A new short story under the cut
I can still smell the sewers on me as I jump into the shower, turning up the heat until it burns. The pain from the hot water is a simple way to make the mind stop focusing on the last few hours. I know already that the being called Gargoyle will become a new figure in my nightmares. Not that adding something to the rounds of horrors that visit me most night will do much difference in the long run, but dreams with a new recruit tend to stick out the first few nights.
Chop, chop, chop
Unwanted my memory jumps back to the sound that will forever be etched into my mind. It’s the wet sound of a butcher knife going through meat. In itself it’s not a new sound, I have heard it before. But then it has been in a proper butcher store. No, it’s not really the sound itself that haunts me, but the whole scenery it brings. A scene that includes piles of meat together with stank of blood and excrement. But all that is secondary to knowing what was put in the box, the box that I’m about to deliver.
For now the box lay on the counter of the hotel, out in the open and vulnerable. It could easily draw the eye of a guest passing by, who could just as easily snatch it up, never to be seen again. But I can’t get myself to care about the possibility of losing it. Part of me wishes the packet to be gone so that I don’t have to confront the morality of what I’m supporting if I go through with the delivery. I didn’t think I would mind being a deliverer for a vamp for as long as I got my perks out of the deal, and as long as I never got told any details. And I wasn’t, told the details I mean. Still, some things are obvious no matter how hard you try to close your eyes. Of course, if I hadn’t involved my working team I might still not have known, but then without them I most likely would be dead.
My skin starts to numb to the hot water, adapting, and so I turn up the heat a little more, getting the stinging back. But I can’t stay in here forever, slowly boiling myself; I still need to get the packet to Kathrine. Not that I will give it to her personally, I got an address of a street corner were Dante will be ready for the pick-up. Thinking about handing the packet over is the worst part, maybe because as long as I have it, as long as it’s still within my grasp, there is still a chance for regret, a chance for me to wash my hands from this. But as soon as it will be with Dante there is no going back.
A wave of nausea comes over me and if it had been in my early years it would have been followed by a wave of puke. But then again in my early days I wouldn’t have felt confliction over the death of changelings. It’s not human meat in the box and that should matter, it should make it easier. That should make all this, maybe not alright, but ok. But it doesn’t and that worries me the most. I was ready when I moved to the city to stash whatever were left of my ethics in bag and lock it away. That was the plan, not seeking pass the line, but not caring if I did. And here I am feeling conflicted over the deaths of a few non-people.
Chop, chop, chop.
There is still the possibility for me to not follow through. There is still the possibility to just get into a car and get away. It wouldn’t be a first time I would have made that choice. But what would I go this time? I already know I will never get out if this world, that has also been tried. And anything that means I get to stay alive will mean a new similar choice down the sooner or later. And so I turn off the water. The air feels viciously cold to my read skin and the cold says with me as I step outside, the box in hand.
