His Answer

The carotid artery was a far better target than the jugular vein.  Daniel was well aware of this when he drew his knife from his back pocket.  Trial and error in the back alleys far from his house had shown him what was quickest and quietest, and how to avoid the spray of blood from young men and women’s necks.  Even if a few choice splatters landed on his sleeves or pants, the soiled layer of clothes could be abandoned with his pretty pale ones and the blackening pools they lay in.

His lady was too dark, sandy skinned but for the hard white lines he could see on her bare forearms and trailing up from the open collar of her black shirt.  No line crossed where he knew the blood river brought red to her face, her eyes, her mind.  Daniel smiled at the blank stretch, licking his lips at the delicious white that would come sweeping across her body.

“Hey, sweet baby,” he whispered.  “Sweet baby mine, come here.  I’ll make you all better.  All pretty again, like God meant you.”  She paused.  Daniel did not.  There was no hearing him speak, so quietly that his footsteps echoed over his voice.  Her pause only let him closer, just as his good lady should allow it.  He tapped his thumb on the dull, flat side of the knife.  She started to walk once more, hands tucked in the pockets of her black pants.

She was too tall.  Her legs could carry her away with long strides he was unable to match easily.  She was his good lady, though, her pace slow and steps short.  Daniel could outpace her if he cared to, but he went only just faster.  An alley, unlit by a dead streetlamp, lay ahead.  It would not do to come to her before then.

The chime of metal against concrete shocked his heart into speed, his hand closing tighter on the knife’s handle.  His lady swore aloud, turning to jog into the alley after the dropped coins.  Daniel smiled and followed.  Her coins would not be enough if she offered them like so many had done before.

“Sweet baby, pretty lady,” he sighed.  “You’re my gold, lady.  All my gold, all your red.  Come here, mine.  All mine.”  He went around the corner.

A quarter was shoved into his right eye.  Daniel screamed, but the hand over his mouth stopped the noise pouring from his throat.  He dropped the knife, his right hand reaching to his face and his left grabbing at the lady’s arm.  When his fingertips scrabbled at her wrist, she tightened her hold, long sharp nails slicing into his cheeks.

“What did your God mean for me?” she asked.  Daniel whimpered into her palm, thick liquid seeping down his face and over her thumb.  Through his left eye’s tears, he saw her eyes, red as the spray he had wanted so much to bring into the night.  There was neither smile nor frown on her face.  Two thin lines, stark white as all the rest Daniel had seen before, made the “t” of a cross on her right cheek.  She watched him, nail-claws cutting deeper with each breath Daniel took.

He screamed into her hand, kicking toward her crotch as hard as he could.  For how often he had dodged the same upward leg swing, the way his lady caught his shin with her free hand was something of a surprise.  He wrenched away from her hands, howling again when her claws cut deep trenches from the holes in his cheeks.  Daniel fell to the ground, slapping his hands on the concrete until his palm came upon his knife.

Still screaming, he stabbed his lady in the belly, digging and gouging until her red mixed with his on his face.  He could not hear if she joined him in shrieking stereo, his remaining eye squeezed shut while he screeched fit to tear apart his throat.

“I asked you a question.”  Her hand came down, and she let the blade pierce completely through her palm.  Daniel did not struggle when she took the knife from him.  She drew the metal from her flesh, the wounds knitting closed and the flow of blood ceasing in hand and stomach alike.

“What did your God mean for me?” she asked.

“Don’t kill me!”  She slapped him, claws carving new lines on his face.

“I asked you a question.  Answer me.”  Daniel, jeans steaming as his urine soaked them, could not breathe.  Each attempt did more to aid the bile rising in his throat, every thought focused to keep it from erupting into his mouth and through the holes in his cheeks.

“Fucking freak!”  He swung his arm high and wide, cracking his knuckles against her nose and knocking her away.  Before she could return the blow, he rolled onto his knees and started to crawl.  Daniel managed to plant a foot on the ground and pushed up, standing and running from the alley.

“Somebody help me!  Please, for God’s sake, someone fucking help!”  Each shout did more to pull open his face, blood dribbling from his slackened chin as he ran.  Car alarms went off when he stumbled against doors, hoods, trunks.  Red fingerprints streaked on white paint, blue, dark green, and pink drops of spit and sweat-thinned blood fell beside those streaks.  Daniel’s feet caught on one another, and he hit the ground once more.  Loose granite slipped into the holes in his face, the taste of exhaust, rubber, and rotted garbage settling on his tongue.

The cars blared around him, but no apartment tenant or restaurant patron bellowed for owners to shut off the noise.  Daniel, panting and spitting, rose up on his knees.  He stared, looking about the long lifeless street.

“Somebody!”  One of the car alarms was cut off in mid-honk, the rearmed system beeping.  “She’s some kind of monster!”  Another alarm quieted.  “She’s going to kill me!”  A horn’s blast was his only response.  “Stop fucking worrying about your cars and help me!”

“Not until you answer me.”  Daniel turned, gravel shifting under his knees, and his lady’s hand closed in the collar of his jacket.  She lifted him from the ground, his feet dangling as she held him with his face above hers.

“What did your God mean for me?” she asked.

“I don’t know!” Daniel sobbed.  The salt of his tears and sweat burned in the holes of his face, the liquid from his right eye oozing in to coat his tongue.  “I don’t know!”

“What if I was meant to kill you for trying to kill me?” she asked.  “If that was true, would you die quietly?”

“I want to live, for Christ’s sake!” Daniel said.  So quickly that his legs hung in the air from inertia, she slammed him to the ground.  Sharp stone edges jabbed through cloth and flesh alike, and he gave a high-pitched yelp at the pain.

“If you can’t tell me about your God, tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” she murmured.

“I’m a person!” Daniel said.  “Everyone wants to live!  For God’s sake, just let me go!”

“That’s hardly a good reason.”  The jacket cloth gathered in her hand began to smolder.  He felt the heat of her fingers spike, blistering the skin of his chest as black flames danced into the world with his jacket as a stage.

“Don’t!  Please don’t!”  She did not reply, blinking once when the fire spread to his flesh and he screamed louder than before.  He slapped at her face, but cut his hand when his palm parted her lips and struck the sharp teeth in her mouth.  The fire burrowed deeper into his chest and he let out a sob.

“I’m sorry!” he said.  “I’m sorry!”  She drove her fist into his throat, snapping his neck before the black flames could reach his heart.  His eye widened at the last flash of pain before his mind went blank.  The woman stepped away from the body, watching the black flames spread through the clothes and to the rest of the inert flesh.  After a time, she turned away from the scent of scorched hair and charred cotton, listening to the pop of the meager fat in the fire.

When all sound but her breathing faded, she turned about.  Ashes lay in a greasy gray-black smear on the ground.  Where the body’s head had lain, the silver blob of the melted quarter shone dull yellow in the light of the streetlamps.  She let out a low, long sigh, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.  Without looking at the smear on the ground, she started away, hands in her pockets and shoulders aching from long-standing weariness.  The body had been nothing, and the man that inhabited it was even less.  She still had no answer, and she walked with the noise of sirens fading in the distance behind her.

end