First Kiss, Last Breath

by Lee Mather

  Nor turned to Helen and whispered something. Helen seemed confused and tried to argue, but Nor shook her head. Helen knew better than to push further. Nor hugged her friend goodbye and Helen flashed Andy a nervous look as Nor moved on to hug Carrie. He ignored it, was already dragging Nor away. He led her through the crowd, shoving past more people as the band continued to play. He strained in the darkness, searching for Glib but the demon had vanished. The fear was overpowering, and the drive, the determination to escape was both welcome and unexpected. He heaved Nor and felt her wince. They cleared the turnstiles of the stadium and cooler air hit them. Andy nervously studied the gates to see if they had been followed. There was no demon. The rain was coming down harder now.

  “Why do you keeping looking back?” Nor said. “What’s going on?”

  Andy hesitated. He didn’t know what to believe.

  “Andy?”

  “Something...something bad is going to happen if we stay. I know it.” He stared at his shoes, wanted the ground to swallow him. “We can’t be together.”

  “Oh Andy...” Nor stepped toward him. He felt her hands on his cheeks. “Look at me.” He duly obliged. “Nothing bad is going to happen. I should have known, tonight is too soon...”

  “No,” Andy interrupted, his tone sharp, authoritative. “It’s not that. We shouldn’t have kissed. There’s no room. It’s–”

  “No room? What do you mean? It’s okay. It will all be okay. Come on. Let’s head back to the bus stop, get out of the rain.” She hesitated, coy. “I could...maybe sleep over at yours tonight?”

  Andy gawped and nausea welled inside him. His mind was a mess of sudden possibilities, some amazing, others so terrible he couldn’t bear to consider them. He glanced back at the turnstiles. They were still. Glib was nowhere to be seen.

  “Please, let’s just go,” he said, his voice creaking.

  Nor blushed and nodded. Tight-lipped, she walked on ahead and Andy quick-stepped to catch up, unsure as to why Nor had reddened. Behind them the music had stopped. People filed slowly from the stadium. Andy tried to gather himself as the dispersing crowd passed by.

  There is no demon.

  Andy shuddered. He was crazy. He blinked. He couldn’t remember how long Grandpa had been dead.

  “A couple of weeks, just a couple of weeks,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Breathe,” Nor said gently. Her arm tightened around his waist. “Wait here. I’ll get you some water from the drinks stand.”

  Andy stared at her and imagined a crosshair on her chest. He couldn’t take the risk that the demon was real.

  “No time. We need to go,” he said.

  Nor stared at him as if he were mad. Her expression cut him to the bone.

  “Okay,” she said somewhat darkly.

  Andy didn’t have time to let this affect him. He took Nor’s hand, gripped it hard and moved quicker than before. He led her through bleak streets, peering frantically though the driving rain, searching the shadows for his tormentor. He saw shapes, blurs of movement, but nothing tangible, nothing except the suspicion that Glib could be out there, waiting for an opportunity to get close. They moved quickly, over maybe half a mile, through the streets surrounding the stadium. It was a rat-run of terraces, littered pavements, graffiti, alleys that reeked of piss. Their escape route was dark and dangerous, offering many a nook and cranny for a demon to hide. The farther they moved without incident, the stronger Andy’s sense of self loathing became. Eventually they stumbled into an alley leading back to the bus routes that would take them home.

  Screams erupted up ahead and Andy and Nor stumbled to a breathless halt.

  “What’s that?” Nor said.

  Andy shrugged, terrified. “We should go back,” he found himself muttering.

  There was shouting, more screams. Shrill alarms began to sound. Carnage beckoned.

  Nor shook her head. “What if there’s been an accident? Someone might need help.”

  Andy grimaced. He had an idea of what might be causing the screaming. It was big and blue and full of hate.

  “Someone else can–”

  “No!” Nor pulled away from him and began striding toward the sounds.

  Andy hesitated as Nor broke into a jog.

  “Nor wait!” He gasped. “Shit!” He chased after her.

  Andy caught her as they rounded the corner to the central thoroughfare of Dickinson Road where a mile or so of closed flea markets adorned one of the main streets linking Stockport and Manchester. They stuttered to a stop, sucker-punched by the sprawling madness that unraveled before them.

  It was a war zone.

  A writhing mass of bodies clashed in the rain. Protestors, police, concert goers. Missiles soared across the sky, interrupting the downpour. Cars were overturned, shop windows were smashed and yellow flames licked the wooden frames and canvas canopies where market stalls had been set ablaze. The cries of those involved were drowned out by a dozen wailing alarms. More lightning cut across the sky and the street, packed with fighting men, lit up. Glib was in the center, the eye of this storm, the demon screaming and flailing its arms like a demented conductor. It had either caused the chaos or was feeding from it, but Andy knew the monster was stronger still, engorged by the violence. The demon saw him then. It started to move through the chaos in their direction. Andy drew in breath, instinctively wanted to flee. He didn’t. Something hardened inside him.

  Glib hesitated. It was as if the demon sensed the change.

  “Andy, we need to get out of here!” Nor said. This time she tugged at his arm.

  Andy studied the fighting. This was where Glib lived, in madness and depravity. The demon would always stalk him, and even if it wasn’t today, it would one day come for Nor.

  Andy looked at her and didn’t see terror, but saw beauty and strength, something worth fighting for.

  He returned his stare to the waiting demon.

  It was time to make a stand.

  Glib roared with fury and carved a path through the maelstrom.

  Andy, calmer, looked to Nor.

  “You need to go. Now!”

  Nor stopped pulling at him, looked stunned then furious. “What are you talking about?”

  Andy stood resolute. “There’s something I need to do. It isn’t safe for you here.”

  “This is crazy! Let’s go before we get hurt,” she pleaded.

  “Nor–I can’t–”

  Nor’s scream interrupted him.

  Glib’s charge forward sent a wave of rage through the crowd like a sonic boom.

  The nearest policemen rushed toward where Andy and Nor waited, driving back protestors. Splotches of white paint and dirt were splattered on their fluorescent uniforms, daubed across their faces for the battle, where some sort of improvised missile had hit them earlier. The police, a nightmarish vision of Jackson Pollock, shared the rioters’ insanity, screaming as they flashed their batons. There was no line here between protector and protestor–the crowd broke and Andy and Nor were pulled into the mayhem as people swarmed around them. Violence ruled.

  Andy grabbed Nor with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. He moved quickly, a darting snake, and smashed his foot into the door of a closed newsagent. Its window held racks of newspapers and magazines. The glass had somehow remained intact despite the riot. The door gave immediately, smashed inward into darkness. He pushed Nor inside.

  “Hide in here! Please!”

  “Andy, no!”

  He tried to close the door on her and Nor fought to wrestle it open.

  A weight smashed into them both. Andy stumbled to the floor and Nor was sent spinning into the blackness of the shop where the door thumped her in the face. Andy screamed in rage. He picked himself up, winded and weak kneed, but his anger was his impetus. His attacker was an enormous policeman, his face a snarl of wild hate beneath the riot helmet. Adrenalin, anonymity and a degree of demonic influence had allowed a primal urge for violence to replace a professional directive to protect and serv
e. The policeman raised his baton high above his head but Andy moved before he had time to think. For a second he was Grandpa. A brave man. A man’s man. Not a boy scared of his own shadow.

  The baton whooshed past his face in a lethal arc and air brushed his flesh. The policeman unbalanced as he missed his mark and Andy, the old boxer’s balance not deserting him, smashed his right fist into the policeman’s jaw just below where the helmet extended. Andy made a thudding contact and he screamed with the impact. The bones in his hand snapped and he crashed to his knees as the policeman stumbled back, toppling like a falling oak.

  The policeman clumsily attempted to stand. A rioter drove into his torso and the pair careered off into the crowd.

  Andy struggled to his feet, wincing as he nursed his broken hand.

  The crowd ahead parted, like a jagged line of earth shattered by a quake.

  Glib strode forth, magnificent and malicious beneath the pounding rain. The rioters kept fighting and yet somehow allowed the demon through without acknowledging its presence.

  Boy and demon faced each other.

  Andy looked at Glib’s right claw as he cradled his hand. It was misshapen, swollen and useless at the monster’s side. He stared at it, his own fist broken and smashed. He looked to Glib’s face and his mouth fell open. He recognized it, the familiarity he knew in the demon yet could never quite place. The features were his own. Corrupted, twisted, broken down and remolded as something heinous. Glib was him, the darkness that lived inside him.

  Glib grinned to reveal razor sharp teeth.

  “Brother...”

  “Leave us alone!” Andy shouted.

  The demon roared and moved quickly, a rush of muscle and bone–a charging bull. Andy braced himself, closed his eyes, but no impact came.

  Hot breath tickled his flesh, he smelt stale death.

  Andy opened his eyes and the demon’s face was close to his, close enough for them to kiss, close enough for Glib to suck his soul.

  Andy shook with fear, but the demon didn’t take him, couldn’t take him. Glib was his darkness and couldn’t survive without him.

  Andy knew it then without doubt.

  His madness was real, loose in the world.

  “Nor,” the demon breathed in a hideous whisper. Glib’s expression was a mixture of fear and envy and misery. Andy understood then. If he had Nor then what would the demon be left with? Nothing. Nor threatened Glib’s very existence. The demon straightened and pushed beyond Andy toward the shop.

  Andy, left hand trembling and right hand hanging limp and useless, fumbled the paper then his pencil from his pocket. He should have done this long ago, but maybe he’d always known on some level what Glib was. Maybe he’d never been ready to face his fears. He dropped to his knees and laid his weapons on the wet pavement. He pressed the paper down as best he could with his broken hand. Pain reared through him but he refused to stop despite the tears streaking down his flesh.

  “I’m sorry,” Andy mouthed.

  The demon stopped in the doorway to the newsagent, turned toward Andy sadly and lowered its head.

  Andy cried out with every stroke as he attempted to return Glib to the page, to his existential prison. He would tear up the paper and defeat his madness once and for all. Around him the shrieks of the riot intensified. The rain pounded.

  Andy leaned over the paper, his body a shield from the falling water. He looked at Glib, his face a mask of determination.

  The demon screamed with fear.

  Andy pressed the tip of the pencil against the paper and began to sketch with every inch of anger he could muster. Stones, bottles and fists soared all around him.

  The demon crouched as if to pounce, but faltered as if it didn’t know what to do. Andy sketched one arm, mottled flesh, hooked talons. He scribbled faster and pressed harder. The delight he felt was a drug. It rushed through his system. Another arm, two legs, a torso. Glib roared and the sound seemed to come from inside Andy. Tremendous pain surged through his body like electricity. He spasmed, barely able to hold the pencil. It snapped in his grip.

  Then laughter filled his head.

  The edges of the paper began to smoke. More lightning flashed overhead.

  Andy watched in horror as the paper burst into flames before him. The fire raged furiously, unhindered by the rain, then stopped, leaving nothing more than a pile of smoldering ash.

  Glib stood triumphantly against the backdrop of the riot. The demon grinned, a hideous blackened smile.

  “Nor...” The monster stooped to enter the shop.

  Andy, saturated by rain and surrounded by carnage, watched helplessly. He looked at the pencil, broken and useless in his hand.

  Glib was too strong.

  Andy had failed. There was no way to stop the demon.

  He screamed in frustration and the emotion was so intense it felt like every inch of flesh and bone strained at once, as if the door in his head was open to reveal a million different universes all touching at the same point. It was as if his soul itself was a source of great power.

  The newsagent’s window exploded and a fireball sent shards of glass and burning shrapnel spinning across the street.

  Andy’s scream stopped in his throat and the broken pencil slipped from his grasp.

  He stared at the flames in disbelief.

  Chapter 19

  His courage failing fast, Andy stumbled into the burning shop. The air was thick with smoke and blistering flames still crawled dangerously up the walls. He moved forward, the heat barely tolerable. His left hand was pressed over his mouth to keep out the smoke. He could smell the fire, hear it cackling and spitting like some demented animal. Eyes watering, sweat drenching his skin, he staggered by the counter where chocolate rapidly melted on tin shelves. It felt as if the flesh was burning from his face but he didn’t stop. Nor lay a few feet away, crumpled and motionless on the floor, her arms and legs splayed awkwardly–a perfect shape around which to draw a chalk outline. Andy couldn’t tell if she was breathing. He nervously looked for Glib but the demon was nowhere to be seen beyond the smoke.

  Andy moved to Nor’s side wondering if he had killed the monster. The scream, the pent-up emotion, the prospect of not being able to save Nor, had it opened something inside him?

  Nor stirred, choked as he knelt

  Andy gently held her, the skin on his hand scorched. She numbly grabbed onto him and, screaming with exertion, he dragged her to her feet then lifted her into his arms, defying the searing pain of his broken hand. He carried her from the store and into the cool rain. It was all he could do not to collapse with relief as life-affirming droplets splashed over him. Tears streaked from his cheeks but he had no time to rejoice in Nor surviving the fire. The riot still raged and, mindful of the brawling men at the outskirts of the battle, he heaved Nor away from the fighting. He hobbled into a rain-stricken side street, deserted save for piles of black bin bags full of trash stacked high on top of one another beneath red brick walls daubed with streaking graffiti. He increased his pace and ignored the pain in his chest and the ache in his arms. His burned skin and his broken hand were of no consequence. Only Nor mattered. Disoriented, she clung to him like a limpet.

  Andy cleared the alley. People were scattered around the next street. They gathered in small groups, some weeping and prostrate. Andy took in their injuries and the two paramedics flitting between groups, treating people who had escaped the riot.

  “Help me!” he wheezed, still choking from the smoke he had inhaled in the burning newsagent.

  One of the paramedics, a balding man in his fifties, saw them. Andy laid Nor against the side of a building as his legs were on the brink of collapse. She remained upright but her head slumped forward. She had lost consciousness. Andy struggled for breath as he leaned against the building to keep upright.

  “What’s happened?” The red-faced paramedic said as he reached them, the green first aid kit bulky and awkward in his grasp.

  Andy could hardly speak through exha
ustion. “A fire,” he croaked. “I pulled her out of a fire.”

  The paramedic knelt beside Nor.

  “Hello. Can you hear me?”

  Nor didn’t respond.

  Andy cried, hot tears mingling with the rainwater that streamed down his face. Despair washed over him. He couldn’t lose Nor.

  The paramedic checked Nor’s throat, and whether she was breathing, then felt for a pulse. “You together?” he asked Andy as he opened up the first aid kit and took out a Guedel airway.

  Andy nodded weakly, feeling a sickness of fear unlike anything he had ever known, worse even than when Grandpa had died. He watched numbly as the paramedic inserted the plastic tube into Nor’s mouth.

  “She needs some help to breathe,” the paramedic explained, reaching for an oxygen canister. “It will be best for you to give us some space to let me work.”

  Andy didn’t move, was unable to. He couldn’t lose Nor. The very thought of it drove a dagger of pain through his heart. She had become everything in no time at all.

  “Back up.” This time Andy managed a step away. The paramedic noticed Andy’s hand hanging limply. “You hurt too? My colleague can take a look at it.” The paramedic nodded in the direction to where his partner treated a bloodied young man in a blue Reebok tracksuit.

  Andy ignored him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the weak flutter in Nor’s chest. Her faltering heart didn’t look strong enough to keep her alive. “I’m not leaving her,” he managed.

  The paramedic shrugged then continued to attend to Nor.

  Nor is going to die. Killing Glib had done it, had caused the fire. He was responsible. It was all his fault.

  The paramedic held the oxygen mask in place, and Nor stirred a little to this touch. He reached for his radio. “I’ll see if they’ve cleared the roads enough to get an ambulance through,” he said.

  Andy barely heard him. His despair, rage and frustration ripped open his wounds of old. The door inside him tore from its hinges.

  A sudden scream of static erupted from the paramedic’s radio. He dropped it in surprise and it hit the pavement to smash in half.

  Andy staggered backward and whirled around in panic.