1
Jagg
A thin fog slithered around the headstones like a snake searching for its prey. Or perhaps more fitting for this story, like a virus, spreading, spreading, spreading, slowly consuming everything in its path. But it was too late. The crowd was gone. I was the only one left.
Come and get me, I thought. I’d spent my entire life tempting the devil and always won. Little did I know what the horned fucker had in store for me next.
I tilted my head to the moon. Glowing iridescent clouds crowded the spotlight, waiting for the perfect time to steal its light.
A full moon was coming.
I did not like full moons.
I refocused on the swaying milky mist, my back against a tree, my feet planted in front of me. Uneven rows of headstones—most tilted and unreadable—speckled the rolling hills, once a vibrant green now brown with dying, wilted grass. Even the trees seemed to sag. Berry Springs was in the middle of the hottest heatwave on record, according to the weatherman. The night had ushered in cooler temperatures—cooler, as in low-eighties—but no reprieve from the suffocating humidity. It had been six days of three-digit temperatures, and feels-like temps of your-balls-are-guaranteed-to-stick-to-your-leg-all-day. Brutal, if you’re unfamiliar. Or neutered.
I shifted, the root poking into my tailbone finally making my ass numb. I was hoping that numbness would climb to my lower back.
No luck.
I popped another pain pill then hurled a rock into a nearby bush in an effort to silence the screaming cicadas, a million maracas shaking between my temples.
Despite the bugs and the ball-plastering heat, I couldn’t leave. I stared at that damn trident, etched on the headstone in front of me, until the thing began to blur.
It had been eight hours since the small, southern town had gathered in their black best, weeping, grieving, trying to understand. Colleagues, friends, family, trying to wrap their heads around a new life suddenly derailed by the finality of death.
Cheated life.
Too early.
Way too fucking early.
Shadow Hill was a typical small-town graveyard where everyone born and raised within a thirty-mile radius was buried. Located in the center of town, the cemetery was nestled in a clearing outside of City Park, which consisted of twenty acres of manicured woods and jogging trails just behind Main Street.
I suppose this is where I’m supposed to say I hate cemeteries, like any normal human being. Truth is, I’ve been to so many over the years that they’ve lost that haunting luster. Death was the only thing certain in life. I knew that better than anyone. Some deaths you accept, a normal course of immortality stolen by time, but others were stolen by six rounds to the chest.
That night was the latter.
I scanned the tree line past the clearing for the hundredth time. The chatter of the town had died down, as most small towns did after eight pm. Trucks, cars, horses had disappeared from the roads with the exception of a few logging trucks passing by. Three, to be exact.
I smashed a mosquito the size of a Volkswagen against my forearm, this one double the size of the last. The blood-sucking bastards were swarming and getting ballsier by the minute, probably attracted to the seventeen layers of sweat that had settled under my white dress shirt. Always white, by the way. I don’t do print. Print button-ups are for pussies and men who manscaped.
Although I tossed the suit jacket and loosened the necktie I’d gotten at the thrift shop earlier that morning, my Hanes had been in a constant state of damp since taking my place among the mourners.
It had been a hell of a day.
Not unlike so many before.
I tipped up my whiskey, my throat numb to the burn of the tepid liquid by that point. Tepid? Who am I kidding? It was like swallowing fresh tar. Something I don’t recommend. Twenty-four hours of vomiting followed by a two-day hospital stint is how that story ends.
I got that twenty bucks though.
A whisper of a breeze swept over my skin, on it, that familiar earthy scent of a freshly dug grave. A scent that never failed at triggering memories to loop in my brain like a black and white horror movie. One dead body, two, three, four… spinning, spinning, spinning, their eyes locked on mine begging for answers.
I swiped the fresh sheen of sweat from my brow.
I was so damn sick of the heat.
My hand drifted to the tie around my neck, giving it a few more tugs. Polyester, best I could tell. Silk was also for pussies.
I hated ties. A noose invented by some overindulgent silver-spoon prick in the seventeenth century had now become a symbol of status in our society—you know, with the printed-shirt people. A man wearing a necktie was considered to have an importance of sorts, always busy, always on the go. Rushing from one very important meeting to the next, with a quick stop off in the company bathroom to rub one out because his barbie stay-at-home-wife never let him stick a finger in anything other than her wallet. Always in his shiny sports car or slick SUV, a weak attempt to prove a masculinity that ironically dissolved the moment he’d asked his nanny to Plattsburgh-knot his tie after pulling his dick from her mouth. Yes, I’m important, the tie told society, despite being bound and gagged at the jugular.
Ties were like dog collars, in my humble opinion. I hated dogs, too, for that matter. Pitied them, having to always wear their version of a tie—the ultimate noose—slowly tightening over years, going unnoticed by their neglectful owners. The only thing that reminded the dog of years gone by was the deep ache in his back and that damn collar growing too tight.
Hell, I was that dog.
A tissue tumbled across the grass, dancing along the mound of dirt like an evil fairy taunting the dead to rise again. For one last chance. One last fight. One last night in a world that had released them to their fates.
I leaned my head against the tree and contemplated heaven and hell, and good and evil, as I had done so many times before. After years being on the front lines of fighting a concept that has ripped nations apart for centuries, I came to one conclusion: Good is a fluid concept and evil is a guarantee. While good is easily overlooked, our society has turned evil into a separate entity, a faceless label given in an attempt to understand the atrocities that happen on a daily basis. Because something has to be responsible, right? Something, or someone, has to be blamed and held accountable. Evil gives us something tangible to focus our anger on, and therefore, we accept its place on earth.
Genocide, terrorists’ attacks, rape, murder, torture, all caused by evil.
Is it?
Or is it simply a passive acceptance, a way to turn a cheek and dismiss a responsibility that society is too scared to address. Too scared to attack head on.
Too scared to look in the face.
That was my job. To face the evil and expose it for what it truly was.
I didn’t allow myself the luxury of believing in good or evil, simply because they don’t come in black and white facts. Declaring someone evil isn’t enough to get them locked behind bars. Evil doesn’t give grieving families closure.
My job was to speak for the dead.
To bring them justice.
And never, in my career, was that resolve stronger than it was at that moment.
On that note, I decided to get moving. Hunting, probably a better word for it.
I pushed myself off the dirt floor, freezing mid-way like Bigfoot caught on camera. Searing pain shot up my back, waves of nausea following seconds later.