by Hunter Blain
Locke. My modern-day bully. The pain in my ass that no cream would calm. All of our interactions since my move to Houston back in the early 2000’s. He had to have known who I was and what he did to me.
I clenched my teeth and shouted at the ground, “He fucking knew who I was the whole time!” My fists where shaking in the air now with fury. “It was all a damn joke to him, and I was the punch line!”
I took in a deep breath and wrestled my emotions back to Zen. I was not going to let Locke control me, especially after what I had just done in the cemetery. I was in control, not that murderous fuck.
It hit me again and I stopped in my tracks. Looking up to the black, starless sky I asked myself, “Am I any better?” The wind blew cool across my skin in answer, further drying the blood of the innocent that matted my beard.
I became aware that I was walking down a public road looking like I had just pigged out at an all you can eat BBQ which had run out of napkins. Bringing my hand up to my face, I willed blood through my palms and used that to coat my entire face, letting it hydrate the dried blood and intermingle with mine. After a moment, I willed all the blood back inside my hand again, leaving my face crimson free. I ran my fingers through my beard to straighten it out and adjusted the grey beanie still on my head. A slip of hair escaped through one of the bullet holes and I mentally noted that I should see my dry-cleaning guy soon.
A few minutes of walking while lost in the thick forest of my thoughts, I looked up and realized I was approaching Valenta’s.
“Sign taken,” I said to the building.
Brushing the excess dirt off my coat, shirt, and pants, I put on a fake smile and entered the saloon.
There were two tables occupied by supes that stopped all conversation as soon as I entered. Valenta stood behind the bar with a scowl on his face, making a point not to look at me. I could feel all the other eyes moving up and down me, piercing my upbeat façade.
I quietly walked to the bar and sat down in front of Val. His eyes were closed tight, and he inhaled deeply. After a few moments, I spoke.
“Hey, man. How’s business tonight?” I meekly asked.
His eyes opened and locked on mine. There was a white fire that blazed behind them, pulsing with the vein in his forehead.
“Ya stupid, undead, fuck,” He spat. “You’ve any idea the shit storm you’re in boy?” His voice increased in intensity as he went on. “You let mortals see you, boy!” He slammed his fist on the bar, forming a crack down its length and sending glasses careening to the ground. I dropped my face toward the worn wood of the floor, defeated by those I called friend.
The other supes quickly got up from their chairs, dropped some money on the tables, and left. Murmurs lingered in the air until the door closed behind them. Leaving only a fierce Valenta, and me.
His voice returned to its normal cadence and volume. “You’re dead, ya realize. Hope ya packed your bags, ‘cause you’ve bought a one-way ticket off this mortal plane.”
His words stung, like a father telling his son how disappointed he is.
I clinched my jaw and leveled my gaze at him.
“Let them try. All of them. I’ll tear each and every one of those fuckers down. If they kill me, I’ll drag as many as I can down to the pits of eternity. And when I’m in Hell, I’ll slap the devil in the face. Now give me a goddamn drink, Valenta!” I yelled and slammed down enough money to get the job done.
After the silence grew awkward, Valenta reluctantly poured my first drink. As he started to pull the bottle of my special mix away, I commanded, “Leave it.”
A show of disappointment crept into his face as he studied me. His eyebrows lifted, and his shoulders slightly shrugged in placation and he moved down the bar, picking up pieces of glass as he went. To him, I was already dead. Well, deader.
I floated the entire bottle within an hour, getting super schwifty wasted. Getting up to leave, I glanced over at Val who was still ignoring me.
Trying to keep my balance, I pointed my finger at the spot where now two Valenta’s were standing behind the bar, twirling in circles around each other, along with all the stools and the bar. My mouth hung open, unable to speak with the room spinning like a kaleidoscope.
I pushed my mouth closed with my hand and slowly turned to the door, teetering to one side or the other the whole way.
In the parking lot, I looked around and noticed it was completely empty.
“Schit,” I slurred. “Bhasterd had mah car towed,” not realizing in my hammered stupor that I left the car back at the Bat Cave.
The walk to the church was challenging. Did I say walk? I meant hammered stumble. Even drunk me questioned my decision to imbibe as much as I had, and Val just let me do it. Of course, he was operating under the assumption that this might be my last night un-dead. It wouldn’t take long for the footage to go viral and for a bounty to be put out on my head by the wardens of the supernatural community.
“Lhet dem come,” I said to a featureless black cat that was watching me from the shadows. Its eyes reflected the moonlight. “And when I dead, ill chock slahp tha debil…wit mah dhick…on the fhace…wit mah dhick.” The cat yawed and sauntered deeper into the shadows, unamused with my antics.
While spinning to face the street again, I lost my balance and fell on my back.
“Dhidn’t fheel hit,” I said, turning my head to try and fight the dizziness.
Footsteps approached. I laid still, trying to triangulate on their position. They came closer, growing more prominent. When they stopped close by, I leaned up and threw my hands out yelling “Boogity boogity boooooooo!”
There was no one in front of me. A hand rested on my shoulder from behind, and a familiar voice said, “Your friend told me where I could find you.”
“Fhather T? Is that ye?” I said as everything went black.
Chapter 26
Now
My eyes fought to open. Usually my preternatural sight let me see in the pitch black, but even after a few moments, my vision was filled with complete darkness.
I was lying on an old, twin sized bed that smelled of a forgotten closet filled with thick clothing. Sitting up, I tried to swing my legs off the bed and onto the floor when I felt a tug at my ankle that was closest to a stone wall. My hands explored the cold rock and found a metal loop where a chain was attached. The metal burned my exposed skin as I grasped to follow its length. It ended at my ankle where a metal ring wrapped around a leather cuff.
“I wouldn’t play with it too much, my son, it’s infused with iron,” An elderly, calm voice informed.
“Father Thomes…” I stammered, “What’s going on?” It was impossible to hide my confusion and building fear. The clergy had hunted vampires for millennia, so I knew the Father could end my existence with little trouble, especially if I was chained to a stone wall with iron. “Why am I so weak if the leather is protecting me from the iron?” I asked almost breathlessly, exhausted.
“It’s day, John. This was for your own protection, as well as those of the innocent.”
I didn’t respond, knowing exactly what he meant.
“A grieving wife and mother, John. In front of her child. Thank the almighty that you were stopped before you took his life as well,” He scolded.
A light was switched on, blinding me for a moment. I shielded my eyes, not only from the light, but to hide the tears that had sprung.
“I am afraid what you have done has set you back substantially,” he said.
Clearing my eyes and wiping my nose I pleaded, “It wasn’t me, Father. I had no control.”
He stood up fiercely, glaring at me and boomed in a commanding voice “And you think that matters, abomination?” The fear must have been evident in my face because his posture relaxed, and he regained composure, “John, we are free to make whatever decision we want on this plane. It’s the consequences we cannot avoid. No matter our intentions, we will always pay for our sins in the end.”
I turned my head away fr
om him, ashamed.
“I am tired of everyone else telling me what I’ve done.” I turned and looked right at him. “I fucking know what I’ve done, old man, and you couldn’t possibly comprehend the eternal struggle that battles inside of me every, single, night. The thirst that clutches at my every thought, clouding my judgement at the best of times and taking the wheel of control away at the worst.”
Tears brimmed in my eyes again and fury rose in my chest. I matched his ferocity as I stood. “How dare you pretend to know what it’s like, mortal. How about I throw you and a small child in the churning ocean with a tattered life vest and let’s see what decisions a drowning man makes.”
With that, his posture straightened, and he wordlessly turned and left the room, flipping the light off behind him. The sound of heavy, metal locks clicked into place. I was his prisoner.
The urge to scream after him to free me was almost overwhelming, but the futility of it kept my mouth shut. I knew he would never set me free unless I could assure him no other innocents would be hurt. The truth was, I didn’t mind hiding in his basement. None of the other supes would find me here, so it was just as good a spot as any to lay low.
My mind repeated the events of the night with Da, Val, and Father Thomes over and over. I was almost impressed with myself, having the ability to alienate 3 out of the 4 people who I could call friend was reserved for made-for-TV villains.
“Note to self: send an edible arrangement filled with meat to Depweg,” I said to myself as I laid back on the bed. The day was still holding my energy hostage, dampening it.
I closed my eyes and let the little death come.
Chapter 27
Night came. While the sun slept, my vision became supercharged and I surveyed the room, searching for anything I could use. The room was empty besides the bed. Though I couldn’t touch it, I could feel the iron infused in the door to my prison. It only took an hour, or half a night (because I have no sense of time) to give up and put all my eggs in the basket that Father T would eventually free me.
There was no sound that my ears could pick up, nor a single smell that my nose could detect that was out of the ordinary. If the Father was in the building, he was being remarkably quiet. Either that or I was deep in the catacombs beneath the church. Which, if that were true, would be exceptionally impressive for a church in Houston.
I sat in my cell throughout the night, staring at the ceiling. As the hours dragged on, I could feel dawn approaching, even though there were no windows. My vision began to diminish and my energy dropped, filling my limbs with concrete.
When morning was fully upon me, I let myself slip into the unconscious. I awakened again at dusk to the same scenario and felt the first pangs of the thirst. I decided to try and free myself with fresh eyes and a more determined mind. Thirst was a powerful motivator.
I spent the better part of a night trying to figure a way to free myself. Yanking was fruitless. He must have blessed the metals, effectively canceling my preternatural strength. I tried piercing the stone wall and digging around the restraint, but it, too, would not budge.
“The hell is on these walls? Iron paint?” I asked, realizing that’s exactly what it was.
A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach had formed as the realization that he made this room specifically for me crept into my mind.
Nights passed without any semblance of the Father being home. Hunger started to overtake my every waking thought. Even my dreams were erratic and blood focused, creating imagery that I had only seen in movies where the hero trips after imbibing an unknown liquid.
PS crept from the shadows, threatening to take charge if I didn’t feed. I hadn’t had my fill after my encounter with Locke, or even the demon before that, and I was weaker than a new born kitten.
“Locke,” I exhaled through gritted teeth. My train of thought locked onto his gaunt, smiling face. All other thoughts were halted behind the current train car filled with hate. The memory of my parents being brutally executed was intoxicating; replacing all reason and logic with pure, unbridled rage. I lived to wrap my hands around Locke’s skinny neck and crush the life out of him. I wanted to rip his head off and then laugh in his blinking face before he went to Hell. Hating him had become a part of me again, and it slipped right back into place like an ample ass sliding into its favorite recliner. No matter how much time passed, the indention was always there, welcoming.
I allowed the hate train to pass, focusing back on my predicament and the events that led me to it. Damn, Da. Damn, Val. And damn the mortal that kept me as a prisoner. I was tired of trying to do what everyone else wanted me to do. I was going to get out of there.
Following the chain with my eyes, I muttered a curse and decided what I was going to do.
I stood up and moved far enough from the bed to tighten the chain. I reached down, and shredded the leather cuff that prevented the iron from touching my body. I rolled up my pant leg, exposing my skin to the enchanted iron. As I did, jolts of lightning and waves of fire shot up my leg and into my core. My breath was taken as every muscle constricted in agony.
Shaking, I picked up some of the leather pieces and put them between my teeth. Biting down, I brought my leg back toward the wall, shut my eyes, and kicked forward with everything I had.
My ankle exploded with bones splintering through the back of my leg. The chain dug into my skin, bringing with it a new existence of exquisite pain. I collapsed to the ground, spasming violently and whimpered with each reflexive breath.
The leather muffled my sobs. My vision blackened to a pin point. I forced myself to relax and took in deep breaths, which was purely a mental relaxation technique, as I didn’t actually need to breathe.
I commanded my hands to find purchase underneath my body which now seemed to weigh a shit ton. After a couple tries, I was finally able to push myself up and rest on my hands and knees. I pivoted and looked at the damage.
The chain was half way through my ankle.; but what alarmed me was the iron had started to make my flesh necrotic and was quickly spreading up my calf. Panic provided all the strength I needed to get up on my good leg. I expressed this verbally with a barrage of superb vernacular efficiency that would have made Sir Shakespeare jealous.
“Shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”
I leaned forward, brought my leg back again, took a deep breath, and kicked as if I were trying to knock down a bank vault.
The kick carried through and the momentum threw me into a back flip, where I landed on my stomach. The electricity had stopped flowing through every nerve in my body and I just laid there, lightly shaking.
After a few moments, I was able to get up on my one good foot and look around. My foot had landed on the bed behind me, still in its shoe. The flesh looked as if it had come from a zombie — the appendage completely consumed by death.
Looking down and balancing on one foot, I lifted my pant leg to see that the decay had spread all the way to my knee.
“Oh, shit!” I said to myself as the realization that if that last kick wasn’t successful, I wouldn’t have been able to move my leg a third time. I would have died in one of the most agonizing ways a vampire, or any living being, possibly could. At least the sun was quick compared to this necrosis.
As I continued to watch, the decay spread over my knee with an insatiable appetite.
“Oh, Lilith!” I cried out in horror. “Damn you holy man!”
I looked around the room for anything to stop the spread. My eyes landed on the chain and I laughed as my panicking brain desperately tried to think that it would make a good tourniquet.
The deterioration continued to creep up my leg. My knee had withered, exposing the bone. The tendons snapped and the joint crumbled away, dropping what remained of my leg to the ground where it evaporated into powder.
I was not about to let this thing take my junk… and my life, of course. I focused on my palms and forced blood through the skin, congealing into a giant pair of bolt cutters.
> Placing the living flesh of my thigh between the crimson jaws, I cried out, “Green Lantern ain’t got shit on me!” in reference to my blood-manifestation as I slammed my hands together, severing the leg just below my pelvis.
The rest of my stump fell to the ground where it was quickly ravaged by the holy enchantment. I watched in fascination as the once plump and super sexy flesh blew away like a dried-out sand castle on a windy day. Still holding the super-sized bolt cutters, I let the blood liquify as I brought my palms to my gaping wound which was spilling my life force. I wasn’t able to grow the limb back with my lack of energy; but I did manage to at least close the wound before the blackness completely swallowed my vision.
I let myself fall to my hands and knee, shambling to the bed. Once I climbed onto the mattress, I turned to face the door while my vision gained control and fought back the darkness. After several minutes, my head stopped swimming and I pushed myself up to my remaining limb.
“I’ll never model for Victoria’s Secret again,” I said to my now lonely foot whose workload had just doubled. I hopped over to the door and placed my hand on it, feeling the iron exciting my molecules. “Feck’n knew it,” I muttered to myself, letting some of my mother tongue slip in.
I turned in circles, which I’m confident looked hilarious, looking around the room, trying to spot a giant sledge hammer that I must have missed before. Alas, there was still no super convenient tool just laying around. Not even a gas-powered jackhammer.
“Yelp will hear of this atrocity! 1 star!” I yelled to the ceiling.
Turning to look at the bed, an idea sprouted through the packed earth of my mind that was filled to capacity with movie facts and references. I stepped forward, eager to fulfill my plan, and then fell on my face.
“Right. The leg…situation,” I scolded myself.
My eyes latched onto the door hinges. They were also made of iron, but the peg through the middle had to be a different, stronger metal to support the door.
I got back up, hopping over to the bed where I grabbed the old comforter, and threw it in front of the door. Tossing the mattress to the side, I grabbed the wooden frame of the small, twin bed and ripped it in half. I repeated the process on the edge of the frames and took two of the wooden legs in my hands. I awkwardly hobbled to where the comforter now rested, as if oblivious to its upcoming fate. I set the two wooden pieces against the wall and picked up the comforter, tearing it into shreds and setting them aside. I picked the legs back up, placed them together, and started rubbing them against each other. Slow at first, then faster. After a few seconds, I was rubbing faster than a teenage boy discovering his first porn site. Smoke started to waft from the wood and I accelerated to supe speed, causing a bright flame to burst from the legs. I set one down and started wrapping the comforter above where the flame was, careful not to catch myself on fire. After I set the torch on the ground under the bottom most door hinge, I repeated the process for the other leg, where I propped it just under the middle hinge. Hopping back to the bed, I grabbed a third leg, returned to the door and used the fire from the first to ignite the wood. After it was wrapped and blazing, I held it up to the top most hinge, and waited.