Apollo rushed into the house. The door slammed into the wall. The knob embedded itself into the cheap wood. His pupils were dilated. The lights were blurry and erratic, like speeding wisps in the night sky. He started following them. Walking, running, into the fridge. The counter, knocking over chairs. He followed the erratic light, until he realized it was just a bulb dead center a slow moving fan. The nun came into the room, eyes open. He turned to her, his eyes wide and his mouth drooping. His hand reached over to touch her stomach, her hips. He got closer. He felt closer. A surreal oneness with her, with the very universe.
She slapped him across the face.
"What's the matter with you?" She asked. He stopped for a while and rested against the sink. His heart, still racing, his artificial happiness, still surging like an electrical shock.
"Drugged," He blurted like a drunkard. "Feel happy, so happy,"
He tried to get closer to her. His arm hovered over her chest. She grabbed it and put him in an armbar. It was supposed to hurt. But he couldn't feel it, though he knew his own arm was bent irregularly And noticing this, his complacency and his drooling smile, she eased. She grabbed his shoulders instead and reared him towards the chair. He plopped down, his hands extending out to touch her again. Smiling, stupid.
“Lord have mercy on your lewdness," She said. “I’m three times your age for god’s sake.
"Orange juice." He whispered. She leaned closer to him, her ear towards him.
“What was that?” She asked.
He tried to reach for a kiss. She hit his hand.
"Sorry," He said. "Orange juice. Need it. Food too, fatty."
He held his chest and felt his heartbeat. It was twice as high as it should have been, and he was just sitting, staring at a seventy-five-year-old woman. He didn't know what hit him worse, the blood loss or the reality of his dumb state. It was difficult, annoying, embarrassing, to be conscious of your high and uninhibited self, to look at yourself from the third person, judging someone you can’t control.
She looked into the fridge. He turned away from staring at her bottom. She put the carton of orange juice on top of the table. Next to it, a few sticks of butter. He gripped it with one hand, put it against his mouth and with the other, crushed it through the plastic mouth hole. It nearly spilled out of his mouth, like a burst, a fire hydrant.
"What's wrong?" She asked.
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“Nothing, juice helps with blood loss,” He ate the butter next. “Calories help my system, help filter whatever's in me.”
He extended his hurt leg out. The calf muscles were torn, there was an obvious incision wound. It looked thinner, weaker too. "Drugged. MDMA like substance, demons." He blurted in between drinks.
"Demons?" She asked. "Here?"
"Where else?"
She scratched her head.
"I looked into those murders, they lead me somewhere...bad. Real bad." He said.
"You should have taken Dion."
He stopped, the thought sobered him. He rubbed his head, the images clashing with his sense of happiness. The images of the corpses littered in that little dark enclave, below the trains.
"No, I shouldn’t have. It's a good thing he didn't see what I saw.” The images started to return. Only slightly, to a more normal, dull shade."What's important is that he's safe and that I make an effort to contain this problem. I don’t think there’s that many creeps left, anyway.”
"What makes you say that?"
"Because most of them were dead when I found them.” He looked at her, smiling. “Asmodai, lord of pleasure. She’s not a demon you covet for power. She’s one you covet to get away. To escape. To indulge. And from my knowledge, only one remains. That I know of, at least.”
"You let one escape?" She screamed.
"Not by fucking choice." He was glad to be angry. Glad to feel anything other than stupid, drunk fake happiness. "I'll find it. It couldn't have been that dangerous, it ran from me after all. If it had any power, it would have fought with the other one and..."
He thought it over.
"Well, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions" He rubbed his chin. His irises shrunk. "Whatever it is, I'll take care of it."
"Is it another demon?"
"Maybe, maybe not." He said. "It's something dangerous, though."
"How are you going to find it?" She asked.
"How else? By hunting."
His hand went across the table, towards hers. They touched fingers. She reeled back.
"I can't help myself, sorry." He said.
"One more move and I'll break your jaw."
"I thought you were a nun, understanding and all." He said.
"Ex-nun," She repeated. “Ex-nun, ex-nun.”
He rubbed his head and drank from his carton. He could feel the lightheadedness leaving. He could feel some semblance of strength returning.
"Still, whatever I was injected with really fucked me up. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be for normal people." He looked deep into the empty carton, he tipped it over and curved his tongue for the droplets. “I don’t have to imagine that hard actually. I saw what happened to them. Dead, murdered.”
"How many did you see?"
"I lost count. I tried to look over the corpses but the incoming police and drug were too much. Some of them had slit throats, some of them had puncture wounds. Some of them looked like mummies, completely drained." He said. “Brutal, but I think there couldn’t have been too many murderers. And considering I killed one of the culprits, some shitty slime thing, then I can’t imagine there are many left.
"And you let one escape, doing god knows what because you were too horny and high to stop it." She screamed. "Imbecile."
"Doing god knows what, huh.” He looked out the window. “If it's going to kill, we’ll hear about it soon or would have. I don’t think it is too. It had...sense. At least, it was smarter than what’d you typically find. There aren’t many demons with what we would call, intellect. At least none you’d find on earth. Which either means it belongs to a higher echelon of demons. Or…”
He stood up.
“It’s not a demon at all.”