Molly (1/10)

Chapter 2

His name was John and he was a tired, old man. Why they had followed him here, he didn't know. He assumed nothing for he deserved nothing. Eventually the legs gave out. Hobbling there, he groped for his pistol but he wasn't even able to move his fingers.

He fell to the curb and silenced himself. He would partake in communion before it was done.

"Jesus," spat the monsieur. "I didn't think he'd get this far."

John rolled over and presented his palms, shaking.

The monsieur sank to one knee, pressing it against John's ribcage. John listened as the liquid in the monsieur's tank sloshed inside. John had one, at one time. He imagined it sitting in the corner of a room, some addict leaning against it, laughing.

The monsieur pulled at his gas mask and spit on the floor. "We told you to leave. You smell like shit and you don't do anything."

"I..."

The other monsieur reached into his pack and pulled out something. John's world grew hazy. He looked down, and lo there was a tube running out of his arm. Black blood running through it. His blood.

"Black blood for an animal."

Something touched his arm. John reached to try and pull down his sleeve but the monsieur wouldn't let him, black-gloved hands forcing John back against the ground.

The monsieur whistled, the sound strange coming through the mask.

"See the snake running down the arm? And three heads. Old man: you were a terror back in the day, yeah?"

John's vision continued to expand, contract.

"That means he killed three men, times ten. That's what they do. They find kids and take them, maybe torture them, maybe more, then they hang them up to dry. Like laundry." The monsieur slapped John's cheek lightly. "Just another motherfucker."

"Should we be worried?" asked the other monsieur. "That's going into the reservoir."

"Blood is blood."

In a fit of panicked strength John shot his hand forward, grasping, finding the tube and trying to yank it out but the monsieur was wise to his game, taking his fingers and nearly cracking them.

"Motherfucker." The monsieur slapped John, the other monsieur laughing until he began to cough, and when he didn't stop coughing John felt some of the pressure on his stomach ease.

"You okay?"

The other monsieur spit on the ground. "Fuck."

The tube was pulled out. John sucked in a panicked breath.

"Are you okay?" The monsieur asked again, rising up, seemingly unsure of what to do.

John fell, the back of his head rolling against metal.

"Am I dying?" John asked.

The coughing monsieur bent over, breathing heavily. "God damn-it."

"We don't have time for your shit." John's monsieur took out a machine pistol, the thing clicking to life as it rearranged itself, nozzle now pointed at John. "Sit down and be happy you'll be useful for something."

The sky was black. Someone had absconded with it. John imagined a day not overcast. A pleasant breeze. A warm sun, a sky not mired by those haunting visages covering one horizon to the other.

Pain--it spread through his brain and trickled down to the rest of his body.

A scream. Both monsieurs turned their heads.

"Did we get enough?"

"Probably not."

The monsieur took the cap at the end of the tube and pinched it, running it back into his dark attire and then moving on with his cohort.

John lay there, trying to catch his breath; he could feel the beating of his heart strain. Through something like fury, John managed to get up.

Smoke was rising up from cracks in the ground, spotlights searching that inglorious sky. John could smell the acrylic taste of spilled blood.

A door opened. A man came out, throwing a cat into the street. A click of a locked door. The cat screamed, then grew quiet, sulking away.

A woman shouted at John, calling him a degenerate, telling him to go away. He made it to an alleyway before sliding against the wall and falling. He clenched himself and wept aloud.

His dreams were blank canvases. He thought he saw his mother's face, but it was faint.

John awoke to a monsieur prodding at him with a boot. John curled up and closed his eyes.

"That's enough. I don't want to taste his shit again."

They wandered away. John nearly called out to them, to help him. His vision had not improved and now he was sure he would die soon.

"I didn't think he'd be able to get up."

"He killed people for a living. Makes you tougher. Not stronger: tougher."

"Is there a difference?"

"Only in application."

Screams. Gunfire. The monsieurs ducked to the side, taking out their machine pistols and pointing them down the street.

One of them began to cough. "You can't leave me," he gasped.

A man appeared from behind a set of abandoned metal boxes. He was holding a shotgun, wearing rags and with eyes almost completely red.

"What are you doing out there?" he called out. "This is my house."

The monsieur rose up and shot the shotgunner in the chest. Blood sprayed onto the street, the apartment complex rising up behind him.

They came to the body. Another burst of fire, and the body lay still.

They came out from their shelters: the ragged, the malformed. Pilgrims in refuge with stringy bodies and faded eyes.

"What are you going to do?" a woman said. She was on the verge of tears, her shirt stained with dried blood. "How could you let all this happen?"

"Not our problem," the monsieur said, lowering his gun but not putting it away.

"You people said you would help!"

"Lady, leave us alone."

"Bastards," she screamed.

People ran away, more than a few diving into corridors leading further into the earth.

The monsieur shoved the woman away as he came up to the shotgunner and with deft hands took out his tube and ran it into the dead man's arm. His tank grunted, the green liquid within swaying.

The woman ran up; she seemed ready to launch herself at them.

"Get out of here or I'll shoot you," said the other monsieur.

"Fuck you."

When she died, John was almost relieved. The world had shrunk, was now barely a faint glow as he relived his own memories, and as he died he wondered if even the monsieurs could be saved and, deciding not, reserved to meet them again in hell.

He watched them open a sewer and run into it once the bodies had been pilfered and, with a heavy sigh, John let go.