I’m gonna kill that motherfucker Mickey Torke.

“Uhhhh, sir? That’ll be $3.82.”

A nervous gas station clerk looked down at my Big Gulp and Doritos and then back at me. I could tell he was trying his best not to look at my mark, which was throbbing and red on the back of my hand. I tried my best not to look at it too. Every time I saw it, I thought of that motherfucker Mickey Torke and how I was going to kill him.

“Right,” I said and dug through my pockets for coins. I made a pile of nine quarters, six dimes, three nickels, and eighty-two pennies, and pushed it his way. He put it in the register without counting and told me to have a good day. I wouldn’t.

I crushed the Doritos in about three seconds and hopped on my electric scooter, Big Gulp still in hand. I didn’t know where I was going, exactly; I just kept moving west. Thanks to the aforementioned motherfucker, a gang of religious nutjobs were hot on my ass and would probably sacrifice me on a pyre or something if they ever caught up to me. He’s also the reason I have this tattoo making my hand itch like a freshly herpe’d crotch.

I was marked about a week ago. It was Tuesday night, so we were hanging out under the bridge. It was me, Mickey, and Beth, my former partner in crime. We had a pretty decent setup under the bridge, with plenty of blankets, a tarp to keep us dry, and a fire pit we nabbed off someone's back porch. It was a misty Autumn evening, and I was relaxing in my tent when Mickey came back from god knows where with his trademarked shit-eating grin on his face. He always acted like he was smarter than everyone else even though he was a bum who slept under a bridge. I should’ve known something terrible was going to happen when he pulled a strange bottle out from his dirty corduroy jacket. It looked like some shit out of a fantasy movie: it had a bulbous bottom and a long, narrow neck, with a silvery floral pattern climbing up from its base and a loose cork sticking out of the top.

“That a fucking potion?” I said to him.

“Communion wine,” he said with a grin that revealed his missing canine. “Nabbed it from the church off Warsaw Street. Dumbasses just left it right out in the open.”

Beth shook her head and laughed at the same time. She always had more tolerance for Mickey’s nonsense than I did.

“Whelp, if we weren’t going to Hell before, I guess we are now,” she said and took the bottle from him. She popped the cork, took a mighty gulp, and gagged a little as it went down.

“Damn, that shit must taste terrible. It ain’t easy to make you gag,” I said. She didn’t say anything, just shoved the bottle into my chest. I thought Mickey was the bum of all bums for stealing from a church, especially if it was just some shitty wine, but I’ve never been one to turn down free drinks. I took a swig, and the taste was even worse than I thought it would be. It was thick and went down like a slimy milkshake with coagulated chunks that gave it the texture of day-old blood. The taste was some combination of fish sauce, sweaty socks, and strawberries. Now I was impressed that Beth didn’t gag more. I damn near threw up in the river.

“I think this shit’s expired or something,” I said to Mickey after I was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to hurl. Looking back, I doubt expired wine would taste this bad, but I never claimed to be the brightest man in the world, especially after a couple of Miller High Lifes.

“Are you stupid? Wine doesn’t expire. It just ages. Give me that.”

He snatched the bottle from my hand and chugged the rest of its contents. He attempted to hide his disgust, but the green tinge of his skin gave him away. I wasn’t feeling too hot myself. I felt like there was a big mound of earthworms fighting in my stomach, and my entire body itched from the inside. Beth collapsed where she was standing, and soon I did the same.

I woke up to the sound of screaming that turned out to be my own. All of the itching seemed to concentrate itself on the back of my right hand. It was so bad that I probably would’ve cut my hand off right then and there if I had something besides a pocket knife to do it with -- and if I was able to do anything besides writhe on the ground and clutch my wrist.

The itch did die down eventually though, and I was able to regain some composure. I propped myself up against a pillar and panted heavily. Beth and Mickey must’ve had the same itch because they were doing the same thing.

“I don’t think that was communion wine,” I said. Neither of them responded to me. Mickey was only barely conscious, and Beth was fixated on her hand, her eyes wide and bloodshot. I looked down at the back of my own hand and saw a faint black ring that seemed to be getting darker by the second. It was barely visible at first, but it grew and darkened like melanoma, and dark blobs raised from my skin and covered the rest of my hand. I looked like a fucked up lava lamp.

Mickey needed to wake up faster, so I got up and smacked him in the face.

“Where in the hell did you get this shit? What is this?” I showed him the back of my hand.

“I already told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I saw it through the window of the church off Warsaw Street and I took it.”

“What church off Warsaw Street?” I said.

“There isn’t a church on Warsaw Street,” Beth chimed in, still not looking away from her hand.

“I said it was off Warsaw,” Mickey said. “It’s a ways down a dirt road off the street, but it’s a big church. I know you guys have seen it before.”

“Can’t say I keep up with all of the churches in Leesville,” I said, “but I think you stole from the wrong one.”

Mickey stood up and grabbed my arm to look at it more closely. He put his marking next to mine.

“Hey, why does yours look different than mine?” he said.

It was true. Both of us had rings on our hands, but he had jagged zig-zags covering the rest of his hand. Curiosity got Beth to finally stand up and come over to us. She had the same open circle, but the rest of her hand was almost black from a series of tightly packed spirals that made me dizzy after looking at them for a couple of seconds.

A voice came from behind us.

“Father, I found them.”

We turned around to see a young man with a white button-up shirt and neatly combed blonde hair. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand and a look of repulsion on his face.

“The audacity of you three, to steal from us,” he said. “Do you even know what you’ve just done to yourselves?”

I thought it was pretty clear that we didn’t, and he didn’t wait for us to answer anyway. He pulled a gun from his coat and fired wildly at us. The first bullet clanged against the pillar between me and Mickey. The three of us scattered in different directions. He followed Mickey with the gun first, unloading bullet after bullet, putting holes in our blankets and causing stuffing to fly into the air, but he somehow managed not to hit him. Mickey jumped into the river, and the young man decided to turn his attention to me. He moved closer, not wanting to miss again, until I was pinned against a wall. Looking down the barrel of a gun, my mind went blank.

I was ready to die when Beth came up from behind and grabbed his arm, which gave me just enough time to get my pocket knife out and stick it in his upper thigh. He screamed, and Beth snatched the gun from his hand. She pointed it at him but didn’t shoot. She had never killed anyone before, as far as I knew. With the hole in his leg, he wasn’t in any condition to run after us, so we ran to my scooter and took off.

“You think Mickey’s alright?” Beth asked, holding my waist tightly as we went down the empty road. She always hated riding on my scooter, but it sure as shit beat walking.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I don’t give a shit personally. He’s the one who got us into this mess in the first place,” I said.

I looked around for a place to hide — I was pretty sure “Father” would be on our ass at any moment — but I had driven us into a sprawling suburb. I’d probably have to worry about some rich, waxy-faced fuck calling the cops on me just for existing before this Father person even got to me.

Sure enough, an old lady stepped out of her little doll house to gawk at us, her pug-like face contorted into a grumpy frown. She reached into her bathrobe, I assumed to get her phone and call the cops, but she had a goddamn gun too.

“Are you fucking serious?” Beth yelled. My thoughts exactly. The wrinkled hag unloaded at us, but her shaky hands meant she was more of a threat to any birds flying by than she was to us.

But she wasn’t the only resident of this suburb who wanted us dead. It wasn’t long before half the neighborhood was taking potshots at us from their front porches. Either they were in cahoots with this Father guy or they really hated homeless people.

But again, we came out of the neighborhood unscathed, though there were a couple of bullet holes in the side of my scooter. I love this fucking scooter, man. I bought it from a junkyard for ten bucks. It was a complete pile of shit then, completely busted, but slowly I fixed it up, and now it runs like a dream. I swear I can get up to thirty-five on it if I’m on a straight road. Fortunately for us, it’s pretty hard to hit someone zigzagging on a scooter. Still, we were pretty lucky.

There was nothing but trees beside us and highway ahead of us now. It was early in the morning, so traffic was pretty much nonexistent, but we had a few people angrily swerve around us and give us the finger. I gave it right back to them. There still weren’t any signs of anyone I would’ve thought was Father, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t just leave us alone. We had done something bad, apparently. Really bad. A lot of very unstable people were very upset that we had this shit growing on our hands.

We continued down the highway for at least twenty minutes. The empty road and gray sky put me into a trance. I completely zoned out, which is why I didn’t see the man standing in the middle of the road until Beth punched me in the shoulder. He had long white hair that flipped around in the wind, he wore a perfectly tailored navy blue suit, and his entire body was covered in tattoos, with patterns so intricate that new ones kept popping up the longer I looked at him.

“Apologies for my idiot son,” the man said. “He should have known better than to shoot at marked men, even ones… like you. He’s lucky you ran instead of fighting him.”

“I’m guessing you’re Father then?” I said. “What was in that wine?”

“I’m Arthur’s father, yes, but most people call me Reverend Alec Humphries, or just Alec. And that wasn’t wine, you moron. It was an elixir for my boy, and y’all stole it from me. Both of you, it seems. What a waste. It takes over two decades to make an elixir. We started whippin’ up that one when Arthur was just a boy, and you just snatched it out of my damn church.” He shook his head.

“Actually, we weren’t the ones that stole it,” Beth said. “A buddy of ours snatched it, and —”

“You shut your fucking mouth. I don’t care who did it. You got those little scribbles on your hand. Y’all clearly drank it. I can't do nothin’ but take you out.”

My asshole clenched shut. The old man disappeared in a puff of white smoke and instantly reappeared at the tree line on the side of the road. He touched the ground and it started to bubble like boiling cheese. The grass broke apart. Clay rose from underneath it and formed itself into the shape of wild dogs. At least twenty clay hounds charged at us at once. There was nothing around us but asphalt, grass, and trees – we couldn't hide, so we had to fight.

The first one came at me, snarling and gurgling and flinging wet clay from its mouth. I kicked at it and separated two of its legs from its body, but that didn’t stop it from coming for me, pushing itself towards me with its two back feet, chest sliding on the ground, snapping at my legs. One kick to the head finished it off, but four more hurled themselves at me in its place. Handling one was no problem, but when they all came at once it was impossible to avoid their gnashing teeth. A set of jagged orange-brown fangs sank into my arm and another one got a mouthful of my calf. I’ve been bitten by dogs before — stray dogs, even — but this was much worse. The bites burned with an infection that quickly started to spread through my body.

I was brought to the ground, and I saw that Beth wasn’t faring much better. She was surrounded by her own pack of dogs that were tearing at her flesh. She was done for. Fuck. Large chunks of her arms and legs were already gone, and they had moved on to her torso, biting and tugging until more pieces came off of her. The sight of her being ripped apart was more painful than all of the holes in my flesh. The one person on this planet that gave a shit about me was dead, and soon I would be dead too. Fuck.

Strangely, out of everything I felt at that moment – searing pain, complete and utter despair, bitter hatred – I still noticed that I had a belly ache. At first, I didn’t know why something so insignificant took center stage in my mind, but then the belly ache got worse, and worse, and worse – until I popped.

Clear viscous pus oozed from my pores and covered my entire body. It was everywhere, and the clay hounds were hopeless to cope with it. Their bites glanced off of me and filled their mouths with slime that made them wretch. They struggled to keep their balance and fell over as if they were on ice. I crawled away from them for as long as I could –which wasn’t very long– and the snail trail I left behind made it hard for them to follow me. It was surprisingly easy for me to move around in the slime, though. It seemed to actually make things easier, like it was carrying me to safety. It felt good on my punctured skin, too. It had a cooling sensation and kept the dirt out of my open wounds, though my blood was still burning as it coursed through my veins.

I inched across the grass trying to make it back to the road. My scooter still sat in the middle of the highway. I crawled for what felt like an hour, but I finally made it to the old shitmobile. I got on top and almost cried with relief, but my luck was short-lived. Alec appeared a few feet in front of me with a disgusted scowl on his face. The markings on his body pulsated.

“This is what happens when a bum is Marked, I suppose,” he sneered. “They get even dirtier. At least my dogs cleaned one of you up.” He looked over at Beth, who was barely more than a red smear on the grass. I threw up in my mouth from the sight but swallowed it before Alec could notice.

“Fuck you,” I said. It was all I could think of at the time.

I cranked the handle of my scooter and took off away from him. He put his hands on his belly and laughed. I probably would’ve laughed too in his situation. I was going pathetically slowly compared to someone who could teleport. Still, it was the only plan I had.

An impressive trail of slime followed me as I went down the empty road. I really wish that would fucking stop. I’m gonna break my damn neck riding over grease. I thought, and suddenly, the slime stopped flowing from my body. Immediately, the road felt easier to navigate, and I felt just a little bit of confidence.

Alec appeared in front of me with a big clay rod in his hand and swung it at me. I swerved quickly to avoid it and almost fell in the process. He did it again, but I was ready for it; I ducked under the swinging rod and continued down the road without slowing down. But I knew that I couldn’t dodge him forever.

My belly started to ache again. The slime was building up inside of me, begging to come out. All I had to do was give it permission and it would explode out of me, but I didn’t let it, not yet at least. I held it in, despite its protests, until Alec appeared in front of me again. This time, I didn’t swerve, and I didn’t duck. I barrelled straight toward him, and when I was as close as I thought I could get, I let it all out. A wave of thick liquid shot out of me in every direction and covered Alec from head to toe. I kept moving and didn’t look back, but I heard an angry roar that faded into nothing as I took the nearest exit.

Drenched in slime, covered in blood, riding a scooter decorated with bullet holes, I made my way through town. I had lived in Leesville for almost three years – the longest I'd stayed in one spot since I was a kid – so I knew the roads well. I took a back road that led to a dirt road that led to a hiking trail that nobody used. It was just wide enough to ride my scooter through, but the overgrown roots and vines made it difficult. I would’ve just pushed it if I had the strength, but even walking seemed impossible. Eventually, the trail opened up to a small clearing. It wasn’t much -- just a little patch of flat grass in the woods -- but at that moment it looked like home.

I slid off my scooter and curled up in a pile of leaves, waiting for Alec to appear and finish me off. I wanted to sleep more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, but I couldn’t. He could show up at any second. I just sat there for hours, waiting to die, but he never came. Sleep came to me by force, but it was far from restful. I would blink and the sun would be lower in the sky and before I knew it, it was dark outside.

I figured I was as safe as I was going to get. If Alec knew where I was, he would've killed me by now. But he hadn't, so I ventured off the hiking trail back onto the dirt road. A little creek ran alongside the road, and I jumped in it to wash the slime off of me. My wounds stung in the murky water, but it felt good to not be covered in slick gunk. I didn't like the sight of the ominous red streaks that climbed up my wrists all the way to my shoulders though, or the way the mark on my hand glowed and throbbed. I needed antibiotics. Luckily, I knew just where to get them.

I swung open the door of Peter’s Pet Supply like I owned the place. Peter looked like he saw a ghost. His normally rosy cheeks turned white at the sight of me.

“Damn, Gus. What the hell have you got into?” he said.

“No time to explain. I need antibiotics,” I said.

“Well, are you gonna be able to pay for them? Last time I gave you some on credit and you –”

“If I don’t get these, I’m going to die. Probably tonight. Maybe in front of your store. Can you just get them?”

He stammered for a moment, but the more he looked at me, the more he knew I was right. Plus, Peter's a good guy. He wouldn't let someone keel over in front of him if had the means to help. Without another word, he shuffled down one of the aisles and came back with a bottle of canine Amoxicillin. I snatched it from him and swallowed a handful.

“Can you tell me what happened now?” he said. He seemed genuinely concerned. I probably should've humored him and told him what was going on. I should've told him about Beth, at least. He was always happy to see her.

But I was already halfway out the door before he finished asking his question. I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I hopped back on my scooter and headed west. Mickey had some friends in Tennessee, and I figured that’s where he would go, and I intended to meet him there. It was his fault we were in this situation. It was his fault that I was being chased by a psychopath. It was his fault that I had this shit on my hand, and it was his fault that Beth was dead. So I headed west, to Tennessee, to kill that motherfucker Mickey Torke.