Justus

Death has visited this place.

Unsteadily, Justus rose from where he had stooped to examine the corpse. The poor girl had been eviscerated, long gashes riddling her body where the knife had ended her young life. She didn't deserve this fate. She should have been carefree for many years to come. Instead, she lies broken in the middle of this run down, backwater town; life stolen, another victim of the one Justus knew as Blade. The smoke from a half dozen fires stung his eyes as he took in the devastation around him. Buildings, once regal alabaster white, lay in ruins, charred and blackened with soot. Victims of the chaos littered the street, crushed under the debris, never to rise again. Others still faintly clung to life, their moans the only reprieve from the eerie stillness that clung to this once beautiful city.

In his mind's eye he traced a path back in time, to another scene, another place, another body, the same picture. The same broken death. It was the same back then, a similar picture. Not very inventive, this killer, but chillingly brutal, his weapon of choice a long knife. He seemed to revel in his victim's pain, savoring their deaths like a fine wine. Justus had been the sole survivor on that day as well, crawling out of the carnage, his heart aching silently inside, just as it did now. Back then, he had fled the wreckage, determined to free himself from the nightmare pursuit of this death-dealer, but he seems to have finally caught up. His hunt is relentless. Justus had thought himself safe at first, but then he would feel the dark eyes watching, waiting to catch him off guard, mocking him from the shadows. How foolish he was not to have left then, before it was too late. But no, he had chalked it up to frayed nerves and tried to make a life for himself. Justus cursed under his breath.

The limp form at his feet had been his friend, once. They had shared the joys of life, the ecstasy found in the scent of fresh bread, in a cool wind through the trees, in the squealing laughter of children as they chase each other through the meadow. But now the horror etched into her cold face turned his stomach. Gently, he closed her eyelids for the last time and said a prayer for her eternal peace. Absently wiping the blood off his hands he rose once again, his mind wandering in a haze.

“Is there no end to death?” he asked the silent gray sky, “Can we ever be free?”

He stalks us like a starving lion, indiscriminate of whom he devours.

Panic began to well up inside him as he looked at the girl's lifeless body. He rubbed at his stinging eyes and realized that blood was everywhere. It coated his hands, soaked his tattered shirt, and ran in small rivulets from where had just wiped his face. It had already began to dry, crusting on his arms, making his skin crack with every movement. Desperate to be clean, he scrabbled over to a fountain.

So much blood...

He swiped at his arms with the cold water. The caked blood slowly began to melt, veins of red draining into the clear fountain. Stripping off his ruined shirt and throwing it away, he dunked his arms up to the shoulders.

“God, it's not enough!”

The girl's terrified face assaulted him, a waking vision begging someone to save her, to free her from this tormented betrayal. He submerged his head, squeezing his eyes shut to block out her haunting gaze, scrabbling furiously at his crusted hair.

“I must be free of this!”

Her dying screams reverberated before the black of his eyelids as he thrashed about. With a gasp he burst from the water, still gripping his head, writhing silently in the torment. His anguish lost all focus and became a cacophony of of noise, roiling through his brain as he sunk to his seat at the base of the bowl. Her stark terror struck like a knife to his heart, wrenching guilty tears from his eyes and sending them pouring down his cheeks. Desperate to be free, for escape of any kind, he slammed his head backwards onto the rim of the fountain. Once, twice, and three times he belabored the bowl, and then the soft blackness of unfeeling took him.

______________________________

Slowly, Justus regained consciousness to find the torment dissolved with the blood in a light rain from dark skies. Panting, his head throbbing, he struggled to his feet. A cold hard fog had drifted over the barren wreckage of the town, wrapping his mind in its emotionless embrace.

I am the living dead.

Stone-faced, he stared into the fountain, now solid red from the blood. Between ripples he caught a glimpse of his face in the water. There was a cruel glint in his eye. His lips turned up in a sneer and he turned from the reflection. Readjusting the long, thin knife at his belt, lost in the tempestuous darkness of his own soul, he slowly left the ruined town behind.

Death has visited this place.