!f !t breathes, k!ll !t

Unk!llable K!ll!ng Mach!ne

 

I can see the faint expansion and deflation of his lungs whenever I look hard enough. Whenever my tainted double-vison allowed me to. Focus on anything is difficult to impossible. My head is wringing with anger, bombs of raw, unfiltered power are pulsing in a drum beat. I can almost hear it.

(Beat… beat… beat…)

The puff-wheeze of his breathing was so low and rattling that it could barely be noticed, many would simply think him dead at a glance. I notice. Its not good enough for me. Beat… beat…

            He was in the corner overcast by the makeshift ceiling of the barn, an iron sheet whistling in the midnight breeze.

(Beat)

He’s like a single burst organ, flaccid and begging for death, engulfed in red. His left arm lolls on its joint as if trying meekly to wriggle free from its fastening of nerve and muscle, the bone had snapped.

            ‘Come on huh, give me a smile,’ I snarl, my tongue leaves for an experimental and sinister lick of the bottom lip.

            A pained jerk of his head. He’s paying attention. He wends down and settles, perhaps finding comfort in the soil beneath him. The soil that he stood on when he did what he did. The soil never lost its scrapings of blood, whether it be the youthful blood of Flora Myer or the fresh, hot blood of Kennedy “Sec” Simon. The barn screams at me, a bay of tragedy.

(Beat)

            I look at him, as hard as I can. My face crumples and I feel its crusty age. My eyes are rushing with the aggressive hum of whatever the f**k these stimulants are doing to me. My hand is flapping acutely, my lungs are still remembering to breath, which is perhaps more than what can be said for Sec.

            ‘Not even your momma’s gonna recognise you now. God damn you look f*****g horrid, which happens to be just the look I’m going for.’

            He grunts and looks at me. His eyes roll flatly as if the movement took all the effort in the world. Maybe it did. ‘Charles,’ his voice is pained and rough.

            ‘Jesus Christ buddy, are you still with me?’ I jolt downward to his height. He’s a short man when he’s not a broken heap, and when he is- he’s as impressive as rotted roadkill. A smiling chunk of dead rabbit, that’s what he reminds me of.

            ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ he says.

            My mind takes me elsewhere. I present a bare, hard look. Affirming myself. I let my face do the talking while I recoil into a headful of dazing, raw half-consciousness. Is it anger? Humiliation?

            (Beat, Beat) Anger. It’s anger. Anger because he has me. He got a leg up without a working leg to his name, the b*****d. A horrific, wet smile cuts along his brazen red mouth, displaying a broken track of busted teeth, a tongue bathing in a pool of glut, blood and tooth shards.

            ‘You got a mouth, don’t you?’ I ask, humouring him. I will let him enjoy this for as long as I can hold a lump of sick at the back of my throat. ‘Shame if something were to happen to it.’

            ‘There’s nothing you can do to me.’

            I repel slightly, my face falls slack. What is this pig s**t trying to do? What is his game? What is my game?

            To beat him so bad his momma won’t recognise him. That’s what I promised him, and myself. Hell, even I can barely recognise him. except, that’s a lie. I can. The eyes, the pearly dimes flickered like the eyes of Kennedy Simon. The eyes that evaluated the judiciary like a row of unripen grapes at a fruit market. The eyes that looked dead at me as ‘Not guilty’ sunk into me like a needle.

            I can see him in those eyes. All of him. I need to get rid of them.

            ‘You got a mouth. What else you got left? How much of a dick do you still have left, huh? how much of your hands you got left?’

            He laughed in a painful wheeze. ‘You can’t do anything to me. Not to me.’

            I crack my elbow off his jaw and the euphoric drowning of adrenaline masks the sting of the muscle I pulled. I can’t feel which muscle, let along remember what its called, or how to relax it. it doesn’t matter. What matters is that his face is still a singular entity.

            ‘Not to me,’ he said. Sort of. It sounded more like ‘Nowtahwee,’

            I stick a hand in his mouth, my knuckles in line with his broken-to-s**t teeth. I feel the gloop and teeth, as if I’m reaching into a hot, moaning rockpool. I tear upwards with the other hand and he rips. The heat of the blood pour is masked by the pulsing heat of my own body, writhing with cooking energy. I want to let it all out on him. All on him. I want all of my hatred, my hatred for everything I hate to burn through my body as I let it loose on this man. I want my hatred for Yops to burn into energy. My hatred for Chrissie Stephens. F**k, who was she? Probably an ex. I hate her. I want all that hate to burn in a coal fire that burns only for him. I want the hatred for the n*****s to cease and rumble into the hits I throw. I don’t need to hate anything else when he’s here in front of me. My hatred for the California f*****s and the�"

            (Beat, Beat, Beat)

            ‘You can’t…’

            Shut up pig s**t shut�"

            ‘Hurt…’

            F*****g kill s**t f*****g (Beat, Beat, Beat)

            ‘Me.’

            He’s speaking through a tongue with as much use as two moist strips of cloth, his teeth are rubble. He’s not got much left in him. He sucks for breath his collapsed lungs deny him. Pig s**t’s gonna die.

            ‘Charles…’

            I forget sometimes, in the pulsing adrenaline, that I pause for moments. Sometimes it takes a while for my mind to regain track, sometimes its quick. So be it, more time for pig s**t to suffer.

            ‘You’re not hurting me, you know it,’ he says this, but all I hear is ‘Yuw nawt huwwing we.’

            That’s a lie. I heard him. I don’t want to hear him, not anymore. I crunch my hand into a fist wrapping a chunk of rubble from my side and let it collapse across his head from the bottom up. His head is a leaking sun, hot and fiercely red.

            I do it again with my other hand. I hear the squirt of his eyeball- its formal abandonment from his skull.

            ‘You’re not hurting me, Charles. Not me.’

            I release it all. Flurries of hits, my knee shoots up and breaks his mangled nose. I wonder, for a moment, how human meat could taste. Maybe I can eat him in front of him. maybe then he’ll know how it feels. How it feels.

            (Beat, Beat)

            Another hit.

            Another.

            He’s like a slush now, taking more and more and more. Maybe the farmer can mop him up, and that’ll be the end of it. maybe I can release his meat to the pigs and he’ll be real pig s**t.

            ‘You can’t�"’

            I force a rock into his mouth and his masseters seem to bleed and stretch. F**k him, I’m done with him.

            ‘Not me,’ he says.

            I beat him until he’s scum on the cold, wet ground. I grind my knuckles into the palm I dried on aa tuft of weeds.

(It’s not enough. I have too much hate now, and the hate is power. I need to let go of the it or I’ll take it out on myself. Or someone I…)

            I stand, scuff my boot on a lumpy trail of blood and leave the barn into the still air of the farm. The wind is a casual snore, the thin volleys of rain are icy and fresh, draining the blood from my skin in oily dribbles. Some leaks into my eye and I blink it away.  The barn is tall, its wooden pillars as if to creak and crust into the sky. In front of me is old Jasper’s house. The window is bright. Smoke funnels from the chimney and trails as a single black tendril into the sky. The window goes dark. Jasper must be away to bed. I could kill him.

            (…someone I love)

No. I can’t, what’s he done to me? He tried as hard as I did to get pig s**t put away. His wife Audrey on the other hand was a sly b***h who sold on stolen goods from her own mother’s salon back in ‘15 last I heard. B***h is getting what’s coming to her.

But It’s not enough. I need someone.

(Beat) Someone real to receive my hatred.

(…someone I love)

Maybe I should have preserved Sec a little longer. Maybe I could still be at the pig s**t. But still… the hate is welling. Like a cancer in my stomach leaking across me. My hands turn to rock-fists. I’m ready. I’m too ready. I’m going to kill the next mother f****r I see.

(Beat, Beat, Beat)

(…someone)

 and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit… and…

 

***

 

            Ugh

            Numbers

            Pig… s**t.

            ‘Get him prepped for fluids we need to flush the toxins out of his system or he’ll flat�"’

            Ugh…. Uhn

            I hear…

            ‘Quite a stunt he pulled. I’d call him a genius if he wasn’t such an idi�"’

            I’m lost again. somewhere dark and fuzzy. The drugs have worn off, now I’m feeling it. My leg… Christ they’re dead wood. I can’t move s**t. Something… sheet…

            ‘Don’t move!’

            A voice. Who…?

            ‘Stay very still, you’ve just narrowly evaded death sir,’

            My eyes screw open and through a narrow slit I see light. Some patches of shadow are moving… nothing feels real. Nothing makes sense. Where am I…

            ‘Private! Get away from him!’

            ‘He’s awake, sir,’

            ‘Yes, I see that, run along solider.’

            What’s happening… why am I ugh uhn Christ I can’t move what is…

            ‘Are you with me Sargent?’

            Something… skin.

            ‘Sargent! Charles Doherty can you open your eyes! Please respond!’

            He’s touching me… why?

            ‘You were in the Trench for days, the boys can barely believe you’re still breathing,’

            ‘Actually, that is rather surprising�"’ another voice, accent. ‘One minute, two minute longer his brain and the cloud would have become one in the same he would be rendered brain dead. Or…’

            ‘Or?’ The other man. I know his voice…

            ‘His mind would have lived on within…’

            Just let me go back I want to sleep I don’t want this please take me back I want to feel the�"

            ‘The most amazing part of all, Doctor? It wasn’t protocol, Trench is way below him. he chose to hook himself up. The whole thing is messed up beyond my years, I’d never have my men involved. No one even knew he was doing it. Didn’t tell a God damn soul.’

            Why can’t I move? Take me back, take me back! F*****g Christ please take me back take me back!

            ‘What happens to him now, doctor?’

            ‘He’s comatose, might not wake up. I’ll try my best, see what I can do. Oh, private!’

            ‘Yes doctor?’

            ‘Clean up all this blood, won’t you?’

            (Beat, Beat… Beeeeeeaaaaat…)