Long road home...
Ruktis kept a measured pace to his stride down the street. His thoughts were still a jumble as his battered psyche struggled to integrate the last half of a year into his existence. Anger, frustration and resentment swirled in a miasma within his mind. As each step down the concrete became a cadence, rage slowly lit its way through his blood.
“He couldn’t just leave well enough alone could he?” Ruktis thought to himself.
So much time and so much of him had gone into crafting the solution for the problem. He had crafted a soul for the purpose of foiling the attentions of his enemies. They looked, ever mindlessly vigilant, for Ruktis. The plan had been perfect. Ruktis simply ceased to exist. In his place was Jacob Talic. Years earlier the actual person had died and no records of the death existed. Jacob had been his student…had gone by the shadow name of Jet. The crafting of his personality to over write Ruktis’ had been both a difficult and terribly costly test. All he had had to do was fade away.
Fate, it appeared didn’t let loose quite so easily.
First, He ran into Boomer who got caught in the blast radius of His rewrite of self due, likely, to past association. Then He ended up right back in this hell hole called Orlando where His actions set off alarms to the most obnoxious of people. Damn it. Like a ten year old with a scab, the idiot just couldn’t seem to quit picking at it. He had torn the scars open before there had been an opportunity to heal them. The Great Work had unraveled at the seams.
Now instead of a team player who wanted to just be of use and help, they got stuck with the target of an ever homing missile. It only took Great Lady Fate kicking Him in the taint six or seven times for Him to get the picture. Orlando is where he is supposed to be.
The rain started as a light sprinkle but quickly strengthened into a downpour as the old scuffed work boots continued to beat out a staccato march toward the destination. He had planned ahead… before. There was a storage facility that held a few things. He had never wanted to see them again but had, even then, known that there was a chance that everything would go tits up. The Boy Scouts had it right, “Be prepared.”
Four hours passed with the same swift metronome beat of boots on pavement until He reached his destination. He recalled his pass code after a few minutes sorting out the jigsaw puzzle of his mind. He also said more then one unpleasant invective to the weather as the rain had seemed to dog his steps from Orlando to Kissimmee. He wasn’t sure what to make of the weather, but it was a certainty that it mirrored his mood. With one last spit of bloody phlegm, finally clearing His lungs, He punched in the numbers and walked through the gate as it opened.
1326 was the rolling door before Him. He reached into his duffel bag, digging near the bottom when He found the key he searched for. He had gotten a good lock and it clicked open easily. The door rolled up with protesting weal of metal and inside sat an old Dodge truck. It was hardly a looker. Rust had crept a little further up the panels in the humid Florida climate and even from outside the opened storage it lightly stank of old cigars and sweat to Ruktis’ honed sense of smell. For the first time in more then a handful of hours, He smiled. It was going to take some time to reacclimatize Himself to the memories built over the last several months, but this simple vehicle lent a bit of stability to the raging rapids that were His thoughts.
“Hand over the key, mutha fucka!”
“You got to be kidding me”, He thought to himself.
Slowly turning around Ruktis was presented with a pathetic sight. The pulse of life instantly revealed that the ‘woman’ could only barely hold that title. With a bit of reservation he placed her at maybe two decades old. The short crop hair was doubtlessly cut by her own hand and not with scissors. She was rail thin and so obviously malnourished it was frightening to the medical sensibilities of the man. This He took in within a single blink of His eyes. Before the second blink He knew the culprit. Addiction and withdrawal coursed through her like lightning down a copper wire. It was revolting and that revulsion centered on her by association. A deeper look revealed the muscular apathy endemic to habitual crystal methadone abuse. Traces of crack cocaine also lie dormant in her frontal lobe like a time bomb ready to end her. She disgusted Him. By the time a single exhalation of his breath had passed, He knew this and had dipped into her mind to see what had led to this point.
“Skipped the tricks and went straight to armed robbery, I see…”
“What? F@*k you cracka!”
“It is Kracker…with a ‘K’ you dirty piece of trash. Now turn around like a good little piece of trash and you won’t get hurt.” And with that, He turned back around to digest what He had learned in the additional handful of second rooting around in her cerebellum. It hadn’t been pleasant. It was like dumpster diving for nuggets of pig waste. Not just the fecal matter but dining on the bile if a ruptured torso. Her mind was full of pain and self-loathing and a distinct desire to die without the courage to actually do it. Better to die by pieces then all at once.
Then she did what He knew she would. The hard metal of the barrel slammed into His kidney. It actually hurt.
“Whud jou s…”
Before the third word had passed her lips, He had spun. Once revolution had snatched the cheap semi-automatic from her hand. The second revolution caught her neck in a prison grip while the barrel slammed into mouth.
“Oops, it seems I broke your meth mouth.” He said noticing her choking and drooling out horribly malnourished and destroyed teeth.
“Now, I am going to ask you one single question and I hope you think about your answer. I take things very literally.” He said calmly. “Do you want to die?”
For a moment, the girl continued to scream and weep and choke before the magnitude of the question and her position became brutally apparent. She began violently shaking her head ‘no’ as if entering into an epileptic fit.
“You sure?”
He head started bobbing up and down though the grinding of the barrel against the raw nerves of her teeth was nothing short of electric agony.
“I’ll be damned. Okay then. I got some stuff in my truck that’ll fix your teeth and then you and I are going to get some coffee and have a conversation. If you rabbit on me, make no mistake, I will shoot you in the back before you make it down this aisle. You understand?”
Another, slightly less energetic nod.
He uses the grip on her neck to throw her into the storage facility ahead of Him, not trusting her not to be stupid. He had meant what He said. He would shoot her down and in the back if she tried to run. The answer she gave was only the first test of whether she was worth saving. Landing hard against the steel back wall, she falls to the ground… whimpering incoherently. He grabs a sports mouth guard out of the glove box of the truck.
None to gently, He picks her up and crams the mouthpiece into her pie hole. She flails in panic, but the corded muscles are irresistible even with fear soaked adrenaline. Mana floods the cramped space to ease the rending of the universe’s natural order and a moment later He lets her go. Spitting and gagging, she ejects the mouthpiece along with whatever bile had collected in the back of her throat. The cheap handgun, meanwhile, had gone somewhere that no one was likely to find it. Let the spirits of this city happen upon it and do what they would. Better the spirit realm then the material at the moment.
“Now get in the damn truck. We’re getting’ some coffee at the IHoP down the road.”
At this a reappearance of panic set across her face. “No, somewhere else.”
“Sorry girlie, I like IHoP coffee.”
“My boyfriend is there… He won’t wanna see me tonight…”
“You mean your pimp and you don’t have money for ‘im. Like I said, I like IHoP coffee.” He didn’t even have to look at her to hear the muscles tense and ready to run, “Remember what I said about rabbiting…”
She got in the truck.
It wasn’t even a mile to the International House of Pancakes on Thacker and Vine Street. He only said one thing in that short time.
“Where did you get that gun?”
She didn’t answer and he had his.
He had to all but drag her in and didn’t even have to ask where his target was for the way that her eyes darted continuously over to the far back booth.
“You’ve got to be f@*king kidding me…” Ruktis quietly said looking over at the black boy sitting there. Seventeen, maybe eighteen years old dressed in ‘thug glorious’. Fubu, Ecko and thousands of dollars in gold if any had actually been real. He dragged his involuntary charge with him as he walked up and slid her into the seat and followed right behind. This caused the ‘kid’ to look up from his ‘Blackberry’ and look somewhere between surprised and angry.
“Where’s my money, bitch” were the first words out of his mouth. Ruktis couldn’t help it…He laughed. The boy looked at him full of thuggish anger as Ruktis said, “What are you, a pimp out of the ‘70s? You’re really a pathetic joke, huh?”
The boy suddenly began to jump up when Ruktis reacted with agility that an Olympic athlete would stare at with awe. The boy looked down at his hand, planted on the table to boost him upward. Ruktis had snatched up the fork on the table and had it on the hand. Not piercing the flesh but, with enough pressure that the intension had been made clear.
“Now shut up or your name for here out will be “Lefty. I am not in a good mood, my night has been bad and I am wet. I am going to say this once. You will never speak to this girl again. You will never stray into my line of sight again. You will get the hell out of this state starting in thirty seconds. Now leave before you’re forced to leave something behind on this table that you will miss until the end of your days.”
The youth stood up, a great deal more pale then when Ruktis had sit down.
“You is dead mutha fucka!” the boy said as he left. Ruktis shifted his position a fraction and it was enough to send the thug-lite running like the hounds of hell had been after him.
Ruktis waved the waitress over and got his coffee. He also fed the girl. Teresa was her name. For an hour they chatted and he slowly took away the poison from her mind and body. He also made a couple of calls on the cell that the boy had left behind. One was a call to a half way house in Orlando and the other to a good taxi service. The rest was up to her.
Shortly after the girl was gone, He drained his cup of coffee and paid his bill. He left a thirty dollar tip and got in his truck. There was no shock when he watched in his rear view mirror as a green tricked out Mazda pulled out and followed him. He drove down Thacker Avenue until it got dark and pulled down a darker side dirt road and killed the engine. He was out of the car and in the shadow realm before the headlights on the trailing car had touched his back bumper.
Four thugs got out of the Mazda. The boy was one of them. They all had handguns on them. Each carried them as if they were comfortable with them but without any actual skill. They approached the truck two to a side. Ruktis meanwhile had reappeared in the driver’s seat of the Mazda. He looked on in pleasant surprise at the manual transmission. He wouldn’t have guessed that any of them had enough brains to know how to use one. He was also happy that the engine was still running. He buried the gas pedal into the floorboard. That got the attention of the four. It took three seconds for them to turn around in confusion and another two second for the engine to blow from redline. Five seconds and Ruktis were back across the gauntlet.
“The third thing I told you was to never stray into my sight again!” Boomed the voice piecing the gauntlet into the real world. The boys ran back toward the car as black smoke flooded the meager space of the engine compartment. A meager twist of location placed Ruktis behind the lagging member, back in the real world. One single punch to the back of the skull dropped the boy. Alive, but out for the time being. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest as the remaining three turned at the sound of his fall. Three pistols seemed to rise at once pointed at Him.
“Stop” was all Ruktis said and each of the boys went rigid. Synapses fired brutal pathways and two of the remaining three, the two remaining He hadn’t seen turned their guns on each other. Both fell to the ground with bullet wounds to the knee. The pimp, He walked up to. The boy struggled to resist bringing the 9mm under his chin. Ruktis’ will would not be shaken.
“Only pussies need to be told things twice. Are you a pussy?” Ruktis said as he released the boy enough to speak.
“I don’t wanna die, Man…”
“I guess that would be a yes. Not so thugs now are you, hard tack? You didn’t get it the first time. Maybe you get it now. I am a nightmare. I will find you if I want. I will kill you if I want. I am the worst thing you will ever know and I am far more then you can guess. I am an angel and demon rolled into one. Do you understand now?”
“Yeah nig, I gotz ya…”
“No you don’t, but you will soon…” It was the last thing the boy heard before the first hammer like blow fell into his ribs.
Driving back into Orlando, Ruktis was glad he had stopped before doing permanent damage, but the boy was going to be long in healing. Some lessons had to hurt to sink in. He pulled into the parking garage of the Florida Hospital on Lake Underwood and fished his janitor’s uniform out. He knows no one would pay attention to his face and it didn’t take long before he was on the tarred roof. It took only a couple of minutes to change the engravings End had made some months ago. If he was stuck in Orlando…the least he could do was help. The next Great Work began.