The Birth of Bane (35 page)

She kissed me
then. There was nothing friendly or sisterly about it. She plunged
her tongue into my mouth, nails digging painfully into either side
of my face, holding me, keeping my immobile. She breathed into me,
filling me with the essence of her, muttering into my very
core.
“It’s not real. It’s not
real. It’s not real,”
she prayed
into me, unwilling to stop, her lips dancing and warm across
mine.

I was stunned.
My arms limp at either side, knowing I should be outraged, fully
aware my girlfriend was mere feet away, while this succubus was
having her way with me. I should’ve shoved her away with every
ounce of strength, my mind alight with revulsion, well aware those
very same lips had been on my father – his lips, his face,
his cock?
I should’ve, but I didn’t. I was despondent. I was
defeated. There was nothing I could do.

When she broke
free, finally, I had no reaction. When she guided me, more gingerly
than necessary, toward the doors, I went. All I wanted to do was
cry. My anger had seared a hole through my chest. Great hunks of
seared flesh blew before the winds of this place like a flag,
shredded and tattered before the Gale.

I looked back in
time to see Myra fall to the coins. Unconscious I hoped, though she
looked dead. I wept then, stumbled after the mystery that was
Rosalyn Galtier. I cried like I had, as a baby, in my mother’s
arms.

We came through
yet another set of doors and found ourselves in the alley once
more, the bluish light muted now, shadows abound and slinking from
corner to corner as she led me to its’ middle.

I felt the
strength give out in my legs and I slumped into the dirty trickle
of water there.

Rosalyn wasted
no time, placing her hands under my arms, hoisting me into a more
erect stance, her face level with mine.
“Get it together, Jerry. It wasn’t real.”

My eyes fell
into hers, desperately trying to find some sliver of truth
therein.

“
Stand up! You’re too heavy for me,”
she said, prompting me to get my feet underneath
me.
“I need you, Jerry. I can’t
do this shit alone.”
She forced
me to keep looking into her eyes, her face mirroring mine as she
spoke.

I blinked away
the tears, my vision clearing.

“
Jerry, come on,
man. You can do this. It’s not real, ok?”

I tried to nod,
but it only served to make my head hurt. I wiped my eyes with my
good hand, strong enough to stand on my own, gazing about –
anywhere but at her.
She had
kissed me and I had liked it!

As if she were
reading my mind, she said:
“Sorry about the kiss. Really. I hope you can forgive me, but
I had to do something to get you out of there.”
She was reaching for me with her right hand,
fingers wagging minutely. She wanted to know it was ok, what she
had done. She wanted to make sure I didn’t hate her for
it.

I knew this. I
could see it in her eyes.
Inadvertently, I wiped my mouth, about to say something
lame.

The words,
though, remained unspoken when I saw my grandfather walk from the
shadows and into a brighter portion of the alley. My grandfather,
my mother’s father, a man who had been dead for many years, came
shuffling from the dark, his arms before him like a wanted a
hug.

Only, it wasn’t
a hug he wanted. He craved a more intimate embrace – one with his
mouth… and his teeth.

She hadn’t
moved. She hadn’t heard him, his tattered shoes scraping across the
pavement of the alley. The moan seeping from cracked and torn lips
was lost to her.

I would’ve moved
if I knew something was wrong. I would’ve snapped the imaginary
vines holding my feet in place. But the lighting was not sufficient
enough for me to notice detail, the strange bluish tinge muted
colors like sanguine, cardinal, wine and coral. Earthly tones
tended to blend.
Maybe, I’m just
looking for an excuse. Maybe…

He was a
half-step away, an amazed greeting frozen in my throat, when I saw
his jaw gape, his tongue loll, half of it missing as though it had
been chewed and swallowed.

I lunged for
Rosalyn.

But, he had her
already. His gigantic mandible closed upon the meat of her shoulder
and bit down – hard.

Her expression
went from wistful to shock to torture. Her mouth formed into a
soundless “O”, her eyes as wide as tea cups, her lone hand still
extended toward me, only now for a different reason.

Blood spurted
through his brown teeth and gums, scratch
ed grotesquely upon bone.

My hand found
hers, but only for a moment.

He jerked her
backward, holding her above the breasts with his other arm,
masticating, forcing huge gulps of the woman down his throat. He
bent down and took another bite.

Rosalyn found
her voice. Her scream has haunted me ever since. It was though the
centermost bit of her was pleading for help with every shred of
strength she could muster.

A score, two
score, maybe a hundred moans joined her shrieks. They were long,
low-level syllables that made the entire alley resonate.

I glanced behind
my grandfather and saw them. They were like him. Filthy, fractured,
decrepit versions of the people they had once been. Their clothing
hardly covered them - desiccated cocks and vaginas, breasts and
buttocks peeked out from underneath, pale, blue-white, sometimes
crawling with vermin.

I stepped back,
stricken.

Rosalyn never
stopped screaming.

I was stumbling,
my mind yelling at me to get away, my heart torn. My eyes nailed to
hers as my grandfather continued to devour her.

They were around
her within seconds, thrumming with the prospect of eating. Hands
and mouths descended, from every angle, from all sides.

Tears obscured
my vision, a horrible sense of guilt washed over me and I was
almost sick. I would’ve fallen to my knees in despair if her wails
hadn’t stopped. I glanced back.

Already some of
them were coming toward me.

I spun on my
feet and began to run, disgraced wetness streaking either side of
my face. Of their own accord, my legs began to churn with all they
were worth. I was sprinting within the span of a few heartbeats, my
chest pounding, my lungs filling and un-filling. I saw a door to my
left was cracked open about three inches. I made for it with such
velocity I could feel my slippers tearing, bursting at the
seams.

Behind me the
hungry groans of the mob receded.

I flashed
through the portal without preamble, slamming the doors behind me.
I swung about, seeing the locking mechanism and gave it a violent
twist. Through labored breathing, I was going to look for an exit.
I’d had enough. I needed to get out of this place. Sooner or later,
I was going to make a mistake and I’d be killed just like
Rosalyn.

I arched about
and I ran into something hard, unmoving, precisely where my
forehead meets the crown of my skull. It wasn’t stone or metal or
wood, so I bounced back from it relatively unhurt, but it stopped
my forward momentum.

I gazed upward
in the same instant someone spoke.

“
Goooood eveniiiing,”
he
said, each word drawn out in such a way that “good” sounded “bad”
and “evening” sounded like an announcement to come to
dinner.

I froze in
place, dumbstruck by the sight before me. It was impossible. No, it
was so absurd, it was beyond impossible.

And yet, he
stood there, wearing a tuxedo as black as the night itself, his
shirt starched white to perfection, his red bowtie the color of
hemoglobin. He wore a cape of all things with the collar high about
his cheeks, as stiff as any flagpole, and did not flap when he
moved. His skin was white, the purest I’d ever seen. His lips were
so thick, they appeared juicy, infused with too much blood. His
hair was combed back over his head, immaculate. His hands encased
in white gloves, dress shoes upon his feet.

He tilted his
head to one side, as if considering what to do, a smile broadening.
I saw the fangs the moment his mouth was stretched too wide to
conceal them. I recognized him then.
Dracula?
I thought, my mind
jammed with a mental misfire. Things were happening too
fast.
George Hamilton as…
Dracula?

He grinned even
wider, looking more like the
Joker
now, his eyes became
less soft. Intent had galvanized his expression. With one hand he
reached for those fangs.

I was certain he
was about to cut himself.
Didn’t
vampires have razor sharp teeth?

To my surprise,
he deftly plucked them from his gums. They came free with little
difficulty. He laughed and tossed them at me.

Grossed-out, I
back-peddled. I was aghast when they didn’t bounce off. They stuck
to my thick cotton pajamas. I stared down and watched as two small,
dark dots appeared at the ends of each. They were no bigger than
pinheads and yet, I knew they were eyes. Dracula’s teeth had
eyes.

Frantic, I tried
to brush them off, but they held fast, tiny filaments formed where
they met the fabric of my top. They began to crawl, like worms,
inching up my pj’s toward the collar. I yelped, grabbing at one.
The instant my finger touched the tip of it, I felt something bite
me.
The fucking tooth had bitten
me!
It was stuck to the end of
my finger, trying to burrow into my flesh. I peered around, looking
for something, anything, I could use to get this
thing
off me. There was nothing. The pain began to spread through my
hand, the lower portions of my arm.

Before me, the
unfathomable Dracula chuckled. Two more fangs had grown in place of
the ones he’d thrown at me. He had already pulled them from his
jaw. As casually as if he were offering me a Pringle or a
bite-sized Snickers’, he tossed them at me.

They landed on
my back when I turned aside. I could feel them moving toward my
armpit. The seams of my pajama top were loosened there.

“
What the fuck!” I yelled for no good reason, other than I was
outraged, confused, scared to death. I grabbed the hem of the
garment and pulled it over my head and off in one swift motion.
Unsure why
I did so, I threw it
as hard as I could at the man in the tuxedo.

He made no move
to dodge. It struck him about the shoulders.

I put as much
distance as I could between us. Then,
I knelt and ran my finger across the concrete floor with
as much force as I could stand. The pain was enormous, my entire
arm, from wrist to elbow, was burning. The maggot-like tooth
snapped in half. I stood, digging what had to be its’ head out of
my flesh, keeping an eye on the man.

He hadn’t moved,
but I could tell he had more teeth in his cupped hand.

I ran for one of
the two sets of doors leading away.

He didn’t
follow.

I came into the
alley once again. I looked left and saw the rainbow spiders
fighting with the flesh-eaters. The noise they were making was
sickening. I covered my mouth and nose, retching at the sound of
limbs being ripped off, of chitinous joints popping, of bodily
fluids spurting upon the ground.

I heard the
tires screeching first, then the horns. A moment later, I heard
(and to some degree – felt) the brutal collision. My sight followed
the sound just in time to see an SUV and a two-door Mercedes-Benz
burst into flames. The driver of the SUV had been thrown through
the windshield and was hanging half-in and half-out of the vehicle.
It was female. Her long, curly red hair was burning, adding to the
stench of the place.

I gagged. My
thoughts a vortex spinning wildly in my head, making it
hurt.
Where had they come from?
How was this possible?

“
Goooood eveniiiing,”
said a
voice at my back.

I turned and saw
Limitless-Fangs had indeed followed me. His head was sticking out
of the door, fangs growing, then dropping onto the floor en masse.
Where they landed, they spread outward, questing, compelled to
search out flesh within which to burrow.

I was trapped.
At one end of the alley was a titanic battle between arachnids and
zombies, while the other way was blocked by the car accident.
George was blocking the only doors I could see.

I jumped clear
of the creepy teeth, stepping to the middle of the alley. Somewhere
in the morass my mind had become, somewhere in the turmoil of my
heart and the taint upon my soul, finding my father lost its’
importance. As I stood there, trying to figure out what to do,
thinking about all that I’d seen. Doorway after doorway, each of
them containing a terror, a hell onto itself, just as freakish as
the last, I forgot why I had decided to trek into this place of
impossibility. Upon my consciousness, the significance of my
situation became more about me and less about anyone
else.