Silver and Salt(26)

What fun would that be?

Hope, today, turned out to be my favorite emotion, and proved steadfast and true when the invisible man ignored the others. That was fine by me. If he didn’t want to move on to nothingness or Hell or whatever punishment waited for him, I had no problem giving him a push. If he didn’t want to pay, then he’d have to play. I loved to play because it wasn’t play at all, not the kind anyone else would know. It was winning. Surviving. I was a lion and that’s what lions did. It was a fact. And fact was fact as truth was truth.

“So, hey, *,” I told him with all the menace and predatory nature I had in me, which was more than he would have possessed in all the years of his whole f*cking pathetic life, “let’s see what I can do to you.” He was backing away, but I’d already pulled two handfuls of salt out of my sweatshirt’s pocket and flung it at him.

He burned.

Every cell flamed a peculiar almost black-red, but it wasn’t raging. It was slow and, from the flailing of his arms, the horror in his sizzling eyes, and the voice he finally found in ragged scream after scream, nice and agonizing. He careened from wall to wall, but didn’t stop, drop, and roll. Basic fire safety, and he ignored it. Then again, he wasn’t leaving singe marks on the warped paneling of the walls he slammed against. Dropping and rolling wouldn’t have helped. After almost a full minute, he staggered to a halt in front of me, a burning shape of a man, and said the only word I’d heard him say. I’d seen him talking to Mels but had been too far away to hear. I hadn’t given him time to talk to me after he’d “lured” me behind the bushes with beer. This was his first and last chance. With a tongue blackened but still burning, he said it.

“Monster.”

I grinned. “Recognize.”

For once, I didn’t care about the label. For once, I was a little proud.

He then exploded. I winced and closed my eyes, throwing up an arm, but I felt no heat. Opening my eyes, I blinked and there was nothing. No glare. No afterimage. There was simply empty space where a way-too-motivated killer and molester’s stubbornly evil * of a shade wouldn’t give up. Not that it mattered. He lost anyway.

Ghosts—0, Lions—1.

There was no Marcus, no ghost grandpa; that was a given. I hated to lie to Nik, but I would hate it much more if he found out that a child molester thought I might be a witness, wrongly assumed I was an easy target, and thought I was better off dead, whichever of those was true. My brother didn’t need to know any of that. I didn’t want him knowing either that I saw a monster that needed to be put down. So I had. There was no difference between Mr. Invisible and a Grendel. If he’d been any other kind of criminal, a thief, a druggie, it would’ve been different, but he was a molester and a murderer. People can pay their dues, people can change…sometimes. Monsters can’t change and their dues are paid in their blood. Hopefully I’d stick with my own monsters, my Grendels with their scarlet eyes and metal smiles, and wouldn’t run into one of the invisible man’s kind again. I wouldn’t want to make a hobby of this.

Was I lying to myself?

I didn’t know.

Niko…he wouldn’t want me to make a hobby of this. That was enough for me. He was a good brother, a good person, and while I wasn’t, didn’t know how to be, wasn’t wired right, I tried to let him be my conscience most of the time.

As for all of the time…hell. No promises other than I would try. Trying was the best I could do.

I hadn’t tried too much with this monster-wannabe. I admitted it. I’d give it a better shot in the future.

I rubbed a toe of my sneaker through the pile of pristine white salt. It was all that was left of an extremely bad man and an inexcusably inefficient monster in the end, heaped on the cheap brown-and-orange tile. I’d have to sweep that up before Niko got home and started asking questions I didn’t want to answer. I’d thought about it the past few nights and come to the conclusion Niko had forgotten our ex-serial killer, ex-neighbor, ex-Junior, as he couldn’t bear remembering what he’d done to the blood-soaked excuse of a man.

While me?

I was seconds away from forgetting the park. Seconds away from forgetting Mr. Invisible. Don’t get me wrong. I was a lion and lions don’t guilt over the four-hoofed fleeing dinner they took down. Remembering the park, remembering the living room and what I’d done to Melanie’s “boogety-man” twice now, I could bear that with no problem.

It just wasn’t worth my time.

Glancing at the clock on the wall, I saw I had three more hours before Niko would be home. I’d have to clean up my mess, but there was plenty of time enough to clean it up later. Right now, I was starving. A good day called for a good meal to top it off. I walked through the salt, leaving a sneaker print in it with no regret or shred of attention as I headed toward the kitchen. Rooting around in the refrigerator, I found three-day-old Chinese from the restaurant where Nik worked. I grabbed a fork and plopped onto a chair. Mr. Invisible already rounding half forgotten and pulling into the home stretch, I dug into the cardboard container with enthusiasm. It was heavily stained with soy sauce, but I didn’t mind. It tasted fine all the same.

If a little heavy on the salt.





From Rob:

Actually, let's be honest, this is less of a story and more of a day in the life of...nope. It's not even a day. It’s about twenty minutes in the life of Griffin and Zeke (the ex-demon and ex-angel) demon destroying partners from the Trickster Novels: Trick of the Light and The Grimrose Path). View it as a snapshot of their average morning. It's harmless fluff—pure and simple. Correction: with Zeke, is anything truly harmless?