DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Part One: Desperado

"For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The laborer is worthy of his reward."

—I Timothy 5:18.

Part One: Desperado

Chapter One

Like broken tusks. 

The ivory tips of the young man's shattered ribs jutted from his ravaged skin and torn muscles like the points of a gruesome crown, as jagged as the teeth that had torn his body nearly in half.

Three men crouched over their fallen comrade, murmuring and shaking their heads. A sharp odor drifted from the corpse on the November breeze, eclipsing the familiar reek of death; fumes that stung their faces and singed the tender insides of their nostrils. The men flinched and sneezed and pulled away, eyes watering, hands over their burning noses. 

"Jesus! What is  this?"

"I don't know, John. You smell it every time. Don't let it get in your eyes!"

Dried blood mingled with the dust of the unpaved street, leaving a trail of deep purplish-red. Two weeks without rain had left the ground too hard to show the pawprints of whatever animal had dragged the victim. Here and there, deep scratches marked the places where the beast's claws dug into the dirt; five toes on each foot, wider than any of the men's hands.

The dead man's face lay turned to one side, his cheek ripped open, exposing broken and bloody teeth. Their fellow soldier, whom they had seen off on his last raid: to pilfer the main office at the Factory, owned, as they all were, by the Guild.

Whether he managed to get any of the paycards the Guild owed the people of the workingtown, they might never know. His empty pockets suggested he hadn't; his corpse suggested he had.

It wasn't the first time one of them had made a score against the Guild and turned up dead, ripped to pieces and left where someone would be sure to find him. Right in the middle of Kimnach's main street, though—that was new.

What wasn't new was the gelatinous, mucoid glaze on the ends of the cracked ribs, the slime that sent those biting fumes into the air. It glistened on the ragged edges of skin and muscle. It melted the torn edges of the victim's clothes. In the summer, it kept the flies from landing. The bones still looked firm, but body tissues looked liquefied, macerated by the slime. Putrefaction didn't explain it; this kill was so recent the torn entrails still smelled fresh. His arms and legs weren't even completely stiff.

John, barely out of his teens, stretched out a hand, and the oldest slapped it away. "Don't do that—it'll burn your hand off!"

"Always one of us," said the third man. "Nobody ever hears or sees them dump the body even if it's right in the middle of town. And always someone who's just raided the Guild. Someone who's cost them a lot of money."

The oldest man glanced around at the other two faces. "One of you needs to set out now for Holstonia. Ridley should hear about this before tomorrow night."

**If anybody else is reading this, I sure could use more votes. Thank you so much for being here! The other thing I could use is thoughts and suggestions about what you like and don't like. I have one critiquer on here and this got workshopped at a writer's group, and I got so many conflicting suggestions I don't know WHAT to do. There were supposed to be sequels, but if I can't even get this one to work, there's not much point. Thanks!!