"A hero is somebody who gets other people killed..."
Read the previous installments here.
Chapter Four - You Only Get One
The mountain of muscle that’s just kicked in the door crosses the room in a single stride. Why can’t these guys ever use little Napoleon-complex types for enforcers?
He hauls me off the love-seat like a rag doll, and slams me against the aged plaster wall. A fine rain of dust covers my face and hair, but it’s hard to notice through the fog that fills my head. That might be a concussion.
“What does a washed out drunk like you want with the girl,” the sharply dressed guy in the doorway asks.
“Well, I was thinkin’ about a blowjob. But I gotta tell ya, if your buddy here is taking over then I’m reconsidering… he’s got a real nice a…” A tightening of the baseball glove the behemoth calls a hand cuts me off in mid-sentence.
“Not the whore… the other girl…” Dapper Dan snorts.
I feel a sudden shift in my gut, a restlessness where my bowels should be. This is about to get ugly.
“Look pal…” I croak. “I don’t know what girl you’re talking about, but your friend here is going to want to put me down right now!” The threat feels more real to me than it does to them. I know what’s about to unfold.
“Or what,” he quips rhetorically.
“You don’t get a second chance to make your first mistake,” I say, as I feel the tendrils uncoil from under my shirt.
“Either one of you…” JR’s voice comes in from the sitting room.
Suddenly Marjorie is resting snugly against Dapper’s occipital bone. He blanches.
The man-mountain looks back just for a moment, but that moment is all it needs.
The sickly green, wet tendrils fasten to his face. Like snakes they crawl over his skin, seeking out his ears and mouth. Before he even knows what’s happening they’re burrowing through his ear canals and up through the soft palate. I slump to the floor, bracing myself for the rush.
As their thousands of tiny mouths begin to consume his brain, the endorphins slam into my system. I begin to spasm. It’s like a thousand orgasms, all at once.
In the doorway, the dandy starts screaming. The tentacles have forced their way into the ocular cavity and out the thug’s eyelids. I’d scream too if I wasn’t in the middle of a rush that would make Keith Richards shit himself.
Mercifully JR cracks the money man across the back of the head, turning him off like a light switch. His buddy isn’t so lucky.
It will take a good ten minutes for the creature to finish off the brain and internal organs, leaving the huge mook as little more than an empty meat-suit. Not that I’ll remember much of it. I’m too busy tripping balls.
I don’t remember much of the ten minutes after that either. I guess consuming another organism’s endorphins directly from the source isn’t good for the digestive system. If I’d eaten anything, I’d be puking up. I’m glad I turned down JR’s earlier offer.
By the time I pull myself together, my symbiote has withdrawn to it’s usual hiding place, right where my intestines used to be, and JR has hauled Dapper Dan into the room. JR looks at me like nothing has happened. I guess it’s a “Hey, I’m a revenant and you’ve got a monster living in your body cavity. Glass houses” kind of thing.
“So I suppose we need to wake this asshole up if you want to talk to him” he says.
“Yeah… give me a minute” I reply.
TO BE CONTINUED
Chapter Four - You Only Get One
The mountain of muscle that’s just kicked in the door crosses the room in a single stride. Why can’t these guys ever use little Napoleon-complex types for enforcers?
He hauls me off the love-seat like a rag doll, and slams me against the aged plaster wall. A fine rain of dust covers my face and hair, but it’s hard to notice through the fog that fills my head. That might be a concussion.
“What does a washed out drunk like you want with the girl,” the sharply dressed guy in the doorway asks.
“Well, I was thinkin’ about a blowjob. But I gotta tell ya, if your buddy here is taking over then I’m reconsidering… he’s got a real nice a…” A tightening of the baseball glove the behemoth calls a hand cuts me off in mid-sentence.
“Not the whore… the other girl…” Dapper Dan snorts.
I feel a sudden shift in my gut, a restlessness where my bowels should be. This is about to get ugly.
“Look pal…” I croak. “I don’t know what girl you’re talking about, but your friend here is going to want to put me down right now!” The threat feels more real to me than it does to them. I know what’s about to unfold.
“Or what,” he quips rhetorically.
“You don’t get a second chance to make your first mistake,” I say, as I feel the tendrils uncoil from under my shirt.
“Either one of you…” JR’s voice comes in from the sitting room.
Suddenly Marjorie is resting snugly against Dapper’s occipital bone. He blanches.
The man-mountain looks back just for a moment, but that moment is all it needs.
The sickly green, wet tendrils fasten to his face. Like snakes they crawl over his skin, seeking out his ears and mouth. Before he even knows what’s happening they’re burrowing through his ear canals and up through the soft palate. I slump to the floor, bracing myself for the rush.
As their thousands of tiny mouths begin to consume his brain, the endorphins slam into my system. I begin to spasm. It’s like a thousand orgasms, all at once.
In the doorway, the dandy starts screaming. The tentacles have forced their way into the ocular cavity and out the thug’s eyelids. I’d scream too if I wasn’t in the middle of a rush that would make Keith Richards shit himself.
Mercifully JR cracks the money man across the back of the head, turning him off like a light switch. His buddy isn’t so lucky.
It will take a good ten minutes for the creature to finish off the brain and internal organs, leaving the huge mook as little more than an empty meat-suit. Not that I’ll remember much of it. I’m too busy tripping balls.
I don’t remember much of the ten minutes after that either. I guess consuming another organism’s endorphins directly from the source isn’t good for the digestive system. If I’d eaten anything, I’d be puking up. I’m glad I turned down JR’s earlier offer.
By the time I pull myself together, my symbiote has withdrawn to it’s usual hiding place, right where my intestines used to be, and JR has hauled Dapper Dan into the room. JR looks at me like nothing has happened. I guess it’s a “Hey, I’m a revenant and you’ve got a monster living in your body cavity. Glass houses” kind of thing.
“So I suppose we need to wake this asshole up if you want to talk to him” he says.
“Yeah… give me a minute” I reply.
TO BE CONTINUED