Holly pulled at the collar of her humiliating new biosuit. Richie kept a protracted, resentful glare on her.
"Don't give me that look!" Holly yipped. "I'm not happy about this either!"
Cuppy frowned. "Hey, I worked really hard on that."
Holly sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I know you did, that's not... never mind, you're a good kid."
"As long as we're waiting on flashes and chills to get back, however long that's going to take, I may as well put dinner on the coals." Richie cracked out his neck.
The wampus cat poked its head out of the porch door.
"It's not dinner time yet, I just said the word." Richie said to the derpy panther.
It grumbled and went back inside.
"Oh, hang on." Holly regarded her phone.
"What's up?" Cuppy asked.
"I just got an update. See, I've still got an incognito link to the Institute's information network, so I can keep tabs and continue digging myself deeper." she chuckled awkwardly. "Hah, I'm gonna get executed. Anyway, looks like one of our drones picked up something interesting. I'm bringing up the footage now."
Cuppy and Richie gathered around to see whatever the telescope dragonfly had recorded. What ensued was aerial coverage of Freyja's exasperated shitfit. Unknown to the hellhound herself, while the spy had lost initial sight of her after she mauled the biker gang into cowed remnants, it reacquired her just in time to see her break the cop's back.
Holly looked horrified.
"Ok, don't piss off the alt rock chick..." she muttered.
Richie had looked horrified, and simultaneously put out that a simple errand turned into as much attention Freyja could draw to herself as possible, but he smiled faintly upon recognizing the pig who kept stomping on his foot, back when he was under interrogation.
"Thanks, Frey..." he said softly.
Cuppy noticed.
"You look happy." Cuppy smiled.
"Fuck you." Richie provided his contractually-obligated edgy denial and antisocial ankle-bite.
Cuppet pat Richie's hair.
"I-" Richie moved to attack, reflexively playing the role of put-upon hermit with a hair trigger temper.
But his heart wasn't in it.
He was happy.
Felt fuckin' weird.
Chikita and Freyja made their way through the forest, heading deeper in search of a spot that "felt right" according to Chikita. "Gotta find somewhere relaxing and pretty, without being too distracting. There, we'll be able to meditate easier and work through your knotted up chakras." The blue haired samurai said.
"My what?" Freyja wrinkled her nose. "Agh, don't worry about it. It's like a soul massage, ok? You've got stuff balled up inside that's dragging you down like a boat anchor, so we need to limber you up enough to cut loose from it." Chikita explained with much hand waving.
Eventually, a small clearing beside a tiny stream came to light. "Cute, this place will work." Chikita proceeded to plop herself down in the grass, patting the patch in front of herself for her lupine companion.
Freyja wrinkled her nose, burying her hands in the pockets of her ripped and faded jeans as she trudged forward, at Chikita's heel. Not wanting to stain her clothes, she shifted into pseudo-wolf form, leaving only her human face stuck on the end of a hellhound's jet black, powerful neck. She sat on her belly, paws propping herself up, looking not unlike a canine counterpart to their unruly manticore guest.
"I can give a good guess about my knotted chakras." Freyja said moodily.
"I fucked up last night. Killed way more people than I strictly needed to, which was zero. Life's been a struggle to reconnect, I still feel like I'm in some numb waking dream. Things felt more vivid and real, healing in the Backyards for two years than they ever did before, or since. Except for whenever I got angry. Hellish, red hot rage, like a berserk wild animal, just buries its claws in me. Then I bury my claws in the mailman. It's all coming back to me now."
Her ears folded. "Even if Holly gave me a pep talk, there's no getting around it. I'm a demon. Something judged unholy. By who or what, I wish I knew. It's always been like that, since we were kids."
She perked up a second, cocking a brow. We? For a moment, she was on the cusp of remembering. Inscrutable, Chikita silently listened.
"That giant parrot I went kaiju on in my flashback - what exactly was he?" Freyja changed gears.
Chikita blinked. "You'll have to be more specific."
Freyja looked frightened, recalling the memory. "It was like the sky condensed into a big, thunderous egg. Then, it hatched - and a bird out for blood came out. I think he's the reason I finally fell into my yard in the first place."
No. Not the sole reason. That inevitable outcome was set in motion when Freyja shifted for the first time.
There was a natural order to reality. It had a sense of self-preservation, and some kind of will and cognition to recognize when it was threatened.
Chikita whistled, looking up at the sky.
"If there are demons, there are angels too." her features darkened. "And they'd disapprove of us lowly mortals sticking our noses where they don't belong. People like you and me - we're threats."
"You and me?" Freyja asked.
Chikita sat up, stabbing the ground. "Forget it. We aren't talking about me here, pup. We've got to whip you - mind, body, and soul - into shape."
"Now I'm not exactly coming from too far afield of you when it comes to being a hot headed, short fused sass machine." Chikita said. "But, you gotta steer it and not let it rule you. Otherwise all this internalized entropy's gonna come bursting out of you at inopportune times, like diarrhea." She added, folding her arms.
"This demonic state, what usually calls it to appear?" Chikita asked.
Freyja cocked her head. "Diarrhea?" - clearly Cuppy was beginning to infect Chikita.
Before Chiki's confused face could give way to asking if Freyja meant diarrhea triggered the transformations, the hellhound clarified. "Intense, usually negative emotion, on average. My powers flickered when I was growing up - fangs here, en ember chucked at a kid I didn't like there - things didn't come to a head till my bastard father tried to stab me in the back and kill me. They saw a demon, and oh boy they got one. Pieces of shit..." Freyja averted eyes tinged with bitter resentment. "Anyway, the near death experience and sense of betrayal was the spark that made the powder keg go boom. Since then, I spent two years in a living dream, locked into my wolfen form. I only came out of it when I rescued a drowning Cuppy, and slowly began to remember my past and who I was. There's a disconnect between my presentation, and my core, like I'm just watching some other girl drift through life, crashing on the couch of some kind - well, close enough - strangers. That rage was never resolved, just because I fell into the Backyards. I'm No farther from the monster who leveled a city block than I was the night I lost my shit. My parents deserved it, and the military were in my way. I don't regret having to put them down. But my neighbors didn't know any of that. The random Joe schmoes who got crushed under debris when the 'angel' came for me didn't invite their fate. Living in this world has dragged other people into the shit star I was born under. So long as I'm with these guys, I could always draw more enemies to them, or worse, lose myself and become their enemy. Holly and I destroyed the tracer tunnel underground. We got pressured by shades en route. I think they drew my negativity to the surface again, and I couldn't detach or bury my guilt anymore. I don't know if I'm a stable choice to reclaim darkness's reputation from thousands of years of fear and contempt."
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-
The scapegoat laying, bullet-riddled but alive, on the hospital bed was languishing in the sludge of his dreaming mind. If only those shots had done their job and killed him right then and there, he'd finally be free of this nightmare.
Even now, as 'his' ruined jester suit was liberated from an evidence locker and burnt to ashes, the man writhed within himself. He was one of the two brothers who were incarcerated that night, the night death came to the Station Bay Police Department. The killer liked to play cat and mouse, catch and release, and had toyed with the brothers in this fashion for some weeks leading up to the massacre. Terror was a hell of a drug. They had tried to warn their nominal captors that they were all trapped together - prisoners awaiting brutal execution. Those warnings were unheeded, written off as the drug-addled ravings of lunatics. He wished he could take pleasure in having been right all along. Luchesi may have turned them loose at the time, but only to act as props deepening the fear of his badged priority targets. Master Crocus found another use for the brothers before Luchesi could grow tired of them, and he put the elder to that use. What might have been weeks or decades roaming dark, creaking halls, haunted by damned voices, passed helplessly. His mind corroded and invited possession, as had the hobo puppet before him. Stumbling out of the endless dark halls which smelled of rot, big brother found himself shrouded in the garb of his hunter, wearing the waxy face of the theater mask he saw in his nightmares. Tipping his fingers were the merciless surgical steel claws, the gauntlets a marvel of engineering for a mere transient killer to create. He was circled by cops instantly, no doubt baying for the killer's blood. They knew, no matter what that special department said, who the culprit was, and whether the officers were alive or dead.
Dead. All of them. Decaying trophies tangled in cloth and ivy within the dark heart of the jester's garden.
Barely able to think, big brother raised his arms to surrender - this was taken as a threatening gesture, flexing and brandishing his claws.
They opened fire with extreme prejudice.
...
And yet, the marksmanship of 'Station Bay's finest' wasn't good enough. Now, the fall guy was exactly as he had been back at the jail - mistaken for psychotic, and trussed up with a neat bow as a present for the true culprit to pick off at his leisure. Only now, instead of merely being behind bars of iron, he was imprisoned behind the bars of the flesh, lucid, sealed inside his own body, clinging to life against his will. How he prayed he'd be disconnected, or some kindhearted nurse would just smother him with a pillow. Let him die now, before-
The lights flickered. Sleeping eyes opened, and somehow saw. A great shape filled the room, hidden under a billowing cobalt cloak. Tatters of filthy cloth fluttered at the ripped edges of the hem like grasping tentacles. A faceless hood that seemed to sink in forever like a bottomless pit inclined over the man's bed. Somehow, even without a face or facial expressions to put out, the nameless thing radiated arrogance. This was no jester. Here was the progenitor of horrors the meager likes of Luchesi could only ever aspire to. Here was cold, clinical judgment, the personification of the final sands trickling to the bottom of the hourglass.
The cameras were conveniently down. No one saw anything. No one could see the shape, even if he had a visible physical presence, and no one could see what he was about to do. That was important. Having infinite power was not the same thing as being able to force certain outcomes to fruition, uncloaked and guns blazing. Faces like Luchesi and particularly vicious ferals fulfilled the purpose of capturing the public eye, and morbid imagination.
For certain steps to make a plan work, subtlety was required.
Society and the media had their culprit to blame and puzzle over, while Crocus's true pawn faded into the shadows to undergo his metamorphosis. Now it was time to wrap up that story. It was time for the brother to take his final bow.
The hospital blanket twisted into a long, thick length of scratchy cloth. It looped itself around the condemned man's neck and clinched tight, all while he could only give a low moan in the back of his throat. The end of the rope went up, found a support fixture amidst the lights, and leveled, tying itself off. Kicking legs lifted off the bed, struggling, then fell still.
The terrible menace of the Checkered Slasher hung himself in the hospital, upon waking from his coma and being overwhelmed with guilt.
Suicide.
Open and shut case.
-
In the dark catacombs below the city, Crocus drifted down from the molded ceiling, phasing through the stone. Gibbering shades knelt at his feet, teeth clicking for their generous bounty.
"I don't need the spare." Crocus pulled the younger brother, arms and legs bound in ropey filaments of solidified black goo, from the tent of his open cloak. His eyes were bloodshot, pointed forward in a demented thousand yard stare. He was, in that respect, the luckier of the two brothers. He went mad quite a while ago.
Crocus tossed the hogtied meal at the feet of his lambs.
"Feeding time." the Faceless Man drawled as he swept down the long chamber.
The oily black death shadows descended on their prey. His mouth was left un-gagged - to stifle his screams was to taint the meat.
-
In time, both brothers, or the idea that the brothers had ever been, would fade. So too, even, would the concept of the SBPD night shift crew.
Men killed men.
The Void erased men.
-
The wampus cat stared at the frying deer carcass as Richie turned it slowly on a spit. The six-legged mountain lion didn't so much as blink, maintaining a glassy stare fixed on the pending dinner, a small chittering noise clicking in the back of its throat. Richie got the impression that, while accustomed to raw meat, this creature probably snagged a few cooked cuts off a barbecue here and there, possibly along with the chefs. In all honesty, the intensity of the stare, and the uncanny predator noises, were creeping him out.
"I'll tell you when it's ready. Go catch a bird or something."
The cat meandered towards the house, not quite walking in a straight line. He wondered if maybe it'd snuck some of Chikita's sake or something. Richie continued rotating the spit, glancing skyward at the afternoon sun. An odd feeling came over Richie. Here, in the backyard of the apartment, he began to realize, he was closer to a normal life than he'd been in a long time. A home, friends, fresh food that he didn't have to dumpster dive for.
This day, unlike so many of his past, was peaceful. A smile crept across his face, foreign as the expression felt. The warmth of the fire, the sight of the sun amidst a blue sky, the scent of cooking food and the cool breeze of wind that occasionally brushed his cheek. All contributed to a strange sense of harmony which took Richie aback.
With difficulty, he lowered the walls built up by years of street rat living and dog eat dog hierarchy, and closed his eyes, forgetting everything just to bask in the sun's rays as he breathed a sigh of relief, his only tethering concern being the steady rotation of the spit.
The wampus cat returned, sensing a shift in energy, and cocked its head at the zen'd out Richie, trotting over to lay on his feet and start purring.
Richie blinked a few times, surprised by this overt gesture of affection from something that had been trying to eat him not so long ago. Inbred swamprat vibes though it gave, the wampus cat was apparently not totally vacant upstairs. It could recognize and return kindness. Apparently rescuing, treating, and feeding the predator was the downpayment for his loyalty. He found himself wondering if, like him, the creature had been conditioned by a life time of getting shit on by a hostile world to be an abrasive asshole.
Richie stiffened, widening his eyes.
"I'm an abrasive asshole..."
Checking the venison for a moment to make sure it wouldn't burn left unattended briefly, he sat down and began petting the wampus cat behind the ears.
The purrs - freely mixed with random choking and gargling like it had three lungs and two of them had pneumonia - intensified.
"We are who we choose to be." Holly said, polishing her new macuahuitl, legs hanging over the roof.
"Spying on me?" Richie asked.
"Not deliberately, but perhaps I settled into my role too well." Holly shrugged. "Your deer is burning."
"Shit!" Richie yelped.
...