Author's Note:
The penultimate daily post! I hope you are having as much fun as I am. This one is only a little longer but hopefully you stick around. This is the last Julian chapter for a bit. I know there are so many unanswered questions. Like who? How? When in the fuck? All these questions will be answered. Peace by piece.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘₊ ⊹ Soul 𓉸 Rejected ⊹ ₊⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
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Reggie swallowed and took the opportunity. In two clean hacks, he cut the binds against the branch. Jim and Harold fell to the dirt but didn't have long to rub their wrists. Lastman was fumbling to raise his shotgun. He likely would have had it ready if he hadn't started with cowering behind the tree first. He found his grip on the gun, but in his panic, accidentally pulled the trigger.
It was the third shotgun blast of the night, but fear the man does not flinch at the sound of a shotgun blast in the night. Lastman nearly dropped the weapon in the surprise. The pellets soared over the dogs, leaving them unscathed but managed to splash into some unsuspecting tree bark near the three escapees.
The sound of the revolver from earlier never reached Julian's ears. He was still shocked at the lifeless body soaking the dirts at his feet. But the shotgun blast came to him like a whisper, bringing him back to the fight. He blinked like it was just his Dad telling him he was late for school.
Miss Laundendale however, flinched hard, firing a stray round directly at her feet, nearly shooting a toe off if it were only a couple more inches to the left.
Julian's head snapped to the woman and his eyes narrowed around her. He could have run.
So he did.
Right at her.
She was trying to aim her revolver from the hip. A gunslingers position, hoping to get the round off quickly and end the engagement quickly.
She should have practiced the move more because the first round splashed into Clunt who was making his own mud. No one has checked his vitals, but it didn't likely count as her first kill of the night.
She only had one more round and she had to make it count. She extended her arm, iron sights trained on Julian.
Alas, she wasn't quick enough. He slapped the gun out of her hand before she could pull the trigger.
She was ready for this though. She still had the blade from earlier in her off hand. She brought the edge upward, cutting the air in front of Julian as he dodged backward.
Unlike the others, she did not appear slow.
Julian struggled to dodge cut after cut and she wildly filleted the evening air.
She advanced, taking each step that Julian gave up.
Swing after swing, slicing closer and closer to Julian's face.
She had him. He was on the back foot. She would gut this boy like a fish. She had him right where she wanted him.
That is, until she didn't. She just barely over extended and pine needles rolled beneath her feet.
She slipped forward and tried to turn around to grab on something –anything– to stop her fall.
It was fruitless. For the second time tonight, Julian heard a sickening crack.
At his feet, Miss Laudendale laid like starfish, basking in the night sky.
She laid motionless except for labored breathing.
All he could do was stare down at her in disbelief.
What the fuck was that? Julian thought.
His pondering was interrupted by the sound of thumps and slaps of meat. He looked up to see the three men relentlessly stomping and stabbing Lastman. He knew they had to. Hell, it was better than what he did to Clunt. Their violence seemed so much more innocent than his. Like it was only natural.
It reminded Julian of a nature documentary where a group of water buffalo punished the lion that got too close to the herd. Such a visceral animalist reaction.
Survival.
Who knew living could be so deadly?
His eyes dropped to the sound of slow gasping. He saw her face, red only slightly by the smoldering light of the dying fire. The smoke billowing from it stung his eyes. Frigid night air started to reclaim the forest around them.
He rubbed his hands together to warm them and squatted down next to her and examined the base of her head. A single jagged stone lay half-sunk into her skull where her neck meets her head. It was dark out, and the blood didn't help with the stone's visibility so her gingerly reached behind her head.
He felt it.
It was certainly a stone. It wasn't just under her head. It felt lodged, like it was sticking out more than poking in.
"Oh, yup. That's it for you, fam."
Julian tutted his teeth and wiped the blood from his fingers on Miss Laudendale's shirt. Finally, he stood, never once taking his eyes off hers. He could see tears forming. He could see a little puddle of tears pool on her eyes before she blinked them free to flow like a stream down her cheek.
"Oh, don't cry, now." His tone shifted to sternness, like chastising a child. "You did this... not me."
It was cold, the way he said it. Like reading a stenographer's record. Matter-of-fact. Impartial.
"I didn't even hit you! More than I can say for the other guys."
Then something swelled inside him. It was a twinge of sadness. Maybe regret.
"No... no you did thi- I mean look at you. Ya done, homegirl. Your friends. They are..."
He gestured towards the fallen men around him but when he saw them, the reality of what he'd arrived at his mind's doorstep, papers in hand.
He shot a man in the face, another in the gut. He punched another's head clean off. That this woman would likely be paralyzed for the rest of her life.
But his survey of the theater showed much more than just a retelling of facts. The stage was set long before he arrived and his role was not scripted. Julian knew what he was looking at.
These weren't just any thieves or trespassers. Reggie. Jim. Harold. They were enslaved. And the men that Julian killed were slavers. Sure, he figured that out earlier but these "people" that lay down in the dirt really did own another human being.
To the slavers, these men were only property. Property that refused its possession and sought freedom. For that ultimate sin, they were to be castrated in the dead of night. Likely hung for display. The cruelty would show.
He saw it.
He saw their cruelty.
It was drowning at the bottom of the pool in Miss Laudendale's eyes, gasping for air as cruelty's power was taken from it.
He could do it.
The "it."
The "it" that suddenly seemed so... premeditated.
It would be so easy. Physically, that is. But for some reason it just felt wrong now.
Still, he wanted to.
Especially with all that screaming graining his nerves, like chalk pressed hard against a chalkboard.
Banjo, peppered in birdshot, was still crying in pain on the ground behind him.
Julian turned his head over his shoulder to address the freed men, he was about to speak, but paused to look at them. They had finished off Lastman and gathered a few supplies, including but not limited to a couple guns, a knife and small pouch of sunflower seeds. Reggie stared back at Julian confused but wielding a knife covered in someone else's blood. In fact, he was covered in someone else's blood. Head to toe.
That didn't phase Julian. No, what bothered him was the incessant screaming. How could something scream for that long?
"I know I just met you guys, but could one of you," Julian turned just a little further, as if speaking to the dying banjo to let out a sudden rage-filled, guttural shout from the bottom of his core. "Shut that asshole up!?"
The others didn't speak. Jim, the biggest of the three silently looked at the other two, an exchange that must have spoken volumes to the others but was just a look to Julian. He broke away from the group, led by the muzzle toward Banjo.
"Now, Jim," a familiar tune pleaded from the banjo. "Hold on. I can make this go away, Jimbo. All you need to- No wait. Boy, don't you dare-"
Jim pulled both triggers. It sounded like it too. No more songs played. Just a shotgun blast to the brain then the sound of rain pattering the leaves a second or two later.
Now that he could hear himself think, Julian returned his focus to Miss Laudendale.
"You can stop crying, old girl."
All sympathy was gone from his voice. He stood up and began to circle her like a vulture.
"I see you now. I see." He emphasized the words with two fingers pointed to his eyes. He came to a stopped on the edge of the invisible circle where the others joined him.
"The devil holds your hand now. You walked this life and now you must lie in it," He wasn't usually poetic. Maybe he was channeling his abuela. She used to talk about the devil and demons.
Julian shook his head and kicked her shoe. "Didn't feel that, did you?" He didn't know what to do but to just keep talking. It was what he was good at.
"That's ya life." He looked around the four points of the circle and let out a dark laugh. "Circle of life! Hah!"
Then his voice darkened again. "Whatever's left of it... You lay here, staring up at this tree. Watching life thrive around you. The leaves will fall. The rats will come. The crows will pick and pry at your meat." His lips straightened. "And you will watch. Unfeeling. Senseless."
The revelation made him burst out in maniacal laughter.
"Senseless! Ain't that some shit, puta loca?!" He squatted next to her and leaned in close. "Now your body matches your senseless brain!" He tapped his temple roughly.
A frown took him as he took in her features. She couldn't be more than a few years older than him, barely an adult. She stared at him wordlessly. He could tell she could speak but she had no words to share. Only tears.
"Don't look at me like that. You wanted to get that man's nuts off. Singing all your freaky deaky shit. Now look at you. Besides...you have time." He looked up to the night sky. The moon was the only witness for all that transpired tonight."Only time, I guess."
He stood one last time, ineffectually dusting off the mud from his knees. "Maybe you can make peace before you starve to death. Alone. Pray to something, I guess."
He and the freedmen made their way out of the forest, following the north star.
₊ ⊹𓉸⊹ ₊
The light from Nico's gem alarm signaled an incoming call in the corner of his eye. He sighed, ignoring it and going back to reading his tome, The Art of Making Deals.
The gem persisted, more demanding this time. After a few flashes, the crystal rang a familiar voice. "Ay, yo. Boss."
Spin's voice came through clearly but the voice itself sounded like sandpaper and sarcasm.
"Quit readin' 'hat yawner, and come 'ere. Ya gonna wannu see dis'un."
Nico took a deep breath before making the trek down the hall and entering Spin's workshop. "What can I do for you, sir?"
"Looky 'ere. Temporal Anomaly. Mor'al Plane." He pointed his long spindly fingers against the glass of a half-technological, half-demonic device. Nico leaned over and next to his finger was a blinking yellow dot on a grid without any other markings, giving no hint as to what information he was supposed to glean such an instrument.
"And is that abnormal?"
Spin dropped his hand and turned to the dapper looking demon, blinking a performatively dumb look on his face. " 'hat's why it's called an Anomaly."
He turned away before Nico could reply and began tapping the screen again. "But wot makes it so strange is 'hat it's not one of us goofin' 'round. It's 'uman."
"Human?"
"'Uman."
Nico gave him a look of exasperation.
"Som'un made a deal, ah think. Someone, powerful. Victim's name: Julian, it says." He read off some ever-shifting symbols on another screen next to the first one.
Nico shook off the facetiousness of the little demon and patted him on the shoulder for the information. "Maybe I should pay him a visit."
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