REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

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Skinner wove his way through the streets. Small agitated crowds roamed and chanted for food and the rights of workers and those who could not. They became more numerous and rowdy as he went toward the Guts. The repeater found himself in the midst of a gathering riot. He could smell burning and smoke tinted the air. Seeking the least populated path, Skinner turned a corner to find himself in the face of another Diluvian patrol, this one three strong. Their draconic swords and helms looked as if they might bite. Unlike the others, these were no saviors. "Your papers," the head tinhead demanded. Skinner dug in his trickbag and produced the false documents that Church had given him. As he handed them over he realized he had forgotten the alias provided him. He'd committed it to memory before but now his mind was blank. Had it been the blow to his head that knocked the moniker loose? Too much on his mind? What was the damned name? 'Meeks?' 'Leeks?' Panic set in. If the officers were to ask and Skinner could not give them his own fucking handle, he was cooked. Please don't ask, hardstick. Please don't ask. Glass broke nearby. A store window shattered by a rock. The riots were spilling into this street now. The officer shoved Skinner's papers into his chest and Skinner was forgotten. The troops moved toward the ruckus. Earlier the Diluvians had saved him from hellraisers and now the reverse had come to pass. It was becoming difficult to tell friend from foe anymore.

— • —

Tusk tumbled and splashed into warm water and great hands lifted him out into the cool dry air and wrapped his body in a warm towel of soft wool. He heard crying and then realized the wails came from his own mouth. He could still hear Aoh's chanting and laughing around him, louder now, echoing from the walls of his father's old cabin. Tusk realized he had just experienced his birth—a true rebirth—and then felt an excruciating burning sensation upon his tender back. He was put into the arms of his mother who was now recovering in a bloody tub from the birthing. Tusk sunk into her soft bosom and the cradle of her arms and looked at his own hands. They quickly grew into the fists of a man before his eyes. Still covered in blood, so much blood. He found himself alone in the dirty pink water now, too big for the basin, knees drawn to his chest. His mother gone. The water had turned cold in a thunderclap. Tusk got to his feet, wet and dripping and trembling, and went to the privy door. He put his fingers to the handle and hesitated, fearing what he would see in the space opposite. Would his eyes land on his family slain there again on the floor, throats cut from lobe to lobe, the place ransacked? Tusk summoned his courage and pushed the door open. The bodies were there (oh the sheer horror, their wide pink grins) but Tusk forced himself not to look at them directly, as if they were catoblepas or gorgons whose gaze could kill. Instead, he looked ahead at the front door that swung in the wind, left ajar by his parents' fleeing murderers who went uncaught. Beyond the portal's frame the beautiful forest beckoned, breezy and chirping. Simon's childhood playground. He kept his eyes straight ahead and stepped over the bodies. The corpses of his kin stared from the periphery, their eyes glazed with death. Tusk's foot slipped in the pool of blood on the floor and he fell toward the door. He fumbled for the jamb but felt no purchase. Tusk plunged headlong through the opening into an astral space beyond all mortal experience, an infinite well of pure happiness and contentment unfettered by worry or pain. Tusk's body was stripped away like a ragged cloak, his naked soul exposed and burned to its core in the glorious forge. The colossal fear of death that had consumed the Reaper from the time he first ever became aware of his own mortality was delightfully and profoundly singed away. So, too, was his omnipresent guilt. He felt another naked presence in that light and knew it to be his soul-twin Aoh. Thanks to the contents of that miraculous psychedelic flower and his lover's calming presence, Tusk would never again dream of those relentless hobgoblin tormentors who had chased him through the restless nights. In that blessed moment those tenacious ghosts were cleansed from his weary mind.