First Blood.
The rain hadn't stopped yet; for three days it poured, as if all of Heaven was crying in uniform sorrow. Night had spread itself like an uneasy blanket over the cemetery, where trees full of life towered over cold, hard granite. Usually, the tree would be wrapped in a green inferno, had the sunlight ignited the leaves with rampant color; now, it was just another gray shape against the larger shade of five past eleven p.m.
Not one. Not two. Three. Three whole years had passed in a bloody, incompetent, lazy streak. The police tried honestly, earnestly, but the killer had committed suicide shortly afterwards, they believed. There certainly was enough gore for a grand total of eight victims, may the Red Death hold sway over us all.
But now, vengeance bowed and exited stage right, left the discorporate, ethereal Hell realm, and roared, pounding, shrieking and tearing, into life.
Birth is not a lovely thing to see. A second birth, a first blood, is a horrible blasphemy. Paris' second birth was unspeakable, but thankfully, no one saw it that evening.
His grave danced with St. Elmo's Fire, blue will-o-wisps that haunted his final burial place and his first stop on the roadmap that would lead him straight back to Hell…only wearing a shit-eatin' grin, this time.
His fingers probed the surface like pale earthworms, but raged like blind, skinless serpents as he flailed, the sudden horror of realizing he wasn't dead, that he had been unconscious, something, just buried alive, invading him and giving him strength beyond his wildest fantasies.
Earth flew in fragmented clods—oh so much like skulls torn apart by a shotgun oh god so alike it even feels like blood and brains and bone—and he pushed one arm through. Cold rain barraged him, but he welcomed the sensation. Subconsciously, he wanted to know he could still feel and felt relief; his conscious mind wailed and wept as it leaned dangerously close to the chasm of insanity. He forced logic and reason and the light of comprehensive thought into his brain. He did multiplication tables, something ordered, anything…but it slipped uselessly away.
He screamed. His lungs gasped for air like baby vampires gasp weakly for blood. He raged. His vocal chords rang like the heavy-wound strings of a bass, thumping and grinding themselves raw. He roared, and the small image of himself, teetering on the precipitous edge just beyond his toes, laughed and mimicked the yell.
Something spoke.
Rather…something cawed.
Paris turned, determined to satisfy a sudden, animalistic, bestial craving for blood and the adrenaline thrill of murder. He wanted to kill whatever had made that noise and disturbed him from his shapeless, bottleneck foxhole of agony where the only exit was blocked by SS Officer Fleeting Memories and SS Officer Suicide.
A large crow cawed again, eyed him sideways, and Paris…he could see himself. He was distorted like an image in the funhouse at a traveling carnival, but it was nonetheless him. He extended a hand towards the bird and he saw the hand near…himself?
"What…the…" he croaked, his voice the dry rattle of dust against bones against a colder tombstone. The sound of his voice startled him and he cleared his throat. His heart rate had finally slowed and he thought he could control himself.
I can figure this out, he thought to himself.
Of course you can, boy. You're not an idiot, are you? asked a rough voice, like the calloused hand of a father. Paris smiled weakly; this was some sort of Stephen King shit. It was the crow talking to him, wasn't it? It had to be; what else would it be?
"If I crow could speak, it'd have your voice," he said quietly. There was a strange feeling that smothered everything else like choking vines. It was a queer, oily sensation, like roiling, tempestuous, raw strength refined into a sort of polished gasoline, a fuel. And dangerously near this newfound strength—This god-given strength, Paris thought, then corrected himself, this dead-given strength—was the flame eternal of rage, of passion, of deepest melancholies and highest malice.
The moon broke free of its cloud-cage and suddenly the whole graveyard was illuminated like the bright eye of a lycanthrope. Paris knew why he was back, he knew it with all of his existence—that is, if I have any sort of "existence" left, he thought with a bitter laugh—but somehow, perhaps thankfully, his subconscious refused to accept it.
"Yeah, it's better this way. I don't have to accept it, and if I do, then I'm fucked." He smiled, pleased that the sound of his voice was calm and unperturbed. Only…
Only it's too calm. It's hysterically calm, like the eye of a hurricane's calm.
To take his mind from this horrible truth he began moving. His funeral clothes—what had been a sharp navy suit but was now destroyed and in rags—fell off like the limbs of a leper with each step. Before long, Paris was completely naked. His skin shone like ivory in the moonlight, his body hard-muscled and toned. He flexed and felt the strength of the gods within him. It was all too…feline. His grace, his power, his speed, it all felt so arrogantly cat-like.
Thankfully, the graveyard was beside a church at the end of a long lane, and the church was as black as the night around it. Paris didn't think he could explain this to anyone, even if he tried.
He kept moving, dutifully, clockwork motions that lead him past the church, still naked, and stumbling, confused onto a homeless man in the deeper stages of sleep. His beard was gray and riddled with trash and refuse, and his clothes reminded Paris of garbage heaps woven into thread.
A crow cawed. The Crow cawed.
What? spat Paris. You want something?
The crow's voice did not ring in his head. Instead, there was a dark flapping of fallen angels' pinions as the bird soared overhead, and landed fitfully on the homeless man. It pecked at his skull, rapped with its beak, not hard enough to gouge or break skin, but enough to wake him up and leave him angry.
"Wha' th' fuck, mayun? Th' fuck's yer problem?" growled the bum. He saw Paris' naked form and faster than lightning, he drew a short-bladed knife. There was a dangerous, perhaps crazy glint in his eyes, and Paris felt wild laughter building up in his chest.
No, not wild laughter. Crazy laughter. Madman giggles. I've got an insane case of the giggles.
He broke into open laughter, and the bum, confused and scared and hurt, rushed him with the knife.
Paris' laugh turned into a snarl, and sidestepped the knife thrust, grabbing the man's extended forearm. With a sharp motion, a glimmer of bone and a hot spray rewarded the boy. There was the beginnings of a scream building in the homeless man's throat, but they dissolved into gurgles and strangled gasps for air.
Paris laughed again, quiet, the seductive, sexual purr of a cello. There was a knife in his hands, blood on his body, and all the weight of Hell on his shoulders.
The hand that hesitates to kill will falter when it needs to be strong, said the crow.
Fuck you, whispered Paris. He felt like screaming but the whisper was so much deadlier. Deadlier than the knife in his hand or the newfound strength in his limbs.
But it was a good deadly, wasn't it? Wasn't it like the adrenaline rush, like a splash of cum, like a violent overture by a wild string section, razor-lined violins on vein strings stretched taut?
Paris felt a sort of sick, lopsided, crazed grin slid onto his face. There would be murder, this night, this fresh, young, virgin night, and he would be the skeleton in a vengeance-shaped bag of flesh, with wild hellflames for eyes.