The Birth of Bane (36 page)

It wasn’t a
selfish notion. The emotion was much simpler than that. It was
survival, but on a level I had not known existed until I was too
afraid, too much in fear for my life. All else appeared extraneous,
supplementary, unnecessary. It was appreciation on a whole new
equivalence, a thirst that needed quenching at the middle-most
portions of me, and I struggled to find it.

I saw the
doggy-door then. It was across the way, next to an upturned trash
can, partially hidden. Uncaring, I ran for it, scraping my knees
upon the ground and my back along the upper edge of it as I
squirmed my way inside.

I came out about
fifty feet beyond the car wreck, the strange bending of physics no
longer an issue for me. I accepted what was happening. I had to
stop worrying over this detail or that item. I had to get out. I
had to know I could find a way. I stood, wiping at my scuffed knees
and along the scratches on my back, gazing away from the carnage on
that side of the alley, seeing it go on forever and ever. I had
little choice.

I
ran.

I had to. I had
to find a way out.

As this demon
and that nightmare catapulted from those hideous rooms, I searched.
As ghouls and lichs and twisted haunts spewed forth to claim me, I
yearned. When sirens or incubus, resplendent in their raw
nakedness, wriggled before me, beseeching my manhood to life with
the promise of everlasting ecstasy, days and weeks of orgasmic
delight, I desired.

But, every time,
the need to flee overwhelmed me. I ran away. I ran and ran. I
needed to find a way out. I had to survive this madness, this hell.
With every corner of my tangled mind, given new life by the
ever-changing possibilities of the alley, I quested. For how long?
Hours? A day? Two days? Forever, truncated into minutes like some
macabre Santa Clause on Christmas Eve? Maybe. Possibly. I would
never know, because there was no true sense of measurement – any
sort was a mystery. I was merely driven by the possibility I’d
live. In a place without hope, it was
my
only
one.

I knew for a
time, I was lost as my search became a search for the reason why I
searched. Everything was convoluted, bent back upon itself, a
mirror image, until reality became layered, an onion of life that
was inescapable. I was circling a spherical path with no end. It
made no sense, and yet, I was compelled to continue. I couldn’t
stop. There wasn’t a thing on this earth that could make me. Not
even Myra. It was the one time in my life wherein she didn’t
factor. Though I have never told her this (
and I have only realized at this very moment I am
actually brave enough to write it in this work), it’s the truth. It
was a duration set aside for me and me alone. It was time I existed
alone, whether in my mind or within the alley. I was by myself with
only the wretched masses from every evil plane to have ever existed
within the annuals of time to keep me company.

I had to find a
way out.

Throughout it
all, there was no sign of Lenny.

Lenny?

Lenny!

It was the first
cognitive thought of someone other than myself and, faster than I
could fathom, it gave me pause. Maybe there was something more to
this than merely me. Maybe there was another reason why I was lost
in the alley. Maybe this was supposed to have happened. Right?
Didn’t that make sense? Did anything make sense?

Some point
later, I walked into a room with nothing but aged furniture of all
sorts filing it to capacity. I strode down the narrow walkways, if
one could call it that until I came to a space clearer than the
rest of the chamber. There were single-seat school desks in neat
rows. My long-time friends from high school were seated in them.
Every one of their faces was riveted to some wild-looking man at
the front of the
classroom?
He was talking,
incessantly, unrelenting sentences one piled upon the next like a
river flowing over rocks.

He seemed to be
cutting his hair, over and over, every ten seconds or so, because
it was growing back just as fast. When he wasn’t shoring his hair,
he was twining it, braiding it into stronger, thicker strands. He
didn’t look my way, but kept on talking, continued to cut his hair,
never stopped making it into rope - a long, long, very strong
looking rope.

All the while,
he never quit speaking.
“I can’t
judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for
you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at
yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in,”
or ,
“I can’t dislike you, but I will say this to you: you haven’t
got long before you are all going to kill yourselves, because you
are all crazy. And you can project it back to me, but I am only
what lives inside each and every one of you,”
or,
“I never had
long hair before I got busted. I never had a beard before I got
busted.”

It went
on.

I stepped
closer, seeing my old friend Angie. I was about to call to her,
when I noticed she was tied down. She was held fast by thick ropes
of hair!

I stayed where I
was, hearing,
“From the world of
darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of the
scorpions to torment!”

I glanced around
for something to cut them free. Mike, Steve, Monica, Lester, Luigi,
Sandra, Julie, Marco – they were all there. They were all tied to
their desks, heads unable to move as the man preached and cut and
wove, giving his sermon as he clipped and twisted.

“
If you’re going
to do something, do it well. And leave something
witchy!”

He stopped
suddenly. The room went as silent as a tomb. His eyes had found
me.

I stood
transfixed.

His face became
a mask of evil.
“They’re all
pigs! Are you a pig as well? Take a seat, pig! I hope you brought
your number 2 pencil!”

I could do
nothing but run. And, I did – some more.

I had to find a
way out.

Sometime later,
I emerged from a blackened room and found myself in a place devoid
of all color. There was only white surrounding me. It took me some
time to understand I was standing before a desk, because it lacked
all color as well. It was large, nearly the size of a conference
table.

I stepped toward
it.

He spun around
in a near-invisible chair, his hands forming a steeple before
him.

“
I see you have finally made your way to me.”
His voice was as smooth as silk.
“Welcome to the Breach. You are
enjoying your stay with us?”

I was
incredulous, barley able to remember how to breathe. I was on the
outskirts of the land of despair.

All I could say
was, “Not particularly, no.”

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

Cha
pter Twenty-Two:
Bait

“
Though I have many names, I’m called, Bore, for the
moment,”
he said, letting his
hands fall to the armrests at either side of him.
“And you are, Jeremiah Favor,
correct?”

I nodded,
slowly.

“
Splendid! Yes,
splendid indeed.”

I was guarded,
putting it lightly. I let my eyes wonder over his expensive suit,
of the three-piece variety and tailored to fit him to perfection,
even while he sat. His nails were polished with clear, as finely
manicured as the rest of him. Everything was in place, nothing left
wanting.

“
I have been waiting for you, young man, ever since you entered
the Breach.”
He raised an
eyebrow.
“Brave thing I might
add. Most wouldn’t have been so eager to enter a place such as
this…”

“
I was following
someone,” I said, sticking with a minimalist attitude.

“
I know.”
He clicked the
roof of his mouth three or four times in rapid succession.
“A nasty business that, but – as I’ve
found through the years – sometimes necessary. Albeit unfortunate,
but still a needed thing.”

I only
grunted.

His stare
intensified.
“Things have been
difficult for you of late, Jeremiah. So many hurtful incidents,
personal injuries, scars that won’t readily heal, how do you feel
you will fare going forward?”

“
I’ll live,” I said flippantly, trying to cover the fact he was
making feel uncomfortable. I didn’t like him knowing as much as he
seemed to know about me. It was
creepy.

He stood
abruptly, snorting derisively through his perfect nose, pushing his
chair back with the backside of his legs.
“Too many times have I heard such drivel from the likes
of common folk. It pains me to hear something similar from one as
unique… as special as you. Why say the very same? I should think
there’s more about you. You are so much more than common, don’t you
think?”

I didn’t know
how to answer a question of that nature. I’d never been one to toot
my own horn, especially when it came to character or placing myself
above the next person. My mother hadn’t raised us to think that
way. In my eyes it was wrong. What he’d asked me was against what I
was raised to believe.

“
Hesitation. Disagreement. Uncertainty.”
He paused theatrically in between each word,
twisting slightly at the waist as he walked toward a filing cabinet
I hadn’t seen before. It was as white as everything else in the
room. He stooped to open the lowest drawer, inserting a key he
produced from an inside pocket.

I
frowned.

It was a
skeleton key, unlike any sort of key I’d seen used to open a filing
cabinet. It fit, unerringly. And, when he pulled upon it, the
drawer itself opened.

“
It seems, I have something for you,”
he uttered through his bright pink
lips.

My grimace
grew.
How could he possibly have
anything for me? I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. What could I
possibly want from him?

He reached into
the filing cabinet, appeared to rummage for a time before his
speculative expression altered, a satisfied smile coming to the
fore.
“Ah, there it
is.”

There’s
what?
I questioned in silence,
trying not to crane my neck. I didn’t want to give him any
inclination of what I might be thinking. He knew too much as it
was.

He straightened,
stepping to the side of the desk. He produced what looked like a
custom-made acrylic. It was the sort used to display an item,
something special, something worthy of featuring. He put it on the
white surface. It was almost triangular with backward facing
stands. Otherwise, it wasn’t noteworthy.

I cocked a
skeptical glance at him.

He seemed smug,
as if extremely proud of himself.

Over a lame
plastic stand?

I motioned
toward it. “I’m not really sure what it is. Or, why you feel the
need to give it to me.”

He chuckled like
a learned uncle before the likes of his naïve nephew, polite, but
condescending all the same.
“This is not what I mean to give you, Jeremiah Favor.”
Another rumble from his chest and
without further ado, he reached inside of his blazer, grinning,
pulling forth a knife.

Automatically, I
stepped back. Too many things had gone wrong in this place – The
Breach, as he called it. I wasn’t taking any chances.

“
Oh, there’s nothing to fret over, Jeremiah. None
whatsoever,”
he felt compelled
to say upon my reaction.
“I mean
you no harm, truly.”

I didn’t give a
damn what he’d said. The fear, the anxiety of being in this place
for as long as I’d been couldn’t be forgotten in the span of a few
words. I had seen things that were so fantastically bizarre. I
could never have imagined anything like the denizens of the Breach.
Multi-colored spiders, flesh-eating ancestors, glass-shard giants,
leviathans living beneath discarded clothing, vampires with
carnivorous maggots for teeth… Rosalyn… It was too much to forget
in such a short duration. I couldn’t discount any of it, let alone
take this Brad Pitt look-alike at his word.
You freakin’ kidding me?
How did I know he didn’t have five or ten
or twenty
of those knives in his jacket pocket? How could I not
know if the pocket itself were a bottomless pit from which one
could pull cutlery by the thousands? I couldn’t afford to be
lackadaisical, let down my guard. I wasn’t going to die down here
or wherever the fuck I was – no way! I wasn’t going -.

I noticed
something odd about the knife then, as he placed it gingerly upon
the acrylic specially made to display it. It wasn’t your typical
knife per se. It wasn’t made for cutting through steak or buttering
bread. It wasn’t one of combat with serrated topside that could be
used to saw through wood. It was nothing like that. It was
ceremonial or stylized, like something representative of something
else, something real. It was no more than seven inches long,
hilted, like a pygmy’s longsword, and it seemed to be made of
gold.