An Immortals Tale: Part 9

An Immortals Tale
The Man In The Black Suit
Part 9
"Technically"


Crunch. Jon's head was killing him, even with his eyes closed. Crunch. That sound was determined. Crunch. The solid wood chair under him cradled his body with ease, the smell of the world outside of his closed eyes was waiting to be discovered. Crunch. With a groan and a lot of effort Jon brought his head up, forcing his winced eyes open. The world first seeped in, then poured in, then flooded into finality.

Jon was in his old chair, in his old monastery, sitting at his old wooden round table, with his old friend sitting across from him, a wide, goofy smile on his face and an apple in his hand. Jon's friend was thin, very thin, but handsome. All the girls around the village would nearly faint with his easy smile. Wide eyes, a broad, warm smile, and brown hair that stuck up made up his clean-shaven features. The smile never left his face as his jaw worked the apple and with a thick British accent drawled, "Good morning, sunshine!" Jon's face must have been twisted with displeasure because he went on, "Oh come on, now! Is that any way to greet an old friend?" The immortal's head swiveled around, taking in his old place.

Brown clay walls accented with wood surrounded him, torches hung in iron brackets, a fire crackled and danced in the fireplace, the smell of burning pitch was heavy, black, greasy stains ran up the walls above the many torches. Iron accents and a heavy oak door made up the rest of the decor, along with crosses and a single picture of the Last Supper. Finally Jon's tired eyes came back to rest on his friend. "What am I doing here?" he croaked out in an accent he'd worked to get rid of many years ago. His friend waved the apple around and scrunched up his face as he began his explanation, the first word drawn out, "Well. Technically you're not here. Technically, you're still in the bar where you were knocked unconscious. Technically, I am a manifestation of your newly formed powers trying to find a better way to explain themselves and their uses to you. Technically." With a satisfied nod, he crunched the apple again, looking at Jon for his response. "I'm...dreaming?" The hand without the apple came up and gave him the 'so-so' gesture, "You're not really dreaming. I'm just a conduit that your mind is using to give you the easiest path to understanding." Jon was having a hard time understanding, "So you're just a figment of my imagination? This place isn't real and I'm still on the floor with people standing over me, attempting to steal my soul away?" With wide, brown eyes, his friend nodded confirmation.

Jon sat up, pulling straight his old robes, adjusting himself for the drawn-out explanation. Just as the first words began to form in his mouth, the room started to suddenly darken. The torches and fire in the hearth still burned their amber color, but the light seemed to be dying down. His friend sighed and tossed the apple over his shoulder, "Well. Looks like we're out of time, Jon. But before you go remember this: Words are very, very powerful. The reason your powers chose me is because you remembered I was a Wordsmith." Jon suddenly began to feel very panicked, cold started to creep into his body, "Yeah, you were a Wordsmith, so what?" Darkness crept on, strangling the light. "I gave normal words power, not magic - Power. With your new abilities you got certain perks. Remind me. What's the Latin translation of 'The Voice of God'?" That big, toothy grin was the last thing that Jon saw before the darkness took him.

He was back in the bar now, not twelfth century London. All the old smells came back: wine, cigarettes, whiskey, the still smoldering ashes of his friend Ricky. Jon could barely perceive the hands above him, glowing orange, the bones black in contrast. His lips struggled with the words, the final clue that his old friend had given him. "V..ox....d..." soft syllables were strained past near-paralyzed lips. Murmurs above him tried to figure out what he was trying to say. Jon tried with all his might, this time, "Vox....Dios....."

Jon's eyes were suddenly wide open, his mind no longer in a fog, but racing. Power suddenly flowed through him like water sluicing off a person lying in a river. The words made sense. He said them again, his voice driven with fury and intensity, "VOX DIOS!" A bomb of orange light went off, a ring of it pushing outward, the cloaked bodies standing over the immortal on the floor sent flying. Some crashed into tables and chairs, others smashed the mirrors on the walls. All of the energy that had been stolen away slammed back into Jon, and once more he was a raging inferno of justice, on his feet again.

A cloaked figure stood and threw its hands out, sending gouts of flame at Jon. He didn't need the words, anymore, the power had been awakened. Jon could see the glow behind his eyes as he gathered the power in his throat and released it in an instant. The fire was extinguished, the clear, but visible geyser of energy kept going, taking with it the right arm of the caster and a chunk of the concrete pillar behind them. With a shrill scream and a spray of blood, the hooded one crashed to the floor, clutching the stump where their limb once was. A call for retreat sounded behind him and the other figures all dashed for the door, bypassing Jon. The Immortal could only glare at them as they moved faster than he could track, even with his newfound powers.

The last one up and to retreat was the one missing their arm. It limped as it went, but before reaching the door turned back, "We are not done with you, Paladin! You may think yourself righteous! But you've been named before! Judas Iscariot!" The hood fell back and revealed a face that only a nightmare could describe: green reptilian skin, pulled tight over a deformed skull, no lips, sharp rows of teeth lining a mouth filled with black saliva, yellow eyes. All the features, though alien, conveyed femininity.

Jon was already gathering another bolt of energy when her words struck him. With a hiss, the creature disappeared out the door. Jon was more than perplexed; his muscles and bones still ached from the wallops of air that had struck him earlier. Without another sound or thought, Jon righted a toppled chair and sat down, grieving for his vampire friend, letting his mind dance over the creature's final statement. As his thoughts went to sorrowful and dark places, the cell phone, that had miraculously survived the entire endeavor, went off. With hot tears stinging his eyes and a long sigh, Jon retrieved the vibrating thing in his pocket and opened the message. It was an anonymous sender, but the message was not encrypted. It said one thing: "The Circle of Altu'Rang."

House Of Lies (Original Short)

"Your father was a ruthless bastard..." My uncle Jimmy used to say after he'd had a few drinks in him. "We had M16's and grenades and he used to use a knife. Moved like a shadow at midnight." That New York cop accent slipping through though he's been living in California for the past 20 something years. I smile at him with practiced affection at his tale. He doesn't know that I know something: The truth about him and my father. Both my parents are dead. They had died in a vicious car accident leaving me to the only person that my family would have trusted: My uncle Jimmy Dons. After their death he took me and moved to the west coast in an attempt to start a new life and give me a shot at something normal. My name is Jack DeMonstros, 21 years old. Yeah, I know. Hell of a name. But we'll come back to that later. "After the war we'd come home and they called us 'Baby killers'! Can you believe that bullshit?!? Worse than that they could only give us jobs as cops!" I sip my beer and puff on a cigarette as I watch him, drunk and at the grill, in the back of my mind a theater plays all the things that I will make happen. He goes on with tales of the war, reciting them to his cop buddies that surround us in our tiny backyard, people he's known for years. The spatula in his hand is waved around like he was drawing the pictures of his narrative, and sometimes it was a rifle, sometimes a handgun, all to illustrate the story he was weaving at the time.

Before I was born my uncle and my father served in the war together. After that they became cops. After that my uncle became corrupt, trying to take my father with him into the depths. My father refused. So they staged a coupe. My mother and father were shot down and pushed off a bridge in their car somewhere in New York. My uncle pulled the trigger. He thought it was the end of it. But plans had already been made. Three years ago a box showed up on my doorstep, no return address, no postage. I managed to open the chest and inside were things that changed my life: Videos made by my parents. They explained what had happened to them, what they saw coming, and videos that trained me. Trained me to be a killer like my father. For three years I've studied them intensely, learning every trick, every word memorized. And soon I became like my father. Soon the blades in the box that was sent to me, 20 plus years later, by my parents, were second nature to me. Every night before I'd gone to bed, for three years, I'd watched a video of them both, telling me they loved me.

He hadn't even noticed that I'd been wearing the very cross necklace my father wore all those years ago. Didn't notice the extra inch or two of muscle I'd put on for the deed yet to be done. He would. I had them all here. Every one of them that took that which was most precious to me before I ever knew them. Now was the time. My empty beer bottle shattered against the floor as I launched myself forward, they never saw it coming. The blade on my hip was out and working, spilling blood and viscera, entering soft, screaming flesh as I dispatched them all. The metallic smell of what they'd spilled by my hand filled my nose, pushing me onward. My uncle Jimmy was stunned to see such violence from his frail, antisocial, quiet spoken nephew. My shoes squished audibly against the soil now soaked with crimson as I approached him, eyes wide in disbelief. He uttered one word: Why? The handle of my knife, my father's knife, came down on his head with a sick thud. He was unconscious. I dragged the rest of the bodies into the kitchen and arranged them, as I'd been told. Then drug my uncle to the den. My muscles quaked and shivered as I peeled the soaking shirt off myself while I tied him to a chair. He'd get his answer soon. While he slept I poured gasoline all over the house, all over his dead friends, all over him.

He woke with a groggy moan, seeking to move his immobilized limbs, but couldn't. I sat in a chair across him, shirtless, the cross hanging from my neck in a gentle sway. He asked why I'd done all this in a slur. With a grunt I turned him to face our TV and without a word let the videos my father and mother made all those years ago do the explaining. He was wide awake, making excuses, justifying his actions, pleading with me, then cursing me. It had been somewhere near ten o'clock at night when I began this spree of violence, but it was dawn by the time he rattled out his last breath. I took the knife with me, cleaning it, and storing it in my coat as I breathed one last, deep sigh, and tossed the lit match into the house he'd built. A house of lies and deceit. I only stayed a few minutes to make sure the flames engulfed and consumed everything inside before taking the few thousand dollars that were in the trunk and walking away. The last words to leave my mouth that night were the words my father had said from beyond the grave: "Revenge takes time, cunning, strength, and in the end the undying belief in the truth." I walked away from my life. Walked away from the lies. And into the night I disappeared with my hand gripping my father's cross tight, giving me the ability to start anew. Revenge is never easy. But it is very, very, gratifying.