Line of Responsbility

Kittens, gore and frightening blue markers.

1

The walking mass of muscle’s glass eye turned inwards as its head jerked to its right. It was a rather small movement, and although it was fast, it sent its glass eye spinning precariously, like most of the movements it made, for it had its glass eye crafted and fitted at gunpoint, and the exchange had been corybantic and expeditious. For some time since the loss of its eye, back when it had head hair and facial hair, it had worn a plain black eyepatch, and worn a vermillion bandana that covered its forehead and its eyelids, thus providing as an integument for the elongated, abysmal scar that ran through its left eyebrow. However, Denzel had very openly informed it that it looked exactly like a “bloody pirate”, and so the walking mass of muscle reluctantly allowed Denzel to shave its head bald, leave its scar burning on its face like a warning, and fitted it with a glass eye which was an opposite shade to its right eye. Now, adorned with a vexatiously raucous leather jacket and a pistol, its oddball gentle giant sort of look had vanished.

A huge, cupped paw heavily lifted itself up to the walking mass of muscle’s sullen face and flicked at its glass eye a few times, until it seemed satisfied, and dropped its arm (and, of course, squeak squeak squeak went the leather jacket). Its glass eye was now looking at the right, whereas its real eye goggled at the young cat at his feet.

The creature was so small and slight that she seemed simply picayune, so thin and bony that she was even malnourished, for her skin and fur wrapped tightly around her skeleton, clinging on, as if fearing sudden collapse. Her display of fur, soft and ginger, sported golden flecks of hairs. She had a shiny, shimmer coat, as if she were lovingly pampered, although her tiny size and lack of collar suggested otherwise. The walking mass of muscle had never seen a feral cat before. Certainly, it had seen stray dogs, and it had liked to poke and jab at them on the streets when it was a young boy, and it had shooed its uncle’s many pigeons and chickens, but never had it seen a feral feline, and nor, now it came to think about it, had it even seen many domesticated cats. Its childhood neighbourhood really never was fond of the whole pet notion.

The little cat looked up at him, piercing, black eyes glistening in the brightness of the early sunshine, and gave a gentle meow. Now a lot more disconcerted and, practically disorientated, in fact, the walking mass of muscle looked over its shoulder, squinted its eye, and then crouched in an awkward, heavy movement (causing its glass eye to roll rapidly) and it stared, transfixed, at the beautiful animal before it. The young cat sat, now, pleasantly licking her dainty paw, appearing to be completely comfortable in the crouching mass of muscle’s presence. The crouching mass of muscle frowned, its brow deeply furrowed, his gaze uncertain yet calculating. Slowly, it lifted its arm. Contentedly, the young cat continued to lick away, seemingly oblivious to any movements. Cautiously, the arm moved over the cat, its hard-skinned, tensed paw hovering over her frail head. A bead of concentrated sweat dripped down the crouching mass of muscle’s glistening temple. Its tongue poked out between its thin, chapped lips. With a slight tremble, its hand fell onto the cat’s head. Her gentle eyes flickered lazily into the crouching mass of muscle’s direction as it ceased to clean itself.

In minuscular, diffident movements, the crouching mass of muscle’s tentative fingers - lengthy and thick, with damaged nails bitten right down to the quick - brushed through the cat’s fur, feeling the softness, feeling her warmth which radiated throughout her and into its flesh. Pleasantly, the young cat began to purr. One half of the crouching mass of muscle’s attenuated mouth twisted and mutated as if it were undergoing some sort of seizure and all of a sudden, its entire mouth became a beaming, rhapsodic grin. It continued to carefully stroke the cat’s head in foreign, robotic movements.

“Kitty, kitty,” it whispered happily, its voice losing the entire menacing tone it had practised for Denzel’s sake for months upon months. As it scratched the cat’s ears, her purring increased immensely.

Then, without warning, a little way behind it, a THWACK noise sounded, the sound of bone crashing against tight flesh, followed by a faint, strangled cry. The crouching mass of muscle’s paw froze, hovering a little as it was yanked upwards. Its face hardened, like a storm had passed over it. It stood tall, exactly 203.2 centimetres tall, and as it did so, its jacket squeaked rambunctiously and its glass eye turned. The cat looked up at it, alarmed and missing the feeling of its hand on her head. Her ears pricked upwards a little, then laid her ears back, sensing danger, as the towering mass of muscle was tense and taking deep, heavy breaths, paws clenched into tight fists, fists so powerful that they were worth any pair of knuckledusters. The cat stood herself, back arched, watching and waiting, ready to speed away if need be. The towering mass of muscle looked behind it, at the colossal warehouse, and brushed its hand along its jeans until its fingers made contact with its pistol.

The warehouse was neglected, abandoned, empty. Almost completely hollow. The structure was made of metal sheets and concrete, a corrugated roof, with every single window smashed inwards and the massive front doors simply removed, so it was literally a box, a relinquished square building, musky and dusty and most of all, cold, separate from the morning sun. No plans had seemingly been discussed to knock it down. If a person was to enter it, for whatever reason, and close their eyes, it would appear to them that they were in a cave, no questions asked. Damp surrounded them everywhere, filled the air, made it thick, suffocating. Puddles were at their feet. Water dripped slowly and rhythmically from the leaking ceiling. Every beat of their heard could be heard, amplified. It was not a pleasant area for one to spend their time in.

The towering mass of muscle’s arm dropped to its side, once again (squeaking, naturally). This movement of its body caused his glass eye to wobble slightly. Instinctively, it scrabbled at it, attempted to move it into the right place, although the glass eye had already naturally been in the right place thanks to prior movements. The pupil of it was now facing the back of its skull. It looked down, with its eye, at the little cat. Inhaled, slowly. Exhaled fast. Sweat collected on its lower back. The man’s scream echoed around its skull, bouncing on and off of its brain. It drove one of its palms into the ride side of its face, shook its head, stuffed its arms into its pocket in a way of defending itself. It was off track. It was going to lose control. Impatiently, the cat mewled.

The towering mass of muscle hated crying.

It hated tears. Hated weakness.

It lifted its foot, and brought it crashing down onto the cat.

Its shoes were jet black and freshly polished, as they always were every morning, and they were weighty, with steel capped toes. Denzel had an identical looking pair on his own feet (although, predictably, a good few sizes smaller). Its boot crushed the cat’s spine and limbs in a matter of seconds. The young cat cried, screamed in agony, writhed. It prepared to stamp on the creature again. The cat went into a frenzy, flinging her unbroken left foreleg in every direction, making a hopeless racket, scraping desperately at the concrete. This time, the towering mass of muscle’s foot crushed her skull in one go. Her brain was mashed into nothingness. Blood from her matted fur made the ground beneath it sticky and red. She was not dead. She was destroyed.

The towering mass of muscle wiped its foot twice on the floor. Its chest rose and fall. As its chest fell, everything else, once again, fell, too, into place. It felt perfectly ordinary. It straightened its back and nodded to itself, praising itself.

Another THWACK sounded in the distance.

Denzel took his seat comfortably on his chair. It was made of thin, rusted steel, and the slip seat had been removed, as had his guest’s. His hands were folded complacently in his lap. He was sporting a striped tracksuit, decorated with an eye-bleeding combination of unsightly pink, sickly green and stark blue. It hardly contained his billowing amounts of squashy flesh, although it did make his generally uncomely appearance more arresting. Thick, greasy brown hair, unwashed and unbrushed, sat on his shoulders and sat without movement, no matter how much he moved his shoulders. Almost like a mould. Strands of  hairs of his parted fringe were caught up in his large sunglasses, which had a faded brown frame, like a washed out stain of blood, and lenses tinted with heavy black, too dark for anyone to see through to his small, piggy eyes. His rubbed at his fat, rounded nose. Scratched the uneven stubble of his chin.

“I swear on it!” the man before him cried in a furious ramble of mashed up words, spraying a mix of saliva and blood on Denzel’s collar as he wailed, the shade of salmon fillet. Irritably, Denzel flicked the spit away with his yellowed, curved nails, lined with dirt and dried blood. The man began to lean forwards further as he yelled into Denzel’s unresponsive face. The pressure showed on the tensed muscles of his forearms. “I wasn’t there! I wasn’t even there! I swear on it!”

A deeply tanned fist went driving into the man’s skull. He juddered with the shock of it, tightened his body, let out a breath that wasn’t quite a breath, more a line of air forcing its way through his clenched teeth, a thin, high pitched noise, like a kettle steaming. Again and again his head pounded, just as fast as his heart, maybe faster, faster than his shaking, faster than his eyes revolving around and around as stars flew from the sky, flew into his face, exploded into a hurricane of red, brilliant sparks burning his flesh. With a sense of defeat his head snapped backwards, over the back of his chair, Adam’s apple bulging. Blood dropped onto the floor behind him, fast and thin streams. The swirling subsided - or did it? Was he just used to it? - and all went still.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

By now, the man was utterly and inarguably unrecognisable. He was at a point of no return of his former appearance. His swollen, crooked nose, once a handsomely shaped one inherited from his father, let out a thick trail of scarlet blood, which dribbled over his cut, ripped lips, and rolled off his sharp chin. His left eye practically popped out of his dented skull as if it were being crushed outwards, bloodshot and heavy, veins popping. His right eye, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen, covered by bloated, bruised flesh, which swelled over it like a thick purple cloud, a distended horror that left the right side of his face monstrous. One of his cheeks had completely caved inwards. He sported less than eight chipped teeth, and each were stained red. Blood seeped from his tumescent gums, spilled out over his lips, met his nosebleed, continued the river down his exposed chest. His bare chest was battered, more black and blue than his original skin colour. Long scars traced the flesh of his stomach, carved into his abdominals. A deeper cut, nearing his waist, had burst open in his lean forward.

Concerning his legs, only his knees and ankles were injured, allowing the rest of his legs to remain mercifully unscathed. Past his boxers appeared untouched skin, smooth, if a little hairy, until it reached his knees, which could hardly be called knees anymore. They were popped out and the flesh around it was skewered and meaty. Deep wounds patterned the area in an oval, evidence of some generous stabbings. Excusably, his legs lay limp. Following more plain skin, the ankles were crushed completely, blackened and crippled, offering no resemblance to an actual pair of ankles. His bare feet, however, were perfectly unmarred. Each toe straight. Each nail in place. Each sole immaculate. His arms, which were tie behind him with thick rope, were almost identical in one way or another. Until the elbows were reached, the skin was just average, hairy flesh, a little weathered, perhaps, but no evidence of injury appeared there. The flesh surrounding his elbows, however, were not cut off: they were burned off. Cooled melted flesh plastered his arms in scorched bubbles. His lower arms paired with his upper arms, until his wrists came into sight. Slit, but the blood was soaked up by the rope that concealed most of the cuts, yet a few needles were poked in the surrounding flesh, on show. The hands, of course, remained untouched.

Patiently, Denzel studied closely at the remains of a man left before him, his eyes narrowed underneath his glasses. The man was hunched over, panting heavily, face mutated with pain, spit, blood and vomit dribbling down his body in a slimy, discoloured coat. With his one free eye, he glowered at Denzel for a split second, his chest overfilling with contempt, his eye in a fusillade with the intensity of his stare. Naturally, he hated everything about Denzel, but he knew much better than to display this loathing and disdain. His expression, he hoped, once he recovered from his furious glare, was pleading, although it was far too skewered and beaten to form any sort of recognisable expression. 

Denzel ran a small, fat hand down his sweaty face, squeezing at his jaw tightly as it slid down, his fingers grappling onto his lips and pulling them as they went. His pudgy fingers left his chin and his flesh snapped back into place like elastic. He let out a short, loud sigh of apparent surrender, continuing to steadily stare at him. Nothing about his demeanour was pugnacious, but the man still took this as a warning. He took a tiresome, prolonged blink and his mouth fell lazily open, his jaw slack. Slowly, he began to form a word: “Well...” His accent was thickly foreign, husky and dry, like the sound of dust, the words dripping with a sleepy heaviness, the vowels a little high, disjointed. He traced his lips with his thumb, the hardness of his lips and the flakiness of his neglected skin, causing heavy friction. A fleck of dead skin fell onto his lap. Small blotches of dried and fresh blood stained his trousers. Blood was always an absolute nightmare to wash out.

“It... would not be fair...” His words were said gradually, inevitably protracted, and his sentences were always prolix. They were also vaguely hushed, as if he were at the end of his sentence before he started it. “...It would not be fair... to make you answer something... you know... nothing about... would it.”

Pleased with his performance, the man leaned back luxuriously into his seat, allowing the muscles of his strained arms to finally relax as his shoulder blades rested on the top of his seat. He closed his eyes gently and, with some indulgence, shook his head, ignoring the pain it caused, offering a broken, bloody smile. “No, sir.” His accent was distantly Polish, although it was mostly too distorted and damaged to recognise. Even his continental shaggy yellow hair and his oatmeal coloured skin offered no conclusive evidence that he was not English. Simply, he was a bloody pulp without identification, beaten and scorched to an unrecognisable state, not a single patch of flesh the same shade as any other. Even his brain and heart were not the same. “No, sir, it would not.”

“Well...” Denzel continued to observe his guest, who appeared hopeful and almost happy, even a little prideful of something, although it was difficult to analyse as his expression mimicked one of a man being pelted in the stomach at full force. Nonetheless, he’d correctly identified moods and emotions from people far more crippled than he was, so he could safely claim to be a specialist in the entire thing. Carefully, he weighed the amount of injury the man had received, and then the amount of further injury he could withstand. A lot, Denzel decided, and then very little. But still, the man could do far more to Denzel than Denzel, in another circumstance, could do to him.

Denzel was, in short, not athletic. At all. Someone of his profession was often stereotyped as strong, with good physique, heavily built and powerful. Well, ignoring the walking mass of muscle excuse, Denzel’s reasoning was, simply put, “Who needs strength when you have threat?” In his opinion, a bomb threat could force an entire building to be evacuated, whereas an actual bomb would be far too blunt and blow everything up. He was one for carefully laid plans. Anyway, for what he lacked in size, he made up for in menace and mercilessness. Besides, the walking mass of muscle belonged to him. With it, he couldn’t go wrong. It could, at times, be a little difficult to get through to, but generally, it did its job: destroying things. Just like giving a gun to a child soldier. Obedient, and no chat-back.

Apart from those... ethical issues and debates, which were gradually becoming more and more frequent. Denzel would have to monitor that.

“I promise you, sir,” the man continued to gabble in a little burst of desperation, blood spraying out of his mouth like a fountain now that he was properly working his jaw, yet he seemed to be unconcerned by this. “I can easily forget this whole thing. I’ll never speak of it again.”

Quite suddenly, Denzel froze still. He looked the man before him right in his visible eye. He smiled. It was a small smile; a little tugging of the corners of his mouth, slight and innocently made, then a deeper curve, spreading warmness. Genuine, it appeared. The man presumed this was the case, too. A little puzzled, he offered his own originally dazzling smile as a response, which was now just a broken hole of shattered tooth and deep red. At this, Denzel’s smile grew greater and brighter, and so did the man’s, now much surer of himself. Laughter escaped from Denzel’s lips - low and guttural, quiet, almost ominous in its amount of pleasure. Uncertainly, the man blinked his free eye, but, after a moment of quick evaluation, let out a short chuckle which sounded uncannily like a dying animal. Denzel laughed harder, resting himself steady with a hand on his knee and the other covering his mouth, bent double and shuddering with the stentorian laughs escaping his body. 

The man had never met Denzel before.

He took this as a good sign.

It was not, in fact, a good sign.

Attempting to compose himself, Denzel ran a slightly trembling hand underneath his glasses, unintentionally stretching his eyelids just far down enough with each swipe of his fingers that the man saw the redness, and almost the whiteness. He vaguely smiled to himself, no longer keeping his sight on the man. Shaking his head a little, he looked down at himself, then pushed a hand inside his right trouser pocket. After a determined moment of rustling, he removed his hand, which remained empty. Frowning a little, he tried searching through his left pocket. That, too, turned out to be completely empty. He patched at his jacket, from the collar downwards, then suddenly shoved his hand deep inside his left pocket. He fumbled inside it, then produce something chunky that was in the shape of a tube. The man before him, due to the blurred, skewered vision that his free eye provided him, could not identify the object. He watched and waited.

Denzel placed both his hands - one palm flat on his left thigh, the other curled into a tight, fleshy fist, concealing the object beneath his folds of skin - on his legs, and, with a heavy, copious sigh, he stood, his slightly curved back letting out a slow crack as he eased himself straight. “Well...” He began to walk steadily forwards, much to the man’s ecstasy and delight, because, surely, he was going to untie him! He’d be so wonderfully free! Denzel opened his closed fist. A dark blue permanent marker, accustomed with a thick nib, sat, rolling slightly, on his sweaty palm. Along the slide, in black, it simply read: ‘5255’. Bollixed, the man looked up at Denzel a little unsurely, anxiety rising up in his throat like vomit, pasting his mouth shut. The laughter had gone from his free eye; it was a dark blue eye, a colour he’d kept from the day he was born. He stared as Denzel gripped at the cap and pulled it.

POP!

“Your compliance... has been... most helpful, Ignacy,” Denzel said without expression, without feeling, screwing the cap onto the end of the pen.

“You’re... letting me go, now?” The man’s voice - Ignacy’s voice - came out reticent and high, unsure of itself, small and innocent, like a child’s.

Denzel took firm hold of the man’s throbbing, blackened neck with his thumb and forefinger, to steady him. A protruding vein pulsed tumultuously under his fingers. Sunlight poured through the broken shards of glass that made windows, illuminating the man’s hair so it looked like soft white gold, dust flying and prancing around his head in a schizo swarm. His blood glistened gently on his face, his free eye shone, coruscating. Denzel angled Ignacy’s head back a little, raised the marker, then moved it towards the man’s midriff, which was heaving with forlorn breaths. “We need... to find... the point in which... your responsibility... surfaces.”

The pen hovered just above Ignacy’s navel. “How about... here?”

Ignacy held his breath.

After a few calculating seconds, the marker moved upwards, slowly. It lingered above Ignacy’s clavicle, closer to the skin this time. “Or, perhaps... here?”

With fearful, pusillanimous breaths, Ignacy looked into Denzel’s black lenses. He saw no movement underneath them - God, did this man even have eyes? - as Denzel once again moved the marker further upwards.

Finally, decisively, as if he had known this would be the answer all along: “Here!”

Fastidiously, Denzel pushed Ignacy’s head backwards even further by the neck, and then pressed the tip of the marker against Ignacy’s Adam’s apple. Ignacy froze, his chest tightening, free eye widening. Surely he wasn’t going to pierce his throat with a pen? Solicitously, Denzel drew a short, broad line, lifted the pen from the skin, then moved it along, and then, once he had reached a distance equal to the first line’s length, he drew another. Ignacy gawked down, horrified, as a perforated line was gradually drawn around his neck, all the way around, in deep blue ink. The type of line where indicated one should cut a piece of paper at. At last, contented, Denzel took a small step back to appreciate his craftsmanship. Ignacy’s arms wriggled and writhed. His legs kicked, futile. His head shook.  His shallow breaths never gave him enough air, never enough, he needed air, he needed air-

Denzel took the cap off the end of the marker and screwed it back onto the nib. He wiped his hands on his legs, ran a hand through his hair, matting it with more grease and blood.

“I...” he said, “...am letting you go.”

He began to turn, then, once he was facing the doorframe, he walked towards it, where the walking mass of muscle’s silhouette stood, a black bulk in the soft light. Denzel lazily threw a hand in the air and gave it a stiff wave. His job was done. Now he could hand Ignacy over. The walking mass of muscle stepped forwards, into the isolated coldness of the building. Light from behind it fell onto its back, making it visible.

Slung over its shoulder was a chainsaw.

It was weathered, it was rusted. It must have been rusted. Something dark red and brown covered the blade, deep and flaky, rust-like. So, certainly, it could be nothing else. Yet, well, it looked so marvellously...

...Bloody.

Author's Note

Quite a short one, yet I feel it only needs to BE short.