Chapter 5 #2
“One day, three officers are captured in the jungle by a tribe of cannibals. The tribe tells the officers they’re gonna eat them and make a canoe out of their skin, but because of their rank, they’ll allow the officers to decide how they want to die.
The first officer, a commander, replies, ‘If you bring me my weapon and a single round, I’ll take care of it for you.
’ They do as he requests, and he shoots himself in the head.
Next up is the sergeant. They ask him how he wants to go out, and he replies, ‘I’ve always been a terrible shot, so if you bring me some poison, I’ll take care of it for you.
’ They agree, get some poison from their medicine guy, and give it to the sergeant, who takes it and dies five minutes later.
Finally, the chief offers the lieutenant the same choice.
He thinks about it for a few minutes and asks them to bring him a fork.
The chief of the tribe looks at him like he is crazy and says, “Excuse me?” The LT asks for a fork again, so the chief, although confused, goes off, gets him a fork, and hands it to him.
The LT grabs it and starts stabbing himself over and over like a lunatic.
The chief is shocked and asks him what he’s doing.
The lieutenant looks up with a glint in his eye and yells, “Fuck your canoe.”
I bent forward and dropped my head into my hands.
Jesus, Ben was destroying me here.
The sound of his soft laughter punched tiny holes in my heart, but it was impossible not to smile at the sheer beauty of the sound I never thought I’d get to hear again.
Even with my gut clenched and my hands shaking, my best friend had come back to tell me he was okay, and that was a gift I’d cherish until the day I joined him, wherever he was.
Sitting there staring at my bare feet, I realized I’d never gotten over his loss, not really.
There’d been too much guilt surrounding it because I always wondered why him?
Why Kyle? Why Espinoza? Why that Humvee and not the one Hollister and I rode in?
Out of all the kill missions I’d been involved in, why that night? Why that second? Why all that pain?
Some nights I’d lie awake replaying all the dumb shit we did when we were young soldiers determined to change the world and make it better and safer.
I never worked out how it went so bad, how my ideals and my state of mind changed from being so positive and so sure of my mission to being so goddamned lost.
Conscious that I was losing time with my friend that I really would never get back, I stood up and shoved my underwear and jeans on.
I pulled my tee over my head and walked outside, still smoothing it down.
I half expected Benny to be gone, but he was still there, standing with his back to me, looking out the window.
“How much time have we got, Ben?” I asked, heading back over to the nightstand, automatically grabbing my shoulder holster containing my gun and fastening it around my chest.
He let out a soft laugh.
My body locked because something about it didn’t sound right. “Ben?” I prompted.
The figure turned, and a cold shiver ran down my spine when I saw it wasn’t my friend.
For a split second, I didn’t recognize the man. He was all silhouette and no substance, like a shadow so dense he could pass for corporeal until you looked closer.
His face was a twisted mask of pure spite, the edges of his features blurred like a TV picture distorted by static.
He wore a black leather jacket just like Benny had, but his had holes where the patches had been sewn, no doubt symbolic of the fact that Cash had his old president cut hanging on the wall in Church.
But what really stood out was the thick, jagged line of blood across his throat.
My handiwork.
Or at least the work of the monster who lived inside me. The same monster that was coming to life just by staring at the apparition.
“What do you want, Bear?” I spat, my top lip curling in disgust.
He smiled, his grin familiar, but his teeth sharp and pointed, like a shark’s.
The motherfucker looked like a demon, but demons didn’t scare me because I had one too, and it was way more terrifying than Bear Rawlins and his nasty-assed teeth.
I knew he was here to try to frighten me, to torment the Speed Demons the same way we did him, but I’d lived with ghosts for so long that it was like water off a duck’s back.
Plus, I knew from experience that the living would hurt you way worse than the dead.
“Need a toothbrush for those dirty old gnashers?” I drawled. “Bet they fucking stink.”
Bear opened his mouth to speak, but when his voice filled the room, it wasn’t his. It was Benny’s.
“All that killing we did, Snow,” he began.
“I knew it got to you, but then you were always really fuckin’ good at it, right?
The way you slit those throats like a knife sliding through butter was so beautiful.
It made your cock stiff, didn’t it? You’re no better than Bear; in fact, you’ve killed more people than him.
Look at you, standing there, acting the hero when really, you’re just a washed-up serial killer who gets off on death just as much as the next washed-up serial killer. Fuckin’ hypocrite.”
I froze, and not because of Bear’s parlor trick, but because the voice sounded so much like Benny’s that if I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t know the difference.
This was the worst thing about having to converse with Bear ‘sex-trafficker’ Rawlins. It wasn’t the savagery or violence that made him dangerous; it wasn’t even the appetite for pain. It was how he was so intent on digging inside your head and doing as much psychological damage as he could.
I felt my skin crawl, and a cold sweat formed between my shoulder blades.
It was unsettling, but I saw it for what it was: a way to get to me. Maybe if the real Benny hadn’t visited me right before Bear materialized, I would have been pushed off-kilter, but this shit was such a cheap shot that I easily recovered.
I took a steadying breath, keeping my stare locked onto the thing before me. “Come on, Bear, you gotta try harder than that. Using Benny isn’t even original. I already have nightmares about the guy at least twice a week. The scariest thing about you is those stinky-assed teeth.”
Bear’s only reply was a slow, Cheshire cat-like grin that showed off his shark teeth to perfection.
“I’m just getting started, Breaker. We’ve got a whole lifetime ahead of us.
Maybe I’ll go visit that hot blonde wife of yours, or even that pretty little daughter.
She’s a little older than I usually like ’em, but I’d make an exception for sweet Kady.
Or perhaps I’ll go see if Kai likes being haunted every night for the rest of his sorry-assed life.
It’ll be fun driving him crazy. Straight up, I reckon I could have him confined to the psych ward within the week. ”
I barked out a laugh. “What you gonna do? Bore them to death? Newsflash, asshole, you’re a ghost. It’s not like you can actually harm anyone—”
Bear’s hand shot out faster than I could blink and jabbed me square in the chest.
My hand flew to the spot, and my mouth fell open in disbelief.
It didn’t hurt the way a punch or knife would have; it was worse. A bone-chilling coldness radiated from his touch, spreading like ice through my veins. I jerked away, but the chill tunneled through me, spreading like frostbite until it got too much and I fell to my knees.
My head jerked up to see Bear’s face was inches from mine, his eyes black voids just like Benny's used to be back when I was tormented by him.
“Wake up, asshole,” he sang in a cliché, creepy horror movie type way. “Tick fucking tock, motherfucker.”
My body gave a massive jolt, and my eyes flew open as I came to with a start.
Atlas’s voice boomed from outside my door. “Wake up.”
Darkness surrounded me, and for a moment, I forgot where I was.
Then I heard it.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I sat bolt upright in bed, and my eyes veered to the clock beside me that flashed the time.
3:21.
My heart was racing, and I felt so fucking cold that my teeth started to chatter.
What the fuck just happened?
“Breaker!” Atlas called again. “Wake up, asshole. Tick fucking tock, motherfucker.”
“Get your ass in here!” I called.
The door flew open, and Atlas stood dark and foreboding in the threshold of my room. “Get your ass up, Winter Soldier,” he ordered. “We’ve got a problem like no other. Either Bear Rawlins is haunting this clubhouse, or I’m going stark raving bonkers.”
An icy cold shiver ran from the top of my spine to the bottom, and I felt my monster begin to emerge from deep within, crawling up through me, waiting to come to the surface.
A slow, sadistic grin crept across my face.
Time to play.