Crimson

You Have a Heartbeat

The room was eerily silent. Jeff was scouring the woods for recently dug cement graves. Anna was trying to sense where Jack was. I was watching Frederique.

She stared back at me stonily, sulking like a teenager and watching the knife I played with in my hands. We’d already tried torture with her, slitting her wrists, breaking bones. I’d even pulled off her fingernails. She didn’t feel it and then she would heal. She was stronger than what she was. But not stronger than me.

Her plentiful misguided attempts at escape were useless, all ended with me throwing her back down onto the couch and settling back onto the arm chair for yet another hour of silence and interrogation.

‘Fred, why can’t you just make it easier on everyone here and tell us where you buried Jack?’ I hunkered down beside her, flicking my knife across her cheek as I did so. The wound closed and I redid it.

‘Jack, I can’t feel it. This ‘cause her pain till she talks’ method isn’t working.’ Fred was smirking at me, the deranged kind of smirk that made anyone who beheld it vaguely uncomfortable.

‘It makes me feel better though. Gives me something to do with my hands.’ I let the knife split her cheek again. ‘Maybe I’m hoping it’ll scar.’

She shot me a glare which I ignored. ‘I will never tell you where Laughing Jack is.’ She put on her stubborn face which I used to find cute, but under current circumstance I wanted to cut off. ‘I’ll heal from anything you do to me.’

‘On that note, why are you healing?’ I cut her cheek again to make clear what I meant.

‘The angel said it was because there were demonic traces inside me and when she added her blessing to me, I was strengthened. But the good and evil warring inside me have made me a little… stir crazy.’ She giggled.

I sat back. ‘You’re insane.’ Of course she was, what else could she possibly be. ‘I suppose I’m a demon then. And  you’re an angel?’

She shook her head. ‘No. You’re not a demon and I’m not an angel. You just have a demon inside of you.’ She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a thick A5 exercise book, the kind you’d get from office works under the ‘Back to School!’ section. Scrawled across the front in black marker was ‘Demonology’.

‘You wrote a book on demons.’ I almost laughed then, or hit her, I wasn’t quite sure. ‘You haven’t had time to get your own food, but you have had time to write the pocket edition guide to crazy people.’

‘I wrote it down, but Rachel dictated it.’ Fred pushed the book into my hands. ‘The demon possessing you is in the cannibalism section. It’s commonly referred to as the ‘Eyeless Consumer”

‘Commonly referred to by who?’ I asked, exasperated now.

‘Angels, demons and everything in between with the knowledge.’ She seemed so sure of herself I almost believed her. I mean, the things I could do, weren’t they demonic? The way I thought? But then I remembered it meant believing in good too, angels and the god damn big man in the sky.

‘So did ‘Rachel’ or whatever give you invincibility or can I kill you yet?’

She snorted. ‘I’m not invincible. And you wouldn’t kill me.’

‘Well you’re definitely giving me a motive.’

‘Jack, you wouldn’t kill me. The demon possessing you may want to kill me. But you, the person’ she put her hand to my heart ‘doesn’t want to kill me. Don’t let him go away, don’t let the darkness win.’

‘You’re a crazy person.’ I was married to an insane women, I sighed. ‘Fred, you have three hours before Jeff gets back and if you haven’t told us where you buried Laughing Jack, we will kill you.’