A Savage Life
Chapter 25

It had seemed like forever since we saw that dead man, all sawn in two by whatever that was that got him, before our adrenaline insulated itself down, with the exception of mine, as mine is still crawling with fear (as that’s what happens when you suffer from claustrophobia).

We see another dead body up ahead- a man in green and red robes, and his upper half covered by the red cape. It wasn’t hard to see the bullet holes in his body, or the movement near it either.

“Here we go.” I tell Damien as we cock our weapons, ready to fight the enemy.

We approached closer, and the moving figure lifts it’s frail, tiny head up, and I nearly shoot Damien out of shock. Of course the bullet ricochets and plants itself near my foot, missing me by a mere hair. The figure squeaks and then starts to cry. I have to avoid crying myself because I nearly shot a child. A small, helpless child.

I walk up to her, whispering, “It’s ok, it’s ok.” She is bawling her eyes out, and I nearly bawl my own eyes out as well. I perch myself beside her, and she clutches the dead figure harder, as if I might hurt her. I look at her, and study her features. Her short, hot pink hair, her sickly gray skin, her sharp, yellow eyes, and her Mesopotamian-like dress.

I rub her hair and introduce myself, gently purring, “It’s ok, I’m Josh, and my friend here is Damien.”

I point to Damien, and she flinches at the sight of him. Of course it doesn’t help that he charges at her and baseball player slides himself beside her literally screaming, “ARE YOU ALRIGHT LITTLE GIRL!”

The small child screams and grips the dead figure harder. I reach over her small, hungry-looking frame, and coldcock Damien a new one. I look back down at the little girl, and I start to comfort her, the best ways I knew how. But I knew that this girl was not human, as when she gets older, she’ll look like the man I see now.

He had the jowls and teeth of a bulldog, his long, sharp, lower mandibles reaching his eyes, just like the girl’s, albeit, her’s were smaller, his eyes were closed, but I opened them and it was like looking into the eyes of the Devil himself, his hands ended in brown claws, just like the little girl’s, which retracted and unsheathed themselves like a cat would, they both had pointy spines on their back, like a lionfish’s, her’s were rather small, and she would be very tall when she grew up, just like the man. The man was very muscular, the girl… maybe… I sincerely hope that I’m not actually string down at the cuter version of an actual monster that wouldn’t think twice before killing me and turning me into a gourmet special….

As a bonus, I managed to get some information out of the little girl too. Her name was Sasha Jehica, she’s four, comes from this place with a hard to pronounce name that leaves me baffled on how she was even able to say it, the man was Eugene Gaile, her uncle’s friend, and they had to leave because her mommy and daddy were “sleeping” when some scary men caught their house on fire. I nearly cry at the story, and I really want to bring her with me, but I can’t. I can’t afford a four year old. I want to leave her, but those big eyes look at me and I take her in.

I feel like a good guy for a moment, but then those Asbury Survival Instincts knock into my head and I think, “Oh great a kid. What’s next, an alien? Historical figures? How can I take care of them all?” But I just can’t leave her here. She’s a little girl who has no idea what’s going on around her, and very easy prey for anyone, or anything, that marks a sadistic fancy to her.

“Do you want something to eat?” I ask her, perhaps thinking that maybe Damien somehow got smart and saved some of those mealworms for her to eat.

The little girl looks up at me, gnashing her teeth, unsheathing her claws, and attacks me. Of course she misses me because I react so fast it was like a reflex, but she’s insanely quick.

“Woah!” Damien shouts, just standing there like he’s been glued to the spot.

“Are you gonna help me!” I cry, avoiding the little girl again.

I knew something was off about her, I just didn’t know what, until now.

“Okay,” Damien replies.

“Hey little girl, stop it!” I slam my hands on my sides thinking, “Is that the best you could do?”

Well, drum roll please, it works wonders because she stops chasing me around like the cannibalistic maniac she is and goes, “Oh. I just thawt that was an in’vitathion to eat you. Mommy and Daddy says that when a person says that, it’s okay to bite them.” Wonderful.

I look at her, taking a few steps backwards in case I accidently say another set of magical words that makes her lunge towards me with lightning speed, and say, “Well, that’s rude where we’re from. That’s not nice.”

Sasha hangs her head low and goes, “Sorry mister.”

I look at her and go, “That’s ok because you didn’t know, and now you know better, right?”

“Right!” she squeals in delight.

“Shouldn’t we get moving?” Damien asks.

I look at him for a moment, and remember that we have to leave this claustrophobic nightmare.

I pick up Sasha and tell her, “We have to go now, say goodbye to your friend.”

“But why?” she asks innocently. Raising children, I know better than to say the magic d-e-a-d word, but Damien didn’t.

“Oh, he’s dead.” Damien just says casually.

Sasha repeats the word dead and then starts bawling her eyes out. With Sasha in my arms, I slap the living stupidity out of him. Why would you say that? Now she’s asking about death, and drum roll please, I’ll have to be the one who tells her that when people die, they go to sleep forever. I would make Damien do it, but he might just say something else off the wall and screw up everything more horrible than it has to be.

I roll my eyes and tell Sasha what’s going to happen to Eugene, and well, she finally calms down. I put her down, and she runs like mad to the dead mutant. She buries her face in his sides for an hour, then she says goodbye, and we leave on our merry little way, but I do make note to cover her face. I’ve already had to explain one death, I’m not explaining a gory mess, but watch Damien do something stupid that makes me have too. And drum roll please, he does.

I am a very tired old man, and I’m not very patient, and being in enclosed spaces makes my skin crawl, and I’d hate to have to beat a man in front of a little girl, but Damien is pushing me to my limits.

Sasha looks at the bloody mess, begs to be put down, walks over to the corpse, and then starts to eat it. I look at Damien like, “How did you know?” and he repays the look with a glare. I almost gag as I watch Sasha greedily tearing into the flesh of the man who had been torn in half, wierd looking flies with stingers buzzing from the corpse and taking refuge into the air, avoiding Sasha after she ate a few of them, and her hunger only reminds me of how much danger I’m really in.

If Sasha is capable of what I think she’s capable of, God have mercy on the next soul we encounter! And Damien, he seems rather formidable, in fact, he seems like one of those “hard to kill types.” Like Sabine was. I broke a few bones, and Sabine walked away unharmed, almost. But I wish breaking a few bones had been the worst to ever come to me. Nope, I’ve been stabbed on mine and Lana’s honeymoon, shot in the chest, and lived, almost killed with a shotgun before I ever turned sixteen, been in multiple car accidents, have been run over by huge trucks, chased by crazy old men, and dropped almost to my death from atop a cliff by drilling into the ice too deep. So I must fit into that category too. And let’s not forget all the people who I have seen died, and that Cyborg Waitress from Heck. I’ve seen a whole lot of death and survived, despite the fact that my life is only halfway over.

Sasha finished eating her fill, then coated in blood, gave me a hug, and stated that she was full. I made an effort to wipe off her face and hands, but instead, it just became a smear of red facial paint upon my clothes and her skin. Sasha just smiles at me, and I realize now that I have to figure out where to go next. I mean, I just can’t go all willy nilly out in the middle of bloomin’ nowhere! I have to be somewhere, but where?

And then Damien starts again. “I don’t know where I’m at,” he says, clutching his head before the hysterics came out. “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?”

He pushes Sasha over then high tails it out of here before smashing his face on a rock that is just jutting out of the wall casually, waiting like a sniper to catch unsuspecting flies, and that fly just happens to be Damien, and no, I am not carrying him, but I do Sasha, because she is crying like nobody’s business. I give her a kiss on the cheek and hug her, and she starts stopping the waterworks. I just let Damien lay there, tempted to let him rot where he lays, but then again, he could rat me out to Tarold Greysing. So Darned If I Do, Darned If I Don’t me waits an eternity is this place, hyperventilating, holding Sasha’s sleeping body, smelling the reeking wretch of roadkill a finger flick away as I make sure nothing comes to get us. I take off my shirt and wrap Sasha in it because she’s starting to feel a little cold, and I don’t want her on the dirty ground, and hold her against me for the next fifteen or so minutes before I’ve had enough of Damien’s antics.

I walk over to the sleeping liability and kick him in the head. “Get up!” I say harshly. I kick him again and repeat my words.

Damien lights up like a bulb after the switch has been pulled when my foot gouges out his stomach.

“Who are you?” he asks me in the most pitifullest manner ever.

I sneer and spit near him, and then he justs, drum roll please, wipes his finger into the goop and eats it, licking his fingers like it’s a gourmet buffet. I surely to God hope that Sasha didn’t see that, because then, I might wake up with the both of them picking my nose in the middle of the night. Which, Sasha is four, so she’s exempt. Damien...not so much.

In fact, I fear that Damien might become a Daddy’s Worst Nightmare- a bad influence. Four year old year olds tend to follow adult influence, which I promptly learn when the F-Bomb came out of my oldest son’s mouth when he was Sasha’s age. Needless to say, Lana had a long, angry talk with me that night when we put both him and the baby to bed.

“Why are we here,” he asks again, this time more frantic. “Did you kidnap me? Are you going to murder me?”

I might if you keep this up. I think to myself.

In this situation, I don’t know what to say. If I tell him that I’m a serial killer, then he’ll run off screaming. If I tell him I won’t hurt him, he’ll have a panic attack and get himself knocked out again. Instead, I say, “I’m a bounty hunter.”

I don’t think he knows what that is, but these walls are starting to get to me, and I know that those words might be asking for trouble, and it does, given the fact that Damien has another panic attack and runs back into the jagged wall of rocks again, this time dislocating a shoulder. He is screaming wildly and holding his blade. He doesn’t stop screaming long enough for me to think straight, so what do I do? I jerk him up by his armpits, thrown him back down, and snarl, “Now you listen here you little piece of crap! I’ve had it up to here with your antics, and I’m prepared to leave you out here unless you stop, got it?”

Damien stares me down with wide, frightened eyes, and then he starts screaming again. I glare at him, and now Sasha is wailing with tears. I’m ready to join them because HE’S driving me insane! I would leave him here, but I have a four year old with me with no concept of danger, and if I leave him here, I’ll never hear the end of it from Sasha, who will endless ask why we left Damien to rot. And I know that if I make that choice, when Sasha gets older, no matter how many times I explain myself to her, she’ll hate me for letting a good man die. Besides, don’t you think telling a kid that you allowed someone to die because they were annoying is a bit mind warping?

When he finally wakes up, I pull him to my eyes by the brownish colored hair on his head and lock our brown eyes in electric hatred.

“You listen to me, and listen to me well,” I say to him, the angry, stern tone in my voice rousing Sasha, who had just fallen asleep a few moments ago, who just watches me intently. “You need to cut the crap of freaking out every five seconds and running off and become somebody worth defending. You″ll kill us all with this foolish stunt you pull on an hourly basis. Cut it out, or else I’ll leave you in the nearest town I can replace.”

I don’t even hear Damien’s answer as I get lost in the pitiful nothingness of his eyes. Believe it or not, but this actually distracts me from nearly killing Damien. I know that he’ll never repeat what he said to me, which literally could have been anything, but there’s just something about getting the urge to throttle someone and then looking at a pitiful puppy expression that changes your mind. I let him go, and then I get Sasha and our weapons and we head out of this dastardly place.