His rough leather jacket whipped furiously in the chill, winter wind. The air bit at his face like getting slapped on the cheek repeatedly by an inuit weilding a frozen salmon. Moist was not a dirty word, but today it felt like one. His "moist" cheek was getting brittle, cracking and sending slivers of ice into his face. I hate winter, he thought viciously. As vicious as mother nature. Pulling his beaten jacket closer around his body, he trudged on.
Tonight he was out for blood, the pinholes of light in the night sky leading him on. I can feel him in this place. Turning to his right, he stared into a sunken alleyway, some hole between 3rd street hell and Manhattan. What was he supposed to make of that feeling on his shoulder? Peering into the chasm of darkness, he took one step, then another. Soon he was a dozen paces into the crack in the world and next to a dumpster. Gently he lifted the lid, the blacktop plastic cover smearing at his touch. Blood... He lifted the lid violently, it made a clanging, ineffectual thud against the brick and mortar building it lay beside. It was an appropriate, inadequate sound, perfect for the vision of horror it had been concealing. There was a strewn mess of blood and gore in the dumpster. His charge. His duty tonight had been fulfilled by another.
The game of cat and mouse had started early and that was breaking the rules. Slamming the lid down he walked away in disgust. The mess he could handle, he would be on the other side next week, another corpse was only a gamepeice. It was this disregard for the rules that bugged him most. I did not come out of hibernation for this... Stomping off, he pulled out his cell phone and made the call. There would be a real hunt, now. There was a rulebreaker and he would pay. He made the call.
The world was going to Hell. Or Hell was coming to the world, or had always been here. Or the world WAS Hell. It was impossible to decide, to reverse engineer this pile of shit that life had become to find the root cause. It was like swimming through beef stew with battery acid in your eyes and steam in your lungs. Every decision he made was tainted with a seemingly subconscious need to hurt people. Every time he lifted a finger, he looked down to find he was crushing something with his foot. Or someone.
He was not a killer; all he had ever wanted to be growing up was a Doctor, M.D. Doctor John Story, Healer. That’s what he always thought that his tombstone would say and how people would fondly remember him. Now there would be no tombstone. They don’t mark where rabid dogs are buried, they just put them down.
“What is happening to me”, he asked aloud. The lady standing next to him in the AM/PM gave him a quizzical look, then blushed when he noticed. He turned to face her, staring into her ear as though it held the secrets of the Divine. He saw a bead of sweat form at her temple as her eyes darted to him then back to the milk several times very quickly. His hand came up to his side…
She screeched a bloody wail. He blinked and saw a corpse in the aisle next to him, some woman whose face had apparently exploded with blood. He could tell it was blood, by the tell-tale color and rusty taste on his lips. Looking at his reflection embedded in the glass pane door, he could see that half of his face was splattered with the gooey residue of life. It was still warm. Turning around, he started to walk for the door, his shambling steps coming slowly. As he opened the door, heading back to his car, he could hear a chorus of screams left in his wake. He did not like having a wake. These things just kept happening…
Ducat hugged his leather jacket closer to his chest, trying in vain to keep the heat near his body. There was little warmth in his current predicament, little to put him at ease; the chill air was the least of his problems. His quarry was dead, his opponent fled and if he couldn’t find the answers, then he would be hunted next.
The Rules… For more then 20 generations, the Rules had kept their activities a secret. The Rules must be followed, or pandemonium would break loose. The Rules held the path to salvation. He was getting sick to death of rules. Life had taught him all the rules that he needed : The strong survive, the weak perish and the rest are left to God. It had made his heart a cold place to dwell, but it had also made it strong. He had survived when others would have given up this spin on the wheel, taken a seat at the next table. He would survive this, Rules or no rules.
“Thank you for holding”, a voice nattered at him through his phone. Dickenson had not answered his phone all night, leaving Ducat to wander the city in isolation. It had not been entirely a waste, as he had killed two muggers and another man who followed him for three blocks. Their bodies would not excite anyone. Another few corpses in the streets was the status quo. He chuckled at his own joke.
“Thank you for holding…”
At least he was getting this asinine hold message now, an improvement over the stony silence of last night’s attempted missives. He would wait. Ducat was a very patient man…
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