The Gathering Storm
Thunderheads piled miles high in the blackened grey vastness of a lowering sky, and the world trembled as the heavens were split asunder with the electric roar of thunder. The barrier between here and there was weakened by its might, unfolding many a possibility for the coming night.
The murder man led his small congregation along the desert highway, their steps sure and steady, their thoughts focused on how best to seize the day, for when the time came, they would be ready. The murder man's purpose was their own now, their old lives bereft and forgotten when they'd pledged themselves to he whose heart was soiled and rotten. His whisper was his power, his words his might, and he planned to use them to convert a few more this coming night. He wouldn't need much, because what he needed wasn’t something that required making … he'd use his whisper to reach the darkness that was already within, ripe and ready for the taking. His purpose would become theirs as well, and they would become part of his flock, eager to help him rescue this world from its deluded hell. He traveled east along the highway, moving towards his soon-to-be acolytes, eager to add them to his growing might …
The laughing monster unfolded early from her slumber, the promise of a grand future in her diminutive form, pleasantly awakened by the grumbling of the coming storm. She cast about in the still, pregnant air for the scent of her prey, which she had been gleefully pursuing for several days. It didn't take long, as they'd been unable to make it far in their weakened state, and she took to the desert highway with a song, ready to deal out their fate. Such was her way throughout the long years, centuries full of adventure, laughter, and perhaps a few tears; she was a unique and deadly jewel, a monster ahead of her time, strange and beautiful in a world occupied by fools. She traveled west along the highway, following the scent of her hapless victims, their futures subject to her mercurial and often vicious whims …
As the fading light slowly dissipated, the desert held its breath, for a reckoning was anticipated …
The Murder Man
In that dream I recall
Pieces of prisons
I'm escaping
From a black hole I crawl
Beneath my halo emanating
The only proof you need
Is that you know
And today's way's divine
Right brainwashed overnight
Mushroomhead
He stepped out of the cave and looked up at the storm gathering across the enormous canvas of the desert sky, smiling at the endless stacks of glowering thunderheads darkening the late afternoon. “Now that’s what I like to see,” he said amiably, “Weather with some character to it.”
Glancing back behind himself, he saw the members of his congregation, nearly twenty strong, filing out of the cave, yawning and stretching out the kinks from sleeping the hot day away in the cool darkness. Traveling in this part of the country on foot was always easier if you did it at night. He could’ve just made his congregation march through the searing daylight hours, and they would’ve willingly done it for him, but there would’ve been several less of them by the time night fell, he was sure of that. The heat and sun made no difference to him, because he was above such things, but his congregation, as pure as their minds had become, were still made of meat and carried all of the frailties therein.
But he didn’t mind, because he preferred to travel at night anyway. It was more interesting then, and the people that came out at night were usually the more receptive types. Besides, it wasn’t his congregation’s fault they were made of meat. They weren’t allowed to choose their corporeal materials any more than they’d been allowed to object to the crude and wicked forms those materials had been shaped in. But unlike the rest of the teeming hordes running amuck over the world, at least his congregation understood the inherent wrongness of themselves and their forms, and they were doing their best to make amends. Over the past few days, they’d killed several dozen people, and had helped him wreck numerous others, turning them into ticking time-bombs just waiting to explode at random points in the future. His congregation was trying very hard, and that was enough to make him feel sorry for them, damned and doomed as they were.
Some of them were more damned and doomed than others, it seemed, as one of his congregation fell to the dusty ground with a groan and a thud. A cursory glance told him that it was an older woman, not very well-suited for the travels they’d made, and apparently the previous night’s march and mayhem had gotten the better of her. She’d been a schoolteacher in her previous life, if memory served. He figured she’d probably dealt with more than a few bad apples in her time, if the way she’d eagerly ripped the throats out of those children a few nights ago was any indication. Resentments like that had a way of working themselves to the surface when one’s true nature was let loose.
The schoolteacher, ragged and reeking, tried to push herself back to her feet, determined to continue serving him, regardless of the cost to her body. The spirit was willing, but the meat was weak. She grumbled and cursed to herself in the semi-mindless manner of those that he’d freed entirely from civilization’s delusional framework, and he doubted that she had any idea what she was saying. Like the other members of his congregation, she’d become a creature of unadulterated instinct and drive, humanity in its purest form: a meaty mechanism of murder. They followed him instinctively because they recognized him for what he was and knew on the most basic level that he and he alone would help them fulfill their one and only purpose for existence. Their obedience was absolute and natural.
So the schoolteacher kept trying to get back to her feet, even though one of her legs could no longer support her. He appreciated her devotion, but the fact of the matter was that she’d just slow down tonight’s march, and he wanted to get some work done and get a lot of ground covered before the sun came up. He’d sensed a prime candidate down in Florida, a young man of incredible charisma and vitality, and the murder man wanted to get him converted as soon as possible. Someone like that would be priceless to his cause.
“Kill her,” he said, his deep voice instantly moving his congregation to action.
They set upon the schoolteacher like a pack of snarling jackals, ripping the flesh from her bones and tearing her to pieces even as she continued her struggle to regain her footing, her nonsensical growls echoing in the still air.
“Ust! Ust! Domuck al targ! Targ!” she roared until a fifteen year-old boy bit out her tongue and pulled her jaw from her face with a wet shlupping noise.
“Domuck al targ. That’s a new one,” he murmured as he watched them tear her apart, enjoying the sight of his congregation slurping up the fresh blood and devouring the hot meat, fighting amongst themselves for the biggest pieces. The sight of humanity without its pretensions was always a pleasant one.
Once his congregation had quickly reduced the schoolteacher to nothing but broken bones and cloth fragments, they turned to him expectantly, their faces bloody and even dirtier than before.
“Let’s get moving,” he said, motioning towards a highway a few hundred yards away. “Got a lot of ground to cover.”
When he started towards the strip of asphalt knifing its way through the desert landscape like a black blade, his congregation immediately fell in step behind him as they headed east, in the direction of the coming storm. He smiled.
* * *
An hour into the march, they came across a dingy little truck stop just off the highway, and he brought his congregation to a halt a distance away from the parking lot, eyeing the place with interest. There were several cars and a number of semi trucks parked in the lot, and he could see lights and activity through one of the diner’s windows. This was good.
Overhead, the sky had darkened even further, and thunder rumbled continuously through the air, sounding like the slow cracking of a giant’s bones. Lightning sparked back and forth between the thunderheads, filling them up with electric light, illuminating the weird, primeval rock formations scattered throughout the desert with an eerie luminosity, transforming the harshly beautiful scenery into an unearthly tableau of even greater beauty.
A light wind picked up and ruffled his dark, shaggy hair and made his long black jacket flap around his lean body. Grit skittered along the highway, drifting along the black surface like millions of tiny ghosts. The electrified air was ripe with promise.
“Wait here,” he said to his congregation, not even bothering to look back at them, because he knew they’d obey his words without question.
The murder man strode across the cracked parking lot, glancing at the parked and dusty vehicles with only mild attention, as such tools of humanity were of little interest to him; they were merely the by-products of deluded minds. Though using one of the vehicles would have made his cross-country travel quicker and easier, he’d found that he just couldn’t bring himself to use one, especially since he now had his congregation with them. It seemed flat-out wrong to have freed those people to their true state and then use a car or truck to move them around. Humanity had evolved feet for a reason, after all. It was much more natural to walk to their destination.
It didn’t take long to cross the parking lot, and he breezed through the grimy glass door of the diner, the smell of greasy cooking and the sound of honky-tonk music assaulting his senses as he stopped and took in the place. It was no different than a thousand other truck stop diners scattered throughout this part of the country, and it was currently occupied by over a dozen people, not including the small staff. It looked like a couple of groups of travelers and several truckers, along with a few loners hunkered over their food at the counter or one of the tables. Plenty of candidates here.
“Y’all havin’ anything, sugar?” asked the tired, worn-looking waitress standing behind the counter.
He nodded and stepped over to one of the stools that lined the counter, taking a seat and resting his elbows on the shabby Formica surface. “Could I see a menu, please?”
When she handed him one without a word, he gave her a look of faint curiosity. “Having a hard day?”
She sighed, blowing a few wisps of stray hair from her face. “Ain’t they all?” she asked, her tone indicating that she’d heard that question from at least a thousand other people over the course of her years.
He shrugged. “They don’t have to be,” he softly replied, smiling at her.
The waitress frowned; she’d probably heard that one before, too. “Says who?”
“Says you, and me, and everybody else, actually,” he murmured. “This isn’t the right way to be, to tell you the truth. But then, you already know that, deep down.”
She laughed, leaning forward to hear him better, as it was hard to catch his quiet words in the noisy diner. “I do, do I?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” he said assuredly, nodding as he spoke. “Let me tell you something …”
As he whispered into her ear, her pupils began to rapidly dilate and contract while her teeth ground together. “Stas, ackuh,” she muttered with a shudder. “Ackuh? Bhon!”
The murder man sat back on his stool and rested his hands on his unopened menu. “Bhon indeed,” he said cordially.
The waitress’ head snapped back and forth in confusion, looking at the interior of the diner as though she’d never seen it before. Actually, she hadn’t. Not through the eyes of a free woman. She growled softly in her throat, her hands twitching with a life of their own.
A sudden blast of nearby thunder made everybody in the diner jump, and the lights flickered for a few moments before reasserting themselves. By the time they did, the murder man had sauntered over to one of the booths and was striking up a conversation with a pleasant-looking man who was a devoted husband and father of two. The waitress remained where she was, continuing to look around and growl to herself, her hands picking at her outfit now, though she seemed unaware of doing it. He didn’t give her a second thought; she’d keep for the time being.
“So where y’all heading for?” he asked the pleasant-looking man, smiling down at him and his family. Though the wife clearly wasn’t thrilled with the dusty and road-worn appearance of the murder man, his tone was quite friendly and hard to resist.
“California,” replied the pleasant-looking man, returning the smile. “Summer vacation, family trip to Disneyland and a day or two in Hollywood.”
“Oh yeah? I just left California last week. Had some business to take care of, and now I’m back on the road again.”
“Where are you headed to now?”
“On down to Florida. Got business to take care of there, too. Could turn out to be something pretty big, if everything pans out right.” He glanced out the window, looking for his congregation, but the semi trucks parked in the lot blocked them from view, which was probably just as well.
“Can’t argue with that,” said the pleasant-looking man. “Hope it turns out good for you. What kind of business are you in?”
Turning his eyes back to the family, the murder man said, “The future, actually. As a matter of fact, I think it’s something that you might be able to play a part in, believe it or not.”
The pleasant-looking man and his equally pleasant-looking wife exchanged glances, not sure what to make of that, and the man raised an eyebrow. “Not sure if I follow you.”
“That’s all right. You will soon enough. Let me tell you something, friend.” He leaned over and started to whisper into the pleasant-looking man’s ear.
The pleasant-looking wife saw the odd look enter into her husband’s eyes and noticed the way he began to grind his teeth as the stranger murmured to him. She didn’t have time to wonder about it, though, because an enormous clap of thunder roared through the heavens directly overhead, rattling the diner with its raw meteorological fury. A second later, the lights went out.
Her pleasant-looking children, aged 5 and 7, let out cries of surprise, and she immediately turned towards them, her motherly instincts causing her to momentarily forget her husband as she comforted the youngsters, reassuring them that everything was just fine.
She didn’t forget her husband for long, however, as his low, exalted exclamation of “Oh wow!” drew her attention back to him.
The look on his face was one of complete, inexplicable joy, and he sat in his seat smiling as though he’d just received a million-dollar raise. The stranger had disappeared during the few seconds she’d been turned away, and she thought she caught his shadow moving towards the back of the diner. It was hard to tell. The faint remnants of daylight flowing in through the windows didn’t do much to alleviate the darkness that now filled the little building.
“Stas ackuh! Ackuh bhon!” barked a lady from somewhere over by the counter. What that was supposed to mean, the pleasant-looking wife hadn’t the slightest idea.
“Ohwak! Ammagammabammadam! Bammadam!” came from somewhere towards the rear. Whoever it was, he sounded pretty angry.
It was immediately followed up by a call of “Snack! Snack! Wassnack!” that came from the same general area.
The pleasant-looking wife gave her grinning husband a look of concern, glancing towards the frightened children for a moment. “What’s all that about?” she asked, not liking the nonsensical shoutings at all. Something about them set off warning bells in her head, though she didn’t know why. She suddenly wanted to get the hell out of there and back on the road, despite the growing storm outside, which looked fit to explode all over the desert at any second. “Maybe we should go …”
“Maybe you should,” said the pleasant-looking man, his voice even more pleasant than usual.
He suddenly lunged across the table with a feral snarl, bit deeply into her cheek, and ripped away half of her pleasant face with a sharp twist of his head. Her shriek was cut off when he ripped her throat out in much the same manner a couple of seconds later.
Fortunately for her, she was just about dead by the time he started in on their children with his teeth and nails.
The Laughing Monster
Hey, look out!
Elmore and Janine stumbled west along the highway, furtively glancing
behind themselves every few steps, their grimy faces etched with looks of terror
that never quite went away. They’d
lost track of how many days they’d been at this, and though intellectually
they knew it couldn’t have been very many, emotionally they felt as though
they’d been on this hellish hike for years. Their torn,
dusty clothes were liberally splattered with their own blood and they were both
beginning to look rather gaunt and ragged from lack of food, sleep, and anything
even resembling comfort. Thirst
also burned in them as they staggered through the wan daylight, but it wasn’t
as bad as it could have been, because on the few occasions they’d been able to
sleep, they’d awoke to find small bottles of clean water waiting for them,
apparently left by their pursuer. It
only took the barest edge off the thirst, but it was enough to keep them alive
and moving, which was further torture in and of itself. It
would’ve been so easy for them to just lay down and die from lack of water,
but they’d found that no matter how badly they wanted to die, they couldn’t
resist the water left for them, even if drinking it meant continued existence
and suffering. The first couple of
times they’d drank the water, it had been gratefully and eagerly, but now it
was an agony to drink it, and the last time, they’d even cried.
They hadn’t even been able to bring themselves to waste the tears that
had fallen. As much as they wanted
to die, they lacked the strength to see that conviction through. Had it only
been last week when the monster had shown up at the door of their house in west
Texas and dragged them into this nightmare?
Last week may as well have been a lifetime ago. Elmore
looked up at the darkening sky with aching, bloodshot eyes, knowing what the
thunderheads high above and the dropping temperature meant.
Soon they were going to be trudging through a thunderstorm, an enormous
one from the looks of it, and there was going to be water everywhere.
He knew they’d drink as much as they could.
They’d probably make themselves sick from how much they’d drink, and
they’d go right ahead and drink even more.
He groaned and hung his head. Janine
took his hand and gave it a weak squeeze. They
were in this together, and at least they had each other. They heard a
truck rumbling down the highway behind them, and though they moved over to the
shoulder, they didn’t even bother looking back to see it approach. It wasn’t going to stop for them. Hardly anybody did, and those that did actually stop were
chased away by the monster. Even
the cops stayed clear of them. The semi
roared past them without even slowing down, blatting its horn at them as it blew
by, the driver probably annoyed that they hadn’t moved farther off the
highway. To hell with him. No matter how bad he had it, he was living the good life
compared to them. He would’ve
done them a favor if he’d veered off the road and had splattered them against
the stainless steel grille of his big rig.
That wouldn’t have hurt as much as living did. Time passed
and the sky continued to darken, the thunder growing nearer with each successive
crash, and the air continued to cool off as a soft breeze began to blow. Janine
stumbled and nearly fell, but Elmore caught her with a shaky hand and draped an
emaciated arm over her sunburnt shoulders.
“It’s all right, baby,” he mumbled, his tongue puffy and clumsy. “We’ll make it through this, somehow. We’ve been through some narrow scrapes before, and we’ve
always come out on top. Just
don’t give up.” His wife
didn’t share his vaguely optimistic outlook.
“It’s never been like this,” she slurred, her lank hair hanging in
knotted strings around her narrow face. “I
don’t even know if we’re still alive or not.” “Of course
we’re alive,” he said. “We’re
not beat yet.” “Living
shouldn’t hurt this much,” she moaned.
“We’re in Hell. We’ve
got to be. That’s a demon back there, I know it is!” They both automatically
glanced back down the highway, looking for their pursuer, but there was nothing
to be seen save the asphalt ribbon retreating into the far distance, the arid
landscape decorated with strange, ancient rock formations and scrubby brush here
and there. The monster was nowhere
to be found. As a matter of fact,
they hadn’t seen or heard her at all today, not while they’d laid up in the
shadows or the entire time they’d been walking.
This was the longest they’d gone without any kind of contact with her,
and Elmore felt hope rise up in his weary heart. He voiced
his observations to Janine, and she shook her head.
“She’s just toying with us. We
couldn’t get so lucky.” Elmore
wouldn’t let his hope be crushed quite so easily.
“Maybe she’s done with us. Maybe
she’s bored with following us. Maybe
she’s found somebody else to fuck with!” Janine
laughed bitterly. “Why find
someone else when we’re still around? Why
would she keep leaving water for us if she didn’t want to keep us alive so she
could keep right on fucking with us?” He didn’t
have an answer for that. “She’s
the devil, she must be,” Janine growled.
“No, she’s got to be worse, because the devil would just kill
us and be done with it, instead of this. What
does she want from us? What the
fuck does she want?!” Her voice
grew higher and louder as hysteria took hold in her again.
Elmore tried to calm her down, but it was no use, and she shoved him away
as she turned around and began to scream into the distance. “What
do you want?! Why are you doing
this to us?!” she howled, her hands clenched into shaking fists as she
wailed over and over again, getting no answer whatsoever to her plaintive
questions. “Who the fuck are
you to do this?! What gives you the
right?!” His heart
broke as he looked at the frayed skeleton of the woman that had been his wife
for over ten years now. She’d
always taken such great pains to make sure she looked as good as she possibly
could, and she’d successfully waged her war against aging and decline,
continuing to look vibrant and beautiful while her contemporaries began to show
signs of time taking its toll. All
of that had been eradicated since that laughing monster had come into their
lives, and Janine looked like she’d aged over twenty years in less than a
week. They’d been a harsh twenty years at that.
He was sure he looked just as bad, probably worse, and even if they made
it out of this in one piece, he doubted they’d ever look or feel like the
young, happy couple they’d once been. They’d
probably never be able to sleep soundly again, either.
What little sleep they’d been able to grab had been shallow and
fearful, stolen away by the slightest noise, the smallest sound that might have
been the monster creeping up on them. The
lack of sleep was not only wearing on their bodies, but their minds as well,
Janine more so than himself, and he wondered just how much longer they’d be
able to keep going, even with the monster supplying them with water.
Something was going to have to give sooner or later. Where were
they even going? He had no idea. When the monster had arrived, she’d beaten the hell out of
them and had chased them out of their house and down the street, and they’d
ran as fast and hard as they could, desperate to get away. They’d kept right on running as the days had passed, not
knowing where they were going, just so long as it was away from their pursuer.
They’d tried several times to veer towards cities and towns, hoping
they could find cover, but she’d ran them away from anywhere civilized,
keeping them on the open road, away from anybody that could help them. He winced at
the memory of the last time she’d steered them away from a little town. She’d brought out blades that time, cutting them up pretty
badly before she’d vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared. Those same cuts weren’t healing right, thanks to the
conditions they were being forced to travel in, and from the way they were
beginning to sting, he knew infection was pretty likely.
He wondered if they’d find a bottle of antiseptic waiting for them
right before things got too bad, so they didn’t die from illness before she
was through with them. He shivered
at the mere idea of what was going to happen when she was through with them,
even though a part of him longed for it, just so that all of this would be over. “Hey! Hey! Stop!
You gotta stop!” Janine howled, breaking through his reverie. Elmore
swayed a little on his feet as he lifted his heavy head back up and looked
towards his wife, whose voice had become even more hysterical than before. Off in the
distance, maybe a half-mile away, a car was approaching through the coming
night, and Janine had planted herself directly in its path, frantically waving
her arms over her head. “Stop!”
she screeched. “Stop!” He knew he
needed to stop her from doing this, but now that he’d come to a standing rest,
it was terribly hard to convince his aching muscles and bones to move again. As though watching through the eyes of a disconnected
onlooker, he saw Janine stagger back and forth on the asphalt, not giving the
oncoming car a chance to swerve around her, and he couldn’t bring himself to
move even when Janine cried out for him to help as the car slowed to a stop. He watched
her yank open the door of the big, dusty Lincoln and start struggling with its
driver, a skinny, nervous young man that was already bug-eyed with fear.
Elmore found himself envying the guy, who was blissfully ignorant of what
real terror was. “You have
to give us your car! You have
to!” Janine screamed, terror giving her ragged body a strength that
transcended her exhaustion. Even
so, the young man’s fear also lent him extra strength, and he was in much
better shape than Janine was, so it was a frantic struggle as Elmore’s wife
tried to bodily drag him out of the car. “Elmore!
Elmore! Help me!” “What the
fuck’s wrong with you, lady?! Get
off me!” yowled the driver, trying to kick Janine off and get his door closed
again. Elmore just
stood on the side of the road and dumbly stared at the spectacle. “There’s
a killer on the road …” Ice shot
through his spine at the sound of the voice drifting through the air, making
itself heard even above the noisy scuffle in the front seat of the Lincoln. “Her
brain is squirming like a toad …” His head
jerked this way and that, trying to see where the monster was, but he could see
nothing but the desert. “Take a
long holiday, let your children play …” “Oh no, oh
no, oh no,” he moaned. “Janine!
Stop! Please stop!
It’s her! She’s
coming!” Janine
didn’t stop. If anything, she
redoubled her efforts, and actually started to get the man out of his seat,
wildly punching and clawing at him as she made incoherent noises of desperation. “If you
give these two a ride, sweet family will die …” “Janine! Stop! Stop!
STOP!” Elmore screeched, stumbling across the highway towards
his wife. “Help!”
cried the car’s driver, who was now more than halfway out of his vehicle, his
face bloodied and battered. “She’s
crazy!” “We need
it! We need it!” Janine bawled
over and over again, like a mantra. “Killer
on the road …” Elmore had
made it around the front end of the car and was almost within reach of Janine
when there was a soft puff of air on his face, and the dark form of the laughing
monster suddenly appeared in between them, as if conjured from thin air.
All his mind was able to register were a pair of glittering amethyst eyes
before she struck. He didn’t
have time to even blink as he was slammed against the unyielding metal body of
the car, the world spinning around him as he fell against the still-hot road.
Janine screamed bloody murder and he felt a spray of something warm and
wet rain down on him. Then his wife fell atop him, writhing and shrieking as though
she were being killed, and more of the warm wet stuff splattered all over.
Calling out her name, Elmore rolled around on the road, trying to get up
to help her, but only getting tangled up with her spasming limbs in the process. The door of
the Lincoln slammed and the big car sped away, its tires barking on the
pavement. “You
shouldn’t have done that, that was very bad,” chided a musical, almost
whimsical, voice. “That was
against the rules, you know. I
thought I’d made that clear, but I guess you two are slow learners, eh?
Ah well. These things
happen, I guess.” His wrist
was nearly crushed in a steely grip, and Elmore barely had a chance to cry out
in pain before a flashing blade sliced off all the fingers of his right hand. Now he and
Janine were getting sprayed with his blood as well as hers.
He screamed and screamed and screamed as he stared in soul-deep horror at
the spurting crimson ruin of his hand. Out
of the corner of his eye he saw Janine thrashing around on the road, her right
hand similarly mutilated. He
couldn’t see the monster anywhere. “Why?”
he screeched, clutching at his hand, trying to stop the blood from spurting out. How could so much blood come out of just his hand?
How was that possible? “Why?!” There was a
chuckle at his ear. “Because you
didn’t stop her when you had the chance, both now and in the past.
Just as she never stopped you when she had the chance.
You two share each other’s fate, in everything.
Till death do you part and all that,” the monster murmured, her breath
hot on his flesh. “We never
hurt anybody!” he howled, his voice disintegrating even as he struggled to
form the words. “I beg to
differ,” replied the monster serenely. “Now
bind your wounds and get walking again before I grow bored and cut off something
else to motivate you.” There was
another puff of air, this time at his back, and he knew that she was gone once
again. Elmore fell
forward onto the warm, gritty pavement, trying not to black out from the burning
agony seeping through his destroyed hand, and he and Janine wept in unison,
sharing in each other’s absolute misery.
There's somebody coming …
And there's NOTHING you can do about it!
Jim Morrison
The Reckoning
“May not have to go to Florida after all,” he murmured. “These two might work out just fine, instead.” High overhead, the black vault of thunderheads growled, seemingly in agreement.
After nearly half an hour, the pleasant-looking man, his smiling face and clothes heavily encrusted with blood, sauntered out onto the road and stopped next to the murder man. He looked in the direction that the murder man was, trying to see what the murder man saw, but it wasn’t any use; his mind simply wasn’t able to comprehend most abstracts any longer. If it wasn’t in front of his face and wasn’t related to the murder man’s mission, he couldn’t understand it. Though the murder man left him with more complex thought processes than he had the rest of the congregation, the pleasant-looking man just wasn’t the quick study he used to be. However, he was completely obedient, absolutely loyal, and was capable of keeping the congregation in line if his master decided to take a powder at some point; the Army would’ve killed for a thousand guys like him.
“Is it time to go, boss?” the pleasant-looking man asked. He paused, thought about his question for a moment, and then added, “We killed everybody.” When the murder man still didn’t respond, he also tacked on, “Ate them, too.”
“Good, very good.” The murder man replied absently, still staring off into the distance, feeling the perfect pair drawing ever closer. He’d be able to see them soon, very soon.
The pleasant-looking man smiled at the praise, but when nothing else was said, his look became one of confusion. “Is it time to go, boss?”
The murder man shook his head. “No. Not yet. We’ve got guests on the way. Our plans are about to be altered, I do believe, and for the better.”
“Oh. Okay.”
A couple of minutes later, the pleasant-looking man was still there, blankly looking off at the horizon, trying to understand what was so interesting about it, but failing miserably. Killing and partially devouring his family had been a lot easier than this.
The murder man paid him no mind, because along with the approaching pair, he also felt … something else. He didn’t know what it was. His mind couldn’t brush against it and get a feel for it like he could the pair. All he could sense were the briefest of impressions, like the clipped glimpses of reality that danced in the manic flashes of a strobe light. But he found just those brief impressions of it to be disgusting beyond measure. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it, and the fact that it was drawing closer made him like it even less. He had his suspicions about what it was, and if they were anywhere close to the mark, something was going to have to be done. Something decisive.
“What’s your name?” asked the murder man, glancing over at his silent companion.
“Leopold.” The pleasant-looking man sounded extremely grateful to be able to put the puzzling mystery of the horizon aside for something that he was able to much more easily grasp.
The murder man put his arm around Leopold’s shoulders and leaned close. “Well, Leopold, I’ve got a little something I’d like you to do for me …
* * *
Elmore and Janine hadn’t even noticed the pillar of smoke slowly rising into the sky as they’d trudged down the highway, as they’d been too preoccupied with the agony that accompanied each step. The world had ceased to exist beyond their cramped sphere of pain and fear, and a slow-burning truck stop wasn’t something that carried any relevance in their agony-laced brains. So they’d mindlessly continued down the endless desert highway, drawing closer to the fire that joined the steady lightning in painting the landscape with flickering illumination.
They didn’t even notice the leather-clad man standing out in the middle of the road, waiting specifically for them, and when he held out his arms towards them and smiled in greeting, his presence didn’t even register. The fact that they were so far gone into their own personal hells of physical, mental, and emotional suffering that they looked right through him only pleased the murder man even further, and he strode forward, a warm expression on his weathered face.
“You two look like something the cat didn’t want to drag in,” he said, tipping his cowboy hat at them. “But that’s okay, I’m pleased to meet you both, anyway.”
The tortured twosome nearly stumbled right into him before they came to a halt, and even then they gave him nothing more than blank looks, as though they were staring at a wall and nothing more.
The murder man leaned forward and got a good look at their fingerless right hands, which had been crudely bandaged with dirty strips torn from their clothing. The bandages were absolutely soaked with tacky, clotting blood, and the ashen coloring of the couple’s skin further underlined just how bad off they were. But he knew from personal experience that the human body could be pushed far beyond its limitations with the proper motivation, and by that standard, these two were far from done for.
“Run into some trouble, did you?”
Elmore and Janine didn’t so much as grunt in response. The murder man didn’t mind. Instead, he leaned over in between their ears and murmured softly to them. It wasn’t as much as he’d said to the members of his congregation, and wasn’t even as much as what he’d said to Leopold, but the response was immediate.
The couple’s eyes instantly snapped back into focus, gazing upon the murder man with wonder and gratitude. The pain was gone. The hunger and thirst were gone. The exhaustion was gone. For the first time since their nightmare had began, they felt good again. Better than good, as a matter of fact.
The murder man stepped back to admire the expressions of growing wonder on Elmore and Janine’s faces. “Feeling better?”
“Oh wow,” Elmore murmured, flabbergasted. “What … what did you do?”
The murder man grinned. “Just freed you of a little bit of the crap clogging up your heads.”
“You’re an angel, aren’t you?” Janine asked in amazement, looking at the murder man with what could very well have been love.
The murder man shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m as human as you are, just in a different way.”
“Who are you, then?” Elmore’s expression was an almost exact duplicate of Janine’s, clearly certain that he was gazing upon his own personal savior.
“A man who likes to help steer people towards their proper places in life,” he answered. “I’ve got big plans, you could say, and I’d like you two to be a part of them.”
“Really?” Elmore’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Us?”
“Anything you want,” Janine said. “Anything at all.”
The murder man nodded. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Those two are mine.”
At the sound of the insistent female voice, Elmore and Janine transformed from grateful acolytes to frightened children, screeching and frantically trying to hide behind the murder man, who casually turned towards the laughing monster.
The diminutive woman standing on the edge of the parking lot wasn’t laughing right now, though her fine features displayed amusement as she met the murder man’s eyes appraisingly. Dressed in a tie-dyed shirt under a somewhat ragged denim jacket, beaded headband, and bell-bottomed jeans, she looked very much the part of a hippie woman, especially with her bare feet and long, straight black hair, but the massive handgun holstered to her waist would’ve said otherwise to most people. It didn’t for the murder man, however, because he’d known a number of hippies that had sported guns; he’d been the one responsible for that, as a matter of fact. No, the handgun didn’t betray the woman’s true nature to him. It was her amethyst eyes, which seemed to sparkle with unknown energies, that did it for him. This woman was clearly trouble, not only for Elmore and Janine, but also for himself and his whole mission. What passed for his spine involuntarily stiffened.
Fortunately, Leopold was on the job, and before the woman could say anything else, the murder man’s lieutenant and a dozen members of the congregation, who’d been lying in wait amongst the cars parked in the lot, swarmed her.
As the laughing monster disappeared behind a wall of dirty flesh, the murder man glanced back at the couple, who were clinging to one another in fear as they watched the congregation attack. “Problem solved,” he said. But when he turned back to watch his flock tear the woman apart, he frowned.
The twelve men and woman that had been all over the woman seconds before were scattered around her in various states of dismemberment, all of them quite dead. Leopold, the only one left, had managed to get hold of her big handgun during the fracas and had it aimed squarely at her chest with a steady hand, clearly feeling no fear despite the condition of his fellow attackers. The woman didn’t seem the least bit concerned, and she actually smirked at Leopold.
“Be my guest,” was all she said. Before the murder man could tell his faithful follower to stand down, Leopold fired.
The substantial Jackson .475, a gun of obscene power, rivaled the thunder itself with the strength of its report, kicking in Leopold’s hand so violently that it slammed against his face and crushed his nose, even as it broke his thumb and nearly shattered his wrist. It had also completely thrown his aim off, and despite the short distance between himself and the laughing monster, Leopold’s shot went wild somewhere over her slim shoulder.
Leopold let out a squawk of pain and dropped the gun, which the woman retrieved with a fluid movement well before it hit the ground. With one hand, she aimed the gun at the hapless man’s head and grinned. “Moron.”
The murder man made his move.
The Jackson roared again, reducing Leopold’s head, neck, and part of his shoulders into a meaty mist that sprayed over the pavement; the woman’s hand hadn’t even twitched from the gun’s potent kick.
As what was left of the formerly pleasant-looking Leopold collapsed to the ground, her free hand shot out and caught the murder man by the neck as he leaned in towards her ear, her speed exceeding his own by a considerable margin, and he found himself scarcely a foot away from the glittering jewels of her eyes, which were hard to look at this close up, even for him.
“You’re fast,” she purred, “But not fast enough.”
Her ruby lips curved downwards in a slight frown, and she leaned forward, sniffing at him curiously before returning her eyes to his. “You look like a man and feel like one, but you don’t smell like one. Not quite.”
“I can tell you what I am. Just give me a few seconds, and you’ll understand everything,” he said, his voice so smooth and reassuring that Elmore and Janine found themselves calming down despite their proximity to the laughing monster.
The woman shoved him backwards and reholstered her gun, then leaned back against the nearest car and gave him a sly look. “Do tell.”
“Certainly.” He took a step towards her and then found himself sprawled out on the pavement, his chest aching. The frightened couple cried out in unison, while the rest of the murder man’s congregation, gathered on the edge of the parking lot, growled and started towards the woman. The woman loudly hissed at him, sounding like an enormous, angry cat.
“I find your smell unpleasant,” she growled. “Keep your distance.”
The woman didn’t even glance in the direction of the approaching crowd of dirty, vicious people, and he had a pretty good idea that it didn’t matter to her one bit if they attacked her or not. It did matter to him, though, because there was no point in wasting perfectly good followers on a failed assault.
He barked a command at them as he got back to his feet, and they immediately stopped in their tracks, though they continued to watch the woman with a primal sort of resentment.
“Don’t be intimidated,” he said soothingly. “It’s been my experience that the truth can set you free.”
The woman snorted. “Intimidated? I’m no more intimidated by you than I would be by a turd. Just because I don’t want a turd anywhere near me doesn’t mean that I’m intimidated by it.”
He nodded cooperatively. “I’ll grant you that.”
“Like you have a choice.”
Letting the remark pass, he held out his hands to her. “So what can I do for you?”
She pointed in the direction of Elmore and Janine, who were hiding behind him once again. “Go away. Those two are mine. I’m not finished with them yet, so you need to stay out of our business.”
“Don’t let her take us, please!” Janine whimpered, grabbing hold of his coat with her remaining hand.
“We’ll do anything you want, just keep her away from us!” Elmore sounded near tears.
The woman laughed.
“I’m sure we can work something out here,” said the murder man. “I’d really like to take these two with me, and I think they’d like it, too. How about I give you a couple of my congregation to replace these two, and we’ll call it even?”
Frowning, the woman glanced over in the direction of the congregation. “Not likely.”
“They’re ideal if you’d like to chase them down the road. They don’t feel pain and won’t stop for anything unless told to, and I could ensure that they obeyed you without question. You could chase them a lot longer than you could these two, who are probably getting pretty near the end of their running days. I think everybody would be a lot happier if we made a trade here and went on our own ways.” He poured all of the charm he could muster into his voice, using the same honeyed tones that he’d utilized to convince children to kill their parents.
“What you think means nothing to me,” the woman replied. “I chase those two for reasons of my own. Your brainless idiots are of no interest to me.”
“Really now. These two are being wasted like this. I could help them move on to much bigger and better things.”
The woman looked bored. “Like what?”
“Like assisting me in helping the human race achieve its ultimate destiny. How’s that for bigger and better?”
Still looking bored, the woman yawned and glanced behind herself at the fire consuming the truck stop. It was only a matter of time until it found the lines to the gas tanks below the tarmac and blasted the whole area with cleansing fire. “Ultimate destiny? I’ve heard a lot of speeches about ultimate destiny in my time. Which ultimate destiny are you talking about, pray tell?”
“Extinction, of course. It’s the one and only destiny that humanity’s suited for.” He winked at her. “You realize that, I’m sure. I know that your kind tends to have a much longer, more informed viewpoint on things.”
She raised an eyebrow. “My kind?”
“Vampires. Slayers of the weak, ravagers of the pathetic, destroyers of humanity, and all of that. I’ve encountered more than a few of you in my time, and I know one when I see one.”
Rolling her eyes, the woman said, “You don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re seeing when you look at me.”
“Don’t I? You and I are the same, like it or not,” the murder man said.
The vampiress narrowed her eyes at him slightly. “You’re being terribly presumptuous if you think that you and I are anything even remotely alike.”
The murder man laughed and shook his head. “Now who’s being presumptuous? We both exist for the sake of murder, pure and simple.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, is that what you do? From the looks of it, you just hang around parking lots with a bunch of scraggly, brainless twits and get in the way of business that doesn’t concern you.” Pointing towards Elmore and Janine, the vampiress said, “Get out of my way and let me resume my fun with these two.”
Behind him, Elmore and Janine both whimpered fearfully as they tensed up, probably getting ready to run if they had to. “Or what?” the murder man asked, meeting her eyes and refusing to flinch. “What are you going to do? Kill me?” Now he was the one that threw back his head and laughed. “Good luck.”
The vampiress smiled. “There isn’t anything or anybody I can’t kill.”
The murder man returned the smile. “You might have a little bit of trouble with me.”
Elmore and Janine cowered as an enormous bolt of thunder shredded the sky and boomed across the desert, and then they both actually screamed when they saw that the vampiress was now barely more than a foot away from their protector, eyeing him dangerously.
“I’ve killed my maker, my equals, and my superiors,” she imperiously declared, jabbing a finger at the murder man, “I’ve slain armies, destroyed nations, and even killed death itself! I am Raven, I am the Great Destroyer, and I am a monster without equal! You, you are nothing.”
The murder man took his hat off and gave her a little bow. “Pleased to meet you, and thank you for confirming what I said earlier.” He placed his hat back atop his head. “You and I are the same. Hell, you probably even helped contribute to my coming into existence, as a matter of fact. See, you’re a stone-cold killer, and me, well … I’m just the ‘lil ‘ol living personification of murder itself.”
Raven raised an eyebrow.
“Doubt me?”
The vampiress chuckled. “I’ve seen far stranger and grander concepts than you.”
The murder man nodded. “I figured as much.”
“I’ve also killed far stranger and grander concepts than you.”
“Impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible. Especially for me.”
He shrugged. “Well, you could get rid of me if you decided to kill every last human being in the world, including yourself. I can’t exist if there’s nobody around with a hunger for murder. Of course, that’s what I’m aiming for anyway, so if you want to go and kill everybody, hey, be my guest.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, the vampiress regarded the murder man curiously. “So … your whole reason for existing is to ensure that you are no longer capable of existing.”
He shrugged again. “Humanity’s the sickness, and I’m merely a symptom of it. Murder is the distillation of humanity's inhumanity, the self-loathing of the species made tangible, and is the ultimate destiny for a dead-end creature. Humanity exists only to destroy itself, and I'm here to help it along. Once I'm the only one left, I'll be complete, and I can rest. I gotta do what I gotta do.”
Raven laughed. “You’re stupid.”
“Am I? Why don’t you let me whisper a few truths into your ear, then? Let me free a few of the bonds you’ve allowed yourself to get tangled up in? I know how to get to the murder at the center of anybody, yourself included. I can set that free, I can set you free, and let you be the perfect engine of murder that nature intended you to be. With all those notions of grandeur and obvious hostility you’ve got running around inside of you, you’d be magnificent.”
“I already am magnificent.” She pointed towards the glaring congregation and Leopold’s corpse. “Why should I want to end up like them? A filthy, drooling, debased, worthless creature? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Devolve people?”
“I free them.”
“Free them of evolution.”
“Free them of all the foolish notions of civilization. Civilization is something that humanity created to distract itself from the fact that it is the vilest of creatures. But no matter how 'civilized' humanity becomes, its basic nature always reveals itself, in art, in literature, in film, in games, and in the way people continually abuse themselves, the people around themselves, and the world in general. Humanity knows it doesn't belong here and that it needs to get rid of itself, but it's still too afraid of itself to just give in, let go, and do the world a favor by killing itself.” He held his hand out towards his congregation. “I’ve taken the scales from their eyes and the lies from their minds, returning them to their most basic state, allowing them to be what they were meant to be: agents of their species’ destruction.”
“And is that what you’re planning to do to those two?” Raven idly inquired, nodding towards Elmore and Janine. “Because if that’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to have to stop you, because I want them fully aware of what’s being done to them.”
The murder man shook his head. “No. These two have potential, you see.” He reached back and put his arms over Elmore and Janine’s shoulders, holding them close, as though they were long-lost children of his. “What these two share between them goes beyond mere killing. What they possess can help sow ruin and misery for generations to come, setting countless numbers of people against their fellow humans, setting up a never-ending cycle of pain that will in time wreck countless scores of people, bringing us that much closer to the end of it all.”
The vampiress snorted. “They’re a pair of two-bit pedophiles, and all they possess between themselves is a disease of the soul that I take great pleasure in excising.”
“We never hurt anybody,” Janine hissed, emboldened by her proximity to the murder man. “It’s not like we killed those kids!”
Without batting an eyelash, Raven calmly drew her .475 and blew Janine’s knees into scorched pulp, completely severing her upper legs from her shins.
As Janine toppled to the pavement, her screams mixed with the echoes of the .475’s twin roars and Raven’s laughter. Knowing what was coming next, Elmore turned and tried to run, but two trigger-clicks later, he was also falling towards the ground, his truncated legs still pumping in attempted escape.
“You killed their innocence,” the vampiress purred, grinning from ear to ear, clearly enjoying the couples’ agony. “That’s worse than simply killing their bodies. You condemned them to a lifetime of pain and suffering, with problems for themselves and their loved ones, perhaps even their own children, someday. For that, you’ve earned my wrath.”
The murder man glanced down at the flailing forms of Elmore and Janine, and then sighed heavily. “What’d you have to go and do that for?”
“Because I can.” Raven fired off another shot, the bullet striking the murder man directly between the eyes. Instead of removing his head, however, it slid right through him, whizzing off into the deepening night.
As the murder man smiled at her, Raven’s eyes narrowed. “Interesting,” she murmured. After reloading and reholstering the Jackson, she asked, “So you still want them?”
He nodded, kneeling down to quickly whisper to the screaming couple. Their cries settled down after a few seconds, and they lay quietly panting on the ground, seeming to go into a trance. When he stood back up, the murder man said, “More than ever. All of the pain you’re pumping into them is just further sharpening their edges and giving them that much more to give back to the world. These two can become truly special with my guidance.”
“Hmm. Like your pet idiot that crippled himself with my gun? He didn’t seem all that special to me.”
The murder man sighed again. “You didn’t have to kill Leopold. He was just trying to do his job. He had so much frustration built up inside of him that when I freed him, he was as joyful and eager as a child. I only freed him up partway, so that he’d still retain his higher functions and be able to serve as my lieutenant, but just that was enough to fulfill his existence and free him from the repetitive drudgery that his life had become. At least he died happy, I guess.”
“He died stupid,” Raven spat. “If he listened to what you had to say and gave himself up to his base savagery, he got what he deserved.”
“Like you’re any better.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. From everything I’ve seen, you’re a sadistic butcher, gleefully ripping up a couple of people and wrapping it in the cloak of ‘justice’ to make yourself feel better about what you’re doing. My congregation and I don’t pretend to be doing this for any higher reason other than self-destruction.”
Raven grinned. “Oh, I don’t deny that I’m sadistic. As a matter of fact, I’m very sadistic. I like dealing out suffering to those that deserve it, and quite honestly, I have a great deal of fun with it. But unlike you and yours, I don’t blindly lash out at the world and moronically kill everybody just for the sake of killing them. When I murder, I do it for a reason and with a purpose. I weed out the scum and filth, those unworthy of existence. You want to wipe out the species? I want to make it better.”
“It’s not going to get better, no matter what you do. Humanity is fire made flesh. Fire consumes everything in its path, leaves ruin in its wake, and is incapable of self-sustenance; sound familiar?” the murder man quipped. “Nature itself put the killer instinct in humanity as a failsafe, a way to make sure that such a horrible creature didn't get so far along that it could destroy everything. Humanity's managed to slow down that self-destruct device by constructing complex and conflicting frameworks of shifting morality around itself, trying in vain to convince itself that it really is a good and decent creature, but deep down knowing that it's not. No matter how deeply culture ingrains such things as mercy, kindness, and compassion into a human being, its basic nature remains the same, and all it needs is the proper trigger to activate it. When you strip away everything else, the core of a human being has always been, and always will be, murder.”
Raven nodded. “Very true. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be harnessed and focused into something else, something positive. The problem is that most people are still convinced that murder is always a negative force, regardless of the context. When wielded by the wise and brave, murder is a surgeon's scalpel, slicing away malignancy that could eventually weaken or destroy the host body. When wielded by an idiot, murder is an abomination. I am the surgeon, you are the idiot.”
The murder man laughed. “I’m the idiot? You’re the one trying to convince yourself that there’s something noble about murder.”
“It’s all about context,” the vampiress said. “Not everything comes in a simple black and white answer. You, apparently, aren’t complex enough to grasp that.”
“What’s not to grasp? You make it sound as though murder’s something that a civilization should aspire to, and I couldn’t put it better myself.”
“A true civilization understands the difficult balance between mercy and murder,” Raven said. “When to administer either is not an easy matter, with no simple answer, and that is how it should be. The taking of life should not be a light matter to a society, but at the same time, it cannot let the heaviness of the matter weigh it down to the point where it's afraid to do anything. A true civilization won’t be haunted by the likes of a boogeyman like you, because it will have accepted what’s in its heart, harnessed it, and grown with it. You’re nothing more than a manifestation of the primitive, stupid side of humanity, which can be summed up in simple terms of brutality and self-loathing.”
Shaking his head, the murder man smirked. “You don’t know anything.”
“Oh, on the contrary. I know a great deal. I know that the whole Manson family debacle a few years back was your handiwork, and I know that the rise of so-called serial killers in American cities is also something you’ve contributed to,” the vampiress said, grinning when the murder man stiffened. “You whispered in the ears of Hitler’s men, and you did a lot of talking to both sides in Vietnam, as well. You get around, don’t you?”
His eyes slitted, the murder man said nothing, his hands jammed in the pockets of his coat.
“I’ll take that as a confirmation,” Raven said with a nod. “I’ve known of you for quite some time now, having heard about some of your exploits in centuries past, on the occasions you were able to manifest yourself. Now that humanity’s growing in unprecedented numbers, with much larger concentrations of bloodthirsty fools than ever before, you’re able to manifest yourself quite a bit more than in the past. That doesn’t surprise me. Humanity’s picking up speed in terms of its evolutionary growth, both mental and spiritual, and your increasing manifestations is a natural part of the process. After all, your purpose in all of this is to help humanity gain the strength to stop being afraid of murder and learning to wield it properly. Eventually, you’re going to cause enough trouble that humanity will be forced to face down its dark side and learn to harness it, and by doing that, you’ll be helping humanity up the next rung on the ladder of spiritual evolution.”
“Bullshit,” growled the murder man, grinding his teeth. “I’m here because humanity’s rapidly cruising towards its own destruction, and I’m here to aid the process. I’m here to make sure that humanity gets rid of itself and leaves the world free of its stain. You don’t know what you’re even talking about. You’re outside of this. You’re just an observer. Me, I’m a part of humanity’s destiny. I’m the personification of its dark heart. I know how this story’s supposed to go, you’re just guessing at it, and let me tell you, you’re dead wrong.”
“Hmph. Don't even presume to tell me how this world or the universe should properly work,” Raven said. “I've been behind the sky and beyond the stars, and have heard the secrets the mirrors whisper in the houses of twilight and temples of dreams. I've met myself, danced with myself, and killed myself, all so that I could find out the murmured secrets of the spheres, thus adding to myself. The past is my childhood, the present is my playground, and the future is my glory. I know things that even gods don't know.”
“Do you know what’s in your heart of hearts? You can say all the pretty things about evolution and growth that you want, but the fact of the matter is that you’re just as human as these two kid-fuckers at my feet and the congregation over there, and you’re just as susceptible to your true nature as they are. You’ve built a nice little house of cards for yourself, I’ll give you that much,” the murder man sneered. “But at the end of the day, all humanity’s damned by its basic nature, and oblivion’s the best place for it.”
Raven stepped forward and looked him in the eye. “All right, then. Tell me what’s in my heart of hearts. Make my eyes clear so that I may see.”
He cracked his knuckles and chuckled. “With pleasure.”
“The pleasure’s all mine.”
The murder man leaned over and murmured into Raven’s attentive ear, telling her the things that had caused men to murder their children, women to dismember their husbands, and people to ruthlessly kill and eat their fellow people. He gave her the worst of it, telling her humanity’s darkest, nastiest secrets, going even farther than he had with his congregation, telling her the things that would make her want to destroy herself in addition to everybody around her. When he finished, he stood back and smiled warmly at her, ready to welcome her to his congregation.
She laughed in his face, long and hard.
“That’s it?” she finally demanded, sounding merrily disappointed. “Mere child’s play! If that’s your worst, humanity has little to fear from you in the long run. You’re nothing more than another entry to the long list of smooth-talking charlatans certain that they know humanity’s destiny, nothing more.”
His face twisting into a fierce scowl, the murder man growled, “And what are you? What makes you so special?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Raven asked, holding out her arms towards the strobing electric heavens. “I’m the future.”
The murder man spat. “If you’re what the future holds for humanity, I’m going to have an easy time of it.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” said Raven, shaking her head. “I really, really doubt that. You can’t even handle me, let alone a whole species of people like me.”
“As long as humans exist in any form, I’ll be right there with them,” sneered the murder man. “Do your worst.”
The vampiress socked the murder man squarely in the face, her fist moving so fast that it broke the sound barrier for a split-second, creating a boom comparable to that of a Jackson .475. But Raven’s fist packed a much larger punch than any mere bullet. The murder man disintegrated upon impact, every single part of him, even his clothes, dissolving to dirt.
Raven looked down at the pile of dry soil where her opposite number had been standing a few seconds before and chuckled. “Not nearly my worst, but more than enough for the likes of you.” She viciously swept her bare foot through the dirt, kicking it up onto the gathering winds, and watched it scatter down the lonely highway, headed to who knew where. The murder man would someday rise again, but for the moment, he was nothing more than dust on the wind.
The congregation continued to glare at the vampiress with resentment, but they lacked the ability to comprehend what had just happened, and without their master to command them, they remained where they were. In time, their instincts would take over and they would roam the countryside in search of other people to kill and eat; that is, if Raven allowed them to continue living, which she most certainly didn’t. They were humanity reduced to its basest form, fouler than the animal kingdom’s very worst, because animals lacked the sheer malevolence that lay at the center of the human heart. Whether that malevolence would someday evolve into something far greater or would prove to be the downfall of humankind remained to be seen.
The vampiress knelt down on the pavement between Elmore and Janine, who were gazing at her with glassy eyes, soothed into peaceful trances with but a few words from the murder man, despite the mortal wounds they’d been dealt. If the murder man were still there, he would have been able to save their lives so that they could go on to help him on his mission. If Raven felt so inclined, she could have saved them as well. But unfortunately for the couple, she was not so inclined.
Drawing a pair of shimmering blades from beneath the sleeves of her denim jacket, the laughing monster grinned at Elmore and Janine, her canines extending into flawless ivory fangs as her amethyst eyes glittered with a reddish light. Behind her, the truck stop’s fuel tanks exploded with a colossal roar, blasting a monolithic column of fire hundreds of feet into the sky and washing the area with a tidal wave of hellish heat that instantly, painfully blistered the mortals’ battered flesh even as it tore the breath from their seared lungs. Raven’s smile grew ever wider.
“Let’s see if we can’t get a few more screams out of you two before I make you into a nice snack, shall we?”
Oh, how they screamed.
* * *
A short time later, her hunger sated, Raven strode away from the conflagration that had once been a truck stop, the only living human being in a fifty mile radius, feeling quite satisfied with herself and looking forward to what the future held.
As her bare feet soundlessly moved down the warm asphalt, the thunder roared over her head, louder than ever, and the first few fat drops of rain fell to the earth, refreshingly icy after the blast-furnace heat of the truck stop. She held her face up towards it, enjoying the rain in the simple manner of a child, and as she walked down the road, she began to sing again.
“There’s a killer on the road … her brain is squirming like a toad … take a long holiday … let your children play …”
Additional lyrics by James Douglas Morrison
