Mask of Flies (31 page)

Sleep wouldn’t come
easy for his host, but it eventually did. Russell took his time to
disengage and decompress for a while. Operating such faulty hardware
was exhausting—Russell had to focus complete attention to bend
Abe’s body to his will. Hiss focus had worn thin as Abe’s
spasmodic thoughts continued to rush forward, refusing to be pushed
underground.

Lingering over his
host, Russell drifted off into an empty daze: the closest thing to
sleep nightmares like himself were afforded. He awoke inside Abe,
unconsciously drifting back inside for nourishment and protection.
The flesh of the man felt hot—volatile; he sat up in a feverish
lurch, head cloudy from sleep, for what seemed to be only minutes.
Nausea and sickness swept through Abe’s body. It felt like his
insides liquefied—
dumpster
chicken.

Russell paced over to
the McDonalds across the street, in dire search for a restroom—he
would shit in the street if needed, but opted not to further
complicate an already unsatisfactory situation. He pushed through the
door and saw the same fellow— the bedraggled homeless man that
watched him rifle through the apartment complex dumpsters— with the
giant beaver tail, a singular dreadlock.

“One—Two—Three,
Charlie’s in the tree,” Beavertail said, sitting at a table with
a cup of coffee. The few elderly patrons in house gave the man a wide
berth.

Russell failed to
acknowledge the man and b-lined it for the restroom. Once inside the
stall, he erupted like Mount Vesuvius and retched into the sink.
After cleaning up Abe the best he could, he emerged, and Beavertail
was no longer there. Perhaps he just finished his coffee and headed
home, to whatever hovel that may be.

And
I’m King of Katmandu

Pain continued in Abe’s stomach;
it felt like his large intestine and small intestine were warring
snakes: the large a strangling python, the small a venomous cobra,
and both were unforgiving on their assault on each other. Russell
didn’t know how much longer his host would last; his largest
concern being what would become of him if his host, Abe, died while
he was inside, unknown territory. He grasped the hope that Rick
lived.

He doubled back
towards Forrest Lane, concluding that no realtors would be showing
the vacant house after dark. The closest streetlight flickered on and
off, and the pathway up to the house was ill lit. He walked up to the
front door in the cover of the night with confidence. It was locked
and the lockbox buttoned uptight. He went around back to search for
something, anything, to try and smash open the box. A cinderblock in
the corner stacked around an opening in the chain link fence, to keep
a dog from escaping. But something else caught his eye through the
sliding door: The stick was upraised free from the track. The dizzy
realtor must have forgot to set it after showing off the backyard,
and the door slid right open.

The worn floorboards
groaned in disapproval beneath his feet. It took a second for his
eyes to adjust to the deeper dark inside the house—light from the
flickering street light flashed intermittently through the
curtainless window, defining a faint outline of the interior for
Russell to navigate.

The walk upstairs
produced more objection from the old steps. Russell pawed his way
forward, into an empty room with a window overlooking Rick’s house.
A few windows were lit on 29 Forrest Lane. He had a direct line of
sight into the kitchen window, and he could see the dining room, and
most of the living room through the bay window on the front of the
house.

Waiting and watching,
watching and waiting, Russell saw a silhouette glide by the bay
window across the street. It moved like a woman. He wondered if Allie
tasted as good as Rick remembered; He wagered she did. Window
shopping was an exhilarating enough prospect for Russell under normal
circumstances, but he was inside a decrepit, starving body that was
most likely poisoned by some kind of prokaryotic terrorist. And now
another bout of liquid fire filled his belly.

He found a bathroom upstairs and
emptied the remainder of liquid inside his body along with any hope
of surviving inside Abe. Russell was like an astronaut stuck in deep
space with his oxygen reserves running low. His eyelids became heavy
sinkers in the sea of darkness.

Awaking innumerable
hours later, Russell in Abe shivered, laying on the cold floor of the
bathroom. His breath emitted as grey vapor when he looked across the
street and saw the driveway across empty. The thought to find some
food crossed him, but he was too weak. He played with the idea of
abandoning his Abe and finding a new host. But Russell was hanging on
a thread himself; inside the jumbled mind of the host there was
little to feed off of. While inside Rick, Russell was able to operate
in a healthy body that was subtly linked to the nightmare world; a
custom vehicle for Russell that held all the necessities to sustain
his existence: regret, grief, and raw violent emotion resounding all
around—simply put, Rick was a man that Russell could work with.
However, his current host, this Abe, with his broken down body and
mind, was useless. Latching onto his thoughts was like drinking sand.
There was no rhyme or reason to him; he was walking chaos and empty
inside . . . no soul, no fear, and no sweet spot.

Luckily the water to
the place was turned on—most likely to keep the pipes from freezing
over. He put Abe’s lips up to the bathroom faucet and took in big
gulps of water. Regardless of his efforts to rehydrate, again, he
expelled more water than he was able to keep down.

Then the sound of a car
wheeling through the snow slush. It pulled up to the driveway of
Allie’s house; It wasn’t Rick, but Allie all by herself, and
Russell had to do something drastic, or he would be trapped in his
dying host. He needed to draw the hot headed bastard out. To get
smoke you need fire first.

Russell stumbled down
the steps and crossed the street over to 29 Forrest Lane. Allie was
in the window pouring a glass of wine. She saw him coming. He pounded
on the front door and tried the handle, but it was locked, he tried
the garage door—nothing. Around the side of the garage, he spotted
a door by two trash cans. It opened.

Through the garage, he
rushed to the interior door, but the door twisted taut as he grabbed
at the knob. It locked. Then a phone rang from behind the door. No
doubt the tasty bitch was breathing heavily on the other side, with
those healthy bosoms heaving up and down.

Russell tried to scare
her but felt exhausted spewing meaningless threats. Here he stood, a
weak, stricken man; he had no apprehensions that the fit woman would
end his host’s life with one well placed blow. Flirting with death,
all to smoke out her boyfriend. When she threatened to dial the cops,
he thought he succeeded, and retreated back to the house.

Through the sliding
glass door, he went back inside. He felt someone or something in the
room with him.

“M-Morrow?” Russell
called.

A shadow walked out
behind him, but did not reply.

Russell felt the
presence eddying in the darkness, and looked back into the darkness,
finding nothing. “Who are you?”

Beavertail stepped out
from the kitchen, in front of him, nonchalantly brandishing a
machete. The hollow voice of Morrow boomed out in stereo, “Oh,
Russell, my dear, you don’t know how to take a hint, do you? Your
service is no longer needed.”

The creeping figure
emerged behind him, standing in the darkness under an archway of what
was most likely the dining room. He had a familiar way about him, but
Russell couldn’t put a finger on it. Down to its last shred of
strength, the black finger of death pressed Abe’s body.

Russell reached out to
the hiding man’s mind. The figure was saturated with an
unimaginable amount of latent energy, and when the stranger
discovered what Russell was trying to do, that energy snapped into a
violent surge of force; it crumpled Russell, slamming him back into
his wretched host.

“Keep your filthy
hands to yourself.” Morrow’s throaty voice again.

“I-I don’t
understand?” Russell said. He turned on his heels and faced
Beavertail.

Now a woman’s voice
spoke, “You have failed to carry out your mission and have become
more of a liability than an asset.”

“All these years of
working together and you have never have the slightest idea as to
what I really am.” Morrow’s deep hollow voice boomed from behind
him.

Russell turned around
to face the direction of the voice. All this confusion was
disorienting. He had no clue on why Morrow was so intent on fucking
with him.

An unfamiliar voice, of
insurmountable volume, scraped in soprano, “
Voice becomes a
mere preference when you learn to speak without your tongue
.”

Russell fell to his
knees and felt fluid pour from his ears, wiping it away, his hand
came away bloody. “I don’t understand—I only aim to serve you.”
Russell spoke out using Abe’s tittering voice. He could barely hear
the words over the ringing in his head.

“You don’t know the
master you serve. You were freed from your tomb and instructed to do
as I say, or you would return to the bottom of the pit from which you
came. The only master you serve is fear,” the woman’s voice said.

“I served you for
over one hundred years, I did everything you asked. W-why are you
doing this to me?”

“You didn’t serve
me so much as you played murderer—corrupter,” the woman voice was
all around. “You fed me my family, my parents, my son . . .,” The
woman went silent, but then she started again with venom in her
voice. “I couldn’t stop you, couldn’t stop myself. A monster in
the making, all at your hands.”

“Family . . .I don’t
understand.” The sound of Abe’s own voice shot pain into his
busted ear. “I thought I was helping you become stronger. You
didn’t tell me to spare anybody, sad to say, but it looks like
you’re equally responsible for their deaths. So quit screwin’
with your old pal Russell.”

Beavertail stabbed the
wall with the machete, temporarily stowing it there. He kneeled down
and put a gloved hand under Russell’s chin, pulling the bleeding
man’s face up to his. “Who I am?” The man’s lips didn’t
move, but the woman’s voice resonated inside Russell. “Think on
the doorway that led you into this world.”

“Through the woman,
her family called her Angeni . . . ” Russell lay there awestruck.
“You
are
the woman,
Angeni? Why would you keep this from me, all these years?”

Angeni spoke, “Let
you, a former rapist and serial killer of women know that I
am
,
in fact, a
woman
? I
think my reasoning is self-evident; you never took a woman seriously,
they were merely playthings for you.”

“I can’t be
punished for your family. You did nothing to stop me, and I had no
idea you were the woman.”

Beavertail took his
hand off of Russell’s host, and stood. Angeni spoke through his
mind. “After Lily Dale, I could barely string a thought together
when I shared my mind with you. My mind was too weak and overworked—”

“—I nourished you,
and taught you how to feed. You became strong, so strong.”

“I did—
but—
by
the time I was strong enough to live in my own body with you, most of
my family died at your hands—my only son . . .” Her voice became
many. “
Unforgivable.
”
Beavertail pulled the large knife from the wall.

“Wait, what about the
doorways—the seeds? I’m working to get Rick back, still working
for you.” Russell slid back with his hands, resting his back
against the wall. “Still working for you when you leave me in the
dark: you’re identity, the doorways, you don’t tell me anything,
but I’m loyal, I don’t deserve this.”

“You serve yourself,”
Angeni said. “You want to know about the doorways, the whole plan .
. . A thing like you, that kills, the destruction is so simple, has
no aspect for importance of life, how special it is. Understand, this
living planet is surrounded by vast nothingness, a mere fleck in the
vacuum of space. To live is be at odds with the all.” Beavertail
raised the blade, holding it an inch from Abe’s face. “And death,
an equally important aspect, grasped in the same hand as life.
Curs
like you feed from it to satiate your carnal desires, but it is so
much more. In order for death to exist life must be present, the head
eats the tail; when a life is born, a death is born with it. You
would never understand what I’m doing.”

“Born and died a
wretch, no illusions about it,” Russell said, “And undeserving of
knowing your plan, I’ll give that to ya. But across the way is
Rick’s house. I can take him and still be of use.”

“Ha, taking him will
prove difficult—” the figure in the shadows walked forward, out
of the darkness and into the cascading light from the widow,
revealing familiar flesh. “When I have him.”

Russell pushed to his
feet and pressed his back against the wall, watching both men before
him, “Rick’s dead, both these men are dead?”

Beavertail took the
knife away from Abe’s face and ran its edge across his open palm.
“Alive, I took them alive.” A thick line of blood swelled from
the cut. Angeni laughed.

Then a door swung open
in the kitchen; an overweight woman in a pantsuit and a young Asian
couple emerged. The couple carried knives; the large woman, who
Russell recognized from the For Sale sign in the yard, carried a
rusty hacksaw.

“What are they doing
here?”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING
HERE?” Angeni’s voice exploded. The four figures stowed their
weapons and surrounded Russell, engulfing Abe’s frail body like
high tide .Beavertail scooped under his arms, locked hands around his
chest; the realtor carried the legs. They hauled him into the master
bathroom on the first floor where the Asian male removed the shower
curtain and laid it in the bathtub. Beavertail and Realtor threw
Russell and host into the tub, and the tubby woman held him down.