by Max Jager
"What have you found?" Ajax said.
"Shh." Darr had his finger to his lips and pressed down on Ajax's shoulders. They looked around. There was nothing but wind and the sound of rusted doors creasing and shutting. It was a high pitched sound. Ajax went forward, he looked around to the corner, nothing. There was raunchy graffiti, beer cans, and bottles. There was a condom lying in a pool of a mysterious liquid. It looked like a tapeworm growing out of the floor. A bottle dropped.
Darr put his guns forward.
"Fuck." Ajax said. He knocked the bottle away. It went out the window and collapsed onto the floor.
They heard it then. The loud voice out of speaker phones they thought didn't work. It was a threat, it was a warning.
"The hunters are here." It said. Their eyes illuminated red.
"Should we call the cops?" Darr asked.
"Why? So they can cover this all up." Ajax said.
"Citizens arrest it is." Darr put his back against the wall.
"I don't think either of us is capable of that. We'll just beat the shit out of them, that's good enough." Ajax looked at the foggy windows and put his ear to the wall, he was looking for sounds.
"Should we split up? I can climb the side of the wall. I figure there are six floors, I can come from the top and rout them down to you." Darr said.
"No. They know we're here and they don't sound scared, that means they have an idea of something to kill us with." Ajax started walking to the stairs. "Stick close and we won't die."
Darr followed him up. Covered the flank which they exposed themselves to many a times. They were on the third floor now and they were just coming to realize how thin and small everything really was. There were small cubicles with their plastic and wooden walls all around them, they were high and blocked the view. Ajax could see the tops of small hooded heads on the other end and saw them disappear into the maze-like alleys. Darr ran. Ajax grabbed his shoulder.
"Together." Ajax said. They walked carefully through the cubicles. Ajax stopped. His foot stepped over something. It was a plastic bag, white and it seemed to bulge out, underneath a desk. He could tell what it was by the smell and his mouth dried up. The blood was dried and it stained the bag, the corpse seemed light. It was a bony hand he had stepped over.
"Don't fuck around, Darr." He dragged his hand past the body. Darr got a good glimpse of it and narrowed his eyes. "We'll deal with it later. They come first."
They had made it to the other end of the room and where the walls closed in on themselves.
"The Mad Hatter must have designed this shit hole." Ajax said. They had their backs to each other and were especially careful at turning each corner. The ceiling was falling, the floor sank and bulged at their light footsteps. They went past a few doors and swore they closed in. They went into an intersection and spun around like a dancing couple, the doors were closing all around them. Those anonymous rooms that held anonymous laughter. It sickened Ajax. He put his foot underneath a doorknob and pushed in. He looked inside and caught glimpse of a black hood and dress, the ends of it as it left and jumped away. Tiny dancers in the night.
He didn't even bother running after the image.
"They're fucking with us." Ajax said.
"They're just people, who cares." Darr grunted. His fingers were undisciplined, hard on the trigger and ready to fire.
The noises were coming stronger, the doors were shutting and closing all around them like an evil drum line. It sounded like heavy rain, it crashed like thunder. They retreated back to the intersection. Their eyes looked down four different halls and their faces turned to try and keep up with their racing heads. Something was drawing closer, it was a sound that was like bass at first, like a heavy chord against the clatter of the opening and closing doors. It droned though, a growl. It was a mad dog's growl, drooling, sniffing into the cold air.
"Dogs?" Darr asked. Ajax couldn't answer. He took out his blade, it was too large to manage in the closed space but he thrust out anyways. He swung it, Darr ducked at the coming arc. It collapsed against a wall and broke the door and the brick in half, a small demolisher. The schizophrenic doors finally stopped. The light footsteps of people faded out, then came back above them, from the fourth floor.
All that remained was the growl and the hot jaws of death that Ajax could feel making its way around the corner.
It smelled like shit, it felt like steam around his neck. A noose.
"Get ready to shoot." Ajax said.
1:02 AM
Ajax
July 20th, 2017
1:02 AM
The Vicars did not see the hellhounds coming. Only felt them, the wind that rushed past them with each of their violent passes through the doors around them. They saw glimpses of them. Eyes that they traced, that looked like lines of blue and yellow across the black void of the building walls.
They saw their fur like wild weeds growing into tangles of black knots. Darr shot out at a hallway. The bullet raced down, illuminating the area and eventually coming out a wall and into the abandoned building neighboring them. He hit nothing. They saw everything. Jagged teeth, snouts so elongated as to look like whips or tusks. They were deformed, awkward, drooping. Diseased hellhounds. With long, flat faces. Wide too, especially as they turned and tried napping at the two. Ajax stared inside their mouths and saw nothing. A void.
"We're going to get cornered." Darr said.
"We already are." Ajax spat. His blade was resting on the wall he had just finished crushing. It was atop the pile of rubble.
"We need to move." Darr kept his body low. He was breathing hard behind his mask, the fumes came from underneath his jawline.
"On my count." Ajax said.
"One." He looked around him. No exits near him, the doors were too far and there were three dogs in between them all.
"Two." His eyes raced. He felt the wall with his sword. Like a walking stick, hearing for the low tap of wood. For any fragile walls.
"Three." He shouted. The three dogs rushed at him, north, west, east. Ajax rose his blade to the south and let it fall, down. The floor exploded. The rotten wood and pipe fell burned, smoldered, melting around Ajax and Darr who sank further down. They were in the cafeteria, atop the tables and chairs now dented or lying injured, arms broken around their fallen bodies.
"Did you get 'em?" Darr said. He was digging out wood from his legs.
Ajax said nothing. He tried to stand quickly. He couldn't. The dogs were coming down, from the red, smoldering ring. Like fish in the lake of fire, jumping, flapping around.
But they bit. They bit hard.
The first thing eaten was Ajax's hand. The jaw dug deep into his bone, into the veins that gushed violently, into the marrow slurped and sucked and dried. Then it climbed up. His forearm was gnawed it, it was meatier. More satisfying. And only when his flesh lay in ribbons in the air like some gory wind chime with its whistling tune did Ajax finally strike back. His sword lay on the floor, his only other arm was swinging strong. His fist was in the shape of a hammer as he brought it down on of the four-eyed great dogs. He dug deep into the furred darkness, he ripped hair out. He looked at its flesh, a cloudy mixture of gray and black. They were dead animals, demons, that much was sure. Ajax stopped punching. All four eyes looked at him and they bit harder into his arm. He couldn't help but moan. It seemed to call the second animal. This one looked hungrier, he aimed at Ajax's rear.
A bullet shot it down. The second dog spun in the air from in the impact, a ballet toss, and collapsed. It whimpered. One of its legs flew away. Darr smiled for a moment. Ajax struggled with the parasite on his arm. Then they both stared in awe as the leg regrew, as the dog mounted itself again.
"Don't just stare in awe." Ajax screamed. His voice was strained, high pitched. "Watch out for the third."
He grabbed the beast with his only free arm and swung it down. Both Ajax and the monster fell, he slammed it harder again. It let at last, pinched between a punch and the wall, its mouth opened and Aj
ax retreated his arm. He stared at it, his face looked dull. It was different. White and red all across, he couldn't tell what it was. Splintered, eviscerated. He screamed, at last. Ajax held his shoulder, it was the only thing that wasn't hurting.
Oh, his arm was terrible. How it drooped on his side, lame and dead, and how it made him stand lopsided. He could not bear to look at it. He stood, his eyes focused. They were attentive. His body tried healing it, what little it could and the smoke rose up between him and the animal.
Ajax reached with his left to the sword fallen near him. He walked or rather the dog let him walk. He put his sword back inside that insignia in his jacket and there, dropped the jacket as well. He ripped something from it, black cloth from the suit. Cloth he held, cloth he wielded inside of his blade. And then he faced the animal. Handicapped.
They were both low, both primed and high-shouldered. They were breathing and sniffing the air and running around each other in their private dance.
The dog flew out. Like an arrow camouflaged in the darkness. Ajax moved forward and in the middle of its trajectory shot his only good hand out. It broke the beast's teeth and the shrapnel shot out. It cut his cheeks and left him with a Glasgow sneer. And his arm was inside the mouth of the beast, his only good arm. He wiggled, he scratched the inside of the beast mouth and felt his arm beginning to hurt and stab. The weight dragged him down and the hound pulled, hoping to leave him armless.
Ajax smiled. He bent his knee. He rubbed something in his hands, inside the steam and wet flesh of the hound's mouth. It was the very cloth of his jacket, sticky and damp. It was a special piece of his make. The only piece that mattered, the arcane symbol. He rubbed the embroidery of the design and his hand slipped in. Deep inside he thrust his arm and deep inside he removed the blade from its small scabbard. It was the magicians trick, the pull of the rabbit out of the hat. And he would pull it all out.
The beast growled. Then expanded as if to vomit. Ajax smiled, he kept dragging the blade out of the arcane symbol. it was too late for the hound to spit by then. It exploded. Too small to eat arm and blade. It was just too full.
The dog cried out. It rained. The lower half was scattered about, the mouth, the face just stared off and away from Ajax, all eyes looking at each corner of the earth, a cross-sighted death. Its grip became limp as the muscles eased and Ajax dragged himself out. His own arms fell as well. He could not move them, he only looked at what was left of the hound. His eyes were heavy and the sounds of violence and of Darr's struggle were low behind him like a shout in an empty tunnel, fading away.
Ajax shook his head. He looked deeper into the body of the monster, he found the glow of the philosophers stone and rubbed his mask upward with the knob of bone hanging barely on his wrist. His mouth salivated, his chin felt cold in the open air.
Ajax reached down and dunked his head into the body of the animal. A carnival game, he almost laughed at the thought. He was bobbing for apples. And it wasn't difficult, there wasn't much left. He rubbed his mouth past some organs, past the stringy flesh and muscle, past the ropes of guts.
He found the gem, the sweet fruit and swallowed it whole. His arms returned to him, muscles regenerating first, then skin. Barely healed, barely moving. But there, at least.
1:08 AM
Aleistar
July 20th, 2017
1:08 AM
They sat on their bellies and rolled on the floor with an intensity that made Aleistar cringe, lost pets dragged themselves on the dirty floor with mouths hanging from their covered faces and the hope and want in their bloodshot eyes. They took steps forward, like lizards chasing the hot sun that had passed through the sky many hours ago. They were here for worship. Of Astrix, of that demon who promised their family names the world and who had delivered nothing but the false hope and the anxiety. Still, they would worship. Perhaps he would listen today and even Aleistar began to believe it. They were close, that was sure.
The most excited for today's offering were those in the front, their knees were bleeding and their pants were ripped and stained with old floral wallpaper made to rot. They looked like scabs of the earth now, black and brown stickers that stuck to the worshipers as they slithered up the room. It was an office meeting once. Once, now it lay lopsided and uneven and on the end where an old projector screen once flapped around, was the makeshift altar. A collection of candles, of scripture and of those yellow flowers in broken vases. The cheap dollar candles stood lonely like acolytes in church. They flickered and illuminated nearly nothing. The worshippers came up. They picked candles and held them close to the heart. Like awkward pirouettes, they rushed round the table, the heartbeat of the fire shaking left and right. The tailcoats died at last and they stepped around to the maggot half-eaten roundtable to their rear. They propped them one by one and set a human femur in a certain place. They were forming crosses, tearing yellow flower petals and putting strands of hair onto the spots where the arcana symbol had been etched in. Unholy worship, unholy sacrifice.
A cup. A goblet, bejeweled and stained looking, shaped awkwardly, like a dented half circle. Aleistar came up to it. He put it at the very center of all the pretty sticks and bones and flowers.
He looked back, the veil on his head was purple. Far different from the white they all wore, the eight others.
Aleistar looked back at the girl, Sophie, lying in the corner of the room in a complacent manner. Her deep breaths sucked in the sack and blew it out like an artificial lung.
"Bring the chair." Aleistar said. One of the degenerates rushed to the other end of the room. There was a chair there, somewhere in the intersection of moonlight that broke through the metal bars outside the windows. There Aleistar could see the chair, the feet dangling from its high legs. The worshiper titillated the chair, rocked it some. It did not move. He dragged it and Aleistar could hear it cry and moan as it came forward. There someone there. Someone young, long passed. The life bled out of her, dripping down one side. He raised the cup and put it under her. The blood would not come off the wood and he raised her hand and rested it inside like a siphon of her life force. Vampires.
She did not move.
"Fuck." Aleistar began to sweat. I don't want to kill another one. He thought. He felt the vibrations from under his feet. The struggle was continuing and his fingers were tingling with worry. Needle prickles, all across his chest, like his lungs, had become a living puffer fish. It seemed to pain him. He heard a man scream. He heard a dog cry. Now the other nine worshippers looked around, the seeming calm around the room somehow discomforting as they played with their hair and bodies like concerned children.
But what's another one to the mound? What's one more sin? Aleistar thought.
It was time and he was closer, he could not wait and it seemed the world could not either. He looked to Sophie.
"Those hunters have made a martyr of you." Aleistar said. "They pushed me to this. Day in, day out with their nosy pickings. They dragged me and hurt me and forced me. Perhaps we could have used others. More deserving people than you, girl. But I don't have that luxury anymore."
He brought himself up and shuffled his feet to Sophie. His whole body was opposed to the action with rigidity. He stopped all of a sudden. Sophie's hair stuck out from a cut in her sack, her lips showed, she screamed at him. He almost forgot there was a person under there. He wanted to forget there was and felt his cloth slip from his face. His nose, his large forehead, and chin couldn't keep it any longer and he shook. Two gaunt eyes showed back, Sophie saw.
"You killed him. Didn't you?" Sophie asked. Aleistar reached down for the cloth. He wiped his sweat and put it back on. It felt dirty like grease rubbed across his face and all of him felt slippery. Unable to stand, unable to move without feeling a need to fret and fumble.
"Shut up." Aleistar said. He reached for the hood and grabbed it. She was heavier than he thought and his knees buckled at each step towards the chair. One of the members offered his help with extended hand.
"
Don't. She's mine." Aleistar said.
"I'm no ones." Sophie screamed.
"Didn't you gag her?" He screamed at the eight. They nodded and looked at their feet and pleaded with open hands.
"Just be quiet." Aleistar hunched over.
"My name is Sophie and you killed my friend, Pip."
"Be quiet." Aleistar said. Names make it worse, just shut up. He thought. He stopped midway to the chair and let himself catch air, he looked up around him to the broken glass and the dirt and the furniture scattered like deforested lands. He walked over to one of his men, he ripped a piece of suit from the right sleeve of the follower.