Fury From Hell (8 page)

The man stopped and was standing under a street light watching as Jennifer crossed the street.

The Fury got a good look at him.  He was thin and his energy was coiled tightly like a spring ready to release.  His breathing was audible through the dark ski mask he wore.  His blood lust was rising and the Fury realized that the man wanted the host…
its brand new host!

Snapping the host’s head forward, the Fury made Jennifer shorten her stride.  The Fury heard the man’s sure, quick, footfalls cross the deserted street.  Pushing its host to the background, the Fury bent the host’s body pretending to tie her shoelace.  The Fury chose to kneel near the base of a tree whose roots had upturned a large section of the sidewalk.  The unexpected move made the would-be assailant falter; just the response the Fury sought.  With ferocious animal speed the Fury spun and attacked the tall, skinny man.

A startled cry escaped from the would-be attacker.  Although his arm was perfectly positioned to arc downward and pierce Jennifer’s heart with the Mora of Sweden AB Stainless Steel military knife his fear had paralyzed him.  In front of him was an image his eyes couldn’t fathom.  He blinked.  He pawed at his eyes and his vision didn’t change; it was showing him what he knew he couldn’t be seeing.  He saw the petite brunette’s flesh morphing from smooth supple youthful pink skin into something dark leathery green, scaly dry and calloused-looking.  There were talons where moments ago there were nimble fingers.

His pause gave the Fury the opening it needed.  The final little sharp tooth slid in cutting the host’s top lip.  The transformation complete, the Fury fell upon the terrified man biting, tearing and chewing as a high-pitched feral hiss emerged from the demon’s thickened throat.

Fury Abatu enjoyed the blood-thirst-kill-pain exuding from the doomed man.  Abatu drank its full of the man’s thick rich blood streaming from his jugular then went for his belly.  With one swipe, the man’s innards spilled out spraying his blood all over the trunk of the tree and the sidewalk; the warm wetness of his life essence ebbed away in the darkness of the night.  Abatu greedily devoured the man’s entrails but left his genitals untouched. Satiation was a potent drug and the demon’s laughter came out in gurgles as the blood oozed between its needle-pointed teeth.  It slid down the host’s elongated jaw and dripped onto the light grey fur covering Abatu’s upper body.

Peering around with eyes that could see in the dark as well as any feline, Abatu’s almost silent attack seemed to have gone unnoticed by any nearby humans.  Fury Abatu made Jennifer stand upright and walk away with an air of nonchalance.  As the demon put distance between itself and the body, Abatu made the host wipe away the telltale signs of the murder.  The Fury made Jennifer wipe the blood off of her morphing face and hands.  There was not much that could be done about the torn shirt and the bits of coagulated blood from the small flesh wound across Jennifer’s stomach and right thigh.  However, the darkness made the blood specks less noticeable to the few that the demon-infested human passed on its way home.

Abatu knew what to do with the damaged clothing.  As soon as it got the host indoors, it would make sure that there would be no trace of blood left. Checking on the host’s spirit, Abatu saw Jennifer was sleeping soundly far in the background.  Smiling its disarming, chilling, smile, the Fury was pleased that the host did not know she had just killed a man.

***

Friday, November 9
^th
, Midday

Something was buzzing incessantly.  Jennifer groaned and swatted around her ears.  Coming out of a thick bilious slumber, Jennifer couldn’t fathom how a fly or mosquito got into her apartment in early November.  The buzzing continued and the ineffectual swatting brought Jennifer up out of her sleep drunk mind and body.  She bolted upright when she realized it was her landline phone.  She leaned over and grabbed it.

“Yeah?!”

“My, don’t you sound fetching.”

Jennifer flopped back onto her fluffy stomach sleeper pillows before responding.

What is it, Feinster?”

“So much for getting a text when you got home last night or, was it this morning?  Was he
that
good?”

“What are you talking — oh, you mean Chad.  We said goodnight right near the bar.  I didn’t even let him see me home.”

“Why?  What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I take offense at that.  Why does something have to be wrong with
me
because I didn’t jump into his bed the first night I laid eyes on him?”

“Because you haven’t been laid in all the years I’ve known you.  You must be clamped so tight that the next time might kill you.  That’s why.”

Jennifer snorted and some of her ire dissipated only to usher in the beginnings of a pounding headache.  She immediately groaned and put her free hand to her forehead.

“Uh-huh.  That hangover’s kicking in.  You do know its 12:30 right?”

“As in P.M.?”

“Always thought you were a sharp cookie…”

“I slept all day?”

“Apparently.  And what’s worse…by yourself.”

Jennifer sat up and looked around searching for the outfit from the night before.  She racked her brain but had no recollection of getting home.  She remembered the pleasant good-bye she shared with Chad and her walking off…but
nothing
else until her phone started ringing this morning.  Her outfit was nowhere to be seen.

“What was I wearing last night?”

“Damn, the Bomb and the Hurricanes did you in!  Oh yeah, and the Lynchburg Lemonade.  Chick, you were downing them left and right —”

“Feinster.  Clothing.  Focus.” 

Betty sighed.

“Jeans, ripped white-T, cute boots and a bolero-style denim jacket oh, yeah, and hot smoky eye make-up done by Babs.  Why?  You came home naked?”  Jennifer could practically hear the leer through the phone.

“Me?  I wore make-up?”

Jennifer flung the light comforter back and hopped out of bed wincing as the movement made her head and right thigh throb.  She peered into her vanity mirror and saw her face was scrubbed clean.  The pain made her check.  She lifted her white tank top and saw a faint scratch that was scabbing over.  On her right thigh was a longer scratch; a bit deeper that was smarting.  She looked back up into the mirror.  Jennifer saw panic in her own eyes but there wasn’t a trace of make-up to be seen.  She strode into her bathroom and flicked on all of the lights; still not one iota of make-up anywhere.

“What’s wrong, Jennifer?”

She ignored Betty and said, “Let me call you back.  I gotta figure something out.”

Jennifer clicked off before her friend could complain at her.  She opened her hamper and stared into it not believing what she saw.

There was nothing in it.

She knew that it was half-full yesterday morning; she had planned to do the laundry today; her day off.  She walked into the bedroom and pulled open the closet.  Nothing was out of place.  She walked out of her bedroom through the living room and into the kitchen.  She checked the tiny garbage bins that were never full due to her lack of usage of this particular room.  Then, she checked the bin in her combo den/office; all were empty.  Spotless.  Pristine.

Jennifer walked back to the center of the apartment, the living room, and stood there gazing at nothing in particular.  She crossed one arm across her chest and used the other to rest her chin.  She blinked rapidly as she tried to stem the flow that was threatening to come.  She blinked faster and out-blinked the hot salty stream that threatened.

Looking at it from the most objective angle, it almost appeared to Jennifer as if the only heterosexual fairy she knew of — Mr. Clean — had come through, did a very thorough deep clean and then had thrown everything away.

She grabbed her trench coat out of the small vestibule closet and rushed down the stairs in the 3-family house she lived in on St. Mark’s Avenue off of the ever bustling Flatbush Avenue.  She was intent on rummaging through the trash receptacles in the front of her building.

Jennifer stopped cold when she opened the front door.  The trash cans were by the curb.  It was Friday; garbage pickup was Monday, Wednesday and…
today
…Friday.

Back upstairs, Jennifer sat down in a slump on her couch; her trench still on.  Even her stylish futon with the tan fabric, reminiscent of burlap, with the dark brown leather and the snazzy hand placed rhinestones to make the initials of her name twinkling at her on each of the front planks of the couch didn’t bring the usual smile to her face.  She grabbed her favorite embroidered throw flower pillows in gauzy dark brown organza and hugged it close as she stared again into the distance.

Why would I come home well after two in the morning, take off my clothes, scrub my face, shower then empty all the trash in my apartment including the clothes I wore last night, and the small thing of laundry?  Only to come back in and play the role of Mr. Clean with the magic eraser sponges making everything spotless?

Looking at it with her cop eyes, she knew the behavior was to cover up something possibly criminal.  But Jennifer had never committed a crime other than jaywalking and defending her childhood self from an unprincipled uncle…

Refusing to recall the gory details, Jennifer refocused.  She knew certain things about herself.  By nature, she was a neat freak; everything had its place and there was an organizational system for everything including her color-coded rubber bands.  Jennifer pursed her lips and crossed her arms.  Her cop-mind took over.  It shouted,
Murder cover-up!
  Why else would clothes be thrown away, and all surfaces scrubbed with such efficacy?  She tried to ignore her twitching eyebrow and shoved the memory back of the huge bottle of bleach the younger Jennifer had hauled out of the pantry and wobbled up the stairs with…

The other tack her cop-mind pulled was that she could she have simply thrown up all over the place including into her hamper so wasted that she thought it was the toilet.  And, because she was so wasted she simply had forgotten the whole untidy affair.

Jennifer mulled over this hypothesis.  She didn’t remember getting home so if she had thrown up again when she reached home her instinct would have been to clean it up immediately no matter how dog-tired she was.

Jennifer got up went into the kitchen and began preparing a pot of coffee with her twelve-cup Hamilton Beach 2-way Brewer.  It came with a commuter cup and brewed a pot of coffee or filled her commuter cup.  Every time Jennifer used it, an uncontrollable silly grin spread across her face.

Six minutes later, while pouring her first cup, she realized that if she were thinking about anyone else, she may have had to go down the road of criminal activity.  But this was her good ‘ole self.  She was the anal Jennifer who couldn’t stand a hair out of place.  That was how she escaped the trauma of the oft-repeated molestations in her childhood.  She had always cleaned up afterwards using the strongest antibacterial soaps and creams with copious amounts of hot water.   She had scrubbed until her skin was well past the normal healthy, rosy glow.

Plopping one heaping teaspoon of organic sugar into her cup along with a dollop of half-and-half, she stirred and sipped.  The worry eased out of her shoulders bit by bit.

The more she thought about it the more she grew convinced that was what had happened.  She had triggered because of all of the drinks.  Then, she made a mess which stands to reason why her OCD had kicked in but it went a little overboard this time.

“Mystery solved!”

She shrugged off the last bit of worry and the furrow in her brow smoothed out.  She pushed away from the marble island counter and walked purposefully to the fridge.  Her grumbling stomach alerted her that food was in order.

As Jennifer rummaged through the orderly Glad color coordinated containers — red for proteins, green for veggies, blue for carbs — searching for something to eat the Fury peeked into Jennifer’s mind.

Abatu saw and felt that peace and tranquility had returned.  The demon knew that it had to stay deeply hidden so the host would continue to find the OCD scenario plausible.  Any prodding would feel false in this host’s psyche and untold legions of problems could ensue from one small misstep.

The Fury recalled many failed and aborted host attempts because it had pushed too hard too early.  The demon’s seven hundred and three years were serving it well.  It shrank into the background, satisfied with itself.  It was finally beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe, this host might be able to avoid the untimely violent death that usually awaited each of the demon’s previous hosts.  This host’s fortitude and training as law enforcement personnel gave this host an advantage the others simply did not have.  Settling in by Jennifer’s limbic brain, the Fury bided its time.

***

Friday, November 9
^th
, 2:15 P.M.

Dropping the v-shaped outer bread crust onto her white plate, Jennifer picked up her phone sighed and did what she promised to do.  After three rings, he answered.

“Wow.  I didn’t think you’d actually call.”

“Well, that let’s me know your batting average ain’t that good no matter what you say.”

He chuckled.

“Touché, Milady.  How’s that headache?”

“Trying to ignore it.  Coffee does nothing for it, does it?”

“Not a damn thing.”

The conversation faltered.  After a pause, he blurted.

“Dinner?  Tonight?”

Jennifer took a deep inaudible breath blinking back the fear and anxiety then punted.

“Can’t.  Got things to do.  Maybe next week?  This is my first break in over a week and I need some downtime,” she rambled.

“Downtime.  Right.  What better way to unwind than to go out and relax?  You know?  I guess you don’t subscribe to that whole no-time-like-the-present stuff, huh?”

His pressuring made her testy.

“What?  You desperate or something?  Next week’s good for me.”