Monster Of Id Arisen

(This story has an element of near-incest, but is not the focus of the story. MST)

*

A slammed door ended the argument.

The cold, suffocating silence of the house confirmed it was over as well.

My daughter, Kesha had just left home saying she would rather live on the streets than live under my roof. Feeling as if my legs could not support me, I stumbled back to fall into the padded chair ... where once I had held her to my chest. Rocking her in my arms for hours, quieting the colic cries that kept her uncaring mother awake.

From this chair I had shouted the last words into a phone that had ended my twelve year marriage to that woman. It was in this same chair that I had been sitting, two months later, when the phone rang telling me they

believed

my ex-wife was dead in a car wreck, and could I tell the police the name of our dentist so they could get her records.

There were a lot of tears soaked into this old brown upholstery. It didn't mind a few more. Why should it, tears stain far less than other things. Things like ...

Getting to my feet, I walked to the closet and began tossing out winter coats, fall jackets, spring umbrellas and a ton of other seasonal crap.

I knew about other stains.

Knew all about them.

"Know about them all too well indeed," I muttered to myself. The two wooden shelf boards followed the junk and then I tossed the metal coat-hanger bar out the way. Hooking a finger into a hole in the back drywall, I gave a tug and--with a rictus grin beginning to from on my face--I to worked the wallboard panel out the way. I let it tumble to the floor not caring now about hiding any more.

Those days were past.

Dead and done.

Behind that panel, that had not moved in years, was a part of me. A part that I meticulously cut away like a rotting arm, least it infect the rest of the body. A surgically, cold, and impersonal practicality. What was in there could not live under the same roof as my wife and child.

But my wife was gone.

Dead in a car that burned so terribly hot they had to identify her and her lover's bodies by their teeth. Such a terribly hot fire. Sometimes, in my dreams, I feel the flames of it still.

Now my daughter was gone, out the very same door, heralded by the same types of screams from myself that had carried her mother away.

"Slut. Whore. Cunt. Bitch."

I took down my mask from the wall hook.

~"Long time no see, Edward. This a simple social call or did you finally get that itch again you just can't scratch?"~

Turning the mask over in my hands, I looked at those empty, soulless eye holes.

"My daughter left. Just like her mother."

~ "So?"~ There was a rueful chuckle. ~" Do you think just because she got tired of her whimpering, simpering father and left your sorry ass that you can come beggin' to me to put your crap right? Been there, done that, got the bloody T-shirt to prove it Edward."~

My eyes went to the shirt hanging in this hidden place on a hanger. It was nice, neat, and with an arrow crisp collar, looking like it was just ironed. The once arterial red splash across the right side was nothing but a dark brown stain now, so many years later.

"Yes," I said simply.

Again that chuckle. ~"Well, I always was a sucker for you, besides I get to have all the fun after all."~

I looked at the mask, disgusted as always by its bloodthirstiness.

"Don't hurt her, not like her mother. She's young, silly, thinks she knows the world. It's not her fault."

~"No, it's yours! And now you want me to clean up the mess. Same old Edward. Gutless, spineless, and afraid to get his hands dirty to do what has to be done."~

"Please?"

There was a disgusted growl. ~"Fine. Kitten gloves this time, but just for her!"~

"Yes. Just for her. The rest ... let them burn."

~"You know where she went? Yes? Then I'll know."~

As I lifted the mask to place it upon my skin I heard a whisper ... so breathy soft as to send chill to my spine.

~"Edward ... is it Halloween?"~ asked the Hidden One.

I took a deep breath and pulled the mask on. It fit, as always, like a second face, so tight it clawed at my skin. I felt hair pull out and then the ripping of my stubbled jawline. With a cry of pain, I tugged it past my throat and placed my palms over my face and shifted those last tortured bits into place. Panting for breath, I turned and looked at the mirror on the hallway wall.

~"Yes, it's Halloween, my old friend."~

Our combined laughter could have scared the dead awake and the living to death.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Gone were the days when candy was dandy but liquor is quicker. Now its meth is best, but how about crack for a snack.

These streets had grown meaner, and my daughter was out there somewhere.

~"Oh, will you shut up, already. I've got this. Have I ever let you down before?"~

I had to nod an acknowledge of that.

As we walked down the dark street that should have been filled with costumed kids but was home to pimps and pusher, whores and thieves ... I had to. I needed this part of myself here and I didn't want him to get mad and leave me. He knew these places. He knew these streets. He was born here. In these blood soaked gutters. In the putrid filth of them.

Hate; it's so very powerful.

Revenge; can drive you to do things you never knew you could.

Insanity; lets you not care about the impossible.

And when you take all three and, through the brutality of the streets, force feed down the throat of a simple man ... what's born is powerful. When you then break him in ways he never knew he could be broken. You can make a force that only nature can rival for destructive energy.

And in these bloody, gore-filled, trash-strewn gutters that trinity was what gave birth to what, some, would call a second personality.

I deign that.

I think of it more as if most of what had been ... me ... had died. Bled out into the already overflowing gutter, and all that was left was him ... and the shallow ghost I had been since I met my wife; since my daughter Kesha was born.

Together we stalk down the sidewalks as if this place is ours. All around us this Halloween night is filled with predators. They hunt for easy prey from the shadows, like all hunters. They target the old and the young first, again like all predatory animals.

And that's what they were, animals.

I've seen them in all their forms by now. And oh, there are many forms of predator. Easily as many types as they have types of innocent prey to hunt upon.

I take a deep breath and feel again the tightness of my leathers, the warmth of protective animal hide. The wolf's skin that lets what was once a sheep walk as an Alpha among the Fenrir packs.

We are together again. We are alive again, no longer the Ghost and the Hidden One. We are again the Hunter. And we are very hungry.

So very hungry indeed.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

There was no way that I could let us walk into the building where my daughter was ... in this state, no matter how badly part of me wanted to. It was already going to be a bloody slaughter, but to let us enter unfed was madness. Lunacy slaked with blood is far better than insanity unstained and famished.

And to be fair the child-selling pimp started it.

I mean it's not like we went looking for someone to hurt, in so many ... interesting ways. It's not like we walked eight to ten blocks out the way to grab a guy that was such a pain in the ass that most people would have gotten a medal for what we did to him.

I mean ...

Oh fuck it, who am I kidding?

We loved it!

When we were young, so very young, so very long ago, we lived on a farm once. A farm that had goats. One day a goat got caught in the barbwire. Our father had to kill it; it was too tangled to get it free. I had to help hold the goat still while he cut its throat.

I was sprayed in the face with goat's blood.

Hot.

Salty.

Copper-penny tasting.

This guy that we went after ... well, he bled a lot more than that fucking goat. He made similar sounds, true. Very true. Very similar. And again I was sprayed with blood. Only this time my mask blocked the feeling ... somewhat. Well, a little.

Okay, not much at all.

With our taste for coppery wine quenched somewhat, we headed for the house where we knew our daughter would be. Her boyfriend's squat of a shack.

And his friend's

house

as well.

They all lived there.

The ones that had come round my home to threaten us once, for calling my daughter to tell her to come home. The ones that had roared up on their motorcycles, with their black leather pants and faded denim vests. With their greasy looking hair, so alike in appearance as to be caricatures of men. Want to be bad-asses. Just like the man my daughter had run to be with tonight.

Their threats had scared the pale pathetic ghost that we had been.

Us, now?

No, not in the least.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

There was a Halloween party going on when we reached the street that house sets on, like some loathsome troll perched among other trolls. This was no bobbing for apples party. There were no bowls of candy, no cheap

Dollar Store

decorations. No bowls of punch or party favors either. The party favors were guns, the bowls were full of pills. The decorations were women's underwear, and candy was the stripper's name.

And the only bobbing going on was ...was....

Closing our eyes to what we saw in the upstairs window, we knew what we had to do. It was the fact that it was going to be almost too easy that made us hesitate. Since the Hidden One was awake again he wanted a challenge, he wanted to walk through the front door, and let it all fall where it may. We had done it that way before, I knew we could do it easily, but Kesha was in there.

My ... our daughter.

I felt the Hidden One sigh, reluctantly he nodded his agreement to

anything

that let him have his slaughter, and we merged back into each other again, seamlessly.

The Hunter.

When you hunt, you are the predator, they must be the prey. Make them act as prey, even if they are predators themselves, and you have already won before the first blood is spilled.

First blood? Humph, Abel's was first of course.

~"Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness ...."~ We nodded, yes light is good. Our eyes went to the rounded, grey, pot-on-the-pole, just down the street from the house. Our grin was ferocious.

Twenty minutes later it exploded with huge gouts of green flames. Fire that rained down upon the street, with splashes of the oil the transformer once held, setting the dried piles of dead leaves under it into a merry blaze.

~"Now can we go play?"~ Our voice was gruff with too many emotions to easily list. ~"You, know how this is going to end lets be about it."~

We nodded, in complete agreement.

Time for us to make an end, such an end as to be worthy of song. Like the great Beowulf before us, we walked without fear towards the monster that was Grendel, because we knew what the monster did not.

We too are a monster.

~"Or would that be we ... two ... are a monster?"~

Our chuckle was delightfully merry as we walked across the dead, overgrown lawn, past the cluster of iron horses, and up to the open front door of the now pitch black house. As we stopped next to the frame, we pulled two little bits of fun from our pocket. Grandfather's antique zippo lighter flicked once, and a lighter that had lit cigarettes in Vietnam, ignited the foot-long fuses of two, artillery style firework "mortar"rounds. I watched the blue-red flame on that old lighter for a moment, after I tossed the fireworks into the open door.

~One Mississippi ... two Mississippi ... three ...."~

There was a huge roar of thunder and a blaze of sparks. Then another, and another, and another. Quad-ball, both of them.

"OH, SHITJESUS, JESUS JESUS. OH, JESUS CHRIST! OH, JESUS!

"FUCK!"

"CHRIST FUCK! OH, JESUS!

With a sigh, I shook my head. ~"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain."~

The men within the house may have been wolves. They may have ridden the long highways upon steeds of steel and smoke. They may have been armed to the teeth, fang and claw. They may have been all of those things. But just then, at that moment when the last sparks and thunder of china magic were flashing into throbbing splashes of mind destroying pain ... they were prey.

~"The desert creatures will meet with the wolves. The hairy goat also will cry to its kind; Yes, the night monster will settle there."~

It was far too easy to walk among them and reap the life from them, like so much sun burnt grain.

The knives in our hands were older than the ages of all the men in this house combined. The bone handled skinning knife once cut buffalo hides free and the Gurka in my left hand came from the North African Campaigns, but was old before the first shots were fired there.

These

bad men

their blood was far hotter than that of a goat.

Screams filled that disheveled house as we strode among them, silencing one by one all such sounds. Only a cowardly mewling of an animal remained and we made that.

Well, part of us did.

The other part grinned a white slash of clinched teeth, shockingly bright on a blood covered face. That part smiled and slew the helpless with vibrant relish. The Hidden One was no longer hidden; the shallow Ghost was cowering back from him, never, not even in the past when we had walked through blood knee deep, had the Hidden One been this blood-drunk. For a moment only did the Father emerge when the woman before the blade had a shock of blonde hair, but it was not her.

Not Kesha.

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!"

We turned towards the powerful voice. Finally, one that was worthy of killing. We looked at the figure standing on the steps from the second floor. His eyes were not filled with gray splotches, his ears did not bleed. Finally comes the warrior, his loins ... un-girded ...for battle

The father knew him.

Hated him.

The Hidden One smiled, feeling that hate burn our hearts with new energy.

We spread our arms wide, inviting the attack. Welcoming it. ~"Behold, I Myself have created the smith who blows the fire of coal and brings out a weapon for its work. And I have created the destroyer to ruin."~

Our daughter's lover looked at us confused for a moment then shook his head and pointed a gun at us.

"Whatever, you fuckin' psycho."

We grinned.

~"Your safety is on."~

See, we told our daughter he was too stupid for her to be dating.

Stepping through the door behind us, in that half-second the moron spent looking away from us and at his ready-to-fire gun, we stood behind the refrigerator as he then emptied the clip in our direction. As that last bullet went past we stepped out and calmly walked towards him. His eyes were flash dazzled by his own gun, ours had been closed. He didn't see us till we were five feet from him. Then he never saw anything again.

Wasp spray.

So very effective.

The Gurka slit his throat like he was a goat. The buffalo knife took his scalp off easily. With that trophy dripping blood on our boots we walked up the stairs. The house was silent. In the distance there was the sound of sirens but they were a long way off. Many minutes left to spare.

Our daughter shot a gun at us.

Always a willful child.

Spiteful at times.

And unlike her ... lover ... she could at least aim.

But his bloody scalp, easily identifiable by its color, throw into her naked lap was too much of a distraction. While she was screaming we closed the distance to her and snatched the gun from her hand and tossed it to the corner.

~"Time to take our leave, Kesha."~

Our daughter looked at us in slow growing horror.

"Daddy?"

~"Both yes and at the same time a resounding no. Get up, get dressed."~

She began to shake her head.

With a sigh, I reached into the pocket of my jacket yet again. This was my last prepared toy for the evening. One I had not made or bought over the counter. I could only hope it still worked, it had been old when I closed up that wall years ago. Placing my finger through the pull-ring of the incendiary grenade, I stopped and look at my daughter there on the mattress. Her hair disheveled, her body naked to my eyes for the first time since she had been old enough to order me from her bath. Then from the dark part of me came a growl, throat deep growl of rage at the betrayer before us.

~"Clothe thyself, Whore!"~ I pulled the ring and sent the canister down the hall towards one of the other bedrooms. ~"And behind a pale horse!"~

With a pop white phosphorous sprayed that part of the house in a deadly, unquenchable, shower of Hell itself!

We gathered our screaming daughter to us and carried her from the house even as the flames consumed Gomorrah behind us. We did not look back as the angel had bid us to not ...

But we so wanted to watch the flames.

So like a burning car.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Tossing Kesha onto our bed we shoved her down when she tried to rise up. Then a hard slap sent her reeling to lay and not try to rise again.

From the closet by the door we took a forbidden thing, so long hidden, even longer hidden than the mask and clothes of the wolf.

We tossed away the top of the bottle of Jack Daniels. Won't be needing that anymore. The sweet bourbon fire burned so hot, it burned with memory of a thousand nights in a gutter where we drank far harsher things than this southern swill.

~"So they made their father drink wine that night, and then the firstborn went in and lay with her father, Lot."~

My jacket fell to the floor in a puddle of Kevlar-lined, canvas raincoat. My gloves followed. My shirt, the old splash of blood newly christened wet, some of it my own, I tossed towards the rest.

"Daddy?"

~"No, not really."~ My boots were more difficult to remove but bourbon helped. It helped us to look upon the child we had raised, raised to be pure and true and to know right from wrong. ~"How badly we failed you, Kesha. But no longer. From this night forwards I shall be the father you should have had."~

"Daddy, please what have you done?"

~"Awoke, from almost two decades of restless sleep."~ My voice sounded old even to me, old and tired, too frail. The hidden part snarled up a fury at that weakness. ~"A veritable Rip Vanwinkle, my dear Kesha. Now, you seem to have developed a fondness for lacking clothes, return to that state."~

"What?"

~"You wish to sleep with men. To be taken for their pleasure and used to their delight so be it. I shall now have the teaching of you, and in all things will you become a master. An artist of death, and a lover of lust? So. Be. It. Then."~

"You're insane!"

Standing up we slid our pants from our hips, the Hidden One ignoring her whimper when our cock appeared. The father wanted to cover us. The Hidden One ignored that too.

Catching her hands, we pushed them above her head and pinned them to the mattress as our daughter struggled.

"Why, daddy? Why? Why are you doing this?" she demanded.

~"It is a father's duty to teach his child of the ways of this world. Holding her crossed wrists with one hand, I pushed up her shirt and saw again her flesh revealed. So like her mother at this age. "When your mother left us, we tried to tell her but she would not listen. She was dead within a month. That shall not be your fate. I shall use sterner methods than words, with you."~

She squirmed under us as we positioned ourselves, reaching between our bodies.

~"My daughter, do you know what this world wants of you?"~

A choking sniffle, scared eyes locked onto ours. She shook her head, her mouth saying over and over. "Please, no. Please, no."