To Hell With It - Chapter One

To Hell With It

Chapter One

Juggling was never my strong point; both literally and metaphorically. As if the pizza box, balanced with an order of breadsticks skidding about precariously on the lid, wasn’t enough of an aggravating distraction, the damn doors to our apartment building wouldn’t stay open for more than two seconds. Hardly enough time for me to get through, skinny ass or not. Whatever would these idiots do if some poor old man got caught in the determined path of a runaway door?

I made it through with the pizza and my backside unscathed and wrestled with my keys to get them to flip to the right one. Surprisingly, the little yappy Chihuahua mix didn’t sound off at the tell-tale jiggle and thump of getting the door open. The thing seemed to always think that every person on our floor was trying to get into its apartment. I welcomed the quiet and shoved open the apartment door with my hip; yet another one that liked to swing shut before I could step onto the carpet, which made an odd crunching sound.

The door swung back to gently bump the edge of the pizza box then my shoulder as I paused to consider what new and shiny thing our cat had decided was better in pieces. A pair of yellow eyes glowed happily from beneath the dining room table, proud of his kill. I glared back in the darkness, kicking the shattered remains of my favor vase from Mikasa out of my path.

“You’re the reason we can’t have nice things,” I grumbled; a catch phrase for my roomie and I when regarding Amos’ path of imminent destruction.

Amos hissed from his crouched position, sounding more reptilian than feline. I elbowed on the light next to the door and energy-saving yellow bathed the living room, dining room and foyer (it was a small apartment, after all). The breadsticks slid to the floor and I stifled a little clip of a scream.

Something wholly other was crouched under the shade of the big white dining room table, wrapping itself around the single stool we had left after Amos decided the others were in poor taste and must be chewed and scratched to shreds. It was hunched, black, and much bigger than an average house cat. Peering at me with those round, yellow eyes, it hissed again and sunk its talons –four inches or more– into the wet masticated meat under it. A saw a few tuffs of black fur littering a path around the living room and back to the kitchen.

My stomach did a tuck and a twist before diving for my feet. This thing had eaten my cat…

It gave off a strange rattling sound and I couldn’t tell if it was trying a hack up a hair ball or laughing. I hoped it was the hair ball and I hoped it was massive; heaven knew Amos shed enough to choke our brand new vacuum why not the hell spawn under my dining room table? It even vibrated with the sound before edging forward with its light-bulb eyes fixed on the next course. Its hindquarters were hyper extended like most four-legged animals, but it walked with its vicious looking front feet air bound and rubbing talons together for that awful sound of knives sharpening. Round head tilted to the side with ears so long they looked to be held up by pipe cleaners. Its previously non-existent mouth spread wide to reveal the teeth of a Great White.

I did the first thing that came to mind. I threw the pizza box at it. It let off another creepy rattle and dodged the cardboard projectile, while I grabbed for the doorknob with my newly freed hands. The black creature dove for the pie that had ejected from the box on impact. It liked pepperoni, who knew?

Vaguely hysterical thoughts aside, I felt no more protected with my door closed and locked than I had in the threshold. I could hear it; little vibrating purrs and sloppy sounds of a slapping jaw. That was about the point that my psyche broke. My breath coming in short intakes warned that I was going to start hyperventilating soon; perfect time for a panic attack, body, thanks.

I bolted for the stairs and slammed my shoulder into the main door because my fingers didn’t push the handle down quick enough. Nothing scary or looming greeted me outside and I made to my car, safely in the driver’s seat with the fasten seat belt icon flashing, in record time despite my high-heels. Like any addict, I spend only a few seconds white-knuckling the steering wheel before my hands moved of their own accord into my purse and clutched my half-spent pack of cigarettes like a life line. They would be gone tonight; should have stopped at the Wawa…

I wasn’t leaving. I couldn’t leave. Well, I could leave; I had my keys, my license, and a good friend about fifteen minutes away, but I refused. Even mentally impaired as I was, I knew Jamie would be home in an hour and there was no way I was letting him walk in on that. Amos was his cat, after all. At that thought I started crying, hiccupping through a deep drag and closing my eyes. That didn’t help at all. I could see the accursed thing even when I squeezed my eyelids shut. The bulbous mass of a torso that reminded too much of a giant spider. I could even see its feet in my head; those wispy weird things that gave it that Christmas elf from hell look. Honestly, it reminded me of the Heartless enemies from KH, only less oddly cute and more Cujo blood-thirsty …well, I wouldn’t be playing that video game for the next few decades.

I sucked down two cigarettes before I even saw any sign of life around the complex. My eyes were trained on our balcony overlooking the parking lot, watching the devious shadow bound around like it owned the place. My fingers were shaking so badly that ash fell down the front of my shirt and when I looked up from brushing it off a man had appeared at the front door working the lock. Obviously, he didn’t just misplace his key and the fact that he might be a thief looking for a new plasma television didn’t change the moralistic fear that he could be hurt by that blasted thing in my apartment. He got through the front door and let it click shut behind him with a leery glance about. The scope rifle slung not so inconspicuously over his back rattled against the door as it clipped at his heels. Now that wasn’t normal. Unless he was coming back from the shooting range…which I doubted.

It wasn’t exceptionally late, just after eight, but that didn’t stop the loonies of the night. I watched him, balancing the pros and cons of trying to stop him. It was bad enough that I didn’t warn my neighbors, but did I really owe my life to a criminal?

Another moment of debating, and curiosity won out, but not without caution. I grabbed my ice scrapper from the trunk and crept in after the vigilante. I could see his tall form through the tiny square window of the second floor, now working at another lock. My lock. To my apartment.

Anger flooded in, overtaking fear for the moment. Jamie just bought that plasma television and I wasn’t about to give up my 720dpi even if it was from Best Buy. I ripped the door open, figuring that if he aimed the riffle I’d book it down to the bottom floor and take off around the backdoor. The security office wasn’t far from here and most crooks didn’t like being seen. They wanted money and luxuries, not dead bodies.

“Hey,” I called loudly enough for neighbors to here. I had my phone out too, 911 dialed and ready for the send button. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He wasn’t what I expected. From a distance he looked built like an army vet and, well he was, but he was much older than I’d originally assumed. Now I pegged him in his sixties, young body for his age, but his face was amassed with wrinkles and scars, his hair a buzzed reminder that he’d been a redhead once upon a time and his nose almost bulbous. His eyes were pretty though, dark gray and surrounded by pale lashes, if one could look past the fuzzy eyebrows and crow’s feet. He stared at me for a moment, as if surprised that anyone would come within a foot of him. Not saying he wasn’t scary looking, but I’d watched enough criminal detective dramas to realized psychos came in all shapes and sizes, which meant the opposite held true as well. He could be completely normal and I could be a psycho…which probably wasn’t too far from the truth at the moment.

I looked psychotic, no doubt, approaching a guy twice my girth and a half-foot taller with an ice scraper. Riffle trumped ice scraper, I knew this, but common sense had sort of flown out the window when I found a demon snacking on Jamie’s cat. I hated the damned furball, but death by raptor wasn’t a nice way to go.

“You, uh,” he shouldered his riffle as a subtle gesture. It said ‘I have a gun are you crazy’ and yes, yes I was. “You live here?”

“Yeah and trust me you want to seek pawnable goodies elsewhere.”

He scowled. It was a frightening expression only because the three claw-like scars curving around his left temple furrowed down to make the glare more of a threatening glower. I stepped back, enough that I could slam the swinging door shut between us if I had to. The ice scraper cut into my death gripping palm. “No, really, you don’t want to go in there.”

He pointed at the door. His lock pick was still lodged in the deadbolt. “You went in there?”

The game of he said she said was beginning to grate. I had mostly expected him to duck and bolt at the event of being seen. There was a gun range close by, but that didn’t give reason for a sane person to run around with all that metal and plastic gleaming in the open. I gave him a nod, having nothing else to say lest he might repeat it. And he gave me a dubious pause, a sigh and a roll of his eyes. “Great,” he tugged the lock pick out of the deadbolt and turned to me.

I yelped when he lurched forward until I realized he was attempting to lean casually toward me. “You have a bit of an infestation, you know?”

I stared at him, blinked once. “And what?”

“You have an infesta—all right, you know what? This is pointless,” he grumbled. He adjusted a large belt buckle, shifted the riffle on his shoulder, and pushed the swinging door into the stairwell open all the way. I dodged the edge of it. “You saw it; you want to deal with it or would you like me to?”

“Depends on if I’ll get my security deposit back after you take care of the Heartless reject,” I replied without even thinking. Most people wished they had the ability to come up with witty comebacks in the moment, but honestly it got me into more trouble than it was worth. And this grizzly bear was gaping at me incredulously like I’d just lost my mind. “It ate my cat.”

“It ate your cat.”

“It ate my cat. Or, well, my roommate’s cat.”

“What ate your cat?”

I pointed at my apartment door emphatically. “The satanic elf with more teeth than the Cheshire cat in there!”

Old man river gave off another weary sigh. “Could you give me a little more to go on? Is it a Sling or something worse?”

“Black, potbellied, fanged and chomping on cat cuisine.”

“Go back outside; it’ll be gone in a few minutes.”

I watched him refocus on the lock and go at with the metal picks. I didn’t move until the stairwell door started swing shut on me. I elbowed it open and stepped up behind the exterminator. He cast a baleful look over his shoulder just as the deadbolt slid free. I was a little disturbed that it was so easy to break into my apartment, but then again I also could have given him my key. “Why are you still here?”

“I just saw something that I’ve been told all my life doesn’t exist, I kinda of would like to see how it can be killed,” I replied, realizing in that moment that sick curiosity had a lot to do with it too. “It can be killed, right?”

He snorted and shoved the door open. I gripped at the ice scraper and pressed on my toes to see around him. It was a little pathetic. For so many years my favorite movies were supernatural and fantasy, my favorite books were of the same vein and oddly cop/mercenary related, I even recorded Ghost Hunters on my DVR every week, but face to face with this shit…I never once suspected reality in those fantasies.

Yet, there it was. A jittering mass of black and scale clattering like a maraca under my dinning room table with bits of Amos, the ass-hat cat, threaded through its teeth. My mysterious new friend shoved me into the apartment. It stumbled on my high-heels, trying to keep the creature in sight. The rifle leveled out of the corner of my eye and let off a soft report before I could even gasp. I didn’t know much about guns outside of cop dramas and action flicks, but I didn’t realize rifles could have silencers until that moment. I noticed it about the same time the shadow creature started reeling and making the most god-awful wail.

The bullet, or rather the dart, that the old man had shot implanted in its shoulder. Some sort of liquid drained from the clear tube and seemed to set fire to the little demon’s veins. The old man nudged me aside again, this time into the living room chair. He dove for the plasma TV, but only to turn it on and jacked up the volume to hide the thing’s death rattle.

I scrambled to get back onto my feet from the chair and trained my eyes on the creature for fear that it would be there in my face the moment I looked away like the ninja kitten. It remained under the table, lurched and heaved on the carpet. Its blood steamed up from its body –great, that I didn’t have to clean up, but still highly disturbing. Black mist and bits of flesh disappeared in the air like ash from a burning photo. The scent of cloves accosted my nose, not the worst smell…actually as a smoker myself it smelled rather nice. Within seconds it was nothing, just the scattered remains of Amos, the now shredded pizza box, and a turned over trashcan.

My eyes slid over to my savior, then panned back the other way as he walked in front of me to where the creature had disintegrated. “And it’s dead?”

“What?” he shouted over the mild cacophony of sounds baying from the television. I snatched up the remote and turned the volume down; the neighbors wouldn’t be too keen on my blasting out their windows anyway.

“It’s dead?” I asked again. If I could rely on what I just saw, common sense would say ‘yes, it’s dead’, but honestly, I wasn’t betting on common sense right now.

The rifle had returned to his shoulder, the remains of the dart between his fingers; obviously it wasn’t poison. He pocketed the tube after displaying it to me. “It won’t be coming back. UV in liquid form.”

“Okay, Whistler,” I breathed out. My wit apparently came back before my calm. My new friend didn’t seem to get my vampire movie reference, of course it took me a moment to realize I had even said it. He started for the door and panic had me dive after him. “What if there’s more?” He was trying to leave and while most people would graciously see him out as quickly as possible, I wasn’t quiet ready to be alone with insanity in my head. I’d much rather insanity standing in front of me in the form of an armed ginger.

“There won’t be more. When you kill a Sling that scent sends the rest scattering as far away as possible. You won’t get another one for years.”

“And what if something bigger comes along? Something that eats things bigger than a cat?”

He paused with a hand to his rifle strap and let his gaze drift to what used to be Jamie’s pet. “The Sling didn’t eat your cat.” I gave him an insulted look and pointed at the tuffs of hair and tangled bits of gore that my brain didn’t want to connect to an animal other than distantly. “Slings are scavengers. They’re lazy and they don’t put up much of a fight unless you interrupt their dumpster diving.”

I jolted my finger toward the pile of fresh meat again, lips pressed firmly together. I didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want to think about it, but Mr. Crazy decided one and one didn’t equal two. He let off yet another of those lethargic sighs, grabbed my arm and turned me toward the carnage I’d been avoiding. “Since when does cat come in Styrofoam and plastic?”

Eyes flickering over the corpse, I noticed the trash can again and leaning around I could catch a glimpse of the refrigerator. Both the freezer and fridge doors were wide open. He tugged me directly in front of him, both hands on my shoulders. I stiffened, several of the defensive maneuvers Jamie showed me flew threw my head, but the old man hadn’t tried to hurt me yet and just the fact that he was humoring me made me resist the urge. Even with his gravelly voice in my ear.  “Please notice that the remains of your pet look remarkably like ground beef and chicken breast.” He was right; all that was strewn under the dining room table was the contents of my freezer. Raw meat, still half frozen, shredded trays and bits of plastic wrap made a happy little pile of relief in the shadows that I wasn’t sure a steam cleaner would tackle willingly.

“I’m pretty sure there’s some veal in there too.”

He snorted in humor and patted me on the shoulder. “Slings don’t normally ransack anything more than outdoor trash bins, but I wouldn’t worry much about it. With its death on the air, no more will come.”

“Who are you?” Yeah, a question that should have been asked a while back, but, you know…priorities.

He smiled, the creases around his mouth deepening and his scruff looking even sparser with the stretching of his skin. “No one of consequence.”

“Me neither, but I still have a name.”

“You’re cute.” His grin widened slyly. “I hope to never see you again.”

“Joe?” My heart leapt in my chest, taking my breath for a second, but thank the lord I recognized that voice.

“Jamie!” I launched into his arms the moment he slipped through the door. He left one arm around me, but instead of hugging me back he lifted me against his side to nearly toss me behind him. His other hand darted forward to clamp around the muzzle of the old man’s rifle, keeping it slung over the broad shoulder. Not that it mattered; I left off a little gasp when a blade swung out a hair shy of slicing Jamie’s throat.

“Wait!” I cried out. Again it didn’t matter. The blade wasn’t unsheathed to cut, just to intimidate and it did its job. Jamie’s solid back tensed to instant knots under my palms. They stared, sized each other up. Alec Jameson was no match for a gun-toting psycho, but an old man with a knife was a possibility. After dropping out of college, my Jamie went on one of those ‘finding one’s self’ kind of trips. Honed his body by climbing every crag and mountain he could, immersed himself in every culture to its gritty core, and came home with more stories and scars that he didn’t want to talk about than those he did. He made it as far as Laos before money ran out, not nerve though, he still had plenty of that. As shown by the fact that he was facing off with a war-scared man with a gun. 

“Who are you?”

Old man wrinkled his brow, his eyes sliding over Jamie’s toned shoulder to me. “Boyfriend?” He was obviously questioning me on my relationship with Jamie, but such was lost on my best friend and Jamie’s blue eyes showed a ring of white as he gaped at me. Did he seriously think that was the strange old man’s answer? I pinched his triceps and knew it hurt; I’d be hard pressed to find any fat there or anywhere else on his body for that matter.

“No,” I told Jamie, then shot Paul Bunyan a glare as well. “And hardly.”

Jamie was my best friend, closer to me than half my relatives, and sure we joked that if we were still single when we were fifty we’d say to hell with it and get married, but regardless to how classically handsome, well-toned, and sexy I admitted Jamie was, placing him in my fantasies just made my skin crawl. I could still appreciate the curve of the muscles beneath my palms as I tried to pull Jamie away though; he had an amazing back, that boy.

“Truce, okay. Whistler just saved me from a big nasty, Jamie. Besides the gun…” I trailed off as my train of thought followed my unfinished sentence to somewhere else. “Wait, what would happen to a human if they’re pumped with liquid ultraviolet?”

The old man lifted his blade from nicking Jamie’s five o’clock shadow when he could see he wasn’t in immediate danger. “Never cared to experiment. May I leave now?”

“What the hell is going on?” Jamie hissed at me. He still corralled me behind him and fortunately we were blocking the front door. I didn’t want the old man to escape quite yet. I wanted to know what that creature was. I wanted to know what other imaginary creatures in my head weren’t so imaginary.

“I came home and there was this thing in our apartment, chowing down on about two weeks of frozen meat.” Jamie didn’t cook dinner more than twice or thrice a week and I even less so. “I thought it’d killed Amos and then Bobby Singer here showed up to save me from the…what did you call it?”

“A Shadowling, we call them Slings, and who the hell are Bobby Singer and Whistler?”

I gave the old man an incredulous look. “Do you watch television? Ever?”

“You have to admit some of your references are more fangirl than common knowledge,” Jamie muttered. He was still tense as a stretch rubber band and the comment was probably more habitual than thought out. We got that way sometimes; finishing each other’s sentences, supplying words and phrases when the other couldn’t finish their thought, banter on autopilot. “An animal got into our apartment?”

“No, this was no animal. Think Santa’s elves’ evil shadow only with teeth.”

"I’m sorry?” Jamie bleated out, eyes still following the old man’s every subtle movement.

“And claws.”

"It’s nothing to worry about. You won’t see one ever again.” Jamie stepped in front of the stranger. They scowled and glared each other over again. Jamie was shorter, though not by much, and the old man had the slightest hint of a beer gut that, in his age, probably alluded to less agility. I’d seen Jamie clamor up a horizontal wall with the ease of crawling into bed, but the stranger had a gun. Even if it was loaded with darts, I didn’t know what that would do to Jamie.

“Who are you?” Jamie repeated, undeterred.

“Krieg,” the old man replied finally. He brushed his knuckles over his chin as if it were a profane gesture. “Now get out of my way. There are bigger and badder nasties out there that I’d like to waste my time on.”

'Like what’ was on the tip of my tongue, but the knife was out again and obviously Krieg wasn’t up for playing anymore. Jamie pulled me out of the way with a hand around my bicep. Krieg was out the door in another moment and left us in the silence of our apartment. Jamie stared at me like a man just told the world was truly flat. And I had nothing to say. That was certainly a new sensation.

The little mew coming from Jamie’s room cut into the quiet and made me jump. Amos, now feeling safe with the demon exorcised, slipped out of the dark crack in the open bedroom door and paced into the kitchen. He was hungry and it was dinner time. I gazed at the remnants of our freezer on the carpet as Jamie rushed over to his baby and cradled the black and white ball of fluff in his arms. Food was probably the farthest thing from my mind…no, scratch that. Sleep was.

Maybe the world really was flat.



Comments and Critiques are appreciated and encouraged. Also seeking beta readers for this story if you are interested.

Contact me at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. Thank you!