Jack: Chapter 1

May 1941, New York City

The punishing blow to my side brings me to my knees. It hurts to breathe and I’m fairly certain he cracked a couple of my ribs. I make the mistake of instinctively bringing my hands down to my side, thus allowing the pissed off gangster to have access to my head.

I consider myself lucky that he only yanks me up by my hair. Looking into his face he sneers at me. “Stupid kid, I’ll show you to ever steal from me!” He snarls before throwing me down onto the ground so hard that my face bounces off of the pavement in an explosion of pain.

I look up just in time to see good old Lou strut up to the club entrance. He nods to the bouncer who unhooks the rope and lets him in like he didn’t just watch the guy beat a kid half to death in the middle of the street.

I struggle to my feet, stumbling a few times before reorienting myself. The hospital isn’t too far away, if I take a few shortcuts, I could be there in about a half hour.  Just before I turn down the first alley I remember my hat. It’s my lucky hat, so can’t exactly leave it behind. The bouncer sees me and coldly picks it up off the ground and hands it to me. It would have been better if he’d called a doctor, but I’ll take what I can get.

Clutching the hat in one hand I turn down the alleyway and begin the long, painful process of navigating the six blocks to St. Luke’s Hospital. My boot catches on a rock and I nearly fall, digging my fingers into the bricks to keep my balance. 

Before I’m even out of the alley, I start feeling like something just isn’t right. When you live like I do, you listen to those feelings. My first thought is that Lou decided that he wasn’t done using me as a speed bag , so I pick up the pace, nervously turning to look behind me.

While I’m busy looking over my shoulder for homicidal gangsters, I manage to run into something. Jerking my head forward I take in exactly what it is in front of me. I stare in horror at the creature, all 10 feet of it. Its long mantis-like body sports a half a dozen limbs, each one ending in various saws, scissors and surgical devices. I scream as what looks like a scalpel tries take out my eye.

In my panic I gracefully trip over my own feet backwards, narrowly avoiding smacking my head on the brick wall. The creature advances closer and I shuffle to my feet and run as fast as I can down a connecting alley. If I wasn’t already hurt, this would be a lot easier.  One of my few worthwhile talents is the innate ability to run faster scared then others can mad. Unfortunately, I’m battered up so staying upright is enough of a challenge. 

I clutch at the wall, dragging myself around the corner before the thing gets any closer.  An ominous clicking whirring noise tells me that the thing is closer than I hoped it would be. The alleyway is really long, and there’s no way that I’m going to make it that far like this.  My only hope is the half broken dumpster that’s in front of me. I drop down and crawl under it, startling about half a million c**k-roaches in the process. The things crawl over me and I resist the urge to shuck them off as much as I can. This is not the time to worry about the ‘heebie-jeebies’, not with that thing coming after me.

The clicking and whirring comes closer, growing louder with each step of those creepy insectoid legs.  It shuffles past the dumpster and I hold my breath.  The thing pauses and for a moment I’m sure I’m going to get away. My sigh of relief becomes a blood curdling scream when a chunk of the dumpster explodes, loudly, right next to my ear. Apparently one of its many limbs bears a shotgun.

The thing ratchets the dumpster sideways with a horrific dragging metal sound and for the second time tonight I’m on my a*s in front of this monster.  I don’t even know what the hell to call it, but I do know it’s going to kill me if I let it.

Damaged ribs be damned I scramble to my feet,  dodging a weird rotating saw in the process.  I shuffle backwards as I draw the knife from my pocket.  The thing throws out one of its arms; this one has the world’s scariest hypodermic needle which wobbles in the air in a malicious drunken sailor sort of way. 

Luckily for me the thing shifts slightly, just enough to give me an opening. I lunge forward and punch the knife blindly into the hard chitinous plates at its abdomen. Do these things even have organs? It screams as I drag the blade back out, so I must have hit something. I force it over and run in the direction it just came from.

I have no idea where I’m going, the bug got me all turned around, all I know is that anywhere is better than here with it. I can hear the thing shrieking behind me. ‘Good,’ I think, ‘at least he’s having as s****y a night as I am.’

I manage to reach another turn when something crashes down in front of me. For a moment I think it’s the bug, then I it dawns on me that this can’t be the same one because I can still hear it screaming back there.  There’s more then one of these things.

A saw tipped appendage drags across my shoulder, bringing me out of my thoughts. I shove the thing into a wall with enough force that I hear a crack.  It tosses me aside, as if I weighed nothing and scuttles upright. I take this glowing opportunity to get the hell out of the alleys.

I make it to the street but everything is wrong. For one thing, I don’t hear any traffic. Looking around, I see a guy walking down the street a ways.

“Hey!” I shout, “Hey, mister!”

The guy doesn’t even turn around. I limp over to him just close enough to see that he’s not alone. Strange shadowy creatures swarm around his feet, their red eyes glowing in their own darkness. One of the shadows opens its black maw and hisses at me.  After I jump backwards a couple of feet I decide to cross the street thinking that maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t get that guy’s attention after all.

Everything appears dirty, like it’s never seen fresh air or sunshine, let alone street cleaners.  Even the street lights cast a dingy sort of light that makes me want to scrub myself raw. Picking the better of two evils I keep myself close to the sickly gray of the streetlights as I try to figure out where I am. Nothing looks familiar to me. I should be on or at least near East 42^nd, but half the buildings are missing. 

That’s crazy, right? Buildings don’t just cease to exist.  And yet, here they aren’t. Hell, the ones that I can see aren’t exactly solid. Maybe it’s the creepy dirty light, but I swear I can see through a few of them; like they’re ghosts or something. This thought sends an uncomfortable chill down my spine.

Any thought that I have of just being lost dies when I do finally recognize something. St Luke’s hospital is there all right, and as solid as one can expect a building to be when it’s twice as big as it should be. The east and west wards are swelling out ever so slowly… then shrinking.  It’s breathing, I realize. The damn building is breathing. That’s not even the worst of it, because now that I’m paying attention I notice that every time it exhales a horrible cacophony of noise whistles through the air.

I turn away from the sight, unwilling to look at its every horrific detail; the screams, shrieks and guttural cries still drift down the otherwise eerily quiet streets.

A shuffling comes from the shadows beside me and I bolt down the street as fast as I can.  I get about half way down the down the street before I feel something shift in my side, followed by a tearing feeling that nearly drops me to my knees. When I scream, only a gurgled gasp comes out.

‘My lung, I punctured my lung.’ I think in a panic. The hospital obviously wasn’t much of an option. I needed to get out of here, where- or whatever ‘here’ was.  Ideally finding someplace comfortable and familiar, like Central Park in the middle of the night. At least the muggers, rapists and freaks are technically human. 

 

I was struggling just to limp down the street when I heard it: The sound of someone clearing their throat. The more I listen the more I can hear a deep voice humming in the distance. I pause at an intersection, listening for the sound again. Suddenly a clear chanting starts, definitely to the left. I grab the corner and hauled myself headfirst around the corner with my good arm. I bounce off of something solid and land on the ground in a painful heap.

The man standing over me looks as surprised to see me here as I am relieved to see him at all. I’m so relieved to see another human being that I don’t care that his dark sunken eyes give the man an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin. I don’t care that his scraggly beard makes him look like a serial killer. I don’t care that the weird clothes that he’s wearing are so out of date that even Jimmy wouldn’t wear them.  Lying on my back, bleeding to death internally, I only look up at this feral looking man and laugh. I laugh until I cough, and when I cough I spray blood everywhere. I just don’t care. In fact I care so little that I’m still gargling with laughter when I pass out.