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Unfinished piece #1

Just a little something I started about 6 months ago, then picked up again a couple weeks back, which would explain the slightly conflicting tone about halfway through. Anyhoo, I’m starting this thing off with some of my WIP bits n bobs, as I’m working on something bigger right now that I’d rather save for later. Anyhoo, hope ya’ll enjoy.

From a distance, you can never see death approaching, at least, not in the form you'd expect. That's how it is for me right now anway. Quite literally. I know death's here, but he escapes my sight. He could be anywhere in the crowd of revellers around me. He could be the overweight man in the stained grey vest, with the wide brimmed hat, he could be the mid thirties woman with the grey jumper, dancing out of time with the pounding music. Ah. I see him. He's dancing like the others, and he's dressed like the others, he laughs and sings out of tune like the others, but his eyes give him away. I remember that from my two previous encounters with him, his eyes. No matter the form he takes, the personality of his character, the manner of his visage, his eyes remain the same. I don't mean physically, no. He can change the way they look, the colour, the width, all that. He's death incarnate, his budget covers that. It's the way they feel. It's difficult to put into words, to paint a mental picture of how his gaze feels, but I'll try. You know when you're lying awake, but drifting off to sleep slowly, and there's a sudden jerk and you're awake, heart pumping? It's like that. That feeling of leaning too far back in a chair, and suddenly you're falling into an infinite abyss? It's something along those lines. Ever get that itching sensation after seeing something unnerving, that crawling on the skin? Feels like that too. Every discomfort, every uncomfortable sensation, every moment spent drenched in post-nightmare sweat, hit you like a wave of adrenaline as his eyes meet your own. Then it's gone, in an instant. He's a professional, he doesn't stare. It's a game he plays, he likes to think he's sneaking up on his victims, and usually, he does, they don't see him until it's too late to run, and even then, they don't recognise him for what he is, and they're gone in the barest blink of an eye. But he forgets that I, too, have been playing this game for a very long time. I see the signs, the warnings, the messages that warn of his coming. I play the game, just like him, and so far, I've been a little better, always staying a couple of steps ahead. Today is the closest he's ever gotten to me. Keeping him in my sight, I begin working my way through the jovial crowd, shouldering drunks aside, pushing back the heaving tide of joyous intoxiation. I see him slowly weave his way towards me as I do so, dancing, not even looking at me. He's good. He's getting closer, somehow people miss bumping into him by barest of inches, and he moves through the crowd effortlessly, as I struggle and shove my own path through. He's gaining on me, too fast. As I push forward, I search for an escape, I need something faster. There. A sturdy looking flag pole, the colours of the parade flying atop it. I scramble my way between a dancing couple, stretching out my right hand to the pole, gripping it, then pulling the rest of my body free of the crowd, gripping with my other hand, I hop, lock my legs around it, and work my way upwards. I twist my neck to peer below my at the parade, I can see him, my hunter, glance at me, for the briefest of instants, bewliderment and amusement on his gaunt features. Let him smirk. I'll find a way out of this. Sure enough, as I near the top, I notice that one of the building nearby has a balcony at around the same height that I'm currently at on the flag pole. Looks a bit far, but screw it, how long can I hang on to this thing anyway. I arrange myself to leap, reaching up and gripping the top of the pole, brace my feet against the pole to jump, let go with my hands, lean towards the balcony, and push. For a brief moment, I'm flying. Then I hit the side of the balcony, too low, but my fingers grip with desperation to the lower lip of it, and I feel the jagged edge cut into my finger tips. I heave, feeling the burn on my upper body and shoulders, and I roll over the top, collapsing in a heap on the other side. I spare no time, dragging myself to my feet, stopping only briefly to consider the closed sliding glass doors leading into the house, before slamming into them with my shoulder, bursting into the house in a shower of glass, welcomed by a blaring alarm. I rush for the stairs, straight ahead of me on the landing, feet pounding on the bare wooden floorboards. As I reach the top of the stairs, I'm greeted with an all too familiar face. Death. He grins up at me, leaning against the banister, chunky cigar gripped between the chapped lips, baseball cap low, the shadow obscuring his eyes, the eyes that I avoid. "Well, fuckin' hell, fancy seein' you here" His voice is cool, like running water, it flows and ebbs, soothing yet slightly melancholic. "Hey" I murmur, slightly breathless. He takes the cigar from between his teeth, holds it front of his face in his long pale fingers, inspects it, drops it on the lower steps, exhales a cloud of smoke. "So, how you been anyway? Kids good? Wife still rocking the hippy look?" His smile is almost remorseful as he looks up the staircase at me. "What do you want?" I ask. Futile. I know exactly what he wants. "To catch up, for old times sake" "No thanks, my memories of the old times aren't the greatest" He takes the cap off, scratches his head, ruffling the messy cut brown hair. "Look man, we all did fucked up shit back there, don't try to pretend you didn't, you were one of us, you loved it" "No." My voice comes out hoarse, as if I've been crying. "I may have done the same things as you, but I was never one of you. I never enjoyed it. Never." The laugh that forces it's way out of his throat is cool and sweet, the laugh of an innocent young man, though he is nothing of the sort. "You can lie to yourself all you want, you can tell that shit to your wife, to your kids, you can tell your fucking dog for all I care, but don't you ever, ever, dare look me in the eye and tell me you didn't enjoy it. Because I was with you, every second of the way, I know you." I shake my head with fervour. "You always thought you did, no matter what I told you, but you never listened. You don't know me. I only did those things to stay alive, you and the others carried on doing them for fun." "It was more than fun. It was orgasmic. I'm fucking done trying to convince you of yourself." Even as the last sylablle left his mouth, his right hand flicked up at me, the cap whirling towards my eyes. No damage could be caused there, but as I caught the cap with my left hand, a brief second or so of distraction,  he was at the top of the stairs before I could drop it. He opens with a rough right hook, going straight for the side of my jaw. I bring up my left hand, cap still clenched in the fist, and catch the crook of his elbow with my forearm, countering the inevitable uppercut from his other hand with my leg with a crack of knuckle against knee cap. With my right I thrust an open palm at his exposed right shoulder, and he has no choice but to lean back to avoid having his shoulder dislocated, and I follow up with a sudden headbutt,  catching his cheek. His back foot waves in empty air at the top of the stairs, and I push with my whole body, knocking him down them. He hits the weak wall at the bottom and smashes into the plasterboard with a snarl. I give him no respite, and take the stairs in two bounds, leaping on the second to fly feet first at him, landing both feet straight into the center of his chest, slamming us both through the wall. In a torrent of dust, crumbling mortar and plaster board we both roll into the next house. He's up first, dust covering his bright hawaiin style floral shirt, and he lunges at me with a knife hand at my neck. I twist and it grazes below my earlobe, drawing a thin line of blood, and his hand over reaches. I catch it with my right hand, bending it over my chest backwards, before pushing my left forearm into it with. With a crack it gives way and bends at an unnatural angle. He grunts and rams a flat palm into the back of my head with his other hand, rattling my teeth and blurring my vision, before pulling his other hand out of my briefly lax grip. I roll and stand, head swimming, then turn to face him, both arms up, fists clenched in front of my face. He takes hold of his broken wrist and pushes it back into place with a crunch of cartalige, skin twisting and pulling in unsettling directions as the jagged bone pulls at it from beneath the surface. Somehow this seems to work, and he rotates his now-functional wrist with a giggle. "Still got a few tricks up my sleeve, eh?" I don't waste time replying, but launch a salvo of hooks and uppercuts at him, brawler style, trying to get a feel for his seemingly healed wrist as I do. He blocks one of my punches with the left hand, and I see a slight flinch on his face. Not fully healed then. I concentrate some of my efforts on the wrist, aiming for the forearm and hand. He yelps slightly as I catch him a solid punch to the back of his wrist, and in panic he grabs at it with his other hand, earning himself a hook to the lower jaw, and as he head rocks to one side, I catch it with my right fist, straight into the cheek. His head swings the other way, and as he brings it back round, I give him a solid one dead center on his nose, cracking the bridge and forcing the front upwards in a welter of blood. He makes no sounds his head snaps backwards, a spray of blood spurting from his damaged nose, only brings his right hand up into a defensive position, his left held lower, behind it. There's a cold rage in those killer's eyes now, I've hurt him and he's feeling it. I go for a low kick, and as I do I see a glint of something swinging from above me, a knife, somehow having made it's way into his hand, jabbing towards my face. I throw up both hands in an X over my face, and the blade stabs straight through my right palm, scraping on my cheek. I twist my hand away despite the pain, in an attempt to pull the weapon from his grip. No such luck, it slides from my hand and he readies for another stab. This time though, I'm ready, I catch it, blade first, with my left hand, bring his right arm down and to the left, before twisting my whole body in towards him, bringing my right elbow into the side of his face. My elbow connects with a solid thump, slamming his head to the side, and I continue pushing, stretching my arm past his face, before twisting my entire self around behind him, pushing his neck backwards, wrapping my arm around his neck, with my hand behind his skull. Then he's gone. Without a sound, without a trace of him being there. I flail, grasping at empty air, stagger a little, breathing hard. I whip my head around, eyes scanning the room, this is something new, something I've not seen before. He's changing the rules again, it seems. I wait for what seems to be an eternity, holding the defensive stance in the middle of the dust covered room. Eventually I convince myself he's gone. I must've hurt him in some way, though I don't believe it. I've seen him impaled straight through the chest with a fucking telephone pole, and it only took him several minutes to drag it out of him and heal the gaping hole in him. Baffling. Ah, I guess I should explain myself a little here, whilst there's a brief respite. I'm not used to having any sort of audience to my pondering, and I'm fairly certain very little of this makes sense. It's all to do with rules, see. Legality. That good shit. The fine print we never bother to read. Turns out the fine print has the potential to save your life, or at least change it in ways otherwise unconsidered by the average Joe. You might've heard the old tale, or one of several variants, about the old man cheating death, with a game of chess, or draughts, or the exceptionally modern re-telling, with ol' Grimmy being thrashed at Top Trumps. It's something a lot of people seem to forget about, but it's actually totally legal for anyone to challenge Death, or whoever's on shift that day, to a game of their choosing, winner takes all, high stakes and all that. In my case, I went for the classic; chess. As luck would have it, my name was picked out of the great hat of those-who-are-to-die-soon by a trainee. Third shift without supervision, apparently, I almost felt bad for doing it. Almost. The day that was to be my last was fairly uneventful, average 9-5 at work, quick ready meal, a comfortable evening Netflix and chillin' with my stalwart pals; me, myself, and I. At 7:36, a knock on the door. More of a nervous tap really, reminicisent of a non-comittal Jehovah's Witness, not really wanting you to answer the door, but having to keep up appearances. Anyway, as it happens, I'd only just finished a particularly gigglesome episode of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, so I decided to show my goodwill by answering the door. I swing the door open with a tad more gusto than necessary, tear my face in two with a grin, and greet the intruder. "Hello! How ya'll doing this absolutely fine evening?" I drawl. Standing before me, in all the grease, sweat, and disgustingly pre-pubescant bum fluff that could physically be mustered and forced into one physical space, is Death Himself, in the form of a mid-teenage pizza delivery boy. Blooshot eyes peer at me from under a bright red, logo emblazoned cap. The eyes blink slowly. They regard me again. "Yes, um, hi, I just wanted to pop by, no, I just wanted to come round, to let you know. Ah. Hmmm." He pauses, drags his eyelids up and down at glacial pace again. Opens his mouth again. "Uh, if you'd kindly, invite me inside, we can discuss, the um, the matter with privacy, I hope you do understand." As I'm about to speak, I see a lock of blonde hair slide it's way from under the red cap. Slim fingers tuck it back under, and come away slick with grease. "Hmmmm, I'm not sure I understand, I didn't order any pizza?" I phrase it like a question, I recall it being uttered a questioning tone, though I could be wrong. "Uh, no. No, you didn't, did you." He stutters a tad more, pulls out a chunky, out-dated phone, glances briefly at the screen, mutters "Aw shit. Shit. Shit." quietly, before returning his nervous gaze to me. "According to section 3, paragraph, uh, paragraph 7, I can use, ah, physical force in order to coerce you into, hmm, into, ah, co-operation. Please understand, it's my job." I feel my eyebrows raise of their own accordance. "Is this some kind of shitty practical joke? Did the kids from downstairs put you to this?" The pizza kid's expression flickers, and in the instant before it returns to it's previous manner, I see something. Something cold, distant, monolithic, something truly terrifying in his gaze. Then it's gone, and he's bringing out a fucking baton from his back pocket, an extendable metal baton, with a leather wrist strap. He holds the weapon in front of him with considerable discomfort. Back then I was no fighter, but even I could take a weedy kid with a metal stick. The joke, if that's what it was, had quickly gotten old. "Are you being fucking serious, kid? Put that thing away and piss all the way off home, before I ram the damn thing so far up your ass you'll be able to scratch the roof of you mouth with it by nodding." An unwieldy threat, I admit, but spoken with real conviction. Doesn't deter the kid though, who lunges at me slightly awkwardly, his gangly limbs jutting at awkward angles. I twist aside from the thusting baton, turning so my back is to the kid, grabbing his baton wrist with my right hand. With my left, I swing an elbow back, clocking the boy on the side of his head, swaying him heavily. He wrenches the his arm from my grasp with a surprising strength and takes a step away as I turn to face him. "Please sir, this is serious, if I have to use lethal force to achieve today's quota, I won't hesitate." Quota? What is this kid on? I don't waste any time on words, simply stepping right up into the kid's face, taking his baton swing directly on my left forearm with a crunch of metal on bone, and give him a heartfelt uppercut. The connection is solid, his head snaps back, the impact shudders it's way up my arm. I don't give him time to recover. Shove him roughly with both hands, center of his chest. He falls backwards, through my still open doorway, landing heavily on his back in the hallway. I hesistate, unsure of how far to take it, gaze fixated on his skinny frame as it drags itself up again. As he rises, the kid's cap falls off, along with the entirety of his hair, revealing smooth, pale skin covering the expanse of his cranium. Our eyes meet, and a horrendous jolt runs through my entire body, feels like goosebumps and an adrenaline rush, over in an instant. Odd.