Art Pact 194 - Stalking


In the twilight gloom we stalked the poor sod, watching him stumble from wall to wall and trip over his own drunkenness so that it seemed almost unfair to me, like kicking a puppy or killing a fawn. But we had to eat, we had to smoke, there were girls to be had for the right price and so driven, there was only one way it could end - with the poor sod in the gutter either dead or dormy, all his drink washed away in violence and all the fineries he carried now in our pockets and bags to be sold as fast as possible.

I was caught myself - caught between feeling a little sorry for the poor sod, which made me want to hang back, and between my shame over the little scuffle with Bronson and his boys which made me want to be the first to step on the poor sod, to show that there was still fight in me, still a bit of fire no matter what the others said. I was damned one way and cursed the other, so I found myself in the middle of the crew, Sally and Drut going first, Bounce and Little Boy after me, so that no-one could accuse me of hanging back. I don't think I thought about it, but that was the way it worked out, and that was how it was that what happened happened.

Afterwards, Drut said that it was me the poor sod saw - but that isn't the fact at all. It was Bounce, right behind me, who was caught on the outside of one of those big dumpsters when the poor sod twirled round by mistake. I'd jumped in front of the dumpster and hustled into its shadow, Little Boy was behind it so hidden from the poor sod's sight. But Bounce must have been right there, and perhaps it was lucky for him that he was, because we never saw Little Boy again.

"Hey!" called the poor sod, and then - knowing that we were made one way or the other - Sally and Drut ran at him. There was a blinding flash and a sound like an oven opening, and then Sally was standing there, stopped so solid that Drut ran into her. That was when she came to bits - Drut ran into her so hard that she just puffed apart into a grey cloud, the ashes that the flash had turned her into pouring out everywhere - mainly onto the ground around him, but also over Drut and up into the air. It wasn't thick enough to block him out completely, so Bounce and me saw him standing there, up to his ankles in our old boss, all grey like a statue himself because he was covered in her. I guess I was so scared I started to laugh, because all I could think about was something she'd said to him the other day when he'd been flashing his dick around at Jelly's whorehouse, that she'd let him inside her over her dead body, and that was exactly how it came to pass. I guess you have to be careful what you say in this world, because someone's listening and whoever they are they have a grim sense of humour. It's another point for my argument that there's no god but there certainly is a devil, I reckon.

But I was telling you about that night. So, we're frozen there - just staring at Drut, who's stuck himself in the middle of what used to be Sally, and for a few seconds there's silence and then there's yelling - I think it was Drut, but I couldn't say for sure because my mouth was definitely open and so was Bounce's when I turned round to look at him. There was a yelp from behind us - and I guess that was when Little Boy got taken out by whatever was there, because I guess it sounded like the time we'd crept up on him - back when he was suing to get into the gang - and grabbed him from behind to test what his nerves were like. They were bad, of course, but he was so funny the way he begged and groveled that Sally knew she had a simple one on her side, that he'd do anything she asked unless someone else threatened him not to, and that was good enough for her. She had fighters - she had Drut, she had herself, and up until the Bronson thing she'd thought she had me (and so had I) - so what she really needed was a lickspit. That was what Little Boy was, and he did a good job of it, right up until the point that he vanished behind that dumpster and vanished off the face of the Earth forever.

Well, while the ash is settling around Drut's feet and one or all of us are still screaming I see the poor sod just walking calmly through the cloud of dust towards Drut, and I start to think - did we pick on a wrong one here? Like maybe he was just pretending to be drunk, and that poor sod staggering around didn't really exist, he was just bait. But then the next things came and I could see that it wasn't that way at all. If it was, he'd have been around, just like me (and Bounce, to a lesser extent), instead of up in the sky on the metal spikes that had Drut.

They came down like spears, or like the gate on an old castle, a whole row of them. One hit Drut in the shoulder, and I guess then you really could tell who was screaming. Another went straight through the poor sod from head to arse, one hit Bounce at an angle so that he went one way and his left leg went another, and lucky me - I was missed by a fly's nuts, so that when they pulled up into the sky again there was just me and Bounce and Bounce's leg, and although the leg would have been much lighter it was Bounce I scooped up off the floor and hobbled off with as fast as our three-legged race could carry us.

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