Yesterday's Gone: Seasons 1-6 Complete Saga

by Sean Platt

  The Diddler’s body burned bright-red, and would until Boricio muted his hue forever to black.

  The big, wide world won’t miss this asshole a bit.

  Boricio finished his Jack but stayed in the bar. He ordered another one, then waited through another 40 minutes after the crimson-colored cocksucker disappeared from the lobby and into an elevator. Boricio wasn’t sure what he was doing upstairs, but knew as a matter of goddamned fact that it was something worth getting a head removed from his shoulders.

  When the Diddler stepped back into the lobby from a bank of elevators Boricio hadn’t moved his eyes from once, he sifted through the asshole’s mind, happy to find that the Diddler was dumb-fuck enough to think about missing a payment on his Infiniti FX35 earlier that morning.

  Boricio left the bar, jogged down to the hotel garage, careful to avoid security cameras, climbed inside the back of the Infiniti, and waited for the Diddler.

  The drive was short, though Boricio wished it was shorter since the cocksucker wasn’t just a pedophile, he actually listened to the same crap as his victims — bands with pubeless punks. They made two lefts and four rights spread across what the predator’s guess said was about three and a half miles. Boricio stayed tense throughout the drive, ready to strike if Diddler was stupid enough to sense him and search in back. Fortunately, One Direction kept the Diddler engaged enough to not notice Boricio, all the way from the airport hotel until he killed his engine 15 minutes later.

  Boricio waited until five minutes after his door slammed, then peered up from the backseat at a house that was as nice as the Diddler’s Infiniti. After another five minutes staring at the front porch, Boricio thanked the gate at the start of the community, figuring it was the reason the Diddler didn’t lock his door or set an alarm. He climbed from the cabin, shut the door, and shot like a blur from the SUV to shadows beneath a green awning, over to a giant wall of bright-pink bougainvillea, and finally around to the side of his house.

  Boricio peered into Diddler’s window and saw him staring ogle-eyed at his widescreen. He crept low, circled around to the kitchen, then helped himself into the fuckface’s house, like he had helped himself into so many houses before.

  Boricio watched Diddler for nearly 10 minutes, that was about nine longer than he was usually willing to devote to assholes, but there was something so mind numbingly pathetic about Diddler, sitting by himself, watching TV with his hands in his pants — the fucking Disney Channel — that Boricio was near hypnotized. Finally, he stepped out into the living room, walked straight to the coffee table, grabbed the remote from in front of a startled Diddler, turned toward the screen, flipped it to black, then spun back to Diddler — who’d not found any words — and hurled the remote hard into the fucker’s face.

  The long, rectangular hunk of plastic smacked the asshole hard in his nose, right on the bridge. Though still too dumfounded to say shit, Diddler screamed as if implements of death were dipping deep into his pucker.

  Boricio looked at Diddler and, disappointed that the fucker wasn’t bleeding, leaned toward him, grabbed him by a fat handful of hair, pulled his head up from the couch and his face toward him, then launched his fist between the asshole’s eyes, aiming for the same bridge that wasn’t broken by the remote. Boricio kept pounding, over and over until both the bridge and his knuckles were sticky with crimson.

  Fuck. Gonna have to explain that to Rose.

  “What do you want?” the asshole was sobbing, already seconds from begging for his stupid, worthless, cocksucking, bullshit-of-a-cunt-hair life.

  You’ve already said adios, now I’m gonna get you to sing it.

  “Well, well,” Boricio sat on the coffee table. He grabbed a box of Kleenex, sitting a half foot from where the remote was sitting a minute before. He handed Diddler a clump of tissues, said, “Wipe yourself off,” and turned toward the TV, noting the time. He reeled back toward Diddler, then smacked him hard on the head just because.

  “You’re damned lucky,” Boricio snarled.

  “You’re not going to kill me?” Diddler asked.

  Boricio laughed, thinking how funny it was that even though he’d said no such thing, the asshole knew what was coming. That’s what happened when you spent most nights lying awake, wondering when the inevitable would knock on your door.

  Boricio laughed harder. “Oh you’re deader than the fucking shake weight, but I can’t afford to take nearly the time with you that I’d like. So we’re gonna have to make this quick. You do get a chance, but that chance won’t dictate whether you live or die. We’re gonna decide, the two of us together, exactly how much pain you’re gonna live with before leaving God’s blue marble.”

  Diddler stared up at Boricio as if trying to understand him — who was this strange and horrible man who had broken into his house and was going to kill him? Boricio leaned forward, laughed into the asshole’s confusion, then head-butted him, because it felt so goddamned fantastic — up high to keep the bruises from Rose.

  “OK, listen, cunt hair, you get one chance and one chance only. Like I said, I’m in a hurry. My girlfriend — peach of a lady and a Tarantino of talent I surely don’t deserve — is probably waiting for me back at our hotel. She just went to meet with the Maris Brothers.” Boricio tried making eyes with Diddler, not caring a hair on his sack if this nugget impressed him, but curious to see if it did. No luck: Diddler was still clasping at his head and trying to see, whimpering through the splayed palm that cradled his face.

  “Well, anyway,” Boricio said, his voice back to casual, “I’ve gotta run. But I’m not the sort of man to leave a job anything less than finished, so I’m looking for an excuse to trim my chore list. You tell me why you deserve to die, now I don’t need to know all the details you sick, fucking fuck, just enough to hear you admit what you and I both already know, then I need a reason why you deserve to have the Grim Reaper get to you quick, rather than turning afternoon into night while making you bleed from your dookie hole. Do ya dig?”

  Diddler cried.

  Boricio head-butted him again, this time harder, then screamed into his face. “I said, do ya dig?!”

  Diddler whimpered, “Y-yes … ”

  “Why do you deserve to die?” Boricio asked.

  For a long minute Diddler cried too hard to make any words. Boricio let him sob since it was part of the show. Then, when tired of the simpering, Boricio started thinking about his own experience with men raping his childhood in one way or another, then grabbed the cockweasel by another clump of hair, this one at the back of his head, and dragged him off of the couch, across his house, and into the bedroom. Boricio dropped him like a sack by the side of his bed and slammed a boot heel into his gut.

  The one thing Boricio hated about purging on the road was that most times he had no access to his tools. But Boricio bent down and did it the old-fashioned way, pulling the middle digit from the Diddler’s right hand and bending it back toward his wrist until there was a horrible snap, followed by a shrieking, muffled only by Diddler’s deafening scream. Boricio reached up to the bed, shook a pillow from its case, wadded it up and shoved it into Diddler’s wide-open, and still-screaming, mouth, told him to “Shut the fuck up before I fill your mouth with my shit,” then grabbed his left hand and made the other middle finger match.

  “I’ll break every bone in your body the same goddamned way,” Boricio said, “and make you listen to Muskrat Love while I do it if you don’t start talking. You satisfy me, and you can ask any number of the bitches Ol’ Boricio’s left breathing, I’m pretty easy to satisfy, and I’ll kill you quick. Otherwise, I’m drawing blinds and we’re hunkering down.”

  Somehow, Diddler found his voice through the sobbing. “Because I hurt people.”

  “What?” Boricio asked, leaning in as if he couldn’t hear.

  “I deserve to die because I hurt people … children.”

  The final word cracked the man’s voice into something awful. Boricio said, “Got a reason I should make it quic
k?”

  Boricio had heard it all before, and expected more of the same from Diddler — any number of reasons why the indefensible was worthy of defense: the same bullshit that had victims spending lifetimes trying to understand what couldn’t be understood, and long lifetimes hoping that one day they would, praying for answers if they were stupid enough to believe in a God, telling themselves over and over like fucking Rain Man that it wasn’t their fault, often while loving the fucker who did shit to them, thinking that maybe they brought it on themselves somehow.

  Instead, Diddler surprised him. “I don’t deserve you to make it quick. Please, Demon,” he begged, “make me suffer.”

  Boricio had a speech cycling through his mind, all about how he would be doing the world a favor, ridding the planet of a dirtbag, but Diddler disarmed him. All Boricio could think to do was give the cunt hair what he didn’t want.

  He kneeled down, wrapped his arms around Diddler in a chokehold, stood straight, snapped the asshole’s neck on his way to standing, then dropped him into a pile on the floor.

  Boricio searched the fucker’s place until he found his stash of kiddie-porn — it didn’t take long since Boricio had a decent handle on how most monsters thought — then opened the box and dumped it all over Diddler’s dead body. Boricio cleaned up any evidence of his being there and on his way outside, slammed into a wall of white, right as he opened the front door. Something slithered in between his ears and started screaming.

  Boricio fell to his knees.

  No, not again, he thought as he blacked out.

  When Boricio opened his eyes, the sky outside the half-open door had already traded blue for gloaming. Boricio lay there blinking, trying not to be scared that he’d blacked out again during a purging. That was the sort of shit that could get him caught, dead, or worst of all, make him lose Rose.

  Tic-tac-toe, three in a row, your momma got shot by a G.I. Joe.

  A car motor rumbled outside. Strong beams from a headlight bathed the house in light.

  Fuckity fuck fuck.

  Boricio leapt to his feet, heart racing. He slammed the front door, ran to the rear of the house, slipped quietly out the back, hopped the first fence then another two after that, and didn’t stop running until he left the residential neighborhood behind him and was bathed by the bright light of a major L.A. street, scoping his surroundings to figure location.

  He had to get to the hotel, and explain shit to Rose.

  As he thought about what he’d say, Boricio wondered if he’d managed to keep his prints off the Infiniti while he was hiding inside it. He thought so, but couldn’t be certain. And there was no way in hell he was going back to the scene of the crime.

  Boricio hoped his carelessness wouldn’t come back to cost him everything — not now that he had a life worth clinging to.

  Thirteen

  Steven Warner

  Marina wanted Steven to turn his attention from the TV back to her, wanted him to nibble at her ear, fog warm breath onto her neck, or put his mouth all over her, whispering sweet promises as he slid across her skin.

  But IT couldn’t: ITS eyes were fixed to the moving pictures, just as they had been since the story of the murderous woman first broke. Since then IT couldn’t shift ITS eyes from the screen, or the bloodbath behind it.

  The woman was just another bored housewife, until The Darkness claimed her, worming ITS way into her body, then nested to grow stronger by the breath until IT was ready to summon her, and ITS growing legion.

  The footage was gruesome, the news cut back on little, wanting to grab viewer attention, even if their overtures were earned only through gore.

  It was as if Steven’s body was hypnotized through ITS fascination: this one story meant so much, maybe everything. If IT wasn’t careful, the world, and all of ITS plans might unravel. IT had made so many mistakes before, on the other world, the dead one, but a new planet meant new opportunity; IT didn’t have to make the same mistakes again.

  This planet was ITS for the taking, so long as IT didn’t make any mistakes — like letting things out in the world that IT didn’t, or couldn’t, control.

  IT was obsessed with the story, hungry to know more, to know everything, but IT couldn’t afford for Marina to know, couldn’t afford for her to find out, or smell what IT was.

  “Turn off the TV, Stevie,” Marina said. “I’m much more interesting.”

  “Of course you are,” IT said, then picked up the remote from the nightstand, aimed it at the screen, smothered the picture to black, then tossed the plastic onto the carpet and rolled over into a hover above Marina.

  “Nothing is more important than you,” said Steven’s mouth.

  That was mostly true. Marina was essential to ITS plans. But the story of the woman, Eva, was important, too. IT just had to know how she’d broken free. She had been one of the 315, one of ITS chosen, and was supposed to have been ITS to command. But Eva, the woman who was once part of The Darkness, had broken away, she had grown unstable, become a liability rather than an asset.

  IT had felt Eva when she snapped and killed her friend in the park. IT had felt it almost as if IT had murdered the woman. However, and most disturbingly, IT wasn’t able to seize control over her, ITS connection severed.

  Eva was one of many such people IT had lost control over recently. While most of the incidents had not made the news, an increasing number were — people snapping and committing acts of horrible violence.

  IT started trailing kisses across Marina’s body, nibbling at her ear like she wanted, like she always wanted. IT lifted her gauzy top to suckle her nipples. She exhaled, lightly bucking beneath ITS mouth, purring as IT spread kisses and kept her humming.

  While ITS host body, Steven, followed the routine with Marina, ITS mind, or the alien part of IT, couldn’t stop thinking about Eva.

  IT was slipping, losing control. If IT did nothing ITS power was threatened.

  The thought brought a sudden flare to ITS body.

  The kind IT didn’t quite know how to control.

  IT snarled, then bit Marina, lightly on her shoulder, just enough to make her yelp, squeal, and purr for more. She’d mistaken ITS rage for passion. Humans were so ignorant when it came to knowing things.

  In a second, ITS temperament shifted, IT felt more like ITSELF, less like IT did when masquerading in Steven’s shell; IT felt more like the entity IT was, alive and born to consume.

  IT thrashed, suddenly aggressive on top of Marina. IT grabbed at her gauzy top, ripping it from her body as she rattled and squirmed under Steven. IT was suddenly hungry to quell the hunger wafting from ITS host body like a stink. Pleasure hummed from Marina’s mouth; guttural craving quivered from her body involuntarily, jolting up toward IT, craving satisfaction.

  “Fuck me, Steven,” she growled. “Hard.”

  “My pleasure,” IT said.

  Then IT attacked her, satisfying something inside Steven by ravishing Marina, planting kisses almost with malice, biting rather than nibbling at her nipples, then tearing creamy panties down her ass and over her ankles and positioning himself between her legs — IT had no underwear to shed, already naked, as IT preferred to be as often as possible — and started thrusting ITSELF into Marina as if trying to punish her.

  It should have been too much for her body, how IT pounded, but it was exactly what she wanted, what she needed. Marina proved it with her every shudder, scream, and whimper. She tried crying out for him, using the name Steven, but was so deep in her pleasure, she could only mutter and groan.

  IT made mad, almost violent, love to Marina — not that what IT did was anything like love. Once finished, when IT should have been exhausted with ITS host’s body so thoroughly spent, ITS mind started to crackle.

  IT left Marina passed out and breathing heavy on the bed, then went into her office to watch her Confessionals.

  The Confessionals were a huge source of curiosity for IT.

  IT had been watching them for a while, sometimes with Mar
ina’s knowledge, though mostly without, and never grew tired of the … entertainment. The Confessionals were semi-well known among the Church, and critics of it. The sessions were supposedly designed so sufferers could unburden their souls, much like with a priest, but the Church of Original Design did something with their Confessions that Catholicism did not: They recorded the sessions and kept them in clearly labeled files. Ostensibly, they did this to “evaluate ticks” and “mine truth from a candidate’s face.” In reality, it was done because secrets were the world’s best currency when shopping for loyalty. While Marina was more or less ignorant of the Confessionals’ use, IT had seen the truth in the heads of her inner council, and knew how the videos were used in the past, before Marina came into power.

  IT clicked Play on the first QuickTime Confession, and watched as a miserable wretch of a woman filled the screen. She had a long face like a horse, her stringy hair falling in a straight curtain around her homely face.

  The horsewoman, Catherine Munn, according to the file name, looked at the Confessor with her large, empty, eyes and said, “Most people who meet me think that I have a great life, and I suppose I do, in a way. I have a family and friends. A husband. We don’t have children, yet, and I don’t want them. My husband does, two at least, and knows I don’t. It’s affecting our relationship. I won’t make a good mother.”

  The horse shook her head, held her temple, and continued with a sigh, “Parenting is a burden, and I’m not a happy person. I’ve struggled with depression for years. Besides, I’m in love with my ex and have sex with him all the time, even though I have to beg him sometimes. He has a girlfriend and thinks we should stop. It’s only a matter of time before my husband and I have kids I don’t want, all to keep living a lie I wish would finally end. I’m so miserable, I feel like I’ll never be happy again.”

  Most humans would have probably thought the Confession sad, but IT saw the video as pathetic; stupid humans who didn’t know how to be happy or use what they had to get what they wanted. The horse woman was one of a billion, feeling the same things that they all did, perhaps in a slightly different shade, not knowing what to do with her stupid, tiny, little feelings.