Pulp 003

I don’t hear the floorboards snap or the wood crack under my weight as I crash through the first floor and fall down the cellar. I only hear the wretched lot waiting for me in Hell using what air their damned lungs can pump for laughter at my buffoonery. It might be the first laugh that Hell’s had in a long, long time and I would be the first to say I earned it.  How foolish—leaping my way at Bloody Ben, only to have him set to the side and have me fall feet-first through the floor. Lucky for me, though. Fate and his loaded dice would have snapped my neck instead of the dried out wood if I dove any other way.

I roll with the fall since a snapped ankle won’t do me any favors now. The light pouring in from above splashes around the cellar. I look up to see Ben leaning over the newly made holes, an inquisitive glance I’d see in the eye of a farm crow, patiently waiting to see whether a wounded animal yet stopped the struggle and has finally laid down to die.

But Ben knows it takes more than a fall like that to put me down for good. I quickly move away from his sight and start a fast search. There’s two ways into the cellar, through the new entryway above or down the stairs.

A weapon. I need a weapon. Ben will have to come down here and if I can get one good swing with something heavy in my hands, I might be able to escape. There’s a hollow echo to one of my steps and I turn quickly to see I’ve walked across a centuries old manhole cover. The memory of its first discovery hits me, from when I drove out the rats and addicts from this building to make it my shelter from the outside. I used an old length of discarded rebar found in one of the basement’s darker corners to force the cover off, finding a forgotten passage to the city’s sewers.

It’s a dangerous risk but my chances with the unknown horrors blanketed in the forever-night below are better than with the devil I know is upstairs waiting for me. With that seal of decades’ rust already broken, it now only takes my fingers and one good heave to move the cover. By my next heartbeat, I’ve gone under. 

A fall through two stories and I’m left with a one or two bruises, a small gash on my leg, a surface cut from Bloody Ben’s blade on my left side and some splinters. A man learns to be grateful from moments like this. But I have no time to for gratitude. Bloody Ben can track a cold body in winter. And though only the tip of his blade scratched lightly through the top of my skin, I am surrounded by shadows that smell blood and have no need for the concept of ‘mercy.’ Until I am safe, if ever I am to be again, my feet must forget how to stay still.