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Curious. Inconsequential.
Wait.
The larger creature lurked, just past the edge of the alley light, disguised in the small pond of imps. My mind tested, but the creature would not come when urged. But the imps...how many smaller ones could I command?
The boiling buzz in my head increased and became a hissing torrent.
The imps obeyed. Swarming the creature, they knocked it over, dragging it still struggling to my feet.
I smiled.
If it’d been an angel or some other dream creature, I’d have walked away.
Something mythological? A werewolf, a witch, a grootslang, or a wendigo, I might’ve studied it, but still walked on.
But this...
The straitjacket, ripped and shredded until the arms were freed, the mask of bandages, the deliriously insane look of the face with missing teeth, missing nose, gouged eyeball and drool...the hair sticking out from between the wrappings. A huge ax clasped in its hands.
This was a monster.
The monster looked up at me blinking.
An asylum madman? Lots of asylums in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Lots of asylum nightmares.
“Let it up,” I croaked. My throat was dry. My feet hurt. How long had I wandered?
As if my voice unlocked it, the monster came to his feet, ax rising to chop.
Even a nightmare ax must have weight; the monster took a while to bring it back to the full arc of the swing. I moved quickly, stepping in and gripping the handle to stop its fall.
I yanked with all my force to wrench the ax away.
Except, the ax was not a separate weapon—it was a part of this thing’s construction. The monster’s hands tore away with the ax, leaving two ugly stumps.
I gasped, stepping back, ax still in my hands, the monster’s hands still on the ax.
The creature lurched forward, clutching with its stumps.
Without prompting, some imps leaped up and pulled it to a stop. Their weight made it topple backward, the truncated arms flailing sloppily. Pinned, like a bug.
I walked around it, contained now that I’d gotten my head around it.
An abomination.
A thing that shouldn’t be.
God, I hated the motherfucker.
Lip curling, I raised the ax and brought it down. I deliberately avoided its neck and hacked the creature’s legs below the knee.
The crunch, the scream, it was just for me—music inaudible to the normal human ear.
JUST WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK.
I could hack away.
Destroy at leisure.
