Universal Monsters VI
We lined the walls of the yard like a middle school gym during a fifth grade dance. Convicts on one side, inmates on the other. In the middle was the disco ball. In the middle, was Fraction.
Death was Fraction’s dance floor and every living thing at MGD 64 and all of the spirits that couldn’t leave just yet because this was too damn entertaining and all of the beasts and trees and rodents and rocks were waiting for him to cut a rug to fucking pieces. To split the air, to split the earth. To rape and pilage and fucking Hulk Smash!
Most of us believed in demons long before that day because most of us believed in Danny Fraction.
But he just smiled.
A too-white smile that glinted and shot the light from the bombs and the flames back in every direction at once. He stood too-still, and his smile made us even more antsy for him rain murder on these assholes. To soak them bone-wet in crimson and rage.
He was adjusting his eyes to the sun and the flashes and the napalm, we said. It had been ages. It had been God-knows how long since he’d been out of the hole. And if God was in South Florida on that Tuesday he wasn’t saying much.
Or, hell, maybe he was. Maybe he was shouting.
Either way, Fraction just stood there.
Monty, who was an NBA referee before he made boots out of his children, once told us, “When you’re good at something it happens slow.” And we believed him. And Fraction was good at war. But this wasn’t slow; this was…nothing.
Space quoted Tolkein. “I don’t want to be in a battle,” he said, “but waiting on the edge of one I can’t escape is even worse”
Then Brinkmire told us to look around. Shifting only his eyes he said, “They’re not moving either. The beasts are graveyard-still. This,” he said, “is a showdown. It’s a dual. It’s motherfucking pistols at dawn.”
Fraction got it. He stood like a gunslinger with the sun at his back and his oil-slick black hair blowing in the wind of concussive blasts off bombs that were way too close for us to stand this still. When he started to move he moved only his fingers. They twitched a bit, eager to draw a weapon at his hips that none of us could see but all of us trusted was badass. And then he cracked his knuckles one at a time, each snap of synovial fluid a gunshot drowning out the explosions and gasps. There must have been gasps.
Demons perched atop the walls and the roofs. They knelt like sprinters and wrapped themselves in their wings and some of them purred. For all the world we would swear they were smiling, too. The ones that had mouths, at least.
Minutes turned into hours into days into weeks into months which were really only seconds before anything happened at all. After all the blood and screaming and body parts and the explosions and the sickly-sweet smell of burning people and the teeth and the eyes of the craziest-ass war anyone had ever seen it’s just one scary, scary, scary man staring down what’s left of the beasts.
And then a monster appeared and approached Fraction. Slowly but tall and with a straight back and high chin a demon that could have been a man if he didn’t have horns and wasn’t mostly on fire and fine with that walked toward the scariest thing any of us had ever seen. The demon held up one hand and two fingers as if to say, “Wait.” He put his hand on Fraction’s shoulder whose skin bubbled under the demons grip. The beast leaned in close and said a few words and we imagined that he spoke English though none of us could hear.
Fraction’s smile left him and his eyes squinted and his ear caught fire just a little from the demon’s breath.
Fraction nodded.
The demon turned his back and walked away from Fraction and from all of us and through the gates. And every one of the beasts followed. Calmly, almost single file they walked and flew and crawled away from the yard.
Fraction watched them go, snuffed out his ear and bandaged his shoulder with the skin of a nearby guard and then he started walking, too.
The silence was more concussive than any ten of the bombs. Lucian knew a word from Fraction’s mouth might well destroy us all but he was willing to take the chance. The curiosity, he said, would kill him just as quick. He sprinted up to Danny Fraction, craned his neck to look into his eyes and asked, “What? The? Fuck?”
Fraction looked down at him and smiled softly, like a father leaving his child at a market to be found, hopefully, by someone better. In the most confusing part of a day that included hippogrifs Fraction hugged Lucian and whispered,
“They said I could have Cuba.”
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