The Lusty City Chronicles Page 2
eyes met with the raggedness of his clothes, the pollution of his face and his horrible smell that polluted the air. He was homeless, a scavenger of Lusty City.
“Where are your folks, your nice clean folks?” slowly speaking and tilting his head side to side, approaching at a preying tiger’s pace.
“We… we ran into some dilemmas along the way” I managed to tell him. Inside I had mixed feelings, whether to act friendly or threatening to this ghastly beast that gradually approached. I compared the frail state of my life to an athlete journeying along a very thin rope, and this dark eyed stranger holding a knife at the other end – I had to be cautious, any word I breathed could be my last.
“Dilemmas, eh? There are scores of harms in the night; it is not safe for you clean people. You could meet with horrible and evil men… evil men like me, and I might just be compelled to slit your soft throat.” I could not find any words to respond as I stared at this wicked beast before my eyes; those dark eyes and horrendous trench made it worse. You could hear a whisper from miles away in this dark silence. He was cautiously and discretely reaching into his pocket… I stared hard at that ragged pocket, contemplating the worst. The silver object finally emerged and I could not easily describe it. He laughed, the bastard laughed. Placing a smoke in his cracked mouth and using the silver object to set fire on the smoke.
“I had you, eh?” he wanted me to entertain this sick and crazy humor with his mind games.
“Only a little” I said, calming my fast-paced heart. Along the silent road, although the smell was still vile and atrocious, I found it more bearable as he accompanied me along the streets. I figured that at least I knew this devil, unlike the unknown devils that lurked in the dark. He told me his name was Felix, Felix was a strange name for a homeless person.
“Did you hear about the murder of the night before last?” Felix enquired
“Yes, poor girl, only if we knew what she knew, we would find this maniac” a chilling and sadistic smile ran on his face when I said this.
“Yes, I guess she would, but nobody survives from five knife punctures” The corners of his cracked mouth were twitching with a hideous smile while he exposed the gaps in his yellow painted teeth.
“Wait… how did you know that she was stabbed five times?”
“I must have read it in the local paper,” he said unsettled, quickly brushing it off. As I stared at him, and he staring at me right back, it came to mind that Felix was not someone who reads the paper, and worse still, I knew that the details of the murder were never released to the public. I myself only knew this because of Jacky.
“You know who the killer is don’t you?” as I looked in the evil that occupied the position of his eye.
“You can say that” he replied without hesitation, as he continued to pick the yellow in his teeth. Was he confessing to not just the murder of Angelique, but all the other girls as well?
“So you admit it, you admit that you are the killer?” Felix laughed with an evil laugh that screeched my ears. His wicked laugh that echoed in the city eventually came to a halt.
“I might be many things, but I am not a killer, Mr. Frost!” he said in a serious voice.
“Then how did you know that she was stabbed 5 times, the paper never said anything about that” He was silenced by this, he knew I had him… he couldn’t deny it.
“You’re wrong,” he insisted “while you clean people sleep in your comfortable beds: we are the shadows, the life in the dark… we need no newspaper to tell us the news. We are the eyes of the city.” I was startled could he be right.
“But if you’re really keen on knowing this so called Lusty Killer, I would point you in the direction of those close to yourself.”
“Close?”
“Haven’t you figured it out? The hunter is no different from the prey” Then a violent shot was fired in our direction, all I could see was blood on my face and hands. My heart pounding faster than the fired bullet. When I glanced, it was Jacky.
“I know this two-faced bastard, a ruthless sonofabitch. What did he tell you?” I was amazed at how she said he was ruthless but the first thing she asked was not whether or not I was OK but rather what Felix had told me.
As his eye stared at me, staring hazel-cold as only the dead can be. I saw kindness in his eyes… but in comparison with his soft kindness, was the beautiful creature with shimmering long hair: her hands where not shaking nor was her heart beating fast. She spoke to me as if she had just accidentally squashed a tiny ant. I saw practiced evil in her eyes.
There were many things surrounding us, there was darkness, blood and carnivores… but justice was not among us. Not just justice for those living today but the unborn yet to come. It was here where I made an oath: that if the people of Lusty City had no direction, I would be their faithful compass and if there was no Law, I will be the badge that shines on the city.
But to her, the person who had just murdered Felix in cold blood, and earlier fired at an unknown stranger in the night… it seemed to me that she enjoyed all this, she was turned on by all this. Later in the evening while her naked legs wrapped around mine and her soft breath touched my neck, I could not craft the strength to face her. A single shed of sleep was beyond comprehension, but within my grasp was the answer to the question: was I sleeping next to the Lusty Killer?