Chapter 2

“Thank God,” John says exhaling all the air in his lungs. Pressing his back against the glass door, he gently slides downward- causing that awful squeaking associated with squeegeeing a window- to the floor to take a moment to recollect his thoughts and checks himself over.

 The blood. The stains. They’re gone.

 It isn’t too long, though, before a distant call breaks him from his daze.

“Can I help you sir,” asks the man from behind a counter drying off what looks to be the last of his dishes.

“Please tell me you have coffee.”

The guy just chuckles and retorts, “Well if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be much of a coffee house, now would we sir?”

While getting to his feet, John grunts, “No need to be a smartass, kid. Just make me a cup before my head explodes.”

Now the “kid” he has been referring is more of a man probably in his early to mid-twenties still making his way through college. But John calls everyone that age “Kid” because to him, “You’re not a man until you see the world or see a person die.” And John has both seen much of the world and seen more people die than he’d care to remember.

John takes a moment to survey the establishment that served him with the hospitable act of shelter from the things that lurked outside. But as his vision adjusts to the dimness, it becomes quite apparent to John that things aren’t much different in here than the hellish street he nearly had a heart-attack on.

 The shop in whole feels like an ancient ruin that’s been hidden from civilization for centuries, keeping with it secrets from a time long forgotten. The walls caked in a green, slimy ooze that splatter across like a gruesome murder scene; the lights, most of them either shattered or stopped working ages ago, hang from the ceiling for dear life as if they were falling off a cliff and the ceilings hands were about to give way; the furniture, well past its time, lie strewn across the perimeter of the shop �"tables, chairs, lamps, couches, bookshelves-  are molding and decaying corpses that have been dead long enough to have muscle and organs exposed but not quite long enough to have fully withered to the bone.

The only thing that projects a peaceful ambiance to this chaos was the only suitable seat for sitting, staged in front of the counter, which sits serenely beneath one of the few working lights shining on it as if God had specifically chosen it.

“Rough night, old man,” the man playfully mimics John’s “kid” nicknaming game.

            “You have no idea,” John replies, easing himself into the seat not fully confident it will hold his weight. “Say, you didn’t happen to see anythin-,” John catches himself. He doesn’t want to come off as crazy, even though he himself thought he was. “Anyone behind me when I ran in here did you?”

            “No. Can’t say that I did. To be frank, I wasn’t really paying any attention. We don’t get many customers these days, day or night, and when you barged in here, it scared the living s**t out of me,” he lets out a chuckle.

            If he didn’t see the hideous creature, then could I have just been imagining everything? But it was too surreal to not be real. I felt its steamy breath on the back of my neck. I looked into the depths of its abysmal shadowed eyes. How could he not have seen it?  Maybe…

“Sir, is something wrong?”

“What? Oh, sorry. Just thinking to myself. Could I get that coffee now please?”

“Certainly. It’ll be a moment. Like I said, we don’t get much service nowadays so I don’t have a pot ready.”

John places his elbows on the counter and rests his head in the palm of one hand as he lays the other flat against the surface. “That’s fine.”

 

            While the coffee was brewing, a question weighed heavy on John’s mind. He thinks for moment on how to ask it without sounding like a complete a*****e.

“I hope you don’t mind in me asking, but why is the store so rundown? I can kinda see why no one comes here. Does the owner just not care?”

John probably should have thought longer. He’s never been one to tread lightly on broken glass though.

            “I’m the owner actually,” the man says in a not-too-serious-but-still-serious tone, back facing John as he gathers the sugar and creamer for the coffee. “And the place hasn’t always been so gloomy.” A deep, isolate sigh rumored the room, followed by the sound of the coffee filling the cup. “No, there was a time this place thrived with people young and old. Kids finishing their high school senior projects, college students in groups studying advanced philosophy, and just regular people enjoying their day off to relax and continue the adventures of the book they’ve been reading. But one day, everything changed”

Setting the coffee down in front of John, the man turns quickly but not before John catches a glimpse of something odd.

What’s with the dimness covering his eyes? Probably just the lack of lighting in here.

“What happened,” John asks as he takes a sip of the very bitter coffee, making his face grimace.

There was a desert of silence between the two and the air felt, for a brief second, sour.

            “You left me, John. You left when I needed you most.”

John sets his cup down.

“What the hell did you say,” he replies dumbfounded and flustered.

            The light that once served as the stores source of illumination now spasms uncontrollably. The ground beneath vibrates as to reenact an earthquake that once devastated a small country.

            “How easily did that blood from your hands wash off?” asks the man, blending in with the dark twitches of light.

Blood?

Intoxicated with infuriating anger, John jumps down from the seat, knocking to the ground, and slams his balled up hands against the countertop.

“You b*****d! You did see what was behind me! You saw that monster, didn’t you?”

Stepping forth from the darkness, the man begins a metamorphosis with each flicker of light, molting the appearance of the young, upstanding and ambitious man into a figure with stitched, shadowy hollow eyes, half a jaw missing its flesh, arms bound to chest and the repulsive porcupine-like sight of the syringes and needles.

“No,” it says wheezing and rasping, “I am that monster!”

            John scrambles back, horrified of what he is witnessing in front of him. 

“What the hell do you want from me?”

Then, with the sound of skin being torn apart and bones cracking- splsssh crrcck, rrshht-  from the abomination that was the monster’s sewn extremities, it completely rips them apart making two independent arms, exposing ribs and leaving decaying skin hanging like Spanish moss from a Florida Cypress tree.

“Don’t you recognize me John? It’s me, Ben”, the fiend recites as it holds both of its arms out straight, crossing legs in a sick realistic visual of Jesus on the cross.

“No! That can’t be! Ben’s”

“DEAD! I KNOW!” shouts the fiend, cutting off John.

“I want you,” in the repeated raspy voice, “To feel what I felt. I want you to feel the pain of abandonment. The torture of being shattered and having no one to help pick up the pieces.”

The fiend, with a swift motion of his newly emancipated arms, totally demolishes the countertop with ease; spraying fragments of wooden shrapnel.

A loud thud resounds from John hitting the floor. He shuffles his legs trying to push his numb body back away from reach of the fiend.

“You can’t escape me this time, John. I won’t let you go.”

Seeking refuge behind a lone coffee table, John searches his mind for answers.

            Come on old guy. Get it together. He’s lying. That THING is not Ben. You need to kill it. You’ve been through the gruesome hell that was war, you know how to kill. You know how to survive. So find a weapon and kill this son of a b***h!

 After a brief moment of his eyes being shut, two items appeared in front of John: a knife, and a gun.

Bingo!

John immediately snatches the gun, taking the mag out to see how many rounds were in it (20) and checks the chamber (1).

“Those weapons won’t be able to harm him,” echoes a soft, unrecognized voice.

In the corner of the shop, shrouded by the dimness, stands a not even five feet tall outline of a girl wearing a dress. “They didn’t kill him while he was living, nor can they while he’s dead.”

            “Yeah, well this,” flaunting the pistol, “Gives me more peace of mind,” John exclaims as he props on the table and unloads round after round into the fiend, knocking it back away from him; but just as the mysterious outline said, the bullets were having no effect whatsoever.

“You have to give him what he wants. Only then can you face him and put him to rest. ”

But what does he want besides killing me?

John goes to post up once more, trying not to ponder to long on a probability given to him from a phantom hiding in shadows. But soon as he breaks the plane of the wooden edge of the table, John finds himself face to half-face with the physical manifestation of fear. It seizes both of John’s wrists; the cold sensation of dead, half corroded hands encircling them. Overpowered, John is pinned down between the tiled floor and the fiend itself, saliva excreting from its half-jaw. Freeing one hand, it reaches towards one of the massive syringes piercing its back and pulls it out slowly.

“This is your penance for breaking our pact.”

With a powerful swing, the fiend lunges its decayed arm forward; forcefully inserting the needle through John’s left eye.

Reviews

[Novakiswriting]

Interesting advancement of the story! If you want, I can provide some feedback notes. There were only a couple. I wanted to read through for enjoyment's sake first. I'm enjoying the story so far. You're kind of twisted.

[misfit_joker]

I'd love to get your feedback! An outside perspective is what I'm looking for to tell me if the direction I'm taking things is making sense and if the story is flowing well. It's much appreciated.