Kristin (15 page)

Twenty

When Thom woke it was still dark. His body had
seized. Painfully, he straightened his limbs, back and neck, extricating
himself from beneath the stairwell. Loud music was pounding from a brightly lit
bar ahead.
How
could he have missed it
?
In front of the building a naked figure lay motionless in the
gutter, an elderly woman with white hair.

He crossed the street and
stood over her. Was she alive? She wasn’t even shivering. Green and purple
lights from the bar pulsed on and off, reflecting in the dull sheen of her
frozen back, confusing his eyesight. But the wisps of raven hair that grew from
the nape of her neck, the gentle musculature of her shoulders, the curve of her
hips, they were all things familiar to him.

He held her shoulder and
rolled her over. Glimmering black optics opened and stared up at him
unblinkingly, the white-haired woman mirrored in them. He gasped. Gruesome
letters had been branded across her chest in
  
ancient Hebrew: “
Thou shalt not murder
”
.
He tried to help her up but she
slipped through the substance of his arms.

‘Ugly digits, poisoned
fuckers!’ a voice snuffled, as she slapped his hands away, gashing them with
her dirty talons. ‘Where are my coverings?’

‘Here,’ he replied. He took
off his coat, wrapped it around her shoulders and buttoned it. The coat turned
a brilliant white.

‘Why dost thou stare?’ she
mouthed, silently.

He sat down on the soft
kerbstone. ‘Don’t you know me?’

‘This covering is too big.’

‘ Thom.’

‘What dost thou speak of?
Is thine organ of thought impaired?’

‘My name is Thom.’

She eyed him with distrust.

‘Do you know who you are?’

‘I am Kwang, from Koreans.
I fight others, kill them. It is my purpose and my pleasure.’

‘No, you’re ... Kristin.’

‘Fucking shit!’

‘You’re somebody I loved, somebody
who loved me. Your name is Kristin.’

‘
Love
? Love is shit, a fanciful notion
concocted by humankind to safeguard its emotions. Love is disingenuous,
poisoned. Hatred is honest, unadulterated.’

‘ … Do you feel cold? It
will be warmer in there.’

‘I like the cold, it brings
me solace. It is where I belong. Why must thou disturb my reverie?’

‘Then I’ll go inside.’ He
picked up a length of wood studded with protruding nails and opened the doors.
She would follow. Before long her overlord would realize she was cold and
hungry, and she would follow. Indestructible memories of her life and love on
Earth would prove stronger than its will, and she would follow.

The space was cavernous. It
was dominated on the left by a gleaming bar without end, behind which a vast
array of liquor bottles sparkled. The garishly coloured carpet swept away to
dark corners enlivened by the dancing lights of slot machines. Shining, round
tables and chairs were positioned in a pattern of precision. Above the bar an
oversized screen hung, bearing the image of a dancer whose semi-naked body
gyrated and jerked to a tuneless, thumping rhythm.

He couldn’t recall this
place, it was entirely foreign to him. It had appeared from nowhere, pristine,
unaffected by everything happening outside, like an oasis of normality. It
reminded him of a dream where he’d discovered a secret room, a basement, in his
old home.

Was he now exploring an
unknown area of his mind? Might he be afforded an insight into his place in the
scheme of things here, a glimpse into any future resolution of the maelstrom
afflicting humanity? By the time he left here, perhaps he would understand the
essence of the hellish
 
entity that
had claimed, and destroyed the soul of the beautiful young woman who should
have frozen to death on the other side of the doors, the sinister force that persisted
to strangle life from the world? Would he learn how to end her torment? Had he
been brought here deliberately, to learn these things?

Starving, he made his way
behind the bar and pushed the swing door to the store room. On his haunches, he
opened the large refrigerator. It was crammed full of black food. He gorged
himself until he spewed. Then he returned to the bar, filled a glass with pure
alcohol and waited.

The heavy doors parted no
more than a crack and she slithered inside. ‘She needs food,’ the terrible,
throaty voice grouched. ‘Get her some.’

He turned his back. The
glass had refilled, and he sipped from it. ‘Get it yourself, it’s in there.’

She hissed at him like a
snake and glissaded towards the door. ‘Where is the food?’

‘Look for it and you’ll
find it.’

‘What should I consume?’

‘She once asked me that
question.’

‘What was thine answer?’

‘Eat anything you want.’

She passed into the room
and silence fell as the doors closed behind her. When she came out, her arms
were full. She dropped the load onto the bar, ducked her head and closed her
jaws around a raw joint of lamb.

‘No,’ he warned. ‘That will
make her ill, it must be cooked.’

‘
Cooked
?’

‘Heated, to kill off
harmful bacteria.’

‘Useless shit!’ she cursed,
tossing the meat to the floor. Her teeth gnashed fruitlessly at the thick glass
of a condiment bottle until they were chipped ragged. Furious, she smashed it
open against the bar and wrapped her lips around the lethal fracture.

‘That will hurt her. Cut
her mouth open.’ He forced the bottle from her hands, and she seethed with
anger.

‘Why may I not eat of my
own flesh?’ she glowered.

‘It defies logic.
How
could you survive
if you consumed your bodily
... ?’

‘Why may I not drink lifeblood?’

‘It’s not for consumption,
it’s an essential element of human ... ’

‘Who is Kristin?’.

‘A girl.’

Her jet eyes doubled in
size and their perfect surfaces reflected the image of his wet face back at
him.

A young woman. Whose body
and soul you stole.’

She smiled in sudden
realization and moved her face close to his. He felt darkness envelop him. ‘
...
We were
lovers
?
When I was wholly human
?’

‘ … Yes.’

‘We
fucked?’

‘We made love.’

‘
Made love
?
I have known love
?’

‘She knew love.’

‘Did I experience pleasure?’

‘She did.’

‘FORGET THE SLAG, SHE’S
DEAD! Did we fuck each other senseless, like two dog creatures of this Earth?
Did the seed of man spatter and waste, or did I take this beginning into my
depths to meet with the ovum there?’

He opened the front of her
coat. ‘Who did that?’

She looked down and
screamed like a vixen when she saw the gruesome burns, ‘WHO HAS IMPAIRED MY
BEAUTY, MY PERFECTION?’

‘It’s a message, a
warning.’

‘Who would dare warn me?’

‘It says “
Thou shalt not
murder
.” Someone wants to ensure you don’t forget what you’ve done, what
you continue to do. They want you to stop.
When will you stop
? Tell me, I need to know.’

‘I will never stop! Eternal
damnation is thy fate!’

‘Why can there be no
salvation?’

‘Man has engineered his own
destiny, set his own future in stone. I am inside all of thee, and for
millennia sometimes a last, desperate shred of righteousness has prevented my
renaissance. But such is the magnitude of man’s aggression, his insatiable
avarice in these times, that I am reborn. Dost thou not understand, dumbfuck?
Thee all
made me
.’

‘Take the body of somebody
else, return her to me, I can’t live without her.’

‘Thou art symptomatic of
humanity’s greed. Such selfishness. Thou wouldst see me continue to destroy thy
race, as long as thou art are content, as long as thou hast thy precious love.
But she will
never return to thee.
’

‘Why ... why not?’

‘The bitch’s soul is dead.’

‘ ... Take my body, let her
live life.’

She leaned back, faded from
view and returned. ‘
Such sacrifice
. Humankind could have done worse than appoint thee
as its leader. I might have faced a worthy adversary. But thine idea lacks
logic. Thou wouldst be without thy love, thy Kristin. She would live in
my
world.
Thou wouldst condemn her to a lifetime of interminable suffering ... why?’

‘You could never
understand. You don’t believe in the concept of love and you don’t acknowledge
its existence. Love has so many facets; love for a woman or man, love for
parents, brothers and sisters, love for fellow man, love of life ... I want to
give Kristin more life. I waited so long for her love, now your
selection
process
has
torn us apart.’

‘I feel nothing for thee.
Nor for her. Nor for humanity. There is only emptiness.’

‘How empty must you be? You
would give your life for nothing.’

‘Incorrect. I would
surrender my soul for these things; absolution, and the love of my father.’

‘Then you wish for love …
maybe you’re capable of giving love too? If you seek absolution then you must
feel guilt, you must have a conscience? But how can you expect to be exonerated
when you continue to annihilate everything good in this world? You must stop,
then plead for redemption for your atrocious crimes.’

‘
Plead
? To whom?’

‘To God.’

‘My father will not speak
to me. I am unforgiven. I shall never stop,
the Christ will be found and slaughtered.
’

‘The Lord died two thousand
years ago.’

‘Now he is risen for a
second time and walks amongst thee as thy would-be saviour. Why else dost thou
think I am here?’

An icy wind blew through
his soul. Could it be true? Could Jesus have been sent down to save humankind
as it teetered on the brink of oblivion? The Beast had already more than proved
its credentials as the antipode of the son of God, there was no reason to doubt
it.

A sickly smile split her
face from ear to ear, until it seemed the top half of her head would separate
from the bottom. She closed her eyes and sighed as the evil at her core
murdered. ‘Ahhh ... such a feeling should be felt by all, at least once!’

‘What have you done?’

‘Burned young.’

‘You murdering bastard!’

‘See their tiny bodies
smoulder. Will they survive? Who knows? Who cares? One thing is for certain,
they will know no more love.’

‘Love transcends
everything,’ he countered. ‘Even death. They will know the love of their
mothers and fathers again. I’ll be with Kristin again. I’ll love her once more,
in this life or the next, and you’ll have no place in that future.’

Her shoulders shook with
mirth. ‘
The
next life
? Ah yes, nirvana. She who bore thee waits for thee there, I
believe.’

He lunged at her, grabbed
her head and forced his thumbs into her eye sockets, pushing the peculiar
organs in hard, flattening them to bursting point. ‘Damn your lies ... she’s
alive! If she’d left this world I would have known. Just as I knew when my father’s,
my brother’s lives ended. Just as I know Kristin is alive. Tell me my mother is
alive, tell me Kristin is alive ... tell me, tell me!’ He began to strangle
her. ‘Tell me, or I’ll break your neck!’

‘ ... No ... thou wilt
break ... hers!’

Her neck shrank to the
thickness of string. ‘Choking ... bitch is ... choking!’

‘Tell me!”

‘Whore cannot ... breath!’

‘Tell me, you bastard!’

‘ ... THOM ... !’

He let her go, sweat
streaming down his haggard face. ‘ ...
Kristin
?’

The possessor could no longer
deny the possessed. ‘For a moment. For a very brief moment,’ she answered.

His head sank impossibly
deep into her chest, entered her body, and he saw a heart that beated still.

‘
Why have you let me live
,
Thom
?
Can
’
t you see this is
torture
?’ she whispered, running her fingers through his hair. ‘I can
recall every bloody murder, every debasement, every wrong I have committed. The
agony of each person. I can’t exist like this, not for one more day. Please,
Thom, help me to die. Take my life before it claims millions more, before it
crushes humanity.’

‘Whilst you can still talk
to me, when I know you’re still there?’

She kissed his forehead and
twitched as the Beast snuffed out the lives of proud mothers, seeded the
unsullied souls of their newborn babies with its malignance.
Motherless issue
,
it muttered, deep inside her mind.
Mine now.
‘Use your heart, Thom, look at me and
tell me what you see?’