Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) Page 6

  A middle aged couple, their faces alight with the peppy glee of contentment, trudged past. They walked parallel to each other, a foot of pavement separating them. They tried to look nonchalant, uninterested in each other, but they were clearly paying more attention to each other than the dogs they walked or the park they walked in. They were telling the world that yes, they may know each other, but they weren’t exactly best of friends and certainly weren’t indulging in a sadomasochistic affair. An affair that would bring the cherry-faced woman close to Michael’s door when she forgot the safe word and her lover continued to strangle her.

  Michael eyed them up as they passed, a complementary smile was dropped his way by both, but he doubted they even noticed him.

  He sighed heavily and stood up to leave, cutting through the centre of the park, keen to avoid the outskirts where Martin Atkinson’s body was probably moments away from being discovered.

  He shot a glance at the bullies and their victim as he moved to within ten feet of them. None of them paid any attention to him. Dean was still calling the shots as he stood over his anguished victim.

  “Now, let’s jump on top of him!”

  “Wait, why?”

  “We’ll wrestle him! Come on, that’ll show him!”

  Michael barely suppressed a smile as he moved past with quickening steps.

  “Dude, that’s not wrestling.”

  6

  Daytime television, where the banal, the pointless and the idiotic combine to create a torrid and unmemorable concoction of watered down humanity that isn’t fit to show to those who choose their TV time.

  Angela Washington loved it. She loved the mindlessness of it all. The topics unfit for human consumption that became fantastical during the day when all the kids were at school and she could stand and do the ironing whilst looking down, in her own modest and introverted way, on those worse-off and less intelligent than her. It made her smile, even when she had nothing to do but housework, and that was the most important thing.

  When the doorbell sounded she was still smiling. She put down the iron, still fizzing a vapored dragon breath into the already humid living room; untied her apron, tainted with trails of flour and eggs from cakes currently rising in the oven; checked her appearance in the mirror above the fireplace, flicking a saturated stray hair from her forehead; and went to answer the door, humming happily to herself.

  She wasn’t expecting anyone but had a few friends and neighbours that liked to drop by unannounced.

  Through the peephole she could see two figures standing at the door, their height and size seemingly uniformed. She sighed, anticipating salesmen or Jehovah's witnesses. She opened the door regardless, deciding it was too late to rudely turn her back, having exposed her silhouette through the smeared glass in the door panel.

  The men at the door were wearing black suits, black ties, black shirts and black tinted sunglasses. Their arms were folded behind their backs in a formal manner.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” She couldn’t see any briefcases, bags or leaflets, but also couldn’t see their hands. Nor could she gather their intentions from their blank stares.

  “Angela Washington?” One asked.

  “Yes,” Angela answered politely.

  The two men exchanged a blank stare and then looked back at Angela -- her left hand still lightly grasped the door frame, her right toyed with the back of her tight ponytail.

  “May we come inside?” Two wondered.

  Angela swapped a stare between the two men. “Why?” she inquired with a hint of curiosity.

  “We have a few things we need to discuss,” he replied.

  Angela ducked her head in between them and threw a gentle wave to her neighbour across the street, passing by with his small Jack Russell tugging mentally on the lead two feet in front of him. He threw a wave back and hollered a friendly greeting.

  The two men watched the neighbour closely, only turning back to Angela when he had escorted the dog down the driveway and was trying to usher him into the house.

  “What are you trying to sell?” Angela asked courteously.

  They exchange a look again. The man on the right, the first to speak, turned around to make sure the neighbour had vanished inside with his ferrety canine.

  He turned back. “Salvation,” he said darkly.

  The curiosity on Angela's face trebled, there was barely a smile left to supplement her Stepford charm.

  They stepped forward as one, pushing Angela back and barging roughly into the house. They slammed the door shut behind them and took up parallel positions in front of it.

  Angela stumbled backwards across the hallway, almost losing her balance. She looked concerned. Her eyes were alive with terror.

  “What do you want?” she begged. The fear was evident in her trembling voice; the smile had been wiped clean off her face.

  “Your soul.”

  They both produced pistols and whipped them in front of her. Aiming the menacing barrels at her tearful face.

  She backed up until her ankles were restrained by the bottom step of a narrow staircase. “I don’t understand,” she trembled with quivering lips. She looked from gun to gun, barrel to barrel, dead face to dead face, horrified at what she saw.

  There was a moment’s hesitancy in both men, they looked ready to pull the triggers but they paused, keeping the guns aimed at the shaking homemaker.

  “Angela Washington?” One asked. “Aged forty-five. Housewife. Divorced. Three kids?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Angela cried, throwing her hands into the air in maddening desperation. “What do you want? Please, what do you want from me?”

  “I guess we were expecting a little more…” One replied, trailing off.

  Angela was hysterical. “A little more?” she asked, something other than hysteria and fear crept into her voice and onto her face. Her trembling body became rigid; her frightened face took on a different emotion.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Hair?” one of them asked.

  The other nodded in agreement.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Angela screamed.

  Again the intruders exchanged stares. This time they lowered their weapons and for a moment their concentration waned into curiosity.

  “You think we’ve made a mistake?” One wondered softly.

  Before Two could answer the question posed by his doppelgänger Angela launched herself at them both. Her face had been transformed in its entirety, the smiling mother of three was now a snarling animalistic killer bent on blood.

  Her neatly arranged sparkling white teeth were hideously large, protruding through her snarling lips like the serrated edge on an unsheathed knife. Vicious claws, capable of opening a man like a tin can, dominated her delicate hands, hands that merely moments ago were baking cakes and ironing clothes.

  She tackled one of the intruders, wrestling him violently to the floor, his head and back slammed against the carpeted foundation. His lungs heaved out every inch of air under Angela’s powerfully body which transformed by the second.

  With a jaw still protruding from her neck as if being inflated from behind, she tried to take a bite out of his throat, succeeding only in tearing the fabric from his suit as he twisted away. He grasped her by the shoulders and tightened his grip on her flesh, but he could feel it growing in his palm, getting strong and stronger with each passing moment.

  His hands slipped from her flesh, his body yielded against her sudden strength. She growled in excitement, a snarling hungry glimmer in eyes that still appeared human, but glowed with a monstrous radiance. She opened her mouth, eyed his throat and dove in for the kill.

  A hissing sound preceded a barely audible thump and the beast jolted to a rigid stop, stuck atop the fallen intruder like a rigid cowboy on a beaten horse. A torrent of blood issued forth from an exit wound in the torso of the she-beast, spraying over the spectacled face of man in the black suit -- his sunglasses shielding the viscous crim
son from his eyes.

  The thing that had been Angela Washington jerked violently on the straddled man. She coughed a splutter of blood from her fearsome jaw, wheezed through damaged lungs, shuddered as her life-force spat out of every muscle, and then slumped forward, eclipsing the man beneath her.

  There was a struggle, then Two managed to pull himself free, tossing Angela aside like a hefty, sluggish rag-doll. His colleague stood above the crumpled, muscular figure with his gun still raised.

  “That was close,” Two said, scooping globs of blood from his face and flicking them onto the floor. The blood left a sickly sheen on his hand which he wiped onto the seat of his trousers with a grimace.

  “Very,” One agreed. He lowered the gun that had blown a hole straight through Angela’s chest.

  “Messy as well,” Two added, removing his sunglasses and using his sleeve to clear the sickly smears from the rims.

  “I had no other choice.”

  “You could have pushed her off first.”

  One shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said unconvincingly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Send me the dry cleaning bill.”

  “Will do.”

  They stepped back and peered at the corpse. It was still recognisable as human, but only just. The transformation had been quick but it hadn’t finished, parts of Angela remained. Her stomach, partially clad with fragments of a pink blouse that her growing torso had all but destroyed, wasn’t hers but nor was it that of a beast. Her ears, hair and forehead had retained the style of the attractive single parent.

  Angela twitched, still holding onto the last remnants of life. Her killers didn’t flinch.

  “How long does it take for these things to fully transform do you think?” One asked as he surveyed the mismatch of human and beast.

  Two shrugged unsurely. “We were warned they could turn quickly but beyond that...” he trailed off.

  “You think we could bring down a fully formed one?”

  “With those?” Two said, nodding to the gun in One’s hand. “Sure. Silver bullets seem to be working so far.”

  “And if we run out?”

  “Wooden stake?”

  “Isn’t that vampires?”

  Two shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sure we’d figure something out.”

  “We could try normal bullets, see how they react,” One proposed.

  “To what end?”

  “I guess I just want to know.”

  “And if they don’t work and keep coming? How are we going to stop them before they rip us apart?”

  One thought about this for a moment and then shrugged. “Just a thought.”

  Two removed a device from his chest pocket. He wiped away a drop of blood that had worked its way onto the screen.

  Angela writhed, groaning in agony. Her body tried to transform and let go at the same time.

  “Come on,” Two said. “We better finish up.”

  7

  Michael gave a solemn shake of his head as he looked down at the corpse. First Martin Atkinson and now Angela Washington. Two bodies; no souls.

  The woman before him looked no older than forty-five. She had a kind face and gentle features that reminded Michael of his own mother. A mother who had cried relentlessly over the death of her son, not knowing that he continued to exist, in one form or another, just a few miles away.

  He bent down and checked the frail corpse. She didn’t look like she could hurt a fly, yet she looked like she had been fighting before her demise. She had been executed. Shot once through the chest and then once through the forehead.

  He checked his timer.

  “Bang on time,” he told himself. “Where the fuck are you?”

  He had already checked the house and the garden. Ghosts rarely left their body so soon after death, but he checked anyway -- she was nowhere to be seen.

  ****

  In the Dying Seamstress, a dark and cosy shack-like pub on the edge of town -- hidden underneath a former newsagents and accessed through a backstreet and an ominous staircase -- Michael attracted immediate attention.

  Rusty chimes above the door jangled an eclectic tune when Michael entered. Everyone inside peered up from their drinks and conversations. They all looked at Michael, gave him a quick once-over and then resumed their activities.

  The bar was staffed solely by an aggressive little man who had to stand on a stool to see over the top. He glared at Michael as he approached, his unibrow arched towards the top of his swollen nose.

  Michael greeted the bartender, a man who constantly looked like he was moments away from growling or humping your leg.

  “Mickey,” he replied with a simple nod.

  “What’s all this about?” Michael asked, indicating his scrutinised arrival.

  Scrub grunted to clear a glob of thick phlegm from his throat before swallowing the offending expectorant.

  “Everyone’s a bit on edge.”

  Michael waited for an explanation, but didn’t want to push for one when it didn’t come. “Fair enough” he said. “Give me a pint would you?”

  Scrub hopped off the stool and scuppered over to pull a pint glass from a dusty rack where a milieu of insects and dust mites gathered.

  “You ever thought of getting the floor raised?”

  Scrub turned and glared at Michael, his tiny face peering up at him like a demonic imp.

  “What you tryin’ to say?” he said aggressively.

  Michael held up his hands defensively. “Never mind.”

  He saw Chip sitting in the corner of the room, huddled forlornly over a pint of dark ale. Naff, their mutual friend, was sitting next to him, looking a little happier and prouder, his neck straight; his arms folded across his lap; a tumbler of whiskey on the table in front of him.

  “So, what’s all the commotion about?” Michael said, turning back to Scrub and trying again.

  To Michael’s surprise the little man was staring back at him, waiting expectantly for their eyes to meet like a mythical murderer in a horror film. Michael nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned to see that grim face peering back.

  “We have mortals in,” Scrub said grimly.

  The little bartender watched the final drops of beer slip into the top of a brimming pint glass. He took it away from the pump and plonked it down on the bar, not budging from his stool the entire time.

  “Again?” Michael said, taking a sip from the foamy top.

  “Something here attracts them.”

  “I can’t imagine what.”

  “Third time this week,” Scrub continued, undeterred. “Walking in here like they have the fucking right. This place isn’t for them, it’s for us. This is our haven; they have no right to--”

  “You feel strongly about this huh?”

  “Mortals piss me off,” Scrub explained succinctly.

  “Is that because you never got the chance to be one?

  “Possibly. Not like I would want to be one anyway, filthy fucking--”

  “If I get rid of them will you shut up?” Michael interjected again.

  “Of course.”

  Michael switched into haggler mode. “If you let me drown my sorrows on the house with a double whiskey, you’ve got a deal.”

  “Deal,” Scrub said without faltering. “They’re over there,” he explained with a distasteful nod of his grubby head. “Get to it.”

  “I saw ‘em.”

  He picked up his pint and headed to the other side of the room where two young men wearing athletic attire and simpleton smiles were trying to converse with the locals at a nearby table.

  The most eager looking of the two was a muscle-bound blonde. He wore a hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing sun coloured arms and an expensive watch. He had started up a conversation with Adder, a colossal man whose biceps were the size of Michael's head, while his friend gazed vacuously around the room. Clearly the blonde wasn’t deterred by Adder’s size, or his unwilling
ness to converse.

  “You’re a big guy aren’t you?” he said happily. “Do you play rugby at all?

  Adder grunted a barbaric reply. It sounded like his throat was crushing metal.

  “I see,” the blonde replied, taking a long drink from a pint of cider. “It is very quaint in here isn’t it?” he noted, looking around. “Very English. Almost medieval.”

  Adder’s throat crunched more metal, the youngster seemed undeterred. Michael held back, wondering just how far their persistence would stretch under Adder’s fearful glare and unrelenting grunts.

  “Do you work around here?” the blonde continued.

  Adder grunted more impatiently this time. Whatever was brewing in his throat was about to be unleashed in a cataclysm of noise and aggression.

  Michael decided to intervene. He put his pint down on their table, attracted their attention and then ducked in between them, wrapping his arms around their shoulders. They both turned inward, their faces inches from his.

  “I think you guys are in the wrong establishment,” he said simply, keeping his voice low and his eyes on the other patrons.

  The quieter of the pair spoke first. “Why would you say that?” he asked. “We were rather enjoying ourselves here.”

  “I agree,” the blonde chirped. “I was just chatting to this big fellow here,” he said, indicating Adder.

  “That big fellow, as you put it, is one of the reasons this place isn’t for you.”

  “He seems quite friendly.”

  “He is. So is everyone else here. But, don’t you notice anything odd?” He straightened up and watched their heads rotate on their bulky hinges as they surveyed the pub.