What Crawls Below

4 § Old Habits

The most recent kill had not kept Cyrus's demons at bay for long. Within days, he was desperate to a point he'd never known; he knew nothing would take the edge off now, no animal or beast or anything in between.

Cyrus scratched the skin on his arms until it was raw and angry-red; it did nothing to drive the darkness out. He could never quite reach it, the feelings bubbling and threatening to boil over inside him. He was beginning to suspect the only way he would never hurt anyone again was if he were dead.

He should have died that first night. It would have saved the world, and Cyrus, plenty of suffering.

A part of him was ready to take the knife and slash his own throat--it would be damn poetic--the darkness residing in him never seemed to let him. It wanted Cyrus alive; it wanted Cyrus to wreak havoc. And if it weren't for the other thing that would eat him alive if he were to relent to his murderous tendencies--his somewhat intact conscience--Cyrus would have given up a long time ago. The old him wouldn't have cared who had gotten hurt.

This new him, this fragile and crumbling version of himself, did. Cyrus could think of only one thing that might numb his pain, if only temporarily, and he spent half of a night wandering the streets of New York seeking it out.

The old house he'd found and killed a junkie in was deserted. Maybe everyone else could sense the negativity surrounding the place, the darkness Cyrus had left there. New York was for the dreamers and Cyrus gathered there wasn't much of a line dividing himself from them: they all fell victim to their baser instincts eventually, and when you hit rock bottom you either drown...

Or you drug yourself up to ignore the fact you're still, in fact, drowning.

This considered, it wasn't hard to find another similar house in a seedy neighborhood. The foundation shook from the thunderous music coming from inside; lights flashed from the windows erratically; the surrounding area reeked heavily of weed. In his days on the street, Cyrus had become quite accustomed to its musky odor.

Crossing his fingers whoever was inside had something a bit stronger than marijuana, and not giving himself time to think it through or chicken out, Cyrus strode straight up to the door and knocked.

It took several minutes for someone to answer; then the door cracked just an inch, a wide, bloodshot eye staring back at Cyrus through the gap. It looked him over before narrowing and the other man said, "Get lost," in a gravelly voice.

Cyrus's hand shot up and stopped the door from shutting. The other man flung it open, revealing his taller--though just as slender--form. His face was pockmarked, his limbs twitchy. He couldn't even keep his eyes on Cyrus; they kept darting around in every direction. It wouldn't be hard, Cyrus mused, to scare him, but he was also worried what impact the drugs the man was on would have on his behavior. Producing a wad of cash from his wallet, painfully aware of how thin it was growing, Cyrus held it out in the space between them and waited.

The man regarded him with his twitchy gaze for several moments before grunting and swiping the cash out of Cyrus's hands. He shoved Cyrus inside and shut the door again.

The lights he'd seen from outside came from some kind of speaker; the lights seemed to flash in time with the beat it was projecting. Beyond that, there was no other source of light inside the house, but Cyrus could make out the forms of half a dozen people in the room with him. None of them looked up at his entrance.

The man who had opened the door reappeared, shoving a plastic bag about as long as Cyrus's pinkie finger into his hand. He stumbled away again without a word, crashing down on a couch full of holes beside a woman who was rolling a joint. Cyrus looked away as they fell on top of each other, the woman's handiwork momentarily forgotten, and back down to the bag in his hand.