We'll Meet Again

Chapter Seventeen: Swing Doors

*Many years earlier*

Alastor moved silently through the sleepy streets of New Orleans. He had tracked his target to a small boathouse deep in the bayou. In addition to the hateful rhetoric, this man had brought when he came to town, he also brought a budding business selling laudanum. As he peered into the candle-lit shack, Alastor spotted the target removing bottles from a freshly opened crate. He used the opportunity to slip quietly in the boathouse door. The target's head whipped around to look at him and met the rounded end of a ball-peen hammer just before laying eyes on Alastor. The target dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Alastor went to work right away, he grabbed a kitchen chair that had been left in the boathouse, most likely for the purpose of fishing off the dock. He opened the dock doors and dragged the chair to the very end. He then moved the motionless, snoring target to the chair and bound him in with rope. He gagged him, but as he went to pull a burlap sack over his face his eyes fluttered open.

"Well well, we certainly are resilient are we not?"

Alastor spoke jovially and plastered a smile on his face a mile wide.

"Since you have decided to wake up and join me I suppose we could have a chat."

The target muttered around his cloth gag. It was hard to make out but seemed to include a myriad of racial epithets.

"Goodness, that sounded unkind, perhaps we should have a briefing on manners before we talk."

Alastor moved forward taking the long slender butcher's knife he had concealed in his belt. He pressed the tip in the hollow where the shoulder and collarbone meet. He leveled a heavy foreboding look at the target and applied just enough pressure to illustrate his point. Panicky little muffled sounds came from behind the cloth. It was still hard to make them out but it sounded like an apology. Alastor moved the knife, placing it delicately under the cloth gag. He twisted very carefully and applied the slightest pressure. The razor-sharp blade snicked through the cloth gag and it fell into the target's lap. He gasped for fresh air and struggled fruitlessly against the ropes.

"Ya fuckin' lunatic, let me go! You're gonna swing for this, so help me! Ya fuc......"

His voice cut off as Alastor reached out and cruelly clamped his hand over the target's mouth, digging both thumb and forefinger into the tender spot where the jawbone meets the cranium. Something fell in the boathouse behind them, Alastor whirled, knife ready. A figure moved from between two boxes toward the door. Alastor tossed the knife in a spinning arch. The knife buried itself in the wood inches from the figure's face. He stalked down the dock taking long strides. He saw the door open, just a crack, and then close. Whatever that had been was far too small to be a person. His shoe met something on the boathouse floor and sent it skittering. He moved to where it had come to rest, it was a book. He picked up the small leather bound book and inspected it. The title in gold leaf was "The Story of Hell" and it claimed authorship by Lucifer Morningstar. He gawked at the odd book, transfixed, only after his target shouted did his mind return to the task at hand. He retrieved his knife and returned to the dock, the target was babbling about something but Alastor was done talking for the night. He struck out with the knife, leaving a cruel gash from chest to waist. then he struck out with a kick which toppled the target, chair, and all into the swampy water of the bayou. He turned and walked away hearing only silence at first followed by violent thrashing in the murky water.

He returned home sometime later to the rundown apartment he shared with his mother. He crept in quietly trying his best not to wake her. He lay awake in bed until sunrise, devouring the strange book. He found himself lost in the beauty of its writer's lofty dreams. When punishment came he felt heartbreak at the cruelty of his peers. As he read the innermost thoughts of the author ruminating about the pain of the fall he cried. Something about the message pulled at him, called to him. Lucifer had sacrificed everything to give mankind free will, yet this was how they used it. To hate one another, to divide each other into pointless categories. It made his actions, these small few deaths he had dealt feel justifiable. He didn't realize morning had come until there was a soft knock at his door.