October 21, 7 a.m. Year of the Curtain+5
New York, New York
“I thought I told you not to come this way anymore!” Adam Rodrigue said, not really giving Alex time to respond. It was the first time Alex had been caught by Adam’s gang since their most recent dust-up, the one that sent him on the pointless mission to try to summon up a Golem, and it was one of the most brutal altercations yet. Adam and his favorite stooge, Brady Franks, had waited down one of the side streets they knew Alex had to walk past in order to get to school every morning. In fact, it was one of the few places they had not yet assaulted the smaller boy, so they had not, in fact, “told him not to come this way anymore.” If Alex had any intention of pointing out that fact, though, it was lost about the time that Brady kneeled on his chest, squeezing the breath from his lungs.
Brady, fortunately, didn’t stay there too long – just long enough for Alex to lose his wind and, with it, much of his mobility. He stepped back and let Adam take over, grabbing Alex by the front of the shirt and pulling him up to a sitting position. He slapped him a few times, until the blood from Adam’s nose started staining his hand, then he dropped him back onto the concrete. Brady stepped in and kicked him a few times, bruising his ribs, if not outright cracking them. The physical pain wasn’t the real torture, though. What would stay with Adam for some time, until the guilt over what happened next started to set in, was how the boys laughed as they beat him.
He looked up through his one open eye, squinting as the early morning sunlight filtered down into his face past the two thugs, lighting them from behind. As he lay there, burbling through his tear-stained, blood-stained face, he tried to force out a syllable.
“What’s that, shitstain?” Brady said. “You tryin’ to say something?”
“No, no, let him talk,” Adam giggled. “I bet it’ll be funny.”
Alex forced himself up onto his elbow, wheezing, gasping through his pain, managing to let out just one syllable. “Why?”
“Why?” Adam laughed and, once Brady was sure that was the appropriate response, he joined in heartily. “Because it’s fun, stupid.”
They walked away from the beaten, brutalized boy, turning away from the school. No point in showing up today, the minute Alex showed up everybody would know what they did and they didn’t feel like spending the day sitting in the assistant principal’s office trying to explain themselves. They walked down the back alleys, avoiding the crowds on the sidewalks, and finally settling on a fire escape a couple of blocks away.
“So what do we do with him next?” Brady asked. Adam was the leader, of course, there was no point attempting to deny his sovereignty over their little group. He sat there, scratching his chin, thinking.
“I dunno. There’s not much more we can do as far as beating him up without getting into real trouble. Maybe we should try something else.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe we should scare him next time.”
Brady started to giggle. “Yeah! Yeah! We can wait outside his apartment building and jump out at him, like wearin’ masks and stuff. We’ll make him crap his pants.”
“I’m sure we can come up with something better than that,” Adam said. “How about this…”
His plan went unremarked, though, when the fire escape started to tremble beneath them. The two boys looked around, shocked. “Earthquake?” Brady asked.
“No, there’s… there’s a guy!” Alex pointed down to the bottom of the fire escape where a brown-skinned giant of a man was rattling the fire escape. He was bald, and looked like he was naked, and his entire body seemed to be covered in dust and dirt.
“What’s happening?” Brady shouted.
“What the hell?”
The two of them clutched the fence, trying to hold on, but as the shaking got worse, their hands started to slip. Adam braved a look down, and saw the man look up at him. His face was almost half-formed, except for a strange series of characters sketched into his forehead. His eyes glowed with a blue fire, and a look of rage furrowed his brow.
They both screamed as they fell.
Two blocks away, Alex stood up, wiping the blood from his face, trying not to weep. “I hate them,” he whispered to himself. “I hate them all. I wish they would all just die.”
Two blocks away, they did.
