Deamons

Chapter 14 Splat part 3

He worries they may drive by and see him so he dashes off the beaten path wherever he can. Just ahead is one of those opportunities. A big wooded park just to the inside of the city. The neighborhood is not good and it is dusk. Two young men are walking a Doberman pincher as he runs by. They holler at him, but he does not stop, he just keeps on running. They holler louder and he looks back. The let loose the dog. Starke runs harder. He has seen so much death some accompanied by mutilation.

One dead man flashes through his mind. His hands and face where carved up by the claw end of a hammer. He picked up street prostitutes and one left the door unlocked behind her when she passed into his house. They thought he had more money then he did and had it hidden around the house. He must have put his hands up to defend himself when the man swung the claw end of the hammer at him. So many pieces of skin and meat pulled from his hands. Only a few to his face.

Starke imagines that is what the dog will due to him when it catches him. He thinks his only chance might be to hit the dog hard in its temple. His mother temple shots dropped him. He needed to hit the dog hard and get lucky with the aim on a moving target. He looks back again. They dog gone, the men stand alone. He does not know if the dog caught scent of a cat or got caught in a whirlwind and he does not care. He just runs and keeps running until he cannot no more.

He is in a really bad part of the city now. The kind of part where many of the buildings are boarded up and people walk like zombies. It is dark. Undesirables a creeping out all around him. He keeps walking not knowing what to do. Now he is wishing he could have slept in that park some ways back. He stands out. Junkies looking for easy money are eying him up. The look like salivating big cats stalking prey. A municipal bus passes by. He chases it waving his arms. It stops. He hustles on paying his fair then finds a seat. The junkies outside the bus look on like piranha watching bait lift out of the water on a string.

He rides the bus looking for anywhere he knows, seeing nothing familiar. Every stop he sees more people get off as none come on. Now it is just him and three other rough cats who are sitting all the way to the back of the bus. They are calling him pretty and asking what is in the bag. The neighborhoods passing by on the outside of the bus are looking bleaker.

Another gift emerges. It is Intuition. The deamons look to push it aside. Death and Pity trying to loom large over this gift. Unlike any other however this gift is unaffected. His great aunt is back home praying for him, its all she can do. Intuition has run in her family since way back. Her mother had it strong, she has it some. She is praying that for Starke to have it now so he may be safe.

Intuition walks right through all the deamons and gets to the inner ear. "You see those men back there Starke," Intuition says to Starke. The deamons had seen them. They could feel their evil. Those men had many deamons they wished to mix with. "Those men mean to do you harm, but do not worry", she says.

Starke looks back. The one of them with the single gold tooth pulls his coat open flashing a gun. "We won't need that on this pussy," another one of them say. "We gonna eat you up," another announces. The bus driver announces two more stops then the bus is going off duty. Starke panics. He will have to get off. The safety of the driver's presence will be gone and he will be done.

"Don't worry Intuition tells him. She has a way to silence out all his deamons. He is at peace again. "Just listen to me. Get ready to move but do not show it. Just like they taught you in karate, do not telegraph your moves." Starke thinks of all the sparring he did with the more advanced men. If he moved his foot the wrong way or dropped a shoulder the better men knew his move in advance and made him pay.

The bus door opens. A man is standing at the second to last stop. He looked to be getting on then stops and just stands there. The driver starts the bus rolling and starts closing the door with the hand lever. "Now Starke run!" Intuition screams in his inner ear. The releases the calm she had been holding in his being and the terror rushes in again. All the deamons screaming how they want to join with the deamons in the other men can be heard now. It is like the silence of falling being broken by the ground. Energy rushes throughout Starke and he uses it.

Like a firecracker popping off the pavement he is at the door, pushes it open and it shuts behind him. The bus is still moving. The three older men are looking out the window at him mouthing words of death and showing signs like one where a knife is cutting their throat.

"Starke, you don't want to be here when they get off the next stop, run that way," Intuition says. Starke looks down the street. It is not a way that looks good to him but he just knows, something inside him tells him, go that way. He runs. The way looks murky and he does not know what he will do for the night but he knows nothing looks friendly nearby. Rats scurry out of his way as he jumps over them. If he did not have something worse behind him he would be more concerned. Then he sees a familiar sight. The lights of the Inner Harbor a tourist commercial area of downtown Baltimore. Relieved, he slows down to a walk.