by Max Jager
He held it all in his chest and walked over to his son like a child with his box of toys, wanting to share, wanting to show. Itrus pulled away.
"Enough of this insane bullshit." Itrus said. "I used to think it was just drugs, a sniff and that was it. Too much acid rotting your brain. But this, this is much worse."
"It started like that." Aleistar dropped to his knees and organized his materials. "We saw something in a fire once, when I went out to burn your mothers clothes. It was the first week. The first... It was in the fire! I remember, I promise. After that we started taking psychedelics, I just wanted to re-watch what it. Heaven, I tell you, Zac. Heaven."
"What are you trying to pull? You found god, is that what you're telling me?"
"No. God let me suffer, God let me go. It was the opposite." Aleistar's eyes flared. "Let me show you."
"Enough. I don't want to hear it. It's enough to know my father is a murderer, it's another thing to hear him pleading his excuses. Have some dignity! Admit to it." Itrus yelled. "At least lie. Let me pretend, at least, that you still have a moral compass. Any compass."
"It was paradise, Zac. It was the best thing ever. Better than the trips to the Bahamas, better than the cruises or the old birthday cakes you used to get at the steakhouse."
"Is it better than mom?" Itrus began to tear up. Aleistar looked up.
"It is mom. And your sister. It's both of them. Let me show you." He started the circle of pink salt. Itrus came up, his mud stained feet left the imprints on the wood. He looked at his father, his balding head and the crazy hair that flew rubbed his feet and ruined the circle and kicked the candle into the water.
"You can excuse the act however you will, but you can't change it for what it is." Itrus cried. "Mom is dead and she took you with her, you've been dead this whole time. I can't believe I couldn't see it until now."
"You've evaluated so many people on top of the couch, you never bothered though, have you? To put yourself on it, to see what's inside of the fucked up brain of yours."
Aleistar lept up. He grabbed Itrus by neck and dragged him to the floor. The wood snapped and the plank fell into a plop inside the water. Aleistar's hands were hot, gloved in black flame. It burned Itrus, burned and suffocated. The more he put his hands around his father, the more he burned. His tears were vaporizing but his body would not. It was an empty pain, pain without the wound or the actual burn. Torture.
"I am trying to fix everything, you little shit." Aleistar shouted. The men around the room looked apprehensive. The contention exploded. The storm of their hearts orchestrated their fear. and they began to look, with skittish eyes, for a means of escape. They contemplated, so afraid of Aleistar and his fire and his rage, to perhaps grab him away. But they were afraid of that even more.
"What can I do with a son that can't see? That won't see? Ignorance isn't your sin, stupidity is." Aleistar spat. It hit Itrus's scrunched face. He was shouting with what little air remained. "You'd dig the knife into your father? You'd twist it, wouldn't you? You did it before, after all. You sold me out. You think I wouldn't find out you shithead? Huh? Huh! Say something."
"Off." Itrus's eyes rolled up. "Me."
Aleistar looked at him. He undid his hands, he sat on top of Itrus now. Itrus who was wheezing for breathing, holding his chest to see if it would even work anymore.
"I wish you had died instead." Aleistar said. Everyone seemed still at the confession, their bones hollowed out and the marrow replaced with some jelly-like substance. Itrus most of all wanted to collapse. But he was too busy holding his neck and reviewing the markings of his father's fingers.
"I could have replaced you with the other. I could have had more. And the piece of her that exists in you is nothing more than pain in me. You're acid. Corrosive, running through my veins." Aleistar stood away. He reached for chains. "It took a while to finally get my dialysis. But I'm proud to say my blood is pure now. I know the way, it was shown to me."
"Killing people is the way? Selfish murder?" Itrus huffed.
Aleistar clicked his fingers. Two men came around and bound Itrus. Aleistar reached and put the collar around his neck. He wedged it right, watched the skin spill out from the top and bottom. It would never be snug, it would never sit right. Every second Itrus would be reminded, with the yank and the pinch of the metal on his neck, that he was chained to the ground.
"I hate the son I have now." Aleistar said. "But I hope, within the next few days, that you come around. I really need you to. For your sake, not mine. I'll come around every couple of hours to see your progress."
"I hate you." He cried. "Let everyone fucking know, let the earth and the heavens and your gods and devils know. I hate you. Let it ring in your heart, I fucking hate you. A stab, a knife? Yeah, yeah, I wish I could right now. I wish I could fix you with the only way I can see you being fixed. I hate you, let the words ring you fuck."
Aleistar looked down at him. An animal, all his son was. The rottweiler gone feral.
"It's been a while since I've disciplined you, hasn't it? Last time I yelled at you was when you were fourteen, just beginning to masturbate. You lied to me then. It seems as though I shouldn't have stopped with just a yelling. Your whole life has been one giant wank. An annoyance, you gluttonous fool. To be given everything, yet to be so spiteful towards your father. Disgusting."
"What father?" Itrus said. "I look and look but I can't find any man you'd call a father. Only a fraud, a fraud with a belt. I can't believe I haven't stood up to you until now."
"Well, our failures are the same. We never struck each other. You were never shown the man I could be, but you will learn. Consider this your therapy session, a correction to that faulty cognitive behavior of yours." Aleistar walked up to the door. The other men were beginning to leave.
"I really hope you'll come around. I can show you the things He's shown me. They'll really make you rethink this whole rebellious streak of yours."
"You can't rethink a murder. You can bullshit that way, Aleistar." Itrus said. The defiance in his tone made Aleistar lower his head. A hammer strike right on his head, he could feel the pressure of a headache building in him like a band around his head slowly crushing his skull.
"We'll begin your conditioning tomorrow. Have a good night, Itrus." Aleistar took a final look at the chained son. It was short and he was stuck to a water pipe running up along the wall. Itrus shouted at Aleistar, growled and dragged his fingernails against the floor to try and gain terrain. He couldn't. He could not move more than four yards. He pulled on his chain, nothing. Steel was too much.
Aleistar sighed, put his hand on the light switch and pressed. The room went dark.
But Aleistar could hear his son. His shouting went on, like the waves of water rising high with the blue surf and crashing down into that loud bevy: Help me, help me, help me, please.
1:24 PM
Darr
July 25th, 2017
1:24 PM
"Try it." Ajax said. "It's the Mac-Dog. Seasonal."
"What's seasonal about it?" Darr asked. He looked inside the tray.
"I don't know. It's just marketing shit." Ajax said. "It's half a pound of fried macaroni and cheese on top of a pure beef, quarter pound hot dog. With the house special Chipotle ketchup. All natural, fresh, charred."
"How long have you been practicing that?"
"I'm a natural born shill. I get a quarter a line. Demon hunting doesn't pay the bills, after all." Ajax laughed though it resembled blowing out air more than anything sincere. He sat down to unveil the mass like a giant golden turd, stuck along the red plastic. It was so smashed together it seemed like a small bundle of papers, spilling grease, and putting it against his mouth, he could feel the butter and breadcrumb topping drip down his hand.
"It's the only thing I've enjoyed in this city." Ajax said, pointing to the Colonel Weiner plastic stand atop the flat-topped roof.
"What does all-natural beef mean?" Darr took a bite.
"It's a phr
ase corporations shout to make you think this hot dog is anything but a cow's blended asshole."
"Disgusting. They should be held accountable."
"It's fine by me. I don't mind ass as long as it tastes as good as this." He was half way through and his bun was already soggy and deteriorating behind the pinch of his fingers.
"When no one cares, it's easy to get away with anything." Ajax said. "It's the same with murder."
"What kind of segue is that."
"It's easy to get away with murder if no one cares. Killing completely random assholes won't get you caught. Ask any cop, they'll tell you that the hardest men to catch are those without reason. Because why wouldn't it be? Who the fuck expects random acts of psychopathy."
"Well, there's a lot of random in this world. We should be better at safeguarding against it. Chaos is the devil's tool."
"Chaos is the natural state of the universe. Don't make such a blanket claim. That's dumb bible studies shit." Ajax said. Darr rolled his eyes. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked inside the window to his rear. There was an old man mopping the floor, an old man manning the register. There weren't many teenagers at all. There was barely anyone at all and the building would have looked vacant had it not been for the occasional bobbing yellow cap running back and forth.
His eyes came back outside to survey the horizon, the empty tables with the rickety metal table tops, stained by bird poop. The umbrellas were on their sides, they were yellow and red and they mostly blocked the wind. There was no sun. All grey, like someone, took an eraser to the ozone and removed every bit of detail.
"I hope we're doing good." Darr said.
"We're demon hunters, Darr. Not…"
"Not heroes. Not Superman, not super anything. I've heard this already. I didn't ask you to repeat it again."
"I know but it goes in one ear - " Ajax said.
"Out the other." Darr said. "Don't you have any new lines or is this the extent of your pretentiousness?"
"How about this." Ajax said. "I found where Aleistar worked."
Darr's knuckles tensed.
"But he wasn't there."
Darr slapped his head, he caked it in a layer of fat.
Ajax finished his hot dog. He searched inside his bag and found another, like a rocket in his hands.
"Everything about him has gone up and left. Poof. He shredded his papers, most of them, he has no secretaries taking calls. It's all gone."
"How'd you get in then, if it was totally empty?"
"Through the roof. I made a hole in the ceiling. There weren't alarms at all, the whole place looked archaic. A dungeon. Just books, Jung and Freud mostly. Some early stuff from his college years, I presume. And lots and lots of case studies. Most of those were shredded, last minute too."
"If you didn't find him, why are we having this conversation? Why call me out to dinner."
"First-fold. I need you to be aware of one thing going forward." Ajax cleaned his mouth. Gulped, swallowed. "We're getting closer to him but I don't think it'll be a clean mission, not anymore than it has been already at least."
"What do you mean by clean?"
"I mean this. Alright? I suspect some people are going to die before we can find an answer. We can only follow a trail of blood and for that, blood has to be spilled. The unfortunate part is how cleanly this guy's been. He's wiped all his data, he's gotten rid of all my leads. I couldn't find his son. I couldn't find anything, not an ex-college friend, not an ex-drug dealer. I just have a name, soem addresses that he'll never come back to. That's it. The guy is slippery."
Darr slammed the desk.
"That's not good enough. How can you expect me to just take that? Blood for blood? Be smarter. You're the brain, aren't you? Find this fuckers tracks. This thing, this beast. Think of the ruthless atrocity he's capable of."
"And ruthless charity. From the few pieces of information I picked up I can tell you that his last few patients, those still alive, all received free treatment. There were no invoices, it seems that our friend was getting ready for the war a long time ago."
"It wasn't treatment then." Darr figured. " It was recruitment. An interview. Who the heck would join him? Who would be as willing as he was to murder as effortlessly as he's done."
"One of those recruits, slaves, whatever which way you'll call them, was someone by the name of Selena Breyer. You killed her at the press office. Burned her alive." Ajax said.
Darr stood still, fries in his mouth. He put his head down almost in grievance and brought them back up in renewed conviction, anger almost, stubbornness in the righteousness of his action.
"She killed her kid a decade back before she even met him. I guess she wanted help all of the sudden. Or at least that's what the records show." Ajax said.
"So she was already practiced in the art. Well, makes sense that she'd go hand in hand with this creep."
"She was schizophrenic. Took Olanzapine, probably stopped taking it when she killed her kid. Probably came to this town to forget she did, decided to see a doctor one day, then well."
"It sounds like you want me to forgive this cunt. Doesn't matter how much you try to excuse her, she did what she did. Live by the sword, die by it. Kill the weak, die weak."
"You truly are holy. Indiscriminate with your acts of piety as you are with your acts of violence. You can't justify everything underneath the holy book. That's not how the world should work." Ajax said. Darr stood. He left his food unfinished and on the table, growing stale.
"If you're going to humanize murderers, I'm going to leave."
"I humanize them because the easier time you have in understanding how someone can go so wrong, the easier time you'll have in avoiding those situations in the first place. Better to learn through someone else than one day, wake up, realizing you've become a monster." Ajax said. Darr turned to walk. Ajax grabbed him by the arm, Darr who then tried jerking away from him.
"You hit me cheap last time. Don't let it get to your head though, it was luck. This time you won't get so lucky. So sit down and stop and think. Think of all the times in which you've gotten in trouble and how they all have one origin of sin, your stupid anger. So stop, sit, and think."
"You and The Priest, all you do is fucking lecture." Darr said.
"Good, You're learning how to curse. And yes, all we do is lecture dumb fucks like you. Except he's an even bigger prick than me."
Darr took a deep breath and relieved his lungs. His nose flared, like a bull, and ended calm and round and red. For the nipping chill had made his face swell with warm blood.
"Don't mix your food up." Ajax came down to push aside the fries Darr had stacked on his hotdog. "The flavors get all fucked if you do that."
"Now you're making fun of the way I eat, you jerk? You know what happens to people who feel overburdened, right? They explode." Darr slapped his hands down. The umbrella wobbled and the wind circulated around it, Darr could feel it cutting through his hair and blowing it to the side, covering his eyes. Like the ocean wave, collapsing and in its fall, pushing and crushing sand out to the shoreline.
But Ajax was a rock. Weathered, already used to the sanding of time and the coarse feeling of his outer shell being thrown and ruined.
"You're right. I am a jerk, and this isn't about food." Ajax leaned back. "I want to get back to my point. I want to catch him but I can't predict the universe. Too much randomness. But I can predict men. I can imagine what lead this educated person to this part of the world, what terrible rolls of dice he must have had and what great love he must have summoned his strength from. Enough to grab the Dealer, to punch him and to reroll the weighted dice. Yeah, I know this Aleistar guy. I'm sure I do."
Darr stared.
"When I find him, I need you to promise me something. Don't kill him."
"I can't make that promise." Darr said.
"Don't make it then, fucker." Ajax said. "Just keep it. We are not here to throw down the executioners sword. We're here for balance, the right of
the blade belongs to one person, to -"
"God."
"No. To the state."
They looked at each other with the intensity of the cold. The numbing feeling, the feeling of heat leaving their bodies from their breaths, steam, rising and becoming a part of the amalgam of the gray sky. A very cold, harsh, overwhelming intensity. Ajax found his pocket, he took out a cigarette and filled the air with the scent of tobacco. Darr put his hand over his nose and they looked out to the street, both having said their peace.