Prompt Post #3

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FILL: Head All Unkilter 3/4

[(Anonymous)]

iii

His head is raw and swollen, pounding bum-bum-bum and rushing whooshwhooshwhoosh.

And his wrists are burning, melting away, why does it hurt so much? Make it stopmakeitstopmakeitstop pleasenomore.

Matt stumbles, confused, knees buckling, stomach rolling. The world shatters and gathers and shatters again. The chains are still on his wrists but he’s on a rooftop—or is he still in the basement?

”Gonna chain you down here, hero—”

They’re dragging him by his wrists which burn, why are they burning?

“Make you wait for the building to crush you—”

Dizzy, tilting, everything too loud and too soft at the same time but still his brain won’t shut up, won’t stop making lists. Rank body odor beneath spicy deodorant. Leftover burger for dinner. Cigarette smoke lining the seams of an old and worn leather jacket. Vodka still on the breath from the night before.

His wrists—what’s on his wrists, what did they do? He curls protectively over them, exposing his back to a vicious kick he hardly feels because his wrists, the smell of cooking flesh is coming from his wrists what’s happening what did they do?

“Real shame you won’t be able to hear their screams from down here.”

Receding footsteps (size 9, size 11, size 12, sneakers, leather boots…). He struggles, pulls, shouts (voices of maybe two hundred people upstairs, feet running toward the exits, high heels and boots and tiny, tinkling heartbeats ohGod there are kids up there, the whir-tick of a timer, ohGodFoggy).

Incomprehensible, saturating noise. Dust clogging his nose. Static clogging his ears. The whole of the world rocking, tilting, falling down on his legs then his back and he’d never, ever thought the world would be this heavy.

And, above the sound of the splintering earth, Matt counts each and every scream.

He remembers. Cool fingers, soft hair, a voice as fearsome as time. A fairy, a memory from long ago. The Leanansidhe. She wanted to break the iron around his wrists but he didn’t let her so he wouldn’t forget the two hundred screams.

The wind—how did he get up here? He doesn’t remember, maybe he lost time, maybe he’s dreaming it hurtsithurts make it stop. The wind bites his cheeks, dries the blood on his skin, tightens his world into focus for a sharp moment. The wind means a roof and not the the basement beneath the world. The fairy stands close, observing, always finding him like—like Stick. Like he’s a lost, discarded thing to be picked up and abandoned overandoverandover—

Her fingers touch his lips. He sways toward her, wanting the touch from his memories at the same time he shuns it. Her touch means either pain or comfort because she doesn’t know the difference between the two.

“Why are you standing still, duckling?” Her voice, breaking beautiful, warbles between the bum-bum-bum and whooshwhooshwhoosh of his head. He presses the heel of his hand between his eyes, opens his mouth to breathe out a silent scream why is he here standing in the sky it hurtswhodidthiswhy is he here he’s always been here his headhis wrists it hurtsithurts.

The wind carries the scent of Foggy’s aftershave. The caramel candy he has in his left coat pocket. Blood mixing in with the exhaust fumes.

Foggy.

The first step is black and shaky. He says something, voice clawing up his throat unbidden and echoing into the sky. The wind picks up, blows at his back, curls around his ankles. The Leanansidhe’s slow stone heart surges and her laughter escapes into the night.

“A namer!” She cries, kissing his cheek and then spinning around him in a wild, wild dance.

Matt repeats what he said, a name, a fragile and terrible name. The wind shoves him, pulls him, and he’s running again, always running, the iron on his wrists hurting so much it doesn’t hurt at all, swollen hands and agony flicker-climbing from his head down his spine. The chain between his wrists clinks and clatters and he finds himself humming with the music it makes as he sprints.

The wind carries him now and Foggy’s alive and not dead from the explosion, have to save Foggy nomatterwhat and still his brain won’t shut up, won’t stop cataloging the endless night and endless world around him, everything bright and sharp and always, always too much.

Thunder, the taste of lightning. Sharp bouquet of trash and refuse from below. Heartbeats. Laughter. Rattling keys. Chorus of dogs barking. Clanging dishes. Chinese restaurant with a mildewy kitchen. Smooth pavement below his feet. Heart-dropping nothing and then another roof, older and rocky. A swollen knee. Singing bruises. Small cuts on his calves and thighs, a gashes still weeping on his back and left hip. Two fractured ribs. Cracked vertebrae. Labored breathing. Liquifying wrists.

His head. His head hurts makeitstop.

The Leanansidhe. Bare feet slapping over rough concrete and broken glass. Not chasing but running with him. Long hair snapping like a flag in a storm. Her dress murmuring silkily against her thighs. She laughs and it’s the sigh of the moon cresting full and lovely. Cold electricity, magnetic and repellant, magic. Dizzying spatial awareness because how can a presence be bigger than the matter that holds it?

Her Hellhounds baying, the pants of three or sometimes ten. A snarling, primordial pack led by Matt and the wind.

The rooftops are becoming sparse just as the van with Foggy’s aftershave, caramel candy, blood, Foggy and the car leading it make a turn and slow down. The police are still ten to fifteen minutes away when Matt and The Leanansidhe perch on a building five stories above the vehicles.

His balance falters what am I doing here, why does my head hurt all swollen and raw and made out of pain he thinks at the same time as four abandoned buildings, ten hostages in the van, Foggy, seven targets, FOGGY. He pitches forward, awareness blinking out like changing scenes in a dream.

He’s caught by the wind and a fairy’s hand.

Matt shakes his head, groans and sways, shudders out a painful, rasping breath why does he always, always hurt. He presses a thumb into the burnt remains of his wrist and the pain brings brief, precious clarity. Next to him The Leanansidhe’s slow stone heart creeps and he wonders if its anything like the sound of a continent-sized iceberg wandering the ocean.

She got what she came here for—his debt. Matt isn’t sure why she’s still here. He holds out his hand. “My mask.”

She places it reluctantly into his hand. “You’re the only human I know who can demand in a non-demanding voice. The mask is ridiculous,” she sniffs disdainfully.

“I didn’t choose the horns, that was the creator’s interpretation.” Breaths quickening in the van. Whimpers. Salty tears. Copper. Gun oil. Four—five guns.

Foggy. Foggy’s voice, scared but insistent. “We’re stopping,” he tells the ones in the van. “And they will kill us, we’ve seen their faces. So we stick to the plan. As soon as we hear them we hit them with the doors. You run and you scatter, they can’t chase after all of us. And whoever makes it… you make sure these bastards get what’s coming to them.”

Shaky murmurs of agreement.

Foggy.

“The horns are foolish.” The Leanansidhe is saying. “And the colors aren’t your most flattering.” Her fingers brush against his back, she tucks her nails into the gash on his hip, the pain takes his breath away. He leans into it. “But I was talking of the mask itself. Of hiding.”

“What I do isn’t exactly lawful,” he reminds her. “I have an identity, a life.” Karen’s perfume, Karen’s terrible coffee, the thrill of a closing argument, the smell of paper, the sound of Foggy tossing the softball up and down and up and down when he’s thinking, pleaseGodnotFoggy just give Matt this one thing.

He fingers the chain links between his wrists like rosary beads. Then he puts on the mask.

The fairy snorts indelicately. “You’re a fool to think they’re separate, your days and your nights. You become what you pretend to be. Which one are you pretending to be? The devil, the lawyer, or the human?”

Her voice is full of omen, but Daredevil’s already leaping off the ledge and landing quietly in the shadows.

Four men (loose shirts, old jeans, sweat, tang of cocaine) have exited the car and are heading toward the van. Two of them have guns in their hands. How am I going to stop them? There’s no plan, no cover, Foggy is locked in a van there is no key, broken ribs and blood loss and something’s wrong with my head, keep losing time.

And then he hears it from the car, not quite a voice at the same time it could be nothing else. It’s shouting from the half-empty gas tank, quivering madly, full of potential energy and insistent.

Daredevil speaks the name he hears, just as terrible and elusive as the wind’s.

The fire stills, like it’s raising it’s head in attention when Daredevil utters it’s name. And then the car explodes into an inferno with a great, bestial roar.

The four men are blown clear, stunned, but Daredevil is already running for the van. The driver’s door is unlocked, the three men in the seat still unmoving, captivated by the heat and flame before them. Daredevil takes advantage, reaching in and grasping (old denim, grease stains, blood but not his—blood from one of the hostages Foggy) and hauling the driver onto the road. He ducks an elbow from the next man, fumbles slightly when feeling for the keys before pulling them from the ignition and—fifteen seconds before the men in the van get out with their guns, fourteen seconds, twelve seconds until the driver reaches in the van for his weapon, thirty seconds before the four from the car find their feet again.

The key calls out to him and he finds the door handle and then the lock with his fingers—ten seconds, nine. He hears the men in the van grasp for their door handle, hears the driver groan and fumble in the floorboard for his gun.

He throws open the door, ducks two kicks from Foggy Foggy, Foggy and another hostage. “Go!” Daredevil shouts at the same time Foggy says, “Jesus, it’s Daredevil. New plan. Stay together and all of us just might make it. Jamal, Nick—you guys help carry Mrs. Milford.”

They’re spilling out of the van into the night and the three men are coming together around the right side. Daredevil hears them releasing the safety of their guns.

Foggy lays a hand on his shoulder, takes a breath but no words come out. Daredevil nods, pushes Foggy toward the left of the van and Foggy goes, pushing the hostages in the same direction.

Thank you God, thankyouGod, Foggy.

Daredevil charges into the three oncoming men, sliding under a bullet and into the legs of the middle one (tall, gangly, racing heart). They end up in a heap, the other two men reaching for Daredevil’s shoulders to drag him off. He rolls, kicks out, runs toward the burning car and the other four targets, the three giving chase.

He hears the footsteps of the hostages (high heels, bare feet, tennis shoes, boots, blood, dust and ash, aftershave and caramel) recede into an alley and emerge onto the next street over.

A gun cracks—he didn’t hear the warning hiss of the trigger in time—and the bullet only grazes his side but it’s enough to knock him off his feet.

A hard, heavy step. A heavier boot to his chest. He retches, cracked ribs screaming. Another blow to his kidneys. One glances off his thigh. He’s reaching for the first boot when he hears the wind gust in warning near his head but it’s already—

Black. Dizzying, infinite black. No sight no sound no taste no feel, just the black and plummeting into it and—

His head it hurts makeitstop why does it hurt where am I what is—why does it hurt I can’t see—Dad, Daddy, make the world shut up—

Ringing, sirens and footsteps and breathing and heartbeats and laughter and—

“Stand up, Devil.”

Ringing, ringing, make it stop, makeitstop—a slamming door two streets over and the cars and horns and sirens a million heartbeats that never shut up—

He coughs, chokes a mouthful of blood, spits it out and screams silently into the pavement because if he throws up there will be awful taste and awful smell and the sound of his own stomach boiling and he’d never stop throwing up until he’s inside out—

And the goddamned fucking ringing—

He gets a knee under him, or tries to, where’s up again?

Steel-toed boots crash into his side, pavement against his back as he gags through the splintering agony. Rattle of a chain and they’re pulling him by his wrists, laughing at his groans, dodging when he sluggishly kicks out.

Ringing. He tries to, but he can’t hear the wind over the ringingpounding whooshwhooshwhoosh. He can’t hear the fire, only feels the scorching heat on his face.

But, by God, of course Daredevil can still hear the two hundred screams.

He rolls and struggles to his feet. The seven men let him, jeering and laughing as he sways, buckles, and spits out a mouthful of blood. But the screams in his head are (always, always, all the fucking time) louder than their laughter so he grins at them. He wonders if his smile looks as razor-sharp and bloody as it feels.

He raises an arm, extends his index finger and thumb until it’s in the shape of a gun. He hums to the ringing, the ringing never stops in his head. And he sings, words blooming out of the dark, older than his first memories.

Maple. Maypole.
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.

He spins in a circle as they close in. The fire sputters and roars. The men have stopped laughing. Their steps are slow, hesitating. Their breathing uneven, hearts shuddering.

Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.

He hears the way their bones creak as they grip their guns tighter. Daredevil only rattles the chain still around his wrists.

Barrel. Barley—

He springs without coiling, reacting to the pull of a trigger before he registers hearing it, spins mid-air as the bullet hurtles past. He lands where he started, somehow managing to stay on his feet. Behind him a man cries out before abruptly going silent. One down, devastating but not fatal (not for four more minutes, anyway, the time it’ll take for the sirens to get here). Six to go.

The others freeze, unsure. Three drop their guns and go for knives instead. Daredevil only points at them again, turning slowly. Up above, he can hear The Leanansidhe squeal and clap girlishly.

Stone and stave.
Wind and water—

One man (flannel, onions, cocaine, Foggy’s aftershave) lunges at Daredevil’s back, the wind shrieking around the blade in his hand. Daredevil flips backwards over knife and man, wraps the iron chain around his neck, presses bloody lips and a razor smile against the man’s ear,

“Misbehave.”