Mike Greenwood was driving home after a ten hour shift at the factory, when he casually glanced out of the window of his car to see a seemingly endless row of billboards on the West Bluntron highway. One particular billboard of the bunch caught his eye. Nothing special, just an ad for another pathetically predictable drama, but it was the release date was what he was interested in. March 13, 2090, the fifth anniversary of that horrible day. He pulled over off to the side of the highway and stared at the date on the board. It was only a week away. He slammed his head into the steering wheel, in such a way that the horn did not go off, as he hated that horrible sound, even through his silencing headphones, just the thought of it made him shudder. There he began to silently weep. Not for unpreventable things like death, no, he wept for something much more sorrowful. He wept for the terrible implications of deeds none but his own. After wallowing in self pity for just over an hour, he decided that instead of going home to eat, he would go out; anything to get away from the love can’t be for three sign, and drove off.
He sat down at the table for two (the smallest they had) close to the door at L'oeil, French for the eye, around closing time. It was a small, rather isolated, place with no windows, and coliseum seating overlooking the kitchen. Fancy, but not shockingly frou-frou. In particular its walls were very bare, white; except a few cameras in the corners. People did not come for the scenery, they came for the food. The quality that Mike enjoyed the most was the quietness. The building was completely sound proof, giving it a sense of removed ambiance. He just could not stand loud restaurants. It was a bit expensive, though. There were twenty five some odd other customers in the building. Among them Mike stood out. In his grease stained factory worker clothes, (he even had his name tag on) he just stood out. It looked as if he could not afford to eat here. Of course those who thought that were right, he could never have gone here on his current salary, but he had some leftover funds to waste. The fact that he was still wearing the sound eliminating headphones did not help his oddness. He was able to eat in silence and without much interaction with the waiters because he was a regular.
He was about half done with his quiche, when a hooded man in a dark cloak walked in the door. His face was clouded in shadow by his large hooded cloak. It was almost exactly like looking in a mirror for Mike, a mirror that turned back time 5 years. After about a second of intense staring he decided that he was being paranoid and picked up his glass of the finest cabernet. The man turned around to shut the door. Mike saw, on the back of his cloak the small insignia of a peacock’s featherhead, that tiny little eye. Mike knew it all too well.
He stared at the symbol incomprehensively. “How? Not here! Not in Bluntron! How could they have spread this far in these five years?” Mike thought to himself, mind racing. He heard a small click, and the three gunshots. The man had shot the 3 surveillance cameras in the restaurant. He had produced two revolvers from his cloak. There was uproar of fear from the customers.
“Settle down” the man yelled, as he removed his hood. This revealed a mask, typical Peacock regalia. It was featureless and round with two eye holes. In green on the black mask there was a single, big heartbeat line as that of an EKG. “I’ve taken the liberty of padlocking the door shut…” “Just like a Peacock,” Mike thought to himself. “Using 20th century technology to pull a heist." “…and no one gets out,” the man continued “until everyone hands all their valuables to me.” Guns still in hand he pulled out a bag.
“No way in hell!” said a bystander. He produced a handgun, and five others did the same (not too uncommon in Bluntron, a very harsh city).
“So stupid," thought Mike “guns won’t help against a Peacock.”
The man raised his mask just enough to reveal his mouth. He chuckled, breathed deep, and then let out an extremely loud wail. It was 10 times as loud as a gunshot. The acoustics in the building caused the noise to bounce back and forth, resonating throughout the restaurant. Mike spat his wine. Even through the headphones it was the second loudest noise Mike had ever heard. At least half of those standing fell to the ground, and those with guns lost their aim to block their ears, and that was all the man needed.
“Why noise? Why did his trait have to be that horrible noise?” Mike thought to himself as he uneasily felt a massive tingling sensation on his upper back. His own was returning.
Six gunshots later the man had killed all the distracted gunslingers. “Why did he have to kill so loudly? There are so much better quietly efficient ways to- No! I will not think like that again!” Mike weakly willed himself.
The man held out his bag again and said “any takers?” That was the last thing he said before he died.
Mike stood up and began to thrash about as if trying to throw something off his back. “Please, no!” He yelled. In his face he had a look of raw dementia and horror. It was too late. Thirty two cord-like tentacles shot out of his back. Four flesh-tone muscle wires went straight down the robber’s throat; completely mutilating his vocal cords, burst out of his neck, then snapped his spine. Simultaneously the other twenty eight tentacles wrapped themselves around the heads of everyone else in the room but Mike. Within half a second all were dead, necks snapped.
Mike stared in terror at the horrible efficiency of himself. There had been no screams. No additions to those of the past. His tentacles knew that was how he wanted it. He looked around at all the bodies, real people he had killed, then up at the florescent light fixtures, and heard a faint hum over the room full of death. As he stared at the lights, he realized that this was as close to sweet, sought-after silence as he was ever going to get.
In the back of his mind he heard it coming, coming back to haunt him, hundreds of screams, the screams of those he had killed. The headphones were no use. He took them off and slammed them into the ground “Useless!” The screams swept over him, like a wave of dread. Those horrible, horrible noises, came back to him, and crushed him with the weight of knowing how many he had killed. “How could I have coped with this much death, coped and continued to kill, so long ago? Why couldn’t I've stopped, stopped before she was dead?” He accusingly asked himself.
The last scream struck his mind. It was the dying scream of his wife, impaled through the stomach with a tentacle. And the scream stayed, scarring his mind just as it did five years ago, spawning his hatred of loud noises. He screamed, but never louder than she did, as much as he tried; “It was an accident! You weren’t supposed to be there! This isn’t how it was supposed to be!" begging for her forgiveness, never to get an answer, but her scream. He laid there mourning for a while.
Mike got up, the tentacles had retracted by now and he was no longer sad, now he was angry; angry not only at himself, but also his mentor, a Peacock. He was not always this way, there was once a time when he had killed no one, and was innocent. A time before that man had twisted him into what had killed his wife. He hadn’t known what to do with his powers before his mentor. Things just happened. Then he came and reshaped Mike; made him a tool of his own gain. The death of his wife woke him to what he had done. Now, five years later, Mike planned to reshape his mentor in a completely different way.
Noticing that his shirt had thirty two quarter-sized rips, he walked over to his assailant. He took off his shirt, replaced it with the man’s, and stole the cloak and mask. He removed his nametag and put it in his pocket. The man's shirt was a little big on him but it’d do. He stared at the man, who was still clutching his guns in death; Mike had killed him so fast that his muscles were still tense. In closer examination, they looked like very nice pistols, but they wouldn’t help him where he was going. In one of the pockets inside the cloak there was a small pager-like device which read “Program complete”. Mike tossed it aside and checked the other pocket. There was a ticket and a small note that looked hastily written. It said “Church 5th Wednesday @ 8 pm ‘spoils’”. Tomorrow night. He would atone for his wife’s death; atone the way he was taught how. He walked out the door with one thing in mind; if he was liable to kill those around him, he would kill the Peacocks, all of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment