A Short Story a Day

by David Michael

The stillness, the darkness, the sense of … not peace, but something close … shattered, exploded, and slammed into Reese with the force of a waterfall.

Cold water hit her, hurt her, pushed her, forced its way up her nose and into her mouth and she gagged and responded with the panic of drowning. She opened her eyes, but the brightness and blur and sting of the water forced them closed again. She felt herself sliding, the water pushing her along, trying to wash her away. Her hands flailed about, her fingers sought purchase, trying to dig in with her fingernails, but the hard, smooth, wet surface gave her nothing to hold onto.

In desperation, she flipped over onto her stomach, fighting against the force of the water, scrabbling with her hands and her feet, bruising her shoulder and knees and elbows as she did, and pain stabbed in her right thigh.

Using fingers and toes and pushing down with her bruised elbows and knees she finally achieved enough friction to slow her slide, and come to a stop.

Somewhere in the part of her mind not focused on keeping her alive, she realized she was nude, that the sun shone down almost on top of her. And that she was alive.

She raised her head, turning her face away from the blast of water and opened her eyes.

The black tile of the Skymoon Room gleamed wet and smooth under the stream of water that had been pushing her toward a gap in the outer wall. She was close enough to see that there was nothing beyond the gap. The water went over into the edge to rain down into the alley below.

The water hitting her against her, still trying to push her through the gap, died away.

“Hey!” a voice called. “You’re still alive?”

Reese pushed herself to her knees and looked around. The open air Skymoon Room of the Cain’s Mark Hotel contained only her and a man. Not the Old Man, just a man. Maybe in his forties, wearing rubber wading pants and big black rubber gloves. He held a high pressure water nozzle with a dribble of water still leaking from it.

The summoning circle painted with Sam’s blood in the center of the big room had already been washed away. There was no sign of the Old Man, the Hope of Friendship, Sam’s katana or the her shotgun. No sign of anything–or that anything had happened here at all. Even the clothes the Old Man had ripped off her were gone, washed away.

Nothing but her, Reese, battered, bruised, and cut.

The Old Man had left her alive. Again. As if he knew she wanted to die, and decided that the best torment for her was to leave her alive.

“Damn, girl,” the man called out, still keeping his distance, with his hand on the nozzle’s valve. “You don’t look so good.”

Reese nodded, acknowledging the accuracy of his assessment and his implied willingness to protect himself with the only weapon he had available. She understood his wariness. Who knew what bizarre shit, dead or alive or undead or worse, had been left behind in the Skymoon Room by other celebrants? She doubted she was the weirdest, or the scariest, thing the man had ever found bloody and discarded, left behind either intentionally or unintentionally in the Skymoon Room.

“I expected a bigger mess,” the man went on. “The Old Man, he … well, I brought three other guys to help clean up. But there was just you, lying there, looking dead, so I sent the other guys back down with the bodies from the hall.” The waver in his voice told Reese that he wished he had kept the company, the reinforcements, handy.

Reese shrugged in her best I’m harmless impression and looked down at the ugly cut in her right thigh. The Old Man had cut across her femoral artery, through the biohazard tattoo that had adorned her flesh there for more than a decade. The blade of the Backstabber had cut deep enough to create a big splash and fountain of her blood, but rough enough that the artery had had a chance to close itself again. The wound had reopened under the pressure of the water and her efforts to stop her slide, but only a trickle of blood oozed out.

So it wasn’t an accident. The Old Man hadn’t wanted her to die. Or not from the cut, anyway.

Her head felt light. She heard the man continue talking, but she didn’t pay any attention. She wondered how much blood she had lost. She wondered if she could walk.

She made it to her feet, despite the slippery wet tiles of the floor, and stood there, thinking, hurting, trying to figure out what she should do now.

The man had stopped talking she noticed, but he still kept his distance.

Reese blinked at him, not really seeing him, not caring that his eyes changed as he looked at her nakedness. Her own eyes looked back at the gap in the wall, with its twenty story fall to the alley below.

Maybe the Old Man had meant her to die that way. Washed away like the trash she was.

She limped over to the gap and looked down. The height, the alley below, the void below that, the dark stillness that she had been pulled from, all of it beckoned her.

Just one last step. Then she could be with Sam, away from her repeated failures, away from the Old Man.

A hand touched her shoulder, softly, and a voice like the sound of the breeze said her name. “Reese …“

She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Sam there, wondering if she had already taken the step and died. But she stood alone, cold and wet, shivering and light headed. And still alive. The man still stood on the far side of the room, watching her.

She looked back down at the alley, and made up her mind. If this was the way the Old Man wanted her to die, she decided, he could fuck himself. She had stopped working for the big half-goat weeks ago.

She turned her back on the gap and its promise of death and limped across the room toward one of the many doors, the one farthest from the man and his hose.

“You going to be alright?” the man asked. He moved closer to her, his eyes jumping from her crotch to her tits to her eyes and back again. “Do you need me to get you something? Clothes? Do you want me to take you somewhere?”

Reese didn’t answer. She didn’t tell him that he was lucky to be alive, that he was one of only two men still alive after seeing her this way. She didn’t mention that this distinction put him in rare company, his own little  category that he shared with the Old Man. A week ago–Hell, even yesterday–she would’ve killed him for that, after emasculating him. Slow and painful like.

Today … she didn’t even threaten him.

She just looked at him, then pushed through the door into the corridor that ran down two sides of the Skymoon Room.

The elevator she had come up on had a yellow “Wet Floor” sign in front of it marking the bloodsoaked carpet where the two bodyguards had died. She went to the other bank of elevators and pressed the down arrow.

She stood alone in the elevator that came for her and looked at herself in the many mirrors, the reflections of reflections. Her hair, chopped short that morning in a pitiful sacrifice to no one that seemed to have been listening, was wet and ragged. Her complexion was pale and splotchy from blood loss. The white scars on her arms, chest and back stood out amid the goose flesh, looking fresher than they were. Her right leg no longer bled, but red blood crusted around the wound and down her instep. The biohazard tattoo now looked like black claws emerging from the cut.

“You look like shit,” she told her reflection, and then she nodded, agreeing with herself. She felt like shit too.

No plan came to her before the elevator reached the ground floor. Nor as she limped through the lobby, ignoring the stares and whispers and gasps from the tourists and hotel staff as they responded to her nakedness and bloody wound. She wondered how many of them had seen her when she came in earlier that morning, in her long black coat, carrying Sam’s katana, marching up to what she thought had been certain death.

Except she hadn’t found death. The Old Man had held out on her. The bastard.

Just before she reached the lobby’s automatic doors, a big, calloused hand with fingers like sausages closed on her shoulder.

Reese clasped the hand with both hands and spun, pushing the hand to get it into a twist lock. She might as well have tried to twist a tree branch. But she held on.

“Back off,” she said, snarling up at the security guard who had stopped her. Then she recognized him from her grand entrance, just before her total failure. “Oh, it’s you.” She let go of his hand and started to turn back to the door. “You don’t have to throw me out. I’m on my way.”

“Here,” rumbled the ogre. “Take my jacket.”

Reese looked back at the ogre, who now held his huge blue blazer out to her. His big brown eyes met hers.

She looked away, took the blazer and slipped it on. It hung on her like a tent, reaching down past her knees. She pushed up the huge sleaves so that her  hands could hug it tight to her, suddenly cold. “Thanks,” she said, and turned her back to him, to everyone in the lobby that had stopped to stare at them, before anyone could notice the tears in her eyes. “I’ll bring it back,” she managed to force out through her tight throat.

“No rush,” the ogre said. “It looks better on you, anyway.”

Reese laughed, the sound coming out like choking gasp, and walked out of the lobby into the early afternoon.

Traffic crawled past her, reduced to only a single lane in both directions as workers in bright orange vests worked to pry apart wrecked cars and hook them up to waiting tow trucks. Horns blared and people rubbernecked and shouted obscenities at each other.

She limped through the cacophony and into a tourist trap shopping mall.

There were more people here, tourists mostly, visitors from Suburbia sticking to the relative safety of overpriced commercial retail. The place would be packed after nightfall. Reese drew some attention in her overcoat-sized ogre security blazer with its shiny nametag announcing her name as “Gregory RcMuffett, How May I Help You?” and her bare feet, one of them leaving red smudges wherever she stepped. But no one stopped her.

The Old Man “protected” this mall. Reese and Sam had helped him “protect” it more than once during her recently ended tenure. The security guards she passed knew her, or if they didn’t they took the hint from her cold stare and the whispered warnings of the ones who did.

She found the store she wanted on the top floor, and limped in. She waved off the tattooed and body pierced salesgirl and collected the clothes she wanted.

In the tiny dressing room she bit off the price tags, spitting them into a corner. She ripped one of the more expensive babydoll t-shirts into shreds and used the pieces to tie up her leg.

“Umm,” said the salesgirl from the other side of the dressing room curtain. “Can I help you with something?”

“Fuck off,” Reese told her, and heard the girl move away again. Reese pulled the makeshift bandage tight, feeling grim satisfaction in the pain it caused. Focusing on the pain, on binding the wound, on clothes, none of it seemed meaningful, but it distracted her, kept her from thinking about … anything else.

When she stepped out ten minutes later she felt almost like herself again in tight, tattered jeans and layers of torn t-shirts pulled over a snug-fitting long sleaved black shirt. She carried the ogre’s blue blazer, folded now, and put it on the checkout counter.

“I need a bag to carry this,” she told the salesgirl.

The girl looked at her, taking in the clothes and the damage Reese had done to them. “You’re going to have to pay for all of that,” she said.

Reese shook her head. “Nope.” She reached over the counter to take one of the bags. The girl looked like she was going to interfere, but hesitated. Reese looked at the girl, gave the girl a chance to give Reese a reason to kill her, but the girl backed down. Reese grabbed a bag and turned her back on the girl. She put the coat in the bag and walked to the door.

“I’m calling security.”

“Tell them hi for me,” Reese said, not looking back.

She walked past the shoe store where she planned to pick up some new boots soon. The smells of the food court, though, drew her down to the floor below. Blood loss, battle loss, job loss, lover loss, probably soon to be life loss–if she was lucky–all of it weighed on her, and reminded her … that she was hungry. She needed to eat. Not that she was sure why, but …

But that was what Sam had told her, time and again, “You need to eat more, Reese. You’re too thin.”

Reese felt tears coming and rubbed her eyes hard, forcing the tears back in. Not here, she thought, not in a goddamned shopping mall.

She didn’t trust her voice, so she ordered her food by pointing to what she wanting, taking it when it was ready, ignoring the demands of the pimple-faced counter boy that she pay for it. She found a table and sat down.

“That’s her,” a voice said, “she stole all those clothes she’s wearing.”

Reese looked up from her tray of food. As hungry as she was, as empty as she felt, she hadn’t taken a bite. The food lay there, still in its wax paper wrappings, getting colder and less appetizing. She had been staring at the food, trying to think of the food, the tray, the table, the rickety chair she sat in, anything but Sam.

But Sam kept intruding into her thoughts. Sam would’ve loved the trashy clothes, and the greasy junk food Reese wasn’t touching. Sam liked coming to the mall. Sam liked buying clothes for her, dressing her in public, then undressing her in private.

When Reese looked up, trying not to hope Sam would be there.

But Sam wasn’t there. Because Sam was dead. Reese had watched her die, and then watched her suffer still more after death.

Instead the salesgirl stood several meters away, strategically positioned behind the shoulder of a mall security guard, pointing at Reese.

The two of them, middle-aged man and girl, looking at Reese, didn’t see the black and gold viscous material ooze like honey from a skylight two floors above, and pile up behind them. The pile spread and grew to be taller than the man and sprouted multiple tendrils.

Reese opened her mouth to warn them, but nothing came out. She remembered the presence that had bubbled up from the Old Man’s summoning circle, that had washed over the flames that burned with Sam’s blood and had reached for her. It had pulled away then, and avoided her when she fell into the circle.

Now it reached for her again, the tendrils becoming longer and longer, reaching around the guard and the salesgirl.

Reese smiled. So the Old Man hadn’t forgotten her after all.

Screams ripped through the food court as Reese stood up. She held out her arms to return the embrace of whatever the Hell the Old Man had brought forth and sent after her.

The guard and the girl turned, following Reese’s gaze. The girl screamed and both of them started to run away, the only way not blocked by the creature’s tendrils–towards Reese.

Neither of them made it more than two steps.

The tendrils stopped coming to Reese, curled back in on themselves and wrapped around both man and girl. The two struggled, the guard even managed to get his gun out of his holster. He tried to shoot over his shoulder but the shot went wild. Then the two were pulled into the creature, its liquid substance oozing around them and sucking them in.

Reese stomped her right foot, winced at the pain in her thigh and the wetness that meant her wound had re-opened. “No!” she shouted. “It’s me you want. Me! Take me, damnit!”

New tendrils erupted from the creature, thick, and swept away the tables and chairs that separated it from Reese. It surged forward and its bulk loomed over Reese.

“Yes! Take me!” She spread her arms wider.

She could see the substance of the creature trembling, quivering. She could feel that it wanted to take her. But it didn’t. It just–stood there–piled up, an avalanche of death stopped in mid-fall.

More screams from other patrons. Gunshots rang out. Some of the shots hit the creature and its surfaced rippled from the impact.

Still, it didn’t move.

Reese, tears of pain and frustration running down her face, yelled again, “Take me! End it!” She took a deep breath. “Just end it,” she said, whispering now.

The screaming stopped, but more shots were fired. Reese heard one of them buzz past her ear. Not a mistake, she knew. This was Hell on Earth. If the hideous, rampaging monster wasn’t killing someone it could be killing, that someone was now a target.

And she wasn’t about to be killed by a rent-a-cop.

Reese, arms still spread, charged at the creature, giving herself, offering herself, wanting to die.

Faster than she could see, the creature shifted its bulk, oozed out of her way. She tripped and fell, sprawled on the floor of the food court. The floor felt slightly sticky, though Reese didn’t know if that was residue of the creature, or just the natural state of the flooring.

The screams started again, and the shots came like a firefight. Automatic fire joined the pistols.

Reese staggered back to her feet, looking for the creature, so she could charge it again. It had moved to the edge of the food court now, and was attacking–striking, absorbing–those people who hadn’t had the sense to run away yet.

The creature moved around the food court, describing a circle around Reese. Employees in their bright uniforms, security guards, women, girls, mothers, boyfriends, store clerks, all died. Those that weren’t consumed were battered aside, rolled over and left behind as a smudge, beaten down.

Reese ran at the creature, and it flowed away from her. She screamed at it,  threw a chair, but it ignored both her voice and the impact, continued on its rampage.

It was there for her, she knew that in her bones, in the hollow part of her where her soul might once have lived, back before Hell on Earth, back when she had a family, before she had done so many, many things that she had had to do to survive. This creature was the Old Man’s retribution, proxy for the world at large, here to strike down Reese and end her, as she deserved.

But it wouldn’t touch her. It wouldn’t come near her.

Still crying, sobbing now, but exhausted, she gave up and let her tired legs collapse beneath her. She sat down hard, rattling her teeth. She sat and watched the creature flow up to the next floor, still chasing fleeing shoppers.

“Why won’t you kill me?” she asked the emptiness of the food court.

But neither the emptiness nor the creature responded.

Copyright © 2006 by David Michael.