Revolution (11 page)

Jim looked at
him, at his friend, both of them thrown into the chaos of a war a million miles
from home.

Both of them
thin starved waifs.

Jim wanted to
break cover and run as fast as he could. But the enemy was so sneaky, so quick,
that he wouldn't stand a chance.

He crouched
behind Frank.

"We're
never going to make it," he whimpered almost crying in the heat, the
terror.

Frank looked
over his shoulder at him.

In a few
weeks" of war his handsome face has been hollowed to that of an old man.

"Don't
say that," Frank said with a sound of reassurance, and then smiled.
"We'll get out of here, you and me, together. I promised I would see you
safe."

Jim shook his
head, a wild terror in his eyes.

"We're
never going home, never," he said as the green bile of terror rushed up
from his gut. He swallowed hard on it but it spewed up through his nose
instead.

"Come
on, pal. It's me. Frank. We'll make it, don't you worry."

And it was
just like Frank to be reasonable.

It had always
soothed Jim in the past.

But now, out
here, in green hell, it angered him. Something had to be done.

Frank turned
around from his crouching position and laid a hand on Jim's shoulder.

"Come
on, pal. Take it easy. Haven't I always been true to my word? When we get out
of this you can buy me a beer. It'll be legal for me to have one when we get
back home."

He gave Jim a
last smile and turned away.

"I'll
keep watch out this way," he said "and you watch out for our
backs."

Seeing his
chance Jim reached down to the knife in his boot.

Gripping its
handle he slipped it out, raised the blade high and slashed it hard into Frank's
back.

"Jim!"
the word escaped Frank in a husky squeal.

He grimaced,
pulling his lips tight.

Frank half
spun around and hit the ground on his back as Jim raised the blade high again
slashing it into Frank's belly.

Frank reached
out instinctively, grabbing Jim's wrist, the knife still in him.

"Jim,
pal, what are you doing?"

Jim wrenched
the blade upward ripping Frank's grip free and his guts wide.

Jim staggered
to his feet, snot and bile pouring in burning streams from his nose as Frank's
eyes looked up at him, pleading, trying to understand.

"Jim,
boy, why?" his face creased in agony. "You're my pal."

Jim stepped
back and watched.

Frank gripped
at the wound in his gut and rolled over onto his front as he tried to push
himself up, and crawled on his elbows towards Frank.

"Jim,
don't leave me, pal, please. Where are you going?  They'll get me."

Jim gritted
his teeth, rushed at Frank and kicked him in the head, and sent him sprawling
onto his back.

"Why
won't you die for fuck's sake?" Jim yelled as tears of rage blinding his
eyes. "Just die!"

 "Christ
almighty, Jim!"

Jim turned
and ran.

#

There was a
flash and a bang.

The stranger
held his hand in front of Jim's face as if he had just snapped his fingers
together.

The stranger
settled back into the dust and the grime and the gloom of the cafe.

"But
enough of that," he said wearily with a sigh.

"No,"
the fat man said.

"Oh but
yes, Jim," the stranger in the wide brim hat said.

"Frank
was like my own brother," Jim said as he struggled to his feet and then
stumbled back.

"And you
killed him," the stranger said his eyes turning to slits.

"I
didn't! He was still alive. I only wounded him, I had to!"

"Murderer!"

"No,"
the fat man shook his head. "They took him. I only wounded him, that's
all."

"Your
own friend and you murdered him for your own skin."

"I had
to do something," the fat man's words bubbled through the lard of his own
flesh oozing between his lips.

"A bird
with a broken wing, providing the distraction you needed to escape," the
stranger said. "Jim was the bait for your trap."

"What
else could I do?" the fat man pleaded.

"He's
dead!"

"I
didn't kill him. I didn't. Oh please God help me. I didn't know what I was
doing," he whined. "Can't you see that?"

"He died
three days before the camp was liberated, still forgiving you. You slaughtered
him. And he had no one. No one! He loved you like the brother he never had. The
family he never had. And he prayed for you right up until the end of his life,
knowing he would never get out alive, prayed as he lay dying and the maggots
ate at his guts, that you,
you
, at least would live. To live the life
you had both dreamed of as boys."

"No,
God, please, the pain."

"Scum!"

The
stranger's movements were quick, unreal. Suddenly he was on his feet and
towering over Jim.

"You don't
understand," the fat man pleaded. "I was desperate."

The stranger
stepped closer.

"You
bastard!
e prayed right up to the end for you H
"

"Who are
you? What are you doing this to me?" Jim asked stumbling back.

The stranger
stood up straight and steadied his breathing.

"I am
removing you from the original equation of balance," he said.

"Where
did you come from?" Jim whined.

"I am
from a realm of injustice. I am the buffer zone. I am the man who cuts the
paper only ever half way down and finds the rot at the core. I slide down
fractals of echoing unreason and find the original equation. I find monsters. I
drag them to an eternity in hell where they belong. And I found you!"

And as the
stranger stood before him something thumped into the fat man's back. He
screamed as his blood gouted from the knife wound.

His abdomen
split open, ripped wide by his own hands, and watched as his guts slopped onto
the floor.

"Why are
you doing this to me?" he yelled crashing to his knees.

The stranger
looked with disgust at the pile of pustulant flesh slobbering to the floor.

"You are
doing it to yourself, James," he said. "I am merely helping you
discharge your own guilt."

Jim's face
slipped from his skull as a sodden mask. The stranger lurched forward and
clawed it away before Jim had a chance to hold it in place.

Squeezing it
dry of excess blood, the stranger placed Jim's mask upon the flesh of his own.

"Recognize
yourself now, James?" he asked turning his head this way and that for the
fat man's inspection.

Jim's flash burned
fingers reach up uncomprehendingly, wavering in a slow nauseating terror, to
his skin sloughing free of his bones.

"Dear
God!"

"No
conscience, no fear," the stranger said quietly and deliberately.
"Always running, always hiding, but I will always you."

Vomit sprayed
through the clenched teeth of Jim's bloodied skull.

Eyelids gone
he could not help but stare even as the words bubbled out of his throat in a
sodden gloop.

"It's
not true."

The stranger
thrust the bloody mask of flesh covering his own face at Jim's suppurating
skull.

"Look at
me, you fucking monster!"

"I
can't. My face!"

"I am
you, your own festering guilt. You dragged me here. Do you know how much grief
monsters like you give me? Do you!"

"I…"

"Answer!"

And as the
stranger stood before him Jim's guts continued to pour out like dead snakes
onto the floor.

"You
make me sick," the stranger said, stepping back and sighing.

He threw
Jim's face back at him, picked up his hat and put it on. Reaching into his
pocket he threw a grubby coin onto the table.

Jim keeled
over as the ground conveniently rose up to break his fall and the stranger
walked up to the closed doors.

Streams of
red and yellow filth ran out his skull his voice bubbled though it.

"I'm
sorry, Frank. I'm sorry."

And as the
doors swung wide of their own volition and closed behind the stranger Jim
snapped back up, blinked and rubbed at his face.

He looked
around, at the empty tables and chairs, at the dark corners, the mezzanine, his
eyes trailing over the railings, searching looking, but for what?

The door to
the street opened again.

The stranger
looked inside.

"Out
here, now!" he yelled at Jim.

"What?"

"I'm
giving you a second chance," the stranger said. "Now get out of here
before it all changes back and it's too late."

#

They watched
from the other side of the road as a Rover pulled up outside the cafe and Frank
climbed out.

It was the
only car in the street. The sign above the diner had also changed.

"Frank?"
Jim said to the stranger at his side.

"Frank!"
he called out.

Frank
hesitated for a moment, and looked around.

"He
can't see you," the stranger said to Jim.

"Why?"
Jim asked puzzled

"Because
now, to your reality, he died, and from his reality as it is now, you never
existed. Everything breaks down at the point of singularity," the stranger
said. "Don't you know anything? I've had to unravel everything, everything
about his life and start it all over again, without you ever being in it."

"But
what about me?"

"You
didn't learn a thing, did you?" the stranger said exasperated.

"But
that's my place," Jim yelped pointing a podgy finger at the diner.

"You
don't have any place," the stranger said.

"How
come?"

"Because
you don't exist. In fact, from where you are standing now, you never ever
did."

Jim's face
creased.

"I'm
dead?" he asked.

"God
give me strength," the stranger said adjusting his Fedora.

"I don't
understand."

"You
were never born."

Something
slithered up through the drain at Jim's feet then slithered back out of sight.

"What
was that?"

"That's
what I wouldn't like to know," the stranger said. "But you'll get
used to it. And maybe it means that we have to work some more on that guilt of
yours. Who knows?"

"You
know anyone else would think that what I did was bad, evil even," Jim
said.

"Yes,
well, I'm warped. What can I say?" the stranger said admiring his
reflection in a shop window. "And you'll have to go on a diet. But that's
beside the point, since you've been removed from the grand scheme of things
anyway. So basically, you have the memory of a nightmare that never ever was
since you were never ever there."

"I am
not fat," Jim protested.

"In this
universe you're gross, believe me." The stranger said walking away.

He stopped
and looked back.

"Are you
coming along or what?" he called.

"Where
to?" Jim asked walking as fast as he could.

"To
square one," the stranger said, "then you can help me find more
creeps like you used to be, who also think they have escaped justice.

"But a
few ground rules first.

"My boss
is a woman called Persephone. But for God's sake, don't say her name out loud.
Otherwise she'll send you on the worst jobs in history. And if you don't do it
right, she'll have the furies on you like a rash looking for poison ivy."

"The
furies?"

"Never
mind, just... never mind. Now hurry up."

(First
published in
Dark Gothic Resurrected
Magazine
, spring 2012)