by Max Jager
"I don't care to be a hero and I don't care to be sympathetic. These people were already at the edge of self-destruction." Ajax threw a sardonic laugh at Darr. "This thing is probably a huge fucking joke anyways, the cities so shit they've probably confused their problems for the work of a demon or anti-christ. I see this happen all the time."
"You can't be serious."
"Oh, I am. Nine times out of ten - from experience - these demon sightings tend to be false positives. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole mission was a hoax." He spat a cigarette and found another in his pocket. It was mechanical, the way Ajax lit and drew in his deep breaths and exhaled, like the giant industrial furnaces and chimneys towering over them. "You see Darr, sometimes people see violence so palpable and so outrageous that the only excuse they can imagine is that it was the work of a demon. Sometimes that's right. Sometimes. But most of the time, most of the time… it's just a man, just a regular ol' man, exercising the capacity of his cruelty. A tragedy, so to speak."
They both kind of stood there, existing but not exactly acknowledging each other. Darr's neck was craned, his eyes yielded away from Ajax and stared at the floor. Ajax looked up, to the sun and then to his dragging shadow. His face scrunched a bit and he walked away towards the noise of people, a crowd on the sidewalk. And Darr stood there, feeling jelly-like as if the concrete pillars inside of him (those of faith and of courage and of honesty) had been reduced some and all that was left was a worried man. Worried, annoyed, angry.
He looked up, the sun was blinding and he mumbled to himself: "This is going to be terrible."
12:34 PM
Mr. Molyneaux heard the whimper of the door as it opened but saw no one come through. He sat behind the counter with his glazed eyes and adjusted his glasses to correct the confusion. No one walked through, he assured himself. But there was a thud. Somewhere in the many aisles of his small shop, he could hear the thudding and tapping like light rain. His face shifted direction to the sound and the bag of discount razors that fell and scraped the floor.
"Who's there?" Mr. Molyneaux said, hopeful that it was nothing. There was another thud on another aisle and he could feel the creeping sensation of fear tapping along his spine and playing music with the rapid tempo of his heart beat. Things would not stop falling, noises would not stop rising and he swore he could hear a distinct crawling sound from the floor.
"Who the hell is there?" He screamed out again and knocked over wooden shavings and miniature horses and blocks of wood. His carving knife rolled on the counter as he stood up, though he could not lock his legs. Between fear and old age, his seized knees could only hold a right angle and shake. He lifted his head as high as he could and saw nothing but a littered floor.
But he still heard the crawling. Like mice or some centipede dancing along the floor. He tried calming down but remembered the newspaper and it fed his paranoia. He was remembering the words and pinching his legs for doing so, 'two old homeless people found dead, half-bodied and dragged into the sewers'. He started shaking and it looked as if he was having a seizure on his two feet.
Crawling noises, again. He walked back and bumped into a wall. He was going to die, he felt it. Then silence overtook the store. There was only his palpitations as if someone had thrown a wrench inside of a broken engine and turned the key to see it chug. He held his chest with his hand and pulled on his white hairs with the other. His breathing was uneven. His hand rubbed his scalp to fold the standing hairs back on his nape and balding head.
That was when he felt the long breath. A cold breath that seemed to suck the heat in his body, blowing against his fingers. He fell to the numbness like a weight on his back that pulled him to the chair. His skull pulsed with rushing blood that fueled the frightening thoughts in his brain, I will die.
He was in the jaws of the beast, he figured. All he could do was jump and give the illusion of putting up a fight. So in one swoop, he did all he could: cry, moan, beg, take his knife and push himself against the counter to a proper corner where he could huddle. He did it in such a quick succession that he tripped over himself and landed on the edge of the glass counter top, knife crying out as it scratched the surface.
"Don't kill me." He pleaded with that muffled voice as his face pushed against the glass. "Please, don't."
And all he could hear was a maniacal laugh.
A snorting laugh.
A stupid, childish laugh.
He turned and saw his grand daughter on the floor, red and turning purple as she chortled and suffocated herself with humor. Mr. Molyneaux's shaking did not end rather, was transmuted. He no longer felt limp and oozing. His limbs felt like tree trunks filled with the sap of rage and he went up to her and grabbed her by the shirt.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" He screamed. She laughed. "I'm seventy-four, do you know how easy it would be to give me a heart attack?"
"I'm sorry gran-paw." She tried to say in the brief moments of calm.
"Sorry? You've made a mess of me. Scared the soul right out of me, girl. God damnit, Sophie. What the hells the matter with you?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. I just thought you'd be happy to see me." She cleaned the drool off her overalls and blue shirt that came out. The old man looked at his grand daughter's small face in surprise. He couldn't believe the wide grin on her as if it didn't even belong to her, stolen from a mad clown. She looked like a snake with its mouth unhinged.
Mr. Molyneaux sighed again and relief filled his lungs as he breathed what he now realized was precious air. He sat back, laid the knife down and rubbed his temples.
"Why're you here? Shouldn't you be at school?" He said.
"Well, aren't you happy to see me."
"I would be if it was after school."
"They canceled school, got scared by the news today. Another abduction. Don't you read the paper?"
"Are you lying Sophie?"
"The hell I'm lying." She lifted herself up to the counter and let her legs dangle.
"Don't curse."
"Hell isn't a curse. It's just a place."
"It's both." Mr. Molyneaux found his glasses on the floor. They looked bent to his eyes, felt bent on his nose. "Well, what're you doing here anyways? Go play with your friends."
"I don't like playing games. I'm here for merchandise."
"Merchandise?" He looked at her through the diagonal spectacles. "You certainly have my blood in you. How long you been selling those candies?"
"They're chocolates. The highest quality, processed and manufactured in Switzerland since nineteen-forty-seven." She showed her gums with a wide grin. Her teeth looked like broken down train tracks with all the gaps. "Besides… what are you, IRS?"
"What do you know of the IRS." He reached for a half finished block of wood and began carving again.
"Enough not to answer to you." She took out a wad from her overalls. "I sell enough." In her closed hands was a bundle of twenties.
"Let me see if they're real." Mr. Molyneaux dragged his eyes to the money. Sophie reeled it back.
"Let me see the good stuff first." Her tone became deeper and Mr. Molyneaux knew what the voice meant. Haggling.
"You want a box?" He asked.
"Two."
"That'll be thirty bucks."
"It was ten per box last time."
"You didn't have money last time. I pitied you, honestly."
"I won't take anything short of fifteen dollars for both boxes."
"God damn girl. First, you try to kill me and now you try to bankrupt me?"
"Fifteen."
"Twenty-five for the two."
"Fifteen."
"Who the hell raised you when you were young? Me. Who changed your diapers and took you to the doctor? Me. Who lets you run amok in his store? Me."
"Fifteen." She did not blink, did not move. She looked like a blue wall. They both drew their stern faces but the old man was the first to turn.
He opened his counter and realized a depressing absence of gr
een. He began to sweat again and felt the chill of another kind of death coming onto him.
"Twenty-two."
"Fine. Twenty."
Mr. Molyneaux twitched a bit but ended up shaking her hand.
"I'll give them to you after I close shop." He had to rip the bill from her hands. "Stay on the counter and take up space. I want the store to look like it's open." Mr. Molyneaux said. She stood for a bit, it wasn't long. He turned, she was gone. Disappeared into the back where she climbed the gondolas, a little metal jungle, searching and inspecting with the kind of curiosity of a primate. He smiled. She was his grand daughter. Very small, though mentally too old for middle school. She resembled him more than his own daughter, Sophie's mother. For inside of Sophie was that stubbornness he found in himself. It was a likeness that vindicated Mr. Molyneaux and his failing bloodline, a collection of reprobates. He wondered if his genes must have played leap-frog for a generation. The thought made him chuckle and in the humor, he almost lost track of the door opening again. The creak, the bell ring.
Sophie dropped. She stared from the back room where her gaze locked on to the counter space, it looked like she would burn a hole through the glass.
Darr came forward first with a pumped chest and eager smile. Ajax was behind. While Darr wasted his time lurking the aisles with hungry eyes, Ajax made his way to the counter.
"I want a pack." Ajax pointed down to a gold-branded box of cigarettes. He eyed a map of the town and put it on the counter too.
"You two new around here?" Mr. Molyneaux asked. Sophie felt pride from her grandfather's stiff face. He reminded her of an old oak tree, a slab left to dry and harden into a bulwark.
"Something like th- Put that back." Ajax pointed to the bag of potato chips Darr came up with.
"Please, I'm hungry."
"We'll eat later. Put that back."
"Come on."
"Stop being obnoxious." Ajax hissed.
"What?" Darr looked around for sympathy.
"It's rude." Ajax said.
"You of all people? Calling me rude?" Darr went over back to the wall of many-colored plastic bags and almost knocked it down with his firm placing.
"That it?" Mr. Molyneaux rung up the number. Ajax looked at a silver wrist-watch hanging by the side and added it to the potpourri.
"Oh, but you'll buy that huh. Real important to tell the time. And the cigarettes. You addict." Darr said. Ajax threw an annoyed stare at him.
"That it?" Mr. Molyneaux repeated.
"Yeah." Ajax said. He took out his wallet and set down some bills and when his eyes came up he saw the blond girl. Sophie felt cold as if the veins in her body had all stopped their transactions. She swore he would eat her, hurt her, kill her. She held her breath behind the wall though did not understand her fear. They were just people, weren't they? No. Maybe. They were odd, she knew it, felt it. It was enough to justify her shivering legs.
"No, actually. I'd like some news if you don't mind." Ajax redirected his eyes to the wood-carved horse on the counter.
"We don't sell the morning paper here." Mr. Molyneaux said.
"Good thing you have a mouth and an ear, right?" Ajax could feel he had offended Mr. Molyneaux in some way. It was in the air like steam or mist. "I just wanna know if anything strange has happened around here."
"Besides you?" Mr. Molyneaux said. He did not like them and it was clear on his face. Maybe it was because of how tall they were or the color of their skin or Ajax's rugged face, but they made him uncomfortable as if they were things pretending at being human and falling into uncanny valley.
"With that attitude, I'm surprised you even have a business. I just want information." Ajax said.
"This is why no one likes you city people. Always insulting us." Mr. Molyneaux mumbled. "Why do you care about the news so much?"
"What business is it of yours." Ajax said.
"None. And since it ain't my business to know it ain't my business to tell. Maybe you should try being a friend." Mr. Molyneaux said.
"Right? Right! He's not anyone's friend." Darr chimed. He walked up next to Ajax and donned his bright, piercing, smile. "We're just with the church. Just here to help the people with a little faith, you see."
"Don't know what the bible can do."
"About what?" Darr asked.
"About the crazy weather, we been having lately. Or the strangeness of the city. Or the killings."
"Anything you know about them?" Ajax pressed and they could all feel something drop. It was the sound of the little rapport they had thrown away, into an echo-less pit. Mr. Molyneaux frowned again.
"No. I don't know anything. Go buy the paper elsewhere or turn on the tube." Mr. Molyneaux opened the register, took the money and they both kind of floundered. They looked like fish breathing hopelessly on land. Sophie saw the wide mouth on Ajax and laughed. She knocked over shelves onto herself. Then her fear came back. Everyone seemed to turn to her but only Darr ran to help. He extended his hand and she crawled away from his worried face.
"Are you hurt?" He said.
"Of course she's not." Ajax said from afar. Mr. Molyneaux looked helpless with his quaking hands. Darr lifted the shelf, he picked her up and stood her though she squirmed. She looked angry and bitter, he backed away. He wanted to apologize, started on it but felt a tap on his shoulder. They left with the plastic bag of things on their hands. Sophie looked at their shadows through the windows of the store and how they dragged along with the falling sun, she could not help but feel small. It was the smallest she had ever felt and it incited in her an anger. Anger grew into desperation, desperation for a relief she wanted from her frustration.
She ran out.
She'd give them a piece of her mind, especially the brown one with the mouth.
Mr. Molyneaux called out for her, but she was too far ahead and hounding the men trying their way into the flow of pedestrians. She reached them almost but from the sideline, she saw darkness and then her whole face was smothered in that same blackness. When she looked up a man stared down at her, disgusted. His face was like clay, cracked and dry and beginning to harden and stay disgusted. She stood up. Rubbed her eyes and then she realized warmth on her nose. Warmth down her lips and on her chin. Her nose was bleeding and as the faces of strangers looked around to her she began to feel small again like some great weight was cast on her shoulders and forcing her to the floor.
She ran to her grand father and from the man with the blood on his shirt. He wiped his shirt and by now everyone around them had begun gossiping and observing. The strangers, the vicars. The bloodied man looked back at Sophie. He too was feeling nervous and he too experienced that same heaviness cast on his ankles. It was a strange thing, this moment, all four of them looking at each other. All ignorant to the nature of the other. The players all set, but blind to each other's allegiance.
Ajax and Darr who would kill the bloodied man. The bloodied man who would kill Sophie. Sophie who would die a lonely death.
They all looked at each other for a moment and split from the nauseous gaze of the crowd. All terrified in some way, all taking their separate ways down the same labyrinth.
3:15 PM
It was only a few minutes into the murder and John Aleistar was already interrupted. It was a knocking that came from his front door, a familiar tempo. He rose and stood in his sweat, felt it collect on his collar. He set down the knife on a table and left the room in darkness as he skated across the wood floor, into the stairs that he hustled down through. All of him was white, the boxers, the socks, the shirt. All of it except for a particular red stain on him. Realizing it, he started taking off his shirt. The knocking was getting angrier.
"Hold on." He moved button to button. Grunted. Ripped it, threw it inside of a closet to his rear to forget about it and walked towards the door.
"Hold on." He screamed. It sounded like a battering ram was oppressing his walls.
Aleistar looked through the keyhole and sighed.
"You're hom
e early." He opened a sliver of the door. His eyes spilled through the slit. The capillaries on his eyes throbbed, his iris's looked like black holes as if little red worms jumped into an abyss.
"I was studying." The man behind the door said.
"Right, hold on." Aleistar said.
There were five locks in total, two chains, three dials that thumped and clanked as they hit the the wall and the floor. When they opened he couldn't help but sweat, especially with his son in front of him.
The look they gave each other was standoffish with their raised and stretched chins to give the appearance of an under bite. Their noses bloomed. It was a long look between the two. He was a slim boy, tall too but you would not have noticed with how low his head was. His clothes were too big for him and it made him seem like a mummy underneath a ceremonial wrapping.