Silent Knight, Ruined Night

[Will]

01.23.2016
0210




“One of these nights I’m gonna convince myself not to be a sucker for that smile.” Will mumbled the words like a curse into the night, warm breath visible in repeated puffs of white that rose skyward and faded out within moments. The muted bark of laughter a moment later would have likened him to a madman to anyone who didn’t know and appreciate his sense of humor. “Ass. I’m a sucker for that ass.”

That was what he told himself anyway.

The reality of the situation was much harder to pin down, leaving him to ruminate on it for a moment before he moved on. He didn’t have to think about it. It just was. They just were. Friends with benefits, right?

Another puff of frigid white breath escaped. Then another. He pushed forward through the heavy fall of snow, head bent against the wind, concentrating on the treacherous ground ahead and failing as his mind wandered. He knew the way by heart, of course, having made the trek dozens of times in the last month and then some; that familiarity meant he could have done it with his eyes closed. In this mess, he practically was. One snow clogged street looked like another but each turned was shambled into as the cloying warmth of memories made and those yet to come made his little apartment in Old Temple a beacon burning bright in his mind. So much so , that Will didn’t hear the music at first.

It was like a churchborn lullaby ringing softly in his ears, background noise that tickled at the consciousness just enough distract him from more pleasant thoughts; it was an odd and not altogether wanted reminder of uncomfortable Sundays in the pews and contradictory sermons. Absently, Will thought he would have preferred something with more soul, like a Christian Methodist Episcopal choir full of shameless black ladies in love with the Lord (because those women can belt out those hymns!), instead of the near childish Gregorian-esque peal, devotedly militant and --thruuuuuum--. It was broken by a discordant note, like a single trumpeted blow from a funeral dirge.

--thruuuuuuuum--

There was an urgency to it.

--thruuuuuuum--

“Maybe I’ve been in Rhy’din too lo--”

A sudden cry brought his head up sharply.

“Help us! The bleeding won’t stop!”

Distracted and off-kilter, he lept into action before even considering what had gone or could go awry, dropping his bag and letting his shoulders square up as he charged towards the voice in the gloom at a dead run. The crashing notes of discord grew worse in his head, far more a hindrance than a help, causing his senses to fail him in those ragged breaths leading up to the--

Whack!

Will remembered the look of the churned up snow on the ground and was suddenly wondering why he was seeing the blustery snow infested sky, or what there was to see of it where it was crammed between the edges of the rooftops along the alley. His chest burned with the sting of the blow, a solid and heavy crossbody strike that had taken him completely by surprise, off of his feet. Wet slush made for a frigid contrast, biting at his neck and shoulders where it slid between the collar of his jacket and his hat. That, more than the suddenly string of varying chuckles, brought his head up fast, though the implications of the latter were far from lost on him. Caution had never been a defining trait for him, but his world had been made and rarely broken on a preternatural awareness of most situations that had seen him through worse.

It had, despite the efforts of someone or something else, failed him tonight.

It wasn’t a thrilling thing to consider.

“Whoa, kids! That was one hell of a snowball!” He squinted at the shadows. The nearest street lamp ahead flickered sporadically dozens of yards away, painting the space between it and him with a half dozen looming shadows. Ominous, but he played if off. “You guys got a yeti for a ringer? Good joke, though.” The chuckle was forced as he hauled himself to his feet, brunching away the errant patches of snow caked wetly to his clothes.

His best patronizing smile wasn’t much of a deterrent for the rough looking men who stepped to the edge of the dull halo of light the lamp a dozen feet at his back bathed him in. In made his shadow larger and more looming than the paramedic himself, but they seemed unimpressed. Small stress lines appeared at the corners of Will eyes, easily mistake for the lingering effects of so many smiles, the his eyes a slowly hardening blue-gray obscured by the play of shadows. The rise of both his hands was a universal gesture that proclaimed he was harmless. So far as anyone local was concerned, he was.

The lack of response from his would-be assailants wasn’t a good sign.

“Okay, guys. I’m gonna level with you,” he began, maintaining the non-aggressive posture though his instinct, his whole body, screamed for him to do otherwise. History made being a pacifist so very hard. “I’m really kinda in a hurry. There’s a beautiful magically tatted up Spanish chick who’s gonna be waiting on me, ready to feed me grilled cheese, soup, and sex me up on every piece of furniture in my apartment until the wee hours of the morning, so… is it cool if I just give you my wallet and my Nikes now, so I can not disappoint her? I’ll even give you an I.O.U. for my Starter jacket. I left it at home. Cool?”

The foremost among them loosed a string of incoherent syllables that sounded more like a growl.

“Okay, cool. You’re an Air Jordan kinda guy. I can respect that, just can’t help you with that. I root for the Nuggets, not the Bulls, but I think we can all agree that the Lakers can suck a big honkin’ D, right?”

The growler and his nearest companion took a step forward.

“Yew goht quite the tongue on yew, mate.” The voice came from behind the throng of brutish man. Or what passed for brutish men, in Rhy’din. At least three of them hardly even looked human. A seventh figure. He and another hung back from the rest, as five moved deeper into the halo of light, fanning out in the occasional half step. “Aw’m really gowna enjoy cuttin’ in out.”

Will’s eyes flicked left and right without his head moving, assessing. He stepped backwards and to his left, allowing the snow dusted brick all offer some protection from any more unwanted surprises. Even then, he made a show of rising up on his toes, as if the minimal amount of added height would let him see the speaker any better. It wouldn’t, but it made him feel insignificantly better. “Uh, as exciting as that sounds, I’m gonna have to pass. My tongue’s dance card is full. Tonight, playing interactive backstop for someone’s well-groomed lady parts. Tomorrow, trivia nights at Bluebird Sky. It’s the Interstation Battle Royale and I’m a whopping thirty-seven and three when it comes to The Abridged History of the Contraception for Aboriginal Catholics. Can I try to pencil you in next week?”

Actually confused, as if that wasn’t at least some of his intention, some of the toughs glanced back at their speaker. Nonplussed, the speaker pointed.

“Thissus quite the foon line o’ work, but aw’m nawt gown loi. Aw’m gowna enjoy ev’rt lettle piece yew get cut intuh. Moight even deliver yew ta this Nee-Co-Now-Ruh bitch moin own self.”

“Wait, Nicanora?” Will’s mouth went suddenly dry but he couldn’t resist the barb that came next, rolling off of his coppery, acerbic tongue in a perfect swan dive of sarcasm. “What? She didn’t wanna drop thong for you? I mean, I guess I couldn’t blame her. Who wants play hide the salami with some greaser who sounds like an uneducated chav with Eddie Izzard’s balls in his mouth?”

The other’s reply was lost in the crunch of boots in the snow. The paramedic braced himself, bringing both arms up in a boxer’s clutch to ward off the first few blows, massive fists that rained down heavily. A man of minutiae, he had just enough time if this was what it felt like when people were beaten with Christmas hams in the grotesque initiation into the vegan lifestyle. It sucked. Worse still, was resisting that ever inescapable desire to reciprocate, to cast off the chains of an even more painful choice; he fought the desire to lash out. To be indignant. To be angry. He bobbed and moved with the vicious punches and kicks, trying to evade and mitigate. His guard dropped once and even he couldn’t tell if it had been deliberate, but the price was paid when punched from two different sources landed in devastating fashion along the side of his face, stunning him momentarily. A kick staggered him when his arm fell, a steel shod boot forcing him back against the wall so hard that he could almost hear the rib crack. It was certainly felt.

The ringleader egged them on with words that would later just be dim, garbled memories for Will, described like they were the ever nebulous adults from a Peanuts cartoon, one particular shout ending with the tinkling shatter of a bottle against the wall he’d been using to protect his back, sending shards of glass showering down onto him and opening a fresh gash in his scalp.

Still Will did not fight back.

A monologue was inevitable, but Will couldn’t hear it. The music had returned anew, louder this time and filling his head as if it were some puritanical choir’s personal amphitheater. Every blow struck saw the return of that discordant note, that --thrum--, sharper now. The music practically pulsed through his veins. It called him to action. It would have been so easy to give in to the impulse, to rise up and release the charity of his rage, to temper them with his wrath. It sucked him deeper into himself, calling him inward, calling him down to…

Something rigid and heavy struck him across the back of his shoulders, driving him to his knees. It felt like a lead pipe. Ooof, oh man. It was a lead pipe.

Those sort of things can make a man lucid at the right time. Or the wrong one.

A battered mess, Will became aware of the ringleader standing over him. There was a trenchcoat. What was it with bad guys and trenchcoats? Worse, a fedora.

“Beg meh for yewr life, mate. Scream if for meh.”

Will spat blood onto the man’s leather shoes. “You look like Dick Tracy’s inbred, pedophile brother. Dick Toucher.”

The sound of a switchblade knife locking into place drew his attention to the side. That was when he noticed that the other watcher was holding a small device aloft. A phone. Probably recording. Will’s lip curled just a little, giving a wink for show in an act of defiance that seemed grossly contradictory to his overt pacifism.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the music fill him up again.

I’m not dying tonight, he told himself.

In equal measure, the world was filled suddenly with blinding light and crushing darkness.

Apparently someone had agreed.






Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
-David Viscott




What little Will recalled of what had come after was disjointed flashes memory, likened to the feeling one would get when falling asleep during a poorly choreographed action movie, waking up in fits and starts when things grew particularly loud or flashy. It was like a fever dream. More vivid was the difficult walk out of the fog and the way the haze cleared from his mind as the heavy mist diminished.

Then there was the pain. Oh, was there pain!

He grinned. Be bore it.

Iron Will was tougher than he looked; the man was tougher than most knew.