pattern. It's seen much use and has been recently sharpened.
I slash her across the chest and arms and she cries out. The braziers flicker.
"W-why?" she cries.
"Where did we meet?" I demand, stepping toward her.
"W-where...! Don't do this!" she yells, a dog snapping for her ankles. She jumps and yelps.
"Who tried to kill us after we got clothes? Where did we go to sell the drugs? What happened in the tent? What happened at the skatepark? What happened in the tent? Just say one thing! ONE THING!"
She shakes her head and raises her hands. I slice at her fingers and she nearly falls back on the chained dog.
"What happened in those hicks' front yard? Who sold us guns and ammo? Why did we come here? WHAT HAPPENED IN THE TENT?"
The mirror catches my eye. In it, I see the Devil standing there in my place. But I know it's not him there. I know he isn't me.
I plunge the knife into her. She looks up with swollen eyes and gasps and claws. The Devil wrangles in his chains. The hounds clamor for blood, their bonds whipping, as the brazier flames flicker and blow as if by a mighty force.
"H-how...?" the false Care gasps, falling to her knees.
"We all have to bet on what's real," I say, throwing the knife away and pulling out my gun. Where the Devil was, Care is suddenly enchained in his place. I grit my teeth and cover her ears, blowing off her links. The room loses its unnatural color and brightness. The feral hounds roar.
"H-how did you know?" the real Care stammers.
"If I couldn't tell what was you, how could I tell who I am?" I wink.
"What about him?"
The false Care morphs and shifts in a cloud of shadows and blurs into the Devil, huddled on the floor, crawling over his own blood. "Such a... beautiful color..." He looks at me, and for a moment, his golden eyes flash blue, almost human.
A shot rings out and he crumples.
Suddenly, the hounds of hell are loosed and come roaring toward us. Six shots brighten the room amid death yelps and I reload, surrounded by corpses. "Hold onto this." We take up a heavy brazier together to light the way.
We go back through the room with four doors and though my guts tighten, the room is now just a room. Back through the adjacent door, the long brick hallway, the beaten wooden stairs. The locked door at the top opens with a few shots. Back upstairs, there's no one but us and the noise.
An alarm is blaring all throughout the house, a back-and-forth wail of danger. Sirens sound outdoors, distant, then instantly closer. An acrid fear-sweat pours down Care's forehead as we run to the back of the house.
"H-how are they here so quick?!" she stammers breathlessly.
"It doesn't matter, we gotta go fast."
We scamper into a mudroom full of stained old boxes and dust-covered antiques, a door and tiny, square window letting in a beam of grey light. I see a long, dark car out back, shining. I tear a handful of keyrings off the wall and throw them in Care's shaking hands. She almost drops them. I look out a small back window, one of many alarms blaring deafeningly beside my head.
The back door is solid, polished walnut, with a half a dozen different locks and chains holding us inside like a magic show from a nightmare. I start fiddling with them before cursing at the impossible mechanisms. I pull out the handgun and slip out the magazine and slap in a different one, aiming at the hinges.
"Get down!" I command. "I don't know if this will work!"
I blast off each hinge where they meet, with some of Wall's hand-loaded armor-piercing rounds. My ears ring with each shot, the gun jumping toward my face like a mauling bear claw from the overpowered ammunition.
I kick with everything I have and the door's solidness kicks back, unmoved, rocking my bones. I lean on it and shoulder-slam all my weight against the hinge side, shifting it minutely each time. Desperation pumps in my heart.
Suddenly Care screams furiously, running and smashing into the door, tucked like a cannonball and crashing to the ground with a yelp. The top hinge rips out from the corner. Only some chains and bent locks keep it in the doorway, ajar. I kick and push with tired muscles, and slowly a narrow space opens for us, crushing us as we squeeze our way out, the house greedily ripping loose bills hanging from our chests and back pockets as if spiteing our thievery.
The backyard is hedged by tall privet bushes. A small gravel driveway leads to a mossy, cedar-shingled garage with a shiny, black Lincoln parked beside it. It's suddenly grown dark out here, the sun setting through shadow clouds like a smouldering coal fleeing from the coming night.
"Try to get in with one of those keys!" I point the gun toward the car. Every door is locked. I look around, the sirens growing very close over the sound of Care's trembling breath and whimpering curses as she struggles and drops keys over the floor.
The garage. Maybe the keys are in there. I run over and peer inside horizontal slants of thick, cloudy glass, only darkness inside. My heart thumps as I look in closer, spying vague shapes and forms. Movement.
Horrified eyes appear, thumping against the glass, sending me stumbling back. A mutilated face with a smile cut up its cheeks and all over, a black ball gagging its muttered pleas.
"Holy fuck!" I scream.
"What?!" Care yells, almost in tears.
"Just get us in that damn car!"
"I'm trying!"
I wipe off sweat and queasiness, as the monstrous figure still eyes me with terror and mutters from the window, dancing about like a caged animal and motioning toward the door. I look back to Care and then to the old wooden door to the garage. A gulp hitches in my throat on the way to the pit in my stomach. A dagger of blind courage and defiance pierces the horror and I run to the door, starting to kick it.
"What're you doing?" Care shouts, looking around as the sirens close in on us, the drone of the house alarm still filling the air loudly.
I ignore her and kick the garage door open, shattering the doorframe.
"Come out!" I shout at the silence, my gun pointed at the garage door. I repeat myself.
Slowly an emaciated creature from a nightmare walks out of the shack. A naked, gangly, hundred-pound wretch covered in torture scars and its own filth, wafting with a gut-twisting stench like death, genitals and several fingers and toes half amputated. Care screams and startles it, and it raises its knubby, blackened hands by its goblin ears, cut crudely to jagged points. Stifled cries rise from its gagged mouth.
I pull out a folding knife and the monster freezes, dropping to its knees, helplessly whimpering, "aah, auh, uaaahhhh!" A ghastly sound that sends terror chills.
"Hold still! I'm not gonna hurt you!" I command, walking over slowly. "Care, get that car open!" I feel her eyes on my back and on the maimed wreck of a man.
"I'm going to get this gag out of your mouth," I whisper, over the sounds of sirens a few blocks away. I slide the knife in between the marred side of his head and the leather strap and he lets out a muffled groan as tears stream down from his closed eyes, washing away some of his dirty mask, revealing pale streaks of what is left of the torn man underneath.
The gag falls away and I step back warily as his eyes open, wide and red. His mouth lacks half a tongue and many of his rotting teeth are broken or gone to black voids. His torn-up, notched lips form together to make what could be a thank you.
"Run! Just run!" I shake my gun.
He's frozen momentarily, then rises, the pain in his joints and everything grimacing his poor demonic visage. He saunters away like a skeletal soul escaped from hell and disappears like a fleeing urban legend. My stomach half untwists and for a second I feel my eyes well up.
"What the fuck was that?" Care cries, sorry she even asked.
Could have been us. "Someone who might get away," I think aloud, walking over to the car. I immediately smash out a side window and open the front door, unlocking the car. Care jumps in, rocking anxiously as she fumbles with keys.
My hand searches for a key between or under the seat, on the dash, under mats, in cupholders, center console, glovebox, anything. Nothing. The sirens are almost on top of us now, in front of the house.
I rip off the lower dash panel and start cutting and twisting wires. A painful spark off my knife. The ignition cranks and the engine turns over. I slam the door, footing the brake and clutch, and we take off out of the driveway with a jerk, then more smoothly.
Red and blue lights like strobing fireworks. A police car spins their tires, rushing at us. I floor it, shifting gears higher and higher as we weave through town streets. Yellow lights up grey watching windows as a growing trail of police cars gain on us, pouring in from side streets and alleys, more than a half-dozen cars pursuing us.
I scrape the right mirror off taking a turn, struggling to maintain control, not knowing I ever drove before, but amidst the total panic the capability seems to flow into me naturally, through my fingers, through my feet on the pedals. My mind races each second, calculating, trying to gain distance, negotiate turns.
"Grab the wheel," I order Care. I let go and she snatches it, the car wobbling as I pull out my gun, slip in a new magazine from my jacket.
I take one deep breath, calming myself as much as possible. It seems to work better than expected. I feel inhuman, robotic. "Put your foot on the gas pedal, all the way to the floor. Keep it there unless I tell you-" The car jerks as her foot pushes mine off the accelerator.
"I'm sorry!" she whines.
"Now put one hand around the shifter and turn it to the number I tell you when I tell you."
There's only a groan of pure panic from her as I roll down the driver's side window and lean out, aiming backward, with my right foot softly over the clutch, grasping the chicken bar tightly.
A handful of white Ford Crown Victorias less than 20 feet off, sirens blaring in a snaking trail of government metal and wrath. I aim my Colt 1911 carefully, my shaking arms and the bumps and corrections and potholes tossing my aim in jolts.
I fire. The leading cop car's windshield explodes, and I spot the driver's lowered head. I can't likely hit him like this, but if I can land it inside...
I follow up shots. A miss, a second, then a flash inside his car. Suddenly a burst of flames. He careens off the side of the road. Another one gains quickly in his place.
"Got one!" I revel. "But there's more. On three, shift a gear down, got me? One... two... three!"
We whir and slow and the car behind us flies suddenly closer, a cop shooting from the passenger window. Our back window shatters and I flash a glance toward Care's head, still intact, sweating, somehow holding the wheel and gas almost steadily, holding our fragile lives to the road in the mad chase.
I take aim again. Fire flashes inside the second car's front seat and the passenger side shooter's vest explodes in sparks. He rips at it and drops his pistol along the road as they swerve. Another shot. A ball of black smoke billows from under the hood, sending the car spinning into a parked vehicle in a thunder of metal and glass. Two chasers crash behind, a few others swerve around in sideways screeches to keep on us.
"One more gone! No, three!" I shout, swapping in a new magazine, almost laughing, thrill and sweat running down my face. The clutch grinds for an eternal second. We slow enough that the trail of chasing police draws within ten feet. I lay four shots into the forward car's hood to no effect, then steady myself and aim for the driver. He swerves away in fear and another takes his place. I aim at the next car and a well-placed shot splatters the interior red, sending his car spinning off the road. Those behind stop or smash together in squealing, thundering crashes like drumming bombs.
I feel almost relieved and fall back into the car, wipe the sweaty strands of hair from my face. "Kaaaaade!" the voice beside me screams.
Sudden impact. Airbags. My head is a world of pain, blurry eyes watching the gloomy sky. I see stars behind the dismal blanket of town lights and awakening windows and stinging blood. I feel inner peace, and a dark world clawing me back to itself.
Voices approach from either side. My hands shuffle below me by their own will, and a familiar, comforting sound clicks, full of power and death. I shoot out the side and two men fall. I pull my head through the broken windshield wearing a red-dripping crown and collar of glass shards, and shoot back from the driver's window, till the slide of the gun clicks open, spent.
A door opens to my right and hands wrench at my friend beside me, pulling her away forever. I fumble for her, then for a new magazine, as she screams "No! No! Kade!" and disappears from sight, her shouts lost in the ringing din.
My leg is jammed below by deformed car metal, and I moan, hurting and weary, and pull it out with a shriek.
I step out of the car and shouts and shots seem to fly in all directions, roaring around the flame of my life, finite and endless all in one. I finally find a fresh mag in my pockets, and answer the chaos sounds with gunshots, watching as men-like forms flee into smoke and shadows, while two drag my friend into a glossy, black SUV that reflects fire and smoke. It drives off with a skrrrrrrrrrrrit.
My senses sink and rise to perfect acuity. My hand delivers death blows by bullets to fallen and standing alike. A great cracking sound each time, a leaping cannon in my hands, as men fall and scatter and die.
I half-jog from the calamity, then somehow find it in me and my leg to sprint down several alleys, till there seems to be nothing behind me but a blur of death and scattered memory. Defeat.
I rest inside a wooden-fenced yard, listening for noise, smelling. Only gunpowder and blood, sirens whirring in the distance.
"Autumn," a quiet voice says. A garotte tightens around my neck, pulling me against the old fence. The cord around my neck strangles till my face bulges red, veins bursting in my eyes. I kick at the fence helplessly, then a final smash dislodges a section of it. I pry my fingers beneath the necklace of death and it cuts into them as I use all my strength to pull the assassin and a ragged section of fence over my head, in front of me.
A blonde girl on her back, a little taller than me, wheezing. I rush for her throat, as she had tried to claim mine, but she shifts suddenly and meets me in a wrestling hold. We grunt and snarl, and I throw her to the side. She tumbles to her feet.
"Autumn, it's Hera," she says, panting along with me.
Her green eyes flash, and I remember her, a wheezing body smashed through a glass table in a dream room of darkness.
"I thought you were dead," I say, as if another speaks. "I killed you."
"I'm sure you meant to but I'm here to bring you home. Your head at least."
"There's no home," I spit, defiant. "Who are you really? What do you want with me?"
Hera chuckles and straightens up. She's in a t-shirt and jogging pants, but scars flash across her arms and neck, her face torn and repaired in the not-too-distant past.
"You really are fucked up as they say! Or are you just faking it? All the hide and seek and games with your whore girlfriend? That's right, we know all about her."
My raised fists shake.
"I can't believe they trusted someone like you with the key, with our whole generation. And now look at you."
"What key?!"
"You really don't remember?" She laughs. "But you remember me, don't you?" Her fists raise, her arms fit and steady, coated in grey-pink scars.
"I don't remember anything!" I shout, gritting teeth, ready to kill. "Why're you toying with me? What the fuck is all this? What did I do to deserve this?"
She looks at me lowly, blankly, then chuckles, bursting into laughter. "You really are broken. They called it a pity, but I could see it then like I see it now. You were never meant to exist. They put so much work into you. He put so much work into you."
Flashes and shadows. The golden-haired boy in the city. Training. Cryptic phrases.
I clench my fists and leap forward, punching and blocking, an exchange of blows that causes her to laugh. She slaps a chance hand across my neck and car glass digs in. I toss her to the side and she rolls to her feet again.
"I don't even know why they want you so bad," she giggles. "Autumn, Autumn, all fucked up It's almost sad to see it!!"
I rush in, faking a grab and turning into a punch. Right, right, the left catches her in the jaw. She falls aside then stands at guard, fists raised up, legs low, grinning.
"What am I?" I ask.
"A spider."
My body fills with pulsing heat and I rush forward. A bullet-like front kick to the sternum launches me to the ground.
"You're a busted, hot-headed Spider," she goes on. "Broken for your purpose... to serve."
"Serve... who...?" I wheeze, ready to wretch out an organ.
She throws her arms in the air, turning one way and another as if enveloping the whole world.
"Who? Who? Well that's what everyone wants to know, isn't it?" She grins incredulously, a scar twisting up a ruined side of her lip to her nose. "What is evil? Who pulls the strings? Is it the government? The rich? Is it Satan himself? Is it aliens? Is it conspiracy, coincidence, consequence? Is it just the evil in every human? You tell me."
"Damn it... I don't know... You're not making any sense."
She cackles. "You're tellin' me. Those were your questions. Before you smashed me through that glass table and stabbed me through the lungs. Good thing you left the hole plugged or I might not have come back to haunt you."
Terrible memories flash, seeming unreal, as I snatch at each breath.
"Honestly, I don't remember much else from that night," she says. "But I remember every crazy word you said right then, talking like your mind was splitting in two. You lost it and killed a room full of peers-"
"Peers?"
"People like us," she growls then laughs. "Why you did it, they're still trying to figure out. How you did it- well, you were always one of the best, you stupid bitch. Everyone knew you were the favorite pet. Now look at you. Gone feral, running around with normal people. You probably want a normal life, don't you? But you'll never be normal. And look what you did to me."
Her hands lift up sleeves, tugged the heather shirt from her chest, revealing recently-healed scars of gashes and gouges all over. They were worse than the nicks and slash that twisted up the once-pretty face underneath.
"I can't be the infiltrator I was trained as now and neither can you. Can't trick anyone or seduce targets with two holes in my tits and skin cut up like yours. But I can still kill, you little fuck. Dead or alive, they said. I don't care what you have or why they want you. I'm gonna take you dead."
"Autumn...?" I stand, trying to steel myself for the next assault. "Is that my name?"
"Pfft, who knows? Who knows any of our real names? It doesn't matter. You're a broken tool, and I'm gonna leave you in the trash."
"Maybe." I watch her intently. She lowers slightly and her finger twitches, telegraphing...
I close the gap with my blade. Two deafening gunshots, next to my head. We're locked eye to eye, my hand wrapped around her pistol, blocking the hammer, thumb behind the trigger, keeping the smoking muzzle an inch from my head. Her left hand has my wrist, my blade inches from her belly. I give it a jerk, but her arm is made of stone. Her thin golden-brown eyes are wide, full of amusement and lust for vengeance. We grunt, each jerking stiffly to win control of our arms, shifting our legs endlessly to gain some advantage, but we seem matched, and I'm tired, always tired, so tired.
"Going low this time, Autumn? Maybe a knife in the gut will work better than the lungs?"
"Wherever I can put it." That name draws the dark words out of me, hits my core, touches something primal, foreign and familiar. A past life or a forgotten dream, dragging itself closer to reality with each reminder of it.
We exchange kicks and throw knees as our top halves remain in stalemate. Monstrous kicks to the lower legs, thighs, but they're just kicks... until a stabbing pain shoots from below, sending fire through my blood, then another pierce, and my body goes cold.
She laughs as I look down. A thin blade is jutting out from her right boot's toe, bloodied. It snaps again like a scorpion's tail, cutting at my shins, and aiming much higher. My dizzied mind thinks her a three-pronged monster, too much to defeat in this state, but I can't give in.
I parry a stab from her foot, then kick it lower, stamp down on her bladed boot. I pull my arms in and headbutt her nose with a crunch, wrenching the gun from her hand. It goes circling across the pavement, clattering ten feet away. She pushes me off and I instantly realize she's taken my knife. In dilated seconds, my mind flashes to Care, our second knife, our second gun, my partner who would protect me here, gladly vanquish this threat for my sake, if only she were here.
The blonde grins and draws a second blade, a long, double-edged boot knife with a slender tip like a black fang. I try to limp to the left, to put myself between her and the gun, but I can't run.
I whip my jacket around my forearm in a ball and pull out Dryden's baton. A club and a shield of sorts. Club beats knife. But I don't feel hopeful; whoever invented that didn't account for two knives or a wounded defender.
"If I were doing this by the books, you'd already be dead," she boasts. "Hell, I'd be taking you in alive for them to dissect, figure out why you broke. But this is the only mission that is just fun for me. The last thanks for making the new me." She slowly drags the flat on the blade down her scarred lips. "I'm almost happy you went crazy. I always wanted to kill you. Who knew I'd actually get to... The great Autumn! You're already done!"
Before the last word leaves her lips, she leaps at me with speed I didn't know she had. It's all I can do to hold my ground. I swipe a knife out of her hand with the baton and her long knife plunges through the coat folded around my arm, through the grip of my hand, cutting it and fingers both. The tip is touching my belly through the shirt. I'm sucking in my abdomen as hard as I can, breathing shallowly, though my body begs for air.
Suddenly she jerks and the blade enters half an inch into me. I scream. "Aaaaaauhhhhh!" She laughs almost girlishly, holding it there with those stone arms.
"I could have shot you from half a mile away. Could've tossed a grenade at your car. But I wanted it like this." She licks her lips. "First I'm going to see what you ate for dinner today. Drag you in some bushes, gag you and gut you like a fish. Then I'm going to puncture both lungs like you did for me, but nice and shallow. Then I'm going to watch how long you last, breathing out of holes in your tits instead of your mouth."
The knife plunges deeper and I grip it harder, the blade cutting my fingers till it seems they meet bone. I can't tell if my hand is there anymore, only slicing pain. I grit my teeth and cry, imagining this is my final moment. Pain. Confusion. And Care without me, lost forever... What will happen when I'm gone?
A million images flash through my eyes, as if from another life. Flashes of Autumn. Flashes of the nameless girl. Flashes of Kade. Flashes of Care, the most vivid. Her golden hair and green eyes, dazzling emerald. Her jokes and quips and hard words. The cold nights together. The hot nights close together. All the things we said. All the things I should have said. Our adventure drains away, into blood watering the concrete. I should be able to save her. But I can't even save myself.
My grunts and groans weaken. The dagger plunges deeper, piercing flesh and soul. I cry out amid her stifled struggle noises that sound like fractured chuckles. Blood and spirit pour out of my stomach.
A gun explosion. Deaf ringing again. I gasp for life- (am I dead?)- the blade withdraws from my core. I fall side by side with my enemy with an unheard thud, smack my skull. My eyes rattle as they turn left, to a lurking form.
The grey naked creature from the garage stands hunched, soiled and shaking in the street. He's awkwardly holding the girl's gun with both hands, a nub of a finger on the trigger, pointed at me. I rise slowly, fixed on his terrible form, all marred flesh and mangled joints and bones, his penis a coiling, ruined sliver of meat, his skin a wasteland of torture marks. The unsteady silver gun shines in the streetlights with the whites of his terrified eyes.
Suddenly he lays the gun down, looking straight up at me.
"Bank-ghyou," he mutters. He turns and half-runs away in a crippled hobble, legs wide, and disappears into an alley.
Thank you.
I look to the dead blonde, her pale white skin and the blade lying beside her. The shot went through her neck, but her face, even with its scars and bruises, looks oddly beautiful, an empty expression like a plastic doll staring up at the sky, lying in a sort of peace on a pillow of dirtied hair.
I grasp my belly with a yelp, feeling opened to the core. I pick up her blade and my gun, vanishing in shaded alleys and yards, away from siren sounds, into the night.