Thrall Again

Lucinda was with the few friends she kept around, a few boys aged between fifteen and twenty-five. Most she had had she had lost or given up willingly, they held her back. They couldn’t handle the new her. They were afraid. Her friends that stayed weren’t afraid. They were strong, they were survivors. They understood that the things people villified were nothing to fear. Most of all, though, they had chosen her. She was someone they kept around. The town was small enough that many friends you had, you had out of neccesity and proximity. Chosen for you. Not these ones, they wanted her. This was a group that only let in people who could keep up, and she was determined to.

Today, they explored the stockyards. They had been abandoned for decades and explored thoroughly by previous daredevils, but the roofed areas were still untouched. Locked doors and jagged metal roofing made sure of that. Nothing was stopping her or her friends, though. One at a time, they shimmied up a heavy pipe onto the sloped tin roof, then carefully walk across to where one of the rusted panels had fallen in. The fallen panel made a slope, just steep enough to lower down onto and hopefully use to climb out of later on. On the way down, Lucinda's grip on the roofing slipped. She fell partway and reached out with her other hand, but didn't find purchase. She felt the roof's rusted metal scrape down her arm before she crashed back-first into the grounded piece of roofing. She was stunned, winded. Lucinda was left to tend to her own injures while one of her friends dragged and stacked old troughs to make a new exit. She had a long, nasty gash across the back of her right forearm. It looked like meat under the moonlight, but the torn flesh was quickly covered by welling blood. Nobody was happy to see it, but they weren't going to let a cut ruin all of their nights. Lucinda wrapped it tight in someone’s jacket and kept exploring.

Lucinda walked, trying to pay attention to the empty coralls and choke points. Where the place didn't smell like shit, it smelled like iron. Butcher's hooks hung, one of which still had the desiccated husk of a hog hanging from it. Nothing but tatters of leathery skin and bones, old enough it didn't smell like rot. Everything was overwhelmed by that iron smell, anyways. Lucinda realized it was from her wound, a fact she implicitly knew but had been trying to suppress. The gash hurt. It kept hurting. Hurt enough to make Lucinda lightheaded. She was sweating through her sweater. The sweat mixing into the wound made it sting. The fabric friction, the sting of sweat, and her constant itching made the injury impossible to ignore. Still— she wouldn't let one injury cut the night short for everyone. She knew how she could handle her own pain while keeping the show going for everyone else.

“Stop for a minute. I need to cool this down.” Lucinda gestured with her left hand to the wrap around her right arm. Everyone quit their wandering and gathered around her. Some of them hung back, but two crouched down with her. The phrase ‘cool down’ had been around in the group since before she had met them, but she was a fast learner. It was a joke, almost, about the drug that brought them all together. She was used to working in the dark by this point. A pocket lighter provided all the illumination she needed as she melted the powder and drew it up into a needle. She passed the needle to one of the two joining her tonight and got to melt down a second dose for herself. The sight of her pulling off the bloody wrapping from her arm was one the people around her were thankful was only barely visible in the dim. The sound of blood-soaked fabric peeling was imagery enough.

They didn’t join the circle if they were already off something else. Off enough to matter, at least. It was a gentleman’s agreement, one that left enough people lucid enough to handle things if anything went down. The few who hung back, too drunk to trust themselves with a needle, watched Lucinda get to her feet. She let her right arm hang to the side, still sticky with blood as she walked. The pain was dulled almost to nothing, the rate of bleeding slowed. She felt good, warm for a moment, then cold. Everything seemed far away, slowed. It must have been obvious she was out of it. Obvious enough to elicit something close to concern.

“She needs some air.”

“Yeah, let’s walk.”

Her and a few others walked back to their exit. One helped Lucinda climb out and across the roof, the other caught her barely-controlled slide down the pipe. As the detachment circled around the stockyards, they ran into the rest of the group. They'd found another way out, apparently. They, as a group, walked back towards civilization. If their small town could be called that. They reached the playground on the edge of town. All metal-piped play equipment laying atop small pebbles that crunched when you stepped on them. They spread out and relaxed, sitting on equipment or laying on the gravel. Under the streetlight, it was clear how pale Lucinda was. They sat her down in the rocks, from there she let herself down to lay on her side. She was woozy, she was cold. She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t will herself to comment on how dark everything was.

Lucinda watched through bleary vision as her friends paced. Their body language screamed anxious, afraid, lost. Pacing and raised shoulders. Someone, she couldn’t distinguish their voices, spoke to her gently. “You’re cool. You’re going to be okay. Just breathe. Focus on breathing.”

She didn’t believe him. It wasn’t that easy. Her chest felt far away. Her body wasn’t hers to control. It felt as though she was a whisp of air watching herself from above. She watched as her friends tensed even further, freezing in place, as someone approached. A flashlight swept across the playground, something that most of them recognized as the telltale sign of a cop. There weren’t many in the town, but none would run after you if they caught you. Most of Lucinda’s friends ran. The ones who didn’t run stood by her. As he approached, they saw that the man approaching them wasn’t any of the cops they knew. It was an old man, maybe in his eighties. He held himself like he was younger.

Her blurred vision made it hard to see any nuances, something compounded by the dyed black hair hanging in front of her face. Her head pulsed, the corners of her vision growing dark for a moment. During that moment, the man appeared much older. As the stranger approached, her remaining friends stood between the man and Lucinda. They were preparing for a fight, if one came.

A fight did come, but it was short lived. The man touched one boy on the cheek, he spasmed and collapsed. Another retaliated with a startled punch, something the man caught. She didn't see the retaliation, just heard a wretch and a body hitting the floor. The sounds of her friends’ fearful voices dropped from three to one, leaving just a whisper in her ear.

“I’ll get help” followed by the sound of running. She was alone with him. The only sound was the crunching of gravel as he drew closer. The man stepped close enough to be shaded in the streetlight, his jacket looked sickly yellow even in the orange hues. He walked up to Lucinda, still curled up on the gravel. He held out his hand. Lucinda, cold, woozy, anxious, and alone, held out her shaking left hand to take his.

All the ailments rushed to the back of her mind. They were far away now, though they were still hers. Her skin was still cold, she was still slow, but she could move and she could think. He told her to stand, she did. It felt involuntary, almost reflexive. She looked down at her hands, at her bloodied arm. Her body wan't her own anymore, but she was alive.

May 11th, 1980. The day Arthur Vaughan took a second servant.

Spawn 3

Hell 2

Thrall Again