A Study in Spite

There was a darkness in the air that night. It wasn't merely the absence of light, for light was plentifully splashed onto the streets from grimey street lamps. Rather, it was the absence of hope. It hung like folds of heavy velvet, a depressing weight reaching down to settle on men's backs as they stumbled home from pubs, feet shuffling to the beat of shattering glass and raised voices.
 

The shouts and laughter trickled into an inconspicuos little alleyway, the giggles of young girls prancing about, playing tag in the shadows. Past the illumination of the street lamps, a door swung open with a smothered groan, thudding back into place as a figure leaned his back against the brick wall. There was the click of a lighter and the man's weathered face flickered into view as he bent his face over the tiny flame. His features were rugged, the dark leather of a well-used sofa. His eyes were worn, a certain resignedness gleaming in their murky depths.
 

His cigarette caught light and he let the flame dissipate. The stangant stench of smoke billowed into the night air as he leaned fully into the wall. Jay Spite was not a man of clichés, but there comes a time in a man's life when he wishes nothing more than to mutter, ”I'm too old for this shit.”. He sucked on his cigarette and idly wondered why cigarettes were used so much in art. Perhaps because they symbolized the short span of a human's life. Or the stress. Probably just because it was something to fill the empty gaps with. He grinned an empty grin. Probably.
 

His mind flashed back to the scene behind the wall he was leaning on. You'd think the visual shock would be the worst. A pair of bodies, one small, one the father. The latter protecting the former with his lacerated back. Skinless, burned corpses that still twitched and leaked fluids with a steady splatsplat. Signs of multiple cut wounds, each no deeper than a centimeter. The discarded play-things of a demented animal.

 

You'd be wrong. A dead person is dead. After death, the person stops existing and all that is left behind is a pile of meat and bone. See enough corpses, they all start looking the same. No. It's the smell that gets to you. The reeking stench of bodily fluids and spilled intestines remind you that they are the remains of a living, breathing person. That's when things get interesting and a smoke-break sounds brilliant.
 

Spite breathed in the smoke of the cigarette hungrily, cleaning out his mouth and spitting away the residue. His hands were shaking. The glowing end danced in front of his eyes, creating disturbing after-images as he blinked. A door opened somewhere further down the street, a thudding bass pounding into the night until the door snapped closed, dulling the steady ump-tsii ump-tsii into ambiatic static. Spite listened to the sounds of the night around him, contemplating useless, every-day things like groceries, tapping into the inherent boredom found in the pollution of any major city.
 

Heavy machinery rushed by above him, close enough to touch, screeching through the night like a demon. Spite started at the noise, the cigarette slipping from between his fingers. His other hand found the butt of his M9 before he knew it, middle finger caressing the trigger. Annoyed, he let his hand fall, balefully staring at the smoldering cigarette on the sidewalk.
 

”I am getting too old for this crap,” he grumbled, driving his heel into the glowing speck on the ground.
 

The train rattled off into the distance and Spite heaved himself off the wall, forcing his feet back towards the door. He ducked under the low frame and walked down the hallway, footsteps rebounding loudly off the walls. The muted shuffles of his team could be heard ahead as they busied themselves on the scene. Mentally steeling himself for the awaiting smell, he took the third door on his left, straightening his collar as he swept onto the crime scene.
 

A man looked up, specks of blood splattering his steel-grey suit. He grinned a delighted grin.
 

”Glad to make your aquantaince, Mr...?” he said, the grin stretching his face.
 

”Spi-” Spite's eyes slipped past the short, jaunty man. There was a moment of utter stillness. The suited man's grin never twitched; Spite stood there with sunken eyes frozen in the act of widening. Arcs of blood were splattered onto the wall as if flung from a bucket. It slowly dripped downwards, fingers of crimson reaching down for upturned faces locked forever in a deathly scream.
 

Time felt muddy as Spite waded through it, stricken eyes trickling towards the man. How hadn't he heard the screams? The train. It had only been there for the space of three seconds. There was no way. Not in three seconds. No one.
 

Yet here the man was, leaning on his cane, bowler hat at a jaunty angle, grinning like a fox in a hen house.

 

Training took over and Spite reached for his side-arm. There was a flurry of movement and he dragged it out, finger on the trigger. The man stood where he had a moment ago. Had he merely imagined the movement?
 

”Aren't you going to shoot? Such horrid manners. I handed you an invitation and you would have the gall to refuse it? I thought they taught –”
 

Snarling, Spite pulled the trigger.
 

Except.
 

His fingers wouldn't move.
 

Ever so slowly, Spite moved his gaze to his hand. Thin, red lines ringed each finger under the second joint. As he watched in horror, a scarlet line drooled out a bead of blood. The perfectly spherical droplet hung for a second, as if unsure of its next move. Then it slipped from his finger and tumbled down onto the floor.
 

His forefinger began sliding off. Spite's hand trembled. It picked up pace, reaching the end of the nub before simply slipping off into space.
 

Spite looked on as the rest of his fingers slid off, the ragged flesh around the cuts emitting a sucking sound as they dropped free. His M9 clattered from his mutilated hand. Blood welled up at the tip of each severed nub, flowing down his hand.
 

He looked at the man in the grey suit, expressionless. He was out of expressions that could convey what he was feeling. Apparently sensing his cue, the man walked to Spite, a spring in his step, twirling his cane. Once he got in kissing distance of Spite, he stopped, clacking his heels together and performing an elaborate, if cramped, bow.
 

”My name is Mr. Floss, if you will allow me the pleasure of introducing myself. I am at your service at all times proper and will do just about any job for the correct monetary indulgment. I was told to tie up all the loose ends on this here mission of mine and will thus have to solemnly apologize for what is to happen.”
 

The man slipped a slim blade from inside his cane and, movements devoid of any flourishes, stabbed Spite through the stomach with it.
 

Spite looked down as his shirt began to fade to red, a stain of ink lovingly dying the fabric. Calmly, as if in a dream, he took hold of the man's sword-arm and bent down, retrieving the fallen M9 with his left hand. He placed the barrel just under the rim of the man's bowler hat and whispered, ”Boom.”
 

He pulled the trigger three times.
 

The retort ripped through his body, setting off the pain in his midsection. Flares went up in his head and he gasped for breath as a terrible heat spread from around the blade. He felt his muscles contorting and bearing down on the sharp edges, effectively disembowling himself.
 

”Should've gone for 'bang',” he muttered as he grasped at the slithering vines uncoiling from his abdomen. I must be in shock, he thought. There's no way this can hurt this little.
 

”Correct you are, my dear unpredictable friend, but don't you worry, you'll be fully acquainted with its full effect in just a while longer. And yes, 'bang' would have been more suitable. Jolly good try, though. Oh so very dramatic.”
 

Spite glanced up into the fox-faced man's steel-gray eyes. Three precise holes drilled into the man's brow, funnels of blood sploshing down the ridges of his face, pooling in the hollows between his grinning, tomb-stone teeth. Angry, confused retorts dissipated from Spite's lips as a scarlet bubble of spit popped forth from them and he retched violently, vomiting a glob of dark blood onto the floor. His face followed the vomit down and he felt a flash of dull pain as his skull slapped onto the tiles, the crack of bone seemingly coming from far off.
 

The drying gore sucked at his skin as his eyes screwed back in their sockets, the soft veil of indifference beckoning for him. He could feel the veil as a coldness on his skin, a detachment of touch from limb. Most of all, he felt tired. Oh so tired. He felt his mind start slipping down a slope, an act that felt completely natural. Colors bled from his surroundings, blurring to a grimey grey.
 

”A most excellent sun-turn to you, worthy advissary. May you wear the mantle of death beautifully, like an Angel in it's grace and kindness. Toodles.”
 

Spite forced his clammy eyes open and through waves of splashing vertigo saw the black shoes in front of his face, sparklingly unblemished. He gritted his teeth against the pain and, surprised, found that he could combat it. His mind stopped its slipping and scrambled up the side of the greasy slope, gaining desperate inches as he dug in his nails. His unhurt hand clenched into a loose fist as he summoned up his strength. He'd get the bastard, he thought. It couldn't hurt this little, he know it can't, but while he could still move –
 

The entity that called itself Mr. Floss retracted his blade from Spite's midsection. Spite had been correct. The full force of the shredding pain rammed into him, snapping at his entrails, sending him flailing and screaming into the folds of the veil, heavy velvet wrapping him in its arms and cutting off his breath. His fist loosened and the slapping of shoes shifted away from him, a cold sound in a cold world.
 

The gore congealed atop Spite's weathered brown face.