Short story

Check this out, i haven't finished it yet, not sure if i'm going to but if people want more then i will...

The killer walks in wet steps



In this city it never rains, but it howls.

The rain kept coming. It clung to my face, my hands, my battered leather bomber. Like little icey needles throwing themselves relentlessly at my skin, destroying their entire being in a millisecond.

In this city it never rains, but it howls.

Death. My good friend, my accomplice, my bitter enemy.
She, he, it, was never far away and always one step ahead; always one body in the making, always one body in the taking.

I stopped breathing for a second, took in my surroundings, glanced down at the gun in my hand, glanced over my shoulder at the dead, black, glistening ocean lapping up the dirt sand and cursed this fucking rain.
The city skyline in the close distance looked like it was fighting the darkness, the monolithic fingers scratching upwards resisting the encompassing clouds of misery, office lights the only witness to the struggle. Somewhere up there, late night workers were putting the finishing touches to some dreary documentation, drinking soluable coffee, thinking of their brief futures and fucking their OFFICE FANTASY IN THEIR MINDS.

This is a real job right here. The meat of the town. This is what i think.

Matheson crawled in the side door of the warehouse, left slightly ajar. The dark portal resembling a deep gash in a forearm, or the depths of womanhood, sucking in my partner head, legs and all. I followed up the driveway, loose stones underfoot, weeds penetrating paving left for dead some years ago. Villains with top hats and thick moustaches always hid in buildings like this in books and films so why not real-life, doesn't it make for a more interesting read?? Fiction encroaching on the real-thing, the real-deal. Baudrillard: Simulacrum. Reality is just our experience of non-reality we've read or seen. Ha. Right now, i wasn't thinking philosophy, just the whirring of my heartbeat, the blood pumping in my brain.
Felt like a headache, but just adrenaline playing mind games.

I scraped along the west well, an assasin in the court of the king. This warehouse a medieval fortress, sleeping, unknowing that Macbeth had murder in mind.
We'd been called out, a routine check on a district warehouse, some illegal rave gone bad.
The standard: Drugs plus kids plus overspilling attitudes equals a blades' exploration to the belly of some poor pillhead.
Things seemed normal at first: lots of witnesses, guilty party gone astray, chase commences. We had to assume this kid was armed, scared and a threat to us but most of all, to himself.
We assume so much these days.

Sporadic raves of this kind had been popping up all over the outskirts of this town far too frequently, so often as to wear our thin blue line that inch thinner fortnightly. We were tired and shattered like the ramparts of a sieged citadel.
Still dripping with damp.
Breath in the air my only companion for now.
Higginson's death at the hands of one of the rave kids some weeks back had really shaken up the already lagging team. Organised chaos had run amok, the kid had leaped on Higginson like a rabid ape, tearing at hair, gouging at eyes, wonderlust at the suprise police raid.
The forensics that put the kid's face back together after Matheson had blown it a kiss with four 9mm rounds to the skull, had discovered the perp had filed his two canine teeth into fangs of some kind; The maw trephining the bone to the brain, exit black ooze and pieces of gold. The rainbow's not far away.

Media attention had riled the station into something of a hotbed of controversy and we didn't want to sleep. The more the decadence kept happening the more ichor was spilled. It was like doom was the intended intoxication for the youths of Settlebed City.
Hysterical mothers, resembling that of Iraqi women who had seen their sons disappear in a red haze propelled from the western invaders, were roaming the pages of the tabloid trash looking for scapegoats and answers.
"Who will stop the carnage from happening again?"
"Police lose war on party invaders!"
"Mothers plunge to death after son suicide shindig."
Crass.

We were right back in the darkness again. bROKEN gLASS windows let in shards of the gloomy light outside. The sparse warehouse a den for rats, bums and bones of those who had punished themselves with ecstasy from the brown. That exodus from society that takes place with addiction and force of habit. The stereotypical miscreants. Voids replace eyes, puzzling promises of ruined highs.

Silence. A blanket of such that rings in your ears, an unholy din that deafens you with every fucking step. The silence briefly penetrated by a rustle from the wind, a rumbling of a distant, passing truck or the footsteps from Matheson's Dr Martens he was so inclined to wear. Silence again. A distant, vacant scratching.

"Oh i'm watching you my sickly sweet sugarheads. I'm watching every lustful move that you make, and i'm going to make love to you with a permeating phallus that you'll never ever forget. I'm itching my flesh-tattered arms to get clutch of you."

The roof: Dark, pigeons nestling each other, brooding, watching the unfolding narrative from their safe homes. I wish i had a safe home. Heartbeats my only allies. Matheson 20 metres ahead, no, a grouping of rags and stone. Could have sworn it was him. Need to check my eyesight. OPTICIANS APPT. Not right now, concentrate Billy. Breath in the musty air and wake up.

So fucking dark. cOLD was creeping into my clothes now, slowly the damp was there, caressing my skin like a hospital nurse whose touch was cold and empty and familiar. Trouser cotton stuck to thighs as creeping low forces it to ride up the top of the leg.
Seeing was a mystery commodity.

I kept to my left, kept low, kept fast, kept quiet. I could see 8 metres ahead Matheson kneeling over something.
Himself.
Puddles. Wet, dark and with a deep, warm smell. Blood. Matheson's blood. Emptied from the remnants of what was a stomach.
Disembowling the future right before his very eyes; with age old efficiency.
Up the base of the spine, sheer panic, terror with a twist of adrenaline to give you that extra kick, a natural high. Adrenal glands pumping, making the mouth taste odd. BITTER DROOL.
Spatitoutlipsweredryhandsweretremblingandidartedmygazeabout.
Nothing but shadows.
And nothing was going to save Matheson now, two empty wells represented his eyeballs staring up at the previously pursued, down at the entrance of his abdomen, the rising ground, then nothing. Save an empty, lonely death.

Damn this fucking rain.

Death. My good friend, my accomplice, my bitter enemy. "You're always one step ahead and forever watching, a macabre grin." Whispering under panting breath. I couldn't see a damn thing.
I picked up Matheson's fallen Beretta, tucked it into my belt and held my breath. Whomever we;d chased into this building was a far more disturbed, more complex individual than we had first recognised.

And now...
Now we were the ones who were being chased down, cornered in a pitch black enterprise.

They say it never rains in this city, but it howls. And its howling in the back of my skull and its howling in the roots of my skin. I plaster my hands to my face and wait.

...