Vertical Descent Point. PART 3

 

In time, Tattoo, Old, and Fat left Colonial Way behind. Old sniggered and cocked a thumb back at the sidewalk that the three of them had overtaken.

 

“It’s been ate up by the cold and the wind,” he said, his thumb hanging in the air over his shoulder. “Like something gone extinct and miserable. The way forward, I mean.”

 

Now the cold was bitter, almost hateful at their backs and exposed faces. The night pressed into them like a massive burial shroud.

 

“Eaten up,” said Fat, his ham-like right hand on his belly as he walked.

 

“What?” said Tattoo, turning her head to look at him.

 

“Old said ate up,” Fat said, smiling ruefully. “It’s eaten up, I think he meant. He talks like a prospector out of the early American frontier. He knows it bothers me, him talking that way. I think he does it just to eat my heart out.”

 

Tattoo smirked and turned her decorated face back to the unknown path that stretched out into infinity before them. “Of course he knows it burns you up. That’s why he does it. Old’s funny that way, aint you Old?”

 

Old grinned, hawked and spat onto the shoulder of Sliver Avenue. His lower lip trembled and pushed itself out. He looked like a petulant child. “Funny, maybe,” said Old, his gait suddenly becoming something very much like a crooked pimp-strut. “Let an old man have his creature comforts, young ‘uns.”

 

Fat threw his hands into the air and sped his walk up. “Hopeless.”

 

“Damn right, I am,” said Old.

 

The trio meandered down Sliver Avenue until Sliver Avenue became Bird Street, down Bird Street until it turned into Parker Path, down Parker Path until it transformed into Kiln Boulevard. At the end of the right side of Kiln Boulevard, just before Kiln Boulevard became Esther Line, was an alley stuffed between an old derelict theater and a seedy looking liquor store. An aged, cracked thing, this alley, that seemed to have stumbled its way from within the grainy depths of a 1940’s gangster epic, maybe one staring Edward G. Robinson at the height of his popularity. Tattoo usually took the lead in the trio’s walking, its endless, terribly tiresome walking, and as such, she was the first to see the grubby young man with just a bit too much exhaustion in his eyes round the corner of the alley and bring a ragged Smith & Wesson to bear on a spot just above Old’s grizzled right eyebrow.

 

“Wallets,” wheezed the man. The gun trembled when he spoke, but became quite steady once he had made his rather crude, yet nonetheless succinct, demand. “Wallets or I shoot.”

 

“Young man,” began Old, but Tattoo cut across him.

 

“And what will us giving you our wallets solve?” she asked, her voice suddenly high and terrible. Full of never-ending grief. “Would what little money we have between the three of us fix your life? Will what you take from us bury the shambles you’ve made of yourself?”

 

“Shut the f**k up,” said the man, and now the gun swiveled. Its barrel came to rest on Tattoo’s high forehead. “Just do as I say and no one will be…”

 

There was an earsplitting BANG and Fat collapsed onto the soft shoulder of Kiln Street, gasping and holding his right arm. Blood oozed from beneath his fingers in dark waves. Tattoo shrieked and thrust a hand into her windbreaker, but before she could withdraw whatever she’d been about to withdraw, there was another loud BANG and she tottered backwards and fell flat on her back. Even as she fell, her painted face twisted with a bright and insane fury that would’ve atomized reinforced steel had she chosen to direct the force behind the face with a need to destroy. The hand within the windbreaker flew into the air above her and there was a hiss as a pressurized spray can was used.

 

“We can both help him,” shouted Old, and in one fluid movement, he stepped into the man’s line of sight and shoved the barrel of the gun to the left with his right hand. His left hand found the mugger’s forehead and glued itself there like an ancient and ugly starfish. At the same time, a cloud of black mist spread itself across the man’s midsection like a film of diseased mucus.

 

“Together,” screamed Tattoo.

 

The man’s trunk began to shudder and bubble like plastic under the assault of a blowtorch with a top temperature slightly above that of the surface of the sun. The man screamed and clawed at his chest, but this didn’t do anything but make Old’s job easier. Distraction was best for him when he chose to work his talent on others. Distraction kept his patients (victims?) from going insane.

 

Distraction kept them stuck to the present. Distraction kept them from falling off the face of the present and into the bloody bowels of the past, where they might suffer forevermore under the weight of been there, done that.

 

Fat gasped and stood, his hand still on his arm, which, strangely, was no longer bleeding.

 

Old began to mutter in a low and harsh voice, his hand on the man’s forehead.

 

The man began to scream.

 

No one heard him scream as he was helped onto the mangled and bloody gurney of a past life lived in the trenches of Darfur’s most horrific culling.

Reviews

[Dms]

The only thing I would say thus far is that some of their conversations seem a bit forced. Fat's response to Old seems almost too well though out to be conversational. It was good, but I just couldn't picture him saying it if you know what I mean.
The action was a bit confusing. I gathered that Old was doing some sort of mind f**k on the dude, and I think tatoo was melting him with her spray can, but it wasn't exactly clear. One sentence would probably concrete this.

On the whole I am thouroughly enjoying this.

[Hairy and Confused]

Riveting.

[Ben Umstead]

OK. Here we are... this feels like the ending, or an ending for now.

The world presented is open to interpretation, and those who read it are gonna see different things based on the stories and places they've been exposed to. I was reminded of Grant Morrison and Vertigo's Fables comics to a certain degree.

The idea of immortals (or angels or devils) walking the earth, shepards without a flock, wanderers, is pretty clear here, along with their assorted bells and whistles. What I really like is the approach you've taken with it. There is a very modern and raw energy to it. The fact that they're surely vets and punks, bums, what have you, sprinkles a possible line of social commentary into all this, as if you're giving us a store front menagerie look at stereotypes and sub-cultures of the 20th century.

The vague sense at the beginning that these are no ordinary travelers gives just enough mystery to the work, lending to the just-out-of-sight eerie mood, which you generally succeed at very well. What some might call fantasy or science fiction, you call reality.

The biggest let down for me is the open interpretation to the piece. There is a lot of room here for readers to paint things in, which can be good, but something isn't clicking for with this one. It seems less your intention to leave it open and more your frustration.

Then again this might not be done, so my words should hold little weight.