Scythe...by aeon
"Pray for me, OK?" He looked up at me with a blank look on his face. A
mirror in a dark room. Dirty chrome.
"Pray yourself," I said, returning the look. We were in his apartment,
waiting 'til 12, listening to the dull arhythmic thumps from a very bad bass
player in the bar below. Some assassins we were turning out to be. It was
like 'Oh, sure, we'll kill some vampires for you, but we have to watch
Family Fued first.' I sighed and looked at him, listening to family members
answering survey questions, envisioned them blasting each other with
shotguns. The audience laughed and cheered and wiped blood from their eyes
in my mind's eye. How utterly puerile. I was insane.
"I can't. It doesn't work when I do it." He paused, as if he wanted to say
something more, then looked back down to his weapon, tried to find an oily
spot on the blade but couldn't. Sometimes people are like that -- trying to
find the flaw in the diamond, just to give them something black to hold on
to in the wake of all that clarity. Purity can be scary. You look down and
don't see anything but clear beneath you and you feel like you're falling
from heaven. Sometimes it's easier just knowing that there's a big black
spot somewhere to catch you. Evil can be comforting at times. Like now.
He wiped at the blade for a moment and then gave up. He didn't look at me,
but looked to the ceiling instead, trying to peer beyond the sky but only
seeing cracked yellow plaster.
"I talk, but he...it's not that he doesn't listen, because I know he hears
me. I can almost see him sitting there, watching me talk to him. But..."
I shut the television off and laid the remote on the coffee table.
"It's like he ignores me. Like I don't matter. Like all of my problems
aren't worth a shit compared to the rest of the world." He picked the remote
control up and turned the TV back on, flipping through channels.
He didn't have to say anything -- I just watched, feeling like God, maybe.
Watched all of those images of horror and pain and misery and death flash
by, war and famine and poverty and disease and purple dinosaurs and whatnot.
And amidst it all were the televangelists, preaching a message that no one
would hear, selling a vacuum attachment that peeled potatoes and saved your
soul. Nobody cared. Not anymore. God was dead. The TV flipped off. Or
flipped us off, maybe. I dunno. I depressed myself sometimes.
"I know he doesn't care, but I don't blame him. I'm shit. But you...hell
man, you got a chance. You're worth something. You been on TV. God's seen
you talk. He knows who you are. He'll listen to you, maybe."
"You think so, huh?" I asked, unexcited. I remembered my shot at glory, all
thirty seconds of it. Selling batteries, or myself -- I still wasn't sure. I
looked at him. He'd put his sword into the wooden sheath, silently and
carefully, as if it were the only thing in his life that mattered. Aside
from the TV, it WAS the only thing of value he owned.
"Yeah, I do," he said. "It's like we're all things man, dogs, but you're
someone. God knows who you are. Me? Hell, God don't notice me unless I piss
on the rug, and then I get smacked in the head for it." He stood and put the
katana into his belt samurai style, blade upwards.
"God's got cable." He pulled his hood up and rechecked some straps. "So pray
for me. I'm not begging nobody." He walked into the kitchen to grab his coat
and gun. And a beer, apparently -- the fridge opened and destroyed the dark.
I didn't have the decency to tell him that it wouldn't work for me, either.
But I think he already knew that. God's got cable...I smirked -- it was
something some televangelist guy had said one night, assuring his audience
that God, too, was watching. Yeah, God has cable alright, but with four
billion channels to watch, what were the chances he'd ever watch me for more
than a second? God was a hell of a channel surfer, I'd bet.
"Wait up," I yelled as he opened the door, grabbing my coat and sword and
gun on the way out onto the Skywalk, just like some fucking hour long
cops-and- robbers show. I wondered what my theme song was. Probably
something jazzy.
***
We found them in the alley, right where they were supposed to be. They were
good. Very good. Dangerously good. Better than they were supposed to be.
Both of them were, espeically the one tearing at my buddy. But I didn't have
time to worry about my friend, a fact I was forced to remember as the
vampire slashed at me with a small knife and hissed, fangs glistening.
I hit the wall hard and rolled to the left just a second before his blade
bit the stone. He followed me down, etching an inch deep channel into the
building, moving effortlessly. I continued the roll and came up on my feet
as his sword reached the nadir of its arc, and as he brought it up for a
second slash I stepped in closer and ducked a bit -- he caught a few strands
of hair and a trailing wire from one of my symbiotes, but nothing vital.
He'd realized his mistake almost as soon as he'd swung, hissing at me, but I
was already inside his guard and he couldn't reverse fast enough, his
natural reflexes no match for my experience. He spun around to go with the
momentum, his only real option, and before he'd pivoted completely I'd
unzippered his spine with my long and hamstrung him with my trailing blade.
He folded up as his spinal column fell out, and died rather noisily.
See, ma, you don't need a wooden stake to kill them.
I heard voices down the street and remembered to check on my friend. He
didn't look so well -- I had to kneel down so I could see some pieces of
him. Even then, between the three bodies on the ground, it was hard to tell
who was who. The voices got louder and closer. The moon grinned more loudly
from behind the clouds, and I got a better look at him. Bad idea.
"Did we get em?" I checked on the one he'd been fighting, then nodded. The
voices down the alley got louder, and I tried to lift him.
"Go," he said weakly, pushing his body off the ground, his left arm
dangling. He looked like a burnt scarecrow. "Run."
I shook my head to clear it as he yelled this and collapsed. Dark shapes
loomed in sillhouette down the alley. Many dark shapes, not all of them the
proper shape. Some ran on four legs. I swear at least one ran on six.
I ran. It was the first time I'd ever listened to anything he said. I
figured it would be the last. But for now, I just ran. Half from him, half
from the enemy, and half from myself. Or something like that; I was never
very good at algebra. It wasn't so much the fact that I saw him die that
bothered me. I don't mind death much at all, not anymore. It wasn't even the
violence of it, watching his life spill out from between his cracked
fingers, clutched over his left breast, trying to breathe with a punctured
trachea as grey things oozed out of the hole.
It was the look.
The look of giving up the fight, of relinquishing your soul to the enemy, of
letting the waves take you down to hell. I paused a few blocks away and
swore I'd never look that way, God as my witness.
Pausing was my last mistake.
I never saw the morph step from the shadows and slit my throat. I didn't
even see the vampire who led the gang pick me up and throw me against the
wall. I did, however, see the shifters pop fangs and settle down for a meal
above my face.
I wish I could have passed out, but peace had to wait for four minutes until
I died. It seems that Death walks with the Scythe Gang, and he likes to
watch.
