Nightmare Stare [Chapter Fourteen]

I wake up.
I'm not dead.
I wake up in the same back alley behind the abandoned theater.
I'm still covered in blood.
There are still dead bodies around me.
The only new thing there is the old black man. He kneeling above me, smiling his two toothed smile. His breath stinks of unfiltered rolling tobacco.
I try adjusting my eyes, yes plural, EYES. But I can't, I feel off-balanced. It feels like the world has been cut in half...
...With a machete.

Why the fuck did he have a machete?

"Hey, man! A machete is easier to buy than a knife or a gun." The old black man says. "Easier to steal too. Ain't nobody running around thinkin' they Mike from Friday the Thirteenth, baby!" He chuckles, I correct him.

It was Jason who was from Friday the Thirteenth, Micheal was from Halloween.

I sit up, my head starts spinning.

"Damn, man." He says. "You got fucked up." Then he laughs some more. I look around to establish where I'm at, my nerves are still a little shot. "But it looks like you fucked them up real bad!" I look to the body he's talking about, the last guy left. That motherfucker with the machete. I look at his life-less body, he has massive holes in the sides of his head. Holes where his ears should be. These enormous holes, inside them, you can see slimy pink stuff with chucks of white sprinkled around.

Fucker.

I get to my feet. The man stands with me.

"So, hey man!" He says as I start to walk off, back home. "I heard you were looking for me?"

Yeah, I was.

"Well, I heard you, and so I'm here, man. What's good?" He asks.

I just had some questions.

"Well, ask away, man!"

Tell me more about these other gods.

The pain in my face starts to subside. I'm still a little dizzy, but my depth perception is still intact, for the most part. I give it a few days and I won't have it.

"Ahem." He clears his throat. "Way back in the day, when people were killing each other with bones, that's when the first god was born. He was just a regular guy, ya dig? But he could do these things that the others couldn't, so they banned with him and made him their leader. But his reign didn't last so long, and then he died." He paused.

Is that it?

"No, man!" He shouted. "Is that it? would I still be walking with you if that was it?" He made a smacking sound with his lips. "Man, let me tell the story! So that guy dies and the people, I mean they care, but not too much, they just keep doin' what they doin'. Then some other guy comes up, a few years after that, and he has the same powers as that other guy. But you see, this guy, he's different, he wants the people wearing clothes, he wants to keep warm, so he invents fire. It wasn't no rock and some hair, ya dig? It was god that made fire.
"So, then he dies, and the people their sad, but they don't really care cause no they got fire. So some other guy rolls into the picture and he shows them the wheel, and now they can carry large animals home and cook 'em!"

And the next god invented the spear?

"Yeah, baby! Wait...you heard this story already?" He asks me.

No.

"Oh, well, yeah. So that guy, he invents the spear. But what he really invented was, war. He taught humans to fight for more than just food, he taught us to fight for more than just to survive."

Your point being?

"Each god lived the first part of his life as a man. So when they change, they still have that foundation, those guidelines that they followed when they was just a man, ya dig?" Now he was getting excited. "So I axed the god I severed, why the fades change, and he told me, its because of the gods. You see, they can influence the mass. He called it a hive mind, and he said all humans got that."

So I can control people?

"No, man. I say influence, not control. you can whisper in the ear of man kind and change it while its sleeping. You can control people's perception of you. You can make people forget they've seen you, you can do things; like killin' all them girls without nobody seein' you. You can do that, because it revolves around you, but to control people, nah, that ain't flyin'."

I was having trouble wrapping my brain around this. I looked into a passing window and caught my reflection. My face was shredded beef. My left eye was spilt in two, I could see my teeth through the tear in my cheek, and left side of my jaw was broken off and hanging a slight bit lower than the rest of it.

If my jaw is dislodged like this, how can I talk?

"Mind over matter, man." He said. "When it comes to you, you can do anything. Like this one time, my god, he was fighting this other god. My god straight up pulled a star from the sky and threw it on the other one."

I see.

"Yeah, man!" He was excited again, and we continued to move. "So you can do whatever it is you want to yourself as long as its not because of a human, you dig? Like you wanna bang that angel real good, make her not want another dick for the rest o' her life, yeah, you can can make that shit grow and stretch, or if she want it small, you can do that. But that scar to your face, nah, that bitch is for keeps."

That's lovely.

"I know, right! You can do all these great things, but you can't smear out a scar."

So, tell me. Why is it that the killings have been so easy for me? Is it just because no one can see me?

"No, man." He pulled out a puny little hand wrapped cigarette out of his dirty sweater. "People change with the influence of the gods, right? So whoever becomes president, or whatever styles are in are because the god like those things. But..." He lit the cigarette. "...Some things are slower to change than others."

Such as?

"Well, my god told me that the god who invented shelter, the house, he fucked up real bad!"

Why is that?

"He took away the foundation of human survival. The will to live, the fear of dying, right? After him, the houses developed more and more and more, and they people forgot what is was to be an animal, to hunt for what you want, to get up and give damn about shit that ain't right. To fuck bitches when you want to. He took that away, so now all the people don't care about living all they care about is the phone bill or the house payment, useless shit like that!" He took another hit. "It makes me sick how passive we've become."

You seem so out of the norm when it comes to people.

"Well, yeah. How could I work under a god directly and not ascend?" He asked. "I used to be a professor at a college, man. I used to study theology, and so working under a god wasn't too much trouble. And he paid me well."

He paid you?

"Well, not with money, but with knowledge, that's the only thing given that can't be taken, man. He also gave me the gift of hearing, hearing the way ya'll supposed to. That's how come I can always find you. yeah, my god paid me well." He spit and looked at me. "You know, its hard losing a lover, some people never get back up from that fall, but losing a god. Man, they don't teach you how to cope with that anywhere. I ain't talkin' 'about losing faith, I'm talkin' 'about losing god, watching him die in front of you. I'm talkin' 'bout losing the foundation of your life, and having nothing left but the gifts and the knowledge he gave you, now that's tough."

I'm...I'm sorry.

"Hey, man, its cool." We were quiet for a while, walking down the four am street, only the occasional car passing us by. Then I remembered, the way you remember an old movie you have seen in a long time. I remember seeing the trees coming in and trying to take Audrey, and it felt like it was happening soon. How soon, I wasn't sure, but I needed to get home in a hurry.

Look, I thank you for all your answers tonight-

"Its cool, man. You go save that angel and kill that fuckin' tree, ya dig?" He said as he crossed the street into the darkness. That was my cue.

I started running.

-Sir Jestro