RedGrave Rising

Timothy Tobias Bluemoon walked briskly down the abandoned cobblestone road. Despite his love for seclusion, the man desperately wished he could find a policeman in sight. The occasional wind gust stroked his ginger braided hair with its’ autumn kiss before both drifted their separate ways down the forlorn streets. Bluemoon wished to find a soul, just one bloody soul, just to prolong his suffering.
His gut twisted into a bloody compulsion and his mind swan in a dismal sea of memories. Curiosity killed it’s creator, discovered—Then again, he only wished would kill him. His pastel blue eyes, watered down into shallow pools over the years, caught sight of a little figure pacing about, a dimly lit match in one hand. It appeared to be trying to set fire to a lodging of some sort.
Breaking into a sprint the form of a child could only wail in horror as the tall figure charged and grasped upon her arm like a vice before it abruptly tumbled to the pavement with her.
Bluemoon groaned and untangled himself from the child and looked into the small blue eyes of a peasant rascal. Her soot-coated hair may very well have been blonde at one time, and her dress seemed to be fashioned from a potato sack, but he had to digress. It was a soul. Not a man or a boy, but a little girl. Something, in the least.
Swallowing a dry throat the man attempted to remove his frilled tie, “What is your name?”
The little girl bit her lip and quivered. She must not have a title, the socialite figured with a distasteful frown. Sitting up he brushed off his mud-flecked pea coat, “Very well, I only need you for the moment, anyway.” He looked at the child, her lip almost deathly white. Her eyes were glazing over, like a bucket with too much water slowly excreting it’s surplus. Guilt overtook the man as he saw what her mind reflected in those flowing pools of blue.
He wanted her for her body, to do you pleasure and leave the weeping child in the streets with a shattered spirit and broken womb. At least, that is what her mind was convinced to believe. Bluemoon shook his head, “No, no!” he exclaimed, guilt dripping from his exaggerated voice.
“I just want you… to help.” Even this word help disgusted him and with a shaking hand he grasped her clinched fist. “My name is Mister Tobias Bluemoon.”
”The same Mister Bluemoon that runs the gallows?” The girl asked suddenly, her voice high with an unfamiliar accent to it
His heartstrings cranked like a broken cog and he nodded weakly, “Yes, I am. Why?”
”You’re the one who killed me dear Mum and Dad, they was caught stealin’ bread for me.”
A silence fell thickly between them as both gazed back into the others’ dull eyes. Bluemoon’s eyes became shallow by the deaths that surrounded his daily life, while the little girl’s were bled into despair now that she stared into the eyes of her family’s executioner—The one who condemned her to a life on the streets. Slowly Bluemoon dipped his hat, “Nothing personal, I assure you, Miss.”
”My name is Alice,” She said with a tongue higher than her age, “it don’t much matter if it was personal or not, me family’s gone. Because of you.”
A gag seized Bluemoon’s throat, his adrenaline raced and his muscles wailed for relaxation as the sewn tightened like that of a mighty boa.
”Alice…” He slurred and wobbled in a haze, the world beginning to drift on it’s axis of reality, his body swaying to stay right—Though it only pivoted him on his side in a sickening groan as bile escaped his jaws. Pain flowed like an intoxicating drug through his veins, the overpowering feeling of numbness tidal waving his torso. Finally his eyes failed him and the world turned black, the echo of his fading ears caught Alice crying his name and tugging mercifully on his dead-weighted sleeve.

Slowly the world bled back into sight, Bluemoon’s fist clenching and unclenching something soft and worn. A dress.. That’s it. The wheels of his mind began to slowly grind into action as they tried to recall the previous hours. “Mmm…” His tongue flickered unsurely at the sour substance that coated his lips and pallet, then he knew it was vomit and spit forcefully onto the damp cobblestone.
”Mister Tobias?” A voice tricked into his eardrum, the man’s neck snapping to forcefully in the direction of the sound he winced in pain, staring upward at the face of the girl. Her head was tilted and blue eyes staring down upon him.
Looking sorely about he saw the flesh of her legs, deducing that his head was resting in her lap. His hat was placed to one side and her small hand stroking his bristled and cracked ginger hair.
“Who?”
“You’re not Mister Tobias..” her voice cracked with horror, and eyes fixed upon Bluemoon’s face. Mirrored in her eyes the same fear gripped the pounded heart of the executioner. Thrusting forward the man fell awkwardly about his feet, flailing hand over scraped hand towards a store window. Surprisingly it was as if his legs were unfamiliar and new. Grasping the windowsill Bluemoon looked into the dark glass and a wail escaped his throat and was resounded by the night.
The man looking back was not of human flesh and bone: His face sat sharp and daunting, the organ that coated his being was a dull gray and coated with an over growth of patched red hair upon his knuckled.
His ears were pointed in broken folds of monotone flesh and seemed impish, though not the worst of his condition. The eyes that bore through the dark night seemed more fit for Satan himself. Narrowed pupils for the black cat, the iris of amber flame consisted of a blinding yellow and orange flecked with a red rivaled only by Hell’s fire. A beast in the shell of a man.
Slowly and rather limply he turned and collapsed, looking back at Alice. Both stared upon the other with new eyes, both brimming with fear. Tobias stood on trembling legs and stepped, rather unsuccessfully, towards the girl, “Why did you stay..?”