Pulp 002

Charity save me, it is! “Bloody Ben!” I bellow.

I push him back and hold that wooden board up to keep that few feet of distance between us. Bloody Ben, a devil’s laugh wrapped up in the flesh of a man. His cold glee heard in the rattle of his voice.  It’s the last voice heard by the living and the first heard by the dead. Boogey man of children’s rhyme - ‘The blade that cooled a thousand men warms the hand of Bloody Ben.’

“Ben!” I shout as we pace the room, my swipes with the board keeping this grinning fiend away. “Ben, you bastard deal-maker, signing your name in his book with the blood from your own heart, contracted to collect those reaper refuses to take! Have you finally come for me?” Is this the day that Charity runs out for my weathered shoulders and dirty hands?

“Heh.” It’s all he says, that rocky snicker. What words does he to say need when his knife sings, when that blade screams from Hell’s mouth and collects all the air of a millions words. What countless lives worth of talk have crossed that edge?

He swings his blade at me once more and I parry the blow with to board and step back. Even with a stomach full of fire and ten years given back from Grandfather Time’s pocket watch, I would struggle against the ungodly grace of Ben. Nimble as a cat’s shadow, merciless as the nine-day-fall. I feel the space leaking out of the room. Soon I will be trapped.

Ben guards the door out of the room. If I leap towards the broken boards, the blade will surely find my side. A twist of Ben’s wrist and I will be another cold massed, laid out at his feet.

The walls might be thin enough to bash through, though I’d leave with broken bones. Better a broken bone than a lifeless body, I think. But this is the second story of the building and there is only hard concrete down below.

His dire grin and that hissing cough of a laugh that presses out through his teeth fill my head. I run on instinct. He lunges forward and I leap at him. Better to face the blade like a man! There is the unforgettable dig of metal on flesh that cuts at my shoulder, Ben’s agile body sidestepping my pounce. But in my foolhardy attempts at that death with glory, Charity forgive me, I forgot of the room and its weaknesses. I am aware of my dumb mistake too late to do anything. My landing bursts through the broken spot. There is the loud crack of wood and the crash of a poor, stupid fool’s body plummeting down.