Gold & Scarlet

The two men are in the small house.

One of them is slumped against the wall. He can’t move much.

The one that stands has a black beard that has been stained with blood and puss. He holds a bloody axe in his right hand. His chest is heaving. It is the slumped man’s blood and puss that is in his beard.

The sun is setting. The orange glow is bitter as it yawns through the old house. It is cut to shreds by windowpanes and door frames.

“Hey,” says the one on the floor, “I got some cigarettes I’ve been saving for this shit. Still got your lighter?”

Standing nods.

“Where are they?”

“Breast-” slumped over wheezes for a moment. His teeth begin to glint red. They are the colour of wine.

“Breast pocket,” he managed.

Once they’re both lit up, standing checks his watch. He breaths out. His beard feels heavy. It’s like some creature has crawled up his front and hooked onto his face.

Slumped over cackles, “don’t forget the gun.”

“I won’t forget the gun,” standing bares his teeth. They are yellow. One is missing. Standing is shivering. Then he says, “it’s only got one bullet left.”

“Fine. Let’s…let’s use a different word. Don’t le-leave with…without giving me the gun. And it doesn’t matter. I only need one.”

Standing’s hands are shaking now. The hatchet is still clutched tightly in his rectangular, dull fingers. It is like it is welded to his palm.

He checks his watch one more time. He makes sure that slumped over can’t see the face.

The orange glow begins to wither. The shadows begin to smother it out. Slumped over knows time is running low. His eyes drift to the gun lying on the nearby kitchen counter.

He looks at standing.

“Check the cupboards before you go.”

“Already done.”

Slumped over chuckles, and it becomes a strangled cough. Blood and puss leak through his teeth and stain his cigarette.

“Nice.”

Both men sit there. Standing doesn’t go to give him a new cigarette. Instead, he shakes. His exhausted, red eyes roll around in their sockets. At some point, he put the hatchet down. Clutched in his fingers is a golden crucifix on a chain.

Slumped over said something. It sounds like a cars motor ticking.

“What?” Standing looks at him. He doesn’t move. He sits. He shakes.

“The world was easier when it was flat,” slumped over manages. He smiles again. His cigarette falls to the floor.

It almost looks like the descending evening is cutting it in two.

“Like…you remember, whe-whe-when you would read those picture-picture books as a kid,” his eyes are glassy now. They twist around the room, and for a moment, it looks as though slumped over can see ghosts.

Standing clutches his crucifix tighter.

“And those…those books, they showed the world…” he blinks and with strength that seems impossible, he lifts his hands like a half-assed Nazi salute, “flat.”

Standing looks at the gun. He still shakes, and the gun is sitting there on the counter like a demon, like the devil that sits on your shoulder, mocking him.

Slumped over’s arm is frozen. Finally, it drops.

“Flat. And the sun would drift over everything, and then eventually fall over the edge. It was easier. Because you could…there was an end to it, you know?”

The evening light is almost gone now. Standing clicks his neck. When he puts his crucifix back on, the little gold icon gets tangled in his beard.

Slumped over is still talking, but standing doesn’t notice. All that he has left of is caught in the tendrils of this creature that crawled up his front and latched onto his face.

Once it was black as night, but now it is bathed in the blood that he drank from another man, this demon that holds his faith in its crimson claws.

He can’t help but moan, and he snatches at it, wrenching and pulling at his hair and the chain, and the orange light is almost gone, and his watch is almost at six o’clock.

The chain snaps.

The crucifix falls.

“I have to go,” standing bursts out.

Slumped over looks up at him. His skin is waxy, his lips are dried. They peel with scabs of blood and puss.

Standing grabs his hatchet.

Forgive me father.

He turns to go.

“The gun,” slumped over manages, “give me the gun.”

For I have sinned.

Standing turns around. He grabs the gun, and he drops it into slumped over’s lap.

“Th-thank you…I know what this means. I know how hard it is for you.”

Understand why I did this Lord; I had no other choice.

Standing walks out. His crucifix is forgotten on the floorboards. It is stained with slumped over’s blood and puss.

The door closes behind him. The night sky has coated the orange afternoon with darkness, and stars blink into existence. When he was a child, his mother used to tell him that the stars were angels.

Until now, that had always filled him with such joy.

Father, I understand that you test us mortals.

He hears something hit the front door of the house. It thuds the same way that a slab of meat does on a kitchen counter.

Seconds later, a second thud, then a third, and then the thuds are overlapping each other, and then the demented moans of the undead crescendo into the black night. They coat the silence of the night, like the blood of another man coating standing’s beard.

The door collapses with an almighty sound beneath twitching, vindictive corpses.

Whether it’s his imagination, or if he can actually hear it, the moans are punctuated by the sound of the gun being cocked.

Understand father, I tried my best. I did everything lord, I tried to suck the infection from his body, I did all that a mortal man could.

And then, the sound of an empty gun clicking, like a demon spitting venom.

Standing opens his hand.

The last bullet glistens golden in the moonlight, just like his crucifix used to glow. When he closes his hands over the bullet, his fingers look like the elongated claws of the damned in the dark.

He remembers what his mother used to say:

“God created your body for you. It is not yours to damage, to alter, and above all, it is not yours to kill. Suicide is a sin.”