Cut Down in the Prime (515 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: Ubermadness_II
Rating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2004-11-18 12:45:31 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Eddie was in a dark mood. Eddie lived downtown, his home a refrigerator-size cardboard box hidden in a dark alley one street over from the outdoor mall and marketplace. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and the sun was beginning to penetrate the black, damp interior of Eddie's home.
On the mall people wandered from store to store, chatting, laughing. Eddie cursed, sprawling in the rancid darkness of his box, wrapped in the aromas of his rotting waste and unwashed body. There wasn't a drop left in his bottle. He winced when a childish squeal reached his ears.
Staggering out of the box with his eyes squinted shut against the sunlight and his hands over his ears to block out the happy sounds, Eddie moved down the shadowed alley away from the mall, emerging on a quiet street.
He'd been dreaming. The dreams were bad. A baby. A grinning man. Blood running in the street. Screams of terror. Deaths. No... sacrifices. And over all of it, the low, powerful roar of a machine.
Eddie shuffled along the sidewalk until he came to the medical clinic, a good place to pick up a bit of change. He made coin off of people who got good news, and sometimes even got a few bucks from people about to die.
Eddie stopped and waited by the wide stone stairs, shivering and licking his lips. He could feel something coming on. Maybe the voice was back. An itchy, edgy feeling made his skin twitch, as if ants were running up and down his body and nipping him as they went.
A young couple came out of the clinic, both of them grinning like idiots, and Eddie went into his spare-some-change-fer-a-fella-who's-down-on-his-luck routine. They gave him a buck and a half in silver.
After an hour Eddie had close to four dollars in change deep in his left-hand pocket. The change jingled whenever he moved and he danced around a bit just to hear it. The dancing stopped the moment Eddie saw a young man walk out of the clinic and come down the stairs. The young guy moved slowly, as if one of the doctors had shot him up with something, face white, eyes unfocused.
Eddie mumbled his lines on cue and waited, trying to look as pathetic as possible. This wasn't much of a challenge— practically the only thing holding his clothes together was caked-on dirt, and his long hair and beard were filled to capacity with lice and fleas which were skittering across his head like busy pedestrians.
The young guy stared at Eddie a long time. Too long. Eddie was about to give it up when the guy took out his wallet and opened it.
Eddie saw a wad of green, a picture of a girl cute as a button and just out of her teens, and another older photo of a grey-haired couple, mom and dad. There was also a driver's licence, in the name of Paul somebody. The guy grabbed the wad of bills, a twenty, a ten and assorted fives and ones, and thrust them into Eddie's outstretched hand.
"I don't need this anymore," he said, "Go get cleaned up, mister."
The guy named Paul turned away, and instead of saying thanks or god-bless-ya, Eddie just stared at the wad of green in his hand, and then winced and fell to his knees as if he'd been struck in the head with a mallet. The voice was back. And it was loud.
Sometimes the voice told Eddie where he could get some money. Sometimes, it made him do awful things. And sometimes it just whispered in his ear, and borrowed his mouth for a while.
He's gonna die. The voice rasped. He's gonna die. Cancer. Doctor told him he's gonna die.
Eddie heard what the voice was telling him, and nodded. Then the voice took hold of his legs, and borrowed his tongue.
"Hey mister!" he called, shambling after the young guy. "Hey, fella, hold on a minnit!"
Paul stopped and watched the bum draw close, choking and stepping back a pace when he inhaled and caught the man's rank scent.
"You done sumfin for me, now I'm gonna do sumfin for you." It wasn't Eddie speaking. It was the voice.
"I'm gonna give you one bit of advice. About dyin'. It's a bit of old lore, real old. Was a time when people believed that those whose lives you take, you will bring with you into the afterlife, where they will serve you, and suffer for you, and never leave your side."
The guy named Paul didn't say a thing.
"Think about it," the voice in Eddie said. Then it turned his legs around and made him march off down the street.
Paul thought about it, long and hard. While the sun moved overhead and people wandered past, he sat on a bench in the bright market, and after a while, he felt all of the things he cared about in life, all of his obligations and responsibilities, slipping away until he was empty inside. He made a decision.
If what the old guy said was true, then he'd have to take a lot of people with him for protection, to do his suffering for him. He hadn't exactly lived an honest life.
He walked to his car parked a block away, and slid behind the wheel. He started the engine and shifted into drive. The car was a '76 Ford LTD, big, wide, and heavy. Switching on the radio, Paul leaned on the gas and headed towards the market, and the outdoor mall, and the happy families.
The Ford approached a red light, and Paul gave it a little more gas. An old man wearing dark glasses and walking with a cane was crossing at the light. The car hit him doing fifty-five, and the old geezer seemed to leap straight up. The car roared through the intersection and Paul watched in the rear-view mirror as the old man came down feet first, his legs hitting the concrete, snapping and folding up like sticks.
Paul reached over and opened the glove compartment. There was a thick black marker inside, and Paul grabbed it, popping the cap off. He drew a heavy black slash mark on the dashboard, and then clamped the end of the marker between his teeth.
Cranking the wheel and listening to the squeal of burning rubber, Paul blew through a vegetable stand scattering crates of produce and turned down the one-way street that had been closed off years ago when the outdoor mall had been created. The narrow concrete plugs and steel chains were no barrier to over six thousand pounds of steel moving at sixty miles an hour and the Ford LTD screamed onto the mall, scattering horrified couples and shrieking children.
He slammed into and passed over bodies and horrified faces— one, five, a dozen, the car shuddering and lurching as if he were driving over a line of plastic traffic cones.
Two kids about ten years old, looked like twins, disappeared under the front bumper. Paul glanced out his side window and saw a fan of red liquid squelch out from under the front tire as it passed over one small skull. He found the double-bump satisfying.
A group of perhaps a dozen people were crowded against a concrete storefront, and Paul steered into them. The car slammed the bodies together and smashed them against the wall. The ones in front exploded with the force of impact, wet red whips lashing at the windshield. The people back against the wall vomited jets of dark blood and Paul laughed hysterically when he actually saw one man's eyeballs pop out of his head. The car came to a stop, and Paul shifted into reverse.
Two women who looked like spinster sisters were sneaking behind the car, hoping to get away unhurt. They were out of luck. Paul backed away from the wall, and they started running. Paul cranked the wheel, executing a nice reverse-turn and knocking both women down. There was a bump as the rear wheels backed over them, and then Paul hit the brakes. One of them was still screaming, the sound leaking up through the floor under Paul's feet. He shifted gears and gave the car some gas, still sitting on the brakes. When the speedometer reached sixty-five and the Ford began to shudder he released the brake and raced away, looking back in time to see a tremendous pink cloud of vaporized flesh and blood rise up behind him.
Paul let the car crawl to a halt, a bit of gravel popping under the left front tire. A little knot of intestines that looked for all the world like a small balloon animal, a dog, or maybe a horse, slid off the hood of the car, leaving a dark red smear behind. The bloody mist in the rear-view mirror shifted and dissipated.
He chewed on the end of the marker and looked up and down the mall. The dashboard was covered in thick black slash marks. People were running in every direction, tripping and falling, and presenting so many targets that Paul couldn't decide which would be best.
Until he saw the baby carriage.
It was about fifty feet away on the left, on the far side of a wrought-iron bench. The kid's mother was on her knees fussing with the wheels. It looked to Paul like she was trying to release the carriage brakes.
Paul smiled, and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal so hard his teeth clicked together, the marker falling on the floor. The kid's mother looked over her shoulder and screamed.
"Oh baby," he said. "Come to Pauly."
The shops on either side of him were becoming a blur. The car was doing over thirty when it hit the bench, the upper part breaking away and striking the mom, sending her reeling out of the way. One end of the heavy metal bench frame collapsed and the whole thing shuddered away, knocking the baby carriage to one side.
The carriage rolled away at a gentle pace, one wheel squeaking loudly.
Paul turned the car around and backed up, preparing for another strike, when some guy behind him shouted, "I've called the police you maniac! Give it up!" The guy was hiding behind one of the old-fashioned lampposts that lined the mall. Paul reversed into the post and it snapped off at the base. The guy leaped backwards with a heroic, "Ahaah!" and then the glass and metal globe of the falling lamp crashed down on him and burst his head like a rotten pumpkin.
"Okay," Paul whispered to himself. "Twenty-five, thirty miles an hour should do it." He drove forward, the baby carriage dead ahead. "I'll spread the kid along the mall like cream cheese on toast."
He hit the carriage as planned. But the Ford's front bumper slammed against the wide tubular steel frame of the carriage and it simply jumped to one side, the basket bouncing up and down as it rolled on down the mall, the squeaking wheel driving Paul to pound the wheel in frustration.
The child in the carriage was crying.
"Oh shut up!" Paul barked.
He waited for the carriage to stop moving and wondered what kind of goddamned miracle lubricant was helping those wheels roll on and on. It finally came to a halt. Fifty yards away. In the center of the mall. No obstructions. No red lights. The kid was screaming, and now Paul thought he could hear sirens.
He put the car in gear and floored it. He was grinning like a sonofabitch, steering the car in a straight line, hearing the engine whine with exertion, feeling like a gnat riding on a bullet.
A complete jackass tried to stop Paul by leaping in front of the car and waving his arms. The Ford hit the jackass and the jackass was cut in half, a spume of liquefied jackass splashing across the windshield and whipping in through Paul's open window in a thick crimson rain. Something hit the windshield, starring it, and thudded across the roof.
Paul flicked on the windshield wipers but it was no use— the blood was in his eyes as well. He reached up to wipe his eyes, and his motion threw his steering off by a fraction, but at the speed he was moving, that fraction of an inch became a gaping distance in a matter of seconds.
The car struck the carriage a glancing blow and it spun about but didn't really move or fall over. By the time Paul realized what had happened he was far down the mall and cranking the wheel around. Then he saw the flashers.
Between him and the baby carriage were a dozen squad cars vomiting out big cops in black uniforms with large handguns. Paul grinned, thinking of circus clowns pouring out of small cars. He put a little weight on the gas pedal, and the Ford shot forward like a guided missile.
The cops formed a gauntlet and began firing. Bullets were plink-plink-plinking off the car body, one of them shearing off the tip of Paul's nose. He didn't give a shit. This baby was his.
Two squad cars began moving forward to block his path but they didn't get into position in time. The Ford smashed through them, scattering chrome and glass, the whine in the engine turning into a coughing rattle. He pushed the gas pedal right to the floor, giving it everything he had.
One cop tried to make a run for the carriage, to push it out of the way. He wasn't fast enough however, and the Ford's wheels ate him up and left him looking like a pile of ground round.
Bullets were bouncing off the car's ass-end, shattering the windshield and the rear window, one of them tearing a bite-sized chunk of meat out of his neck. One of the rear wheels blew out.
The cops continued firing until the carriage was in their line of fire, and then they squeezed back into the squad cars.
When the Ford was on top of the carriage the front wheel on his side disintegrated. The car was shimmying, his control sluggish.
Moving at more than sixty miles an hour, the Ford swept past the baby carriage and the big front bumper did that magic trick a second time, giving the carriage a tremendous push down the mall.
Paul watched in astonishment as the Ford pulled up beside the baby carriage, giving him a momentary glimpse of the squalling, red-faced infant all wrapped up in a thick soft blanket. The car raced forward, leaving the carriage behind.
Paul was about to curse his stupid luck when it all turned to shit. He caught a brief glimpse of the metal bench he had hit earlier. It was now right in his path. One end had been destroyed, and what remained was essentially a small, sturdy metal ramp.
One side of the Ford rose up and the car went into a roll, shedding chrome and plastic and glass and Paul, who was catapulted out of the car when his door popped open.
He hit the ground, his legs crumpling under him like accordions, his backbone snapping with an audible crack. He left a bright red skid mark as he slid to a halt, lying on his back, looking down the mall, and watching in horror as his Ford, losing its momentum, rolled side over side towards him. Shutting his eyes, he sucked in breath for a scream as the body of the car loomed over him, heard a strange scrape and creak of metal, and slowly exhaled.
The car was balanced on its rear bumper, which shook and quivered, one end still bolted to the car, the other resting on the cobblestones of the mall. The car was looming over Paul like a crazy lean-to, one exposed wheel rim coming to a stop six feet over Paul's head like an executioner's axe frozen in mid-swing.
A block away, Eddie was lying in the shade of his cardboard box, his arms cradling a bottle of Old Crow, his pants sopping with his own piss. The noises from the outdoor mall nearly woke him up a few times, but a familiar voice whispered in his ear and lulled him back to sleep.
Paul tried to move. He couldn't. He didn't feel any pain, his body numb. He looked up and saw the car leaning over him, completely still. He began to laugh. Tears squirted down his cheeks as he screamed laughter, and when he was out of breath he sprawled in silence.
The cops were coming, but Paul didn't really give a shit. He'd had his fun, and he wouldn't have to pay for it. No punishment, no horrible sickness, no pain. Just drift away from it all. And perhaps all the lives he took would serve him.
He heard a noise and frowned. Squeak-squeak-squeak. What the hell?
The baby carriage, he thought. Jesus, the fucking thing is still moving!
And it was. It rolled by the ruined Ford at the pace of a leisurely Sunday stroll. The baby had stopped crying. In fact, he was gurgling and laughing.
The carriage rolled by, struck the quivering bumper holding the car up, and then rolled out of the way of the ruined metal hulk and came to a gentle stop.
Paul looked up and saw sunlight flash off of the bumper's chrome as it moved, heard the grind of metal and the dull snapping sound as the last over-stressed bolt holding the bumper to the car snapped, saw the car falling, the wheel rim falling, and didn't even have time to get off a scream.
His last thought was of the baby, how he would have to serve him, suffer for him, and never leave his side. He hoped the kid lived an honest life.
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Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-03 11:19:13 EDT (#)
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Supreme Overlord damage control...
Submitted by Supreme_Overlord (user info) at 2005-07-21 22:15:07 EDT (#)
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shite
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 11:25:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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