Lady in Red: Chapter 2

Lady in Red: Chapter 2

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Comissioned by Shaderic.

Wordcount: 2500.

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It ain’t nothing to help someone out, that was what Pa told me, and he ain’t never lied to me. He was a dumbass, a moron, and a jerk, but he was no liar. That was the only side Ma liked about him, so it was the only side about him that I cared for. Everything else, the fact he ain’t been seen in town since my fifth birthday, that he left to gallivant across the world, and screw up his life didn’t matter one damn bit.

I wasn’t going to waste time being angry at someone who I’d never see again, but I wasn’t going to throw away the one smart thing he’d ever said, too.

But, maybe I should’ve, because now I hurt everywhere.

It’d been the dead of night. I was fixing to get something for Ma after my shift, before reviewing for class. University was a bitch and a half, especially for a blockhead like me, but work and studying wouldn’t get me away from helping Ma out when I could. Working as a waitress all day, dealing with townsfolk, and keeping a smile one was tough shit, no matter what she said, so the least I could do was help her out with groceries and maybe a breakfast that wasn’t greasy garbage.

I’d been making my way to the only convenience store in town, when I passed the train, which for some reason had someone showing up in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

I ain’t no busybody. People can handle their own shit, unless they were stirring up trouble in my shit, but I felt something was off when I looked at the man who left the train.

He was slow, staggering, and covered in clothes that were busted up. He wasn’t bleeding or nothing, but he was pale as sheet in the station lights, and it was a wonder why the nightly, winter winds didn’t have him tumble ass-backwards.

Yeah, Pa’s words rang in my mind when I saw him, so I changed course.

That’s when the monster showed up.

I didn’t get a good look at it. I saw it, knew it was dangerous, and pumped my pedals. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind that I could waste time pondering. At that moment, doing something besides speeding up and getting to the poor bastard who was half dead was downright stupid.

Whatever that monster was, it crumbled and roared when I crashed my bike into it, but what got me out of my monofocus was what the man I was set on rescuing did to me.

It was something else, something strange, and something that hurt more than all than every other pain I’d felt in all my life put together. He’d shoved his hand into my stomach, somehow, and then everything that could hurt filled me from my stomach to tips of my years. If I didn’t scream, I was sure I’d have bit my tongue, because it sure as hell felt like someone filled up a bottle with acid, every taser in the town, and mixed it with all the rusty knives, before pouring everything into me like I was a sock bolted onto a busted hydrant.

Whatever happened next, I didn’t know, but I woke in the forest with a gal looking all fierce above me, with the guy who fucked my shit up dead beside me.

Not from anything I did, since I couldn’t have done jack shit to him while his hand was fucking with my insides like playdough, but it was still a bad look.

However, before I could say a word, she disappeared from my sight.

So, after trying to save some guy from a monster, I’d lost my bike, gotten my insides messed up, and was having hallucinations. And, I was in the middle of the fucking forest, beside a dead body, and with the town nowhere in sight… in the morning.

Shit.

My phone’s out of charge!

SHIT.

Ma was going to a be sobbing wreck when I get back home!  

…

As far as small towns up north went, Gottsfield was pretty chic. It was a tourist destination, a good one that actually tried instead of mucking around with niche, quaint shit. Motels were upgrading, an airport was getting built, and all the ski slopes were top-tier. Not that Ma and I were going to do any of that touristy crap, but the guys brought in cash to keep the town running smoothly and fix itself up here and there.

The roads were wide enough, the snow was kept clear, and on the off-season, it was nice and quiet. I was glad that it was off-season, because there was no way I’d have gotten away with getting back home like I did, if there were a bunch of cops keeping an eye out for rowdy idiots with too much time on their hands.

It was cold as Hell, especially since I spent time piling some snow on the man who’d fucked with my insides, but I managed to get home.

As far as houses went, it was sturdy, built on half of a lot, and just two streets away from the main. Ma kept everything spic and span when I was kid, but I took care of most of it nowadays. The windows were holding, so they were worth all the trouble it took to put’em in properly and by myself, so the insides of the house were nice and warm when I managed to get through the door.

It took half-a-second for Ma to turn to me, with tears in her eyes, and another half-second for her to see the mess of bruises on my stomach, my torn-up clothes, and the fact that I was half-dead from the cold.

She really didn’t deserve shit like this on her only day off the whole of the week, but what was I going to do? Not tell her what the fuck happened and how the town went from being half-full of judgemental douchebags to also, possibly having some weird shit happening in it?

Nah, that sort of shit’s for people I don’t trust.

Not Ma.

“What happened to you, Char? My god, you’re so hurt!” She took my wrist and dragged me into the kitchen. She sat me down, got my legs up, and had an icepack over my stomach in an instant. Then, she checked my bruises, it hurt like a bitch, but I let her put her know-how to work, while I got some rest from my hike and run. “We need to get your stomach checked. That much bruising there…there might be something wrong with your insides.”

“I wasn’t coughing up nothing, but it does hurt like a bitch.” I didn’t know what to think, but having Ma help me up was making my mind clear up quick. Sitting down was making me feel a lot of shit that I’d ignored while sprinting back home, but it was helping me remember, too. “But that needs to wait. We need to go, Ma. Out of here.”

Maybe, someone else’s Ma would’ve asked questions, but not mine.

“…Then, if you can move, help me pack. Get necessities only. The lockbox in my room, too.” I wasn’t one to lie, one of the few good things I got from dad, even I had to pay for with his mug whenever I looke din the mirror. I stood up, let my blood get pumping, and went up the stairs while Ma pulled out a luggage bag. The walls in the house were thin, so I was able to hear her even when I managed to get up the stairs and start grabbing what we needed. “What happened to you? What are we running from, Daniel!?”

“There was something…something that looked like a girl, but wasn’t! A monster!” It was difficult to recall what I’d crashed my bike into last night. Most of what I remembered was the nasty surprise I’d got from the corpse I’d woken beside. That didn’t matter, though. What mattered was getting out of town, with my Ma in tow, and hopefully escape whatever mess was coming. Better off on the road, moving fast, than dealing with men who can mess with insides and women that grew claws. “It was… it was fighting some guy, so I tried to save him, but he rammed his hand into my stomach and did whatever he did to me! I woke up with him dead next to me in the forest!”

“What?!” Ma asked the same question I’d been running through my head. It sounded like something that would come out of some crazy tweaker’s head, but it was the truth. I knew what I saw, I felt what I felt, and so I was going to get out of town, along with my mother, before anything else strange turned up. Fuck trying to deal with shit like that. Running was the way to go. “Daniel did you hit your head—

Whatever Ma was about to say was drowned out as the front of the house imploded into the rest, knocking out the breath in my lungs, and knocking me against the door into Ma’s room. I hit her dresser backfirst, felt a stabbing pain as something broke skin, but I climbed out of the wreck even while my ears rang and my stupid eyes refused to focus. I stumbled trying to get up, my balance thrown off like I’d taken a punch to the ear that made my brain bounce in my skull, but I somehow managed to recenter myself. 

Only to see a tall woman, wearing a red coat over a suit and chomping on a cigar, in the doorway, with Ma slung over her shoulder.

Behind her was a rubble-filled, snow-covered street that threw up dust nearly ten stories up.

I didn’t get a word in. Not even about having her let go of Ma. Whoever the bitch was, she crossed the distance between the two of us in one step, then overtook the whole of my vision with her palm.

I went out like a bitch, not even able to fucking help Ma.

…

For the second time, in the same damn day, I woke up somewhere else besides my bed. It was a top-notch place instead, better than winter forest beside a dead man, but I barely cared about that. The pain in my stomach was gone, along with whatever happened to my back before I’d been taken down, but that mattered even less.

Whoever took me, took Ma, and I needed to find her—

“Tch, all muscle and no brains, huh?” Before I managed to get up, something hit me and pinned me down on the bed. Then, smoke drifted toward me, from the bedside. I found the one who’d took me down and had Ma over her shoulder smoking a cigar, still wearing her suit and red coat. “I suppose a good vessel was needed, but couldn’t you have been a touch smarter, kid? Maybe, not running through town half naked for everyone to see?”

I’d been in a few fights, mostly because I was being an idiot or someone else was, so I learned to trust my instincts. Sometimes my gut told me that I could take someone on. Sometimes it told me to grit my teeth, buckle down, and bear with the punches. This time, though? I felt like I was staring down an avalanche instead of a person. There was no winning for me here, especially with whatever she was doing to keep me pinned down.

But I wasn’t going do fucking nothing.

Talking took effort. It was like my neck was being held in a vice, even though I could breathe, and my tongue felt like it’d been weighted down to the bottom of my mouth. My jaw didn’t want to move, as though I’d been to the dentist and they’d been trigger-happy with sedatives.

I didn’t care about any of that shit.

“Where’s… Ma…” Had she even been breathing while she’d been on this bitch’s shoulder? If so, where was she? And, why the hell did she need to be taken too, especially since nothing strange happened to her!? Answers. I needed every single one I could get my hands on, even if it meant going against whtever shit my kidnapper was using keep me a vegetable. “Where’s… my… mother!”’

“Wow, you didn’t choke on your own tongue. Color me impressed. Not. Stop that before you die for nothing, imbecile.” The woman stood up, looming over me with her face lit up only by the end of her shitty-smelling cigar, then ripped off the blanket that’d been covering me. I was in the nude. What the fuck. “Your mother’s asleep the next room over, so that I could get a moment of peace without her screaming at me about you.”

Cigar ash fell on the bed, as she leant over with hand outstretched towards my stomach. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but couldn’t react. I’d managed to talk, but moving anything else was somehow impossible. Even craning my neck, to look at what she was doing, took more out of me than a whole day’s worth of work.

“And, if you’re wondering why you’re restrained and held down, is because of this.” It was just a touch on my skin, but something flowed into me from her hand. It was like what the dead man did to me, but sending only shivers through my whole body instead of filling me with fucktons of pain. However, I didn’t have time to appreciate whatever was happening to me, because my stomach slowly became overtaken by a mass of tattoos and symbols that I’d never seen before in my life. “Congratulations kid, you’ve got a demon inside you, a big one too courtesy of The Tempest.”

Demon and Tempest both meant nothing to me, but what did was the woman with red hair at the foot of my bed, unnaturally standing on a bunch of crumpled sheets without any weight… and unnoticed by the woman peering down at me. She had an impossible body, with a face that shouldn’t be possible in real life, and… her eyes were slitted and exuding a warm fire.

“Do you want to be free?” The question came forth without the slightest movement of her mouth. It was like a voice just spoke within my head. “Say the word and you shall be free from your bindings.”

She was unnatural, strange, and was called a Demon by the woman to my right.

However, she didn’t blow up the front of my house, kidnap me and my mother, and strip me down.

Yeah, I was going to take my damn chances.

The weight on my body fell away in an instant, the woman who’d kidnapped me had a moment to look surprised, before I grabbed her by the collar, pulled her down, and introduced her jaw to my fist.

Whatever the fuck she was, with whatever the hell she was doing, she still crumpled like a bag of bricks after getting a right hook to the jaw.

Fucking still got it.