Trespasser (Part XXX)

Posted on June 6, 2017 by R. Richardsson

John stared absently at the scabs on the backs of his knuckles, and wondered how they had gotten there. There was some residual pain, as if they had been previously injured, but he couldn’t recall how, if when, that would have happened. It was as if he was peering through a thick fog, and his memory was the shadow hidden beneath its damp embrace.

His house was empty, his wife and daughter having long since gone to her parents. For what reason, he also couldn’t remember, only that he had only spoken to them once, since. She had been angry with him, accusing him of being hurtful during their last conversation, but like the mystery of his hands, this, too, was something he couldn’t remember doing.

He should be angry. Shouldn’t he? It felt as if there was something he should be remembering, something that felt more important than the two things most recently on his mind.

He looked around as if in a daze, seeing his surroundings for what felt like the first time today. He was at the dining room table, upon which were the remains of his last several meals. He didn’t remember eating recently, but the evidence couldn’t be denied. Not by him, nor by the several dozen flies that flew from plate to plate, tasting his decaying leftovers.

The room smelled, ripe from the lack of cleanliness, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. If he had been hungry before, that feeling was long since gone. He made a mental note to clean before his family got home as he turned and walked into the living room. The thought was forgotten before he’d finished passing through the door.

His living room was in no better shape. Apparently, he had taken a few meals in here as well. Three plates, each with the remains of forgotten meals upon them, sat upon the coffee table, along with an empty pizza box. But was that there before? Hadn’t he had friends over?

He couldn’t remember.

It also didn’t matter right now. He would have to clean that up later, he thought as he lay down on his couch. He wrinkled his nose as he noticed another funky smell in the air, but before he could identify it, he had been overcome with sleep.

– – – – – – – – – –

Hours later, (or was it minutes?), he shot up off of the couch, shrieking. His skin was clammy, and his hair stood out wildly on the right side of his head, but none of these things he would notice until the fear had run its course, nearly two minutes later.

As the dreams faded from memory, they took with them the feelings they had inspired, leaving him to wonder what it was that had frightened him. He looked around as if in shock, struggling to regain his bearings as he finally realized he was awake. The room was darker, and the light behind the curtains fell closer to the wall than it did when he lay down, suggesting it was now late in the afternoon.

“…tho gooooood!”

The familiar, nasally voice, of someone he knew screamed at him from the shadows, and he screamed as well. He screamed as he fell to the floor. He screamed as he curled into a fetal position. He screamed, and he screamed, and he screamed, until he could hear the laughter no longer.

The Morelli Bros. (Chapter II, Part IV)

Posted on January 17, 2017 by R. Richardsson

Deep within the bowels of the fort, where the shadows were cast by molten rivers, and only the most fearsome guardians awaited, was imprisoned a young lady of royal importance. The fourth child of her family, a princess to the Toadstool name, and a fighter in her own right, she came from a race of people who were very similar in appearance to the two plumbers that had come to her rescue.

She’d barely escaped the initial attack, which had begun several feet above the Royal Palace. A flying galleon sank beneath the clouds and docked against her father’s balcony. Rabid Chomps, a rare breed of man-eating plant, that unless chained to the heaviest weight would eat any and everything in their paths, had made short work of her parents.

* * * * * * * * * *

She awakened to the sound of panicked shouts outside of her room. There were tortured screams coming from every direction; through her window, the walls, in the distance, beneath the hurried cries of those outside, and for a brief moment, she had been disoriented. As she struggled to free herself from her blanket, two guards burst through the door, each looking worse the wear.

The guard on the right, whose name was Nu’iratha, was covered in blood. His sword was drawn, but it wasn’t blood that covered the iron. A brackish ooze, slightly green in tint, dripped from the point of his blade.

“Your majesty,” he said with a touch of desperation in his voice. “You must come with me!”

The other guard, whose uniform and weapon had seen less battle, and whose name she recalled as Pou’ic, was frantically glancing over his shoulder, down the hall that led to her parents chambers.

“You must hurry,” the latter cried. “They’re coming!”

As she sat up, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, inserting her feet into her slippers as she’d done a countless number of previous mornings. The difference between each of those times and this one, was that they weren’t to the sound of battle.

Screams echoed off of the walls, each originating from different points of her ancestral home. Smoke rose into the air, outside of her window, and bestial roars preceded what could only been the death cries of her people. Forgetting her modesty, she rose in only her night-gown and rushed to her wardrobe.

“Your majesty, ” Nu’iratha protested, “we don’t have time!”

“We’ll have to make it, then,” she grunted through her teeth. “It’ll not do, for a princess to be seen in her night-clothes, during battle.”

She grabbed a dress and pulled it over her head, securing it to her waist with an embroidered belt. From this, she hung a small pouch, the contents of which she always had on hand; an enlarging mushroom, a fire-flower, and a green mushroom, though never used, was supposed to reverse time a short distance, when the need was desperate.

As she was fitting her shoes, the battle came to her door.

Pou’ic suddenly lunged forward and shoved the other guard into the room. As he did, he shouted; “Keep her safe! She may be surviving member of the royal family!” He pulled the door shut behind him, locked it from the outside, and slid the key under the door. “Love live the Queen,” he shouted heroically.

“Queen,” she mouthed.

“Worry not, your highness,” Nu’iratha had said. The others may yet live!

* * * * * * * * * *

She awoke with a start, helpless to contain the yelp that escaped her lips. She struggled to remember where she had been taken, the memory not as fresh as the one she had just escaped.

The most unexpected sensation she felt was the heat. Sweat beaded upon her skin, already, and the air was thick with moisture. Her dress clung to her skin, soaked from perspiration and reeking of fear. Beneath this was the smell of wet straw.

A single torch lit the room, though its meager light fought hard to push the darkness to the farthest side. She saw only one door, a mighty steel portcullis, of which there was no way to open from this side.

Defeated, she slumped back into the mound of straw from which she had awoken, and cried.

Trespasser (Part XXIX)

Posted on January 11, 2017 by R. Richardsson

At the end of Bryer Street, in the early hours of the next morning, and in the shadows of one small home, one could just make out two figures huddled close together. The morning had brought with it the frigid promise of old Jack Frost, covering the neatly trimmed grass with his bitter cold breath. Not a single sound interrupted the coming dawn, save the soft hum of electric lights, and maybe the occasional hushed whisper.

It had only been a few hours since they’d finished with their grim task, but neither had yet to feel the effects of their labour. Both were worried, one for his longtime neighbor and friend, the other for his younger brother, who had snapped, only moments into what would have been a carefully thought out plan. They’d had to improvise once he was finished, but they were still able to draw out the confession that would damn him in the end.

“So, you think that he’ll come around to it,” Donnie asked, for what must have been the sixth time since they walked over here.

“Uh-huh,” Davie muttered. “He gonna need his rest now, don’t you worry bout dat. In da mornin’, you’ll see.”

Donnie studied the old man with a raised eyebrow, for a moment, as he gauged whether there was enough, yet, that needed said, between the two.

“You know,” he began softly, “I’ve only ever seen one other person react the way John did down there. It was before the Battle of Shewan. Me and a couple of buddies were out on patrol when we came across a small group of ’em, the Taliban. Three of them stood between us and the fourth member of their group, who was laying on top of this little girl. She was screaming for help, you know? My buddies wanted to get out of there, but I just couldn’t. I’d made eye contact, and even though I couldn’t understand what she was saying, I knew that I might die trying to save her.”

Donnie paused to take a long drink from his bottle, just another in a long line to pass his lips this night, before continuing.

“One of my boys, he went back for help, see? That left me and Nick. I told him; ‘You don’t have to stay, you know?’ but he wasn’t having any of it. I’d saved his ass just as many times as he’d saved mine, and he knew I’d do the same if the shoes had been on the other foot.”

Donnie finished off his drink and cracked open another, downing half of it before continuing.

“It’s fuckin’ sick, how simple it was. We took out our knives, stepped up behind two of them and slit their throats. Before the bodies hit the ground, we turned like fuckin’ dancers, you know? Anyway, we turned at the same time, and slammed our knives into the spine of the remaining guard. It’s not that it would have been hard, taking them out, they died with their dicks in their hands.”

He hadn’t realized it, but during the course of his story, he had begun to cry. Hot tears slowly burned trails down his cheeks, though he’d have been hard pressed to notice. Absently, he wiped them away with the cuff of his jacket, with one hand, while slamming back the rest of his newly open bottle, with the other.

“Now, I had been the one to make the decision to help her, you know? But it was Nicky, it was Nicky who made the first move on him. That remaining rag head was climbing to his feet when Nicky just, kicked him square in the face. I remember the sound his ass made when it hit the bricks. It was a meaty slap, and had there not been that girl at our feet, I might have giggled. As it was, I felt as if I was moving in slow motion. As I was pulling her to her feet, trying to cover her dignity and calm her, Nicky had laid him out with another kick to the face.”

Donnie trembled, partially from the cold, but mostly from the shock that came with his memory. It’s not that he was cold, the meager warmth from the closeness of his friend, combined with the massive amount of alcohol he’d consumed, helped to ward off the discomfort that came with it.

“Nicky,” he sobbed.

“Donnie,” came the soothing voice of his friend. “You in a safe place, now.” Davie put his arm around the veteran and gave him a brief squeeze, but the other was lost in his thoughts, reliving the events of that night.

“He wouldn’t listen though. I had the girl, wrapped in a blanket I don’t remember having, and was trying to pull her out of the open, into safety, you know? We had just murdered three of Al-qaeda’s finest; there were sure to be others nearby. I watched in horror as Nicky bent over the one who was raping her. He had his knife in one hand, and the guy’s junk in the other. He cut it off in one sweep, turned, and jammed the bloody club into the guy’s mouth, which he covered until he stopped moving altogether.”

“Jesus,” Davie muttered softly.

“That’s just it,” Donnie said miserably, and when Davie looked at him with a confused look on his face, he only shook his head in sadness. “There is no God. No Jesus. No Holy Fucking Ghost, you know? Out there,” he gestured toward the street, “there is only man. Believe what you want, but me,” he lifted his hands in display, “I’m going to stick with these.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, neither wanting to disturb the solemnity of the moment. Donnie drained two more beers before another word was spoken.

“What about your boy, Nicky,” Davie finally asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Moments after Nicky had choked that fucker out on his own dick, reinforcements started to show up, only it was for them, not us. Everything was still moving in slow motion for me, you know, so I could see it happen plain as day. Two insurgents exploded from a nearby doorway and opened fire on us. I could feel the bullets as they passed by me. I’ll never understand how not a single bullet hit me, but several managed to find their way into Nicky’s back. The girl, who had been screaming at me this whole time, wrestled her way loose, only to take a bullet in the back of her head. One second her face was there, the next, it was gone.”

“I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards, only these flashes, you know? It’s like I was knocked out, and I was having these momentary flashes where I see this face looking down at me, or hear this voice as someone spoke to me, and it would be two days before I “woke” up.”

“So, you know, when Johnny called me up with his problem,” he said with an angry gesture towards the Marsh place, “I was all for it. I… I didn’t want him to-”

“-end up like Nicky.” Davie finished for him.

Donnie leaned forward and rested his forehead against that of his companion, placing one hand on the back of the other’s neck. They stayed that way for the next several minutes, each showing deep respect for the other, until the sun crested over the eastern horizon.