The Parasite

Chapter 7: Homecoming

The next morning Jack awoke knowing what he must do, although not liking the conclusion he had come to the night before. After waiting for those in the rooms around him to leave so he could exit the building unseen, he made his way down stairs to a back door and slinked out into the streets and went on his way to another part of town.

As he walked through the streets and approached his destination, Jack began to be recognised by passersby who either ran off further into the neighborhood or stood around giving him dirty looks. Although some who Jack believed would recognise him didn't or simply ignored him as if he were a stranger. He wondered just what had happened during his disappearance to warrant this kind of response. Jack turned the corner to approach a parlor where a door man stood waiting as he approached. When Jack reached the door the man held it open, gesturing for him to come inside.

Inside a meeting had already been set up with a table pushed out into the middle of the room. As Jack approached the table a young man of slight build came up from behind, shoving past him before stamping a chair down in front of the table and saying. "Sit." Jack crossed his arms and spoke with a calm voice. "I think I'll stand." The kid stamped the chair down again, getting in Jack's face and shouting. "I said sit!"

"If he wants to stand then let him stand." The woman sitting on the other side of the table said while puffing on a cigarette. "B-but he-"

"No but's, now if you'd please leave, the adults here need to have a chat." The woman snapped as the kid scampered into a back room. "Sorry about him Jackie, he's still yet to prove himself." The woman said as she placed her cigarette in an ashtray. "It's just Jack, Marry." Jack said as he pulled a chair out from one of the other tables and sat down, pushing the chair he was offered aside. Marry scoffed as Jack sat down. "What happened to you calling me mom?" Jack slung his arm over the back of the chair and leaned back. "I grew up and moved out."

Marry leaned forward and spoke again. "Ah yes that's right, you've been gone for over a year by now, so you're either crawling back to avoid life as a hobo or your delusions have forced you back here." Jack sat up straight in the chair and placed his hands on the table. "I need manpower and guns for a job I'm gonna pull off." Marry looked at Jack as if he were mad. "Delusions it is, I have to say I'm disappointed." Jack stood bolt upright and spoke forcefully to reassert himself. "It's a simple hit, we go in, take out one of the guild's armored transports and make off with whatever's inside!" Marry leaned back in her chair and glared at Jack "Jackie, you and I both know what's in those transports, with that knowledge what you're proposing is a declaration of war."

Standing in the middle of the room, Jack took a moment to compose himself before turning around to leave. "Fine, if you won't support me I'll be on my way then." He said as he walked away from the table, but before he could leave the doorman locked the door as Marry chimed in. "Actually, we can't let you leave." As Jack turned around he saw the gangsters around the room drawing guns. "You see Jackie, the guild's been very kind to us, and we can't let that whole relationship slip down the drain because the terrorist that ruined their entire charade was able to just walk out our doors." Jack leaned forward, casting a dark shadow over his front side before speaking. "You can't kill me that easily."

"And why would that be?" Marry said as two men with guns took aim at jack. Before either of the men could take a shot Jack snapped into an upright position as pitch black, spiked tendrils sprang out of his shadow and slashed at his attackers. "It's been a long year, and you could say I've changed."

As Jack's body was enveloped in shadow, the doorman behind him tried firing a shot into his back only for the bullet to disappear into the shadow. After this, Jack spun around, mimicking the shape of a gun with his hand and firing the bullet back into the doorman's head. Jack spun again back to Marry and broke out into a sprint, and as a gangster tried to stop him with a tackle, a multi-jointed arm sprouted from Jack's shadow and proceeded to slam his head into the ground.

As he ran through the room he passed by the door the kid had left through and was promptly met with a shotgun blast which stopped him in his tracks. Looking into the hallway the door led to, Jack saw the kid holding a shotgun and shivering from fear. With a shrug Jack expelled the pellets from his shadow, firing them back at the kid, injuring but not killing him before taking the shotgun for himself.

As the shadow faded, Jack approached Marry, and as she tried to back away he fired a shot into her knee, obliterating it and sending her tumbling into the wall. As Jack loomed over Marry and clutched the shotgun by it's two barrels as he spoke with dark conviction. "Fine, I'll do it myself." After this he proceeded to smash in Marry's head using the sock of the shotgun.

Jack turned from the corpse, making it a few steps before falling to his knees and vomiting due to a mixture of panic and disgust. Sitting on the floor, Jack gasped for air as his tough guy act fell away, replaced by confusion and a slight tinge of fear. Jack staggered to his feet, desperately trying to regain his composure as he looked around him. After a moment Jack managed to steady his breathing as his hands continued to shake, and as he passed through the parlor towards the back exit Jack made an effort not to look at the bodies of those he once might have called friends. Stepping over the kid in the hallway, Jack made it to the back door before looking back at the kid who stared at him with a mixture of hate and fear, eventually managing to choke out the words. "Look what proving yourself gets you." before leaving through the back door.

Moving through the alleyways to avoid being seen, Jack could hear the sounds of shounting as people discovered the scene in the parlor. Adrenaline raced through his veins as he ran out of the neighborhood and back to his apartment elsewhere in the city, all while people searched for him in the streets. Eventually Jack was able to escape undetected and began walking back to his apartment, and as he contemplated what to do next a profound sense of loneliness came over him as he realized he had cut ties with most of those who could help him, and now he would have to take his revenge all on his own.

Jack remembered a story he heard during his year in exile, one about a knight who found a dragon he could not kill, so in desperation he joined the dragon in a bid to make himself stronger. At the time Jack thought it was some sort of psychoanalysis, meant to deconstruct his past actions, he thought himself the dragon, collecting knights to serve under him. But after returning from his year in exile he didn't know what to think, he knew there was a second part of the story, but he couldn't remember how it went. Jack assumed the dragon and knight would destroy each other, that's how those kinds of anecdotes were, usually just a vague warning about nebulous self destructive behavior, never any straight forward advice. After the brawl and realizing how his actions were leaving him with fewer and fewer friends, Jack simply wanted to come out of the terrible story alive.