Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

“You look ridiculous,” Desecrator told him. “That’s some childish shit you’re doing.” Homewrecker turned around to look at him through the hole of his collar: “Yes, but at least I’m dry.” Even though his face couldn’t be seen, the boys could tell that he was smiling by intonation of his voice.

Corpse Eater eased a little and smiled too. Puppy Slayer did the same thing as Homewrecker and was wildly flailing his arms around, making spooky noises. Corpse Eater let out a short chuckle and did the same. All three of them looked like headless creatures with very long bodies. Homewrecker charged at Corpse Eater and body slammed him, laughing giddily, and Corpse Eater returned the favor.

“Ridiculous,” Desecrator repeated. “The General would whoop your asses if he saw you like that.”

“Enjoy being wet, then,” Homewrecker taunted him. “Wet like your noodle,” Puppy Slayer snuck in an uncharacteristic-for-him joke, and Homewrecker practically howled with joy, giving the younger boy a pat on the shoulder.

Corpse Eater smiled as well. The joke wasn’t particularly funny, but Corpse Eater was never picky about them—they were pretty rare, and the jokes of the adults… He simply didn’t like them.

“Whatever, man,” Desecrator said under his breath, but there was nobody around to hear him: all three of the boys were already heading in the direction of the warehouse. Standing alone under the heavy droplets of rain, Desecrator grunted, took off his T-shirt, and put it over his head. It immediately started soaking in water, getting heavier by the moment, and its wet cloth started dropping down onto his face, obscuring his vision. Grunting again, he hurried after the rest of the boys.

Homewrecker, Corpse Eater, and Puppy Slayer were up ahead of him. The three of them started slowly, but as their clothes were getting more and more soaked, as the wind was getting more turbulent and violent, and as the droplets were hitting them harder, the boys started picking up the pace.

“Man, this is some bullshit!” Corpse Eater screamed through the wall of water, and he heard Homewrecker’s laughter in response.

A few steps later he tripped and fell down, scratching his knee on a treacherous rock that lay hidden in the grass; the T-shirt pulled over his head made it hard for him to see where he was running, and the pouring rain didn’t help. He got up and looked ahead; the cover under which the adults were seated was just a few hundred feet away, and he was relieved to see that the lights were off. It seemed that the adults had already left for the night.

“You all right?” Homewrecker helped him up, his shirt still pulled over his head. His seriously concerned tone didn’t mix with his goofy appearance, making Corpse Eater giggle and forget about pain.

“Race you to the cover!” he exclaimed, pushing his friend away and charging past him. As he ran, the words muffled by the rain reached him from behind: “Not fair!”

Corpse Eater rushed ahead, finally feeling happy for the first time in a long time. The future might not hold a lot in store for him, and the past was filled with mistakes, wrongdoings, and pain, but he felt like living in the moment, fleeting as it was. At that moment, his childish nature overcame the burden that not every adult could bear. At that moment, while he was running, he could just be a kid, and neither the General nor Tsetse were around to take that away from him.

Jumping through a small waterfall of water rushing down from the roof, the boy jumped under its cover. He almost slid on something as he landed, and when he took a step he realized that his feet were sticking to the concrete floor.

There was no light to see what he was standing in, but as he kneeled down and touched the still-warm substance with his fingers, he instantly recognized what it was. The same substance his entire life was tainted with.

He couldn’t see how far the pool of blood stretched or where it was even coming from, but turning around he saw it flowing outside, where it was mixing with the running water.

The boy froze: Where did the blood come from? Was the blood on the floor the result of a card game that had gone bad? But then, why hadn’t he heard any shots? Did the adults get into a knife fight? Or was there something else, much more sinister, at work?

“Man, I’m going to bust your cheating ass!” With laughter, Homewrecker burst through the wall of falling water, followed by Puppy Slayer. “I’m serious, I’m going to—” He felt silent when Corpse Eater hushed at him, raising his finger to his lips.

Still keeping his finger pressed to his lips, Corpse Eater pointed downward with his other hand. The boy looked to the floor, cocked his head inquiringly, raised his foot, and, finally realizing what he was standing in, gasped.

“What happened?” Puppy Slayer whispered, looking around. “Are we being attacked?”

“I don’t know yet,” Corpse Eater whispered back. “I can’t see anything.”

“We gotta turn on the lights,” Puppy Slayer said, heading toward where the lamp was.

“No, don’t.” Corpse Eater tried to stop him. “We can’t reveal that we’re here when we don’t know—”

He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t need to; the younger boy, stumbling over something, didn’t reach the lamp. For a second he was silent, and then he let out an exclamation—filled with surprise, terror and disgust.

“Keep your voice down!” Corpse Eater hushed at him, and Homewrecker jumped to Puppy Slayer to help him up. A moment later, he let out an exclamation of disgust as well.

Puppy Slayer fell on his butt and started crawling away from the shadows. Something long snagged him, and he hastily threw it off, before getting on all fours and puking.

By that time, Corpse Eater had already realized that the boy must’ve found the corpse that all that blood was leaking from, but he couldn’t figure out why both Puppy Slayer and Homewrecker were acting up. While the former was prone to be icky and have panic attacks at the sight of violence, the latter was more used to such things, if only by virtue of being a year older. What was it about that body that caused such a reaction?

Corpse Eater leaned over the table that separated him from the body and squinted his eyes to take a look. His nostrils were hit with a very sharp smell of manure. From his experience, many people soiled their pants after dying, but the smell was rarely so defined and hard to miss.

Lighting cracked through the sky, illuminating their dark corner for a split second. Corpse Eater gasped.

The body in front of him was mangled beyond recognition—literally: the man on the ground had had his face ripped off, with a single eye hanging by the thread of its nerve. His left arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, and his abdomen was carved wide open, with torn intestines and half-processed food spilling out. His outstretched right arm was permanently frozen in the air, trying to reach the pyramid of AK-47s that the adults had so carelessly set one step too far from their gaming table.

The corpse itself, however, and the state it was in, was not the worst thing; that short burst of light that the lighting provided Corpse Eater had allowed him to catch a glimpse of four more bodies lying on the floor. He didn’t need to come closer to them to reach the conclusion that they were most likely just as mangled as the one in front of him was.

Judging by their poses, they had given up trying to reach their weapons and had instead betted their chances of survival on escaping. For Corpse Eater, who had seen these men fearlessly charge down the streets under heavy fire, that sight was bizarre—almost off-putting, in fact. What kind of opponent would make these men who didn’t value any life—including their own—flee?