The Harder They Fall

The girl pressed herself closer to her mother. She instinctively sought the comfort and protection of her arms, the familiar smell of her faded dress. But she knew there would be no comfort or protection and the familiar smell was overpowered by the acrid smell of those who had soiled themselves…and of blood. The bad men had come.

They had arrived out of the shadows of night, exploding into their house in a sudden fury of sound and motion. Sleepy, confused and terrified she felt herself herded outside, the rest of the village visible in the dim light of the moon, all being pushed into the open space between the few dwellings. The men with the guns corralled them together and arranged themselves around the group in a rough circle. The bad men’s leader put away his gun and drew a long, curving knife from his belt.

He barked orders in a language she didn’t understand and more than one villager felt the bruising force of a blow to the head or body. She pressed her eyes closed and tried to wish it away. Her mother made soothing sounds and stroked her hair. She could feel the tremble in her mother’s hands, hear the racing of her heart and the terror continued its infection of her thoughts.

More shouts to her right.

What did they want?

A sudden scream and the girl’s eyes flashed open unbidden. The image of her aunt falling away from the bad men’s leader burned itself into her retinas. Another scream assailed her ears and hot tears sprang from her eyes. Her mother shushed her and the girl realized the screaming was from her own throat. With that realization it died to a whimper. She glanced at the guard in front of her and his eyes didn’t look like the rest. She saw her own fear reflected in his.

The girl prayed that her screams hadn’t just gotten her mother into trouble, prayed for invisibility, prayed that the leader, now stalking back and forth in front of the group, didn’t focus his gaze on them. As he passed the girl held her breath. He stopped, and although the girl willed her eyes to close, to block out the horrifying specter, her muscles were stiff and still and the release would not come. The girl held her breath, could feel her mother’s face buried in her neck, damp from tears and soaked in fear.

The girl dared not raise her eyes for surely to lock eyes with the bad man meant the end. Instead her eyes forced her to stare unblinking at the wicked knife clenched in the leader’s fist. Its wide curving blade was crimson. Blood dripped from the razor sharp edge like an hourglass of evil. Her aunt’s blood dripped. The girl’s lungs burned but she dared not take a breath. Tears flowed down her cheeks and over her lips, she felt them dropping onto the bare skin of her arms.

The leader roared and she jumped, a small cry escaping her lips. She saw the dripping knife move away and her sense of terror was overwhelmed by loss. She knew in her young mind that she was going to die, that her friends and relatives were going to die. Her aunt and others were already dead. The girl wanted to be a doctor when she grew up, now she just wanted the opportunity to grow up. The guard opposite made a small soothing noise to her and she noticed for the first time that he wasn’t dressed exactly like the rest.

The bad man with his wicked knife was now shouting at the woman who sold the goats milk to her mother. The woman pleaded with the bad man; she didn’t know, she didn’t know. A sudden roar of frustration exploded from the bad man and he turned and gestured to the other bad men who had been standing at the edges with their guns trained on the villagers.

The bad men opened fire at once. The girl looked up into her mother’s eyes and saw her own terror reflected back. The rattle of gunfire and the screams of murder assaulted her ears and she knew it would end soon. She looked to the guard in front of her and his gun was silent, his own eyes wide in horror. Her mother kissed her forehead and the girl felt the terror being pushed back by her mother’s love. Two sharp pains punched into her side, tearing through her daisy print dress, and she was gone.

Colonel William Judah surveyed the devastation. The piles of bodies, the ripped clothing, and the ground growing black with blood as if a contagion were growing and spreading. He cleaned his knife using a piece of torn skirt, careful to remove all of the staining.

Next village, he said.

chapter one

Adam ran.

Spurred on by fear and the terrible knowledge of pursuit, he ran. The forest crowded in on him; seeking to block his way, to snare him in a spider web of branches and vines.

They whipped at his face and limbs, their stinging and scratching a constant assault.

His breath was ragged, the available air thin and sparse. He pushed himself onward, clawing and pulling at branches and trunks to eke out some extra momentum, to continue his flight.

The forest was dark. A bloody moon above provided a ghostly illumination to the crowding, crushing press of trees and branches. The sickly, limp leaves were dripping, their flaccid forms pulled down by the liquid upon them. Not rain or water, but something…more viscous.

He heard the parting of the foliage behind him, always just behind. The sound seemed to foretell the torments in store for those who fell behind, whispering of darkness and terror. Adam’s feet slapped against the damp forest floor as he ran, the cracking branches like thunderclaps.

He was aware of other forms around him, before him. Men and women ran, their faces at once visible and formless, pushing through the branches and undergrowth. They all fled for their lives, the single-mindedness of escape or capture writ large on their movements.

How long had he fled? He could not tell; minutes, months? A keening wail washed over him. The fear in his stomach coiled and knotted, twisting, seeking its own escape. His vision blurred momentarily as he ran; the tearing, gripping undergrowth clasping at his limbs seeking still to snare, to slow.

At once the group burst into a large clearing, the impossibly large crimson red moon a baleful eye in the circular hole to the sky. The sound of the onrushing forms behind them assaulted their ears, a herald of doom.

Figures in white robes, their faces indistinct, sought escape at the edges of the clearing but the trees seemed to coalesce before them; merging into an impenetrable wall of dull brown and black. As the dripping walls surrounded them Adam found himself rooted in place. He willed himself to run, to continue his flight, but he remained immobile; an island of fear in a maelstrom of terror.

The keening sound came again, its terrible vibrations reverberating through his body and soul.

Then, melting out of the trees, they came. Misshapen bodies, grotesque parodies of humanity, all corded muscle and twisted sinew. They came on bowed legs, cloven of foot; their hands an arrangement of talons, claws and hooks. Their eyes white, seemingly blind, but boring into the souls of their prey.

A furious clacking erupted, their insect-like mouths moving back and forth. Angular, serrated teeth dripped saliva into foul pools before them.

The white robed prey huddled into a mass, now spinning and slipping over itself as individuals merged and emerged to form a collective, faces coming then going. Adam wished he could join the collective, their shifting number offering some hope, some solace. But he remained still, exposed.

The fear in his belly uncoiled and loosed itself into his being. His awareness burned with the cold chill of terror. He knew that he stood with Death, on the cusp of Hell and oblivion.

The furious clacking ceased and a muffling blanket of silence descended, the horrific tableau frozen in time, trapping Adam in an infinite experience of terror.

The terrible keening came once more and the grotesques fell onto the white robes in a fierce cataclysm of cutting, tearing and rending. The spinning white forms grew ribbons of red that spun and grew until the churning mass was a reflection of the bloody moon above. Adam remained immobile, awaiting his fate, his certain death.

He raised his hands to his face to weep and found them a mix of talons, claws and hooks. Made for cutting and tearing and rending. Adam opened his mouth and cried out in anguish. And the keening came again.

chapter two

The dishwasher stared from across the room, its half open door a grimace of menace. Adam couldn’t summon the effort to empty it. He hadn’t been able to for some time. The memory of emptying the dishwasher, stacking the newly clean plates and cups and cutlery, almost seemed to belong to someone else; another man lost in the mists of the recent past.

Adam’s current, indeed now de facto standard, method of dishwasher interaction was to remove items as needed and simply put them back in when used. When there was no longer any clean ware he summoned an effort of will, procured some detergent and switched it on. He did at least employ a strict left to right policy; he wasn’t, after all, a barbarian. The system was still however an affront to the dishwasher’s raison d’être and the animosity Adam perceived from the appliance was a growing, pulsing thing.

He did try to elongate the periods between wash cycles by ordering take-out on most occasions. The evidence for this frequency was scattered throughout the living area. Most of the containers bore the same logo, indeed had contained the same dish, cost the same amount and won the delivery boy the same non-communicative vacant acceptance of goods and payment at the door.

He tended not to interact much with others. Not any more at any rate. It hadn’t always been this way. He used to be different but the same mists shrouded these memories also. It had only been five years but it felt like a different life. Adam almost felt he had been reincarnated, and it had gone badly for him.

Adam’s depression infused his being. It colored his thoughts in shades of dark and clung to his skin like sticky sweat. Its weight, once so heavy, had become normal; much in the way that extra 20lbs does that you carry around but wish you could lose. It was a black hole at the centre of his being and it had sucked the light out of his life. After five years of devouring light it now seemed intent on drawing in darkness instead; hence the growing animosity from the dishwasher. Adam mused that the coffee machine would most likely turn on him next.

He knew he needed to get moving. Apart from the fact that he found movement lifted his spirits somewhat he also knew that Petra would be arriving soon.

Petra was from a local cleaning agency and was all that stood between his parents house and near dereliction. She came once a week to push back the tide of mess that, like any ebb and flow, would return after her departure as surely as any lunar cycle.

He felt his parent’s disappointment from their vantage point on the mantelpiece above the unused fireplace. They had passed their dwelling, with its view of the Golden Gate Bridge, on to him. At least, his father had. Adam had not preserved it in the manner to which it was accustomed.

Their disapproval was new also. He had always been the object of his parents undying approval and affection, their vicarious success. He had been a purveyor of warm feelings of pride and honor for them for so long. That too changed five years ago. That particular wine had soured, become toxic, unfairly so in Adam’s eyes. He was unsure if his father had died of a broken heart at losing his mother, or at shame of losing his honor and legacy.

He looked around the room. Weak light filtered in through the mostly closed blinds providing scant illumination. All the pieces of the room, so carefully arranged by his mother, remained the same. The overstuffed sofa and easy chair, with their consciously mismatched throw pillows. The glass coffee table with its stack of wooden coasters and the Ford logoed ashtray, missing its usual partner of his father’s cigar. The old TV set with its archaic clicker control. Adam almost smiled as he remembered the numerous times he had tried to upgrade the set for them but they always resisted. They knew how to work it and it had the shows they liked, it was going nowhere. Adam almost smiled…almost.

He presumed it was like any other muscle group; if you stop using them they atrophy, slacken. It becomes difficult to form the commands necessary to control them properly. Adam’s smile muscles hadn’t had much work of late.

Petra’s arrival continued to loom ever closer and still he remained in place. He liked when Petra came; she brought light and life. He wasn’t sure if she liked it so much however. It was that black hole in his being; it made him feel toxic, almost infectious, as if too long spent in his presence would end in consumption. He had vowed that his time he would try to make some impression of civilization apparent before her arrival. Admittedly it would now extend, at best, to the removal of the carpet of take-out containers but it would still be something, a gesture.

He had made this vow the previous week as he sat in the woods behind his home awaiting Petra’s arrival and subsequent departure. He didn’t want to be there but couldn’t bring himself to go anywhere else and the possibility of social encounters was mercifully low in the woods. As he sat on the damp leaves he had promised himself that next week would be different, that his parent’s house would be tidier, and that he and Petra might even share a coffee together. Almost immediately the thoughts of having to launder his now sodden jeans had added itself to the list of Herculean tasks in his life and the gravitational pull of his inner torment had reasserted itself. The jeans remained in the hamper and his good intentions had remained on the hillside in the woods.

Finally rousing himself he began to collect the discarded containers from their various points of abandonment in the living room and kitchen. The Chinese letters on the logo, which he knew were meant to represent Golden Dragon, seemed to twist into mocking characters, now conveying a new meaning…Loser.

His mind replayed the telephone exchange from the previous night. His mind had developed a disturbing taste for repeated viewings of unsavory events, like his own personal You Tube. The guy answering the phone at the Golden Dragon had recognized his voice, parroting his usual order down the phone to him with mirth in his voice. No doubt the dishwashers in the Golden Dragon had chuckled along with him.

The old Adam wouldn’t have accepted that treatment, indeed wouldn’t have been in the position in the first place. He was not the old Adam; he was the new dis-improved Adam. He had felt his anger and frustration rise but he knew that those emotions now brought new bedfellows with them. Instead of a fiery retort, Adam could offer little more than a clenched throat, increased heart rate and the prickly beginnings of a cold sweat. Mr. Golden Dragon had simply hung up the phone, no further time needed to be wasted for him to earn Adam’s twenty bucks.

He knew that it was time to change take-outs. Again. He consoled himself with the knowledge that even if he continued to discard purveyors of various made-to-order foods every few weeks as he now did, there were surely enough of them that he wouldn’t run out.

He went to get a garbage bag from the roll under the sink in the kitchen. It sat beside all the other unused cleaning products. He noticed with grim dejection that he was out of dishwasher detergent. Petra’s agency, Maid in the Valley, supplied all of their own; presumably they couldn’t trust what they might find in other people’s cabinets. He tore off a bag and flapped it open. As he began stuffing the Golden Dragon cartons into it the various smells wafted up at him, unsettling him. It wasn’t just that the unpleasant odors were further evidence of the unkempt state of the house, it was that they were further evidence of how far he had fallen.

In his previous life as a Force Recon Marine, Adam had been fastidious about cleanliness and tidiness. You couldn’t afford to have a dirty gun or disorganized pack when you were deep in enemy territory and both silence and surety were necessary to survive. In this previous life, which had shattered those five years ago, his sense of smell had been acute, as much a part of his arsenal as his rifle, and was one of many talents that seemed to enable him to almost smell the enemy coming. Some had thought he was practically psychic, others thought him just plain lucky.

To realize that his house stinked, that he probably stinked into the bargain, and that he had not noticed worried him. He wondered if he would ever regain that life, that person he used to be. He did know, with sad certainty, that he would never be a marine again; never have the honor of serving his country. Not after what had happened, and definitely not if he continued to live the way he did.

He had tried to maintain that life, but it had gradually leaked away. The only element that remained was his running. He could still run for hours with a loaded pack, and did so frequently, but always at night. Fewer people around at night. When he ran some of the clouds in his mind lifted and he began to feel better, offering glimmers of hope through stacked thunderclouds of dark emotion. He often ran to exhaustion chasing those weak rays but they never lasted. He also ran to avoid sleep. Sleep brought dreams; or rather dream, singular. Always the same dream. It involved running too and was more accurately classed a nightmare. A draining, emptying nightmare.

The nightmare had come again last night and he had thrashed and kicked beneath his unwashed sheets. He awoke, as he always did, sheathed in sweat and tangled in damp blankets atop a sopping mattress. His heart sank as he realized his treacherous nose had most likely masked the smell of stale sweat and stale fear that probably hung in the air of his bedroom like trapped smog. The level of impending embarrassment that would accompany Petra’s arrival was now too much to face. He would be gone before she arrived. This time, he reasoned, he at least had a good excuse; he needed to get dishwasher detergent.

He finished compacting the take out cartons into the garbage bag. He surveyed the newly revealed room and lied to himself that it didn’t look too bad, or certainly had looked worse before. He went out the back door into the yard.

The yard had suffered the same neglect as the interior of the house and his father’s once manicured lawns now reached almost knee height and were suffused with weeds. Adam opted not to see this and balanced his bag precariously on the overflowing garbage can.

He went back inside, washed his hands in the sink and dried them on an old blue and white checked towel. He grabbed the keys to his father’s truck off the counter, absent-mindedly brushing crumbs off onto the floor, and left the house, locking the back door behind him. Petra had her own keys.

He went to the garage and opened the door. It clattered noisily on unoiled hinges as it rose, revealing the Ford truck inside. Miraculously the truck was clean, having been washed some days previously by a friend of Petra’s. Adam had been glad to help her friend as he tried to set up a valeting business. It had been cheap and he had given the money for the service to Petra.

The glass and bodywork gleamed and the inside was spotless having been vacuumed and detailed. It was, in fact, the cleanest space he had occupied in some time. This piled further embarrassment onto the epic weights on his shoulders, doing its part to keep him down.

He pulled out onto the road and headed for a beat-up market in a crumbling strip mall a few miles away. It had little to offer against the gleaming steel and glass superstores that regular folks shopped in and had few customers as a result. This to Adam was its redeeming feature. He drove in silence, the radio off. Reasons for his newly acquired inadequacy fought for his attention; the Golden Dragon incident and his malfunctioning nose were the current heavyweight champions of dark thoughts.

He had not noticed the flow of his journey and found himself at his destination only to be in danger of passing right by it. He swung the truck in a sudden tight turn, aiming for one of the few empty spaces in the lot by the store. He had to brake hard to avoid mounting the curb. The truck bounced on its springs in protest. No sooner had he stopped than a car horn sounded behind him; loud, angry, insistent.

Adam peered over his shoulder and saw a fat man in an old sedan, the sedan at a curious angle suggesting that it too had been aiming to occupy his particular parking space. The fat man pounded at the horn. Five, six blasts came like blows to the head and still the pudgy hand rose and fell. Adam’s body began its now familiar dance of betrayal.

Cold sweat bloomed across his skin, bands of iron constricted around his chest and throat and his heart began a mad dash towards self imposed destruction. The pounding pulse in his ears competed with the angry horn blasts to see which could deafen first. He fought for breath, pushing against the bands that pressed ever inward on his chest. His lungs felt empty and the rising panic in his body welled from inside, compressing the space within further. As lights danced in his vision he saw with rising dread that the fat man was unloading himself from his still running sedan and waddling with menace through his rear view mirror.

The fat man’s body passed from the rear view into his blind spot and Adam’s eyes swiveled towards the side mirror. His eyes were the only part of his body responding to commands but even they seemed to have their own treacherous reasons for doing so.

The fat man’s bulk appeared at the window, blocking out the sun, sending gigantic shadows rushing over the truck’s interior. His meaty palm slapped the window, the sound thunderous at Adam’s ear and he flinched involuntarily.

This was my space, asshole, the fat man shouted.

The implication was clear; that Adam should back out and surrender the space to its rightful owner. Adam did no such thing, he could not. He fought for breath and struggled to think as the fat man pounded at the window and roared various commands and expletives as if Adam may have been foreign and that if he kept trying he might stumble upon a phrase that Adam might understand.

After a good five minutes of onslaught the fat man eventually slapped that meaty palm on the hood a final time and gave up. As he waddled back to his still idling old sedan he left Adam with a variety of descriptions for his opinion of him. The old sedan pulled away and Adam continued to fight to regain control of his rebellious body. His clothes were damp with sweat and he trembled slightly.

It took some time for the panic attack to subside and some hours further for him to feel viable once more. In a slight daze, his body recovering from the ordeal, he backed out of the space and returned home. He had forgotten, but he still needed the detergent.

chapter three

Nic de Luca strolled down the hotel corridor, absentmindedly flicking the hotel room key between his fingers. The corridor ahead was empty except for a lone housekeeping cart midway along. His footsteps made muffled thumps as he walked, the expensive pile cushioning his steps and wrapping the footfalls in its depth.

He smiled inwardly as he remembered the conversation with the pretty receptionist at check in. She had welcomed him with a bright smile and commented that his wife, Mrs. Johnson, had checked in forty five minutes earlier and had gone up to their room.

I’m sure she’ll be happy to know you’ve arrived, Debbie the receptionist had said.

She’ll be very happy, believe me, Nic had replied with a wink.

The wink drew another smile from Debbie. Nic began to wonder if perhaps this trip might turn out even better than expected, but decided to file that possibility away for later. Gemma was adventurous but he hadn’t really tested the boundaries yet. Besides, if he walked into the room and really found his wife waiting for him he’d have a shitload of explaining to do.

He passed the housekeeping cart and glanced through the open door next to it. Two Latina women were busy making up the room. There were piles of sheets on the floor and a vacuum plugged in near the door.

Damn, Nic thought, even the housekeeping chicks in this town are hot; I gotta come back here more often.

Nic passed two more doors and came to Suite 2315. He paused a moment, savoring the anticipation of what was to come. He touched the pocket of his jacket and smiled as he felt the item inside. His pulse was already quickening as he slipped the room card into the lock.

Gemma stood in the marble clad bathroom of the suite, checking herself again in the large wall length mirrors. The white lingerie had been an impulse buy two days earlier when Nic had called to say they were going to Vegas for the weekend. It wasn’t her usual color but it proved a nice contrast for her honey colored skin.

This was her third weekend in a new city in the last three months. Since she met Nic at the club where she worked he had showered her with expensive gifts, dinners in exclusive restaurants and taken her away to places she wouldn’t normally be able to afford. She knew he was married and she knew that spelt trouble, but when had taking a risk ever stopped her before? It was taking risks that had gotten her this far and it had worked out OK. Besides, married men always got tired of their affairs sooner or later so she was going to ride this for as long as the fun lasted.

She adjusted her breasts one more time and checked that her suspenders were properly clipped into the top of her white stockings. She debated one more time whether to leave her long black hair down or to put it up. A flick of her neck arranged her locks around her shoulders in a more pleasing fashion so she decided to leave it down. She was about to touch up her lip gloss when she heard a beep and the door opened. Gemma stepped out of the bathroom and draped herself against the wall.

Nic came through the doorway, smiling broadly, his dark Italian looks smouldering under his cropped black hair. The toned body that had filled her thoughts lately was wrapped in a silk shirt and cashmere jacket, his legs slim under designer jeans.

Hey there, Mr. Johnson, Gemma said, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. You’re late.

Work stuff, baby, Jimmy’s been off the radar since yesterday. I was trying to find him for something, Nic replied, a wolfish grin spreading across his lips. But who gives a fuck about Jimmy, come here.

Nic