by Mark Tufo
The blade rang out as it struck one of the boney protrusions atop his head. I figured his crown was going to go spinning off onto the ground. Instead, I got a hollow ringing as the bone snapped and then the howl of one in pain or rage. Maybe he was pissed because it took decades to grow those. Like maybe he was a reggae lover that had passed out early at a party and some of his douche-bag friends had thought shaving a patch in his dread-locked covered head would be hilarious. But the screech kept going, I was thinking rage was not it, especially when I saw the eruption of a thick, deep yellow fluid gushing from the broken head spike. Looked like molten gold as it poured down the side of his face.
I was tallying up the score, I had just awarded myself round two when that stupid fucking spear thwacked me in my side. He had enough force behind the stroke, my body wrapped itself around it, just about cracked me in half. Pretty sure I could add lacerated liver and split spleen to my list of injuries. I might be tough to kill but it wasn’t impossible and I was starting to come down the other side of that bell curve. From a damned pointed stick! Now that I knew just how painful and tender those thorns were, they were a flashing bonus target. It was time to go for another. And that was exactly what he was expecting. The spear whizzed over my head like a helicopter blade in full rotation.
I didn’t give him a chance to readjust, the spear fell to the ground with half of his right hand. I split it between the third and fourth hooves. Yeah, they were more hoof looking than phalange type digits and there were only four of them and that included some weird opposable thumb-ish thing that was high up the arm thus making it six or so times longer than any of his other finger-things. Thorny was pissed off, that much was obvious, but he wasn’t exactly about to lay down and call it a day. That’s the thing about fighting for your life. If you’re in a fist-fight, maybe you’re drunk, you say something stupid about someone’s date or football team, and someone gets in a few good pops and dazes the living shit out of you, you tend to tell them you’ve had enough. Most times you splayed out on the ground looking up at the stars is enough for them to realize they’ve won and everyone goes back to drinking. In a life or death struggle, something else clicks in the brain, you do until you can do no more. You fight with everything at your disposal, wits, hands, teeth, bricks, doesn’t matter. To retain life is the primary focus, there is no timeout or halftime or uncle.
What I’m getting around to saying is that I should have expected the strike to my face. It was something like a punch, only his hoof fingers were not curled nor fleshy, so he carved my face up like a Thanksgiving turkey, or like being stomped repeatedly on the face by a bull. I didn’t dare reach up to feel the damage, first because it would hurt like hell, second, it would give him an opening, and thirdly I didn’t want to be touching my facial muscles, which I was sure were completely exposed. I was in instinctual mode now as I lifted my blade to deflect his next blows. My axe cut lengthwise down his arm slicing his right thumb completely off. He was bleeding at a good pace in three areas and I still think he was getting the better of me. His hoof hand knifed into my shirt, piercing my side–though not far.
I was covered in a fair amount of my own blood and also his. This triggered my primal side again, the need to feed that dark side. I wasn’t sure what golden demon blood was going to do to me, but it was my only chance. I latched onto his damaged arm like a cat might a person that was harmlessly, tenderly scratching its belly. Oh, you know what I’m talking about. You can still be a cat lover to realize that for some reason that crazy animal both loves and loathes that particular form of attention from its human caretaker.
At first, he shook me around to the point I thought my eyes were going to roll out of my head and still, I held on and more importantly, I drank. Even as he was dying I felt better, strange, but better. He fell to his knobby knees, yet, bless him, he kept punching my head and shoulders doing his best to dislodge the fat tick attached to him. I was getting loopy, like his blood was laced with hallucinogens or I’d just shot-gunned a twelve pack of beer and chased it down with a couple of bong hits. Not that I’d done that recently, but some things never fade. Bringing a bottle of this shit back to Trip crossed my mind, as did other bizarre notions. I was getting restored and fucked up, I just hoped not beyond repair. Hey, getting buzzed from time to time is fine, but if that becomes your new normal it’s not such a good thing. I was losing contact with his arm; I don’t know if it was because I couldn’t control what I was doing or I just didn’t care…hell, maybe he was empty. I fell away from him like Alice did down her famous hole.
It seemed to take an hour before I felt my head impact the ground and then another hour when I heard the thud of him land next to me. Maybe my body realized I hadn’t completed the healing process or I just wanted to get a wee bit higher, but I managed to shift my body weight enough that I lined back up to that arm and again planted my fangs in. He was still alive, or at least his heart was still pumping as the blood gushed into and around my mouth. It spilled down my throat, some of it inside, some out. I passed out when I saw four of him.
Chapter 14
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 11
“Tallboat…Tallboat.” In my dreams, I kept looking for these tall ships the mystery voice spoke of. “You must awaken.”
“Fuck off,” I croaked. My throat was raw, and my head was splitting. Whatever rager I had attended last night, I had over-indulged. I could not remember a time when I had been more hung-over. I could not even open my eyes, they were crusted over in thick sticky breadcrumbs. I dug it away from the corners of my eyes and the ends of my eyelashes as best I could, attempting to break that seal. When I felt as if I succeeded I opened my eyes only to realize that I couldn’t see. My brain was as foggy as a fall night in San Francisco as it struggled to figure out what was going on.
“I’m blind,” I choked out.
“Shut up, Tallboat,” the voice hissed.
“Linnick?” I asked.
“I will bite you and not let go if you do not cease to make noise.”
That threat cut through all the other bullshit. We were either back to the first time we’d encountered the Polions and I had been killed and hallucinated all that had happened afterward or this was the next time and she had found me. The first explanation seemed much more likely.
“You’re so little; how could you have found me?” I asked, and true to her word she bit my earlobe with enough force that I think her mandibles were touching. I shut up, and I shut up quickly. Yeah, I was overjoyed my friend was back but if she didn’t stop chewing through me I was going to be forced to do something about it. Finally, she released her grip and sat back.
I should have been more petrified, I knew this on a bunch of different levels, I just couldn’t muster enough feelings inside of me to give a shit. Thorny had nearly taken me out, I should be celebrating the fact that I was alive and petrified that I was about to hand that hard-fought victory into the jaws of defeat. There was a very good chance it was Thorny’s blood that was funking me up. I still had a residual buzz and the true beginnings of a bitch-slapping hangover was on the horizon.
Have you ever partied your ass off on a Tuesday night hoping that Wednesday was still days away? No? Come on I’m not the only one. Your alarm goes off crisply at six fifty-five in the a.m., you are approximately a sheet and a half to the wind and you know your ass, which you figured looked pretty good in your jeans last night, is going to be flailing and dragging on the ground the entire day. Sometime right before Carl from accounting asks you what you’re doing for lunch, your head is going to start drilling spikes through its own skull, your eyes are going to begin to smolder from the burning sensation, and your poor abused stomach is going to grumble and bumble its distaste at your choices in life. And that’s not even getting into your sphincter which will be flapping in the breeze because your broke ass was drinking something swill-like that came in a bargain breaking twenty-five pack. Yeah, because it’s that very last beer that cements the fuck-fest you’re going t
o be for the next twenty-four hours.
Right this very second, I could see Carl coming over, his early receding hairline the only thing visible above the cube walls. “Geez Talbot, you look like shit, want to get some sushi?”
I didn’t lose my lunch that time, but I made up for it this time. Steaming wet, semi-chunky jets of something gold-colored was tossed forcibly from my stomach and onto the ground. Linnick was losing her shit and I hoped not literally. Because the last thing I needed right now was warm runny whatever she crapped running down into my ear canal and leaking into my brain. I’d no sooner got done unfurling my body from the severe cramps when I heard a shifting. That’s the best way I can describe it. Like whatever the monster was that had the good and common decency to just pass us by unbothered, had now had a change of heart. Or more accurately, figured that he’d walked right past something to kill and eat.
I wasn’t in any condition to fight. I didn’t need Linnick to whisper in my ear to stay down, I tried to lift my arm that was holding the axe but either my bones had turned to rubber or Thor himself had taken over my weapon, and since I wasn’t a Nordic God…well you know the rest and if you don’t it just means only Thor can lift it. The thing was coming. I could hear the squishy noises it made as it moved and there was a thumping as it must have been sending an arm out, pounding on the ground to either locate its prey or maybe scare it off so it would start running. If it was coming to eat us, I just wanted it to be over with. I’d deal with whatever was on the other side of this encounter when I got there. Anything would be better than to keep feeling like I’d downed a case of Maddog 20/20. If you’re reading this, there really isn’t any chance you’ve stumbled upon some in your scavenging hunts and you should consider yourself lucky. That shit would have definitely eaten through its bottle by now. I think they made it from those fake plastic grapes that everyone’s grandmother had from my original time. You have no idea how many times as a kid I tried to eat those. No one ever said I should have been in Mensa.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the part about not giving a shit. Yeah, that ended the moment one of the tips on one of those arms brushed across my face. Everything got real, real damn fast. Still wasn’t a whole bunch I could do except get petrified, but at least it became my primary emotion. The rest of the monster was coming, having discovered something of interest. I put an image of Azile, the babies, and Oggie into my mind; that was what I was going to hold on to in the after after-life. This suddenly seemed like something a cat would get through, and just like that, I let Sebastian into my final mind-photo.
I heard what sounded like wet rope constricting, then there was the shattering thud as a heavy object was pummeled into the ground, then again. I felt the cool spray of blood rain down over me, then there was the meatier (poor choice of adjectives) internal parts as Thorny was hitting the ground like he was a brush beater and the ground was a rug. Or the ground was a fly and he was a fly swatter, or the ground was a cockroach and he was a boot heel. I mean, you get it now, right? He was getting destroyed. Seemed good-old Thorny was taking one for the team, I always knew he was a team player. “Cheers to Thorny! I’ll drink to that.” Were pretty much my last words before I decided unconsciousness was a better state.
“Tallboat, you must awaken now. We have been too long in this place. I will bite you if you do not listen to me.”
“My mom never bit me when I was running late for school,” I mumbled. I was face down in the dirt, felt like I’d been eating some of it. I sat up, drooly mud caked the side of my mouth. My head so light I thought it was going to lift me all the way up and we’d go floating around like a hydrogen-filled balloon, ready to explode. That did wonders for a belly standing on the edge.
“Perhaps if she bit you, you would not have been late.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“That demon,” Linnick asked, pointing over to something that once was a being, which had now been reduced to almost a paste. The Polion had smashed it into oblivion, maybe concerned that if enough was left it could regenerate itself. I could happily report that was not going to be the case, though I did shudder thinking I was about six inches away from that having been me.
“What about it?”
“Did you feed on it?”
She asked it in a way that did not sound good–like possibly I’d eaten an ill-prepared puffer-fish and was about to die a horrible death.
“Why?” I stalled as if this were somehow going to halt whatever inevitability she was about to tell me about. If I didn’t know, how could it affect me, right? I’d lived most of my life that way. I wasn’t seeing any good reasons to go and shift away from it now. Especially now in fact.
“That was a Luvier demon.”
“And?” I prodded gently, not really wanting to know more, but needing to.
“They are among the third hierarchy of demons.”
“Out of?”
“Three.”
“So, they’re the fat cats? Linnick, I don’t know what you’re driving at. Thorny kicked my ass and I drank of him to keep me in the fight and alive. What happens now?”
“I do not know,” she replied. “Lift me to your face.” She studied me like she was getting ready to paint me. “Have you always had gold flecks in your eyes?” she finally asked.
“No. I don’t think so….” A pit was beginning to deepen in me. This was merely a cosmetic change but I’d never seen one that didn’t imply other, more fundamental, changes as well.
“Hmm,” she said to my answer.
“What’s going to happen to me, Linnick?”
“I don’t know, Tallboat. I have never heard of a Luvier demon dying by anything less than the hand of an archangel, and surely none of those types ever consumed their defeated opponent. You should not have been able to kill him.” If I thought she was laboriously studying me before she had upped her game.
“You’re freaking me out a little, Linnick. Can I just put you back in my pocket so we can get out of here?”
“That might be for the best. This body is sure to garner attention.”
I got my feet up under me, swayed like a tall tree in a wind storm, righted myself and started to walk. I felt decent, but I kept having a nagging thought of something horrific happening. Like maybe my eyeballs would melt and run down my face or my feet would catch on fire and I would be doomed to run for all eternity to make sure the fire did not continue past my ankles. You know, normal type fears and concerns; I mean at least for hell.
“Are you real? Is this real? I mean we parted ways. How could you have possibly found me and so quickly?” I asked after my head cleared enough that I could even form a question somewhat intelligently.
“I turned around almost immediately.”
“Sure, Linnick, but I’m huge compared to you. How could you possibly keep up?”
“At a full sprint, I can run four miles an hour.”
“That was about the pace I was walking,” I said in astonishment. “Damn, Linnick! Those four miles would have been like me running for fifty.”
“More,” she said, but did not elaborate.
“But why? And aren’t you exhausted?”
“You ask a lot of questions. Yes, I am exhausted, and I don’t quite know why. Instinct, I suppose. I have begun to accept your hideousness and even worse, your company, and thought we would be better off keeping our forces united for the time being. It is a very good thing, too, or else the Polion would have gotten you.”
I had to halt her there. “How do you figure that? If you hadn’t awakened me I would neither have moved nor thrown up.”
“You were snoring loud enough that you would not have gone unnoticed.”
“Oh. Well, thank you for that.” And I meant it. “But even if we are a good team, which I agree with, by the way, you yourself said your only way out was forward, not back.”
“There is more to your value than my eyes can see Tallboat, you are not just an ugly biped with little wit. You destroying the Luvier is proo
f of that. I suspect my best chance of salvation lies with you.”
“Sure do wish I had a tape recorder, ain’t nobody anywhere that’s ever known me going to believe someone just uttered those words to me.”
“You mean about your unsightliness?”
“We need to get a few things straight, I might not be Brad Pitt handsome but I’m not Quasimodo, either.” Right after I said that I was thinking on the bone scraping wounds Thorny had given me on my face. “Linnick if you can get past your prejudice of my apparent repulsiveness to you, could you please let me know what the damage that Thorny did to me looks like? He hooved me in the face a couple of times and opened me up like a can of tomato sauce on Prince spaghetti day.
“You have four immensely large scars, nearly as long as I am and are very thick–almost the width of my arm.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. In terms of damage it wasn’t all that bad; basically, I had some scars about the size of an Amazonian beetle. I had bigger scars from workshop mishaps. Size is as relevant in every world.
“They also have a golden tinge. But only sometimes, when the light hits them a certain way.”
“Great, it’s going to look like I’ve gone to a strip club and Goldie the big bosomed blonde shook her sparkles all over me. I’m sure Azile will be okay with that and not put a witchy spell on me.”
“Wait Tallboat, Are you talking about Azile, the Red Witch, Azile? How am I just putting this together?”
That kind of took me aback. I mean Azile was a unique name; how many of them could there be running around? “The better question is how do you know her? I’m married to her.”