_-^-_ Chapter VII: Drinks _-^-_
Richard was having the time of his life. His energy and enthusiasm had skyrocketed in the last few hours. Their plan was coming into being and was going as it had schemed in the months that their leaders had spent configuring it. Also, he was running on a high that you couldn't get from any of the drugs being sold on the market today. It was a high that took you to the enclosing atmosphere around the Earth and beyond. It was a high that Richard got when he murdered, or in this case was around someone getting murdered. The feel of a soul leaving it's container body and floating to the great beyond, whether it be heaven or hell, was a heated engagement that flared all of his senses to beyond their normality and sent his skin afire with dark flames. It was a quenching of his lust, a lust for death and sex, which he had done for both rituals. It was a high like no other, a high that took you through life, death, and everything in between.
And at that moment, Richard was swimming in energy and he felt like he could do anything that he pleased, and the alcohol that he was constantly consuming was not doing anything to lower him off of his pedestal of power, they were only managing to turn him drunk and completely out of this reality. He felt as if he had been transported to a world where everything spun and nobody spoke coherently. Richard loved this alternate plane of existence for he was the only rock amid a swirling realm of chaos and unpredictability, a world where objects blurred to become incomprehensible colors and shapes, and the only sound came from twisting black holes in a low moan of agony that filled the cosmos.
Richard was having the time of his life, really. All his life he had always been a nothing, one of the people who went to your high school and you never remembered. He was the kid who was always by himself, no friends, no one to talk to about his hopes and fears. His parents had always been far to drunk to understand anything he had ever tried to tell them. As a result of this negligence, Richard had grown a resentment and eventual hatred for everyone around him, a hatred that sounded with an intense scream that resounded throughout his gray matter, all of his waking hours, as well as all of his dreams.
His dreams were always frightening affairs that he kept locked in a vault inside of his minds inner-workings. They were always centered around the phenomenon of death. He would dream of dreadfully terrible events, like, Richard loading his father's shotgun and plastering his stupefied parents' brains all over the wall painting it red. Richard would then wake up, his own dream laughing still echoing through his head, and sweating buckets that drenched his gray shirt dark. The cotton fabric would cling to his perspiration laced skin as he brought his knees to his chest, hugging them and rocking back and forth, afraid to go to sleep.
That was only at the beginning of his dreams however. After a few months of gruesome events running though his brain, Richard began to take pleasure from these subconscious videos. He began to imagine himself performing slow, unmerciful deaths on all that made him angry. These thoughts twisted his heart, mind, and soul into a single loathsome creature that thrived and enjoyed his art of death dealing. Nothing could excite him more than slowly releasing a soul from its captor form and sending it to the afterlife, not even the moment in his terrible life when he had lost his virginity as he painfully raped a 13-year-old girl while he was in his 19th year of existence.
And now Richard was no longer the small loner, weakling he had once been in his earlier years. Now he was a man of 43 who was still somewhat small for his age, who now had as many friends as anyone could ask for, but the most important fact was that he now had immense power. Or at least he had power coming his way, in about a week to be precise. The killing tonight was just a minute part of an already in motion grand plan that would change the entire world forever. Richard would be one of the leaders after all of their planning came to a head. He would be revered and every one would know his name, Richard Paisley. He would have people bowing before him and listening to his every word.
Richard began to laugh hysterically at the thought of his power. He would never again be looked down upon, he would never again go unnoticed, and he would never again be ignored. Richard gradually stopped laughing and looked at himself in the long mirror that stretched across the entire wall behind the bar.
Richard's large round head held large watery eyes and only echoes of hair stretched across the balding top. His small frail upper build gave way to also frail legs that looked as though they were only held up by demon strings that coursed blue waterways underneath the flabby rubber outer flesh. He was currently sporting a tweed tan suit with a white undershirt and tan tie. He always wore attire of this nature, for he believed that they made him look important while they only made him look even more pathetic.
He was also sporting a fine number of beers in front of him as well. They weren't enough to make him completely drunk but he was getting there. And Richard planned to get as drunk as possible because he had been told that he needed to be sober for the next few days and this would be the last drinking he would do for a while. And after these few days that called for his sober self, he would be able to drink all that he wanted to and anything he wanted to. He would be living a life that he had always dreamed of having, a dream that was just within his reach.
"Richard," came a whispering voice from above.
Richard spun around and surveyed the bar patrons with his blurry vision. None of them were paying any attention to him, but they were looking up towards the voice. He followed their eyes to the ceiling and his own eyes widened with fear.
The ceiling was a compilation of rectangular windows that allowed a person to look at the smog-choked sky. These windows met in the center of the roof, creating a triangle effect. Atop some of these windows, a dark silhouette etched the smoky glass. It was a shadow of the darkest black that seemed to contain a swirling vortex of anger and pain. It was a chaos that entrapped the viewer and froze them in their spots. The vortex began to move around the mirror boundaries with a slow determination and steps of black leather.
"Richard, Richard, Richard," sighed the silhouette, "You've been a bad boy Richard, a very bad boy of the worst variety. You've been the type of bad boy that requires punishment. A punishment that can only be rained down from the heavens above in the form of a black bird."
As fear slithered into the black heart of Richard Paisley, the owner of the black vortex fell through the glass smoke and rained down knife rain onto the drunks below. Richard flew his arms above his head, blocking the sharp bits from his face but in the process, cutting his arms and leaking blood. The dark angel that had spoke his name had flipped onto a pool table that was in the corner of the room. It jumped to the ground and turned in Richard's direction.
What Richard saw sobered him up quickly. The man across the room was painted in a way that he would never forget, vertical stripes of white innocence laid across his face that seemed to pulse with primal power, his eyes were encircled with the black blood of the wicked with silent dark tears stretching to the gates of heaven above and reaching for the pits of hell below. His lips were covered in the black rage and curved into a menacing smile of darkness that started a stream of fluids from the center of Richards body.
The patrons of the Devil's Playground had panicked and fled from the bar in fear of the ominous figure leaving the angel of death, Richard, and the bartender.
"Hey buddy," the bartender exclaimed pointing a pistol at the other man, "you owe me a shitload of money for all that glass and you just scared off all my customers. What do you have to say for yourself? Huh? Say something or I will pop you full of lead you stupid mother fucker!"
The man only smiled a wicked smile that made Richard's crotch only flow more.
"That's it!" the bartender yelled and fired his pistol directly at the gut of the man in black across the room.
The man was flung back from the impact of the lead against the flesh of his midsection, causing him to double over while still standing. Richard's eyes widened as the figure straightened up to his full height allowing the bullet hole to be seen by the two men. The small amount of blood that had seeped from the pistol wound was quickly regaining its place in the body, followed by more skin covering the hole up leaving no mark whatsoever.
The bartender looked at the primal angel with widened, frightened yes. He dropped the pistol on the ground while backing up and then ran out the back door leaving only Richard and the black angel. The man turned from the door from which the bartender had exited and focused his cold eyes upon the murderer and rapist that sat across the room from him, pissing his pants.
"Poor little Richard, no one to help you now. What happened to all those friends you had," said the dark being, brushing glass from the sleeves of his long sleeved shirt.
Richard looked to the man in confusion and fright, "W-What are you talking about?"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk Mr. Paisley. Did you think that you could do that without paying the price?"
Richard licked his lips and took a short glance to the door that was to the side of him. He thought that he could get to it before this supposed dark avenger got to him.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," spoke the avenger. "You wouldn't reach the end of the bar."
'How had he known that I was going for the door?' Richard thought to himself. 'He had his eyes closed.'
"Oh, I have eyes everywhere Richard."
"I-I don't even know you man, I didn't do anything to you," Richard finally said after gathering his courage.
The avenger opened his eyes and began to laugh slightly with a vicious smile painted upon his lips. With a speed that Richard couldn't see clearly that only came out as a blur, the avenger had closed the distance between the two of them and grabbed a hold of his tweed jacket and hurled him through a table. Richard's vision blurred even worse until he could barely see anything. The man came down on Richard again and lifted him until there faces almost touched.
"Look you pathetic worm, look upon your judge!"
When Richard's eyes cleared he looked closely at the man's face. He recognized the face; he had seen that face only a few hours ago. He was Aidan Paige, the son of the traitor. But, no it couldn't be him; he had watched him get filled with lead.
"B-But your dead, I saw you die, I felt you die!" Richard screamed into Aidan's face.
"The angels have looked upon me with pity Richard Paisley. They have given me something that almost no one in the entire universe is given."
"Y-Yeah, and what's that?"
"Why Richard, it is a soul's second chance. A chance to judge the judges."
Richard knew then that he wouldn't be getting out of this. He would die this very night; no power, no friends, and no way to stop it. He would die as something that he had strived his entire life to overcome. He would die as a weak small, loner.
Aidan pushed Richard back down to the ground as he stood up. Richard tried vainly to get back up on his legs, when Aidan let out a roar and used both of his legs to prop up the knee then step straight through it. The pressure applies to Richard's leg caused it to snap completely, allowing the bone to break though the flesh that surrounded it. Richard screamed in agony as he felt pain, as he never had before. The pain he had occasionally felt was self inflicted and felt uplifting, while this felt dark and angry and brought hot tears to the cheeks of his face making them moist.
As Richard finally stopped screaming and reserved himself to moans and mumbling, Aidan went behind the bar and picked up two bottles of beer.
"Let's have a toast shall we," Aidan spoke cheerfully as he approached the weeping man.
He opened both beers and handed one to Richard who took it in fright. He watched as the dead man chugged the entire beer in a few seconds and broke the bottom of it on a nearby table creating a series of sharp knives. Aidan then knelt next to the bleeding Richard and spoke, holding the bottle to him menacingly.
"Now Richard, it is my time to judge you. If you answer the questions that I ask you truthfully, then I may take favor upon you and let you live. Now, will you do that for me?"
Richard thought for a moment and then quickly nodded.
"Good, now, why did you and the others murder my family?"
Richard tried to think quickly, "It was all about your dad, he was going to do something that could destroy the group and all of our ambitions."
Aidan press the broken bottle into the neck of Richard, creating a small stream of blood, "What group?"
"G.R.E.A.T, it's a group that your dad was in. He was a leading person and knew all of their secrets, for some reason he left and was branded a traitor. The head guy had us kill him and his family, they didn't tell us why," Richard said quickly.
Aidan seethed with anger, knowing that there was a lot more information that he needed, but he wasn't going to get it here. Aidan stood up from his position over Richard and turned away from him. Richard propped himself up on one hand with a beer in the other.
"Are you going to let me go now?" Richard said hopefully.
"Richard, Richard, you have raped and killed countless people that deserved none of it which is something that is beyond me to judge. But tonight, you overstepped the boundary of your own wickedness into the land of the unforgivable. Not only did you rape my mother, but also you raped my little sister of 5 years. You stole her last possession, which was her innocence. For that, I will let you go."
Richard's mouth curved into a smile as he said these words. He didn't know why Aidan was letting him go but he didn't care why, he cared that he was going to live see all of his dreams come true.
"Yes I will let you go, let you go to the dark pits of hell where you belong!" Aidan screamed as he turned around and plunged the broken end of the bottle into the top of Richard's balding head.
Richard was only able to let out a small gasp as he felt the sharp pointed glass dig into the brain that had conjured so many terrible things and twisted Richard into a demon of disgusting proportions. Richard's arm gave way and he fell back with a thud onto the wood floor, his eyes directed at his beer that still lay in his hand. It was spilling onto the floor, meeting the blood that seeped from his head in a dance of swirling liquids.
And as Richard's vision began to fade to black and his eyes began to glaze over he heard a conjoining of two sounds as he passed from the land of the living to the realm of the dead.
In the land of the living, the sound came out as the scream of a crow.
In the realm of the dead, the sound came out as a single voice in a void of silence, 'Now that's what I call a buzzkill.'
_-^-_ Disclaimer: I do not own The Crow, James O'Barr does.
Richard was having the time of his life. His energy and enthusiasm had skyrocketed in the last few hours. Their plan was coming into being and was going as it had schemed in the months that their leaders had spent configuring it. Also, he was running on a high that you couldn't get from any of the drugs being sold on the market today. It was a high that took you to the enclosing atmosphere around the Earth and beyond. It was a high that Richard got when he murdered, or in this case was around someone getting murdered. The feel of a soul leaving it's container body and floating to the great beyond, whether it be heaven or hell, was a heated engagement that flared all of his senses to beyond their normality and sent his skin afire with dark flames. It was a quenching of his lust, a lust for death and sex, which he had done for both rituals. It was a high like no other, a high that took you through life, death, and everything in between.
And at that moment, Richard was swimming in energy and he felt like he could do anything that he pleased, and the alcohol that he was constantly consuming was not doing anything to lower him off of his pedestal of power, they were only managing to turn him drunk and completely out of this reality. He felt as if he had been transported to a world where everything spun and nobody spoke coherently. Richard loved this alternate plane of existence for he was the only rock amid a swirling realm of chaos and unpredictability, a world where objects blurred to become incomprehensible colors and shapes, and the only sound came from twisting black holes in a low moan of agony that filled the cosmos.
Richard was having the time of his life, really. All his life he had always been a nothing, one of the people who went to your high school and you never remembered. He was the kid who was always by himself, no friends, no one to talk to about his hopes and fears. His parents had always been far to drunk to understand anything he had ever tried to tell them. As a result of this negligence, Richard had grown a resentment and eventual hatred for everyone around him, a hatred that sounded with an intense scream that resounded throughout his gray matter, all of his waking hours, as well as all of his dreams.
His dreams were always frightening affairs that he kept locked in a vault inside of his minds inner-workings. They were always centered around the phenomenon of death. He would dream of dreadfully terrible events, like, Richard loading his father's shotgun and plastering his stupefied parents' brains all over the wall painting it red. Richard would then wake up, his own dream laughing still echoing through his head, and sweating buckets that drenched his gray shirt dark. The cotton fabric would cling to his perspiration laced skin as he brought his knees to his chest, hugging them and rocking back and forth, afraid to go to sleep.
That was only at the beginning of his dreams however. After a few months of gruesome events running though his brain, Richard began to take pleasure from these subconscious videos. He began to imagine himself performing slow, unmerciful deaths on all that made him angry. These thoughts twisted his heart, mind, and soul into a single loathsome creature that thrived and enjoyed his art of death dealing. Nothing could excite him more than slowly releasing a soul from its captor form and sending it to the afterlife, not even the moment in his terrible life when he had lost his virginity as he painfully raped a 13-year-old girl while he was in his 19th year of existence.
And now Richard was no longer the small loner, weakling he had once been in his earlier years. Now he was a man of 43 who was still somewhat small for his age, who now had as many friends as anyone could ask for, but the most important fact was that he now had immense power. Or at least he had power coming his way, in about a week to be precise. The killing tonight was just a minute part of an already in motion grand plan that would change the entire world forever. Richard would be one of the leaders after all of their planning came to a head. He would be revered and every one would know his name, Richard Paisley. He would have people bowing before him and listening to his every word.
Richard began to laugh hysterically at the thought of his power. He would never again be looked down upon, he would never again go unnoticed, and he would never again be ignored. Richard gradually stopped laughing and looked at himself in the long mirror that stretched across the entire wall behind the bar.
Richard's large round head held large watery eyes and only echoes of hair stretched across the balding top. His small frail upper build gave way to also frail legs that looked as though they were only held up by demon strings that coursed blue waterways underneath the flabby rubber outer flesh. He was currently sporting a tweed tan suit with a white undershirt and tan tie. He always wore attire of this nature, for he believed that they made him look important while they only made him look even more pathetic.
He was also sporting a fine number of beers in front of him as well. They weren't enough to make him completely drunk but he was getting there. And Richard planned to get as drunk as possible because he had been told that he needed to be sober for the next few days and this would be the last drinking he would do for a while. And after these few days that called for his sober self, he would be able to drink all that he wanted to and anything he wanted to. He would be living a life that he had always dreamed of having, a dream that was just within his reach.
"Richard," came a whispering voice from above.
Richard spun around and surveyed the bar patrons with his blurry vision. None of them were paying any attention to him, but they were looking up towards the voice. He followed their eyes to the ceiling and his own eyes widened with fear.
The ceiling was a compilation of rectangular windows that allowed a person to look at the smog-choked sky. These windows met in the center of the roof, creating a triangle effect. Atop some of these windows, a dark silhouette etched the smoky glass. It was a shadow of the darkest black that seemed to contain a swirling vortex of anger and pain. It was a chaos that entrapped the viewer and froze them in their spots. The vortex began to move around the mirror boundaries with a slow determination and steps of black leather.
"Richard, Richard, Richard," sighed the silhouette, "You've been a bad boy Richard, a very bad boy of the worst variety. You've been the type of bad boy that requires punishment. A punishment that can only be rained down from the heavens above in the form of a black bird."
As fear slithered into the black heart of Richard Paisley, the owner of the black vortex fell through the glass smoke and rained down knife rain onto the drunks below. Richard flew his arms above his head, blocking the sharp bits from his face but in the process, cutting his arms and leaking blood. The dark angel that had spoke his name had flipped onto a pool table that was in the corner of the room. It jumped to the ground and turned in Richard's direction.
What Richard saw sobered him up quickly. The man across the room was painted in a way that he would never forget, vertical stripes of white innocence laid across his face that seemed to pulse with primal power, his eyes were encircled with the black blood of the wicked with silent dark tears stretching to the gates of heaven above and reaching for the pits of hell below. His lips were covered in the black rage and curved into a menacing smile of darkness that started a stream of fluids from the center of Richards body.
The patrons of the Devil's Playground had panicked and fled from the bar in fear of the ominous figure leaving the angel of death, Richard, and the bartender.
"Hey buddy," the bartender exclaimed pointing a pistol at the other man, "you owe me a shitload of money for all that glass and you just scared off all my customers. What do you have to say for yourself? Huh? Say something or I will pop you full of lead you stupid mother fucker!"
The man only smiled a wicked smile that made Richard's crotch only flow more.
"That's it!" the bartender yelled and fired his pistol directly at the gut of the man in black across the room.
The man was flung back from the impact of the lead against the flesh of his midsection, causing him to double over while still standing. Richard's eyes widened as the figure straightened up to his full height allowing the bullet hole to be seen by the two men. The small amount of blood that had seeped from the pistol wound was quickly regaining its place in the body, followed by more skin covering the hole up leaving no mark whatsoever.
The bartender looked at the primal angel with widened, frightened yes. He dropped the pistol on the ground while backing up and then ran out the back door leaving only Richard and the black angel. The man turned from the door from which the bartender had exited and focused his cold eyes upon the murderer and rapist that sat across the room from him, pissing his pants.
"Poor little Richard, no one to help you now. What happened to all those friends you had," said the dark being, brushing glass from the sleeves of his long sleeved shirt.
Richard looked to the man in confusion and fright, "W-What are you talking about?"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk Mr. Paisley. Did you think that you could do that without paying the price?"
Richard licked his lips and took a short glance to the door that was to the side of him. He thought that he could get to it before this supposed dark avenger got to him.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," spoke the avenger. "You wouldn't reach the end of the bar."
'How had he known that I was going for the door?' Richard thought to himself. 'He had his eyes closed.'
"Oh, I have eyes everywhere Richard."
"I-I don't even know you man, I didn't do anything to you," Richard finally said after gathering his courage.
The avenger opened his eyes and began to laugh slightly with a vicious smile painted upon his lips. With a speed that Richard couldn't see clearly that only came out as a blur, the avenger had closed the distance between the two of them and grabbed a hold of his tweed jacket and hurled him through a table. Richard's vision blurred even worse until he could barely see anything. The man came down on Richard again and lifted him until there faces almost touched.
"Look you pathetic worm, look upon your judge!"
When Richard's eyes cleared he looked closely at the man's face. He recognized the face; he had seen that face only a few hours ago. He was Aidan Paige, the son of the traitor. But, no it couldn't be him; he had watched him get filled with lead.
"B-But your dead, I saw you die, I felt you die!" Richard screamed into Aidan's face.
"The angels have looked upon me with pity Richard Paisley. They have given me something that almost no one in the entire universe is given."
"Y-Yeah, and what's that?"
"Why Richard, it is a soul's second chance. A chance to judge the judges."
Richard knew then that he wouldn't be getting out of this. He would die this very night; no power, no friends, and no way to stop it. He would die as something that he had strived his entire life to overcome. He would die as a weak small, loner.
Aidan pushed Richard back down to the ground as he stood up. Richard tried vainly to get back up on his legs, when Aidan let out a roar and used both of his legs to prop up the knee then step straight through it. The pressure applies to Richard's leg caused it to snap completely, allowing the bone to break though the flesh that surrounded it. Richard screamed in agony as he felt pain, as he never had before. The pain he had occasionally felt was self inflicted and felt uplifting, while this felt dark and angry and brought hot tears to the cheeks of his face making them moist.
As Richard finally stopped screaming and reserved himself to moans and mumbling, Aidan went behind the bar and picked up two bottles of beer.
"Let's have a toast shall we," Aidan spoke cheerfully as he approached the weeping man.
He opened both beers and handed one to Richard who took it in fright. He watched as the dead man chugged the entire beer in a few seconds and broke the bottom of it on a nearby table creating a series of sharp knives. Aidan then knelt next to the bleeding Richard and spoke, holding the bottle to him menacingly.
"Now Richard, it is my time to judge you. If you answer the questions that I ask you truthfully, then I may take favor upon you and let you live. Now, will you do that for me?"
Richard thought for a moment and then quickly nodded.
"Good, now, why did you and the others murder my family?"
Richard tried to think quickly, "It was all about your dad, he was going to do something that could destroy the group and all of our ambitions."
Aidan press the broken bottle into the neck of Richard, creating a small stream of blood, "What group?"
"G.R.E.A.T, it's a group that your dad was in. He was a leading person and knew all of their secrets, for some reason he left and was branded a traitor. The head guy had us kill him and his family, they didn't tell us why," Richard said quickly.
Aidan seethed with anger, knowing that there was a lot more information that he needed, but he wasn't going to get it here. Aidan stood up from his position over Richard and turned away from him. Richard propped himself up on one hand with a beer in the other.
"Are you going to let me go now?" Richard said hopefully.
"Richard, Richard, you have raped and killed countless people that deserved none of it which is something that is beyond me to judge. But tonight, you overstepped the boundary of your own wickedness into the land of the unforgivable. Not only did you rape my mother, but also you raped my little sister of 5 years. You stole her last possession, which was her innocence. For that, I will let you go."
Richard's mouth curved into a smile as he said these words. He didn't know why Aidan was letting him go but he didn't care why, he cared that he was going to live see all of his dreams come true.
"Yes I will let you go, let you go to the dark pits of hell where you belong!" Aidan screamed as he turned around and plunged the broken end of the bottle into the top of Richard's balding head.
Richard was only able to let out a small gasp as he felt the sharp pointed glass dig into the brain that had conjured so many terrible things and twisted Richard into a demon of disgusting proportions. Richard's arm gave way and he fell back with a thud onto the wood floor, his eyes directed at his beer that still lay in his hand. It was spilling onto the floor, meeting the blood that seeped from his head in a dance of swirling liquids.
And as Richard's vision began to fade to black and his eyes began to glaze over he heard a conjoining of two sounds as he passed from the land of the living to the realm of the dead.
In the land of the living, the sound came out as the scream of a crow.
In the realm of the dead, the sound came out as a single voice in a void of silence, 'Now that's what I call a buzzkill.'
_-^-_ Disclaimer: I do not own The Crow, James O'Barr does.
