The Creature

Pt. 1

The creature crouched patiently on the lowest limb of a large, full, maple tree, its eyes restlessly scanning the dusky graveyard before it.  Sundown was almost upon the small southern town of Wyldangel, and the creature could hear the children in the distant park playing their simple games of flashlight tag or hide-and-go-seek, well beyond the horizon.  

But sound carried to its sensitive ears from far and wide, and the creature cared to fancy that it could hear the whole town from its perch.  The limb had been carefully selected early in the evening and had been adopted as its hunting loft, where it had waited, motionless save its roaming eyes, for hours.  It hadn’t really expected much activity until sunset, anyway.  

The graveyard was overgrown with weeds, shadow on shadow, and varmints scampered furtively, drawing the creature’s attention each time for just a moment.  There was nothing dignified about these crumbled gravestones, nothing respectful or proud of even mournful.  It was an old graveyard, forgotten by most save the local tellers of ghost stories and the occasional secretive cluster of men in all black.  The creature was much more interested in the latter.  

It shifted its eyes from angel to gargoyle to tombstone, unable to decipher the faded words carved into each.  It was of no consequence, however.  The creature had different interests here, involving living flesh rather then ragged maggot-savaged bones.  

The creature itself was a thin thing, with pale skin and dark, sunken eyes.  It concealed its pallid tone with black silks draped across its narrow, shapely body, perfectly matching the mosquito-infested darkness where it hid.  Its face, too, was largely concealed with a mask of the black silk tied behind its head, where its long dark hair had been scooped into a neat, high ponytail.  

There were times when it had found more use in revealing its face than in hiding it, for when the creature was of a mind, a single carefully calculated glance (and perhaps a swift shake of the ass) could bring any man to his knees and stun him just like a taser.  But the creature found no pleasure in manipulating man’s petty desires.  It much preferred swift, clean, honest conflict – something it knew it would win, every time.  

~~~

Pt. 2

The creature’s carefully honed auditory sense brought its attention to an electronic buzz nearby, which irritated its ears, but it soon died as the murky yellow street lights along the narrow, empty road lining the left border of the graveyard failed all at once.  Its eyes snapped to the end of the row, where a darting black figure flickered away from its gaze, leaving an electric box attached to a light pole dangling open.  

The creature felt its pathetically human heart begin to race.  It eased its limber body against the tree trunk, folding itself tighter into the darkness.  It itched to draw its weapons, for the creature knew that the moment it had been anticipating for months was nearly upon it.  A creature of lesser discipline than itself would fidget like a giddy school-girl, but this creature was still as stone.  It realized that the breeze in the tree was too strong for this, however, and to better match its environment, allowed its tightly wound muscles to ease as its athletic body swayed naturally with the slow, rhythmic breathing of the huge, powerful tree.  

Near the end of the dark street, it saw a fleck of movement – more like a shift from black to black.  Soon.  Another movement, closer.  There were no stars, no moon, and all that remained of the sunset was a pale pink band of clouds along the distant horizon.  Even with its crystal nighttime vision, the creature was nearly blind.  It was uncomfortable with how close the man was to its tree (the only cover in the graveyard) before it could discern him clearly.  

The man was tall, over six feet easily, it assumed.  And yet he could not have weighed more than one hundred and seventy-five pounds, he was so slender.  His dark brown hair was long, straight down his back in a low, loose ponytail, which made his face appear even longer and narrower.  His dark brown eyes darted anxiously every which way and over his shoulders as he approached the trunk of the tree.  

With a sigh of relief, he leaned back against it, just below the creature’s hide-out.  It looked down on the top of his head, frowning suspiciously.  This man had something to hide.  His party had initiated the transaction, which meant he was in control of the situation.  So why was he wound as tight as a spring?  The man hummed a nervous tune, his arms crossed tightly, and tapped his toes at the ends of long grasshopper legs.  

The creature spotted the second man long before he did.  This man approached from the other end of the street, passing recklessly through rays of light cast through the back windows of warm houses.  He, too, was tall; nearly as tall as the first one, but much larger.  This was a great man of great physical power, a hulking man of muscle and brawn.  The creature instantly had lent its respect to the man.  

His strong, round face sneered at the lankier man as he approached, his pace swift and confident.  Here was a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it.  As he approached the tree, he said loudly and carelessly, “You Chad?”  

The skinnier boy jumped and spun around, eyes wide and staring.  “Yeah – uh – yeah.  And what do I call you?”  

“Cornbread,” replied the other as he stopped beneath the thick black foliage of the maple.  

“How did you get that name?” asked the first man uncertainly.  

“It’s my favorite food.  You got the money?”  

Chad nodded and removed from the folds of his long black jacket a thick orange envelope.  “You have the stuff?” he asked, trying and failing to sound as confident as Cornbread had.  

“Yeah,” grunted the bigger man and snatched the envelope from Chad’s hand.  Chad shifted uncomfortably, perhaps wishing he controlled some end of this game.  Cornbread crouched and came up with a shovel that had been concealed in the tall grass.  “Dig there,” he demanded, pushing the shovel into Chad’s skinny arms.  Chad followed his directions and dug at the grassy cavity of a sunken grave with a crumbling headstone.  

The creature felt bitter irony bubble in its throat, nearly the consistency of a laugh.  There were no drugs buried in that hole.  The dirt was hard and packed, the grass roots thick and matted.  It had not been disturbed in a long, long time.  Chad was digging only his own grave.  

~~~

Pt. 3

When the hole was perhaps halfway dug, with Chad flinging shovel-full after shovel-full of dirt into the air, grunting and panting and gleaming with sweat, Cornbread took a step towards him.  It was subtle, but the creature noticed.  Perhaps Chad had, too, out of the corner of his eye, for as Cornbread’s hand slipped behind his back and under the hem of his shirt where his pistol was so poorly concealed, Chad had suddenly cast aside the shovel and leap-frogged over the waist-high tombstone of Mr. Bruton.  

The graveyard was suddenly alight with the flash of gunfire and the deceptively quiet pings of silenced shots.  A corner of the gravestone exploded into dust as a number of pockmarks appeared in its surface, but Cornbread was trapped in a bald spot with no cover near enough to matter.  Chad’s left shoulder and half of his face appeared to the side of the tombstone behind which he crouched, and with steady aim her fired twice quickly.  He ducked back behind the tombstone as Cornbread screamed and shot sporadically in Chad’s vicinity.  

Chad’s face appeared on the other side of the large tombstone, half hidden in the tall grass.  Cornbread had stumbled back against the creature’s tree, gasping in pain and trying to focus blurring eyes on the snake in the grass.  Chad shot him twice more, and a puddle of thick scarlet blood began to form at the base of the tree, seeping down to its roots.  

But with a last defiant roar, Cornbread emptied his clip at Chad.  Not even the creature’s sharp eyes could tell if the boy had been hit.  Cornbread slumped against the tree and fell to the ground.  His shallow breathing was quick to gurgle out with the distinct sound of a badly damaged, blood-filled set of lungs.  

After several minutes, the dust settled around the gravestone, and the creature heard muffled breathing.  A smirk formed on its lips as the boy’s wide brown eyes appeared over the top of the gravestone.  Shaking badly, he climbed to his feet.  The left side of his face was torn and bloody with bullet shrapnel; a number of them must have struck the stone just inches from his head.  

He tucked his single pistol back into the waistband at the small of his back, and finally approached Cornbread.  Chad felt for a pulse for several seconds, then with a sigh, grabbed the man’s wrists and began tugging him towards the partially dug grave.  

~~~

Pt. 4

Several minutes later, the body of Cornbread had not budged an inch and Chad was slipping on the bloody mud as he grunted and strained to no effect.  Now the creature was growing bored with watching this game.  It considered its prey for a moment, examining his deceptively wide, innocent eyes, then decisively pulled the swathe of fabric away from its face, tying it in a knot around its belt.  The creature abruptly dropped to the ground just before Chad, watching him closely.  

The man shouted and jumped back, trying to draw his gun, but the suppressor was stuck in his belt.  “It’s okay,” the creature consoled in its sweet, clear voice.  “I was supposed to be backup, but it looks like you took care of it.”  

Chad swallowed hard, staring at the creature uncertainly.  It could see its spell taking hold of his mind.  The creature smiled mischievously, its head tipped forward so that its dark eyes peered up at him at an angle.  “You did a good job, you know,” the creature said, staring at him intensely.  

“Uh – thanks,” he said hesitantly, blushing.  

The creature walked closer to him, looking into his eyes and letting its hips sway with each step.  When it was face to face with the man, and Chad was thoroughly paralyzed, staring down into the creature’s eyes with a slack jaw and a look of disbelief, the creature let its hands raise to its waist.  Its eyes held his so steady that even if he had wanted to with all his heart, he could not have looked down to see what the movement had been.  

The creature lovingly wrapped one arm around the small of his back, cradling him gently, and slipped its other hand onto his shoulder.  He did not even notice the blade it had concealed along that wrist.  The creature slid the hand between them so the dagger rested on his chest.  

Then, quite abruptly, the creature stabbed it into him, clear back to his spine.  He gasped and sputtered, eyes widening, and tried to stumble back, but the creature held him pressed close with the arm around his hips.  It began to saw the razor-sharp blade in and out of him, bisecting his sternum and shredding his innards.  

The agony and terror in his desperate, confused eyes almost made the creature giggle.  Such a brutal death would attest to the graveness of the Father.  It was not something they would forget soon.  Finally, with a sick, wet, sloppy rip, the creature jerked its dagger from his navel.  It released him and he fell onto his back, still staring up at it, gasping through a throat-full of blood.  The creature crouched beside him to watch him die.  

It didn’t take long.  

“Father tells me that you were both in his territory,” the creature scolded softly to those empty brown eyes.  It tied on its black silk mask and climbed to its booted feet, then turned to stroll away.  

It disappeared into the calm, quiet town of Wyldangel, and only smiled at the bland news report in which electric workers had discovered an apparent gang assassination with two dead and no leads.