Cherry || b.barnes

09 || Stunning

A loud scream cuts through my thoughts, and guided by instinct, I turn around for one hundred and eighty degrees, securing the street I just entered for any signs of its source. It was of short life, but the despair and pain in it still lets the hair all above my body raise. Not waiting all too long, and once again just like the time with the biological weapon directed by a force awakening in the depths of my being, I rush towards the next wall. Finding a metallic staircase on the outside, probably for emergencies like fire, I start to climb the house upwards in a speed the common human would get dizzy from. Hand clawing around the railing on the story before the roof, I swing back, hoping the muscles in my arm don't fail me, and throw myself onto the top of the red-bricked building. 

The landing is a little inelegant, scratching my elbows through the jacket along the rough ground, but I couldn't care less. Mind focusing, I take a deep inhale, and this time consciously blending out the city's roaring around me. Cars, busses, the music of the clubs around me and the loud, indistinct chatter of people are shoved into the back of my mind, and with all the might inside me, I concentrate on what I smell. 

And my assumption isn't left in disappointment. The metallic scent of blood crawls up my nose and its direction right into the map I drew when I crossed this neighborhood. When I first started in the business, and with the business I mean generally getting me into dangerous situations with possible violent outcomes, the stench of the smell evoked vertigo inside me, spinning my mind around the badness of the scenario in my front. It took me merely three weeks until I was fully used to it.

Getting to the west end of the rooftop, I glance down along the wall into a street so narrow I bet it would be a set perfect enough for Jack the Ripper to murder his victims in. And the scenery in there almost let's nostalgia flood me. I maybe didn't get anything of the film, music or poetic industry within the last years, but there was a boy in my class back when I went to school that would talk about a comic figure as it was his icon. I think the family was called Wayne; I never really paid all too much attention, was busy listening to the gossiping It-Girls of the class, but he told me that the main character's parents were rich, and shot in front of his eyes in a narrow street of... Gotham City, I guess. Well, I know. My memory never fails me on anything I even slightly focused on.

And this very segment plays right underneath my feet. There's a woman with blonde, shoulder-long hair, perhaps thirty years old, and a man a little older, holding her hand and the one of their son's, maybe seven or eight. On the other side, not too far away from the little family, there's a group of five men, all broadly built and wearing ski masks, otherwise completely white-clothed from shirt to shoes.

I recognize them even before I decipher the entire situation. As – now probably an ex- - member of one of the gangs of New York City, I should know about them, or at least the fact I should take my legs into my hands and run when I see these shades of clothing. They call themselves Lucifer's guards, and are one of the most ruthless and merciless people I have ever met. They don't have no side, never, and kill for the thrill, without any purpose. A wrong glance at one of their members is enough; they would find out about your home, and you'd be standing on heaven's door before you even realize what is happening. The cult they have even has a special sign for their kills, a cross slashed over the entire faces of their victims while they're still alive, a warning to anyone who dares a step too close – which is exactly why you could ask anyone about them, but there was no answer. The few that would open their mouth about whereabouts, about the cult in general, merely taking their name into their mouth have their personal death penalty spoken out. 

I've just always been too curious about everything and anything to let the fear get the best of me. Not naïve, not carefree, but intrigued enough to have the urge to always know what's going on and why.