Written by Nohbodee
Bear
Detroit, Michigan
The city of Detroit stood alone, outlined against the dark of night. The derelict buildings struggled to keep standing, as their creators neglected to care.
Its streets, sometimes flooded with waste and violence, shimmered with broken glass and broken hearts. Those in charge continue to force brave men and women onto the front lines of a war they did not start, leaving apartments empty and families destroyed.
The unnerving sounds of the city screamed, while dark polluted clouds moved in to eliminate the blood moon’s light. The fearful hurry inside to lock their doors, guarded, while the street rats crawl from out of their holes to fight.
Bear leaned against the railing of a balcony and waited. Jacoby didn’t listen. Bear was disappointed. After everything he’d heard about the man, being a pussy wasn’t what he expected.
Jacoby was afraid. And when men are afraid, logic was usually left forgotten. It had to be the only reason Jacoby would hire such a low life piece of shit to have innocence killed.
A ribbon dangled delicately between Bear’s fingers, and as he looked down at the city he called home — he briefly grazed it across his scarred lips, then hid it away.
He may not have been born in this city, but he was lucky enough to have seen it at its best, right before the collapse. It sometimes did leave a pang of painful nostalgia.
His dark eyes glared into the night, contemplating the idea of hell. He thought about the concept often. For someone who has seen the beyond, he didn’t believe there was any other place more infernal than the Earth.
Hell was already among them.
Like a cue from the heavens — a woman’s scream howled up to him from the street below. It was mostly empty, except for the red-haired beauty running for her life.
Make-up ran down her face as she heaved for breath against the pain in her chest. She was looking around frantically for anyone, anyway out, but all she saw was a parking garage and a dead-end street.
“Come back!” an unpleasant voice taunted her from behind.
About time, Bear thought.
The voice belonged to a man named, Handsy. Bear had spent most of the week following him and knew now quite a bit about the rotten bastard. When he killed him, he’d leave his body on display for the cops. No doubt it’d be on the news.
A message for dear old Jacoby Greyson. When you hire scum, expect them to die like scum.
Bear watched the woman look over her shoulder and panic. He knew that look. The realization of one’s true predicament — that her pursuer was in fact closing in and her choices were limited.
Bear could only imagine what she was thinking — what she saw. Handsy was a tall, heavy-set man whose shaven head was inked with a beast and the numbers 666.
He wore dirty jeans, boots, and a leather vest that read: Hands On, No Pussy Bullshit. Bear smirked. “Careful what you wish for,” he said aloud to no one, his deep chuckle hanging on the night air.
She couldn’t turn back, but there was also no going further. Her only hope was the parking garage across the street, a few feet away. Bear’s back tightened. She could get out through the front gates, though she didn’t know it, yet. It would only be a moment before she reached freedom — but Handsy…no…
No Mercy. Only death. Only pain.
Down below, behind the woman, Handsy chuckled with pleasure, watching his prey make her way into the parking garage. “You can run, but you can’t hide!” he called out, quickening his pace. He knew this city better than any other cockroach playing in the gutters.
The red-haired woman stumbled into the garage and ducked behind a rusted, blue car. She scooted back against the metal, trying to get control of her sobbing, but the fear refused to calm.
Her hands shook and her stomach clenched as her shoulders rose and fell. And when she heard the sound of heavy boots, she clamped her hands over her mouth, smothering the sound of her crying.
Handsy stood in the entrance. His greedy eyes scanned the place listening for his prey. It was only a matter of time before he sniffed her out. The mind games were the most thrilling part of the hunt, and this one was going to be fun. He could tell.
“I thought you liked me?” he mocked, thinking of the way she was rubbing up against him back in the bar. She seemed perfectly willing then, when she was begging to go home with him.
“Come on baby, it don’t hurt long,” Handsy peeked behind a few cars, smiling.
The woman sobbed into her hand, squeezing her eyes closed. She didn’t want to die here like this. She didn’t want to die knowing that her son was home alone, left to make dinner for himself, again. If she lived through this, she would do better — she would be better.
Handsy felt the woman’s presence nearby. He could hear the whimpering, and as he knelt to peer beneath the cars, he spotted her dirty bare feet underneath the blue car and smiled.
In that moment, a black figure rushed past him from behind and disappeared. Handsy straightened up and looked over his shoulder. Chills had erupted across his skin and his senses seemed to heighten.
His smile faded. He continued to search for the cause of his unease, but when he found that he was alone, he forced himself to focus on the game at hand.
Handsy turned back around and rolled his neck, his smile slowly returning. “Come on baby,” he called, “I can give you a hell of a good time.” Walking towards the blue car quietly, he listened.
Her weeping could be heard the closer he got. And when Handsy reached the car, he smiled as the woman peered through one of the windows and saw him.
She screamed and attempted to run, but Handsy had her by the waist and slammed her up against one of the cement pillars that had a number nine painted on it.
As Handsy slid his hand between her legs, she fought against him, pleading and crying for him to stop, but her weakness only made him want her more.
When she attempted to kick him, he was suddenly ripped away from her and thrown back against the blue car. Handsy’s body crumbled to the ground, glass from the windows showering him.
The woman spun around to find that she was face to face with a hooded man. She couldn’t find any defining features as she looked into the abyss of his hood. The man took a step closer towards her.
“Run,” he whispered.
She didn’t need to be told twice, as she quickly stepped around her savior and escaped through the garage entrance.
When she was gone, Bear turned slowly towards Handsy, who was attempting to sit up. He dropped a loop of rope around Handsy’s neck that was attached to two beams and yanked hard.
Handsy grunted as he was suddenly forced onto his feet, sputtering from his uneven weight. When he got some sense back, he realized then that the devil had come for him.
“No, no, no! Please,” he choked out, “I wasn’t gonna actually hurt her! Girls like that shit!”
“And, I’m not going to actually hurt you,” Bear seethed, breaking Handsy’s nose with his forehead. Handsy cried out, clawing at the rope. “And I think I am going to like this shit.”
Bear tied his end of the rope to the beamer of a black truck, watching as Handsy flopped around like a fish.
“Mercy,” Handsy choked.
“Mercy?” Bear sighed in mock surprise. “Mercy,” he repeated the word, “Did you show mercy-” he asked Handsy, before pulling several photographs and a dagger from out of his duster.
Bear flipped through the pictures of Handsy’s victims one last time. Then, like a dragon about to breathe fire, Bear took a deep breath and pinned the pile of pictures into Handsy’s right eye with his dagger, penetrating so deeply that handsy began to seize.
Bear watched Handsy slam around hard in the rope a moment longer, before he took the rope back in his hands and pulled until Handsy was almost three feet off the ground.
As Handsy choked to death, Bear pulled back his hood and glared up at his prey. Rapists, Bear thought, were always the most fun. You never felt an ounce of pity putting them down. There were a lot of them in the city and it satisfied his urge to kill.
Jacoby had better take this warning, or he was going to keep good on his promise and come for him, too. He’d string him up like his little hitman. But he’d put his body on display in that little bar of his, instead.
Let his people find him. Show him what it tastes like to die like a coward, choking and begging for mercy.
