Chapter Ten: The Slum’s S.O.S.!
1069 Words
(Locke Manor: Leo’s Gilded Aviary)
The casement windows—vast, glacial panes—framed manicured lawns trimmed with martial precision. Beyond: an artificial lake—stagnant, lightless—a cyclopean eye regarding him with aqueous contempt.
Leo wrenched the velvet drapes shut.
Darkness descended—sepulchral. Only sconces wept pallid luminescence.
Damnation!
He paced—a caged panther—across cavernous silence. Aubusson carpets devoured footfalls, amplifying the void.
Three days.
Entombed in this mausoleum gilded with opulence.
Only Rosa’s glacial apparitions delivered sustenance. Only Dr. Harris’s phlebotomy needles pierced the stasis—extracting rubies of his vitality for their alchemy.
Victor? Confined to adjacent wings—communications severed. Rosa’s handiwork.
The patriarch? Comatose. That abyssal sigil faded—yet its host lingered in limbo.
Sentinels? Twin obsidian monoliths barricading his portal. Twenty-four solar cycles. Motionless. Even bladder relief required an armored escort. Protection? Profanation!
Suffocation. Incarceration. Sanity’s fraying filament.
A zoo specimen. A vivisected lab rat. Drained. Scrutinized. Awaiting desiccation.
No.
Escape. Oxygen. Sixty seconds of unshackled sky.
Opportunity—unlocked.
That afternoon. Harris departed, brow furrowed: "Mr. Yang, your cellular regeneration—preternatural. But your bio-field resembles supernova debris. Requires recalibrated serums."
Rosa’s ice-voice followed: "1500 hours. Security systems maintenance. Non-critical sectors: signal blackout. Sixty minutes."
Maintenance? Blackout?
Providence!
Leo’s heart hammered—war-drum cadence! He pressed his ear to the oaken portal.
Beyond—a sentinel’s respiration. Steady. Solitary? Shift transition!
He tore open the nightstand drawer. Harris’s leavings: gauze, isopropyl… and—a stainless-steel tenotomy scissor! Blade honed to osteotomy sharpness!
Cold steel kissed his palm—focus crystallized.
He stormed into the walk-in vestiary. Racks groaned with Rosa’s obscene silks and vicuña. Ignored.
Cornered: his frayed knapsack. Cardboard crate.
He ravaged the canvas sack—
There.
Ash-grey hoodie—collar threadbare from ten thousand dawns. Denim—knees cratered by concrete prayers. Splitting canvas sneakers.
Sanctuary.
Leo shredded the emerald silk pajamas—vermillion shame. Clad himself in the armor of his truth. Coarse weave abraded his skin—sacred friction.
He inhaled—deep, ragged—parted the drapery slit.
Lawn’s edge: one sentinel. Distracted? Adjusting comms amidst the blackout interference.
Now.
Leo thrust the casement open—silent on oiled hinges. Carpet-muted.
Feline grace: roll, pivot, landing—a shadow melting into manicured boxwood.
Heart—a caged starling! He flattened—ear attuned.
Sentinel—unmoved. Still wrestling comms.
Deus ex machina.
Leo serpentined—belly to earth—exploiting topiary camouflage. Streaking toward the perimeter’s wrought-iron palisade! Adrenaline—quicksilver in his veins!
The barrier: three meters. Spear-tipped finials.
No pause. Two strides recoiled—sprung! Fingers clawed freezing scrollwork! Muscles shrieked—ignored!
He scaled.
Arced.
Crashed onto exterior turf!
Impact—shattering glass in his joints!
Up! Sprinting! No glance back—hellhounds at his heels! Plunging into the untamed copse beyond the wall!
Liberation!
Goddamn emancipation!
He gulped air—bronchi aflame! Face cracked in a rictus of ecstatic agony! Legs pistoned—eating distance! Vector: home. That festering, glorious, real slum!
(Oakwood Street #117: Derelict Tenement)
The stench embraced him: rotting refuse, human urea, black mold—cut with rancid fry-oil and dime-store perfume.
Leo inhaled greedily—coughed—ravished. This—not Locke’s bergamot lies—was life’s acrid perfume!
Cap low. Hood shadowing orbits. He moved—a wraith on familiar hunting grounds. Alert.
Approaching: the leprous brick hulk. His kennel—third floor.
“Leo?!”
A voice—cracked, tremulous—lanced from a pitch-black stairwell.
He froze. Scanned.
Martha. His ancient neighbor. Cookie-bearer. Chronic worrier.
Transfigured: hair—a bird’s nest of despair. Eyes—bruised peaches. Cheeks—salt-rivered canyons. A moth-eaten coat swallowed her shivering frame. A leaf in a typhoon.
“Martha?!” Dread icicle through his heart. He lunged toward her.
“Leo! Sweet Jesus!” She clutched his arm—skeletal fingers talons. “Save him! My Diego! He’s—!” Sobs strangled her words.
Diego? Her grandson. The plump boy who’d trailed him for candy?
“Sick?!” Leo rasped.
“Sickness? No! Hospital… refused him! Said… hopeless! My Diego! Seven summers! Leo—you know medicine! See him! SEE HIM!” She hauled him into the reeking stairwell—mold, despair, and something fouler…
Martha’s lair: smaller. darker. Stench: gangrenous meat stewed in bleach-vomit.
Under a grimy bulb: a sunken couch.
Upon it: Diego.
Once a buoyant cherub.
Now: a desiccated homunculus. Swaddled in filthy wool.
Emaciated. Cheekbones—scythes slicing paper skin. Lips—cyanotic fissures.
Worst—his epidermis.
Not pallor.
A grotesque…
Lividity.
Cadaverous mottling—indigo, violet, necrotic black—crawling up his throat, chest. Subcutaneous vessels—distended, obsidian serpents—throbbing. Writhering.
Respiration: ghost-faint. Ribcage—stuttering. A death-rattle wheeze escaped his throat.
“Diego! Leo’s here!” Martha hovered, trembling. Tears salted the boy’s parchment cheek. “Three days… fever… then… this! Hospital… no cause… no hope…”
Leo’s heart—crushed in permafrost!
Not illness.
He knew this pestilence.
*BWOOOOONG—!!!*
Psychic klaxons! Not death’s whisper—but a keening, glutinous shriek!
Gelid. Slithering. Reeking of mildewed crypts and… hemophagic hunger!
Shadowkin!
Low-tier specter infestation!
He’d scoured similar filth from Locke’s sewers! But this—cruder. Starving!
“Christ!” Leo spat—face contorted. Shadowkin? Here? Feasting on a child?!
“Leo? What?!” Martha recoiled.
“Martha! Listen!” Leo knelt—gaze riveted to Diego’s convulsing chest. The nucleus of the corruption—there. “Diego’s not sick! He’s… infested!”
“Infested?!” Terror blanched her. “Father O’Malley came! Holy water! Crucifix! Useless!”
Church? Sanctified trinkets? Useless against corporeal shade!
Leo’s jaw locked. Diego’s fading breath. Martha’s abyss-deep eyes. This crumbling purgatory.
Fury detonated—volcanic!
Screw Locke’s gilded hell! Screw the demon-sigil!
Here: a dying child. A shattered elder.
He could act.
Would.
Consequences be damned.
“Martha! BACK!” Leo’s command—granite.
He ripped the fetid blanket away—revealing Diego’s horror-show flesh!
The miasma intensified—frozen needles stabbing Leo’s psyche!
His inner sirens screamed: FLEE!
Leo saw only Diego’s agony. Martha’s tears.
Burn it.
He inhaled—centered. Recalled the life-inferno against Locke’s sigil.
But here—finesse? Gentleness?
Impossible.
Leo’s hands shot out—
No hesitation.
A crusader’s fatalism.
Slammed onto Diego’s searing, serpent-veined—
Brow!
- Writer
