Shoot From the Hip, Aim For the Head
Like a Knife Through the Heart
The two fought mercilessly. Fangs that showed more than any tooth should were scratching against skin. Blood slowly started to stain its way down the two males as they fought. Everyone merely stood there watching the scene unfold, watching the two leaders kill each other. I stood and watched, but not at the fight, but at Zed’s change in appearance. That could not be normal, even for someone like Zed, even for all the crazy ass bullshit that has been going on sense we got here a few days ago. People do not just change what they look like.
Drifting off into thought, I barely noticed Ӓllur move across the room with a small group of killjoys. With one swift motion, he had Zed pinned at the shoulder, but something was off; drastically off. Zed started coughing, he was not struggling against Ӓllur’s hand, and he was fighting for breath. He was bleeding out, as the assassin withdrew the small dagger from his leader’s shoulder a trail of blood followed in the motion’s wake. Skratch fought to get to his feet, shacking he practically lunged to get into the shadows, fading into his own being. No one dared to move, the only sound that could be heard was Zed coughing struggling to keep his breath.
“You recognized him. All three of you.” Saw finally spoke up, stepping away from the wall he was using as a brace. “And don’t you dare fucking lie. I saw the look on your face, on all of your faces. You guys recognized him.”
Ӓllur carefully cleaned his blade as he looked at all of us, studying all of us. Shadows started to crawl out from under the desks, and corners of the room. I had remembered Amber talking about them, the Black. Zed is protected by their being as we all are, the good and the bad, but they stand for their own beliefs as well. I remember her talking about how they were people before, at any time before, during, after the wars. From any point in time. She spoke about how it wasn’t always fair how they would help Zed cheat his death, but she’d then go on to complain that nothing about Zed’s being was fair.
“What are you talking about? Who do we supposedly recognize?” Jet was the first of us to speak. Amber and Ӓllur had gone back to making sure Party was okay, Kobra was staring death glares at Amber, and I stood confused trying to put a face to a name.
“The guy! You cannot tell me you did not see the changes! You guys…all three, all four of you have to know who he was…” Saw trailed off in his rambling. I was not sure about the others but I knew I had known that face before. More importantly, I knew he was dead. That face, that man we had lost when the bombs dropped, next time we saw him…he was being shot. By a Drac? By a Killjoy? I could not say, all I knew was that we were friends, and that now he was dead.
“Saw, we’ll worry about that later. Right now, we have to get party to the Graves. He is still in critical condition. We have time to figure them all out later, we need Party.” Revolver was pulling on Saw’s arm, pleading with him, convincing him to drop the subject.
“We need to know though…” Saw looked at the ground, sighing and walking towards the door out of Zed’s chamber, “before they forget, like they forgot themselves.”
~/~/~/~/~
“Oh come on Kobra! You can’t hate me for doing what I had to! What, would you have rather I let him just kill you?!”
“I’d rather you have been honest with me instead of leading me on like that! ‘Oh yeah Kobra, everything is fine, let’s go play in lala-land some more and forget about the fact that a psycho manic has your brother and is screwing up his head’! Just pretend that didn’t happen?! That’s what you were playing me as! Yeah, I can hate you! I can hate you for all of your pathetic being, cuz you know, that was my goddamn brother, Amber!”
If only the walls had been thicker. Sense Party had gotten back, sense Kobra’s soul, mind, whatever had gained full control, and he had seen Party like that, he hated just about everyone. Including Jet and I. Currently he was in his and Jet’s room having a full out bitch fight with Amber. They had been at it for a few hours now. Amber never came out as one to back down, and sense the bombs dropped and we had lost everything and everyone we loved, Kobra and Party had gotten even closer. Remember that brotherly instinct I had talked about? Yeah that was it showing now.
Jet was down on the strip somewhere, somewhere other than here was a good place to be. Party was still with the Graves. They said something along the lines of him being in such a critical condition and whatever Zephyr had done to his head, making it illogical for him to be on the surface with the rest of us. That meant that he was down in a dark pit, with a group of vampires, and Zed who was trying to undo the knots that were left for us.
I sat up from where I lay on the bed, slightly falling to the side as I folded Party’s bandanna back into my stuff. Maybe one day I would sneak it into his stuff, he would probably never realize, but for now, it was mine. Now it was time I went to pay him a visit. He had been very weird the last few times I have gotten to see him alone. Note, alone. Every other time I was with someone else, via Jet, Kobra, or whoever he was fine, but if I was alone, heaven forbid I got to close to him. I had asked Zed about it; see if he figured anything using his deranged voodoo abilities. All I got was an ‘I’ll look into it’. Much like Saw, he is still pissed about the events that happened down in his room. Saw is still pissed that none of us, not even Party can figure who it was, which I do not get why it is such a big deal that Party did not recognize him. He was unconscious for the whole thing.
Then again, everyone was acting a bit weirder after that day. Like they had seen god or were told the word from a prophet and now they were all scripters. Everything just seemed different, everything seemed off.
“You can’t see him now. Zed’s been working on him for the last several hours, he’s determined to figure this mess out.” Dawn sat at the hotel’s bar, slowly, casually, sipping on the cold liquor in his hand.
“Why’s that? Or hasn’t he told.” I sat next to him; in the last several days that we have been here, Dawn and I had grown close. We had a lot in common, and oddly enough, our stories were close to the same. Over all, we were just two people trying to find ourselves all over again, in a new world where second chances do not exist.
“There’s a few reasons,” he finished his beer, turning to face me properly “there’s a rumor spreading around here faster than a wild fire, the beacon is going to be turned back on. That news, to us, is like a sex disease burning through your veins my friend.” He got up, and I followed. “Wait, what’s the beacon? You guy’s talk like this is a prophecy.”
“Ah, the beacon. It is a light, the light. From the old times, the top of the pyramid. Except now, it’s not just a light.” We walked down the destroyed sidewalks, passing people hard at work, and others just enjoying the day. We talked and walked to the stables. “So in a nutshell, that light gets turned on the Black go away and Graves can’t help us.”
“So you’re saying that Ӓllur, Skratch, Saw…all of them are going to disappear?”
“Basically, and Zed will lose all his inhuman powers, so will Zephyr, but Zephyr is way stronger than us, for a crippled old man. However, Kod goes away too. The black cannot exist while that light is on, and they can’t come out during the day. So yeah…we’re screwed.” Dawn had pulled out a saddle and started working on the dents as he spoke.
“Why would he do that though? I mean, wouldn’t he be weakening himself as well?” I leaned up against the stall of one of the Werevamons. As killer as they were, they were gentle giants for the most part and merely shook off my existence.
“I dunno, he’s a crazy old man.” Dawn just shrugged, continuing to work on his saddle. I decided to stare at the ceiling hoping the answer would appear.
“Ghoul. Zed want’s you, he’s in Graves with Party.” On the other hand, I could go visit Party, as I had originally planned.
~/~/~/~/~
As often as I found myself down in Graves now in days, I still hated the place. It was cold, it was dark, and most importantly it was spider infested. Party was down here though, he doesn’t have a choice to be, so for a few hours I would suck it up and be in Graves, just because he couldn’t leave.
“Zed, I got word that you wanted to see-”
“He raped you, and you two are still fuckin friends?” My jaw hung slack, Zed looked exhausted, a mask of dread dripping off him. I could not answer that question though. I did not know how to answer that question. “Well?”
“H-he…a-a-and-d I…r-rape…What?”
“Ghoul I’ve been digging through your friend’s head here for the last three days. You asked if I could figure out why he doesn’t like being alone with you. No? Well I figured it out. What I don’t get is why you want to be by him after that?” Zed stared into my eyes, and I shivered. I had no way to answer what he was saying. Party had never raped me. He couldn’t have…
“Zed…he never…” I shook my head, trying to look past the other to see Party to no avail. “I mean…Party and me…we, ya know…yeah. But he never raped me!”
“Well that’s what he believes. Moreover, do the initials J.E. mean anything to you? Finally started to get somewhere and all I get is a set of fucking initials.”
“I-I don’t see…J.E. could be a lot of people.” My mind trembled at the idea of Party, my Party Poison raping me; I couldn’t focus on some initials. “Why should they? Does this have to do with what Saw has been going on about?”
“Ghoul you died. You all died. This person, this J.E. he died as well by your hand. He was a Drac, a damn good one too. You four killed him before they killed you. That is why none of you remember. We have all already met. I led a team that broke your dead bodies out of Battery City, out of Better Living Industries; we brought you to the Rebirthing Chambers. You four know who this person is, and it’s very; very important that we can find him before they realize that he is a bigger key than just another drug addicted Dracloid.” I stood there, staring in awe as Zed spoke. It was as if he was speaking in rhymes. First we almost lose our beloved Party Poison, then we find out everything is a lie, then I learn that our only protection from BL/I may be taken from us, then I hear this deranged idea that Party believes is true that he raped me, now I find out I’m dead. That we are all already dead. “Zed this isn’t true. No, we’re still all alive.”
“You are now because we saved you. That’s why Doc traded you over here, it was our agreement.”
“No, no, no…We never died, I don’t know who that man is…the only time we raided Battery City, Better Living, was this past time, and we won….we won.”
“Frank, fuckin listen to me! You four raided Better Living before. You did it to get a girl back, Grace was her name. You guys literally preformed a suicide mission to get that girl back. At the front of the building, you four fought a horde of Dracs and Korse. One of you killed a certain Drac, and that is the one we are looking for. None of you survived that raid. The only ones that survived were the few that were Doc to get Grace out of there.”
I stared at him. He was speaking lies and I knew it, however a part of me felt like there could have been some truth behind it. Why would they all keep it secret though? What made now so special, then it hit me. “The beacon. That’s why all this matters. That’s why he is risking so much. That light can be seen from fuckin space, he is going to use it to summon them isn’t he! Zephyr is going to summon more Dracs and Korse, and, and…he’s looking for that dead Drac too…isn’t he?”
“Ghoul, this is like a prophecy and it’s gotta go our way. If things go wrong, people will turn, and the body count will be terrible. I want you to tell Jet, and if you can Kobra, and I want you guys to make lists of everyone’s names that you can think of that have the initials J.E. alright?”
“They’re not going to believe it. Hell, Zed, I don’t even believe what you are saying right now. Maybe you just need a break.” None of it could be true, how could it? That they broke into Better Living Industries and robbed them of our dead bodies? Used Rebirthing Chambers to bring us back to life? I doubt it, we were California’s finest. No one knew those deserts better than us, not even the Dracs.
“Frank, you need to understand that I’m not lying. That you knew this guy. Doc knew him, you were all close friends. In your past lives you toured together, he was in another band. He was the one that introduced Gerard to his wife-”
I cut him off, fuck I cut Zed off. I would never forget those fights, the day that he married. Only took that for me to remember the man who got them together in the first place.
“James.”
“What?” Zed looked at me like I was crazy, but as if it was a good crazy. Maybe I was a bit crazy, because now everything Zed was saying made clear sense.
“J.E., it stands for James Euringer. Party shot him in the back, and pulled off his mask. Party saw him die. He’s the Drac you’re looking for.” A scarce tear fell, not at the understanding of our own deaths or the reoccurring memories and pain they brought, but the confirmation that we had to kill our own best friend. That is a pill no one can ever swallow, only forced down and Korse had him choking on them.
}{}{
Drifting off into thought, I barely noticed Ӓllur move across the room with a small group of killjoys. With one swift motion, he had Zed pinned at the shoulder, but something was off; drastically off. Zed started coughing, he was not struggling against Ӓllur’s hand, and he was fighting for breath. He was bleeding out, as the assassin withdrew the small dagger from his leader’s shoulder a trail of blood followed in the motion’s wake. Skratch fought to get to his feet, shacking he practically lunged to get into the shadows, fading into his own being. No one dared to move, the only sound that could be heard was Zed coughing struggling to keep his breath.
“You recognized him. All three of you.” Saw finally spoke up, stepping away from the wall he was using as a brace. “And don’t you dare fucking lie. I saw the look on your face, on all of your faces. You guys recognized him.”
Ӓllur carefully cleaned his blade as he looked at all of us, studying all of us. Shadows started to crawl out from under the desks, and corners of the room. I had remembered Amber talking about them, the Black. Zed is protected by their being as we all are, the good and the bad, but they stand for their own beliefs as well. I remember her talking about how they were people before, at any time before, during, after the wars. From any point in time. She spoke about how it wasn’t always fair how they would help Zed cheat his death, but she’d then go on to complain that nothing about Zed’s being was fair.
“What are you talking about? Who do we supposedly recognize?” Jet was the first of us to speak. Amber and Ӓllur had gone back to making sure Party was okay, Kobra was staring death glares at Amber, and I stood confused trying to put a face to a name.
“The guy! You cannot tell me you did not see the changes! You guys…all three, all four of you have to know who he was…” Saw trailed off in his rambling. I was not sure about the others but I knew I had known that face before. More importantly, I knew he was dead. That face, that man we had lost when the bombs dropped, next time we saw him…he was being shot. By a Drac? By a Killjoy? I could not say, all I knew was that we were friends, and that now he was dead.
“Saw, we’ll worry about that later. Right now, we have to get party to the Graves. He is still in critical condition. We have time to figure them all out later, we need Party.” Revolver was pulling on Saw’s arm, pleading with him, convincing him to drop the subject.
“We need to know though…” Saw looked at the ground, sighing and walking towards the door out of Zed’s chamber, “before they forget, like they forgot themselves.”
~/~/~/~/~
“Oh come on Kobra! You can’t hate me for doing what I had to! What, would you have rather I let him just kill you?!”
“I’d rather you have been honest with me instead of leading me on like that! ‘Oh yeah Kobra, everything is fine, let’s go play in lala-land some more and forget about the fact that a psycho manic has your brother and is screwing up his head’! Just pretend that didn’t happen?! That’s what you were playing me as! Yeah, I can hate you! I can hate you for all of your pathetic being, cuz you know, that was my goddamn brother, Amber!”
If only the walls had been thicker. Sense Party had gotten back, sense Kobra’s soul, mind, whatever had gained full control, and he had seen Party like that, he hated just about everyone. Including Jet and I. Currently he was in his and Jet’s room having a full out bitch fight with Amber. They had been at it for a few hours now. Amber never came out as one to back down, and sense the bombs dropped and we had lost everything and everyone we loved, Kobra and Party had gotten even closer. Remember that brotherly instinct I had talked about? Yeah that was it showing now.
Jet was down on the strip somewhere, somewhere other than here was a good place to be. Party was still with the Graves. They said something along the lines of him being in such a critical condition and whatever Zephyr had done to his head, making it illogical for him to be on the surface with the rest of us. That meant that he was down in a dark pit, with a group of vampires, and Zed who was trying to undo the knots that were left for us.
I sat up from where I lay on the bed, slightly falling to the side as I folded Party’s bandanna back into my stuff. Maybe one day I would sneak it into his stuff, he would probably never realize, but for now, it was mine. Now it was time I went to pay him a visit. He had been very weird the last few times I have gotten to see him alone. Note, alone. Every other time I was with someone else, via Jet, Kobra, or whoever he was fine, but if I was alone, heaven forbid I got to close to him. I had asked Zed about it; see if he figured anything using his deranged voodoo abilities. All I got was an ‘I’ll look into it’. Much like Saw, he is still pissed about the events that happened down in his room. Saw is still pissed that none of us, not even Party can figure who it was, which I do not get why it is such a big deal that Party did not recognize him. He was unconscious for the whole thing.
Then again, everyone was acting a bit weirder after that day. Like they had seen god or were told the word from a prophet and now they were all scripters. Everything just seemed different, everything seemed off.
“You can’t see him now. Zed’s been working on him for the last several hours, he’s determined to figure this mess out.” Dawn sat at the hotel’s bar, slowly, casually, sipping on the cold liquor in his hand.
“Why’s that? Or hasn’t he told.” I sat next to him; in the last several days that we have been here, Dawn and I had grown close. We had a lot in common, and oddly enough, our stories were close to the same. Over all, we were just two people trying to find ourselves all over again, in a new world where second chances do not exist.
“There’s a few reasons,” he finished his beer, turning to face me properly “there’s a rumor spreading around here faster than a wild fire, the beacon is going to be turned back on. That news, to us, is like a sex disease burning through your veins my friend.” He got up, and I followed. “Wait, what’s the beacon? You guy’s talk like this is a prophecy.”
“Ah, the beacon. It is a light, the light. From the old times, the top of the pyramid. Except now, it’s not just a light.” We walked down the destroyed sidewalks, passing people hard at work, and others just enjoying the day. We talked and walked to the stables. “So in a nutshell, that light gets turned on the Black go away and Graves can’t help us.”
“So you’re saying that Ӓllur, Skratch, Saw…all of them are going to disappear?”
“Basically, and Zed will lose all his inhuman powers, so will Zephyr, but Zephyr is way stronger than us, for a crippled old man. However, Kod goes away too. The black cannot exist while that light is on, and they can’t come out during the day. So yeah…we’re screwed.” Dawn had pulled out a saddle and started working on the dents as he spoke.
“Why would he do that though? I mean, wouldn’t he be weakening himself as well?” I leaned up against the stall of one of the Werevamons. As killer as they were, they were gentle giants for the most part and merely shook off my existence.
“I dunno, he’s a crazy old man.” Dawn just shrugged, continuing to work on his saddle. I decided to stare at the ceiling hoping the answer would appear.
“Ghoul. Zed want’s you, he’s in Graves with Party.” On the other hand, I could go visit Party, as I had originally planned.
~/~/~/~/~
As often as I found myself down in Graves now in days, I still hated the place. It was cold, it was dark, and most importantly it was spider infested. Party was down here though, he doesn’t have a choice to be, so for a few hours I would suck it up and be in Graves, just because he couldn’t leave.
“Zed, I got word that you wanted to see-”
“He raped you, and you two are still fuckin friends?” My jaw hung slack, Zed looked exhausted, a mask of dread dripping off him. I could not answer that question though. I did not know how to answer that question. “Well?”
“H-he…a-a-and-d I…r-rape…What?”
“Ghoul I’ve been digging through your friend’s head here for the last three days. You asked if I could figure out why he doesn’t like being alone with you. No? Well I figured it out. What I don’t get is why you want to be by him after that?” Zed stared into my eyes, and I shivered. I had no way to answer what he was saying. Party had never raped me. He couldn’t have…
“Zed…he never…” I shook my head, trying to look past the other to see Party to no avail. “I mean…Party and me…we, ya know…yeah. But he never raped me!”
“Well that’s what he believes. Moreover, do the initials J.E. mean anything to you? Finally started to get somewhere and all I get is a set of fucking initials.”
“I-I don’t see…J.E. could be a lot of people.” My mind trembled at the idea of Party, my Party Poison raping me; I couldn’t focus on some initials. “Why should they? Does this have to do with what Saw has been going on about?”
“Ghoul you died. You all died. This person, this J.E. he died as well by your hand. He was a Drac, a damn good one too. You four killed him before they killed you. That is why none of you remember. We have all already met. I led a team that broke your dead bodies out of Battery City, out of Better Living Industries; we brought you to the Rebirthing Chambers. You four know who this person is, and it’s very; very important that we can find him before they realize that he is a bigger key than just another drug addicted Dracloid.” I stood there, staring in awe as Zed spoke. It was as if he was speaking in rhymes. First we almost lose our beloved Party Poison, then we find out everything is a lie, then I learn that our only protection from BL/I may be taken from us, then I hear this deranged idea that Party believes is true that he raped me, now I find out I’m dead. That we are all already dead. “Zed this isn’t true. No, we’re still all alive.”
“You are now because we saved you. That’s why Doc traded you over here, it was our agreement.”
“No, no, no…We never died, I don’t know who that man is…the only time we raided Battery City, Better Living, was this past time, and we won….we won.”
“Frank, fuckin listen to me! You four raided Better Living before. You did it to get a girl back, Grace was her name. You guys literally preformed a suicide mission to get that girl back. At the front of the building, you four fought a horde of Dracs and Korse. One of you killed a certain Drac, and that is the one we are looking for. None of you survived that raid. The only ones that survived were the few that were Doc to get Grace out of there.”
I stared at him. He was speaking lies and I knew it, however a part of me felt like there could have been some truth behind it. Why would they all keep it secret though? What made now so special, then it hit me. “The beacon. That’s why all this matters. That’s why he is risking so much. That light can be seen from fuckin space, he is going to use it to summon them isn’t he! Zephyr is going to summon more Dracs and Korse, and, and…he’s looking for that dead Drac too…isn’t he?”
“Ghoul, this is like a prophecy and it’s gotta go our way. If things go wrong, people will turn, and the body count will be terrible. I want you to tell Jet, and if you can Kobra, and I want you guys to make lists of everyone’s names that you can think of that have the initials J.E. alright?”
“They’re not going to believe it. Hell, Zed, I don’t even believe what you are saying right now. Maybe you just need a break.” None of it could be true, how could it? That they broke into Better Living Industries and robbed them of our dead bodies? Used Rebirthing Chambers to bring us back to life? I doubt it, we were California’s finest. No one knew those deserts better than us, not even the Dracs.
“Frank, you need to understand that I’m not lying. That you knew this guy. Doc knew him, you were all close friends. In your past lives you toured together, he was in another band. He was the one that introduced Gerard to his wife-”
I cut him off, fuck I cut Zed off. I would never forget those fights, the day that he married. Only took that for me to remember the man who got them together in the first place.
“James.”
“What?” Zed looked at me like I was crazy, but as if it was a good crazy. Maybe I was a bit crazy, because now everything Zed was saying made clear sense.
“J.E., it stands for James Euringer. Party shot him in the back, and pulled off his mask. Party saw him die. He’s the Drac you’re looking for.” A scarce tear fell, not at the understanding of our own deaths or the reoccurring memories and pain they brought, but the confirmation that we had to kill our own best friend. That is a pill no one can ever swallow, only forced down and Korse had him choking on them.
}{}{
12/26/12