24Fourth. In The Desert, You Shall Drown.
"She's a little… long," Doris Kammer couldn't help but comment. "Why is she so long?"
"Humph," said Aeron Mantra, rubbing his callused fingers against his favorite garden tool. It was an old but trustworthy D-handled spade, and it was in fine shape save for a little rust here and there. It got the job done every time, even when the job seemed impossible and begged for heavy machinery. It had seen big landscaping contracts, harsh construction work, desperate dumpster diving sessions and even the inside of a man's skull, once upon a time. Aeron didn't have it in him to murder anybody, but the legacy of the spade was a bit of a legend to those who knew about it; he prided himself on the idea that at some point in time, his beloved tool had been a blood splattered 'Exhibit A', glistening the spotlight for all to see and all to fear. Perhaps that old glory made the soil richer when Aeron dug at it. Killed the parasites.
Stupid flowers, Aeron thought as he battled against a swelling migraine. Seven months ago he'd been happily planting poinsettias in the Upper Reservoir Canals; now he stood in a stinking shack somewhere along the goddamned Underpass of all places, watching in horror as some creature slithered out of Doris' filthy womb. He cradled the legendary spade in his hand as if it were his final friend in the world. It was.
If I hadn't pushed myself so hard to plant those beauties, I would have never met her. I would have never gotten myself so damned lost.
For a moment, he tried his hardest to meditate his way out. He tried to mimic the monks he saw on television and send his mind into a place where lovely flowers peppered the Earth as far as his eyes could see. No luck. The stench would not lift. Dull razorblades ate away at his brain as his migraine became more serious. Aeron sighed in disappointed agony as he realized once and for all that his psychic abilities were non-existent, and that he was light years away from any sort of Zen.
At least he could honestly say that he tried. He wondered what font he was going to use to engrave it on his headstone.
The gurgling, gasping shrieks of his newborn daughter began to ring in his inner ear. He knew that if he didn't do something drastic right now, there would never be an end to it.
"I don't care what she's horley-pan," said Aeron, unable to speak straight as he fought his splitting headache. "She is out and I am done. Humph."
"But she's weird looking," said Doris, her ratty Underpass clothing soaked in sweat and shit and fetal blood. Candlelight flickered across her freckled face and sunken eyes, demonizing her. That ginger hair of hers had never looked so sinister, soaked in sweat and hanging over her eyes. "Will she always look like that? What the fuck am I supposed to do with the baby clothes? She probably won't even fit inside the crib, bucko. She's weird – she's too long and her head's crooked. She's gone rotten. Let's throw her out and try again, fucking shit."
Don't vomit. Don't vomit. Hold your vomit down. Hold your—
Aeron lost all bodily control as he collapsed to his knees, throwing up harder than he ever had and drenching Doris and his little girl in the process. But it didn't matter much. What were they to him? They were a drug-dependant, self-righteous, demonic bitch of a mother and a nameless bastard child with a birth defect, and they would both continue to whine and complain whether he puked on them or not. He knew that they'd probably be whining and complaining about one thing or another until they drove him into the ground.
And now that he was close enough to see the little girl, and her body – glistening with blood and vomit and the assorted fluids that came with fresh babies – was held up to the candle's glow, Aeron noticed that without a doubt… she was a little long. She was very long actually, like a wriggling tapeworm larvae. The thought made him heave again.
However… his eyes traveled across the girl's freakishly elongated midsection and came to rest on her face. Something clicked.
Despite the gore and the stink and the crushed-in smooshiness of her skull, he couldn't help but fall in love. Like a true parent, he loved her immediately and unconditionally, long or not. A moment of unmistakable clarity rushed through his brain, and he decided then and there that he would do everything in his power to turn this defective little girl into something especially extraordinary. Extraordinary… and happy to be so.
But first things first.
"So… she's long," said Aeron as he coughed up a bit more of his lung. His head pulsed and strained as if it weighed eight hundred pounds, but he couldn't give in. Not yet. He struggled to maintain himself. Grabbed a bottle of filthy, worm-infested water from his knapsack and guzzled it down in desperation. "So what if she's long? She's my lorgel and I should get a chance. She should get a chance. Plus, all fresh babies have crooked heads."
"You're drunk, aren't you? I can tell, I can smell it on you!"
Aeron hadn't tasted a drop of alcohol since high school, but he couldn't focus enough to argue. He needed to get the little girl far away from this woman as soon as humanly possible. This was perhaps the most important thing he would ever attempt to do.
Doris heaved her aching body off of the bed, slid a knife from her shoe and hastily stabbed the little girl's umbilical cord until it tore free. She snatched up the baby, told it to shut the fuck up and tossed it into a corner, much to Aeron's dismay.
"Are you insane? You'll kill her!"
"I wish. Go and get her if you want, asshole – I'm done with you. I'm done with your weird dick and your weird sperm and your weird kids, you freak!"
can't berlef thises happermem. crazy bitch. crazy bitch.
Every last bit of Aeron's energy went into dragging his feet along the tiny shack's floor. The legendary spade dangled in his fingers as he strained to hold it.
keep holden. fust for a jew more circus. blood spattered A.
"You're impossible," he said, straining and shambling around the shack like a zombie. "And I'mma get my dot… dotter out… from you. No matter what."
"Don't you fuckin' touch me," she roared, losing blood and energy as she mimicked Aeron's shaky movements. "I'm not one of your stupid flowers!"
stupid flowers.
Her sagging belly began to make noises that she'd only ever heard on gruesome late-night health shows, and after a moment or so, a greasy blob of placenta made its way past her legs and onto the floor. It was a nasty little organ, all veins and sinew and slime – but due to the poor lighting in the shack, Doris missed it entirely.
Shame. She might have become a better person in some far off alternate reality.
Brain swelling behind his eyes, Aeron wearily watched as Doris slammed her foot into her own afterbirth, lost her balance and snapped her neck in one fluid, beautiful motion.
He chuckled, dropped the spade and collapsed. He didn't have it in him to kill anyone.
He dragged himself along the creaking floor until he reached the child; he wrapped her up in his poncho and held her, mumbling old folk songs until she stopped crying.
They stared at one another for a few minutes, utterly exhausted. He decided she was perfect, length and all.
And just before the worms took him, he lovingly called her Leeann.
Veronica Belmont died before she hit the ground.
She remembered it all quite vividly: Topper had grinned that insufferable yellow grin of his, crooned something, and then swung his amber cane into her skull so hard that people miles away could probably feel the shockwave. The blow kicked up enough sand to completely block out the sun, swallowing up the cloudless sky and forming a murky bubble of oppressive, choking dust around them.
The last thing that flittered through Veronica's earthly mind was, curiously enough, the visage of an unfamiliar young brunette with thin lips, a bony face and gregarious freckles. Her first instinct told her "God", but she immediately waved the silly thought away and replaced it with something more realistic – "lust".
It was already happening; before Topper even killed her, she was already getting sucked down into the soul-eater's depraved brain, seeing people he had eaten years ago. Death was only the first step in what would be a long and horrifying journey through the twisted psyche of a master magician. I don't care. Just give me Scarlett.
And then, whack! One liquefied skull, coming right up.
She never thought she would go so quickly, though. For years, Veronica had fantasized about her epic, blood-drenched downfall at the hands of some incredibly sadistic and omnipotent monster that dripped with sewage from the River Styx. A heated sniper battle would inevitably end with a blade jutting through Veronica's chest (or a bullet, or a claw – whatever), but she'd make sure to survive just long enough to blow her killer's brains out, laughing right down to her last gurgling breath. In her fantasy, she'd already made peace with her acquaintances, tied up all of her loose ends and had lived a long, healthy and fulfilling life with her true love, Scarlett. Chances were good that she'd have a dramatic bronze statue erected in her honor, too – and for centuries after her death, children would walk up to the effigy and pray that one day they might be half as powerful and daring as the legendary assassin Veronica Belmont. Naturally. Now that she recited it in her head, it all sounded incredibly stupid.
But that was all null and void now, for she'd finally met her end at the hands of a two-faced, immortal, shape-shifting, hopelessly sociopathic soul-eater who believed in magic more than hygiene, and on the terms of a technicality at that. No grand battle, no bronze monument, no legendary hero. She was just dead, anticlimactically smacked in the forehead in the middle of the Reservoir desert. Poof, gone. Abracadabr—
Top. Per. Snnnn. Snash. Snatch. Trrt. Throat. Burhah. Brain. Cut. Think. Think. Think. Shut. Shit. Shut. Down. God. Top. Per. God. Tip. Poor.
After spending roughly four seconds liberated from her worldly body, Veronica found herself unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to see. Topper's gnarled hand glowed orange as he gripped Veronica's soul by the throat, holding her about a foot above the ground. She would have resisted, had she any power left whatsoever.
"There you are, sweetums. Don't want you escapin' now, do we? Ah, no we certainly do not," he said, beaming. "Scarlett won't be at peace unless you're in there with her, yep-o."
The hurricane of sand raged around them without pause; Topper's hat fluttered off into the grainy void, yet his hood remained tightly fastened around his empty eye sockets. In his other hand, the bloody amber cane disappeared into his sleeve.
"I'm quite sorry Veronica," said Topper, licking his lips. "But you of all people must be well aware of the rules I follow. No exceptions, nope nope nope."
The assassin could only muster a broken string of simple syllables; Topper was cutting off the flow of energy to her brain. Or… whatever spectral organ was doing the thinking now, anyway.
Cuh. Cr. Can. Eul. Yu. Stel. Here. Moo. Muh.
"Can… I still hear you?"
She gave him a near-invisible nod, desperately wishing he'd loosen his grip a little. No such luck.
"Well at the moment, no! I can't really hear you at all," he said, scratching some sand and wiggling insects out of his beard. "But give me a moment, my flower, and you'll be yapping up a storm – I promise. I'll hear the cries of your tormented soul for as long as I'm livin', so don't you worry. I'm gonna hear you, and Scarlett, and your parents and her parents and four million other delicious morsels that have been unfortunate enough to slide down my gullet, yep-o. It's a wondrous party in there! Spectacular! Otherworldly! And – dare I say so – MAGICAL!"
And with that final, bile-drenched string of magic words, he shoved Veronica's soul down into his void of a belly. "Ohhhhh baby, that's the stuff, that's the best stuff! Ohhhhmmmmyes!"
He smiled and wept and belched and gurgled; he entered a state of mind that allowed him to see beyond anything and everything, eyes glittering like rough diamonds against the sandy air, jaw breaking and stretching to horrifying widths. In a much less elegant ritual than what he'd used to coax Scarlett inside of him, Topper crumpled Veronica's spirit, tore it apart, rolled it back together and gnawed on it until he was able to swallow it all down as mush. Strong one, very strong.
But she could honestly care less at this point. Nothing would matter once she met up with Scarlett and spent an eternity or two drowning the little blonde angel with every drop of love she could muster. No more assassinations, no more work, no more constant creeping dread of death. It would be the closest thing to heaven she could ever ask for. She closed her eyes, her mind, everything. Shut down. Dropped out. Gave in. And with that, Veronica Belmont disappeared from the waking world forever.
"My my my," Topper gasped afterwards, re-donning his slimy hood. "You chubby, hostile little nugget, you. I'm sure you'll be sticking to my ribs for decades. Just like your mother."
And it all ended there. The sandstorm settled and the sun shone brightly and the leftover corpses began to bake in the desert. And Topper patted his gorged belly, content.
So… where to now?
He didn't particularly feel like heading back to his lonely home anytime in the near future, despite remembering the two stragglers he'd taken in last night.
He wasn't entirely trustworthy of those kids quite yet, oh no… but they had seemed… special, for lack of better descriptive words. Why couldn't he pull off the most basic magic when they were around? He'd never failed quite so horribly at the Cavernous Maw before – and that was just an itsy bitsy parlor trick. Stretch out the jaw and show them the universe, simple as that. But no…
Those kids would be trouble at some point. Perhaps not now, but at some point they would tear Topper's world inside out. And he knew that he wouldn't be anywhere near ready for them. The disgusting one, the smartass… Vincent Barlow, yes! He was a treacherous waif, but he wasn't very special. That little girl, on the other hand…
He briefly wondered what a StReTCH Pod was. Lila Friedmont had been mumbling it over and over again in her sleep, but in his years upon years of experience he'd never heard of such a thing. Perhaps when he returned home (in a few minutes or a few centuries), those two kids would still be around for him to examine and tear apart and examine some more. "Vincent Barlow. Lila Friedmont," he said. "You're on my List."
But that was in the future. Those two kids were his doomed future, Veronica and Scarlett were his most recent past, and now… well right now, Topper felt like doing something entirely different.
So after he let the desert burn off his most recent meal, he casually mulled about the scattered group of bodies that Scarlett and Veronica now occupied, snatching up small valuables from the dismembered spider carcasses when he could find them. He found his hat neatly propped on a mutilated skull, streaked with dust and blood.
"So pretty," he said, snatching it up. Of all the priceless things in the world, he couldn't think of any more beautiful than his trusty top hat. It was a revolting mishmash of ancient patches, zippers, hides and innards, held together with bone marrow and good old-fashioned fear – and Topper loved it to death and beyond. He placed it on his head and basked in its glory.
More scavenging. He happened across an anonymous vial of glowing blue liquid no bigger than his pinky, examined it, and then slid it under his hat for safekeeping.
"Must have been why those two sweet girls had to die, eh? Delicious, delicious MacGuffins – why must you torment humanity?"
Eventually, he circled back to Veronica's headless corpse, recalling her soul's nutty aftertaste as he eyed her up… and finally noticed her impressive weapon buried in the sand nearby.
"Hello, darling… may I have this dance? I promise it won't hurt."
Effortlessly, the old magician flung Veronica's massive rifle across his shoulders, tested its weight and proceeded to swing it around like an oversized baseball bat for half an hour, kicking up powerful gusts of sand that traveled for miles and miles before mutating into raging tornadoes and other miscellaneous forces of death and horror. Boredom. Soon, his trusty nose would tell him where to go next.
It would be another hour before he noticed the distant smoke. It seemed so familiar…
"Either there's a scrumptious barbeque party just over the ridge, or somebody's burning a big pile 'o bodies," he said, sniffling in muted ecstasy. "How's about we find out for sure?"
Topper slipped his hat off, shoved all six feet of the rifle down into it and plopped the hat back on as if it were empty. He began to walk off into the dusted void, but stopped to glance at Veronica one last time. He frowned. "You'll never cease to be my ally, sweetums. When you were new, I held you in the palm of my hand and I seriously considered squishing you. Your bones were so soft and your skin was so pink but I restrained myself because I believed in you… and, well, here we are. Make no mistake, sweetie – the Belmonts have been very good to me over the years," he said, sniffling and burping up yellow slime, "And I owe you better than this. Perhaps I'll give you a proper funeral one of these days, yep-o. But until then, the dog will have his fill of you."
I just wanted Scarlett, eeked a furious voice from nowhere. I wanted her forever.
"That's not the point of romance, though. Frankly, you and Scarlett completely missed the point," said Topper, seemingly talking to himself. "By their very nature, people are not meant to bond their souls together, no no! That is perhaps the most insane and masochistic thing I've ever seen anybody do – and I'm a magician."
But we're meant to be.
"I'll be the asshole here and speak my mind – you two really weren't right for each other. At times, at times, at times," he said, wobbling on his feet, "Scarlett loved you dearly, yep yep. But every now and then, she'd awaken and she'd realize that she was too good for you. You never took a snapshot of her life and compared it to your own. Disgusting, disgusting mistake. You needed to find a camera and snap snap snap at her every time you could, and after a while you would have realized that her puzzle pieces are not the same as yours, no ma'am. Scarlett was halfway done with a meadow while you were fiddling with the edges of a stark blue sky."
The puzzle piece metaphor doesn't exactly work for everything, you know.
Topper dug around underneath his tongue for a moment, eventually unearthing a small silver whistle and blowing on it. "Take it from me, sweetums… it does."
On queue, some plump little man burrowed his way out of a nearby dune, shrieking and growling as if it had been years since the sun had touched his flesh. He burst out of the sand, rolled down the dune face and came to an abrupt stop at Topper's feet. He wore a series of tattered rags, blankets and ponchos that didn't seem to match his clean-shaven jowls, and a pristine necklace of little glowing blue vials noisily clanked around his neck as he moved.
"Hello there, Doherty," said Topper, swallowing the whistle. "You're looking fit, fit, fit."
"Mer mrong azzi bree?" The man asked, facedown in the dirt.
"Hmm? What was that, Doherty? At my ancient age, I seem to have developed a bad ear. One moment, eh?"
His tongue detached itself from his mouth, slithered around his neck and eventually burrowed into the sticky canals of his inner ear, settling there and cooing gently. "Now then. I'd hate to ask you to repeat yourself – I'm too gosh darn prideful about it, I suppose. It's your fault anyway, you know."
Doherty flipped himself over and flashed Topper his pale brownish eyes; one was made of plastic and haphazardly rolled around in its socket, as if it was straining to balance on some invisible needlepoint. Despite this, he still wore a pair of cracked spectacles with pride. He stood up, dusted himself off and tried to get his bearings in the desert. "How long, you fucken hack?"
"Oh! Well well well, it has to have been a couple of decades," said Topper, picking his teeth as he pondered. "At the very least, yes. I know, I know – blink of an eye. But I had to make a special exception. An old family friend made some real dark mistakes, yep-o."
Doherty's heart seemed to sink in his chest. "Twenny fucken yers? Are ya kiddin' me? I've barely digested th'last batch!"
Tiny wisps of dark energy pulsed around the stoutly man's shoulders as he stood there and smoldered with rage. His good eye began to glow with the ferocity and power of a young demon, and the vials around his neck shifted from glowing blue to shimmering gold.
"Oh hush," said Topper. "You're a glutton, kid. You're a bottom feeder. You love what you do to people after they're dead and you'll kill me in a heartbeat if you knew it meant more meat on your plate. Which it certainly does not, by the way."
"Well call me a goodie fucken two-shoes but I think imma pass, Top Hat," said Doherty, walking off. The dark energy dissipated. "I'll see ya in a hundred fucken' years, yeah? I'm not kiddin' this time."
"There are a lot of corpses here," Topper said in a singsong voice. "Whatever shall I do about them? Hum, well I suppose I'll just have to scrape them up myself and toss them in some dumpster."
"Not gonna work, Top. Fuck off."
"Fine. But before you go, tell me the next name," said Topper, idly returning to the corpses and kicking them. "I want to get a jump on things. Pretty please?"
Doherty stopped walking, turned slightly, muttered 'what the hell' and slid an ancient scrap of animal hide from his pocket.
"I knew you'd come around," Topper said with glee, giving Doherty a spiteful hug. "Always around to help me out of a pickle, you little rascal!"
"Righ', when was th' last scheduled feedin' you did?" Doherty asked, sighing as he unfolded The List.
"Last time I saw you, it seems. I always get sidetracked by this wonderful crumbling world of ours, yep-o. Can't keep these fingers out of the cookie jar for long."
"So th' last one was Dana, then?"
"Oooo, Dana was a treat! Yes, yes – Dana the Delicious Dame of Decadence! I loved her dearly."
"Alright then… here. Target Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty. Name Leeann Mantra, parental status orphaned, radiation level critical. Age fourteen years. Masteries include," Doherty said, squinting past his perpetually cracked glasses, "Fencing, Contemporary Botany and Echinococcus Manipulation. What the fuck does that last one mean, eh?"
"Ooo! Slithering parasites," said Topper, bending over backwards and grinning up a storm. He began to playfully poke his associate in the belly. "Have you ever met a person with scoleciphobia? Or do you suffer from it, my friend? Do those adorable wormy creatures make you squirm? I don't think I've ever asked you."
Doherty tasted a sudden gush of vomit in the back of his throat, but decided not to acknowledge it. "Y'know, I'm thinkin' I'm pretty indifferent to th'worms, yeah?"
Topper stopped poking him and snubbed his nose up. "Has anyone ever told you that you're deplorable? Right, right, right."
"Look, I told ya' the next target," said Doherty, folding up the old file and clenching it in his fist. "Now, if you're fucken' done, I think I'll go back t'bed."
"She's a shapeshifter, you know. I can tell that much just from her description."
"Like I care."
"You should," said Topper, finally serious. "She's fifty thousand years old, at least."
"You did hear m'say fourteen, yeah? Like as in… fourteen years?"
"Her body's age, maybe," said Topper, rubbing his chest. "But I'll bet a major organ or two that her soul's carved from something ancient, yep-o."
"Whatever, Top Hat. If yer right, then all the besta luck to ya. If not, then the world keeps on turnin' round and round."
"Bah," said Topper, idly pushing his stubby friend into the sand; Doherty went toppling down head over heels, losing his glasses and The List. A powerful gust of wind appeared out of the blue, pushing the old scrap into the air where it magically fluttered into the band of Topper's hat. "Look here, if I'm right – and I am – Little Miss Mantra has the potential to murder everyone involved in this upcoming situation. Shapeshifters are rare, vengeful and extraordinarily clairvoyant. Chances are good that she already knows about this conversation, you understand?"
"I'll be thousands o' miles under th'earth when it all happens. If it all happens, I mean. You ain't even looked at the list since Dana – why start again now?"
"None of that even matters, Doherty. The List remains The List, and the souls remain devoured, oh yes. It must be done," said Topper, staring into the oppressive sun. "If anything, my speculations will prepare us for the worst, eh? I'd prefer to be fully prepared if we encounter any real dark magic out there."
The stout little man coughed up a mouthful of sand, glaring at his elder. "And y'always talk about th' dark magic, when yer the darkest creature I think I ever fucken' met. I mean, you gave me darkness t'fool around with underground."
"Talk, talk, talk, Doherty. It's absolutely incessant with you, isn't it? Let us get directly to the point – will you be accompanying me to see Little Miss Mantra or not?"
Doherty finally found his glasses, dusted the sand from them and slid them back onto his face. "I'm goin' back t'bed."
"Why? Do you find something repulsive about the way I conduct my business, Mister Doherty?"
The two nearly suffocated in Topper's sarcasm before bursting into fits of laughter.
"You're the worst person I've ever known," Topper said between giggles. "Fine, Doherty. Stay here in the middle of the desert and drown, you disgusting bottom-feeder. After I investigate those smoke signals, I'll be off to help a little girl stumble into the light. Good day, sir."
Topper snapped his fingers and disappeared, and with that, Doherty found himself surrounded by death on all sides. Death and sand, both idly fluttering in the breeze.
After a few moments of inner conflict, he shrugged his shoulders in defeat and began to work on the corpses.