Dark Wings

Dark Wings Chapter Three

Dark Wings

3

What remained of my breakfast lay in a puddle of goo on the floor at my feet.  Although I had no more to throw up, my stomach kept on pushing and contracting air out of my throat. My left hand was at my belly while my right hand was clutching the fabric of my shirt hurtfully: my fingernails cutting through the cloth and into my skin.

Again and again the heaving came until it subsided into small pitiful chokes that rattled my shoulders. The eyes that had witnessed everything were tightly sealed, but the image: the blood, the smashed skull, and the eyeballs never really faded. It was like a gory film on repeat in my mind’s eye. Inescapable. The exact same way nobody inside the bus could escape.

“Fuck!” The wolf spat after he had kicked the dead man home at the foot of the door, blocking the only exit available. Streaks of red and white liquid painted the bus. Blood splattered in tiny drops on the walls and the windshield.

I quickly closed my eyes again. If all there was to see was the sight of death, I’d rather pluck my eyes with my own bare hands. The idea brought back the scene where the crawling man had his eyes separated from its sockets to roll on the floor like golf balls.

My stomach started protesting again. I bit the soft flesh of my arm to control the reaction, the pain spreading like wildfire temporarily shoving the guilt and disgust I was feeling on the backseat.

“Are you alright?”

I opened my eyes a little only to see a pair of running shoes shiny with fresh blood beside my own.

It took a second before I screamed, cringing away in a futile attempt to meld my body to the cold wall. “No! Aaah! Stay away from me!” I had my arms protecting my head for something worse that he could inflict upon me.

“Step back!” He shouted, his voice echoing like thunder. “Come think I have my guard down and you’d be dead before you know it.”

I lowered my arms minutely and saw that he was pointing his gun at a guy in his middle age. The guy was slowly retracing his steps backwards with his hands lifted in total surrender. He looked like a child caught with his hand inside the cookie jar.

Everybody whimpered, anticipating the sound that was getting dangerously familiar to us.

“Please, let us go. We didn’t –“

“Shut up!” the wolf cut him off, making the guy jump out of his skin. “Don’t test me. Now go sit and be a good boy next to that slut.” The guy didn’t move. From where I was seated, I could see the way his jaw was clenched tightly, daring to refuse to follow the command. “Playing tough, huh?” The wolf grinned, baring his teeth to shimmer with the occasional flashes of lightning. “Let’s see how tough you really are.”

What he did next was enough to knock the grain of control I had left. I watched his outstretched arm move from the guy and pointed the barrel of the gun to a little, scrawny boy inside his mother’s embrace.

“Please, not my son…” The woman started crying torrent of tears and pleading for mercy. “Please, I beg you, sir… not my son.”

For a fleeting moment his face softened, his eyes glazed over, his muscles relaxed. It was as if he was remembering something… something he didn’t want to remember at all. And just as quickly it was gone and he was back to his former vicious self.

“Now, are you gonna move your ass or not?!”

The guy didn’t need to be told twice.

I was frozen in place, disturbed by what was beneath the dark surface he was masquerading.

What was his purpose for doing this?

He didn’t seem to be the type of person to… what? Hurt a fly? No. He already killed two people  without any hint of hesitation and regret. I shouldn’t forget that. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

But why?

Suddenly there was laughter: bittersweet and full of encompassing agony.

I lifted my blank stare and saw that the wolf was looking at me, his face crumpled and broken despite the laughter. “Two years,” he started, and then shook his head enthusiastically, his blond hair going this way and that. “Two fucking years, Darrel!” Tears finally tumbled down his flushed cheeks. His blue eyes, blue like the bluest of blue skies, cut me through the core strangely.

I was struck speechless.

He took a couple of steps towards me, kneeled, and then watched me watch him.

He raised his quivering free hand, meaning to touch my face. “It’s me,” he whispered softly with a ghost of a smile.

Before his fingertips could make contact, I croaked the only thing running through my brain. The only thing I knew I needed and wanted to say.

“I’m not Darrel.”