Blue Flame II: Extinguish pt2

 Scene II: That’s Not Bacon

Sunrise bleaches out the night. Light cuts in horizontal slits through window shades. Jack sits up, rubbing the top of his head. “What a messed up dream. I haven’t dreamt in so long. I thought I couldn’t do it anymore. . . not since the desert.”

He notices the gray skinned woman in bed next to him. She opens her eyes and coils closer to him, nipping at his neck.
“Think you ate enough of me last night.” Jack says fingering the bite marks on his shoulder. “Bad little kitty. There will be no breakfast for you.”

She looks up with large dark eyes.

“Ok, maybe just a snack.” He pins her to the bed, pulling the sheets over the two of them.

Her fingernails claw down his back peeling away flesh.

There is a knock at the door.

“Your breakfast, sir?”

“Chauncey!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be down in a minute! Keep it warm!”

“Of course, sir.”

An exquisite arrangement of exotic foods decorates the kitchen table. Even for Jack it came as a surprise, and he thought he had everything back in Gucken.

“I’m going to have to send some of my people over here Chauns,” Jack says between bites of well-cooked fat and flesh, “to get some of your recipes.” Jack takes another bite and chews. “This is damn good. What’d you say this was?”

“Why thank you, sir.” Replies the butler fiddling with some dishes. “It’s something we had laying around. Leftovers, you could say.” Chauncey says over his shoulder at Jack with a strange grin.

Jack stops chewing.

Chauncey continues washing knives in the sink.

Jack spits out the half chewed chunk of meat and brushes his tongue on a napkin. “Thanks for the breakfast, Chauncey,” he says standing up. “I should be getting on my way. Much to do, much to do, so little time, ya know.” Jack flings the napkin over Chauncey’s shoulder and heads for the front door. “Thanks for the grub. The day is young and I ain’t getting any older.” Jack picks up his hat and flips it onto his head. “Send my thanks to the ugly guy. Tell him he should have what he wants by sundown.”

“Very well, sir,” replies Chauncey, wearing a strange grin. His teeth turned black inside his mouth. Startled, Jack took a second glance.

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“No, no, it’s nothing.”

“Very well then. Your jacket, sir?”

“Yes, please.”

“Right this way.”

The door closes hard behind Jack as he stands in the cold gray of the day. The Blue Flame, he thinks. What the hell did he agree to? Son of a bitch, he should have never left Gucken, but he was Jack Gemini--died and came back, risen like the man, Jesus, that the old ones once wrote about. Nothing he couldn’t handle, right?

Through crumbling cobblestone streets, Jack walks between crowds of decrepit Kausian folk going on about their business. Stopping in the middle of the road he retrieves a cigar from inside his jacket and lights it. The flame from his lucky lighter dance at the end of the brown leaved cylinder until it burns into the tender material. Jack inhales and starts walking again. Smoke trails off behind him as he weaves through the half-dead staggering locals. Their bodies are bone thin and deteriorating. Children, just as bald as Jack. All of them, freakishly pale and shrouded in dry flaking skin covered in sores.

Their sunken eyes watch Jack as he strolls through town. Another stranger. They know a visit from a foreigner brings bad things. Shortly after the last time two strangers came to town, the killings began. Few have caught glimpses of the creatures that carry off the victims. The elders know this somehow has something to do with the monster known as Shuffle. Ever since he arrived, those many generations ago, the village has slowly been deteriorating.
Now, in the final days, they know, it’s far too late. There will be no salvation, no cure, no solution. The end is at hand with every step this stranger takes. Jack feels a tinge of pity, and disgust, for these people.

An old lady, missing teeth and an eye, stands at the street corner. She throws up her arms and begins screaming, “The hollow man has come! The one with no soul! He is here! The hollow man has come! The end is here! The end is here! No one is safe! Flee! The hollow man has come!”

Jack thinks about putting a bullet through the soft tissue of her rotted brain. He decides not to waste the ammo. Children playing in the street run indoors to hide from the stranger. Jack walks down the center of the road. Ghostly eyes watch from windowsills. The streets go empty. The day is bleached with the promise of death. Jack exhales. His eyes scan the scenery as he nears the edge of town, still hearing the distant voice of the old lady.

“The hollow man will kill us! The hollow man has come! The end is here!”

Jack drops the cigar and buries the ash with his heel. “I should have shot her,” he whispers. On the horizon, he sees where he was told to go. In the center of the prairie, a large earthen structure towers like a grimacing anomaly.

Written by Charles Denton
Story by Charles Denton and Joe Lipscomb
Illustrated by Blaine Garrett
Cover Art by Joe Lipscomb
Art Direction by UsuallyPolite.com
Edited by Ricki Walter
Copright 2014 Dim Media