by AnonYMous
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ he mumbled to himself.
He crouched down to retrieve the lighter from the sludge, doing his best not to kneel in the snow. It was cold enough already without getting his uniform wet. The lighter had landed just under the car, almost out of reach. As he pawed at it, he caught sight of a dark shadow looming over him in the snow. Even in the already gloomy light provided by the dim streetlights, this shadow was dark, and large. He leaned back and looked over his shoulder. There, stood behind him and now looking quite a fearsome sight was the Santa Claus he had bumped into in the library.
‘You want something?’ Sanchez asked, climbing to his feet.
The Santa opened his mouth wide. On his upper set of teeth he had a large set of fangs. The guy was a fucking vampire. A big bastard one at that.
The big ugly Santa hissed at him, his foul breath wafting out from the pit of his stomach. Sanchez reeled back instinctively at what he perceived to be the smell of rotten kebab meat. The Santa lunged over his left shoulder, reaching for the book on top of the squad car.
‘Give me that book!’ he snarled.
‘Not a chance!’ Sanchez yelled back, turning around and grabbing for the book. He managed to get his hands on it before the vampire. With his chubby cold fingers he slid the book off the top of the car and clasped it against his chest ensuring his elbows protruded out to keep the Santa at bay. His attacker climbed all over his back and reached around him with both hands to try and get a grip on the book.
Sanchez twisted away from him. If he could somehow knock the fat Santa over, he might buy himself enough time to get in the car. Unfortunately gripping The Book of Death with all his might made it difficult to do anything. Although there was no way he was releasing his grip on the book (and the fifty thousand dollar reward) to some fat, out-of-shape undead Santa Claus.
Unfortunately, in terms of strength and fighting prowess Sanchez was no match for the colossal mass of the huge grey bearded fucker in the red hat. The Santa grabbed at the book and tugged at it with one hand. The two of them struggled back and forth with it like two toddlers fighting over a teddy bear. But where Sanchez continued to pull as hard as he could, the Santa suddenly surprised him by pushing. He succeeded in shoving the book hard into Sanchez’s chest, knocking him off balance. He slipped and lost his footing on the ice, tumbling backwards. In refusing to let go of the book he only succeeded in pulling the obese vampire down on top of him.
Neither of them could sustain a firm grip on the book. But with each passing moment it became more evident that Sanchez was no match for his opponent. The vampire had blood-crazed eyes and where initially he had been focussed only on retrieving the book he suddenly caught sight of the ample flesh on Sanchez’s neck. It was glowing red in the cold. In vampire terms it must have looked like a juicy steak.
As the Santa lunged forward to take a bite, Sanchez wrestled hard with The Book of Death, hoping to use it as a shield. With one almighty tug he managed to yank it upwards. It hit the Santa underneath the chin, knocking his head away just as he was about to sink his teeth into some flesh.
Drastic evasive action would be required to get out of this mess. Fortunately Sanchez had the survival instincts a weasel could only dream of. He pulled his hand away from the book and pulled at the Santa’s beard. As he suspected it was attached around the vampire’s face with elasticated string. He pulled it back as far as he could before releasing it and allowing it to snap sharply back into the Santa’s face, covering his mouth and more importantly his fangs. The Santa wasn’t fazed by it though and instead seized the initiative and tugged harder at the book, forgetting about biting anything for a moment. It took only a couple of seconds for him to rip the book completely from Sanchez’s grip. He then sat triumphantly astride the hapless bartender, grinning maniacally. He tossed the book down on the pavement by his side and leered down at Sanchez, pulling his beard back into position.
‘Time to die, fat man!’ the Santa hissed, reaching inside his red jacket. He pulled out a small silver hip flask. ‘I’ve tried your hipflask. Now try some of mine!’ he sneered.
‘No thanks,’ said Sanchez frantically fumbling around in the snow just beneath the kerb with his free hand.
As the Santa unscrewed the lid on his flask Sanchez put Operation Weasel into action. He felt the cold metal of his Zippo lighter in his fingers. He plucked it from the snow and flicked it open, then thrust it towards the Santa’s beard. The Santa never saw it coming and Sanchez watched with glee as the fat bastard’s thick grey beard went up in flames.
‘SHEEEEE-IIIIIIIT!’ the Santa screamed as the flames flew up towards his face. He rolled off Sanchez and onto the snow on the pavement, dropping his hip flask to the floor.
With the vampire rolling around face down in the snow attempting to put out the flames on his beard, Sanchez seized his chance. He hauled himself up and reached for the silver hip flask. The lid had come off it and a green liquid was leaking out onto the snow. Figuring it to be some sort of alcohol and no doubt flammable, Sanchez held it over the Santa and attempted to pour it onto the flames on his beard to ignite them further before his victim could extinguish them. He timed it perfectly. The Santa rolled over onto his back looking up at Sanchez just as he poured the liquid onto his beard and the lower half of his face. The Santa’s eyes opened wide in horror as some of the liquid slid into his mouth. The flames on his beard had all but gone out but there was still a small cloud of black smoke rising up from it causing him to cough and splutter.
Sanchez put down the hip flask and prepared himself to re-enact his favourite wrestling move, The Splash. He launched himself up in the air and threw himself down onto the Santa like he’d seen his favourite wrestler, Earthquake, do on television. Landing astride his stricken victim, he flipped his Zippo lighter open again. The Santa was no longer struggling or fighting back. He was simply laid out motionless on the ground.
Sanchez was busy congratulating himself on the effectiveness of his Splash technique when something caught his eye. Peering down at his stricken foe he noticed the green stains on his lips. He remembered the stories of the child killer paralysing kids with a green poisonous liquid. Could it be that this vampire was responsible for murdering a load of defenceless kids? Well, now it was the vampire who was defenceless. Time for some gloating and Schwarzenegger style pay off lines.
‘You should lay off that green stuff, you look paralytic,’ he said. The Santa didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The paralysis had kicked in already. His eyes said all Sanchez needed to know. He was terrified of what was to come. For once, Sanchez was going to get the chance to administer some good old retribution on behalf of all of the victims of a vicious killer. A genuine chance to be a hero and avenge the deaths of many innocent people had landed in his lap. What could possibly go wrong?
He looked down at the flame on his Zippo, then looked into the eyes of the vampire again. ‘You need to lighten up!’ he said smirking (while contemplating what a shame it was that no one was around to appreciate his fine pay off lines). ‘Come on, give me a ho, ho, ho!’ The vampire looked truly terrified but offered no fight.
Sanchez closed the lighter again momentarily and picked up the hip flask. He poured a little more of the green flammable liquid onto the Santa’s clothes, then he stepped away from his prostrate victim. He screwed the lid back on the hip flask and slipped it into his inside pocket figuring it would be an ample replacement for the one he’d given away earlier. Then he flicked open his lighter again. Toying with the fat bastard by holding the flame of the Zippo over him gave Sanchez an enormous sense of power. All he had to do was drop the lighter down onto the vampire’s beard and within seconds the paralysed psycho would be a smouldering pile of ash. First of all though, some more gloating was required.
‘Not nice to be flat on your back with someone staring over you, threatening to kill you, is it?’ he asked, kicking the vampire in the ribs for good measure.
This was turning out to be great fun. Sanche
z kicked him again, harder this time. As he held the Zippo high over the Santa, readying himself to drop it, he suddenly heard a voice from behind him shout out. It was the voice of a young girl, probably no more than ten years old.
‘Hey everyone! That guy is beating up Santa Claus!’
Sanchez looked over his shoulder and saw on the other side of the road a troop of Sunflower Girls, the Santa Mondega equivalent of the Savannah Girl Scouts but with some serious behaviour problems. They all wore green sweaters and blue skirts with fluffy blue pom pom hats to protect against the cold weather. Not normally a fearsome sight, but there were thirty of them. There was also the group leader, a rather large lady in her forties with a face like a giraffe’s and a bowl haircut. Fortunately she was at the back of the group. The one Sanchez had to worry about was the little girl who had shouted out to the others. She was at the front of the group, pointing at him. And far from looking distressed, this little girl looked extremely angry. She reached down and pulled something from her sock. She held it up. It was a flick knife. She flipped it open and pointed the blade at Sanchez. Then she looked around at her troop.
‘GET HIM!’ she shouted.
Within a second, thirty screaming ten-year old Sunflower Girls had started charging towards him. The one with the knife led the way, snarling like a pit bull terrier. The leader followed on behind the pack shaking her fist angrily at Sanchez. She looked absolutely appalled at what she had seen him doing to the Santa Claus.
‘It’s not what it looks like!’ Sanchez yelled at the onrushing mob.
It was no use. None of the girls would have been able to hear him over the noise of their own screaming. He took one last look at the vampire on the ground and dropped the Zippo onto him.
WHOOSH!
As soon as the naked flame made contact with the flammable green liquid on the Santa’s red outfit his whole body exploded into flames. The sight of it stopped the onrushing girls dead in their tracks. There were gasps all round as their jaws dropped at the sight of Santa Claus going up in flames. The image would no doubt be permanently etched into their memories, scarring them for life.
Unfortunately once the initial shock passed, it only angered them further. Their screaming took on an entirely new level of aggression.
Sanchez reached down to the sidewalk and grabbed The Book of Death. By the time he’d picked it up, the Santa was a flaming ball of flesh three feet high. The flames were stretching up to the side of the squad car, blocking off any chance Sanchez had of getting into it, so with no time to lose, he turned and raced off down the icy street, praying he wouldn’t slip.
Thirty hysterical Sunflower Girls chased after him, baying for blood.
Thirty
JD walked along the dusty track towards the horizon. The sun shone blisteringly in the blue sky above, yet he felt no heat from it. The temperature, much like the breeze, had been totally neutralised. For the longest time he felt like he was walking the wrong way on a conveyor belt. The scenery didn’t change and the horizon seemed to come no closer. All that surrounded him was the deserted wastelands of the Devil’s Graveyard. And everything seemed to be polished in an almost blinding white sheen. The only sound was that of his boots on the highway beneath his feet. Everything had been muted out. Even his breathing was silent.
Finally after an indeterminable length of time he spotted something up ahead by the roadside directly beneath the sun. It was a large building with a thatched roof. Within seconds of catching sight of it his life moved into fast-forward. The horizon raced towards him and the faint white clouds zipped by overhead all in less than two steps along the highway. And just like that, he found himself outside a large roadside bar with a solitary Harley Davidson parked outside. From the outside it looked very similar to the kind of bar found in Santa Mondega. Was this place part of his imagination? It looked like a typical gunslinger saloon. Kind of a cross between the Tapioca and the Nightjar, but ten times the size of the either of them and even less inviting. But this was undoubtedly the place to he was meant to be. He was going to have to go in.
The name of the bar shone brightly in red neon letters on a large signpost above the entrance out front.
PURGATORY
He walked up a dirt and gravel covered pathway towards a pair of traditional old Wild West swinging wooden saloon doors at the entrance. A gentle murmuring noise from within the bar grew louder with every step he took. The murmur soon became a loud buzz of voices. People were inside, drinking and conversing. He felt a sense of trepidation as he approached. He had no idea who or what he would find in this place, but it sounded busy and it looked like the kind of place where the Bourbon Kid would fit in. Unfortunately, right now he still felt like JD. Maybe that would change once he was inside? One thing he sensed was a distinct possibility that some killing would be called for. The time to test out those good ol’ murderous skills might be near.
He reached the saloon doors and paused for a moment. He peered over them and saw a large propeller fan hanging from the ceiling above the bar. Several feet beneath it he could see the heads of a crowd of drinkers, mostly men, but of all ages, shapes and sizes. He pressed both of his hands up against the doors and pushed them open. Then he stepped into the bar.
The second he set foot in the place, it turned deathly quiet. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at the newcomer holding the doors of their bar open. They stood there like statues, no one moving an inch. JD took another step forward and let his hands back down to his sides. The saloon doors swung back shut behind him and flapped back and forth on their springs until they came to a stop. Still no one moved.
Directly in front of him there was a narrow opening through the crowd of drinkers. It led up to the bar where a lone barman was waiting for his newest customer to walk up and order a drink. JD walked slowly through the crowd, noting the angry looks from the men standing on both sides of him. Everyone’s gaze followed him as he approached the bar. He glanced at some of the faces either side of him as he walked. These were faces he recognised.
Faces of people he’d killed.
There were many other faces he didn’t recognise, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he hadn’t killed them too. The Bourbon Kid had slaughtered a lot of people, and not all of them had been significant enough to remember.
He could feel the eyes of all the other drinkers burning into the back of his head as he reached the bar. The bartender, a rather shifty-looking guy with straggly black hair hanging over his face, had been wiping the bartop with a towel. At the sight of JD he tossed the rag onto a shelf behind him. This bartender was another face he recognised. And it wasn’t one that was pleased to see him. It was Berkley the bartender from the Nightjar in Santa Mondega. The Bourbon Kid had shot him in the face shortly after downing a glass of his finest bourbon one night. He remembered the incident with Berkley well because upon arriving in the Nightjar he had seen the dead body of his old arm wrestling adversary Rodeo Rex. Rex had been curiously positioned on top of a large rotating metal propeller fan that hung from the ceiling. He had received a serious pasting at the hands of Jessica, or Archibald Somers, or maybe even both. Who knew? Or cared?
Berkley placed a whisky glass down on the bar in front of JD and produced a bottle of bourbon from under the bar. Considering that the last time they had met, JD had blown a huge hole through the middle of Berkley’s head, it seemed a fairly forgiving gesture. The head wound had vanished. The bartender looked exactly as JD remembered him. His hair was still long, dark and unwashed and he had maintained his overall tramp in a waiter’s outfit look down to a tee. His white shirt looked unwashed and most of it was conveniently concealed beneath a black waistcoat.
‘Pour me a shot,’ said JD leaning against the bar and taking a look back at all the people behind him. They were still all watching his every move. Hundreds of them. Not one of them seemed remotely pleased to see him. Hardly surprising really.
Berkley uncorked the bottle of bourbon and poured it
into the whisky glass. He filled the bottom inch of the four-inch high glass and then stopped pouring. JD glanced down at the drink as the bartender began to replace the cork in the bottle.
‘I’m gonna want a bigger shot than that,’ he remarked.
Berkley stopped corking the bottle. ‘How much more?’ he asked.
‘You really need to ask?’
‘No.’
Berkley filled the glass to the top and stepped back away from the bartop. JD looked down at the drink. This was a serious moment. If he took a sip of that bourbon his deal with the Devil was done. There would be no turning back. He would be back to the man he once was. A man with no soul. A man capable of killing everyone in this shitty bar. A man who had probably killed them all once before. And might be expected to do it again if he was going to get out of there alive.
He picked up the glass and inspected the contents. There was a bead of sweat sliding down the outside of the glass. Actual sweat. As he was watching it he heard a voice. A fairly gravelly one, as these things go, and it said: ‘What are you doing in our bar, stranger? What’s your business?’
JD put the glass back down on the bar. He recognised the voice. It was Ringo, a fat fuck he’d killed some years earlier in the Tapioca. Through a crowd of people on his left, Ringo appeared, barging aside anyone in his way. He looked exactly as he had done all those years before. He was a heavy set, greasy, unshaven slimeball wearing dirty brown trousers and a sweat stained baggy grey shirt. He came to a stop at the bar by JD’s left shoulder and glared at him.