~ two

Nun Elder - In her office with the teacher, "Dr Astorius, you were summoned here to teach.  You are new to this town.  There are things you do not understand, but I do know why you are here."

Astorius - "I was transferred because ... "

Elder - "No.  No ... that is not why you are here.  But here you are.  And you have a job to do.  Can you do this job ?"

Astorius - "Well.  Yes, I've had harder classrooms.  The kids are fine.  But is it true the last teacher committed suicide ?  And that things have happened to all of them for the last ten years ?"

Elder - Leans back with an indulging smile.  "Dr Astorius.  Do not let those two get to you.  Children can be ... vicious little things.  Primal.  All of these children have suffered Dr Astorius you've taught in many schools but never an orphanage, and never in Midwich."

The teacher pours over a map of the town, drinking hard.  While in his bedroom Nergal is with a woman around 35 years old.  Eresh smiles leaving them closing the door, bullwhip in one hand and a small sickle in the other.

As the teacher follows a path on the map near spilling the bottle down his shirt, Eresh walks it.  An underground network beneath the city, connecting the major points but with no circle drawn it looks like a star's lines drawn from the center, beneath the city fountain.

As Eresh walks these dank halls, the world above ground goes about its evening.  The people here are a private sort, with a strange hidden rage in the eyes.  Their day is as any other but every little deed with a sense of serious purpose.

Quiet nods without pleasantry at the counter of the convenience between clerk and purchase over Eresh's steps below.  He follows the map's line all the way to the Asylum.

Eresh opens a heavy door, excited by the work it takes, then pushes it back shut behind her with both hands and a lean, the sound of heavy locks.

The teacher passes out on the couch, the bottle dropping with and rolling out it's last on the floor.  Eresh walks a long asylum hall, upturned hands reaching from the bars for a mercy granted with the sickle across them.

Nergal - Looks at his lover when it's done, "Goodbye my dear."

Woman - "You're ... leaving."

Nergal - "Well inevitably yes.  I suppose.  But our contract has expired.  Which only makes you evidence."
____________

The cracking sound echoes deep through the city archive, where a beast walks on two legs.  But not a beast as an animal unless the simple prototype for them all. 

With the two legs of a man, a face that expresses itself but massive with a bow to all doorways.  Wings jutting upward from the shoulders, draped over like a cloak, the only semblance of clothing and nothing in his hands but claws and grip.  This library grows deep, filled with shades.

Among them a man walks cloaked as the rest.

Beast - "Librarian.  I have questions."

Librarian - The man from the beginning who sold his soul and family, eyes gone blank after having forgotten who he is like the rest of the shades. "And .. questions precede answers ... my ... Lord.  What is it you seek here eldest son ?" 

Beast - Smiles and raises his humbled chin, "Poor empty vessel, self forgot and soul elsewhere awaiting.  I seek the points of the star.  To break the chains.  To free the souls."
____________

Eresh comes to the last cell, a folding chair leaning on hall's end.  She looks to the high corner's camera, a loud buzzer sound, the patient inside jolting to the corner in response to it.

Eresh unfolds the chair and sits with the whip in her lap, she smiles at the patient, who stares in horror at the whip and sickle.

Eresh - "Oh no ... I'm not here for that.  Do you know what today is ?"  She leans in, the patient draws back.  Into her ear, "It's your birthday."  Leans back looking proud, "You're free !  Isn't that special ?"

Very pleased with herself she rises and places the sickle and whip in the chair.  "No I want you to go.  And show them Everything you've shown me."  Echoing into the next scene, "I want you to show the World."
____________

Librarian - Kneeling in terror, "That book ... it is no longer here !  I swear it to you !"

Beast - "No ... "  He peers under his cower grinning, "Do not fear me little man, not yet."  Looking deep into him, "Who's mind has been saved by forgetfulness, waste no time."  He stands tall stretching his claws, a crack of the neck and a grin, words pouring with smoke from his mouth.  "Just tell me where it is."
____________

The patient stares at the open cell door, past the sickle and whip on a chair, intently.  While a strange cat-like thing stares back. 

A skin bone wisp of a thing with a bell on the collar just sitting there like a shadow from the chair, if such a thing would have eyeballs and a bell and if shadows were white. 

But somehow against these grey walls it makes it seem as though maybe they are.  It it licks a paw and looks bored, before turning away with bell's ring.

Clutching the whip and sickle she follows the cat past the slumped arms leaking life between the bars, death moaning and a few last twitches.  The cat looks back to check on her with a ring, distracting her forward from the sight.

She passes a polaroid in a red pool and picks it up, her on stage at the Canon Club dancing at a birthday party, a number of men raising the stein, flashes of memory and the things they've done as she stares.

A ring of the bell to remind her, she looks up at the cat-thing as it turns walking on.

And to the end of the hall before a heavy door, to the left one open.  The cat-thing sits waiting.  Inside a man waits in the infirmary with a crude laser for surgery in hand.

A hideous thing this supposed doctor, grinning beneath his goggles laser in hand connected by numerous fiber optics to a machine looking like it was made of car parts.

He motions with a smile to the table.  She looks to the cat-thing, it licks a paw and looks around bored. 

She lies face down on the table gripping the whip and sickle, staring into the polaroid as he opens her gown's back, exposing the whip's many scars.  The reminders of sickle slices and gouging.

The handle in hand as though handling a blade, he peers close to the skin slicing off the layers and scars, dipping a hand into a vat of cellular ooze and slapping it on, lathering it like sunscreen.

While she stares into the picture and it's flashes of horror remembers in flickers and static.  He kicks the machine and the lights stabilize, his work continues.

When it's done, her eyes close with a deep breath, the scars gone but for the red left behind to be healed.  He steps back and gestures to the camera, the pride in his work.

When she cracks his neck, holding onto the goggles as he falls away while she stares int the camera.  A loud buzzer sound.  She looks to the door, a ring of the cat-thing's bell as it walks down the new hall.  The cat thing waits at the door to a locker room now.

All of them locked but one.

She opens it and finds clothes and a hooded coat hanging.  With a normal button up shirt and loose pants, the shirt with bandage and lotion taped inside the back. 

But a harness there as well, to be worn over these or any other clothes, wide straps of Kevlar wrapped and sewn into silk so the platelets it forms will slide, allowing motion but protecting what's to be, a pistol's magazines under the arms.

A last strap down to the wrists with heavy plates, exposing only the leather wrist straps like bracelets, one set with a watch under thick glass, the other a black stone, either good for the backhand or a block.

All put on and the coat over it, she looks in the mirror by the sink.  Closing the coat over it she wraps the whip tight around the waist and ties tip through the loop.  In this way one only sees the shirt's normal collar.

She slides the sickle into the wide pocket clearly made for it, her other hand pulling a silenced pistol from the other's long holstered sheath inside.  Checks and returns, leaving her hands warm.

A loud buzzer sound, the ring of the bell walking.

In the next hall the insanity is harvested and loud, grasping from the bars, the cat walks through unnoticed.  They reach as if to pull her right through the bars with a madness beyond intent when at the end of the hall the cat-thing turns to watch.

The loud buzzer sound as all the doors slide open.

True whip fighting is a rare art, easy to look good but not so easy to do anything with it.  One would think they could hold a perimeter with it in these broad halls but the truth is, they always grab the whip.

She spins out of it and curls it over like a beating tool, uses it to twine arms with a lash out to rip a leg, following every stumble with a single shot to the head until it runs dry, she swaps hands and pulls the sickle.

With each move a flash of dancing in the club, the leering business men of a small town like this, with all their sweaty self importance and cash in hand, flashes red, in all of them she remember only the Polaroid's inhabitants.

Eresh smiles excitedly into the monitors watching until all is death.  In the last kill, the patient spins back into the whip as a belt and ties it.  She looks into the camera in the high corner.

A loud buzzer sound, and the blinding light of the world.  A ring of the bell and the cat thing walks into it followed by the patient released.