Richie felt suddenly cold, as if time had darkened and flash-frozen over, a once lukewarm pool of awareness he stood in suddenly turned to liquid nitrogen. Once again, Richie’s hackles raised in that telltale reflex of sensing one is under hostile scrutiny. Richie was being watched, like a lamb by a wolf. Words died in his throat, and his fingers twitched in a tardive dyskinesia display of nervous energy at his sides, hands unable to fold themselves into defending fists. He felt cold breath on the nape of his neck, like a psychopomp of Hades, come to bear him away to Persephone’s distant shore in the shadow of the living world. This presence, by contrast to the virus ghost Richie had killed - no, destroyed - was quite alive, and ensouled with a will of its own. Unfortunately for Richie and a slew of other less fortunate victims, that will was a dark and evil one, warped by malice and drenched in blood, guiding the body that bound it in flesh and bone to cut so many bystanders to ribbons to slack that unquenchable thirst.
A hand of steel claws clutched Richie’s right shoulder, tenderly patting and stroking him, and closed down, their two-foot lengths tracing themselves all the way down to Richie’s waistline, far closer to his privates than he’d like. A single curved tip even toyed with the border between band and flesh, ever so subtly implying that a surprise trip through a meatgrinder for Richie’s schlong was a sneeze away.
Richie shuddered under the icy weight of the predatory aura bearing down on him, like a mouse whose tail is caught in the paw of a mighty lion. The claws tightened their grip, flexing ever so slightly, making little zipping noises across the fabric of Richie’s hoodie.
“Exquisite.” a quiet voice, cold and clinical like the steel claws it conducted its symphony of murder through, slithered into Richie’s ear. “Well done tearing that trash apart, I commend you. You may live another day, I think.”
Richie felt an agitated vein bulge against the skin of his forehead from inside, an eyelid twitching indignantly. “I may?” scorn overrode fear, and he spoke up against the beast at his back in calculated belligerence. “Who do you think you are to decide those things? Who are you to play god with other people’s lives, you twisted freak?”
Richie initially heard only the tinkling of bells in answer, followed eventually by a low, soft chuckle. “Who I am is of no concern or consequence. I’ve never been exceptional. I’m just tending to my garden, preening and pruning as I like. The tranquility of the Backyards is pristine, you’ll never find cleaner, crisper air. You can almost taste its purity on your tongue, like an immortal elixir sought by alchemists since the dawn of the chemical sciences and their occult roots. The gate to that paradise opened itself up to me, seemingly because I wished for it - wished for it without even really knowing it.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.” Richie asked, not sure what he really expected of a delusional madman.
The claws tightened their clutch. “I’m sure you’ve seen it, the way this city combines the principles of modern architecture and a future-bent perspective on utility with the core essences of mother nature, to mixed success. The world of man, and the world of mother nature from whom’s womb man was borne have become sorely incompatible with each other, a fact ever-more casually swept under the rug with successive generations. I was no activist counter-lobbying to protect the rainforests, or preaching hellfire sermons on the grave threat of greenhouse gasses. I was just a drifter, like you, minding my own business. But do you know what I did care about?”
The wolf in sheep’s clothing flexed his claws again to prompt Richie to indulge him and ask what it was this madman cared about once upon a time. “What?” Richie complied, the words feeling like heavy sludge on his tongue. He could hear his own blood pressure in his eardrums, like a low ambient ringing.
“There was a particular park trail I liked. In the morning, the dew on the grass blades was just perfect there, sparkling like diamonds. Things seemed fresher there, like a break in the clouds of dreariness in this earthbound sky called a city. A prison, more like, a prison where inmates and guards are one in the same. Today, when everyone is more connected than ever before, they simultaneously suffer self-imposed exile from their own animal natures. And so we allot precious few outlets to sate those needs, to throw off our human shackles and be ourselves. I liked that park path. It was a sanctuary in a concrete Hell. It just gets so crowded and dirty, and people are so sharp-tongued. Especially in traffic. Take the kindest man you know and put him behind a wheel, and watch him become a beast. At least I admit it.”
“Why are you telling me this crap? I don’t care if you want to take credit for being a real person or not, fuckin’ leave me out of your rambling ludite diatribe, you pompous psychopath! What does any of this shit have to do with butchering other human beings like disposable cattle?”
“What doesn’t it have to do with it? There are countless faces running together in cities, a few getting sliced off here and there hardly makes a difference in the status quo. People only care because my work makes headlines. But that is besides the point. My park path was demolished, cleared away to make room for another dull parking lot, as if we needed any more box space for dullards who can’t conceive of a world beyond their gilded eyes, of life and extremities beyond their nine-to-five work cycles and endless days of meaningless banter and trudging. But we’re different, Richie.”
“How do you kn-”
“We’re different. We know what it’s like to live, to truly live, to live on the edge. You can break through those illusions, or you wouldn’t have knocked down the walls obscuring the door to the Backyards. We both found the way into Paradise. I invite you to share in its pleasures with me, be a guest in my garden instead of an intruder. It is a right granted to precious few, and only those deemed worthy of entering the Backyards truly live. Those walking sacks of chemicals and clothes I struck down? Those vermin? They’re nothing, they aren’t real. They don’t live, they don’t think, they just eat and watch tv and agree with each other. Empty. Killing them is only humane. Don’t be like them, Richie. Embrace your nature. Be like me, wild and untamed, chaotic and free. Do as you like. To make the Backyards your home places you above man and their laws. You can do whatever you like. It’s your divine right of kings.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Richie blinked a few times, processing all of that nonsense. “You’re quite eloquent for a crazy fuck. That’s the most meaningless spout of bullshit I’ve ever heard, including from the child-sacrificing cultists. Being a heartless psychopath is not how I found those weird tunnels. I don’t know what’s going on or what to make of ideas like destiny, but whatever’s going on with these portals popping up in front of me everywhere has nothing to do with your delusions of grandeur. That world doesn’t exist for you, and living creatures don’t exist to be your stress toys! I’m sorry your happy place got bulldozed, but you’re taking it out on the wrong people! Jumping from fighting for elbow room in a ghetto to hacking your neighbors apart is fucking uncalled for!”
A claw drew itself to Richie’s lips to shush him. “Don’t get too comfortable lecturing me from your ivory tower, you might just find it’s a long fall down. I assure you, the meat puppets I broke were as empty as the anti-spirit you dissected so beautifully just seconds ago. The portrait you painted in tools of destruction, whose canvas of that lifeless thing you shredded like a kamikaze origami brought tears to my eyes. I took you for a visionary artististic type, like myself. I will not argue with you further into seeing things my way, but I will demand you don’t obstruct my work. If you are not a fellow greenthumb in my personal garden, then you are a visitor at best, and an unwelcome intruder at worst. If you become the latter in my eyes, you will face severe consequences.”
Richie spat onto that single claw. “Stop calling the Backyards or whatever you think they are your garden. Who would make a personal sanctuary for a monster like you? You’ve got to be kidding me! All you are is a serial killer who found a convenient lifehack, and if you kill me it will just be someone else. If we both found the gate, there’s a good chance others will too, and a great chance that they’ll get sick of your shit. Knock this madness off now while you still can.”
The figure chuckled. “If you think you can make me, then I will wait for you - wait for you in Paradise. It’s a game of tag we’ll play.”
Richie, who had no intention of looking for this freak or coming anywhere near this place again, still felt compelled to level enduring defiance against the arrogant boogeyman and his deadly claws. “A game of tag? Bring it on. You’re just like that freaky transforming monster, a fire that wants to burn the world the more fuel it’s fed. It’s too dangerous to let someone like you do whatever they want with a powerful place like this. I’ll remove you by force, and make you pay for your crimes. Bet on that.”
The faint tinkling of bells accompanied another low, soft chuckle. “My claws look forward to consuming you.”
Then the blades, and their foul pressure, were off of Richie’s shoulder, and the killer was gone, leaving Richie alone and sickeningly cold and drained in the tangled overgrowth of this forest beyond the apartment yard.
After several long moments had passed, and the last vestiges of Richie’s enduring nerve gave out, the fatigue took him, and he collapsed onto his knees, head spinning. He clutched at his ribs, grunting as his fingers twitched spasmodically, then fell facedown in the grass and lost consciousness.
Between the fluttering veils of darkness within his unconscious mind, Richie saw the crouched form of that ebony wolf and its glossy coat highlights trot into view in the forest clearing, paw pads making soft tapping sounds as she - it was a she, he felt - came to sit by Richie’s side. Sitting on her haunches, the wolf looked alert, intelligent eyes staring across the clearing in the direction of the tree where Richie had carved his initial, and beyond.
You fought well against that monster. Richie felt from this animal.
Richie had another image surge through his mind, that of an eagle’s eye view looking down on himself following the explosive hit he took from the phantom pain, in the moments before the metal baseball bat returned to his hands. Had this wolf been watching him even then? And from what vantage point?
She nuzzled the bat closer to Richie, letting it stop at his side. Richie’s perception was torn between seeing it as just that - a sporting implement - and seeing the legendary sword that he had used to slash the monster, as though two images were laid over each other, struggling for dominance, almost similar to the scene of the ghostly creature amalgamating the bad man from Richie’s memory.
Dog, what is this place? Am I dreaming or awake?
The wolf looked downward a long, sullen few moments, then looked up suddenly through a patch of night sky suddenly overtaking the clearing airspace, where a full moon beset by twinkling stars stared back down at them.
I’ve been asking myself that a long time. I suppose I’ll find out one of these days. But if it is a dream, it’s a good dream I’d prefer not to wake up from.
Richie felt perplexed, ashen-faced and his tongue heavy. A good dream? Here? With the monsters?
The wolf’s ears laid back as she whined. There are monsters in the real world too. I don’t have a home to go back to. You’re lucky, you know?
Richie? Lucky?
How do you figure?
The wolf smiled. You’ve been important to someone.