* * * * *
The downstairs of the Hell Scratch hadn’t changed at all despite having seen a handful of owners over the years. It was basically a large cement hallway that ran underneath the ground floor in a large rectangle. Every so often there was a door that would either lead to a maintenance closet, bathroom, storage area or a private lounge.
“I don’t like the thought of crazed cultists showing up with axes to protect their drugs!” Fiona was saying and it was getting harder to ignore her since her voice carried in the hall, “Are you sure this is the best idea?”
“No.” I grunted. I wasn’t really irritated with Fiona but the entire situation of looking for a cache of drugs owned by fanatics was wearing on my nerves, “The best idea would to be hop on a plane and go to Tahiti for a couple years.”
“Sorry,” She replied, sounding hurt, “I…I’m not used to this sort of thing.”
Turning my head so I could see her in the weak artificial light of the fluorescent bulbs above us, I shot her my take on a heroic smile. It took all of my willpower not to stare into those emerald eyes, knowing that if I did I might end up wanting to genuinely comfort her.
Make no mistake. My sudden change of heart to help Fiona wasn’t out of righteousness, chivalry, or to even increase my chances of charming the pants off her. No, my motivation was still self-preservation. I had simply adapted my client’s presence to suit my needs.
The fact that her supposedly dead sister was a recognized member of the Daughters of All (and I suspect the one who framed me for murder), made me reconsider Fiona’s worth in this game of cat-and-mouse. Since she knew more about Faye than I did, it made her too valuable as a source of information to discard…yet.
“You don’t need to worry.” I told Fiona, keeping my voice low so it wouldn’t carry in the hallway, “We’ll grab whatever these freaks might have stashed here as evidence, then we bail.”
“Then we take that evidence to the cops?” Fiona asked.
“Someone of authority.” I answered smoothly, though Zotkin didn’t exactly fit my description of an authority figure, “If not, we’ll just wait for the boss to show and beat some answers out of him.”
Fiona knew what we were doing was illegal but she obviously didn’t understand how the law worked. Whatever evidence we did grab here, even if it was a dead hooker filled up with pure, uncut cocaine, there would be a hundred infractions a slick lawyer could use to dismiss it from being used in court. I wasn’t about to tell Fiona that nor was I about to divulge the plan of turning over any hard evidence to a ruthless crime boss so he’d butcher the cult for me. Fight fire with fire right? Or rather, drug smuggler with drug smuggler.
“I don’t see how this helps us find Faye.” Fiona pressed as we rounded the corner of the hall.
Sighing inwardly, I shot a look at the Twins who were tailing us. They were still in the dark about the agreement between me and my “client.” I doubt they would have cared to listen had I offered to explain. The delicate intricacies of a con weren’t their style. All they knew was Fiona was the mark and that would keep them from running their mouths and ruining my carefully created persona.
“Finding Faye will be a lot easier with the Daughters of All dismantled.” I lied, counting the number of doors we passed before adding, “Besides our safety comes first.”
Looking doubtful, Fiona just nodded and finally fell silent. Thanking the powers at be for small favors, I stopped at the fifth door we passed during our trek down the hall. If my mental map of this place was still accurate, this would be the largest lounge area. A good a place as any to start looking for a distribution-size drug stash.
“Kurt, would you be kind enough to provide the key to this door?” I asked.
With a nod he obliged. Taking a step forward, the biker brought his trailing foot up and kicked hard. The thin door was nearly knocked off its hinges as it exploded inwards, revealing the dark gapping maw of the unlit lounge.
“Subtle.” Fiona commented in a huff.
Couldn’t really blame my client for her remark. In the cramped confines of the cement hallway, the sound of the door being kicked in had been amplified so loud it almost sounded like a cannon being fired.
Grunting a wordless reply, Kurt strode into the darkness. Squeezing past Fiona and I, West also stepped into the lounge. I waited for two heart beats and since I didn’t hear Kurt open fire on anything, I took the liberty of assuming it was safe. Hurrying after the Twins, I stepped into the unlit room with Fiona following so close her breath tickled the back of my neck.
We all began to grope along the walls in the hunt for a light switch, the darkness making the sounds of our own footsteps and breathing somehow sinister. I eventually found a switch and gave everyone a quick warning before flooding the room with illumination.
Fiona gasped.
I cursed.
Even the Twins were alarmed at what the lights revealed.
“Well,” West commented through a forced smile, “You were right about one thing.”
“What’s that?” I croaked, my voice cracking as I tried to tear my gaze from the horror surrounding us.
“Someone’s ass needs to be kicked.” Kurt finished for his counterpart, his own voice sounding more on edge than usual.
Before a grim silence could settle, Fiona turned her head and vomited. The wet splattering sounds of her retching making me all the more nauseated…if that was even possible. After Fiona was done, she wiped the mess away from around her mouth with a handkerchief and unable to trust her wobbly legs, leaned against the doorframe for support.
Stacked three high in triple bunk-bed style cots, were bodies. Though race seemed random amongst those stored here, there were two constants amongst the occupants of the cots: Gender and age. Each body was female, that much was certain from the bare minimum of clothing they wore. They were also in their teens, none younger than thirteen and none older than eighteen. A sense of utter perversion and wrongness filled the room so completely that it was almost tangible, like cold fog prickling at your skin.
How long we all stood there, stunned, was beyond me. Our minds had blanked out as we tried to comprehend what we were seeing…but after a while it dawned on me that we needed to get out of here. And fast. These bodies would be enough evidence (even illegally acquired evidence) to make sure the proper authorities shined a light on the Daughters of All.
No one could talk their way out of this atrocity.
But I wasn’t reporting to the cops. I was reporting to Zotkin who had a more…finalize solution for the Daughters of All. It was nothing less than what these twisted fucks deserved. Still I might as well hedge my bet and make an anonymous phone call to the police. Either Johnny Law would throw the cult ringleader in prison or Josef Zotkin would dump their bodies in the ocean. Either way the end result would be the destruction of the cult and that was good enough for me.
Fighting back a wave of repulsion, I took a step towards the nearest row of cots.
“What are you doing?” Hissed Fiona.
“We still need evidence!” I replied through gritted teeth.
“Evidence?!” Gasped Fiona, “We have found a pile of dead bodies! That’s evidence enough!”
“Ain’t dead.” West corrected her.
The Twins had walked over to the far end of the lounge, staring down at one of the bodies. Fiona and I glanced at each other uncertainly, and then stepped over to joined Kurt and West in their examination. They had picked a redheaded girl on a bottom cot to scrutinize and soon four pairs of eyes were staring down at the teen. Upon closer inspection I agreed with their assessment; the girl was still alive.
Unlike corpses, these girls still had a certain glow to them that came from body heat. Their lips were pale but not the bluish-hue given off by dead flesh and their faces lacked the completely-void-of-tension look. If anything, their slack features resembled someone sleeping. Even with my sharp eyes, I couldn’t detect the faintest sign of the redhead drawing breath, adding
to the confusion.
“Lights are on.” West said, gingerly pulling back one of the redhead’s eyelids though it caused no reaction whatsoever, “But…”
“Don’t say it.” I groaned, not wanting to add a cliché to the insanely unfamiliar situation.
Kurt scratched his chin, “It’d make sense if they were going to use dead bodies to smuggle drugs across state lines but live ones?”
Anyone who’d watched enough gangster movies or cop shows would know that stuffing dead bodies full of drugs was a classic and clever way of smuggling illegal substances from one state to the next. The embalming process created a strong enough chemical stench to throw off drug dogs and few cops would risk/stomach desecrating a human body during a search. Corpses would have made some sort of sense but to have a room full of comatose teens? It didn’t add up.
“We could have stumbled onto an organ farm.” I commented which made Fiona paled even more, “But these bodies look intact.”
“No scars.” Agreed West.
The redhead was only in her underwear and if there were any scars to be found on her lithe figure, I didn’t detect any.
“Check her for a pulse?” I asked.
“We stop heartbeats,” Kurt informed me, “Don’t measure ‘em.”
“Well I don’t know how to do it.” I confessed.
All three of us turned and looked over at Fiona. It took her a moment before her eyes widen with the realization of what we were asking.
“N-no!” She protested, recoiling physically from us, “I’m not touching a dead body!”
“They’re not dead,” I pointed out, “And if you know how to check the vitals…”
“I don’t!” She snapped.
“Fine!” I replied, holding my hands up defeated, “I just wanna know how the hell they keep these folks alive and out of it without an IV drip or something.”
Bringing this to everyone’s attention, my companions looked around the room and concluded I had spoken the truth: this room was completely void of any medical equipment. Hell it had been devoid of light just a moment ago! Once again, I had leapt head first into the bizarre and wasn’t enjoying it.
Figuring that everything needed a more thorough examination, I took a deep breath and emptied my mind of all the wrong that was unsettling me. It was time to reassess this situation now that the shock had alleviated somewhat. I needed to examine everything piece by piece, bit by bit, to find something that made sense here.
I started with the body. Young, female, red hair, cute. She would have definitely been the poster child for a media frenzy if she had been kidnapped. A runaway then? She was old enough that the cops wouldn’t take too much of an interest in her if she did skip out on her parents, figuring she had just left town with a boyfriend or something equally mundane. In short she was a perfect candidate for the Daughters of All.
Moving on, I started scanning the cot. It was cheap and had only the bare essentials. No pillow, no blanket…but there was a sheet between the body and the thin cotton-stuffed canvas that made up the actual cot. That’s when I saw it. The bottom corner closest to me was wrinkled while the rest of the sheet looked undisturbed…as if the body hadn’t moved since it had lain down. Running my finger along the edge of the cot, I took a few steps down until I was standing by the feet of the redhead. Above me were two more sets of feet from the other two occupants on the higher cots. I shivered, thinking of a morgue.
“What are you doing?” Fiona asked, puzzled.
“Let him work.” West murmured, folding his massive arms across his broad chest, “It’s best to let him do what he does.”
“You’ve helped him investigate the paranormal before?” Fiona asked skeptically.
Kurt and West shared a look.
“No,” West admitted, his grin stretching from ear to ear, “But I’ve seen him work.”
Furrowing her brow, not quite understanding what the giant had meant, Fiona just fell silent and watched me. I was glad that I didn’t need to break my concentration to create a cover story/lie. I was positive that Fiona was having her doubts about my investigative skills, paranormal or otherwise. Hopefully I could string her along until this whole mess was over and done with…or when her usefulness was at an end.
Maybe I could even squeeze a few more bucks out of her.
Now that I was by the redhead’s feet, I focused on the wrinkled part of the sheet. Given the indents that her feet were making on the cot, it wasn’t likely she had moved or so much as kicked a foot in quite some time. That meant the sheet had been wrinkled by someone else…probably the person responsible for their incapacitation.
Taking hold of the bottom of the sheet, I lifted it so that I could see what lay underneath. Though I had a strong feeling that nothing I could do would wake the slumbering teen, I still took extra care not to disturb the cot’s occupant. Reaching underneath the sheet with my free hand, my fingertips brushed something cold and solid. I took hold of a flat object and pulled it free then dropped the sheet. In my hand I held a clipboard with a healthy stack of papers clamped to it.
“What’s that?” Fiona asked, noticing my discovery.
Giving the clipboard a quick once-over, I shook my head. This was getting stranger and stranger! Just to be safe, I thumbed through a few more pages and as far as I could tell, what I held was authentic.
“Well?” West prompted, apparently just as curious as Fiona.
“They’re adoption papers.” I informed them, taking the top pages off the clipboard and pocketing them.
Realizing that whoever would check these bodies would know that a few pages were missing, I didn’t bother replacing the clipboard or tucking back in the sheet. Instead I just dropped the clipboard at my feet and reached for the bunk above the redhead. On it laid a cute Latina girl, who couldn’t have been week over fourteen. Reaching under the sheet of the middle bunk, I retrieved a similar clipboard. Once again I took the top page off the adoption forms and then repeated the process for the occupant of the top bunk.
“Adoption?” Fiona murmured, clearly as confused as I was, “Why?”
“Good question.” I replied, a headache forming behind my eyes as my burned out mind struggled to make sense of what this cult was up to, “But for now let’s get out of here! We definitely need to rethink this whole mess…”
Quite bitterly I added, “Again!”
We all turned towards the exit but none of us advanced towards the lounge door. In the movies, this is where the evil villain and his gun toting flunkies would be standing in the doorway, ready to pitch some dialogue before pumping us full of lead. But this wasn’t some played out Hollywood routine…someone was blocking our path but not anyone we expected.
A strikingly beautiful woman stood in the door way with an amused smile on her face. Her hour-glass figure was covered in a little black dress so tight it seemed more like a second skin. Though her body was firm and her beauty was enough to even give Fiona a run for her money, there was one thing that this woman couldn’t hide: She was aging. Her dark hair had streaks of silver through it and her coal-black eyes were surrounded by heavy make-up, probably to hide the crow’s feet. This didn’t seem to stop the woman from flaunting her appealing body but to see such a mature woman with as much modesty as a high school tramp was rather sad.
“I see that some partygoers need a change of venue,” The mature woman stated, her voice tickled ever so slightly with an accent that I couldn’t place, “Oh such a shame. Your little group would have been quite welcome among us…”
As the woman spoke, her eyes locked on Fiona. The grin on the woman’s painted lips widened as her eyes ran up and down Fiona’s body as uncouthly as any sailor might eye a streetwalker after months at sea. Understandably unnerved at the stare, Fiona took a step closer to me and the Twins.
Just minutes before, I had figured drawing the cult out would have been a good thing. Hell I had planned on it! But now, with a lounge full of dead-ish bodies, I wasn’t too keen on confronting
anyone just yet. Not only for my safety but for the safety of the women lining these walls.
I cleared my throat, “Would you believe we’re the new stereo installation crew?”
The woman gave a sharp laugh.
“Of course not,” She replied smugly, turning her eyes towards me, “I am many things but a fool is not one of them.”
“I was afraid of that.” I sighed, “Kurt?”
The biker took a step forward, drawing his .45 as he did so and leveling it right at the woman. For someone who was outnumbered and had a military-grade weapon trained on them, this woman didn’t seem too concerned. In fact, her aloofness was beginning to worry (and annoy) me.
“Oh no!” The woman cried in a tone that was anything but sincere, “You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood would you? Not with a witness present?”
With that, the woman reached over and pulled another person into view. It was the same junkie that we had let escape. Seeing his reward for informing his boss about our activities was becoming her human shield, he was clearly regretting his choice as his left eye began twitching wildly.
“I have more than one bullet.” Kurt stated simply, turning the gun on the junkie who was now the unwilling buffer between us and the woman.
“Oh how very barbaric,” Purred the woman, her grin peeking over the junkie’s shoulder, “But I can’t stay and play with you. I have an appointment to keep.”
With Kurt and his handgun supplying superior firepower for this odd little stand off, I gained some courage and stepped forward, trying to display as much confidence as I could muster. I added a little roguish flare and a dash of swagger to the mix, just to counterbalance the uneasiness I was feeling.
“Well you’re going to have to wait on that facelift, ya old hag,” I proclaimed, noting that my barb concerning the woman’s age drew a venomous glare, “But you have much to answer for. First and foremost being your involvement with the Daughters of All.”
The woman’s eyes widened with surprise and her amused smiled faded as she sized me up. Apparently she hadn’t expected us to know about the cult. Her eyes narrowed in anger and irritation but oddly enough her irritation didn’t seem directed at us. I could almost see her mind’s eye conjuring up the focus of her frustration…a superior perhaps? A partner?
“It seems you aren’t just some nosey knaves after all,” She replied with a laugh too strained to be genuine, “I must make it a point to stop depending on disappointing rift-raft.”
If the junkie had looked scared before, he was definitely panicking now as he craned his neck, trying to look at the woman standing behind him. He wasn’t begging verbally but his eyes were wide and wild, pleading silently with his boss.
“I don’t know who you are or how much you know,” The woman continued, her voice becoming ice cold, “But I can’t allow you to leave this place. It’s a shame…I could have really used someone like you.”
These last words were directed at Fiona as the woman gave my client a longing glance. The look she gave the rest of us was nothing short of bone chilling, filled with the cold kind of malice that only a woman could summon. She raised one of her hands high in the air, a syringe wrapped tightly in her fist.
“Kill them all!” She shouted into the junkie’s ear as she slammed the needle right into his neck, “Do not damage the vessels.”
The contents of the syringe were injected into the junkie with a simple press of her thumb. Shoving the junkie forward, the woman turned and fled, the sound of her heels click-clacking down the hallway mocking us as she made her escape.
“Broker?” Kurt asked, his gun still leveled at the junkie who was now twitching something fierce.
“Don’t shoot!” I ordered, moving towards the junkie, “He’s the only witness we have for Zotkin!”
Against my better judgment, I hurried towards the junkie despite the erratic behavior he was now displaying. In seconds the addict had gone from twitching to full out body spasms that seemed beyond his control. His head jerked back and forth so savagely it was a wonder he didn’t snap his own neck and his hands began clawing at the front of his shirt.
“Hey buddy,” I called as soothingly as possible, “Listen, we can get you some help! Just keep calm...”
The junkie’s eyes opened wide. What I saw in those eyes wasn’t the euphoria that came with alien chemicals entering your bloodstream and fucking with your synapses. No, the red-rimmed eyes of the junkie were full of fear of such intensity it was contagious…then his eyes began to dilate until they were pools of black.
I jumped back just in time to avoid being spit on by the junkie as he began to convulse and foam at the mouth.
“Oh my god!” Fiona cried, “We’ve got to get him to the hospital!”
“West!” I called out and the giant came running.
As West and I got on either side of the junkie hoping to grab his flailing arms, the addict fell to his knees. The random spasms stopped just long enough for his hands to start clawing at his chest. His yellowed fingernails dug at the fabric of his shirt as he desperately tried to rip open the garment. After several attempts the junkie finally grabbed the collar of his shirt and tore it down the middle, then quickly discarded the garment to reveal his sickly pale skin underneath.
But flesh the color of a fish belly wasn’t the only thing underneath that shirt. Stunned, West and I took several steps away from the junkie, appalled at what we were witnessing. Across the addict’s chest, angry red lines were appearing as if being carved into his skin by some dull, invisible knife. The markings didn’t bleed but the skin was irritated and red, almost like fresh scar tissue.
My astonishment numbed my fear somewhat but that all faded when recognition popped into my head. Those markings, so strange and tightly interwoven were familiar. In fact, they were nearly identical to the blood-painted design that had been on the ceiling of my office…the same markings that were undoubtedly connected to the trash-thing that had attacked me.
“Get back!” I shouted in alarm.
A painfully savage howl cut through the air as the junkie threw his head back and screamed. Foamy spittle ran down the corners of his mouth while tears flowed freely from his terrified eyes. He opened his mouth wide, almost to the point of dislocating his jaw as a savage series of convulsions racked his poor body. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, out of the foam-caked lips of the junkie wafted several strands of blue vapor. The wisps of vapor were transparent, nearly invisible as they danced in the air like smoke before vanishing completely.
After the vapors exited the junkie’s mouth, he let out one final, ragged groan and then fell completely still. His head and shoulders slumped forward but he didn’t topple from his kneeling state. It almost looked as if he were bowed in prayer, save for his hands hanging at his side.
It was so quiet in the lounge that I swear a pin drop would have echoed like a gunshot. We were all transfixed by the junkie but then that damnable tingling sensation started at the base of my spine and traveled upwards until my scalp was itching, snapping me out of my spellbound state. Though I didn’t know what to expect, I knew it couldn’t be good if my sixth sense for trouble was already working overtime.
“We need to get out of here!” I said, “Now!”
“But we have to help him!” Fiona argued, unable to tear her eyes off of the poor, slumped figure before us.
I was about to retort with a scalding remark when the junkie began to move again. Slowly, he raised his head and squared his shoulders, his mouth still opened ridiculously wide. Dread was pouring adrenaline into me, giving my body the much needed fuel to run but for some reason, I found myself glued to the spot, unable to move.
Until something moved me.
The junkie slowly got to one knee and as he did so, I shivered. Not in fear but as a reaction to the sudden decrease in temperature. One second everything was normal but the next I felt as if we were standing inside a freezer. I had no time to ponder over the sudden chill as I was knocked off my feet an
d hurled backwards by some unseen force. My back slammed into a set of bunks, causing my cracked ribs to explode with fiery pain. Despite the rough collision, the three gals on the cots didn’t stir but that was no surprise.
Grimacing and fighting through the pain, I did a quick check of the room while I got to my feet. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had been struck by the mysterious energy. The Twins were lying flat on their backs and Fiona was on her stomach, arms akimbo. If I had been worried before, now I was panicking. Whatever possessed the strength to send West soaring through the air was a forced to be reckoned with.
“Is everyone…” Fiona began to ask but her voice caught in her throat.
With a glance I knew why.
It was strange enough that our junkie adversary had decided to grow a scar tissue tattoo on his chest and expel mysterious vapor from his mouth but that all seemed like child’s play to what he was doing now. The addict was blocking the only exit to the room…but doing so while hovering a good two feet off the ground.
Despite displaying his newfound gift of levitation, the junkie did not look too impressive or intimidating. He simply hung limp in the air with his head lolled to the side, almost as if he were a puppet on strings. The addict’s eyes had completely rolled back into his head, revealing nothing but bloodshot whites and every now and again, his mouth moved but no sound came out. He looked less the aggressor and more of a victim of some otherworldly possession.
“Well would you look at that.” West commented casually as he got back to his feet, “That’s one neat trick.”
“Wonder if we can clip his wings?” Kurt speculated as he raised the .45 and squeezed off a few rounds.
The sound of gunfire inside the lounge was deafening. Though my ears were ringing, I had still expected to hear a death cry from the floating freak. I mean even that trash-thing got hurt when I wailed on it with the pipe, right? So not even this hovering freak-show would be able to withstand a high caliber round.
You’d think I’d stop being so naïve.
The first round went wide but the second caught the junkie right in the forehead, snapping his head back savagely. I’ve had the unfortunate luck to be caught in firefights before and I knew for a fact that a .45 round should have turned the junkie’s skull into nothing but a cloud of brain matter, blood and skull fragments.
Apparently the junkie wasn’t aware of the lethality associated with large caliber rounds. Instead of his skull disintegrating, a small trickle of blood began to ooze from his forehead, as if the bullet had simply scratched the skin. In utter disbelief I watched the metal slug fall from the shallow wound and drop to the floor.
“That’s new.” Kurt mumbled, about to squeeze off another shot.
Turning his head to focus on the biker, the junkie let out an inhuman scream that was followed by another intense chill sweeping through the room. As the echo of the spittle-flinging cry died out, Kurt let out a curse as his trusty pistol was ripped from his grasp. Stupefied, we all stared at the gun as it hung in the air, suspended by the mysterious energy at the addict’s command. To his credit, the biker made a grab for his flying firearm before it was thrown across the room, striking the wall so hard it cracked the cement.
“Son of a-!” Kurt growled as he was suddenly lifted off his feet. Cursing all the way, the biker was picked up by the same unseen force before he took an unwilling flight after his firearm. He crashed hard into the wall, narrowly avoiding some cots and their motionless occupants.
“Bastard!” West roared, charging the junkie with the same ferocity as a Pamplona bull.
Even floating off the ground, the junkie barely saw eye to eye with West. The giant threw back his fist and ropy muscles wound and unwound as a wicked haymaker punch was delivered. The blow caught the junkie in the jaw, snapping his limp head to one side as savagely as the .45 slug had. West wasn’t satisfied with just one punch and rained several more bone-jarring blows down upon our possessed opponent.
Despite his apparent weightless, the addict didn’t move an inch from his original hover-space.
Only when he needed to stop and catch his breath did West end his furious assault. The junkie had just taken a beating that had sent stouter men to the ER but the floating freak only had a few bruises beginning to discolor his pale skin…if that wasn’t disturbing enough, blood ran freely from West’s knuckles, as if he had been punching stone and not flesh and bone.
“Fuck!” West panted, “He’s pretty tough!”
Making West’s point even more valid, the junkie went on the offensive by raising his hand and placing it near the giant’s chest. This time the chill that followed was so intense that it stole my breath away. Unable to tear my eyes away from the floating freak, I noticed the air around his hand began to shimmer, much like the desert horizon did during a heat wave. Whatever this mysterious energy was, the junkie didn’t want to keep it to himself and he transferred to West by giving the giant a shove.
Upon contact, the giant’s entire torso began to shimmer as the energy struck his body. Then the three hundred plus pounds of West was hurled across the room like a rag doll caught up in a child’s tantrum. To see someone so large soaring through the air was kinda amusing but also terrifying.
With a grunt, West landed hard on his ass while one of his thick shoulders took out the corner of a bunk. The flimsy cots were jerked savagely by the impact and two unmoving, unflinching bodies fell from their bunks and into West’s lap. Thankfully both of the girls landed on their sides so they didn’t crack their skulls open against the hard floor. West seemed disorientated and for a moment I was afraid whatever the junkie had hit him with was going to have long-term effects.
With a grunt, the giant shook his head and shoved one of the comatose teens off his lap. Though I kept my primary focus on the junkie, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something strange. Each girl had a tattoo on their right shoulder blade, an interwoven spiral that almost looked like a tribal tattoo. My mind filed the tattoo away as something important, a detail to revisit later. As for now, I had bigger problems…
“Fiona,” I called, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, “I believe it’s time for you to make an escape.”
Up until this point, Fiona had been completely numbed by the situation, her face a mask of shock. I’m sure I had worn a similar expression when I had faced off against the trash-thing. It was the result of her mind trying to process a massive amount of unrealistic information and attempted to make sense of it. Or so I suspected. Then again for all I knew Fiona was praying this was all a dream and she would wake up soon, safe and sound in her bed.
I knew I was.
“W-What?” Fiona asked, her voice trembling.
“Try to go around him,” I instructed while reaching into my pocket and drawing my switchblade. With a flick the blade sprang forward, gleaming in the dull florescent lighting, “I’ll distract him.”
I know what you’re thinking. Why would I, the spineless con that I am, suddenly become noble and attempt to save Fiona’s life? Had I gone mad with fear? Was it Doc Holiday Syndrome? Was there some innate good within me that was maturing now that I had a fair young maiden to protect?
Hell no!
I wasn’t telling Fiona to run for her own sake but for mine! She was going to serve as my distraction since I needed an opening to blindside the freak. Of course I had just witnessed the junkie survive a .45 caliber round to the skull but the gunshot had caused him to bleed. Likewise West’s fists had bruised the junkie. That meant our opponent could be injured and I was hoping to provide a fatal wound.
Sure, it was a shitty plan but it was the only one I had.
“Go!” I shouted.
Without need for a second prompt Fiona took off, maintaining a certain grace even as she ran for her life. My heart thundered in my chest as I stared up at the face of the junkie. His vacant expression met mine. For a terrifying moment I thought my ruse wasn’t going to work but as Fiona skirted around the junkie,
the flying freak turned away from me. I can’t describe the relief I felt when the junkie rotated in midair to focus on Fiona. Yes, I know that makes me a soulless prick but being a living soulless prick was better than being a dead hero.
Fiona had almost reached the door when another chill swept through the room, nearly freezing the marrow in my bones. The air shimmered about my client, giving her almost a mirage-like appearance as she was lifted into the air. Unlike the Twins, Fiona wasn’t hurled across the room which was a small blessing in itself. Kicking and squirming, she was left hanging in midair as if the flying freak wasn’t sure how to dispose of the fairer sex.
Even though I had used my client as bait, my opportunity to attack had finally arrived and I wasn’t going to squander it. I charged the junkie, zeroing in on the base of his skull. The soft spot where spine met brainstem was my bull’s eye, a virtual sugar glass window protecting a body’s most vital organ. With his elevated height, I couldn’t just make a wild stab at my target. So I leapt into the air while extending my arm, hoping to use my momentum to drive my switchblade as deep into the junkie’s drug addled brain as possible.
The good news is that I got off the ground.
The bad news was that I didn’t get any closer to my target as I was wrapped up by the addict’s mysterious powers. This was my first official time being directly subjected to the bizarre forces of the paranormal. It was a sensation I’ll never forget no matter how hard I’d try to drink the memory away. The unnatural sensation of weightlessness made my skin crawl and my stomach weak as the mysterious force pushed against me from all sides, locking me in place. Suspended in mid-air, I felt extremely claustrophobic as well completely helpless.
“Shit.” I sighed, wiggling about and discovering that I could move my arms and legs but was unable to propel myself in any direction. I could turn only as far as my body could twist, which allowed me to look over at the Twins who were uncertain at how to proceed with the offensive now that Fiona and I were held hostage several feet off the ground.
Turning in the other direction, I caught Fiona’s eye. She had stopped her struggling, coming to the conclusion we were trapped. I decided to follow her example, opting to test the limits of the force suspending us in a different manner. Using my left foot I pressed my toes against the heel of my right shoe and easily slipped it off. My shoe fell but didn’t remain suspended but instead thudded to the floor.
Good to know.
As my shoe hit the ground, the junkie slowly turned on his invisible pedestal and once again his slack, expressionless face found mine. His eyes were still rolled back into his head and I found that even more disturbing than any of the harsh glares I’d received before and trust me, I’ve had plenty of harsh glares thrown my way. His look was more terrifying because it was so…inhuman.
“So,” I commented as casually as I could, “You hang out here often?”
Fiona groaned and I’d like to think it was from the discomfort of levitation and not from my joke.
In stead of a verbal response, the junkie raised one of his limp hands above his head. That unexplainable chill ripped through me once more, prickling every pore as the addict’s hand began to shimmer. I didn’t know what to expect so I prepared for anything, from a gate to hell opening up to a bunny rabbit popping out of thin air. I was a little out of my element after all.
The shimmering around the junkie’s hand intensified until each one of his fingers danced around like a mirage. I had to avert my gaze from the mysterious display of paranormal power for fear I might throw up. My gaze fell to the ground where I noticed the filthy shirt the addict had discarded but only because the torn cloth had began to shimmer as well.
At first I thought I had bigger concerns than some torn piece of clothing but then I quickly realized that my only concern should be that torn piece of clothing. Before my eyes the shirt began twisting in on itself, tighter and tighter. Soon the cloth was coiled so tightly it looked more like a piece of cord than a piece of clothing. Once the shirt was coiled tight enough, each end raised up and came together to form a loop. Though not a fan of westerns, I knew what a hangman’s noose was and realize that’s what the shirt was trying to imitate.
At a menacingly slow pace the noose began to float towards me.
“Listen buddy,” I hastily spoke, “I don’t know what the hell’s come over you but I can promise you that if you let us go, you’ll be set!”
No response. Instead, the flying freak clenched his hand into a fist and the noose increased its speed.
“Zotkin! You know Zotkin, right?!” I nearly wheezed, my voice hoarse with desperation, “Every dealer knows him including yours! Smack, crack, weed, meth, whatever you want I can get you!”
The junkie’s slack expression didn’t change in the least which told me that this poor soul was completely lost. For experienced druggies the mention of more substances to abuse always piqued their interests, even when in throes of the deepest rage or the thickest drug-induced haze.
As I realized I was wasting my breath trying to bargain with the addict, the noose draped itself over my shoulders then constricted, biting into my neck. My free hand tore at the material but it was wound up so tightly that my fingers couldn’t find a decent purchase to tear at it.
“Do you really want to do this?!” I shouted desperately as the noose dug deep into my skin, “You’re finger prints will be all over this place! No way you can cover up four murders! Think this through!”
I know I was scrapping the bottom of the barrel here. It was a pretty pathetic argument considering I was speaking to someone who was levitating. If the laws of physics weren’t applying to this deadbeat, what would make him think the laws of man would?
The shirt continued to constrict, cutting off any further dialogue as it began to squeeze my windpipe shut. My experiences with garrote wires (far too many) told me not to waste my breath struggling wildly. Instead I needed to remain calm and make my last few breaths count. Ignoring the panic swelling up inside me, I forced myself to focus. Through teary vision I adjusted my grip on my switchblade and began to pray to every deity I’d ever heard of for help.
Now as any knife fighter will tell you, weight and balance is key when throwing a blade. That’s why throwing a switchblade is so difficult. You can’t throw it with a snap of your wrist because if it spun at all, the heavier handle would ruin its rotation. That’s why I’ve learned to throw my switchblade like a dart. Holding the handle like a pencil, I lined up my shot as I brought my arm towards my chest, then made a pushing motion while releasing the knife...at the exact moment the noose gave a violent tug to finish me off.
Not only did the noose’s sudden tug completely cut off my air supply, it also jerked the rest of my body so hard that my already hindered throw became an even bigger SNAFU. I had been aiming for the junkie’s eye, figuring that even if I didn’t kill him, I might at least blind the fucker for the rest of his days. No dice. When my body was jerked, my grip loosened and I accidentally released the knife before my arm was fully extended, resulting in the switchblade wobbling through the air in a drunken arc. Since the full momentum of my arm didn’t transfer into the throw, it seemed my last effort was a wasted one.
Thankfully that wasn’t the case.
Luckily (or perhaps fatefully) the arc that my trusty switchblade took caused it’s blade to strike against the junkie’s chest…dead center of the scar tissue tattoo he had received after his inexplicable injection. Just like the Twins’ attacks, my knife only seemed to do skin-deep damage. The tip of the blade broke the skin, piercing just deep enough to draw blood before gravity took over. As the switchblade fell it created a bloody gash down the flying freak’s body, its keen edge passing through the angry red scar tissue that polluted his chest like a scalpel.
One of the gods I had called upon must have been smiling on me. The moment the scar tissue tattoo was damaged, the mysterious forces that kept me and Fiona trapped in the air vanished. The fall was unexpected and we both l
anded in a heap on the floor.
“Kurt! West!” I coughed at the top of my lungs as I started tearing at the makeshift noose around my neck, “Aim for his chest!”
Kurt had already gotten back to his feet and was now trying to salvage his firearm. Since the wall of this lounge was pretty much drywall slapped against concrete, the .45 was a lost cause. Realizing this, the biker dropped to one knee and freed a Glock from his ankle holster. He only took a moment to aim before squeezing the trigger three times. One shot caught the flying freak in the throat but once more the damage was only skin deep. The second shot caught the junkie in the shoulder and didn’t even leave a bruise as the slug rolled off his skin like a raindrop.
Third time was the charm it seemed as the final round managed to take the flying freak dead center in the chest. This time the bullet did its job, shredding flesh and causing even more damage to the scar tissue tattoo. Unfortunately the bullet wasn’t fatal which was a testament to whatever powers were being granted to the junkie. Instead of dying, he merely floated back down to earth as blood poured from his freshest wound.
Still standing uneasily, the junkie ignored his bleeding chest and summoned more of his bizarre power. Invisible force slammed into Kurt and he didn’t even have time to curse before being launched backwards as if hit by a semi truck. The biker managed to knock over two cots before the wall of the lounge finally stopped his flight.
My hearing was just coming back from the abuse suffered from the gunshots when another deafening sound tore through the air. It was West, who had somehow managed to rip a metal post from one of the cots. The giant was now charging directly towards the junkie, the makeshift weapon being held like a lance as he bellowed a wordless challenge.
The junkie regarded West with the same blank expression he gave all of us, completely oblivious of the danger the charging giant represented. Despite his facial expression (or lack thereof), the freak did attempt to defend himself. The air began to shimmer around his hands but it was too late for even the paranormal powers at play to save the addict. West’s massive strides simply covered too much ground. With another bellow, the giant threw his entire weight behind his assault.
What followed was nothing short of gruesome.
The muscles in the giant’s arms ripple as he slammed his makeshift spear right into the open wound in the junkie’s chest. All that momentum had to go somewhere and it seemed that our opponent’s flesh just wasn’t up to the task of containing it all. A good three inches of the metal post exited the addict’s back, sending a spray of blood raining down upon the floor.
West stepped back, a grim smile on his face.
With a bullet and makeshift spear lodged in his chest, the junkie finally seem to relinquish whatever occult powers he possessed. That strange bluish vapor reappeared before his lips, which he greedily sucked up in a few ragged breaths. The addict’s eyes returned to normal, showing irises filled with panic, pain and confusion…as if he didn’t understand what had just happened. With trembling hands he reached up, touching the metal pole sticking out of him. He tried several times to verbally express his need for assistance but only managed a gurgling sound that ended with a wet, bloody cough.
The addict took one last step forward, raising a blood-slick hand out to me, his grotesquely dilated eyes begging for help. A violent convulsion tore through him and the junkie collapsed, never to rise again.
With another dead body just a few feet from me, I must say this was quickly becoming the most horrific week of my life. Only through a series of deep breathing exercises was I keeping my cool. Likewise the Twins were looking irritatingly calm. Apparently if gang wars, hit men and firefights couldn’t faze them, this sure as hell wouldn’t.
Fiona on the other hand…
Considering it was the first murder (albeit justified) my client had ever witnessed, it was obvious that she wasn’t taking it well. Shock had given Fiona the same lack of expression the junkie had worn while he was airborne. Experience told me she was a ticking time bomb and at any moment she could either start screaming hysterically or cry uncontrollably.
“Okay guys,” I declared, “That was…particularly fucked up. Now let’s get the hell outta here.”
Stepping up to Fiona, I took her by the wrist and guided her around the corpse, heading towards the door. She almost seemed as empty as the comatose teens lining the walls. Stress had simply switched her off, at least momentarily. I wasn’t in the mood to wait around for her senses to return and hurried her along.
As I mentioned before, I’m a prick.
“What about them?” West asked, indicating to the rows and rows of teenaged girls.
“What about them?!” I demanded, “My threshold for weird shit has just been reached! Let’s just get the fuck out of here before the gates of hell open up, ok?”
Without another look back, I stepped out of the lounge, dragging Fiona along with me. The Twins followed close behind, alert for any other danger that might be lurking in the club. Luckily we encountered none and exited Hell Scratch without further incident or paranormal encounter.
Though my comment on my weirdness threshold had been accurate at the time, I look back nowadays and just laugh. If flying junkies and storerooms full of comatose teenaged girls were the weirdest thing I’d have ever encountered, I’d still have some sanity left by week’s end.