The Monolith

Our dreams are haunted by demons, sometimes they hold us down in our sleep. Other times they rip us out of bed and into the night. 

My notoriety casts a long shadow, and the detectives withdrew from my presence. Each officer feared I carried the dark mark of a scarlet letter, and the specters that tormented me sought refuge within them too.

They wore polished shoes and creased suits, wedding bands snug on their fingers. In the investigative unit, we dubbed such unions "starter marriages." Time passed and absence didn't let fondness grow, but it did allow wandering gazes. Immersed in the night, one had all the time to let those voices seep back in.

Ghosts lingered in these dusty files. They revealed metallic odors of crimson liquids splattered on walls; eyes like sharks belonging to predators stealing lives without needing a breath. The mothers bargaining with God to bring their children back were what drove me to reach for an extra pill in my prescription bottle—anything to silence the infernal noise.

I kept the pictures on my phone before the genuine detectives shot me that thousand-yard glare as they let their breaths escape. Breathing near me—a living tomb—was deemed ill-fated. Old myths cling tight.

These were no ordinary shapes or symbols; they were runes I had encountered before. The forensic teams bore a reputation of excellence when documenting each excursion into these haunted spaces. Tiny sigils surrounded bodies, while an unfamiliar media device left eerie silence enveloping the dead.

  the task force fixated on the minuscule coins atop the corpse, I surreptitiously crushed two capsules between my teeth in the cordoned-off chamber. Chilling blue radiance from digital lenses immortalized the body in their frozen snapshots. One day, that lifeless display would be my own—blood and bone ensnared in shadow.

The subtle marks adorning the body bore no signs of drug dependency. Instead of post-mortem cherry spots, neon blue markings shimmered strikingly. No wonder they summoned the man who donned a Halloween costume every night—his mask muting disparate voices. 

A secondary aspect prompted my presence: a minute etching of a black crescent—an eclipse—my personal trademark. Despite my best attempts, I could not spring forth from every dark crevice in this forsaken city. The etchings signified untouchables: addicts shielded from being sold lethal doses; sex workers who vanished or faced harm would warrant my undivided attention. This particular man left behind a mother and son—the young boy whisked away by the state into his grandmother's care—an all-too-frequent tale in our broken system.

Each crime concealed a thousand enigmas, buried beneath heaps of bureaucratic paperwork awaiting processing between evidence collection and burial ceremonies. Deprived of funds, crime labs languished, with uncontaminated evidence gathering dust in forgotten storage units.

A metallic slot adjacent to the body called out to me—it accepted tokens now circulating as underground currency. Murmurs of secret passages and hidden chambers below the city's surface stirred greater curiosity than even my spectral presence could evoke. These sought-after tokens held a sinister resemblance to golden tickets from a perverse chocolate factory fantasy. As much as it was evidence, it matched the coin before me—so I slid in a token adorned with an ebony raven at its core.

The offering rolled down the entry point and I waited for the click. The door opened. That excited feeling like a kid on Christmas, the time you didn’t take a peek at your gifts flooded over me. That's what it was like to break a case. The endless blackness engulfed the neon stick down the hatch. 

The prongs from the coil on my  cannon latched on the spoke around the cracked hatch as I 

descended into the catacombs below the city. The stale air ripped across my nose and my mouth. I left another glow stick on top as a marker. The eyes above the hatch faded from the hole above. They believed they were looking at a dead man, all except one The pathway descended for hours.

 The beads of water dipped into my mask. I turned my gaze to the  Marin County Pubic Works flyer. This was decades before I entered the mortal coil. The edge of the corner whittled away after years of exposure to mist and mildew.

I surveyed my surroundings, as a penetrating darkness gazed back at me. A sensation reminiscent of a young boy sneaking into an illicit show swept over me. The lenses in my cowl tracked the rays as they wrapped around the corner. Taking a moment before entering, I thought about how one acquires a heightened sense of their surroundings after living the hero's life. Knowing that you're not alone in complete isolation is often a more terrifying realization.

My recollection grew hazy as ghostly lights emerged from the shadows, reminiscent of the primordial days of Genesis. The thundering footsteps storming up the stairway echoed in my ears, just as a diminutive figure collided with me, clinging to me like a lifeline. I studied them, drenched in the chemicals of sheer terror.

The little chain that once adorned their neck was now detached, and purple rings and coarse boundaries surrounding their form painted an image of a cruel fairy tale sprung to life. They closely resembled a once-confined domestic animal, running amok in the streets, fearful of their previous tormentor.

Behind me stood a behemoth figure – something barely resembling a man. The presence reached out, forcefully dragging me into the corridor. Contorting my body protectively, I felt the coarse concrete flooring etch into my suit – unrelenting in its pursuit.

The man would not speak; perhaps on some days off, his idea of paradise was an electrified cattle prod or spiked whip. We often describe monsters having vacant eyes akin to barracudas or malformed dolls – but those were mere words.

Facing this sinister reality was encountering self-actualization in a predatory form. The man who existed on the surface world differed drastically from his subterranean persona. He didn't have to wait for nightfall to unveil his true self; down here in these passageways devoid of sun's rays, he was free from scrutinizing gazes and could be his monstrous self day or night.

Having squeezed every bit of use from his toy, he discarded it callously – but other horrors were lurking beneath the bay to be afraid of.

He lashed out with his whip aimed at my eyes but I managed to deflect it, causing it to wrap around my forearm. Retaliating, my elbow crashed into his brow, aiming for the spot where blood would soon flow.

“You bastard, it can smell blood for miles.” The disguised enforcer stammered in the dimness. “I paid good money for privacy, and you're going to cover the cleaning fee.” I twisted from his impact, driving a hammer fist into the area between his eyes. Surges of agony only spurred him further. It was time to shut him down.

Frenziedly wielding the cattle prod to regain control, the stench of men's cologne permeated from his leather attire. Taking on a Goliath such as him required tactical ingenuity – a sturdy stick and perhaps a sling.

  There was neither a howl nor a holler as the wounded wolf sank back into the cave. The lights went back into the shadow one by one. We followed the trail of pitch down to the last flickering bulb.  I waited for the shock to leave the women's system.  She maintained her composure. In between the light and the shadows, I caught glimpses of small marks and ink. Neither a moral judgment nor a call to action, my brain liked to connect dots.

 I could only imagine how many times she had been through a scenario like this. “We’ve met before,”  she announced. “Got a light?” I had a thousand vices swimming across my cortex, smoking did not cross my path. I apologized and cracked open another glow stick as we entered the second door. "You were there when one of those boys from the east bay special units was looking to provide favors.” I had seen that scenario play out many times under the mask.

Never sneak up on a dirty cop whos caught with his pants down. I had no issues with consenting adults in the backseat under the concrete mazes that split between Oakland and the North Bay. I had issues with men trying who flashed their badges for free samples.  I get testy when people pull a gun on me. 

It was the first time I had seen one of those coins. It fell out of his back pocket when my knuckles hit the soft spot in between his belt and his vest. She must have taken the other one. The ridges on the coin created an echo in my brain. The ridges and the raven matched the coins in the deceased eyes. I reached for the riot stick and the needle broke in the small parts of my gauntlets.

“Don’t worry it's clean, and it was supposed to be quick.”  Chemical cocktails don’t hit fast like in the movies or pulp magazines.  What can put a shooter to sleep can kill a mugger.  “My friend told me about the protection marker.”  The sadness slipped from her voice. “But there are bonds that cannot be broken. You’ll see” I frisked the woman and kept her pinned against the wall.  The was a whimper, in a playful way. My presence hit her harder than any drug on the market.  “You truly are the real deal.” She whispered.

 A phalanx of steps echoed from the blackness. The green lenses from protective masks shined against the last of the fading light. Were the lights going out above me? Or Inside me. I grabbed another pod and tossed it at the clean-up team.  Deep below the city, they would never find my body.  The math didn’t work for me. An armed team vs a washed-up and drugged-down vigilante. I wanted no smoke.

My secondary hand tossed a second pair of flash bangs.  They wanted me alive or else I would have spilled blood inside the cowl.  I kicked open another door and prayed for a moment to breathe, no one answered and I felt suffocated by the nothingness. I followed the blue lines to the bottom. They danced like sugarplum fairies in the dark. I walked on unholy ground.  The blue lights ignited and I witnesses a blackness that stood against the shadow. The mammoth pyramid with cerulean veins.  Black barbs writhes out, the tiny suckers searched for a meal across the vacant floor. The desire to cry out died out against the beauty of the blue.

“I am sorry we had to meet like this.” The voice had no mouth and it never required one. “I have spoken in so many tongues, and I have absorbed so many.” It was revealed to me.  “You and I need not be enemies.” The monolith told me.  The unit returned. I would see the blue spots on it their veins too. Their guns were no longer on me, but on the butcher from the blackness.  The leather daddy. For his sins, he was trapped down in the depths of his brain, was the calling card was to mock me or cry for help.  

The unit parted like the red sea as the woman approached.  “ I know the shame of failing people under your protection.” She was sorry for the body at the crime scene. “You won't find justice above ground, but it can be delivered in the dark.”  The monolith needed to feed and the city needed energy that wasn’t going to choke the planet and rot the seas. 

 “No one feels pain as they fade.” The warmth from her voice smothered the coldness of the decision. She dragged the butcher off the shores and watched the prongs latch on to him.  “They say one bite from the pyramid equals the bliss of your honeymoon or watching your firstborn come into this world.”

 The tentacles wrapped around this man.  This wasn't justice, this was a culling. “It wasn’t hard to get him down here. You would be surprised how many asocial serial offenders come from means.” 

 The depths of the darkness allowed him to take off the mask and be the real person. You could blame the pyramid for driving the woman to madness, but the electrons in my brain encountered bureaucracy and bean counting.

 As long as it fed on the people that wouldn’t become serial numbers in a police report it would keep feeding.

 “I can get that scarlet letter off your back. You could hunt the real predators.”  The muscles in my face betrayed the joy behind the mask.  Endless nights running from the vice squad and begging at the mutual aid centers to patch up old stitch work. There were so many cinnamon scars on tired skin. 

“They can’t get the right amount of nourishment on the blood of addicts. But there are so many outlaws whose transgressions are worthy of the feast.” She said. The living pyramid had chosen her to be its emissary and powerful person that knew how to make the outliers feel special and pulled on those strings. We were all victims of a greater grift.

She held back gunslingers with inflamed fingers. Surprisingly, amid chaos, they failed to enlist top-notch professionals. Yet, overconfidence could be blinded by a single bullet.

"Unforeseen side effects emerged, akin to lead exposure igniting aggressive behavior—the monolith's fumes push invasive thoughts into an irresistible itch craving blood."

Life vanished from the butcher as ecstasy flooded his body—an intoxication beyond any class-three street drug's capabilities. No victors stood here; only those vanquished.

The city bore the brunt of frequent power failures, and the pyramid—older than bones themselves—remained imprisoned. The butcher deserved a fair trial and guidance, but from the shadows emerged three curved daggers, severing the connection between the murderer and the monolith—their metallic grasp seeping into his very being.

Sacred ground stained by electrifying blue discharge. A grappling coil decelerated my descent into orchestrated insanity. Dismissing it as pure madness oversimplified – though the monolith journeyed around the world, the primal pangs of hunger and solitude haunted all.

 The flash pods ignited across the Kevlar suits. The security agent panicked as a volley of ash and copper graced the altar. The pyramid reached out and searched for holes in the armor. The tiny blue barbs pierced the skin and drain the essence of the man.  Tribalism entered the chat. The shooter's fears of when their ancestors faced such terrible predators kicked in as they showered the creature with bullets.

Three tokens left their pouches as old skin absorbed young blood.  I dragged the serial offender from the pools of blood neon blue and red blood turned violet. My fingers ran against his pulse.  He was close to gone, no amount of gauze was going to bring him back to the land of the living, maybe he was the lucky one. 

There was another loved one that was never going to say goodbye or celebrate another birthday. Even killers had mothers. I moved the man away from the monolith. If there were demon awaiting him in the next life, he didn’t need to see one before he left. As a silent prayer left my lips, a sharp kick cracked them open.  The woman was no longer the babe in the woods. She had me dead to rights

 “We could have accomplished so much good, but men like you still believe in evil.” 

The rifle in her hands would leave no room for misinterpretation.  I would never leave this tomb. The ringing in my ears disappeared along with the scarlet cracks between my lips. “I will leave this city with one last gift.” She dropped the gun and walked towards the monolith. She walked towards the creatures as the prongs and follicles made contact. They curled around her body and the liquid inside hardened as she embraced the predator.

 I couldn’t be sure if she embraced it like a caregiver or a lover. I wanted to take several showers just to get the image out of my mind. She wanted to light up the city one last night. I grabbed the tokens and prayed for a miracle. It wasn’t one size fits all. The flashing lights and circular bulbs on the control panel shattered into orange and jade pieces. The creature became formless and a part of the void left the containment area and slithered over the bodies.  The follicles dined on the shooters like the homeless guests in a great banquet. 

 I fumbled the coin as I fed the slot. If i didn’t hear a click, I would become another fixture of this haunted house, the abyss doesn’t always stare back sometimes he just needs an ear to listen.  Every time you step out of a haunted house you're supposed to feel victorious, but what happens when the grave takes a little bit away from you before your time?