Later that night I cornered the club manager, who was also Evangeline’s pimp, in his office, and strangled the life from him. The next day I got a call from Bill Vlad.
“You ready to come back to work now?”
“Fuck you, Vlad. You know I’ll never work for you again after that shit you pulled with the vampire. That damned thing nearly killed me!”
“Well, that is the name of the game, kill or be killed. And besides, you never felt a thing. I mean, you can’t. And how many people have you killed? Just the other night I happened to be walking past this strip club with my trusty camera. I’ve got some lovely photos of you throttling Mikey the pimp right in his own office.”
“You bastard.” It was all I could say. He had me.
“Now what would Evangeline say if you wound up going to prison for twenty years or so? Do you think she’d wait for you? Besides, don’t you think she deserves a boyfriend who can buy her nice things? I pay you well, don’t I?”
“Okay, but it’s double this time.”
I knew Evangeline had set me up. She’d probably been working for Vlad from the very start. But it was too late. I was in love with the deceitful bitch, and no way could a guy who looks like me keep a woman like that without money in his pockets. So I took the fight on a week’s notice without the slightest clue who or what my opponent was.
***
The guy circles me with a big dopey grin on his face. I suppose it could look menacing if you were prone to fear. I wasn’t. His teeth were unnaturally large and straight and white. Like he had a fetish about toothpaste and dental floss. He had huge puppy dog eyes and pudgy cheeks like an oversized adolescent. A cherubic face, like a choirboy. He didn’t look at all like a killer. Maybe that was the point. Maybe Vlad wanted to watch me tear this guy with the choirboy face into bloody strips of steaming viscera, not so much a traditional gladiatorial event as simply feeding Christians to lions. I knew Vlad wasn’t too fond of Christians anyway.
The guy hits me, and the blow nearly takes my head off. The fucker’s strong, stronger than most humans, but that didn’t mean much. Mike Tyson is stronger than most humans, too. Besides, I have an edge. I don’t feel pain.
The nerve centers in my brain don’t function as they’re supposed to. I can barely feel anything, pain or pleasure. I am a freak of nature, a natural oddity. I grew up in Bill Vlad’s Circus of Oddities. My destitute and drug-addicted parents sold me to him when I was eight years old once they discovered my talent/affliction. I was the boy who could walk on glass and hot coals, who could swim in boiling water, who could cut himself to the bone and stitch up the wound while playing a video game.
Pretty soon I was the circus’ star attraction. During three acts a night, over a period of more than ten years, I was cut, gouged, scalded, burned, beaten, bitten, electrocuted, and crushed. By the time I was seventeen I had broken every bone in my body at least twice and there was not a single patch of skin that wasn’t covered in scar tissue. When the Bill Vlad Circus of Oddities rolled into town, people would flock from all around to watch an adolescent boy get tortured on stage. Sick world we live in.
As Bill Vlad’s Circus grew increasingly more bizarre so did the acts I was forced to perform. I was put into a pit to wrestle bobcats and wild dogs. Once, when I was ten or eleven, I was pitted against a Komodo dragon that Vlad had starved and tortured to make crazy mean. Its razor sharp claws nearly ripped me apart before I snapped its neck. That act became a sensation, and soon I was being matched against increasingly bizarre creatures from alligators to anacondas. The crowds would watch aghast as I was mauled and my flesh was rent to glistening red ribbons, then be amazed when my bleeding body was taken out of the pit and I was given ice cream or a toy. Whenever anyone would protest and accuse Vlad of child abuse, he would cheerfully remind them that: “He can’t feel a thing.”
I would smile and go back to playing my video games as paramedics rushed to stitch my wounds. As soon as I became an adult, Vlad wanted me to add sex to my act, so I began torturing my genitals onstage. I would stab my testicles with spikes and then cauterize the wounds with a Bunsen burner as the crowd cringed and gasped in horror. I grew to hate Bill Vlad. Each time I injured myself I imagined that it was his penis being twisted with vice grips and pierced with spikes and needles, his testes being sliced open and zapped with a taser gun.
The one thing Vlad was good for was anticipating my needs and accommodating them and usually before I was even aware of them. Right after I hit puberty he began supplying me with whores after every show. I didn’t know where he was getting them from but he seemed to know my taste in women without even having to ask. He knew me. He knew all my secret desires.
Every prostitute he sent to my trailer in the middle of the night was of the same type, plain, average, no excessive amounts of make-up, no gaudy, overtly-sexual outfits, a shy demure personality. They looked like anything but prostitutes. They could have been the girl next door who babysat your kid brother on the weekends. They never screamed or winced when they saw my scars, always showing the appropriate amount of sympathy and concern but without the outrage or revulsion that normal women displayed when faced with the multifarious wounds and injuries that decorated my flesh. These girls were pros.
They would take my scarred penis down their throats sucking and licking it like it was the world’s richest source of nourishment and then ride it like they were on a merry-go-round pony. Always with a smile, as if taking my gnarled and tortured flesh between their legs was the most joy they could imagine. But then, once my hour was up, they would leave and I would be alone again. No matter how good they were at maintaining the illusion that they really wanted to be there with me, the illusion always had a time limit. Even if they stayed all night there was no fooling myself that they would stick around in the morning without being paid extra for it. My heart broke every time I watched one of them walk out my door. By the time I was twenty-one I had had enough. I left the circus to become a fighter.
I thought it would be one hell of an asset to be a no-holds-barred fighter who felt no pain, and often it was. I would fight until the last drop of my blood splashed onto the awe-struck faces of the ringside observers. I would fight with broken bones and lacerations, with a concussion, or even when my lungs could not take in enough oxygen to maintain my aggression. I was relentless. Other times it just led to really gruesome defeats. My survival instincts were extremely dull due to the lack of pain response. I discovered that you need pain to be a successful fighter. It tells you when to increase your defense, or fight harder, or when to give up. I was carried out on a stretcher as often as my arm was raised in victory and sometimes was both victor and victim simultaneously. On more than one occasion, fights that I was winning were stopped because I had so grievously injured myself in order to defeat my opponent that the judges and audience alike were repulsed. Many an audience was treated to the sight of me trying to choke out an opponent using my own shattered arm as a garrote. Eventually I was banned from legal competition. That’s when I went underground. It wasn’t long before I ran into Vlad again.
Vlad was heavily tapped into the black market. Most of his bizarre attractions were looted from crypts and shrines, kidnapped from jungles, and smuggled from medical research facilities. Nothing happened underground that Bill Vlad didn’t catch wind of. So when news of a guy who felt no pain and defeated opponents while taking injuries that would have crippled most men began to spread among the criminal underground, Bill Vlad immediately rushed in to capitalize. He offered me twice as much money as I had been making, if only he could pick all of my opponents. I knew there would be a catch but, after years of exploitation and abuse, my sense of self-worth was small enough to be purchased...even by the devil himself...even by Bill Vlad.
So that’s how I wound up back in the employment of the evil showman with the handlebar moustache, flaming red hair, bloodless white skin, and shark-toothed grin like a demented Dumbo the clown, fighting creatures literally plucked
from the darkest bowels of the earth. That’s how I wound up facing this guy with the choirboy face and a punch like George Foreman.
***
He swung at me again and this time I rolled with the punch. Even so, the force behind it was tremendous. I wouldn’t be able to take many more of those. I kicked him in the leg, landing my shin on his thigh with the force of an axe chopping wood. His leg buckled and he had to struggle to stay on his feet. His face contorted in agony but he continued to fight.
I kicked him in the same spot again and again until a ghastly black and purple bruise swelled on his thigh and he began to limp. Then I brought my shin up into his side and was satisfied to feel it meet the resistance of his rib cage and then break on through, causing all the air to expel from the choirboy’s lungs in an anguished bark. He wilted and doubled over and I slipped around him to get him in a chokehold, wanting to end it quickly. He fought hard to keep me from securing my forearm under his chin and around his throat, so I wrapped up his arm instead. I grabbed his wrist and tossed both my legs over his shoulder with his arm locked between them. It took only a thrust of my pelvis to snap his elbow.
Choirboy howled in pain and continued to howl as his flesh began to melt and reform. I could hear his bones snapping and popping as they reorganized themselves under his skin. I didn’t know what the hell was going on until the fur began to sprout all over him. He stopped howling and began to growl. I watched his ears grow and the tail sprout from his ass as his wrestling trunks tore.
“Fucking Vlad! He put me in here with a goddamned werewolf!”
I felt the pressure as his slavering fangs clamped down on my forearm and crushed my ulna and radius bones. Blood spurted from my fractured and lacerated arm, and I knew that I’d been badly wounded. I felt the tug as my forearm separated from my humerus and disappeared down Choirboy’s throat. I didn’t cry out. What would have been the point? I didn’t feel a thing. But now the clock was ticking again. If I didn’t kill this thing soon I would bleed to death.
The silver and gray werewolf stood to his full seven-foot height, with bits of flesh from my amputated arm clinging to the fur around its snout, which was dark and shiny with my blood. He still had those big puppy-dog eyes, but his snarling predatorial grimace didn’t look quite so dopey with the two-inch canines and rows of jagged teeth lining his mouth. I had no idea how to kill a werewolf; I’d never really believed they existed. If I had, I would have been expecting Bill Vlad to eventually put me in with one. I was happy to see that the thing’s arm was still broken. At least it could be hurt.
He came at me fast and low. Before I could defend myself, Choirboy had already ripped open my belly exposing my bloated intestines. Bleeding badly and mortally wounded. I launched myself at it and trapped and snapped its limbs while it tore at me rending my flesh from my bones. All I had to do was kill the thing, and Vlad would get me to a doctor and stitch me up. Then I would take the money, and Babygirl and I would move away from this place, go somewhere, and get married. This was definitely going to be my last fight.
Choirboy broke free and we backed away from each other. He dragged his shattered hind leg and cradled his broken arm with his eyes still blazing with fury. I held my intestines in with one hand and planned my next attack. Even injured, the choirboy was still dangerous— perhaps even more so. His fighting spirit mirrored my own. He would not quit. But he could definitely feel pain.
I began to circle him for the kill. I had broken his leg now along with his other arm. I was just about to charge in and go for the thing’s throat when that sound of bones breaking and popping started again and I could see the bones slipping back into place under the creature’s skin. Choirboy was regenerating. The blood spurting from my severed limb seemed to be slowing down, as was the flow coming from my eviscerated torso and lacerated throat. I was getting dizzy. I had to kill this thing before I bled to death. Choirboy was now fully healed. I watched him flex his now fully rejuvenated arm and rise on his newly healed leg. Steeling myself for another brutal attack, I swore again that this would be my last fight.
We charged each other, and I released my fury, letting my savagery rise to match that of my opponent’s. I gouged its eyes as it tore a chunk out of my thigh. I split its skull with an elbow, sending a fountain of blood erupting into the air like a burst water main as it slashed its claws through my cheek, causing the flesh to hang from my exposed cheekbone like moth-eaten cheesecloth. Seizing one of its claws in a wristlock, I broke its arm once again. Choirboy howled and this time it sounded less like pain and more like rage. I looked into his big, vulnerable, puppy-dog eyes just before he clamped down on my throat and I felt sorry for him. After this victory, who knew what type of abomination Vlad would pit him against. Even as the Choirboy’s murderous jaws crushed my esophagus, I knew that both of our lives were over. I was better off than Choirboy because I could not feel the pain of my death. Choirboy would feel every minute of his slow death night after night in this blood-soaked cage, fighting beasts most humans were lucky enough to believe were fairy tales and myths. I was finally free. I could hear Bill Vlad off in the corner consoling a conspicuously affluent woman, sitting just outside the octagon cage, who was horrified by my imminent death.
“It’s okay, honey. He can’t feel a thing.” He said. And for the first time in our acquaintance, he was right.
Perdition’s Flame
Jason’s Nike Air Jordans turned the puddles of rainwater into temporary airborne projectiles that sprayed into the air with each footfall, drenching the bottoms of his jeans before settling back to earth calmly in his wake. His denim-coated shins parted the mist roiling up from the sewers and soaked his socks. Jason’s feet were already numb and he’d been shivering uncontrollably for days.
Cars hydro-planed through the larger puddles in the street, splashing Jason’s coat, washing off more of the blood the endless downpour had been unable to erase. Jason watched the long spirals of red run off his raincoat and drip onto the sidewalk. It was almost pretty. The rivulets racing down his face and clothes, dripping from his fingertips, looked like watercolors from one monochromatic palate. The blood never went away no matter how much it rained, no matter how many showers he took, no matter how hard he scrubbed. His own tears joined the cascade.
Ghosts haunted his footsteps, seethed even in his own shadow. He had killed so many children now that it felt as if every inch of his skin was crawling with their vengeful spirits. Over and over he dragged his jagged nails over the surface of his skin trying to scrape their lifeless forms from his flesh, but they would not go away. They held tight to him, burrowing deeper than he could scratch. He could feel their spirits clinging tight to his own. At times, Jason could even feel their tiny spectral fingers tugging at him, deep within him, trying to pull him from his own flesh, trying to drag him off to their side of eternity.
Each time a child passed him in the street, he wondered if they were real or one of them, one of the dead, one that he had murdered. Their wide innocent eyes bore deep into his, accusing, demanding, condemning until he turned away in shame. He heard their laughter in his dreams. Heard their screams and cries even when he was awake. He could hear them even then as he made his way through the rain-soaked streets. They had still not forgiven him… even after all this time.
Jason thought that perhaps if they had graves. Maybe if he could have laid them to rest in hallowed ground they would give him peace. But that was impossible. Their bodies were long gone. What was left of their bodies after he was done with them had gone into an incinerator or landfill somewhere. He honestly didn’t know what happened to most of them. All he knew was that they were gone, unsalvageable.
Sometimes the faces of the women, the mothers, were even worse than the kids. They had all been too young to know, some, too young to even scream. But the mothers had known. They had known what he was doing. They had come there looking for someone with his skills so he had performed for them. He had taken the life from them, sucked it from their wombs
, and now they would never leave him in peace.
The rain dripped from his nose just as a young boy stepped from the shadow of a nearby alleyway, pointed at him, then dissolved into the sewer fog. Jason wondered which child that one was. It could have been any of them. He’d never even gotten to see their faces.
Jason turned the next corner and sat down in front of the abortion clinic he used to work at. He paused there a moment to collect himself. Rethinking his life as he unwrapped the package under his raincoat and stuck it behind the front door of the building. He had taken so many innocent lives at this place, halted their existence before they could even truly live, before they took their first breath. Atonement would not come easy. Perhaps, it would not come at all. Still, Jason knew he had to try.
Jason scratched at himself again and almost cried out when his hand came away from his neck bloody. The blood of the children he had murdered. He wiped at the back of his neck again before he realized that he had scratched his neck raw. His own blood. Not theirs.
The bomb had not been nearly as hard to make as he had thought. Gasoline, nitrogen-based fertilizer, laundry detergent, put it in a big jug and you’ve got something very similar to napalm. Perdition’s flame.
For some, a religious epiphany is a great thing, a liberating thing, like being born again. For others, it is like dying, like being flayed and crucified but never knowing for sure if you will be resurrected, never knowing for sure if you deserve to be. Jason was not hoping for resurrection. All he was hoping for was absolution.
“Dr. Lathum? Dr. Lathum, is that you?”
Jason recognized the voice, Mary Thompson, the Physician’s Assistant he had hired his first day on the job. Her red hair, dimpled cheeks spotted with freckles, fiery green eyes, those unreasonably large breasts, had been immensely attractive to him once. He would have asked her out eventually, even knowing that she was married. But that was before God had called to him.
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