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The
squealing shriek of dying men would be categorized as “Sounds I’ll never get used to” in the man’s mind.
Like
a gurgling fire alarm, he thought.
He was in The Forest. Great oaks and
maples soared toward the heavens by hundreds of feet, dwarfing anything he’d
encountered on Earth. Beyond the canopy, a tar black lightning storm was
rolling in from the West. Blue tendrils arced across the sky, their light mingling
with the amber blaze of sunset.
The
air was thick with howls of desperate souls. From within the tree line, hidden
in shadows, he watched carnage unfold. Hundreds of men and women had fallen
upon the grassy clearing like a crashing wave, to fight for their lives.
Makeshift spears and a stone knife cut ragged gouges through flesh and bone. A
woman cowered, her wrist broken, hanging limp in her other hand. She cradled
her pain like a newborn, sobbing softly as her attacker loomed. Men and women
fought hand to hand, trading punches and grappling. There were no sides, and no
quarter was given. Each fought to fill their quota. 1,000 kills and they could
return to the lives they lost, The Maker had said.
He was no longer sure he could
remember his previous life. There were images and writings he had been able to
keep and recreate in The Preparation Room. By all accounts, his life had been
sweet and steamy and dark and innocent. He had been loved and had known things;
had been a relatively intelligent guy, but had squandered his opportunities.
Whenever he looked back, pouring through his old journals and memories, his
self loathing grew.
He put it all aside. Giving up the
feelings holding him back, his metamorphosis began.
Tyler Durden said, “It’s when we give
up everything that we’re free to do anything.”
For the man, that anything was
learning how to kill. He had turned himself into a beast. He had killed, and
had died, and had slowly learned to survive so he could do more of the former.
A death rattle shook the battle back
into focus before him, and he stood, brushing loamy dirt from thin, linen
pants. They were the color of mocha cream or cool sand. He had grown the hemp
that made cloth which he wore. With the empty hours and days and months of
training, he had built his own self-sustaining world. The Converse on his feet
he had simply imagined into being from memory.
The grass was beaten down by
thousands of footsteps, circling, jumping, and shifting in the dirt. Lighting
sparked again, a rumble reverberated in his ribcage. He sank into a stance,
felt the movement of the small planet they all walked, felt the energy coursing
up between his toes. It spread like electric fire through his being, whirling
in his core. His skin tingled with goosebumps, hairs on end.
Feel
the energy.
Above, the lightning forked through
the trees as he drew its beam towards him. The resounding compression created
an airburst that spread in all directions. His cry rose above the tumult and
echoed in the treetops. Those on the outskirts of the melee were knocked flat,
the others oblivious to the world outside of their current opponent. He stepped
forward into the field, ice-blue energy sparking across his form, illuminating
his path with a faint glow. In his hands, he held a searing light. The light
pulsated and grew, his body coiling, preparing to strike.
Behind his eyes, he felt a flash and
pang of familiarity. He could feel a presence off in the distance.
Could
it be her? Please, let it be her.
The energy crackled around his
fingertips and he aimed his mind at the crowd. With a growl, he unleashed a
sphere into the clearing, spinning out of his hand with a speed that blurred
his vision. Wisps of smoke coiled from the ball. When it made contact, the
shell encasing the energy split with a thunderclap and exploded. The after
image of three bodies vaporized in incandescent blue seared his retinas. A thin
sweat coated his forehead, a single bead running to the corner of his eye.
547,
548, 549, he counted.
As
one, the combatants shook awake, turning and glancing, as though from a
daydream, temporarily mesmerized by the electric fireworks. He had his opening.
They were twenty paces from the man when he pressed forward. He closed the
distance while someone blinked, despair and disbelief written on their taut
faces.
He took a running leap, his right
hand a careening hammerhead. The hammer’s face mashed a Hispanic man’s nose and
mandible, planting itself within gristle. Its backside struck across a
clavicle, felt it bend and snap, its owner crumpling to the ground. Fingers
jabbed for his eyes, clawing. The
sneakers slid in the dirt in shallow crescents, shifting the man’s weight. He
lowered his base, levered the arm, and released his attacker to fly through the
air, crashing heavily into the backs of unprepared fighters like a human
wrecking ball. Turning to face the crowd, he laid in with a left cross, teeth
rattling behind his every blow. He used his forearms and shins like clubs,
beating bodies into heaps on the blood soaked ground.
On the heel of his sneakers, there
were two words stitched in Turquoise thread: BIGGER KNEES. When the crowd
began to writhe again with combat and press in and around him, he began
creating distance with his legs, stomping into faces and abdomens, mashing
skulls on his steel-hardened knee caps, crushing throats with the snapping of
his feet. Grunting with the effort, he kept his breathing even, whirling his
body through combat. He moved like a dancer through a crowd, aiming toward the
middle of the floor. Throughout the fighting, he counted:
554,
55, 56, 57…
Ahead, combatants were slapped aside
by a tall man wielding a bamboo staff; hardened and treated. The large grass
strand cracked against faces and bodies were knocked clear from his path. On
the man in Converse’s back hung a similar length of bamboo, this one treated
and inked dark and foreboding, slightly curved, about four feet in length. It
rested along his spine, tied across his chest, heavy with a hidden strength.
Crouching now, he drew its length from the ties and felt them fall to the
ground.
The weight of his shorter bamboo rod
felt reassuring. He had treated the material himself, hardened over fire,
lacquered, resealed. The tall man was fast approaching, crimson glistening on
the staff’s edge, matted tufts of hair and gray matter clinging to crevasses. A
horizontal swing came in from his right, threatening to knock his head from his
shoulders. In a flash, his guard was up, there was a clatter of wood on wood,
and the staff deflected toward the sky. In the open air underneath the staff,
the man swept closer to his opponent. The dark length of bamboo was at his left
hip, his right hand in a leading grip. The tall man had hardly reacted from the
block, but he could see the start of shock ringing his dark eyes.
The man in hemp clothing twisted his
hands slightly and felt the sheath release from the hilt. The blade hummed as
it leapt into the world, shimmering golden with the sunlight and black with the
storm clouds. It flickered through the tall man with ease, a mist of arterial blood
puffed into the air. A seam grew through the tall man’s chest from hip to
collar bone, and he folded into two slopping pieces.
As one, the crowd recoiled from the
scene. The weapons the people of Purgatory usually encountered were all
handmade, mostly barbaric parodies of clubs and spears. The katana that gleamed
before them was also handmade, it was forged in his Preparation Room and not
created from memory, and so The Maker allowed it. The man had always been
fascinated with Japan’s culture and had studied texts during his life, never
actually visiting the country. With this remembered knowledge, he forged his
own steel, a hard shell with a cavity of softer steel encasing the heavy core
of the blade. His folding and treatment of the sword brought out a sawtooth
pattern along the edge, beaten into the steel till the layers became a single
homogenized entity. The technique was used by Goro Masamune, a legendary
Japanese swordsmith, called Shoshu Kitae. He had read about it once, in a life
that seemed eons past. Crystal structures in the steel itself seemed to dance
along the blade like stardust.
“Get him!” one of the fearful yelled
and the man refocused.
The
crowd lurched forward, a desperate tide clawing to end the sword bearer’s life.
His dance became different, but his movements were still fluid. Limbs and
bodies fell around him. Blood rained to the forest floor, the dirt turning to a
warm soup of viscera and earth. Many lost their footing on fallen warriors.
Screams erupted from armless and legless, soon-to-be corpses, sobbing, wrapped
in the agony of bleeding out to open air. He cut swathes through the crowd,
sprays of blood slathering those around him.
A
guttural cry echoed off his lips, charged by his eternal energies, booming
throughout the Forest. It was lamentous and feral. There was a voice in his
head, and it howled in reply.
He
felt the same pang of recognition and realized the other powerful entity was
closing in.
577, he counted.
A
headless black man fell to his knees and toppled underfoot of so many others.
Above the crescendo of screams and shouts and curses, he heard a battle cry.
Forlorn and cutting to the core.
“For
Jeremy!” the shrill echoed all around them, shaking eardrums. The sun was all
but gone, when he finally saw her. A robed figure flickered in and out of
reality on the edge of the battle, men and women falling from knife-like
slashes to the neck.
Damn, she’s fast. He couldn’t
follow her movements. A fist caught him across the side of the face awkwardly,
turning his head and cracking his vertebrae soothingly. He turned and cut the
man down quickly.
“Thanks,”
he rasped from a dry throat, feeling looser and more relaxed. The crowd was
reeling at the second major threat, and many ran for their lives.
He
let them go, conserving his energy.
The
few stragglers who hadn’t fled, tripping in the slop around their feet, were
screaming the same slaughtered pig sound he had learned to recognize.
The
hooded figure jumped back into the visible plane, long enough to kill three
more with a single strike, disappearing again.
A
sheet of crimson mingled and hung above the failing bodies, their legs unsure
as to how they were losing strength, the dumbfounded look that plastered all of
their faces.
His
heart fluttered and a smile crept along the crook of his lips. There were six
left, and he watched them run. The battle had lasted all of ten minutes, and
yet the clearing would never be the same. Blood clotted and soaked into the
roots of short grasses and pooled in footprints of the fallen. He felt alive
standing over the macabre sight; a graveyard of limbs and slowly cooling
bodies.
There
was a sound like cloth tearing and the hooded figure apparated in front of the
man with the sword. The cloak looked heavy, as though pieced together by strands
of thick wool and leather. The sleeves hung heavy with dark, damp stains.
He
knew it was blood. It was all around them, the smell coiling up his nostrils,
tickling receptors with an aluminum tang. It covered his khaki clothing,
spattered on his shoes, soaking into the ground. The thunder rolled again, the
storm almost on them. Off in the distance, the sound of raindrops sifted
through the treetops, moving closer. The figure in the robe, head down, made a
clucking sound.
“Tut-tut-tut. Not bad,” an arm waved
lazily at the massacre around them. The man saw the glint of steel poking from
the confines of the robe; saw the sharpened fingertip caps his enemy preferred
to wear. They resembled the hooked talons of a winged raptor. The steel nails
hooked the inside of the hood and began to draw it back. Gleaming cinammon
curls fell and sprang in the fading sunlight. He saw the face he had been
waiting for, yearning and searching for.
The
man took a step forward, arms wide, sword resting loosely in a half-open palm,
dangling towards the ground.
“We really need to stop meeting like this,” he joked in his dust-dry
rasp. Deep mahoghany eyes ringed in purple fire locked onto his glacial blue
stare.
“You could’ve left a few more for
me,” she quipped, whipping her long curls away from her smiling face. She
blinked her large eyes, freckles dotting her copper cheeks and forehead. He
reflected how with other people a smattering of freckles may look unnatural or
offputting. He found her’s sexy. His gaze softened, embarassment warming his
face. He gave a slight bow.
“Constance,” he addressed the
beauty. She let the cloak fall off the sharp edges of her bare shoulders.
“Evan,” she nodded. The cloak
crumpled at her heels. Beneath the heavy fabric she wore the tattered remnants
of an emerald prom dress. What was left of the silk body had been torn in
strategic places to show bits of her caramel skin, her muscular torso, the
sweet curve of her hips. The excess strips had been resewn to the skirt,
falling in a feathery sheath around her smooth thighs. She twisted her hips
gently, thunder echoing above, silk strands dancing as she swayed. “You like?”
He planted the sword firmly in the
mud at his feet.
“Beautiful,”
he breathed, “as always.”
Now it was her turn to blush.
“Though, you already knew that,” he
continued, teeth flashing.
“True,” she giggled, “but oh, how I do enjoy the flattery.”
“Jeremy’s a lucky man.”
“You’ve said that. Lily’s a lucky
lady.”
“So you’ve said, as well.” There
eyes locked, and he felt himself drawn into the deep recesses of her pupils.
They grew like deep wells in the failing light, two voids drawing him in. For a
brief moment he remembered the nights they shared together in the crook of an
ancient willow tree. A whirl of desperation and emotional longing. The Proving
Grounds had worn them down to beasts, and they clung to their humanity the only
way they had been able to find: through eachother. Deep within the blackhole of
her stare, a look he had lost himself for hours in, he saw their passions unfold
again by the firelight, thrust out into the night air for the world to witness.
She caved and lost the staring contest for a brief moment, then she looked
back.
“How many have you got now? 525?
550?” she asks, a hand gently snaking to her exquisite hips.
“578. You?” he returned.
“Seven hundred eighteen. You’ve
caught up quickly,” she seemed impressed.
“The Shadow taught me well,” he
admitted, shrugging.
“I hope we won’t be seeing him
anytime soon. Too vulgar for my liking.”
“I think I’ve finally got him
contained.” The voice in his head spoke, sounding as though it came from Evan’s
right.
Like
hell, you do. Evan turned his head to the origin of the sound, glancing
away from Constance.
“Shut up.”
She laughed. It had a resonating
roundness that made her that much more attractive to him. “Contained, eh?”
“Well, I’m workin’ on it,” he
chuckled. They shared an amiable moment, and then her features began to
sharpen. Her legs lowered her frame into a fighting stance. “Wait,” he
motioned, palms out again, “one more question that’s been bothering me.”
“Shoot,” she relaxed.
“Well, two actually.”
“Yes?”
“If we really do get home again, do
you think we’ll remember all of this, fighting and killing… meeting eachother?”
She considered for a moment. “I’m really
not sure, but aside from that last bit, I would gladly do without any
memories.”
“Fair enough. Last one. Let’s say
that we do remember. Would I be able to get in touch with you? Would that be
okay?”
“I wouldn’t mind a double date,” she
laughs.
“I’m serious,” he says.
“So am I,” she snaps back, the smile
drained from her features. “Despite all of his shortcomings, despite everything
you and I have been through, I loved Jeremy. I still love him. Just like I know
you still love Lily.”
“But…”
“Uhn-uh,” she waggles a steel claw
at him. “Two questions is enough for today. Let’s get to this.”
Business
time, the Shadow whispered behind his eyes.
Evan watched, unmoving, as she
lowered herself back into a stance, her feet staggered, hips forward, hands up
in front of her body and face, elbows tucked in to protect her abdomen. The
muscles in her legs coiled, waiting for the first strike. He quickly assessed
the distance between them, knowing that he could overtake the area with three
strides. Their gazes were unmoving, locked onto the other’s looking for any
sign of weakness. With his right hand, he gently reached for the hilt of the
sword. Her coiled legs sprang.
He barely had time to bring the
sword up to bear, flinging a spray of sodden earth towards her face. It
plastered across her skin and around her closed eyes. He aimed a slash for her
torso, coming in from her right. Before the blade sunk into her flesh, she
flickered away in a blur. The sword chopped through her afterimage, cutting
through the greasy wisps of her leftover energy.
He stood in the darkness, eyes adjusting to
zero light when he felt a pressence behind him. The leg sweep was already in
full swing, and he barely had a chance to react, pushing himself into the air
above her. In middair, his left hand found the hilt of the sword and he turned
his defensive jump into a downward slice.
She flickered away again, the blade
squelching into the coagulating earth deep enough to holdfast. Before he could
muscle his weapon from the earth, she had pounced back in.
There was a moment in each of their
fights, where Constance moved with a speed and ease that Evan could barely
follow. He watched and was unable to react as she chopped the inside of his
right forearm toward the wrist, causing his fingers to involuntarily spasm
open. She raked her fingers across his chest, stripping flesh and fabric alike.
He growled, twisting his left side in to jab at her face angrily. With a sweep
of her hands and a smooth rotation, he was airborne, wheeling end over end. As
his face was about to make contact with an armless cadaver, Evan tucked and
rolled back to his feet. A gurgle erupted from the body’s mouth as the weight
of his somersault squeezed the air from stagnant lungs.
Back on his feet, he wheeled in time
to block her first strike. Her fists contorted to the shape of beaks, stabbing
for his eyes, throat, solar plexus, his collarbone, his nether region. Evan’s
frame stayed solid, blocking each of her strikes, feeling the flow of her
energy, anticipating her next moves, but it would only go so far. For all the
strength and skill he possessed, he knew Constance had the advantages of speed
and precision on her side. Her strikes flowed over him like a torrent, crashing
uselessly on his carved forearms and callused palms.
“You going to join this fight?” she
goaded. He took the opportunity to gain inside control, her strikes redirected
above her head.
Evan took a short step forward with
his right and layed into her with a double fisted palm strike to her firm
chest. Her bare feet glided along the muddy forest floor, carried more than
five feet from the force of his strike. She flickers and reappeared another
several paces further away, still facing him. His wolfish grin was back. She
touched her chest softly, deep purple welts already forming beneath her hand. A
drop of blood fell from the corner of her lips.
“More like it,” she wheezed, drawing
the back of her hand across her mouth. They stood, addressing one another for a
few moments. The sun had dropped beneath the treeline, and the storm was
hissing its way toward them. There was a flash of lightning, and she
disappeared. Flickering in and out of reality, she juked towards him across the
battlefield: Left then right, left then right. Vanishing in front of his eyes.
Instinctively he brought his right knee up in a Muay Thai block, as a newly
reapparating crescent kick cracked against his shin. The force sent him
skidding back in the muck. Evan kept his balance, but the throb in his leg was
fierce. They both knew that the end of this fight needed to come before the
storm hit them. Quickly recovering from the delivered blow, he felt her energy
begin to shift again.
She launched herself at him with a
cry, flickering out of existence in middair. His eyes fell closed and he felt
her movement through the immaterial world around them. He dropped his head to
the left, and a beaked fist that would have pulped his skull shot over his
right shoulder. She hung in middair behind him, attempting to deliver the final
blow. His training took over and he clamped her arm, shifted his feet and a
coiling snap reverberated through his body as he levered her body up into the
air. He swung her hard into the ground at his feet, her face plastered with
waste. This was his opportunity.
He dropped to the forest floor after
her, arresting her attempts at escape. Clamped tight in a wrestler’s lock,
Constance could do little more than squirm in his arms. The rolled in the mud,
till Evan held her tight, his back in the mud, her lithe body against him. She
swung her elbows back, mashing his ribs, he felt at least two of them give way
with sharp snaps. She felt like fire incarnate in his grip, her energy
radiating off her skin and body. She arched her hips into his groin, snapping
her head back against the bridge of his nose, it broke easily, but it was the
moment he was waiting for. His own blood poured down his throat and into his
mouth, threatening to choke him.
Evan snaked an arm underneath her
pointed chin and wrenched upward, clenching her carotids. He made a sound as he
exhaled like a tire losing all its pressure. She broke another rib. He clenched
harder, her face blushing.
“You dough, you haff my birffday,”
he managed with his pulped nose.
“What?” she gurgled.
“Sevedd huddredd deighteed. Sevedd
deighteed’s my birffday,” he sprays. Her curves pressed against his body,
slowly sopping wet earth on their clothing. He never felt more alive.
“Well, aren’t I the lucky one,” she
manages on her last dregs of air. Her face started to make the transition from
beet red to violet. “Finish it,” she says, her eyes looking up for his
pleadingly.
“Di’ll seehd you soond.” She nods.
His right hand curled around the point of her chin, the other arm around her
neck and braced against her shoulder. He grunts, pushing down with the left,
wrenching up and back with the right. There’s a soft pop and she goes limp.
Gently, he rolled her over onto her
back, taking time to cross her arms over her chest, brush the muck from her
beautiful face. He hacked a throatful of snot and scabbing blood, dark as a
liver. Between his thumb and forefinger he clamped the bridge of his nose,
feeling the broken area gently.
He drew a sharp breath in through
his mouth, then rerighted his face. The sound echoed hollowly in his throat,
and the blood began to pour freely. He ripped a strip of silk from Constance’s
skirt, tearing it again to plug his nostrils.
For some reason, it brought back an
old memory from his past life. Evan tried desperately to grasp for the thought,
as they were less and less frequent with so much time having passed. He said a
silent goodbye to the slowly cooling corpse of the girl of his dreams,
retrieved his sword and scabbard, and turned to walk toward the treeline.
Everything was still and silent as he reached the hiding spot where he had
watched the beginning of the melee. There was a shoulder slung messenger bag,
laying against a large root of an immense oak. He rummaged through it and
returned to standing with a cigarette case and a battered silver Zippo.
Evan took one last look at the
clearing, the severed limbs, the puddles of human waste and lifeforce, piles of
the dead. Atop the mangled dogpile, he made out the emerald silk. He knew he
would see her again soon. He turned toward the treefort he called home, brought
a cigarette up to his chapped lips, and lit it.
And
then it started to rain.