The First Stain

by Dakota Rayne et al.

  Mungazi cut me free. I soon had a flask shoved in my face, the sugary sweetness slid down my throat with the viscosity of warm honey. It tasted of rosewater. My eyes bulged as I jumped to my feet. I looked at the veins bulging in my forearms and my mind went to a black place. The only way out of this darkness was to burn. Burn it all.

  The nerve syrup worked!

  Three cultists grabbed me, one around my neck and two on either arm.

  With a wave of Mungazi’s arm, three shuriken flew. His aim was true. The metal throwing stars buried themselves in the necks and faces of the three cultists who held me. They dropped to the floor like slaughtered sheep.

  Mungazi flipped open his robe and revealed my Thompson machine gun and two Colt 1911 pistols.

  “Yes!” I yelled over the chaos around us.

  Mungazi removed his samurai helmet and armor. Underneath, he was dressed in fine dapper clothing, his hair perfectly quaffed and mustache waxed. “Damn, man,” I said. “I like your style. Now, are we to make a mess of these bastards before they destroy my business?”

  “Yes.” Mungazi unsheathed an exotic-looking sword. Behind him was a group of cultists running towards us.

  “Out of the way!” I pushed Mungazi to the side and stepped forward, pointing my gun towards them. The automatic weapon produced a rapid succession of white-hot flashes as it shouted out rounds. They ripped through the cultist’s robes and mulched the flesh underneath as if it were dank topsoil. One of the cultists’ heads burst like a dropped melon.

  I aimed the muzzle flashes at a gaggle of cultists, keeping my finger on the trigger. I nearly ripped one in half at close range.

  Mungazi made his way towards a machine gun turret. Two more cultists rushed him. He held them back with strikes both fast and fierce. Although not as effective as boxing, the orient has an exotic way of fighting I have always enjoyed.

  The Thompson clicked, the magazine empty. Instead of reloading, I threw the machine gun down, took my two Colt 1911’s, and aimed for the cultists flurrying about like roaches exposed to sunlight. Mungazi had taken over one of the machine gun turrets and mowed down a robust column as they tried to enter the hotel. The cultists scattered into the ruined city.

  A large group ran past a cluster of oil barrels that seemed out of place at the base of the stairs below us. It must have been an explosive device that Mungazi rigged. For some reason it had not detonated. “Mungazi!” I waved my arms at him as his machine gun continued to shoot down the retreating men. He noticed me and ceased fire. I pointed to the barrels. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Mungazi smiled and aimed his large gun at the barrels. Squeezing down on the trigger the machine barked a bright muzzle flash.

  Being the marksman he was, Mungazi connected with his target. The explosion was magnificent. It gleamed in my irises. Below was a true inferno. Everything was on fire. Glowing scarlet-amber danced around me as I smiled with euphoric mania.

  A man jumped up onto the platform and grabbed me around my neck. I crouched down, bending over and throwing him down the steps. He rolled into the flames. I ran after him and put my boot on his chest. He screamed and shook as the fire consumed the starched uniform he wore. The smell. Oh the smell. It was that of The Dream. I laughed with wide, wet eyes, seemingly impervious as the flames licked the fabric away from legs, leaving red blisters in their stead.

  All around me a ghastly firestorm raged. I shot into the blaze at random, laughing and screaming and crying until I was out of ammunition. A glance at Mungazi told me he needed to reload as well.

  I walked up the stairs, trying to catch my breath, in search of another clip for the 1911, or at least another weapon.

  Red Moon approached. Her beauty caused me to hesitate, something familiar about the look in her jade eyes, like exotic jewels. The katana she held shimmered like the red dress I knew she wore underneath her robes. She closed the distance with a forward somersault and kicked the pistol out of my hand. I was dumbfounded. Her eyes had hypnotized me like a serpent’s stare. She swung the sword at me: slicing, stabbing, and cutting. I barely was able to dodge her attacks. I eventually fell on my backside. She towered above, holding the sword with both hands over her head, ready to slash down at me.

  She was going to kill me. The Shinigami would harvest my soul. I closed my eyes and saw my mother dying, the image from The Dream—a small black dot in a raging fire like a ball of opium burning in the midst of a pipe.

  Clang.

  I opened my eyes. Mungazi had intercepted the killing blow with his own samurai sword. His other hand made a quick circular motion, clanking open a butterfly knife with a twirl. He stabbed her in the ribs. Red Moon wheezed, stumbling backward. The samurai sword over her head shook as blood frothed over her lips. With a spinning back kick, Mungazi sent her flying into the flames.

  I took in the scene in front of me. Dr. Lee had vanished. It was just me and Mungazi. We had defeated an army and saved my business. I would give Mungazi my house in Tucson as promised. We would become fast friends, reminiscing on this adventure as we aged. No, we would create new adventures together. I would follow through with Dr. Lee’s plan myself. World domination. Was that not the ultimate goal? World domination?

  I stood and admired the crumbling, burning city around me. I would become an emperor of more than a few mountains. I would rule the world! The nerve syrup would flow through every vein and mind alike!

  I felt light headed. I became cold all over. The excitement was too much.

  Looking down I realized the tip of a blade exposed itself through my stomach. Did it happen during the explosion? No, someone stabbed me in the back. I don’t attest to being a man of medicine, but I knew this wound was fatal.

  Behind me, Dr. Lee laughed. He had stabbed me in the back both in a literal and figurative sense.

  It was then that my Shinigami appeared.

  A familiar face from my past scowled at me, though the flesh had melted off of it. The tendons tensed, her underbite smile comprised four small tusks; two on the top and two on the bottom. It took me more than a moment to place, but when I did true fear took me. You see, it was my mother. It was her face. She wheezed as she approached. Her breath the scent of soured milk.

  Mother had come back for me, to harvest the soul she created, the soul that killed her. Her restless spirit was my Shinigami.

  Behind her was an army. Shadows on the walls of fire morphed into blocky figures. Twisted samurai. Their armor was large and flat with over-exaggerated helmets reminiscent of a horned beetle. I recognized the faces of warriors. They were those who had died in my company town, those I had exploited. They were the ghosts of my old workers who I had burned and built my town with. Fear grabbed at my shoulders and shoved the breath from my lungs.

  Shinigami. An army of them. They all had come for me.

  “Mother . . .”

  She responded with a lullaby. Yes, mother began to sing. It was the same song Red Moon had sung during the ritual. The same glitchy, rhythmic tone that urged me to snap my fingers in three’s during my manic episodes. The song I hummed when I was alone and fantasized about burning the world.

  The samurai Shinigami joined in the song with strange, distorted, notes of intense melancholy. The ghosts moved like a series of still frames in rhythm with their song. They looked as if created by the same artist who drew my dreams. Images of black cardboard paper against a fire-red sky flooded my vision. They moved in sequential snapshots. I counted each movement as I snapped my fingers in time with them.

  One. Two.

  Three.

  Each Shinigami moved to a corpse.

  Through the crown of the head, they pulled the spirits from the dead cultists. The ghosts stabbed the souls with exotic melee weapons. I reveled at the Shinigami as they slaughtered the souls of men around me. They were harvesting the energy, the evil.

  Meanwhile mother stared into my eyes, freezing me in place. She put her hand atop of my head, still singing the song of the Shinigam
i. I sang it with her at the top of my lungs. I had never sung so loud in my life.

  She pulled the soul from my body. Slowly.

  A low groan graveled through the cosmos and flooded my ears, covering my brain in a thick sludge of fear and sadness and insanity. The noises. Oh god, the haunting drone. A baritone reverberated in the center of my being.

  The universe shook. The haunted sky burned around us. It all turned to tones and shades that were not of this world. They were colors of which I had never seen before, colors that do not exist here. Haunting, disgusting colors. A dark god had painted the sky with a twisted palette. The thought of it chills me to this very day.

  I saw myself outside of my body. An out-of-body experience is the correct term I believe. I had collapsed to my knees. Mother removed her hand at the crown of my head. I ignited into flames.

  My mother screamed. It was not the scream that haunted my dream. It was cackle, a maniacal laughter that echoed in my mind as my body burnt to death in front of her.

  A revelation took hold as I saw all of this happen from above my wrangling body. This was The Dream. The recurring nightmare I had done all in life to avoid. It was my death. I was cursed to always know it. The small black ball in the middle, the person dying in fetal position, that was me. I had always thought it was my parents. No. Although I had killed them, it was not that cursed event of my past which plagued my dreams. It was my own future death haunting me my entire life.

  I have since realized that all men are haunted by death. You, whoever you are, running down the hill, you are haunted by death more than anyone right now! There is no greater demon in the world, nor a more foreboding existential quandary, than us being aware of the fact that one day we will die. For you, it is today. Take comfort in knowing that.

  By the way, you have four minutes left.

  I awoke in an American hospital, covered in burns, shackled to the metal frame as if I were some common criminal. I swore I would kill Mungazi, or whoever saved me from the fiery inferno. And what of my soul? Did I still possess it?

  For a number of weeks, the doctors did not acknowledge any of my questions. How did I come back stateside? What happened to Mungazi? What of my business? What happened to Dr. Lee? Did he keep his end of the bargain?

  I was willing to overlook the small misunderstanding we had in China as long as my business would continue to grow. Did my warehouses receive any shipments from Japan? What about China? How did my quarterly income statement fare?

  During the skin grafts and salves and changing of bandages and bedpans and horrible hospital food and liberal applications of bag balm, they ignored my inquiries. I was furious. Why was I bound by restraints?

  Eventually, they told me the truth.

  I was not found in China. They said I had tried to burn my house down. Amphetamine-induced psychosis is what the doctors called my condition. I had had a delusion—a psychotic episode invoked from overconsumption of nerve syrup.

  Apparently, the fire department came to my house when a neighbor called to complain of a rapid succession of gunshots and noticed smoke coming from my attic. When the fire department arrived, they found me wandering around stark naked and badly burnt. I had a machine gun and was pacing back and forth in a room full of empty nerve syrup bottles. I had lit the second story of my old Victorian on fire. The Thompson machine gun I held had no more ammunition in it. Still, I clicked the trigger at them. When they tried to talk, I wrestled and fought them, biting one of the responder’s ears off in my rage.

  The doctors and investigators who came into my room over the next few months contested that I had never left for Japan or China, saying I had never even started a nerve syrup business in the first place. Mungazi was not real, nor was Dr. Lee. I had spent the last few years only consuming over the counter amphetamines in quantities that should have killed me. In a way, it did.

  In my time in Nanjing—imagined or not—I have seen men strapped to walls and shot point blank with anti-tank guns, and a line of prisoners who awaited their turn. I saw mass graves. Gang rape followed by death. Sons forced on their mothers while their fathers watched. I saw the Shinigami harvest the souls of evil men. Yet nothing disturbed me as much as my own failure, my own wasted potential.

  I thought I was an emperor. A god. It turns out, after I achieved my initial success in the coal mining industry I became nothing more than an aristocrat, an arsonist. I had always been these things—nothing more, nothing less. I am a spoiled brat who likes to play with fire.

  Sadly, this is my story, my fate, as I have corrupted my mind and memories alike due to my overconsumption of nerve syrup. The opportunity to do something with myself after my initial success—that is the true causality herein this story.

  I am still one of the richest men in the country, nay, the world, yet I am bound to an institution for the foreseeable future after confessing to the murder of both my parents, of which I am sure I committed. At the time of this recording, I am still awaiting sentencing. My life is over, my fortune is worth nothing without an able body, mind, and freedom to do something with it.

  I thought perhaps I could help others not waste their life as I have wasted mine, perhaps I can be a catalyst to another. My goal now is to motivate my fellow man to reach their full potential. Perhaps Mungazi was right, redemption is possible.

  You see, I am not certain the story I told you during your run was real at all, but make no mistake I believe every word of it. The reality of my story is really of no consequence at all, it is only your perception of it that matters to me.

  For example, did you know that there are no explosives on this damned mountain?

  Let that soak in for a moment’s time. You are going to survive. I apologize for what may seem like a cruel joke, but in consolation know the money you carry, that is real.

  You are now a millionaire.

  That is the truth. And although my tale may be false, as I am most likely insane, the fact of the matter is this: You have just had the best run of your life. You have physically and emotionally purged yourself in the last half hour. I envy the way you must feel right now—at this exact moment. You have a renewed zeal. A lust for life. The realization that you are going to survive, after pushing yourself to your limits. Whoever you are, you are about to have the greatest day of your life. The crisp mountain air has never tasted as good as it does right now. Heave it into your lungs, good sir, you earned every bit of it. How you must feel!

  In order to make someone truly want something, you must tell them they can’t have it. It is a counterintuitive sales tactic I have found to be very successful. The intention of this exercise was to alter your perception by using such a tactic. A newfound appreciation for life is what I hope you have achieved during our time together. That, my dear friend, is the real gift you received today. Do not squander another day, for every moment is a privilege.

  Now take this new-found fortune—and I am not referring to the bag of cash you carry—and go make something of yourself.

  N.K. MitzenMächer

  About the author

  N.K. MitzenMächer resides in a small town just south of Sedona, Arizona. He lives with his wife, three dogs, and a cat aptly named "Kitty." They have also unofficially adopted the local, feral peacocks in their neighborhood. NK has his MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and has been working as an executive in the healthcare field for the last ten years. When not writing he enjoys practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, making music, and going on adventures with his wife.

  Smells of Desperation

  By Cristina Romero

  “But, I love you,” he said as I tried to shut the door. “Please tell me what I did, why this isn’t working for you. I can change.”

  His words were drowned out by the slamming of the door. I bolted it and slid down to the floor. I couldn’t do this anymore, I couldn’t take his calling me over and over again, first trying to sweet talk me into taking him back and then ranting about how I didn’t love him, and I wa
s a good-for-nothing whore. I had enough of the drama. He was taking up all my emotional energy. I realized that I needed to deal with this now and finally get him to realize it was never going to happen, his fantasy life with me. I stood up and cautiously opened the door. He barged in like a frenzied bear and we ended up in the kitchen, talking things out, him finally convincing me to at least give him a second chance.

  A few days later I realized I hadn’t heard from him. No calls, no emails, no texts, nothing on my social network pages. It felt surreal, this peace, like it was only borrowed and before I knew it, it would come crashing down around me.

  I sat in my house, on edge, waiting to hear from him, suddenly wondering what he was doing and who with, if it wasn’t me. Was he not thinking about me anymore? Wasn’t that what I’d wanted? This fear that he’d done something to hurt himself began to eat away at me. That if he had, that I’d been the reason for it. I couldn’t understand this emptiness I felt, this hole he’d left by not continuing to contact me. Maybe he was testing me, seeing if I really meant what I’d said about second chances. I needed to see if he was all right. I wouldn’t have to talk to him, he wouldn’t even have to know I was there. I just wanted to make sure he was okay.

  What I found was heartbreaking and infuriating. He had found himself a new girl. I tried to control my rage, to just watch from afar, but I couldn’t do it. I rushed him outside the little family-owned restaurant and confronted him, not really caring what anyone said about me.

  “I thought you loved me!” I yelled before I was even close enough for him to hear me, but he did hear me. He turned around and for a split second I didn’t recognize him. I began to feel the heat of embarrassment on my face but then it was him again. I continued on my tirade.