THE SON OF ELI

CHAPTER 8: THE DEBT COLLECTOR

King Eli Kem faced his brother across the lab.

"I can see you're angry, and filled with the wrath of a king, but let me assure you that whatever you do will be an exercise in futility, and vexation of your soul," Sali said calmly. "You don't know how long I've waited for this day, Eli. Twenty years in there, planning, waiting, hoping for a time just like this to collect the debt you owe me."

"I should have let them kill you," Eli said bitterly.

Sali nodded and wriggled his fingers.

"You should have, my little brother, you should have. It would have saved me twenty years of rotting away in some damn house. However, destiny always catches up with us sooner or later. It will be so easy to kill you all, but what would be the fun in that? As I said, that would be a simple task, wouldn't it, to take all the debt you owe me at once? No, Eli, no. I'm going to keep you near and watch the light die from your eyes as I hurt you. And there's no debt more painful to pay, no debt sweeter to collect, than the interest, little brother. In this case, it is going to be your agony in your eyes when you watch me killing your wife and son."

"You evil bastard!" the king screamed and rushed at his half-brother. He lunged and slammed a hard fist into Sali's jaw. He followed with a hard kick into the groin of the beast. Sali growled and, grabbing Eli by the throat, threw him across the room. The king slammed into the door and fell on his hands and knees.

Anya let out a scream of fear and picked a long, thin scalpel from the control board and rushed at Sali, who tried to spin around to face her but was a little bit too late. Still screaming, Anya struck at him blindly. The scalpel blade punctured Sali's right purple eye.

He screamed in agony as a thick, purple gooey substance fell from his eye. The sheer pain was so shocking and unexpected that Sali Kem struck out instinctively and with devastating effect! His hard, ten-fingered fist slammed into Anya's face with such outrageous brutal force that her neck broke before her body smashed down on the floor.

"Anya!" Eli screamed with horror. "Oh, God, no! Oh, my darling, my love!"

As Eli crawled to the side of his dead wife and gathered her in his arms, Doctor Biko picked up giant pair of scissors and dashed nimbly towards Sali with a hopeful idea on his mind; if he could puncture the other eye of Sali, they would be free.

Sali was grabbing the sides of his face as the agony blasted through his head in waves. The doctor raised the scissors and was looking for a way to drive it home into Sali's eye when the man turned his face towards him.

Biko drove the tips of the scissors forward. Sali caught the doctor's hand and swung him around, using the momentum to slam the doctor's face violently into the wall.

Biko screamed as shards of pain racked his broken nose. Blood spurted from his nose onto the wall instantly. Sali roared with fury and opened his mouth. King Eli, cradling the dead body of his wife and weeping pitifully, watched with horror as Sali's mouth opened to a mighty width that should not have been possible for a human being. His long, curved fangs sank into the back of Biko's head and crunched down. There was the nasty sound of skull shattering and the soft welching sounds of brain matter scooped into the monster's mouth.

Sali wrenched his jaws back and took out half of Biko's head with it!

The king turned his face away with revulsion as the grey matter inside Biko's head quickly filled over with blood. Brain tissue and blood glistened on Sali's chin grotesquely as he slammed Biko's body down on the floor.

Sali chewed for a moment, and then he grimaced and spat out the mixture of hair, skull and brain in his mouth.

"f**k, the man was really mad!" he said with a sinister chuckle. "Brain tastes as bitter as a nun's stinking p***y!"

Eli, tears streaming down his face, looked up at his brother with hatred etched deeply on his handsome face.

"You will pay for this, Sali!" he groaned painfully. "Kill me, if you want, but you will pay for this! You will pay!"

The scalpel was still sticking out of the busted eye of the monster, and with his mouth smeared with blood, he looked every inch a beast when he smiled.

"But you just paid your debts, little brother," he said calmly. "You can't imagine the joy it gives me to see you in such agony, holding your dead wife and crying! Ha, never thought I'll see you shedding tears! So beautiful! But, f**k it, debt is only half paid. You know I don't like to be owed, huh? I always do a full collection with due interests, Your Majesty!"

Eli Kem looked at his brother with mounting horror and wailed with agony when Sali began walking towards the glass globule containing his son.

"No!" Eli screamed and scrambled to his feet. "No, Sali, you bastard! Keep your damn hands from my son!"

He rushed at Sali who side-stepped his blows and hammered a horrible backhand across the king's face, sending him tottering backwards and crashing to the floor.

"You aren't strong enough to stop me from doing anything, little brother," Sali said nonchalantly as he stopped in front of the control board. "Save yourself a beating and let events unfold. I'm just collecting my debts! Debts you owe me!"

Groggily, King Eli Kem struggled to his feet and stood watching Sali with horror as his evil fingers hovered over the knobs of the control board.

"Sali!" the king said gutturally and with pain. "Don't do this! Not my son, please! Not my son!"

Sali finally pulled out the scalpel from his eye socket and looked at it with distaste. He dropped it on the clean floor and looked at Eli with a vicious expression.

"You know what to do, Eli," he said coldly. "If you want your son to live."

"Please!" Eli cried with passion. "Anything you want, Sali. Take my life if you want, but please, don't hurt my son!"

"The son of Eli," Sali said with a cold smile. "s**t, I don't hurt kids. Beg, Eli. Get down on your knees and beg me like you mean it."

He watched with a sardonic smile on his face as King Eli Kem shuffled forward and crashed down on his knees in front of him. As was the gesture of complete obeisance, the king bent and touched Sali's feet with both hands as tears fell down his face.

"I beg of you, Sali, with all humility!" Eli cried pitifully. "Have mercy on my son! Please, don't hurt him!"

Sali Kem laughed softly, happily.

"Ha, ain't this a sight!" he cried buoyantly. "Dear Lords, ain't this a sight? The mighty King Eli on his mighty knees begging the prisoner he humiliated. Sure, Your Majesty, I won't hurt your son!"

"Thank you, thank you," the king murmured with relief as he sat up with tears in his eyes.

"However!" Sali said with a cold smile. "As much as I don't hurt kids, you must admit that, technically, this piece of s**t in this lousy glass is not a kid! This s**t has been filled with substances that God has never allowed children to have, substances created by a madman called Biko! So, my little brother, this freak should not live another second longer!"

And King Eli Kem screamed in anguish as Sali began to push the knobs on the control board all the way up to their maximum!

The monitors went haywire!

They emitted warning beeping sounds shrilly!

Hidden bells clanged!

King Eli Kem screamed in a tortured voice when he saw his son jerking in the glass tube! The coloured liquids entered the globule fiercely! The boy began to jerk wildly, and the king saw the intense agony on the baby's face and his little hands opening and clasping, opening and clasping, and then sudden blood spurted from the baby's nose forcibly.

The king's body went numb as he watched, unable to make a sound as his baby suffered. Tears fell down the king's face silently.

"Freak!" Sali with a satisfied smile as the cylinder was filled with more colour until the baby could barely be seen. The glass globule began to tremble wildly.

Sali Kem held it and shook it hard until it came free, and then he crashed it hard on the floor. He smiled with satisfaction when he saw the face of the baby floating up to press against the side of the glass.

The baby's mouth was open, slack, and his arms and legs flailed lifelessly in the spectrum of liquids.

Sali gave the globule a final kick, and it rolled over and began to leak liquid all over the floor. He walked to the dazed king and held him by the collar of his gown.

"I'm not done with you yet," he said softly. "It is time to revel in your sorrow from now on. Come with me, little brother."

Sali Kem dragged the king of Eden across the floor and out of the room where the son of Eli lay dead in a glass globule. The last thing Eli Kem saw was the sight of his lovely wife lying still with the fake fibre nestled around her belly, giving the distinct impression of a pregnant woman sleeping.

And just behind her, he saw Doctor Biko's body expanding, expanding, expanding and then – phuuut!

He watched as the materials of his clothes rained down on his dead wife and the flesh dissolved and formed that peculiar purple-white cloud and moved upwards. A second later, the internal organs exploded, and the dry bones landed on the floor in a clatter.

The half-skull of the doctor landed on Anya's left cheek, and this made Eli Kem's soul fret in his body. No, he could not leave her like this, with a skull on her face, no! But he had no strength to struggle, and his weakness and helplessness assailed him.

His tears fell in hot rolls down his cheeks as he was dragged out of the room.