Post by Sicko on Apr 8, 2019 17:23:18 GMT -5
One of them stirs as I sit up in the bed; this powerful, muscled body making the bedsprings creak and groan. I look back at the two forms wrapped up, entwined in the sheets. They’re young, nubile, and were both perfectly willing to lose themselves in hours of sinful pleasures they’d never dreamed of.
I stepped over fallen leather, boots, skirts, all discarded boudoir bits that were cast or ripped aside as the three of us engaged in our dalliance. I made my way to the bathroom, and the girl, a delicious thing with mocha skin, curls back up in the linen.
For breakfast I had two girls, a blonde and a brunette. It looks to be a good day.
I undertake my morning ritual, starting by looking myself in the mirror. The face looking back at me is sharp, severe. I examine it, turn my head this way and that.
I gently apply a face scrub to the pores to let them breathe, and take out a small pair of scissors to trim the goatee. I turn the hot water on, letting the shower run like red-hot needles over the skin as I step inside and apply a lavender-scented body wash. Maintenance of the body is very important. After I'm finished with my skin care routine, I take a quick stock of the mess in the room, and I shake out my sport coat. I dress quickly. I wrap the bloody mess I’ve left in the bed in the linen sheets like a rollup, pull it towards the laundry chute at the end of the hallway, and toss it in. Nothing that was thrown out will be missed.
I step out onto the curb as the valet brings my car around. Smiling, I admire the luxury, the style that comes with being a former World champion allows, and it’s good to me that this exchange has given me money to burn. As I slide behind the wheel of the Maserati, I tap my thumb on the steering wheel, and the city of Phoenix stretches before me. I allow myself one brief moment's reflection on the carnal acts I partook in. But they are meaningless. I tire of being Jason Twisted, malevolent manipulator, former wrestler. I tire of being someone who is seen. What I want; what I've always wanted, really, was indefinable, ultimate power. And I have the name of just one that can give it to me. Ironically, it was an encounter with my running mate from the IEW that set me on this path. And while I did everything I could to cloud his mind with confusing words, something he said flipped a switch inside of my head. Moloch. Ephrain said a name. Moloch. And in the weeks since we met at the old Inner Circle compound, those syllables are a song I am unable to forget.
By the time the maid comes to the room and finds the walls daubed with the blood of two girls in the eldritch symbols I gleaned from the book seated on my passenger side, events will be set in motion. The song rises in pitch. It's too late to stop it. It's too late for Ephrain to turn back. It's too late for everyone. A good day, indeed.
***
He coughs, choking to himself, and his eyes seize onto the fly buzzing around the inside of the windshield. With a piquant fury, his ham sized hand swoops in and swats at it. He lifts his paw, inspecting the smear it left. He wipes it on his coverall sullenly, but he notes with a black, dour remark that there were more flies buzzing around the inside of his truck. He coughed again.
He closed his eyes, fighting back against the pounding in his head and concentrating. Usually Moloch was a dark passenger, if not a backseat driver. But as he probed his thoughts deeper, their connection felt strained, like from far away. Ephrain exited the door of the ice cream truck, stepping out into the air, and he felt nauseous, lightheaded and weakness uncharacteristically pass over him. He couldn't hear his dark passenger at all. Still, free of the thickly choking buzzing of flies in the cab, he heaved, and tried to get his bearings. He had never felt this way before. At length, he craned his head up towards the house.
He had ventured to the last known address of an... old friend. Rebecca Owens, interviewer extraordinaire for the IEW. He grimaced to himself. Finding Rebecca's cabin was no mean trick, not the least because he was no detective. He had managed to find a string of forwarding addresses after reading an old IEW mailer in the ruins and tatters of the training facility and worked from there; finally tracking down a lake house which seemed to be the last stop. And now he stood in the driveway, heaving. The feeling of dark dread had risen up just as he was turning off the old backwood road up towards the lake, and it had grown thicker, and rife with flies, the closer he came. As if in response, the sky overhead was the color of a purple bruise, with the same sense of foreboding.
And still, he couldn't hear his dark passenger speaking in his ear.
It almost drove him to fret, he had become so accustomed in the past few months to Moloch's hungry directives to hurt. Granted, the distraction had cost him precious ground when he had gone up against David Hunter. But working in synch with the elder demon, he felt the surge of power and righteous fury doubling his strength, giving him purpose, directing him where he needed to be. Right now, he felt... lost.
He staggered up the gravel, tottering towards the wooden stoop.
Rebecca, if she was here, would have insight. She had interviewed them all in turn, but Jason... as he had with him, he supposed, had taken interest in Rebecca. Had taken a liking to her. But as Ephrain thought on that, it didn't bode well for the girl. Jason had this way of getting into your head, when he spoke it was like it was filled with steel wool and railroad spikes. He joked he could have talked her into... anything. As he reflected on that, he touched the front door. He pushed it open, and it was enough to make even his blood run cold.
The flies. The flies were covering all of the windows. Wriggling black dots danced, giving the illusion the window itself was moving. And the flies, thick in the air as he swatted at them, were also buzzing over the thick, congealed trail leading across the floor. Putting the discomfort out of his mind as he looked at the body-wide trail leading across the floor, he bent down and touched the sticky mass. Old, by weeks. "Oh, Rebecca," he murmured to no one, not even his dark passenger. But the flies were the only answer, the buzzing of their wings giving such a whine that it rose to the pitch of a dog whistle. He gripped at his forehead, gnashing his teeth.
And then, as he looked up, he saw the symbol painted on the wall. It had migrated in it's age from deep maroon almost to black, and while the flies danced in the air and landed on every spot of the wall they could, the fly mass as a whole avoided the sigil painted on the wall in dried sticky blood like it was a ward against them. Curious and startled by the morbid phenomena, forgot everything in the moment, the weakness, Moloch's silence, coming here to find Rebecca - he reached out, extending his hand as he walked over towards the wall where the sigil was painted in blood, feeling it's familiarity, a vein beating in his head like a drum -
"DON'T" came the clear instruction, a panicked scream rocketing through his head. It was all the dark passenger had to say, but it was with such urgency and fear that he withdrew his hand.
He looked around, confused, as he called out into the ceiling, "Moloch?" but there was no answer that could be heard over the sound of the wings of so many flies.
***
I'm smiling as I leaf through the files I have. I'm sitting in the office of a licensed social worker, and in my outer skin right now, I'm looking just as official as she is. She takes me for her boss, and I persuade her to that effect with simple words delivered in a low, droning buzz. It's my secret talent, you see, I talk, people give me what I want. And as I go through the case worker assigned to a particular set of files, I'm fascinated by what I pore over. The entire Springdale history of two patients involved in a particularly gruesome ongoing debacle. My boy Ephrain, and his little woman, Mariah. I'd read the backstory before, but now with the file in hand, I pulled out leaflets, crime scene photos, detailed diagrams of markings... notes on a book of forbidden, ancient magic that the girl was purported to have. It was fascinating reading.
The social worker, nervously, stands behind my shoulder, as if awaiting a command, but so skittish that simply plopping a file makes her jump out of her skin. I cast a look at her, telling her lowly to leave me. And I turn back to the file. When I see the next array of photographs, they make me smile. Because it tells me I am on the right track.
The book I purchased through black market dealers has not steered me wrong. That book that I carry in the passenger seat of the car is the key to giving me the very power that Ephrain was gifted. That Mariah Bamford craved, hungered for. And what's better, I won't have to bewitch a proxy to dismember my body and have it stew in a grave to be animated by blood magic. It began simply, with the wards daubed on the walls in three key places. Their blood is my bridge price. When it's finished, I can rip all of the power I could ever want straight from the heart of the demon's vessel.
With interest, I read the reports of how Mariah drew Ephrain from his shell. And I have to smile with pride, the father that watches his son learn how to ride on training wheels. The poor fool doesn't even know. But, all the same... Ephrain grew from a broken man, searching for a home that his addled, confused mind didn't know was lost forever. And I made him into my weapon, and when it amused me, I turned him into a catatonic... but he fought his way back from that. And he ended things with Mariah, and has since been roaming the countryside, stronger than ever. In my way, I facilitated that. And I stand by it. Even in defeat, Sicko has grown stronger than he ever was in the IEW. Used to be, when the illusion of the monster clown was broken through, people just saw Sicko as a whipped dog, a cringer. But that David Hunter boy had to throw every single thing he had at Ephrain and still it took five of his finishers. I made that.
And, you know, if I had my hand in making something of that power and magnitude, I have every right for him to give me that power. It's only natural.
I replace the folder in the social worker's shaking hands, and I speak lowly to her. She is as a mouse before a cobra, helpless and frozen as the predator sways in front of her. I give her a kiss on the cheek. I think about using her, gutting her, pulling out her entrails and daubing her blood for the third sigil to unlock, but I decide against it. It's already a good enough day. I step out of her office on the administrative, my near seven feet of height and muscle mass swaddled in a sleek black suit. I cut an imposing and, I can admit it, incongruous figure out here. For all intents and purposes I’d appear to be nothing more than some asshole social worker who came down here to get a liberal, bleeding-heart up-close look at the harsh realities of institutionalized life. But none of that interests me at all. I’m here because I am drawn here, like a moth to candle-flame, attracted to the prospect of the deepest, darkest sins. I'm walking back from the social services office, towards my expensive Maserati, which I parked with no fear in this bad neighborhood, ruminating on what I saw about Ephrain and Mariah in the files.
Not many people approach me. They cross as far away from me as they can on the sidewalk, giving me strange looks as they go. I am a malevolent shark trawling for prawn. A skinny black boy in a 76’ers basketball jersey bumps shoulders with me and he starts to shout “Hey man what -” but he sees me, and his voice hitches, and he keeps walking.
I’m sure they see me, like a ghostly aura. There is always an idea of Jason, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real Jason Twisted. Only an entity, something illusory.
I pass by a deep alleyway, and something snicks out in the darkness. I’m aware of what it is, even as I see the face behind the blade. His olive skin is dark, his face and neck are covered in tattoos and his greasy mustache frames a shifty, rat-like appearance. And he doesn’t seem perturbed by my size and muscular frame, all he sees is the fancy accoutrements. He grabs hold of my lapels and attempts to pull me in, attempting to stick the knife in my face. I just smile. “Gimme your wallet, man,” the thug says, his voice grim and businesslike. There’s no show of nerves here, I fully expect that if he wanted to he could end me at any time. I respect his cold, murderous demeanor even as I’m disappointed by his small-time thinking. Here was a greasy thug like a Jason Twisted so much used to be, limited, pathetic, nothing. He lacked the capacity for greatness. He wanted to be more. As I wanted to be more, I wanted to be whole. If circumstances were different, I know, this young man would have made a worthy shell.
I apologize. I’m so lost in sizing up the young man I forget that he’s threatening to kill me.
The knife dipped, and his expression went slack. Then his brow knit in fury, "Ain't you listening bitch? Gimme your money!" The knife was up again, now digging into the throat, drawing blood.
I sigh. Stupid and thoughtless. No, it would’t have been a good exchange after all, he lacked the necessary vision. So I ask him, simply, “You know your girlfriend is cheating on you.”
"How do you know that-" he said, knife forgotten.
"I know. And I know if you go home right now, you’ll catch her with Julio from around the way." My face could break even the best poker-player’s concentration. "The thing’s she’s saying to him right now, … do you want to hear? How he’s making her scream on the pullout bed in your house? How she’s telling him to drive it harder, papi- "
"You… you ain’t right, man…" he denies, but I just stand there. Letting my words sink in. "Madre dios, you ain’t right, how can you know all this -"
I tap my eye, is all. I see things. The punk actually pulls out a St. Christopher medallion from the cathedral across the way, and, eyeing me fearfully, he begins to head up the street, to find his girl presumably. He's afraid to take his eyes off me. "You ain't right," is all he can say.
"Oh, I'm right," I tell him, but my eyes aren't for him now.
I'm watching the cathedral, and a street lamp on the corner. I can see the faint score marks now, the place where it was bent out of true and my sharp eyes even pick up microscopic bits of glass and blood from the long-ago car wreck embedded in the fabric of that small spot. My mindseye takes us back to that night as I walk closer to the lamp, and the cathedral it sits by.
I smile.
Predator's smile.
***
He's sitting on a blood soaked easy chair, feeling heavy in the pit of his stomach as he pushes the play button. Rebecca's desk yielded an older style tape recorder, and a stack of tapes she had been taking notes on. It was an old expose about Jason Twisted, at the tail end of the IEW. He remembered those times well, in 2010, the Inner Circle had fallen apart, all four of them left had gone their separate ways, Danny had retired, Hightower had taken on a new identity, and Sicko had faded into the woodwork. Jason was... in the midst of becoming something vastly different to what he was. There was a rumor a long time ago, about some kind of accident. It was... in the same city that he himself had been kidnapped in a year or so later. In fact... it was the same city that housed Springdale.
His lips pursed. All of this was connecting in ways he didn't like. So he pushed play, letting the tape wind in the old style recorder, pleading for Rebecca, if she was out there to give him some kind of hint as to what was going on.
Squiggle of tape going forward, then it begins. "--I’ve encountered this mystery in my career, through my… association with Jason Twisted, and even after all this time I’m still not sure if the real deal fits there." A deep breath. The husky woman's voice continues, after she seemingly blows out some smoke.
"I’m at the outer edges of the puzzle, unable to see the picture at the center. There’s something that goes beyond said tropey bullcookies there, yes. It goes just far enough that it seems corny sometimes… but then you realize what a facade it seems to be. As if something working the strings is playing it too over-the-top to be purposefully believed, it wants it that way.
"But no, that’s ridiculous."
"Full disclosure: these are just my journal notes, to record my thoughts and findings. I’m unemployed currently, have been ever since the IEW folded, and anyway, a 37-year old chick with a bachelor’s in journalism and communication doesn’t find many job prospects. I write puff pieces for various magazines that may or may not get picked up..."
Impatient, he pushed a big finger down on the button, making it fast forward a few stops.
Squeal and squiggle of moving tape, then it cuts in, " - I will not, I won‘t let the trails go cold here. I just... Sigh...
"The problem is that so much of Jason’s trail is misdirection. It was known he’d grown up on the streets and was in the juvenile deliquent system in Pittsburgh, but as who? He was identified as Jason Negan, Jason Rieber, Jay Torrance, and Jason Aaron Julio Esquivel. He was affiliated with gangs from MS-13, the Crips, and others. He was Hispanic, or he wasn’t. Misdirection. Nobody knew where he came from or where he could be tracked until the age of 19 when he popped up in Canada, of all places, wrestling at a small promotion’s hardcore division. How he got there? Anybody’s guess..."
He groans, and he picks up one of the other tapes with a scowl. Maybe there's nothing here, he thinks, as he pops one tape out and puts the next in. And then, from far away he feels the call. His dark passenger is returning, weak and tinny, a radio reception just out of range - "Ephrain, something is trying to sever my connection... we are running out of time."
He listens intently, face scrunched up in consternation. "What does that mean? Is that why I felt so weak? Moloch, answer me!" He thinks back to his struggles over the past few weeks. Is this an answer for why he's faltered as he's gotten closer to finding Jason?
"Strengthen our bond, Ephrain. Feed me blood and broken bone. You have to." The elder demon is insistent as it's voice sounds strained. It sounds like he's hurting. "I have not encountered magic like this in eons. Feed me a blood price and we can -" the voice fades out momentarily. When it does, it comes even farther away, garbled. It sounds like Moloch is saying "predators smile", as if that has a significance.
He knows he faces David Hunter at his "other job" very soon, and making David Hunter squeal in pain would be music to Moloch's ears. Hunter is actively looking past him now, which is just enough to make him grit his teeth in anger.
When he faced David at Mass Destruction, he was confident, perhaps overly so, that the instructions his dark passenger left him would allow him to dismantle the foppish young boy trying to step into his father's shoes. Hunter surprised him, pushing a strong message, talking about legacy, about dynasty, about a kingdom. Except when push came to shove, David proved that he was weak. It took the interference of Razor Blade and five of his finishers to keep Sicko down.
And what made Ephrain even more annoyed is that people saw David Hunter's words before Mass Destruction and talked about how he really showed his worth as a champion. But his message changed with every week, Hunter literally was just saying anything that fit his arrogant rambling of the moment. Before Mass Destruction, Hunter had said how DARE Sicko write the current Underground division off as worthless, they had main evented shows and every week we saw strong showings from Muscles Malone, from Tyler Scott, from Cory Steel. Words that no one in their right mind believed even as Hunter said them, but they sounded good. Except one Trauma later, and Hunter was standing backstage flirting with the interviewer girl as he always fucking does and he listed off a list of names that were beneath him, Muscles Malone, Cory Steel, Alexa Black, Tyler Scott, Sicko. Midcard nobodies that came against the King, First of His Name and lost. David Hunter so arrogantly clings to the Underground title and it' stupid crown configuration. But he can't keep it straight whether they were strong victories over worthwhile competition that proclaimed him as main event level talent or if they were losers and he was the only good one there.
It was honestly a good thing that logic didn't dictate who won or lost matches in Pure Class Wrestling, he thought with a grumble, because there were gaps in that train of thought that could drive, well, an ice cream truck through. But as much as it galled him that the mouthy little prick was now listing his name as a nobody he had managed to conquer, thereby erasing his own message and tainting his victory, what really got to him was that he really thought the loss broke Sicko, that it removed all of his menace, that he had nothing more to fear. Oh no, David Hunter, he thought, while you became number two of my most wanted today, you still are ready for a reckoning.
He thought, I am the match that, when struck, sparks a cleansing flame that is going to burn your paper "kingdom" down.
He thought his dark passenger would agree, but there was radio silence on that end.
But he remembered the words Moloch had said, about running out of time, and he stood. He couldn't delay anymore. In the back of his mind, he was wondering how well he would fare with limited guidance from Moloch, but he reaffirmed himself. He did not need it. He had his own strength to guide him, and his own will.
Giving one more glance to the weird sigil on the wall, he put Rebecca's tape recorder down. It was still spinning, but there was quiet there, only the rolling of the tape and the buzzing of flies wings for a long time, after Ephrain shut the door behind him, off to work on finding a blood price. Finally, after an eternity played out, the tape began to speak again. It was her voice, from much more recently.
"Jason- Jason found me. He came back. I can't believe it. He called me, on the phone... his voice was so... irresistable. He knows about the tapes and the interviews I've been doing... it was so long ago, how did he - not important. He's coming here. He's coming. Please, anyone who hears this... he's coming. Hide."
And then the tape ends.
***
I take the steps slow and deliberate. I know I'm going to find her here, as I push open the doors to the cathedral. The vestibule looms large above my head, and I turn, taking in the ornate stained glass, the plush velvet-lined pews leading the expanse of a football field all the way up to the altar. It's not time for mass, or any service, so there's only one person here, praying on her knees by the flickering candlelight. My presence alerts her as I waft closer. She looks up, does a double-take, and crosses herself, then looks away, resolutely avoiding me. Her nun's habit covers every exposed bit of skin, but her hands are clasped in white-knuckle terror.
"How are you here?" Is all she can say. I don't give her an answer, just watch.
She looks down, closes her eyes. "I would have thought your feet would start burning the moment you stepped in this church."
I actually laugh at that, a real laugh. "But here I am."
She turns her shining eyes to me, and I see again the face that was framed in mortal terror across from the body pinned to that street lamp, aghast at what she's done. "Do you have any regrets?"
"I know I shouldn't have left the scene," she admitted, "that was my - my sin. But I was so scared, I -"
She went silent, for a moment, thinking. "I changed my life, you know. I've turned things around, I've joined the sisters to... I'm working on absolving myself."
I laugh, but darker this time... meaner. "I'm in the middle of changing my life, right now, too."
She sighs, and only flinches away a little bit as my hands reach out for her in a grip as implacable and inescapable as the Grim Reaper.
The finish the day off, I had my way with a nun. And then, the third sigil was complete, on the walls of the vestibule, and I stood there admiring my work with a satisfied smile.
It was a good day.
I stepped over fallen leather, boots, skirts, all discarded boudoir bits that were cast or ripped aside as the three of us engaged in our dalliance. I made my way to the bathroom, and the girl, a delicious thing with mocha skin, curls back up in the linen.
For breakfast I had two girls, a blonde and a brunette. It looks to be a good day.
I undertake my morning ritual, starting by looking myself in the mirror. The face looking back at me is sharp, severe. I examine it, turn my head this way and that.
I gently apply a face scrub to the pores to let them breathe, and take out a small pair of scissors to trim the goatee. I turn the hot water on, letting the shower run like red-hot needles over the skin as I step inside and apply a lavender-scented body wash. Maintenance of the body is very important. After I'm finished with my skin care routine, I take a quick stock of the mess in the room, and I shake out my sport coat. I dress quickly. I wrap the bloody mess I’ve left in the bed in the linen sheets like a rollup, pull it towards the laundry chute at the end of the hallway, and toss it in. Nothing that was thrown out will be missed.
I step out onto the curb as the valet brings my car around. Smiling, I admire the luxury, the style that comes with being a former World champion allows, and it’s good to me that this exchange has given me money to burn. As I slide behind the wheel of the Maserati, I tap my thumb on the steering wheel, and the city of Phoenix stretches before me. I allow myself one brief moment's reflection on the carnal acts I partook in. But they are meaningless. I tire of being Jason Twisted, malevolent manipulator, former wrestler. I tire of being someone who is seen. What I want; what I've always wanted, really, was indefinable, ultimate power. And I have the name of just one that can give it to me. Ironically, it was an encounter with my running mate from the IEW that set me on this path. And while I did everything I could to cloud his mind with confusing words, something he said flipped a switch inside of my head. Moloch. Ephrain said a name. Moloch. And in the weeks since we met at the old Inner Circle compound, those syllables are a song I am unable to forget.
By the time the maid comes to the room and finds the walls daubed with the blood of two girls in the eldritch symbols I gleaned from the book seated on my passenger side, events will be set in motion. The song rises in pitch. It's too late to stop it. It's too late for Ephrain to turn back. It's too late for everyone. A good day, indeed.
***
He coughs, choking to himself, and his eyes seize onto the fly buzzing around the inside of the windshield. With a piquant fury, his ham sized hand swoops in and swats at it. He lifts his paw, inspecting the smear it left. He wipes it on his coverall sullenly, but he notes with a black, dour remark that there were more flies buzzing around the inside of his truck. He coughed again.
He closed his eyes, fighting back against the pounding in his head and concentrating. Usually Moloch was a dark passenger, if not a backseat driver. But as he probed his thoughts deeper, their connection felt strained, like from far away. Ephrain exited the door of the ice cream truck, stepping out into the air, and he felt nauseous, lightheaded and weakness uncharacteristically pass over him. He couldn't hear his dark passenger at all. Still, free of the thickly choking buzzing of flies in the cab, he heaved, and tried to get his bearings. He had never felt this way before. At length, he craned his head up towards the house.
He had ventured to the last known address of an... old friend. Rebecca Owens, interviewer extraordinaire for the IEW. He grimaced to himself. Finding Rebecca's cabin was no mean trick, not the least because he was no detective. He had managed to find a string of forwarding addresses after reading an old IEW mailer in the ruins and tatters of the training facility and worked from there; finally tracking down a lake house which seemed to be the last stop. And now he stood in the driveway, heaving. The feeling of dark dread had risen up just as he was turning off the old backwood road up towards the lake, and it had grown thicker, and rife with flies, the closer he came. As if in response, the sky overhead was the color of a purple bruise, with the same sense of foreboding.
And still, he couldn't hear his dark passenger speaking in his ear.
It almost drove him to fret, he had become so accustomed in the past few months to Moloch's hungry directives to hurt. Granted, the distraction had cost him precious ground when he had gone up against David Hunter. But working in synch with the elder demon, he felt the surge of power and righteous fury doubling his strength, giving him purpose, directing him where he needed to be. Right now, he felt... lost.
He staggered up the gravel, tottering towards the wooden stoop.
Rebecca, if she was here, would have insight. She had interviewed them all in turn, but Jason... as he had with him, he supposed, had taken interest in Rebecca. Had taken a liking to her. But as Ephrain thought on that, it didn't bode well for the girl. Jason had this way of getting into your head, when he spoke it was like it was filled with steel wool and railroad spikes. He joked he could have talked her into... anything. As he reflected on that, he touched the front door. He pushed it open, and it was enough to make even his blood run cold.
The flies. The flies were covering all of the windows. Wriggling black dots danced, giving the illusion the window itself was moving. And the flies, thick in the air as he swatted at them, were also buzzing over the thick, congealed trail leading across the floor. Putting the discomfort out of his mind as he looked at the body-wide trail leading across the floor, he bent down and touched the sticky mass. Old, by weeks. "Oh, Rebecca," he murmured to no one, not even his dark passenger. But the flies were the only answer, the buzzing of their wings giving such a whine that it rose to the pitch of a dog whistle. He gripped at his forehead, gnashing his teeth.
And then, as he looked up, he saw the symbol painted on the wall. It had migrated in it's age from deep maroon almost to black, and while the flies danced in the air and landed on every spot of the wall they could, the fly mass as a whole avoided the sigil painted on the wall in dried sticky blood like it was a ward against them. Curious and startled by the morbid phenomena, forgot everything in the moment, the weakness, Moloch's silence, coming here to find Rebecca - he reached out, extending his hand as he walked over towards the wall where the sigil was painted in blood, feeling it's familiarity, a vein beating in his head like a drum -
"DON'T" came the clear instruction, a panicked scream rocketing through his head. It was all the dark passenger had to say, but it was with such urgency and fear that he withdrew his hand.
He looked around, confused, as he called out into the ceiling, "Moloch?" but there was no answer that could be heard over the sound of the wings of so many flies.
***
I'm smiling as I leaf through the files I have. I'm sitting in the office of a licensed social worker, and in my outer skin right now, I'm looking just as official as she is. She takes me for her boss, and I persuade her to that effect with simple words delivered in a low, droning buzz. It's my secret talent, you see, I talk, people give me what I want. And as I go through the case worker assigned to a particular set of files, I'm fascinated by what I pore over. The entire Springdale history of two patients involved in a particularly gruesome ongoing debacle. My boy Ephrain, and his little woman, Mariah. I'd read the backstory before, but now with the file in hand, I pulled out leaflets, crime scene photos, detailed diagrams of markings... notes on a book of forbidden, ancient magic that the girl was purported to have. It was fascinating reading.
The social worker, nervously, stands behind my shoulder, as if awaiting a command, but so skittish that simply plopping a file makes her jump out of her skin. I cast a look at her, telling her lowly to leave me. And I turn back to the file. When I see the next array of photographs, they make me smile. Because it tells me I am on the right track.
The book I purchased through black market dealers has not steered me wrong. That book that I carry in the passenger seat of the car is the key to giving me the very power that Ephrain was gifted. That Mariah Bamford craved, hungered for. And what's better, I won't have to bewitch a proxy to dismember my body and have it stew in a grave to be animated by blood magic. It began simply, with the wards daubed on the walls in three key places. Their blood is my bridge price. When it's finished, I can rip all of the power I could ever want straight from the heart of the demon's vessel.
With interest, I read the reports of how Mariah drew Ephrain from his shell. And I have to smile with pride, the father that watches his son learn how to ride on training wheels. The poor fool doesn't even know. But, all the same... Ephrain grew from a broken man, searching for a home that his addled, confused mind didn't know was lost forever. And I made him into my weapon, and when it amused me, I turned him into a catatonic... but he fought his way back from that. And he ended things with Mariah, and has since been roaming the countryside, stronger than ever. In my way, I facilitated that. And I stand by it. Even in defeat, Sicko has grown stronger than he ever was in the IEW. Used to be, when the illusion of the monster clown was broken through, people just saw Sicko as a whipped dog, a cringer. But that David Hunter boy had to throw every single thing he had at Ephrain and still it took five of his finishers. I made that.
And, you know, if I had my hand in making something of that power and magnitude, I have every right for him to give me that power. It's only natural.
I replace the folder in the social worker's shaking hands, and I speak lowly to her. She is as a mouse before a cobra, helpless and frozen as the predator sways in front of her. I give her a kiss on the cheek. I think about using her, gutting her, pulling out her entrails and daubing her blood for the third sigil to unlock, but I decide against it. It's already a good enough day. I step out of her office on the administrative, my near seven feet of height and muscle mass swaddled in a sleek black suit. I cut an imposing and, I can admit it, incongruous figure out here. For all intents and purposes I’d appear to be nothing more than some asshole social worker who came down here to get a liberal, bleeding-heart up-close look at the harsh realities of institutionalized life. But none of that interests me at all. I’m here because I am drawn here, like a moth to candle-flame, attracted to the prospect of the deepest, darkest sins. I'm walking back from the social services office, towards my expensive Maserati, which I parked with no fear in this bad neighborhood, ruminating on what I saw about Ephrain and Mariah in the files.
Not many people approach me. They cross as far away from me as they can on the sidewalk, giving me strange looks as they go. I am a malevolent shark trawling for prawn. A skinny black boy in a 76’ers basketball jersey bumps shoulders with me and he starts to shout “Hey man what -” but he sees me, and his voice hitches, and he keeps walking.
I’m sure they see me, like a ghostly aura. There is always an idea of Jason, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real Jason Twisted. Only an entity, something illusory.
I pass by a deep alleyway, and something snicks out in the darkness. I’m aware of what it is, even as I see the face behind the blade. His olive skin is dark, his face and neck are covered in tattoos and his greasy mustache frames a shifty, rat-like appearance. And he doesn’t seem perturbed by my size and muscular frame, all he sees is the fancy accoutrements. He grabs hold of my lapels and attempts to pull me in, attempting to stick the knife in my face. I just smile. “Gimme your wallet, man,” the thug says, his voice grim and businesslike. There’s no show of nerves here, I fully expect that if he wanted to he could end me at any time. I respect his cold, murderous demeanor even as I’m disappointed by his small-time thinking. Here was a greasy thug like a Jason Twisted so much used to be, limited, pathetic, nothing. He lacked the capacity for greatness. He wanted to be more. As I wanted to be more, I wanted to be whole. If circumstances were different, I know, this young man would have made a worthy shell.
I apologize. I’m so lost in sizing up the young man I forget that he’s threatening to kill me.
The knife dipped, and his expression went slack. Then his brow knit in fury, "Ain't you listening bitch? Gimme your money!" The knife was up again, now digging into the throat, drawing blood.
I sigh. Stupid and thoughtless. No, it would’t have been a good exchange after all, he lacked the necessary vision. So I ask him, simply, “You know your girlfriend is cheating on you.”
"How do you know that-" he said, knife forgotten.
"I know. And I know if you go home right now, you’ll catch her with Julio from around the way." My face could break even the best poker-player’s concentration. "The thing’s she’s saying to him right now, … do you want to hear? How he’s making her scream on the pullout bed in your house? How she’s telling him to drive it harder, papi- "
"You… you ain’t right, man…" he denies, but I just stand there. Letting my words sink in. "Madre dios, you ain’t right, how can you know all this -"
I tap my eye, is all. I see things. The punk actually pulls out a St. Christopher medallion from the cathedral across the way, and, eyeing me fearfully, he begins to head up the street, to find his girl presumably. He's afraid to take his eyes off me. "You ain't right," is all he can say.
"Oh, I'm right," I tell him, but my eyes aren't for him now.
I'm watching the cathedral, and a street lamp on the corner. I can see the faint score marks now, the place where it was bent out of true and my sharp eyes even pick up microscopic bits of glass and blood from the long-ago car wreck embedded in the fabric of that small spot. My mindseye takes us back to that night as I walk closer to the lamp, and the cathedral it sits by.
I smile.
Predator's smile.
***
He's sitting on a blood soaked easy chair, feeling heavy in the pit of his stomach as he pushes the play button. Rebecca's desk yielded an older style tape recorder, and a stack of tapes she had been taking notes on. It was an old expose about Jason Twisted, at the tail end of the IEW. He remembered those times well, in 2010, the Inner Circle had fallen apart, all four of them left had gone their separate ways, Danny had retired, Hightower had taken on a new identity, and Sicko had faded into the woodwork. Jason was... in the midst of becoming something vastly different to what he was. There was a rumor a long time ago, about some kind of accident. It was... in the same city that he himself had been kidnapped in a year or so later. In fact... it was the same city that housed Springdale.
His lips pursed. All of this was connecting in ways he didn't like. So he pushed play, letting the tape wind in the old style recorder, pleading for Rebecca, if she was out there to give him some kind of hint as to what was going on.
Squiggle of tape going forward, then it begins. "--I’ve encountered this mystery in my career, through my… association with Jason Twisted, and even after all this time I’m still not sure if the real deal fits there." A deep breath. The husky woman's voice continues, after she seemingly blows out some smoke.
"I’m at the outer edges of the puzzle, unable to see the picture at the center. There’s something that goes beyond said tropey bullcookies there, yes. It goes just far enough that it seems corny sometimes… but then you realize what a facade it seems to be. As if something working the strings is playing it too over-the-top to be purposefully believed, it wants it that way.
"But no, that’s ridiculous."
"Full disclosure: these are just my journal notes, to record my thoughts and findings. I’m unemployed currently, have been ever since the IEW folded, and anyway, a 37-year old chick with a bachelor’s in journalism and communication doesn’t find many job prospects. I write puff pieces for various magazines that may or may not get picked up..."
Impatient, he pushed a big finger down on the button, making it fast forward a few stops.
Squeal and squiggle of moving tape, then it cuts in, " - I will not, I won‘t let the trails go cold here. I just... Sigh...
"The problem is that so much of Jason’s trail is misdirection. It was known he’d grown up on the streets and was in the juvenile deliquent system in Pittsburgh, but as who? He was identified as Jason Negan, Jason Rieber, Jay Torrance, and Jason Aaron Julio Esquivel. He was affiliated with gangs from MS-13, the Crips, and others. He was Hispanic, or he wasn’t. Misdirection. Nobody knew where he came from or where he could be tracked until the age of 19 when he popped up in Canada, of all places, wrestling at a small promotion’s hardcore division. How he got there? Anybody’s guess..."
He groans, and he picks up one of the other tapes with a scowl. Maybe there's nothing here, he thinks, as he pops one tape out and puts the next in. And then, from far away he feels the call. His dark passenger is returning, weak and tinny, a radio reception just out of range - "Ephrain, something is trying to sever my connection... we are running out of time."
He listens intently, face scrunched up in consternation. "What does that mean? Is that why I felt so weak? Moloch, answer me!" He thinks back to his struggles over the past few weeks. Is this an answer for why he's faltered as he's gotten closer to finding Jason?
"Strengthen our bond, Ephrain. Feed me blood and broken bone. You have to." The elder demon is insistent as it's voice sounds strained. It sounds like he's hurting. "I have not encountered magic like this in eons. Feed me a blood price and we can -" the voice fades out momentarily. When it does, it comes even farther away, garbled. It sounds like Moloch is saying "predators smile", as if that has a significance.
He knows he faces David Hunter at his "other job" very soon, and making David Hunter squeal in pain would be music to Moloch's ears. Hunter is actively looking past him now, which is just enough to make him grit his teeth in anger.
When he faced David at Mass Destruction, he was confident, perhaps overly so, that the instructions his dark passenger left him would allow him to dismantle the foppish young boy trying to step into his father's shoes. Hunter surprised him, pushing a strong message, talking about legacy, about dynasty, about a kingdom. Except when push came to shove, David proved that he was weak. It took the interference of Razor Blade and five of his finishers to keep Sicko down.
And what made Ephrain even more annoyed is that people saw David Hunter's words before Mass Destruction and talked about how he really showed his worth as a champion. But his message changed with every week, Hunter literally was just saying anything that fit his arrogant rambling of the moment. Before Mass Destruction, Hunter had said how DARE Sicko write the current Underground division off as worthless, they had main evented shows and every week we saw strong showings from Muscles Malone, from Tyler Scott, from Cory Steel. Words that no one in their right mind believed even as Hunter said them, but they sounded good. Except one Trauma later, and Hunter was standing backstage flirting with the interviewer girl as he always fucking does and he listed off a list of names that were beneath him, Muscles Malone, Cory Steel, Alexa Black, Tyler Scott, Sicko. Midcard nobodies that came against the King, First of His Name and lost. David Hunter so arrogantly clings to the Underground title and it' stupid crown configuration. But he can't keep it straight whether they were strong victories over worthwhile competition that proclaimed him as main event level talent or if they were losers and he was the only good one there.
It was honestly a good thing that logic didn't dictate who won or lost matches in Pure Class Wrestling, he thought with a grumble, because there were gaps in that train of thought that could drive, well, an ice cream truck through. But as much as it galled him that the mouthy little prick was now listing his name as a nobody he had managed to conquer, thereby erasing his own message and tainting his victory, what really got to him was that he really thought the loss broke Sicko, that it removed all of his menace, that he had nothing more to fear. Oh no, David Hunter, he thought, while you became number two of my most wanted today, you still are ready for a reckoning.
He thought, I am the match that, when struck, sparks a cleansing flame that is going to burn your paper "kingdom" down.
He thought his dark passenger would agree, but there was radio silence on that end.
But he remembered the words Moloch had said, about running out of time, and he stood. He couldn't delay anymore. In the back of his mind, he was wondering how well he would fare with limited guidance from Moloch, but he reaffirmed himself. He did not need it. He had his own strength to guide him, and his own will.
Giving one more glance to the weird sigil on the wall, he put Rebecca's tape recorder down. It was still spinning, but there was quiet there, only the rolling of the tape and the buzzing of flies wings for a long time, after Ephrain shut the door behind him, off to work on finding a blood price. Finally, after an eternity played out, the tape began to speak again. It was her voice, from much more recently.
"Jason- Jason found me. He came back. I can't believe it. He called me, on the phone... his voice was so... irresistable. He knows about the tapes and the interviews I've been doing... it was so long ago, how did he - not important. He's coming here. He's coming. Please, anyone who hears this... he's coming. Hide."
And then the tape ends.
***
I take the steps slow and deliberate. I know I'm going to find her here, as I push open the doors to the cathedral. The vestibule looms large above my head, and I turn, taking in the ornate stained glass, the plush velvet-lined pews leading the expanse of a football field all the way up to the altar. It's not time for mass, or any service, so there's only one person here, praying on her knees by the flickering candlelight. My presence alerts her as I waft closer. She looks up, does a double-take, and crosses herself, then looks away, resolutely avoiding me. Her nun's habit covers every exposed bit of skin, but her hands are clasped in white-knuckle terror.
"How are you here?" Is all she can say. I don't give her an answer, just watch.
She looks down, closes her eyes. "I would have thought your feet would start burning the moment you stepped in this church."
I actually laugh at that, a real laugh. "But here I am."
She turns her shining eyes to me, and I see again the face that was framed in mortal terror across from the body pinned to that street lamp, aghast at what she's done. "Do you have any regrets?"
"I know I shouldn't have left the scene," she admitted, "that was my - my sin. But I was so scared, I -"
She went silent, for a moment, thinking. "I changed my life, you know. I've turned things around, I've joined the sisters to... I'm working on absolving myself."
I laugh, but darker this time... meaner. "I'm in the middle of changing my life, right now, too."
She sighs, and only flinches away a little bit as my hands reach out for her in a grip as implacable and inescapable as the Grim Reaper.
The finish the day off, I had my way with a nun. And then, the third sigil was complete, on the walls of the vestibule, and I stood there admiring my work with a satisfied smile.
It was a good day.
