(A/N: Imagine my horror when I returned from a long period of depression... to find Part One of Chapter 29 gone! Who knows for how long?! To the readers who missed Chapter 29, Part One, I'm sorry for any confusion. The chapter is back up. I suggest you go back and read it before reading this one. If you don't, then you're going to be very confused. Again, I apologize. Warning: Chapter contains topics of sexual assault and abuse.)
Time wasn't on Anthony's side in Hell's new year, 1954. The seconds were slipping through his fists and taking Cherri with them.
The severe continental weather of Hell was a cacodemon in its own right, with sweltering summer temperatures and drastic drops in winter.
This particular brumal storm made Anthony miss the sizzling, summer sun. Wet squalls battered his body as he scuttled down the sidewalk, a brown paper bag clutched to his chest. Torrential rain slicked the sidewalk with precarious black ice, and sunk icicle nails through his jacket, soaked clothes, and into his core. He seemed to be the only soul out tonight, the dead streets lit by neon signs and paltry street lamps. Exhaustion made each step heavy, but he hurried himself along.
Cherri needed the contents within the bag. After days of researching, and then frantic, plain-old searching, he finally found the remedy he'd been hoping for.
She'll be okay, he thought on repeat. But tears still rose in his eyes at the defeatist possibility.
She's as dead as dust, and it's all yer fault! A cruel voice replied, sounding like an amalgam of every detractor in his life: Pops, Nio, the various Johns who, after blowing their load (call it post-nut clarity), wouldn't want to be within fifty feet of him. Add her to yer ever-expanding tally. First the love of yer fuckin' life, then Barb, the one person who gave ya a chance in Hell, pardon the French... and now Cherri, yer best friend.
Sometimes, Anthony forgot those jeering voices came from his own mind.
Anyone with the will to live better think twice before gettin' wrapped-up with you, huh? The twisted chorale kept on.
Stop it! He snapped, sending the voices back into whatever dark recess they crawled out of. She'll be okay! She'll be okay!
His desperate mantra escalated, then overflowed into mumbling. Anything to keep those voices from speaking their piece. Because what they were saying was true.
It was all his fault.
Year after year, the New Year's Extermination tradition ran its course, starting at sunset on New Year's Eve, hitting its bloody high throughout the night, and slowly trickling down to a total stop by sunrise. By first light, vulturous sinners swept the streets for unsoiled clothing, cash, jewelry. Some even took the bodies to do Satan-knows-what with— to each their own.
Wait until first light. He should have abided by that rule. Some rules were set in stone for a reason—a life-or-death reason.
But by some hubristic ambition, he proposed to Cherri they slip out into the early morning streets on the tail-end of the Extermination. He wanted to get a leg up on the rest of the scavengers.
Cherri was against it from the get go, gawking at him as if he sprouted a seventh arm from his forehead.
"Anthony, are you thick in the head? Some exterminators hang around until morning light, you know. We'd better wait like everyone else," she argued, at the time tinkering with a few homespun pipe bombs for the impending turf wars.
He dismissed her worries. He swore to her they'd be careful. Whatever straggling exterminators that remained would be easy to hide from, if they ran into one at all.
YOU ARE READING
Vintage Memories
Fanfiction(Earlier parts of the story are currently being rewritten, chapters 1-12 have been updated) "Seventy-four years..." "Seventy-four...fuckin' years!" "I searched for ya' for decades! I thought ya' were fuckin' dead!" "We are dead, my dear." "Did ya' e...
