William Rose - The Seven Habits

Somehow, Gauge managed to climb onto Corduroy’s chest and the younger man slammed his forehead into the bridge of Corduroy’s nose with a series of sharp whacks. Blood sprayed in the air like a crimson mist, but it was impossible to tell if it were coming from Gauge’s split and swollen lip or the torrent that gushed from Corduroy’s nostrils.

Corduroy struggled to land a punch, to hit the squirming son of a bitch in the throat or solar plexus, but his swings were wild, as though he were seeing double and aiming at the wrong figure.

“Fuck you, old man,” Gauge hissed. “I’ll make that little bitch of yours choke on chunks of your fucking flesh, you damn turncoat.”

Gauge’s hand snaked behind him, the fingers grasping across the floor until they came into contact with the object they sought. In a blur of motion, the hammer descended in a deadly arc that ended with a thud on Corduroy’s forehead. The older man’s body jerked in a single convulsion, but the hammer bashed down again. And again.

“ I was a food warrior, mother-fucker! You can’t take down a food warrior, you stupid son of a bitch!”

Gauge had been so focused on the struggle that he hadn’t heard the cell door swing open. The patter of footsteps had been lost beneath the primal sounds of their battle and the heavy breathing from behind him would easily be mistaken as an echo of his own.

His hand raised high for one final blow, the hammer held aloft like a blood-caked trophy. Then his hand was tumbling toward the ground and he knelt there for a moment, staring at the spurting stump, his brow knitted in confusion and shock.

He reached out to touch the nub of flesh that had once been a wrist, to prove to himself that it really was gone.

There was a flash of light and he was left staring at not one, but two severed appendages. Blood oozed from the wounds, seeming to bubble up from around the hints of bone through all of that wet, glistening flesh.

He looked up as the first twitches of pain began to pull the corners of his eyes and mouth into a grimace. Ocean towered above him with the sickle held firmly in both hands. Her shirt and face were spattered with blood, her eyes nothing more than narrow slits.

“I loved you, damn it.” No tears. No quivering emotion in her voice, just a flat statement of fact. “Do you understand… I loved you.”

She snorted through her nose and shook her head as if in disgust. “I loved my Mama, too, but that’s okay, now. You taught me. You showed me what it takes to survive. That bitch deserved to die. Understand? I was her damn daughter. Her daughter. ”

Gauge wobbled back and forth as he pressed the remnants of his hands beneath his armpits. His face was as pale of the wax in the candles they’d always burned, candles Ocean now realized had been made from rendered human fat. His eyelids fluttered as he began to slip in and out of consciousness, so Ocean crouched down and put her lips close to his ear.

“She deserved to die, and so do you. But not yet. Not like this.”

She puckered her lips as if she were about to kiss him on the cheek. Instead, she drew up a glob of phlegm from the back of her throat with a quick inhale. She spat, smiling as the goo slid through the shadow of a beard on the face she’d once thought possessed angelic perfection.

Gauge toppled over like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He lay on the ground, breathing shallowly, blood continuing to drain from his missing hands.

“O… Ocean.”

Corduroy. His voice was a soft whisper as he struggled to open his eyes.

“Shoulda k-killed him long time ago.”

Part of her wanted to ask why. Why had he come to her aid, why had he given his life in an attempt to free her? It was obvious the man didn’t have much time left. There was too much blood, his skull too shattered. She simply let him talk, listening in silence.

“D-didn’t… know. Where were you. Where you were. Didn’t kn-know. Tried to warn…”

Corduroy’s eye looked hazy somehow, as if an invisible fog were churning within the bloodshot orb. The pupil dilated rapidly, adjusting to a change in light that only he could see. He blinked several times.

Then something changed. A long wheeze strained his vocal chords, and Corduroy’s back arched as some sort of current seemed to jolt through his body. At first, Ocean thought he was having another one of his fits, his final fit, perhaps. But as the air whooshed out of his lungs, his muscles relaxed and he struggled to raise his head and hands so he could look at them. They shook so badly, however, that he simply didn’t seem to have the strength to hold them up. His arms slumped to his sides and he swallowed once as he laid his head back into the puddle of his own blood.

“What the fuck, man? I’m fuckin’ dying ? Aw, shit… shit, man, it fuckin’ hurts.”

Ocean gasped when she heard the voice coming out of the burned man’s mouth. It still had the same raspy gurgle, but the cadence and word choice… the tone… it was the same as the voice she used to hear in the back of her own mind. The voice that she hadn’t heard since the night Gauge had hit her.

Ocean’s sharp intake of air caused Corduroy’s eye to look directly at her. The haze which had seemed to obscure it earlier was gone now and, somehow, it almost looked younger .

“Ocean! Ocean, honey…”

He raised his arm again and extended his trembling hand toward her.

“I found you… finally found you. I remember! Gauge. Levi. I knew… knew they’d lead me to you. And I was gonna take you away. Where you’d be safe. So safe. Fuck, man. The babies… the poor, poor babies.”

A tear slid from the corner of Corduroy’s eye and he bit his bottom lip. His voice quivered with emotion and his gaze dropped, almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

“Never ate them. Never . Fuck, Ocean. Life’s… life’s always tryin’ to make me buy those fuckin’ brownies, man. Mother-fuckin’ brownies. But you. You’re all that matters. All that ever mattered.”

Corduroy’s words degraded into a series of coughs that sprayed a mist of blood, but within moments he’d regained his compsure.

“Eye’s callin’ me back, baby girl. I don’t regret… I don’t regret a…”

The clouds seem to roll back into his good eye, obscuring the clarity that had graced it momentarily, and then he laid perfectly still. She watched him for a moment, realizing that the questions that haunted her would go unanswered forever.

She would give him the death rite, of course, even if he had been insane. For whatever reason he’d had in his deformed head, he’d tried to help her. Had helped her, in fact. For that, at least, he deserved a true and lasting death.

There would be time for that. For now, there were more immediate concerns to attend to. Pebble, for one. Had Corduroy killed him as well as Levi? If not, would he have fled? Would he attack her? She hoped he wouldn’t… she really didn’t want to kill the little boy, but, at the same time, she knew she could if she were forced to.

Gauge mumbled thickly like a man in the throes of a bad dream. He, of course, was the most pressing matter.

Ocean walked across the hall to where Vessel’s body was still splayed out and grabbed her by the ankles. The woman was heavy and Ocean could only pull her in short bursts; but eventually she was able to maneuver the corpse into the cell which the woman had known so intimately. She placed the body on the bed of paper and took a moment to catch her breath.

When Gauge came to, it was to the sound of Ocean’s voice. She spoke softly from the other side of the door, her voice the same gentle lull with which she’d used to sing Baby to sleep.