Max Jeremiah Quartermain led the Russian into the city, with the demon gripped firmly under his arm. Holding onto the demon’s tail, Jaha had found that he could retreat into his shell and simply slide along the ground on his stomach, pulled smoothly in tow by Quartermain’s rythmic steps - a method of travel that shielded him from Sergei’s intrusive stare. Ivanov examined the turtle thoroughly, only ceasing his interrogations after it was clear that Jaha was not going to respond to any more questions, and he could not forcibly dissect the turtle without first killing the rough Quartermain and losing their ticket to the city. As they walked in the heat, he eventually removed his fur coat and draped it over one shoulder. So the Russian returned to dwelling on the blonde boy and his cloning machine, the turtle slid along inside his shell munching on his secret stash of pepperoni packets, the demon Legna fumed as he waited for his freedom, and all three of them tried to ignore Quartermain as he spoke.
“So then I looked him dead in the eye and told him, ‘It’s game over for you,’ and I hip-tossed him into an arcade machine. One of his friends grabbed me from behind, but I stepped on his foot, turned around, grabbed him by the head and said, ‘This is a two-player fight, buddy,’ and threw him onto the ground, and put my boot on his chest. The punk I hip-tossed came back for more, but I just stared at him and said, ‘get a life,’ and he started to cry. The owner of the arcade told me to leave, so I grabbed his belt and took all the quarters from the coin-roll dispensers he had as payment for my protection. Everyone in the mall screamed and cheered for me, so before I left, I turned around and said, ‘Winners don’t use drugs.’”
“That Mario dude eats mushrooms that make him grow.”
“Yeah,” Quartermain replied without turning to Jaha, “and he’s also a plumber, so he’s not a winner, now is he?”
“He’s got a princess.”
“He fights a turtle.”
“Bowser isn’t a turtle, man,” Jaha stuck his head out of his shell. “He’s a dinosaur.”
“Can you not,” Legna interrupted, “talk, about, dinosaurs?”
“Whatever you want, demon dude.”
Sergei wiped his brow, and looked up into the sky. The sun was on the other side of the city, but he still felt too hot. Rolling up a sleeve, he checked his digital watch - 88:88:88 AM. Indestructable. Nuclear Battery. Broken.
“Piece of trash. Curse this night.”
“It’s daytime, bro.”
“Do not test me, turtle. We each arrived at the hotel before nightfall. Only a few hours have passed.”
“The sky don’t lie.”
As the group navigated through the outskirts of the city, they met the fringes of a fairly large crowd. Many bodies simply stood in the street, facing into the city, murmuring and whispering. Max approached the nearest spectator, a man wearing a ragged white T-shirt and jeans, and put his hand on his shoulder.
“What’s going on, here?”
The man turned towards Max, and simply stared at him. His eyes were void of movement.
“Hey, man, I’m talking to you. It’s impolite to ignore people when they address you.”
The T-shirt and jeans turned back to face the center of the city.
“Someone should teach this guy a lesson,” Max began as flexed his right arm and cupped his large bicep with other hand, “and I happen to be some one.”
“Wait, Max... look.”
In one movement, Jaha bounced into the air and popped his arms and legs out from his shell. He grabbed a small axe and walked towards a fat, red-headed woman in the crowd.
“She’s not moving either, and neither is he, and neither is he,” he illustrated as he pointed the tip of his axe towards different people. “They’re all... lifeless.”
Sergei gripped his umbrella by the handle.
“The noise increases as the crowd thickens. We should approach the center of the city and find the source of their stasis,” the Russian suggested.
Quartermain pointed a finger toward the Russian and exclaimed, “now that’s an idea.”
The group made their way to the center of the city, gradually needing to push and shove to continue. The demon Legna shrank lower as they continued into the crowded mass. He moved slowly, his eyes darting from person to person, and when he noticed that he had lost track of the other three, he quickly turned heel and ran down an alley. Breathing heavily, he jumped onto the dark brick wall of the alleyway, and clawed his way to the roof. Once there, he stopped, sat on the edge of the roof, and took a slow breath.
A sudden noise shook Legna from his relaxation. He turned violently toward the noise, and noticed the belfry of the church before he recognized the gong of the bell. A second ring of the bell. Legna recognized the church from two hours’ past, and turned his head to find the museum he had previously explored with Sergei. The demon thought of Dr. Ulysses Day, and the bell rang a third, and final, time. Legna spread his wings and jumped from the roof.
Suddenly, the constant murmurs ceased. Jaha climbed up Quartermain’s back and stood on his shoulders to get a better view of what was ahead.
“There’s a stage, and a banner, but it’s covered. Hey, a blue guy is climbing on stage, with a megaphone.”
“...that time of the year again! Come one, come all, com-pete, in the tenth annual Old-fashioned Submarine Sandwich Eating Competition, sponsored by your very own Keller Carnival! A lot of three-man teams enter, only one three-man team remains victorious! For a nominal entry fee of-”
“Dude! Max,” Jaha pleaded. “We have to enter.”
“I don’t think we have to.”
“But we have three people, right here!”
The three stood for a moment.
“Where’s your friend, in the inappropriate red suit?”
Sergei grinned, and shrugged.
“No, man, we gotta enter. Subs are the best. And I bet there’s a prize.”
“There’s never a great prize at these things. They’re a rip-off.”
The man in the blue suit continued to shout, enticing the gathering crowd.
“Great prizes! Not a rip-off!”
“Hey Sir-gay, you gotta be our anchor.”
Jaha turned around to convince the Russian, but found an old hobo in his place.
“What is with those two? Whatever. We don’t even need him. Max, now you have to enter. The two of us can win, even a man down.”
“Of course we would win, but we have better things to do.”
The banner above the stage was revealed with a loud rustling. The man in the baby blue suit stared straight through the crowd at Max as he read the banner aloud,
“Are You MAN Enough?!”
Passion and pride blazed behind the dark sunglasses of Max Jeremiah Quartermain. Clenching a huge fist, he cracked his knuckles.
“Where do I sign up?”
Ulysses stepped out of the church and into a muggy, dark afternoon. The church was set on a precipitous hillside - a stone-stepped walkway led from the entrance at the top, winding down through thick green brush to a cobblestone clearing at the bottom. The grand scale of the church shielded the old man from even a murmur from the crowd on the other side of town. At the top of the stairs, Ulysses opened his pocket-watch to find the hands again illegible, slowly spinning in alternate directions. Now accustomed to the strange sight, but not having expected it, Ulysses closed the watch. As if purposefully satisfying his inquiry, the church bell began to ring. Ulysses simply kept his eyes at his feet, navigating the steep hill’s narrow stone steps one at a time, listening to the reverberations. Three gongs of the bell, and silence. If he arrived early, he would simply wait for Bruce.
The demon Legna watched from the sky, wings beating infrequently though powerfully, as he glided in circles overhead, watching his prey. What intuition had led to this fortunate circumstance. He would attack now, if not for the enclosed path the doctor followed; instead, with a slow twist of his wrist, he peered into Ulysses’ mind one last time - with absolutely fascinating results. Ulysses would not make his rendez-vous. The demon folded his thick leathery wings, diving through the air towards the cobbletstone street, and at the last second, upturned, spreading his wings and stopping inches from the ground.
After a few minutes’ trek, Ulysses arrived at the end of the path and saw the cobblestone clearing. Gathering his bearings, he looked to a street-sign - a single pole with three different destinations: Pier Harbor, Keller Carnival, and Hülle Granz Cathedral. Ulysses looked towards the carnival and wondered what could have happened to Bruce there, before remembering Ayoko. Looking back towards the church, he moved his umbrella from his right hand to his left, so that with his right, he could make the sign of the cross.
“Ritual can’t save you now, Doctor,” Legna spoke slowly.
Ulysses quickly turned to see the demon leaning against the street-sign. The creature’s wings were folded behind his back, and his gaunt, ribbed body no longer showed any sign of his previous injuries. He stood with an upturned open claw, examining his own nails, before meeting Ulysses’ gaze. From fifteen meters away, Legna’s jaundiced eyes looked completely coated yellow, but when the demon blinked, Ulysses saw his black, slit-like irides. The demon grinned, and at the sight of Legna’s wicked fangs, Ulysses gripped his umbrella tightly and began to re-evaluate his position, re-examining his surroundings for an advantage, without losing at least peripheral eye-contact with Legna.
“Where do you think you will go, old man?”
“All roads lead away from you,” Ulysses quipped.
“No, no, Ulysses. Humans... always thinking in the now, in the finite. Even in old age, even you.”
Ulysses stopped and turned towards the demon. Legna now held his long tail in his hands, slowly running a boney finger along its sharp, bladed edge.
“Where will I go?” Ulysses called back, somewhat loudly.
“Yes,” Legna hissed. With a kick of his foot, the demon Legna pushed off of the signpost and began to walk towards the old man. “Nearing sixty-nine years of age, you are, Ulysses. And you will die soon. Sooner than you want. Sooner than you expect. And where will you go, when you die?” The demon weaved slightly in his his steps as he spoke, upturning a clawed hand with each question: “In a box? In the dirt?”
“Death is not something that I fear, Legna,” the man stood firm. The demon did not halt his slow approach.
“Oh, but it is,” he hissed. “You may have accepted that you will die, but you do fear death. Because you don’t think you are done. And because,” the demon stopped, and raised a crooked eye, “you don’t know what awaits you.”
“I know what awaits me,” Ulysses repeated. “What awaits all the faithful when they die. You don’t scare me, Legna.”
“No?”
“If anything,” he argued, “your presence here, your existence, only affirms my belief.”
“Hah. What empty affirmation. Congratulations, Ulysses. Your faith... is sound,” Legna replied, praising him in mockery. “But you were raised that way. You were raised with religion, you were born into a religious family; even an inquisitive specimen such as you could believe in a God if he was raised that way from the very beginning. But what if you weren’t born into that family, Ulysses?”
“That’s something you can’t take from me. My family, or my belief.”
“No, what if?” Legna continued, seemingly ignoring the man’s response. “What if, say, you married into that religious family, without those beliefs? They would seem absurd! There’s no need for a creator, when everything can be explained by science. So why believe in one? It seems... ‘irrelevant.’”
The demon’s choice of words stunned Ulysses.
“Everything can be explained by science,” he heard his fiancée argue. “Creation doesn’t need to start at human life, just as it doesn’t revolve around the Earth. There is so much that is not explained by the Bible, that it's hard to accept Christianity as a truthful explanation to the world. You must understand,” Legna continued to recall, word for word, “if I am hesitant to raise our children that way.”
“Stop it!” Ulysses shouted.
“You don’t know what awaits you,” Legna approached, threatening. “But I have been to Hell. And I can tell you, dear Margaret doesn’t wait for you above.”
Ulysses roared, rasied his umbrella, and struck at Legna. The demon caught the umbrella with one hand, ripped it from the man’s hands, and viciously slapped Ulysses in the face with the back of his clawed hand. As Ulysses stumbled backward, Legna thrust the umbrella forward, throwing it into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground.
“You will never see her again,” Legna continued. “Margaret is dead - in a box, in the dirt. And you know it. You know she lied to you. She didn’t accept Christ. On her death throes? Please. She extended you a great kindness, convincing you she believed, but that is all she could do. Lie.”
On the ground, Ulysses rose to his hands and knees. He reached for his umbrella, and as he did, Legna took a step forward. With a slight skip, the demon swiftly brought his foot to the man’s stomach, kicking him over.
Ulysses rolled over onto his back, clutching his abdomen. He looked up at the demon through uneven spectacles.
“I don’t believe you,” he labored.
“Yes, you do. And that’s why it hurts. That’s why it took you so very long to get over her death. Disbelief, at first, led you all around the world. Like your childhood. Traveling around - Egypt, Asia, America - just like you did as a boy. Trying to forget her, trying to go back to your life far before her.”
“I didn-”
“Yes, you did!” Legna interrupted, kicking Ulysses over again. The demon leaned down, now, and stared the old man in the eye. “You tried to forget all about her. That is why you traveled. That is why, when Roger invited you to his wedding, you refused to attend! You missed the most important day in your son’s life - his marriage, the most sacrosanct ceremony - because you couldn’t bear remember yours.”
With obscene pleasure, the demon Legna piled Ulysses’ greatest fears and regrets, one on another, atop his broken body. The weight of the demon’s words held him to the ground. As Legna continued, Ulysses closed his eyes, but could still see the demon before him - the gaunt body, visible bones, dark red, leathery skin, sharp fangs, wicked wings, yellow eyes. He could not escape.
“Despicable. Almost pitiful.”
With a quick strike, Legna pierced the old man’s arm with his tail. The man screamed, and the demon stabbed again. As Ulysses squirmed, the tail shot through his chest. Legna twisted his tail sideways and pulled it out.
Legna continued, and Ulysses struggled to fight back, both against the demon and against his worst fears. He could not raise his voice against the demon, because he could no longer convince himself the demon was wrong. He began to cry. He rolled over.
Legna slashed at the old man’s back, again, and again. Ulysses screamed into the ground. Legna pushed him onto his back with a foot.
“Look at me,” the demon Legna demanded. Ulysses closed his eyes tightly and turned his head away from the demon, refusing the command. Legna leaned over in front of Ulysses, and the man abruptly turned his head the other direction.
“LOOK AT ME,” the demon shouted, grabbing the old man by the jacket and pulling his upper body off of the ground. Ulysses opened crying eyes to see Legna’s malicious, pointed grin. “Do you know what is truly sad? You would have been happy, Ulysses. You missed the wedding for nothing - you would have been happy, and instead, you prolonged your grief. You did it to yourself.”
Legna gripped Ulysses under the old man’s arms and extended his full wingspan. With a heave, the demon jumped into the air and thrust himself into the sky. With each beat of his leathery wings, Legna brought Ulysses higher and higher into the air.
“You are going to die here, Ulysses,” Legna spoke as he began to fly above the stone path, towards the church. “And you do fear death, because Margaret will not be there, and because you will not be here for Molly. Your death will crush her. You are leaving her, and she won't get over it. How will she fair without you? Her curiosity will be shadowed by depression. She will be overwhelmed with anxiety, with lonliness, with fear of betrayal.”
From above the church, Legna held Ulysses almost at an arm’s length. Pulsing up and down in the air with each beat of Legna’s leathery wings, they threatened to fall out of the sky at any moment. Ulysses looked down at the entrance to the church below, and then back at the demon.
“No... please...”
Legna brought Ulysses in close, one last time, and whispered.
“She will die without you.”
Legna let go, and without the extra weight, shot up into the air with the next fierce beat of his wings. He watched Ulysses fall towards the ground, and he laughed. On impact, the man let out a terrible scream of excruciating pain. The demon watched from above as Ulysses continued to cry out in pain. Satisfied with the lethal blow, the demon Legna turned and flew towards the pier.
“So then I looked him dead in the eye and told him, ‘It’s game over for you,’ and I hip-tossed him into an arcade machine. One of his friends grabbed me from behind, but I stepped on his foot, turned around, grabbed him by the head and said, ‘This is a two-player fight, buddy,’ and threw him onto the ground, and put my boot on his chest. The punk I hip-tossed came back for more, but I just stared at him and said, ‘get a life,’ and he started to cry. The owner of the arcade told me to leave, so I grabbed his belt and took all the quarters from the coin-roll dispensers he had as payment for my protection. Everyone in the mall screamed and cheered for me, so before I left, I turned around and said, ‘Winners don’t use drugs.’”
“That Mario dude eats mushrooms that make him grow.”
“Yeah,” Quartermain replied without turning to Jaha, “and he’s also a plumber, so he’s not a winner, now is he?”
“He’s got a princess.”
“He fights a turtle.”
“Bowser isn’t a turtle, man,” Jaha stuck his head out of his shell. “He’s a dinosaur.”
“Can you not,” Legna interrupted, “talk, about, dinosaurs?”
“Whatever you want, demon dude.”
Sergei wiped his brow, and looked up into the sky. The sun was on the other side of the city, but he still felt too hot. Rolling up a sleeve, he checked his digital watch - 88:88:88 AM. Indestructable. Nuclear Battery. Broken.
“Piece of trash. Curse this night.”
“It’s daytime, bro.”
“Do not test me, turtle. We each arrived at the hotel before nightfall. Only a few hours have passed.”
“The sky don’t lie.”
As the group navigated through the outskirts of the city, they met the fringes of a fairly large crowd. Many bodies simply stood in the street, facing into the city, murmuring and whispering. Max approached the nearest spectator, a man wearing a ragged white T-shirt and jeans, and put his hand on his shoulder.
“What’s going on, here?”
The man turned towards Max, and simply stared at him. His eyes were void of movement.
“Hey, man, I’m talking to you. It’s impolite to ignore people when they address you.”
The T-shirt and jeans turned back to face the center of the city.
“Someone should teach this guy a lesson,” Max began as flexed his right arm and cupped his large bicep with other hand, “and I happen to be some one.”
“Wait, Max... look.”
In one movement, Jaha bounced into the air and popped his arms and legs out from his shell. He grabbed a small axe and walked towards a fat, red-headed woman in the crowd.
“She’s not moving either, and neither is he, and neither is he,” he illustrated as he pointed the tip of his axe towards different people. “They’re all... lifeless.”
Sergei gripped his umbrella by the handle.
“The noise increases as the crowd thickens. We should approach the center of the city and find the source of their stasis,” the Russian suggested.
Quartermain pointed a finger toward the Russian and exclaimed, “now that’s an idea.”
The group made their way to the center of the city, gradually needing to push and shove to continue. The demon Legna shrank lower as they continued into the crowded mass. He moved slowly, his eyes darting from person to person, and when he noticed that he had lost track of the other three, he quickly turned heel and ran down an alley. Breathing heavily, he jumped onto the dark brick wall of the alleyway, and clawed his way to the roof. Once there, he stopped, sat on the edge of the roof, and took a slow breath.
A sudden noise shook Legna from his relaxation. He turned violently toward the noise, and noticed the belfry of the church before he recognized the gong of the bell. A second ring of the bell. Legna recognized the church from two hours’ past, and turned his head to find the museum he had previously explored with Sergei. The demon thought of Dr. Ulysses Day, and the bell rang a third, and final, time. Legna spread his wings and jumped from the roof.
Suddenly, the constant murmurs ceased. Jaha climbed up Quartermain’s back and stood on his shoulders to get a better view of what was ahead.
“There’s a stage, and a banner, but it’s covered. Hey, a blue guy is climbing on stage, with a megaphone.”
“...that time of the year again! Come one, come all, com-pete, in the tenth annual Old-fashioned Submarine Sandwich Eating Competition, sponsored by your very own Keller Carnival! A lot of three-man teams enter, only one three-man team remains victorious! For a nominal entry fee of-”
“Dude! Max,” Jaha pleaded. “We have to enter.”
“I don’t think we have to.”
“But we have three people, right here!”
The three stood for a moment.
“Where’s your friend, in the inappropriate red suit?”
Sergei grinned, and shrugged.
“No, man, we gotta enter. Subs are the best. And I bet there’s a prize.”
“There’s never a great prize at these things. They’re a rip-off.”
The man in the blue suit continued to shout, enticing the gathering crowd.
“Great prizes! Not a rip-off!”
“Hey Sir-gay, you gotta be our anchor.”
Jaha turned around to convince the Russian, but found an old hobo in his place.
“What is with those two? Whatever. We don’t even need him. Max, now you have to enter. The two of us can win, even a man down.”
“Of course we would win, but we have better things to do.”
The banner above the stage was revealed with a loud rustling. The man in the baby blue suit stared straight through the crowd at Max as he read the banner aloud,
“Are You MAN Enough?!”
Passion and pride blazed behind the dark sunglasses of Max Jeremiah Quartermain. Clenching a huge fist, he cracked his knuckles.
“Where do I sign up?”
Ulysses stepped out of the church and into a muggy, dark afternoon. The church was set on a precipitous hillside - a stone-stepped walkway led from the entrance at the top, winding down through thick green brush to a cobblestone clearing at the bottom. The grand scale of the church shielded the old man from even a murmur from the crowd on the other side of town. At the top of the stairs, Ulysses opened his pocket-watch to find the hands again illegible, slowly spinning in alternate directions. Now accustomed to the strange sight, but not having expected it, Ulysses closed the watch. As if purposefully satisfying his inquiry, the church bell began to ring. Ulysses simply kept his eyes at his feet, navigating the steep hill’s narrow stone steps one at a time, listening to the reverberations. Three gongs of the bell, and silence. If he arrived early, he would simply wait for Bruce.
The demon Legna watched from the sky, wings beating infrequently though powerfully, as he glided in circles overhead, watching his prey. What intuition had led to this fortunate circumstance. He would attack now, if not for the enclosed path the doctor followed; instead, with a slow twist of his wrist, he peered into Ulysses’ mind one last time - with absolutely fascinating results. Ulysses would not make his rendez-vous. The demon folded his thick leathery wings, diving through the air towards the cobbletstone street, and at the last second, upturned, spreading his wings and stopping inches from the ground.
After a few minutes’ trek, Ulysses arrived at the end of the path and saw the cobblestone clearing. Gathering his bearings, he looked to a street-sign - a single pole with three different destinations: Pier Harbor, Keller Carnival, and Hülle Granz Cathedral. Ulysses looked towards the carnival and wondered what could have happened to Bruce there, before remembering Ayoko. Looking back towards the church, he moved his umbrella from his right hand to his left, so that with his right, he could make the sign of the cross.
“Ritual can’t save you now, Doctor,” Legna spoke slowly.
Ulysses quickly turned to see the demon leaning against the street-sign. The creature’s wings were folded behind his back, and his gaunt, ribbed body no longer showed any sign of his previous injuries. He stood with an upturned open claw, examining his own nails, before meeting Ulysses’ gaze. From fifteen meters away, Legna’s jaundiced eyes looked completely coated yellow, but when the demon blinked, Ulysses saw his black, slit-like irides. The demon grinned, and at the sight of Legna’s wicked fangs, Ulysses gripped his umbrella tightly and began to re-evaluate his position, re-examining his surroundings for an advantage, without losing at least peripheral eye-contact with Legna.
“Where do you think you will go, old man?”
“All roads lead away from you,” Ulysses quipped.
“No, no, Ulysses. Humans... always thinking in the now, in the finite. Even in old age, even you.”
Ulysses stopped and turned towards the demon. Legna now held his long tail in his hands, slowly running a boney finger along its sharp, bladed edge.
“Where will I go?” Ulysses called back, somewhat loudly.
“Yes,” Legna hissed. With a kick of his foot, the demon Legna pushed off of the signpost and began to walk towards the old man. “Nearing sixty-nine years of age, you are, Ulysses. And you will die soon. Sooner than you want. Sooner than you expect. And where will you go, when you die?” The demon weaved slightly in his his steps as he spoke, upturning a clawed hand with each question: “In a box? In the dirt?”
“Death is not something that I fear, Legna,” the man stood firm. The demon did not halt his slow approach.
“Oh, but it is,” he hissed. “You may have accepted that you will die, but you do fear death. Because you don’t think you are done. And because,” the demon stopped, and raised a crooked eye, “you don’t know what awaits you.”
“I know what awaits me,” Ulysses repeated. “What awaits all the faithful when they die. You don’t scare me, Legna.”
“No?”
“If anything,” he argued, “your presence here, your existence, only affirms my belief.”
“Hah. What empty affirmation. Congratulations, Ulysses. Your faith... is sound,” Legna replied, praising him in mockery. “But you were raised that way. You were raised with religion, you were born into a religious family; even an inquisitive specimen such as you could believe in a God if he was raised that way from the very beginning. But what if you weren’t born into that family, Ulysses?”
“That’s something you can’t take from me. My family, or my belief.”
“No, what if?” Legna continued, seemingly ignoring the man’s response. “What if, say, you married into that religious family, without those beliefs? They would seem absurd! There’s no need for a creator, when everything can be explained by science. So why believe in one? It seems... ‘irrelevant.’”
The demon’s choice of words stunned Ulysses.
“Everything can be explained by science,” he heard his fiancée argue. “Creation doesn’t need to start at human life, just as it doesn’t revolve around the Earth. There is so much that is not explained by the Bible, that it's hard to accept Christianity as a truthful explanation to the world. You must understand,” Legna continued to recall, word for word, “if I am hesitant to raise our children that way.”
“Stop it!” Ulysses shouted.
“You don’t know what awaits you,” Legna approached, threatening. “But I have been to Hell. And I can tell you, dear Margaret doesn’t wait for you above.”
Ulysses roared, rasied his umbrella, and struck at Legna. The demon caught the umbrella with one hand, ripped it from the man’s hands, and viciously slapped Ulysses in the face with the back of his clawed hand. As Ulysses stumbled backward, Legna thrust the umbrella forward, throwing it into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground.
“You will never see her again,” Legna continued. “Margaret is dead - in a box, in the dirt. And you know it. You know she lied to you. She didn’t accept Christ. On her death throes? Please. She extended you a great kindness, convincing you she believed, but that is all she could do. Lie.”
On the ground, Ulysses rose to his hands and knees. He reached for his umbrella, and as he did, Legna took a step forward. With a slight skip, the demon swiftly brought his foot to the man’s stomach, kicking him over.
Ulysses rolled over onto his back, clutching his abdomen. He looked up at the demon through uneven spectacles.
“I don’t believe you,” he labored.
“Yes, you do. And that’s why it hurts. That’s why it took you so very long to get over her death. Disbelief, at first, led you all around the world. Like your childhood. Traveling around - Egypt, Asia, America - just like you did as a boy. Trying to forget her, trying to go back to your life far before her.”
“I didn-”
“Yes, you did!” Legna interrupted, kicking Ulysses over again. The demon leaned down, now, and stared the old man in the eye. “You tried to forget all about her. That is why you traveled. That is why, when Roger invited you to his wedding, you refused to attend! You missed the most important day in your son’s life - his marriage, the most sacrosanct ceremony - because you couldn’t bear remember yours.”
With obscene pleasure, the demon Legna piled Ulysses’ greatest fears and regrets, one on another, atop his broken body. The weight of the demon’s words held him to the ground. As Legna continued, Ulysses closed his eyes, but could still see the demon before him - the gaunt body, visible bones, dark red, leathery skin, sharp fangs, wicked wings, yellow eyes. He could not escape.
“Despicable. Almost pitiful.”
With a quick strike, Legna pierced the old man’s arm with his tail. The man screamed, and the demon stabbed again. As Ulysses squirmed, the tail shot through his chest. Legna twisted his tail sideways and pulled it out.
Legna continued, and Ulysses struggled to fight back, both against the demon and against his worst fears. He could not raise his voice against the demon, because he could no longer convince himself the demon was wrong. He began to cry. He rolled over.
Legna slashed at the old man’s back, again, and again. Ulysses screamed into the ground. Legna pushed him onto his back with a foot.
“Look at me,” the demon Legna demanded. Ulysses closed his eyes tightly and turned his head away from the demon, refusing the command. Legna leaned over in front of Ulysses, and the man abruptly turned his head the other direction.
“LOOK AT ME,” the demon shouted, grabbing the old man by the jacket and pulling his upper body off of the ground. Ulysses opened crying eyes to see Legna’s malicious, pointed grin. “Do you know what is truly sad? You would have been happy, Ulysses. You missed the wedding for nothing - you would have been happy, and instead, you prolonged your grief. You did it to yourself.”
Legna gripped Ulysses under the old man’s arms and extended his full wingspan. With a heave, the demon jumped into the air and thrust himself into the sky. With each beat of his leathery wings, Legna brought Ulysses higher and higher into the air.
“You are going to die here, Ulysses,” Legna spoke as he began to fly above the stone path, towards the church. “And you do fear death, because Margaret will not be there, and because you will not be here for Molly. Your death will crush her. You are leaving her, and she won't get over it. How will she fair without you? Her curiosity will be shadowed by depression. She will be overwhelmed with anxiety, with lonliness, with fear of betrayal.”
From above the church, Legna held Ulysses almost at an arm’s length. Pulsing up and down in the air with each beat of Legna’s leathery wings, they threatened to fall out of the sky at any moment. Ulysses looked down at the entrance to the church below, and then back at the demon.
“No... please...”
Legna brought Ulysses in close, one last time, and whispered.
“She will die without you.”
Legna let go, and without the extra weight, shot up into the air with the next fierce beat of his wings. He watched Ulysses fall towards the ground, and he laughed. On impact, the man let out a terrible scream of excruciating pain. The demon watched from above as Ulysses continued to cry out in pain. Satisfied with the lethal blow, the demon Legna turned and flew towards the pier.
