Joakim
A coarse, greasy voice shouted out to us from beneath the ladder leading to our perch. "Oi, you boys got some booze? Throw some down… 'nuff for four, ain't it."
I recognized this as Cook, one of Varren's enforcers. He takes small groups of men and patrols the city. He takes taxes from whoever he finds, oftentimes through force. It wasn't anything but barbarism. We had food, he enjoyed the thrill.
He was a fat, dense man with a bald head and clean-shaven face.
He normally guarded the front gate at its intercom and made sure to keep his large cleaver on clear display, its cold, clean, well-kept metal contrasted with the impossibly vile white outfit he had on. He told me once that he wore white so everyone could see the gore that covered him.
Fucking sicko.
After all, some people only behave because laws keep them in check. No god means no punishment for sins either. If no one will stop these people, why wouldn't they take what they please and do what they want?
Me and David looked down the ladder and took note of the other man with Cook. He joined fairly soon and boasted a taller, wirier frame and a spotty afro. He was a sicko too. No one hangs out with Cook if they aren't crazy themselves.
His voice was deeply burnt by cigarettes. He rasped when he spoke. "Yeah, it's cold down here. Would ya share some for a brother?"
I would rather just grab my gun and shoot these two monsters dead, but that would derail the whole plan. They will all be torn apart by the Fleshcrackers as soon as Varren's brain is all over the ground.
David was about to reply… but something wicked washed over us.
What is this? It's like something foreign is drawing my attention away. It's dense and almost slick, and I can feel it coat my lungs as if I was breathing in oil instead of air.
The shadows stretched out by the floodlights seemed to lengthen along the open road. It felt like my mind was being weighed down by a boulder. Something impossible… wicked.
I saw her then, and I knew they saw her too. All four of us froze in unison. David had crawled down the ladder to hand some beer over, but he had dropped the crate. It stopped mattering now that she was here.
She was wrong.
Her steps were a little too soft, and her body a little too still. She walked towards us as the floodlights glowed with white fury, yet her eyes were just as open and her face stood in that ever-calm, ever-mocking smile. Unflinching.
Her hair seemed lush and well kept. She stopped right before the chain-link fence. Before I knew it, I had already dropped down the ladder and turned off my rifle's safety. David looked back at me with concern as the other two men snickered. Her eyes, hollow like a shark's, looked into my own.
Cook's words were gratuitous enough to drag me out of my trance. "Yah fancy her, lad? I'll give yah a turn first if yah bring 'er in."
"No way," the other man replied. "All the bitches we've fucked were always scared. This one's got some crazy in her eyes." I shuddered at his words. "I am boning her first."
Disgusting. These men should all fucking die. My gun was looking a hell of a lot more seductive right now.
"Alright, alright… maybe if she ain't scared it's 'cause she has some connection to the boss or sumthin'…" Cook cut back in as if seemingly remembering that he had some degree of duty, and that if this was someone the boss knew, hurting her would get him flayed.
"No… she is no good. She is dangerous… can't you feel it?….. We should just let her have what she wants." David's lips shook as if he struggled to get the words out. Her presence was uncomfortable, but seeing David shake, I understood that it wasn't at all affecting us the same.
"Aww, what's wrong? Scared of some crazy bitch? Fair enough. She might bite it off or something, so just be careful." The skinny man laughed. "The looser the screws, the tighter the hole."
Cook barked out a heavy laugh before he commented, "Oh yeah, be careful with the crazy ones. Jeremy kept on screaming that some meth-head harlot was trying to bite his dick off. I blew her brains out. Nearly castrated him by accident, but it's better than having some arrogant whore chew on it. She was like a zombie, you should have seen her."
Yeah, they can't feel it.
They don't get it, they don't get it at all.
This woman… no, this thing.
"This what, huh?" she spoke, words finally. Something human to attribute to her. With her silky voice, I could feel my terror subside ever so slightly. Her words carried no undertone of malice, but they also held no warmth. She seemed bored, if anything.
I stumbled over words as if to find some sort of inoffensive answer, but by then Cook's friend decided to cut to the chase and pull the heavy lever that governed the fence's gate.
Electronics buzzed, and the faint red light on the control panel flickered shut before a smooth green one made its introduction. The sound of steel grating against pavement was music to my ears compared to the tense silence the girl carried. The mechanism locked open with a harsh clang.
"You must have a reason to be here, girly. It would take a really stupid bitch to walk up to a place like this for the hell of it." Cook picked up his cleaver before whipping off the non-existent layer of dust that had formed, his condescending tone laced with vile intent.
She stepped through the gate, hands at her sides. The two men approached, emboldened by her advance. Cook's friend reached out with a gloved hand. He gave her a sick smile as his fingers closed around her forearm.
David looked towards me, and his wide, fear-filled eyes told me all I needed to know. She was not the one in danger here. We were.
He stepped beside me, not in front nor behind.
The man's hand clenched. He gripped her harshly, but she showed nothing but disinterest. "You high or something? Do yah even know what's going on?" His dual tone of condescension and lust was met with nothing. I could see his weight shift. He was more than ready to get violent.
Steven would have stepped in. There is something off about her, but I can't just let them do this.
I pushed past the shaky grasp fear had wrapped around me. I just needed to scare them off. I will shoot over their heads and then… Damn it, I'm not thinking straight. What if Varren gets suspicious and I don't get a shot at him because of this?
I can't let this happen though. I just can't. I need to do something.
My mouth opened, my gun raised, my voice was just about to push out my larynx when—
Crunch.
Fast and solid, her forearm cracked across his face. Her smile grew ever so slightly as she saw the arrogant bastard stumble back and cover his now-crooked nose. "I have no time for side characters."
Her words were full of a genuine irritation that now seemed to permeate her demeanor. The shift in attitude was almost comforting in a way… for but a moment, she seemed a sliver less unknowable.
Cook's thick laugh died down as his friend slowly uncovered his face. Blood stained his greyed clothes as his nose pointed far to his right. It was as if she had turned the dial of a faucet sink. Both in look and function.
She shot me a wry smile before turning back to the group. The brief seconds her eyes were on me felt terrible… God, I wanted to wretch.
"Nice metaphor with the faucet, I'll be sure to use that one?" Just like before, her voice seemed far too smooth and far too… bored. The irritation whipped away.
The man reached his bloodied hand into his pocket before looking his attention to the girl, his words dripping with venom. "Sh… shut up, you whore… I'll kill you…"
"Oi… don't yah cut 'er up too bad. I'm not into corpses." Cook interjected quickly.
The man flipped open a switchblade, the mixture of anger and shame that leaked from him flowing even harsher than the drip-drop of his nose. Had she been a normal person, she would have felt some sort of fear, but no.
She was in control. She knew she was. I knew she was, and David knew it too.
Metal glinted under the floodlights. The blade sliced through the skin of her cheek. The man waited for a reaction that never came. The cruel smile that he had managed to muster quickly fell as her cold eyes and unshakable smirk remained completely unchanged.
For a moment, I could see it in his eyes, distinct and deeply human…
Fear.
He had understood what we had, and he dropped the blade. He held out his hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, wait plea—"
several of his arteries ruptured
She looked at him, no change in her face or expression, though for a moment I could feel David flinch away as if some sort of force washed through us, brimming with twisted life.
Tension left the man's body, and his skin seemed to tighten before turning a pale hue. He gasped, then shuddered.
The dripping blood from his nose stopped as his skin became an even paler, shriveled layer. The thin capillaries in his eyes popped as that gentle force we had felt penetrated deeper into his tissue. The white of his eyes slowly shifted to a soft, spotty pink before he fell to his knees, then laid flat on his face.
He crossed over from living to dead with all the softness of a falling leaf, its movement and eventual landing at the base of the tree far too gentle and certain to even take note of.
Cook's expression finally matched ours. He realized the danger of the woman who stood before us, but he wasn't a stranger to peril. His response to fear and his fight-or-flight instinct did not stand against him.
His large, rugged hand tightened around his cleaver, and his scared expression became resolute as he sprinted forward. There was no attempt to intimidate and no show of rage or vindication. This man may have been terrible, but just like anyone else, he wanted to live.
I had seen him injured from past battles, and in the back of my mind I understood that this brutish man had lived and fought long enough to accumulate some experience, and the decision he made was born from said experience.
A loud thunk broke the silence as her skull was cleaved open all the way from her forehead to her left eye. I gagged slightly at the foul smell that ripped away from her as a thick purple slop drained out of her split skull. It was inhuman, vile. Her insides confirmed our gut feeling.
This did not kill her.
"She can't be killed…" David whispered quietly as he looked away as best he could.
But I couldn't look away.
She frowned in annoyance as her small hands grabbed the cleaver's handle and tugged it out. Purple fluid and greyish, pulsing brain matter followed the blade's arc as she unceremoniously dumped it to the ground.
She was uninjured.
And then the worst of her dreadful powers was shown to us.
It was but a moment.
A single fleeting instant that filled me with untold dread.
Something vast blinked. I felt a tug and then—
She stood there, unmuddied, pristine.
Cook's determination was cut away by her snide grin. His body tensed up like a current had run through it. The strength in his legs waned, and he slowly stumbled backwards as if his body was trying to forcefully drag him away from the imminent danger.
"Wh… what the h… hell are you?" His thick, hoarse voice had become the shakiest of whimpers. She slowly raised a hand before closing her last three fingers and raising her thumb with a playful flick, her index finger pointed at Cook like the barrel of a gun.
The oh-so-familiar gesture now held a real and physical threat. Could she actually…
No, she couldn't just do that…
She definitely could. She did something to Cook's friend just by looking at him.
"Mmmhh… did you read Chainsaw Man?" Her grin faded, and for a moment she seemed almost curious. Cook's eyes now showed a veil of confusion beneath the terror that had consumed him.
"What's a chains—"
"BANG"
She clicked her thumb back as her exclamation ripped through the air. David snapped his head to the side. I also flinched. Cook nearly launched himself backwards, but…
Nothing.
She was laughing, playing with us. She was malicious, evil, evil, wrong. I had a gun. I could stop her. I had to. If I shoot her now, maybe it would slow her down enough that David could get away and bring the boss over.
David looked at me as if to tell me to stop. Terrified reluctance marred his gaze. Cook seemed relieved. He knew perhaps I would draw her attention away and perhaps he would survive, at least.
Pull the trigger.
Pull.
Pull.
Pull.
"Steven would have pulled it, you know. You should have joined the war despite your injuries, coward."
My fear faded, and only rage was left as my finger slammed down against the trigger. How she knew this or the nature of her claim was irrelevant. I would shoot and keep shooting…
A sudden splash of red hit me, and my gun was blown to the side. The loud crack of my rifle echoed into the void of night. My bullet struck a floodlight and broke the glass.
Cook's head exploded like a water balloon. His large body flew into the metal fencing before slumping over.
She laughed again, louder now. Like a harpy. A siren.
"You really thought I was pulling your leg with that, didn't you? I was. But that was just the setup… there's your punchline."
She was… what?
But why? What's the point in this?
It's just a joke to her. We are nothing to her.
"Why are you doing this? What's the point… what do you want?"
David spoke up with a fervor I had seldom seen from him. I had the gun, and I was completely silent.
He was scared too. His shaking knees gave it away, but this didn't stop him.
"Oh, David, you can't tell me you never crushed some roaches before. They were disgusting, and so I killed 'em." She spoke like a disappointed wife after she caught her husband drinking on a Sunday afternoon. Every bit as playful as any of her other words.
"But you can't just—"
"David, you are fine with your good friend over there doing something similar, aren't you… didn't Steven say he hated that greater-good crap?" David's defiant flames melted away as she spoke.
Hearing her mention Steven's name felt as blasphemous as gunning the Pope down in cold blood.
I raised my gun and squeezed the trigger.