by Axel Taiari
Are you okay, I say, fumbling behind her and failing to break the cuffs.
It’s you, she says.
I can’t undo the cuffs. I need to find the key, where is it.
It’s you, she repeats, about to burst into tears.
I stop, calm down, and look at her. Place a gentle palm on her face, a gesture my muscles never forgot. It’s me, I say. Time scrambled her features into a patchwork of wrinkles, the decrepit ruin of old age unable to avoid but her eyes have never changed - a loving blue a man could build a dream on.
Then Cain screams no at the top of his lungs, tailgated by several fat blasts from David’s shotgun. I rise up and sprint out, shouting out their names and enter the living room. Spare a slice of a second to take in the scene: Abel kneeling and crying over his murdered brother, his hands bathed crimson. A dead hunter lies discarded near them, body freckled with tiny bullet holes all slobbering red. Umpteen shells grace the linoleum as if they had just hailed from a murderous sky. The flavor of copper and sugar waft heavy in the air. Cain’s head has been obliterated to a chunky stew, his beyond damaged body resting on the floor. In the corner, a shotgun-less David wrestles against someone and begs for help. I jump past Abel, yell for Dave to move away, which he manages to do and I fire the leftover bullets at the man there - clearly not a hunter by his attire, and wait for his inevitable collapse.
The man stands still, rips his gaze away from David and turns his head in my direction. Two meters tall, spiked blond hair, twice my weight but all muscles. His eyes shine a nuclear-green and his mouth offers a smirk. The bullets I fired his way hang in the air, as if frozen in time.
David, out of breath, mutters, guess why I dropped the shotgun.
Behind us, Abel’s mournful wails never cease.
The hovering bullets spin around slow, now aimed in my direction. David gasps then charges into me, both of us go wrecking into the coffee table while the bullets soar past us, missing by centimeters. We rise up side by side, I toss the gun away then pounce on the mentalist with David. We pummel him, two versus one but something’s wrong. Knuckles brush by my face and the skin splits open canyon-wide. I throw everything I have behind heavy fists but an electrical crackle deflects each hit, air and static braiding an ethereal wall I can’t break. The mentalist has a shield up. An interminable succession of blows and parries compose the sickening melody of dragged out primal fights while Abel’s cries reach a new level of misery. I keep punching, kicking and biting while my body crepitates and tries to dismantle itself. My tongue stings and I gurgle pure high voltage, then my mouth overflows with boiling blood and I think this is it, end of the ride. David pulls away, about to succumb or so I fear, leaving me to deal with the bastard by myself which I do pitifully, by now my skin singing, burning meat smell invading my nostrils, my whole perception flaring a sparkling blue until I see the mentalist’s cocky grin switches to a confused frown. Do a one-eighty and David removes something big and square-ish from under his huge coat, presses a button and the mentalist tries to back away but it’s too late: a gorgeous crescendo of classical music blasts forth. David grabs his portable radio like a brick in his palm and slams it against the mentalist’s skull, his nose spraying blood straightaway, the frequencies too strong for the chip in his head to handle, and this is my cue to move in. I dig my claws directly into the mentalist’s eyes, through them as violins and cellos screech and the mentalist falls to the ground, David and I both tumbling over him while he struggles and shrieks, trying to protect himself. Mad sprites detonate all around the room, arcing branches of lightning searing the walls. I get back up. The mentalist froths at the mouth, a rabid seizure trapping him to the floor, the walls of his mind caving in at the sound of his own requiem. I lift my foot up and stomp on his head. Again, and again, and again, flesh, veins, bones and grey matter squashed to a messy oblivion.
I help David back up and realize the extent of his injuries for the first time. Blisters cover most of his still-smoking baked face. Dime-sized smothering holes flourish on his coat. David can barely stand up by himself. He drops the radio to the floor, removes and throws away his coat with a whimper. He feels his face with a cautious hand. In the corner, Abel rocks back and forth, holding Cain’s body, whispering useless comforting words where his brother’s ear used to be.
David limps over to him and crouches. He says, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but Abel doesn’t hear him.
Glittering shades glissade around in my vision but I beat them away with blinks, every inch of me shuddering, my body trying to heal itself but my starving slugs the process.
David turns around and eyeballs the dead hunter. He squats near the body floating in its pool of blood. He stares at Abel, says nothing. Then dives a finger into the blood and smells it.
I tell him, no, don’t.
But he simply nods and replies, changed my mind. That kid already lost a brother tonight. I’d rather not have another death on my hands, and he licks his finger.
I await, ready to see him convulse and howl. David breathes in and out, waits. Abel, still holding Cain, looks at David too.
David’s eye expands like a blast of fireworks, colors shifting, and he digs his head into the unvaccinated blood, licking it up like a starved dog, slurping noises followed by grunts of pleasure. Abel gets up, placing his brother’s corpse on the floor in silence, and joins David in his feeding.
I leave them to it, in spite of everything.
Back to the room where they kept Lucille. She gasps when I enter, relief inundating her features. The other hunter’s body is still here, his walkie-talkie working and emitting warnings. They’ll be here soon - backup, more hunters, more mentalists, the police. We have minutes left to slip away, if we’re lucky. I dig through the man’s pockets and find what I need. I reach behind Lucille and unlock her cuffs. She falls on me, embraces me so tight despite how frail she looks, her perfume the same it was all those years ago but I can’t hold her up, I’m too weak, and her smell is so perfect I might just have myself a nervous breakdown right here and there.
Are you hurt? I croak.
She whispers, I knew you’d come, all those nights. I guessed what you were, when the news told everyone about...you know. I waited and waited and-
We have to go, I tell her, we’ll talk at home but a thought slaps me: where is home now?
Black and white still-frames assail my head: a new life together, me by her side, young and perfect while she exhales her last breath in a piss-stained hospital bed. We have no future together, there is no point in lying to myself. But in this instant, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
She gets up. I try to do the same but can’t. A warm migraine inflates within my cranium, the pain, exhaustion and starvation too much to take. I’m bleeding so much I must be running on empty. Lucille sees this, then helps me up without a word, my wounds staining her velvet nightgown. Her iceberg blue eyes look at the dead hunter. The walkie-talkie keeps repeating that backup is on the way. I calmly stagger to the corpse and kneel. Every joint in my body broadcasts hysterical distress signals, my famished stomach amok from such a long starving. I turn back to her and she nods, blind approval for who I am, what I need.
I bend over the still warm cadaver, drown my parched lips in blood and as she watches over me, I feast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Axel Taiari is a French writer, born and raised in Paris. His work has appeared in various literary magazines, such as Dogmatika, 3:am Magazine, No Colony, 365tomorrows, and more. His stories have also been published in anthologies, including the upcoming Warmed And Bound (2011) alongside Stephen Graham Jones, Brian Evenson, Craig Clevenger, and other acclaimed writers. He is the creator and co-editor of Rotten Leaves magazine. He has recently finished a noir science-fiction novel and is now trying to sell his soul to the devil.
Read more at http://www.axeltaiari.com and http://www.rottenleaves.com
E-stalk him: http://twitter.com/AxelTaiari
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Axel Taiari, A Light to Starve By