Hey all, Happy Easter! Here's the conclusion to chapter 42 in all of its rough draft glory.
If you find you're enjoying this twisted little fable, why not tell your friends? I'm attempting to hit the ground running by building an audience in anticipation of the happy day this finally gets edited and published. Having people already in place who like the same messed-up stories I do would be a huge benefit.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy!
Bone leered at him for an uncomfortably long beat before being finally pulled by his wife out of sight.
This couldn’t be happening. This was his mess, not Rebbecca’s. He wanted to scream, to bring them back, anything to make them wait. Each footstep receding in the distance was a spike of failure driven into his conscience.
Stirling willed himself to stand, but in the confines of the barrel found the best he could do was to latch the fingers of his right hand on the edge of the opening. It was a start. After a monumental effort, his left hand followed. That left him panting with a cold sweat prickling out all over his body. He heard the sound of a metal rolling door closing somewhere in the warehouse with a muffled thud. Fuck!
About the only good thing about his situation was that whatever was making him feel ill wasn’t getting any worse. After some wiggling, he found he was able to rock the barrel, the contents sloshing thickly around his ankles. Once, twice, three times, before the barrel slipped off its wooden pallet and crashed on its side to the cement floor.
Stirling was decanted with much of the remaining contents of the barrel with a noisome sploosh. It felt about as good as it sounded.
“Here we see the miracle of birth on the African Savanah,” he wheezed to himself in an overblown Australian accent, his cheek pressed against the cold floor.
He braced himself on the toppled barrel and slowly got to his feet. The room tilted around him and it took him a long pause before he felt he could move without falling over. He searched the nearby racks for the medicine bottle, but it was gone. Presumably, it rested in Rag's had pocket now.
He staggered down the deserted aisles of empty barrels using the empty steel racks to steady himself him as he went. On the far east wall of the warehouse where the series of loading bays. The sound of a truck pulling away from the lot drifted inside.
He didn’t think he’d be able to lift one of the rolling doors, but thankfully there was a side door and he stuck his head out just in time to see a large moving truck turn right onto the street and accelerate away. It was nearly obscured by a swarm of souls swirling in its wake. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught sight of Rebbecca’s form once or twice in the swirling mass. Double Fuck!
He sat down heavily on the cement stoop. What now? He could slowly feel his strength coming back, but he wasn’t going to be hitting the gym anytime soon.
Magnon glided from over the building to land on the top of the chain link fence that surrounded the property fifty feet away.
“Wow. Look at you. If you were anyone else, I’d consider eating you before you went bad. What happened in there?”
“That redheaded temptress of darkness lied to me!” he spat a last glob of blood out of his mouth. “She said I’d get a second chance, but when she sent me back from that miserable little office I was right in the middle of dying again. Now look at me,” he said gesturing down at the bloody mess that was his entire front. “On top of it all, they made ‘Becca into one of those gin and she just left with the rest of them on that truck,” he said gesturing weakly toward the road.
“Woah there. Let’s back things up a second. If Merciful Death didn’t bail you out, how are you here? You look pretty alive to me.”
“Well, it’s no fucking thanks to Emily!” He said “Emily” like other people would say “rancid slug semen.” “I’m talking to you right now because I pulled my own spuds out of the oven.”
“And just how did you manage that?”
Stirling used the stair rail to pull himself to his feet with a grunt.
“There was a medicine bottle filled with this red shit next to the barrels. One of the spirits in there said he thought was Panacea, but that it had something extra added. I don’t know what else was in it, but it definitely had some of my own magic in there. I had it in my pocket when I went into the barrel. Right when I was about to die, I took a little drink. Fixed me right up.”
He began to walk drunkenly toward the exit of the parking lot. The gate was a chain link panel on pneumatic tires, which Madame Rage and Mister Bone had been good enough to lock up after them when they left. Damn their security-minded eyes.
“Until it didn’t. You don’t look that hot.”
“I don’t feel that hot. Whatever that stuff was, the hangover is even worse than it tasted, and it tasted like I rimmed a skunk. I feel absolutely wrecked.”
He chose a baseball-sized rock from the ground, took a feeble swing at the lock, and nearly dropped it out of sheer fatigue.
“Maybe she knew it was there and she sent you back so you’d have a chance to drink it.” The crow didn’t sound all that certain.
He swung the rock again and connected, a small scuff appeared on the steel body of the lock.
“Sorry, I’m not buying it. It was sheer luck that I even remembered I had that bottle in my pocket. She backed out on the deal. Only explanation.”
“Sure, sure. So what are you going to do now?”
“I heard them saying something about Memorial Park and Asphodel. They have ‘Becca with them, so that’s where I’m going. Some assholes just need killing.”
“You’re doing it again, you know.”
He cocked his head up at the bird, panting. “Doing what?”
“Reacting to them.”
Stirling took another unsuccessful swing with the rock. “I fail to see what else I can do. They have one of the few people I actually give a shit about. I’m going to go and try to get her back.”
“How about a real plan, unless you really think the “Hulk smash” strategy is really the best thing going forward.”
Stirling glared at the bird and hefted the rock. “Talky bird have clever mouth, Stirling fix and smash with rock.”
“All I’m saying is that thinking your way through a problem is a great way not to get stabbed and stuffed in a barrel to die.”
“Can’t you go and do something useful like get me a Red Bull or something? You’re so chatty.”
He swung at the lock again and sent the lock swinging on the chain, still undamaged. “Besides, I’m a linear thinker. I see a problem and I fix it.”
“How about extending the line a bit further along than your immediate next step then? Your ancestors developed the gift of abstract thought and planning. Let’s put some of that to work.”
Magnon actually had a good point, and any excuse to sit down was difficult to resist. “Fine. Let’s think this through.” Stirling slid down to sit at the base of the fence. He wasn’t making any progress with the lock anyway. "Rag, Bone, and the funky bunch have yanked out Rebbecca’s soul and hijacked her body for their own nefarious ends. I need to get her soul back into her body. I’m also nearly positive that their boss, Knox, used the magical energy I put in my hunting decoys to make the potion that made it possible.”
“It’s actually called an Alchemical Philter.”
“And that changes the problem, how?”
“It’s fine as long as you’re happy going around sounding like a slack-jawed rube.”
“Let’s save the editorializing for when we have the time, sound good?”
“It’s your show. How do you think you’ll be able to help her?”
“I know where Memorial Park is. I can make a plan on the way.”
“That’s a good start. Did you also know that Memorial Park is the location of the main portal to Asphodel?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Do you remember what Asphodel even is?”
“Isn’t it that place you go when you die, or something?”
“Or something. It’s also the biggest cultural and commercial hub in the Aether.”
“So what are they going there for?”
“That’s a great question. Maybe we should find out.”
Stirling jerked away from the gate as the lock shattered next to his ear. Magnon launched himself away with a squawk of fear.
Stirling rolled on his side in the gravel to find himself looking up into the face of the bike courier who had nearly killed him in the warehouse. Triple Fuck. This day just kept getting better and better.
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