There was an allotted rest time on the Hovercraft Baund Doc for the weary crew, all two of them, during the time when it would normally be night on the cloudless surface. The ship's captain, Typlica, was asleep at the helm, scowling, as her eyes darted beneath her eyelids. The Baund Doc is consistent with powering down at this time.
In the room just behind the bridge was the station to monitor and jack into the Matrix. All the terminals were offline and the overhead lighting was only consuming dust. It would be nine hours before they received their proper nourishment.
That is until a faint buzz hummed, followed by the sparkling of fluorescent. As fruit of Kaezrer's labors in maintenance, the machines were glistening in the light. The polished monitors kicked on and displayed a screen of vertically-descending green code: the blood of present events, the Matrix.
A frail figure crept quietly pass the monitors, casting a bending shadow as he moved toward an insert station, the one of four that actually gets used. His hands examine every piece of machinery, cradling his fingertips around the plug forced into people's craniums. His teeth were clinched into a wide, untamed grin.
His caressing ceased into a vibrating fist, digging his fingernails into the plug's metal casing. The grin became wider and his teeth clinched harder. His eyes dashed from side to side, impatiently observing every piece of machinery, every cable being in its place. His tightening knuckles turned bone white, a slow exhale passed his dry, parted lips, a stifled cackle tickled his molars, and with another quiet cackle unshackled he forced the plug into its hole.
The moon was devoured through a ferocious thunderstorm. In Mansenn Park the long-forgotten street lights provided no security for commuters working grinding employment in neighboring Bathory. There were typically close to one hundred men and women pushing their 14th hour at this time with two more to go. It didn't matter to the figure if things may have improved in his decades of absence.
A large and bare fist clinched tightly. The droplets splashed against the gleaming skin, dousing the dark hairs into tiny sheens against lightning crashes. The veins climbing over the formed bone were pulsating rapidly with every second. The forearm tendons were tensed so strongly that the entire arm was quivering from the strain.
The large man, dressed in a black trench coat, roared from his throat and sprinted into deeper Mansenn Park.
The buildings were smothering him in nostalgia. In a maddened haste his canines twinkled in the buildings' lights as he neared one particular building in the 109 Apartment block. He stopped, pushing his worthless air out and taking others' in as he stared at the beginning: Apartment 109B. Room 28 was so close he trembled with a passionate eagerness.
His torso felt frail and his breathing wasn't satisfying him enough. The doorman, Paul Thomason, was still there after all these years. Still talked big for such a decrepit-old brat; he never could back up his burnt-baked threats. Dislodging the fossil's Cervical vertebrae with a strong, two-handed embrace gave the man an unmeasurable satisfaction. As he ascended the stairs to the 3rd floor, taking his time to build up the anticipation of the inevitable orgasm that he starved for, in his mind the events from 20 years ago played in the fashion of an old film reel that fueled and fanned his insatiable rage.
The memories broke free and flooded as he passed Room 27. His wide, strained grin tightened to the fulfillment of squeezing his neck to the point of cutting off airflow. His hands were trembling violently and had become too unstable to be clinched.
His eyes fixated on the door number: 28. His eyes widened to the degree of tearing, and within another minute his teeth would have broken from the force of his straining his jaw.
He laxed his grin just enough to exhale. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and slowly, savoring every moment of every image he imagined in the last 20 years as unforgettable memories that were regretfully never captured on any kind of film.
His lungs peaked. His red-glass eyes opened. He roared, twisting it into a high-pitch breaking scream that could be heard within the apartment block, and after an ephemeral nine seconds, without losing force of voice, shattered the door with an anchored front kick.
He stepped into the room, immediately closing his mouth to form an enraged sneer, but still screaming straight from his voice. His eyes, beginning to see in a translucent haze, consumed in the nostalgia of these walls. His nose cringed upwards after feeling the familiar stinks of the two still here. His ears heard a faint shuffle from their room, on the far right, and his glare bolted to the door.
With a pipe wrench in hand, the middle-aged drunkard opened the door furiously. The instant his eyes looked up and met the large, mute-screaming monster, he was knocked onto the floor with a punch that shattered his nose structure. The large man stepped into the room, choking back his screams as he stared widely at the fallen man. His body was shivering from the weight of his exploding enragement.
His focus jolted onto the woman on the bed, who just realized the situation, and began screaming as she covered herself with the sheets. The beast man found his strength to reform his muscle-shaking fist that he entered this convenient facade with, the one he made 20 years ago on the day everything began, the one he made, with someone else's hand, everyday with an unsatisfied hunger to force it into the ones that crafted this beginning within their inept sparks of life, the one that only minutes ago began to cry with the illusion of life.
In the moment of a blur he leapt from the door onto the bed. The woman turned and tried to climb off, but tangled in the sheets she was too slow to avoid the bone-breaking punt to her sacrum. She was catapulted off the bed, snapping her nose against the wall, creating a blood smear, and bounced onto the floor.
The boulder of a man jumped off the bed and landed on the floor in front of her head with a tremor that was felt on the entire apartment floor. Slowly, he knelt down. In what was an unorthodox calm, he grabbed her hair and lifted it, causing her back to bend with it, so she could make eye contact. The gorilla man's image pounded into her eyes: his red and white-eyes, tanned skin, and black hair. His breathing calmed, and in a serene, quiet voice, he spoke.
“Hi Mom.”
The woman gasped with a soul-crushing horror. Before her thoughts could begin racing the giant man placed a second hand on her head and broke her neck with a ferocious spin that severed most of the lower Cervical vertebrae and fractured the Axis.
The titan man stood up and glanced back at the door. He apparently didn't break the old man's brain with his nose; there he was, terrified into an appropriate stupor, screaming and fleeting out the door. The inhuman man felt ravished at the delight of this main-course chase, especially after this decadent entrée.
The gigas man popped his head out of the door as he saw the man stumbling to the front door. With strained, wide eyes and grin, the colossus man began to walk towards the timid lamb. “What's the matter Dad,” the sentinel man roared, “aren't you proud of your son now? Isn't this what you wanted me to be when I grew up? Isn't what you molded with yours fists not to your satisfaction? Were your whips and knives not sufficient guiding tools? Was Mom's help not enough to mold me to your liking?”
The disorientation from the rapid blood loss had obliterated the man's equilibrium, and he fell onto the floor before reaching the front-door gap. The juggernaut man's fists and arms were tightening so intently that every joint in his arms released this almost-indescribable grotesque popping and cracking that made the man involuntarily void his bowels. The sinister man cackled in a high-pitch voice. “Oh Dad,” he said casually, moving closer every blink, “this takes me back. Remember what you did the first time I did that at 5-years-old?” The controlling man knelt down beside the scared-sh*tless man and shoved the knifehand-style up the back of the stained boxer shorts, shoving the unseen feces into the rectum, pushing as far as his large hand could.
The father screamed in agony. The bully man rose and began to walk around him. “'Typical',” he began to say, “'little brat gets his sh*t put back for him and he acts like an ungrateful sh*thead.'” The man sighed with a more calm smile, looking at the far wall from the door with the older man behind him: “Ah, memories. 'They' might have forgotten about that scene, but I was forced to carry that agony with me after all those almost-20 years, when I wanted to forget it, too.”
The brutish man turned around and glared at his father with unadulterated hate. He stomped over his torso, blocking the hall's light with a elongated shadow, and raised the smooth head with both of his hands, because even when he was young his father was naturally bald despite the racial slur his color brought. Their eyes met. “But I couldn't forget,” the enraged man said in a solemn and quiet tone, “I could never forget the anger you spit into me. 'They' forgot almost all the inhumanities you strangled into us, but I was not allowed to forget; I was made to always remember and harbor your parenting.” The man's large hands began to tighten the man's skull. “I missed my chance to be free. From you, and all of this bullsh*t we've been forced into for countless lifetimes. It was my chance to be free, Dad! I should have been the one they found, not Damon! Even your b**ch Cais would have been an acceptable puppet, but not Damon! I can't talk to Damon! I can never talk to Damon!” The bear man's grip was beginning to crack the man's skull. “We went there because I wanted to go! Damon didn't care what I did as long as I didn't threaten the b**ch, but why did he get free and I didn't!? Why Dad!? Why did it have to be Damon and not me!? What did you do to me that it couldn't have been me!? Why Damon!? What did you ever do to him to make him so much better!? What Dad!? You never struck Damon, always me! It was always me, but Damon was the one who was freed! Why can't you explain it to me Dad!?! Why can't you make me feel better Dad!?!”
The ogre man's grip loosened suddenly and the man's head fell to the floor. The savage man knew that there was no way this broken man would be able to run anymore. He raised his leg, bending his knee as sharply as he could, and when he reached the pinnacle of his leg height, he said, in a sharp tone: “Oh right – you never could.” He brought his foot down as hard as possible, breaking the floorboards, too.
Other tenants had seen him leave, but he was sprinting too fast for them to see his face clear enough to remember it. He didn't care. He raced into the stairwell and began to ascend in a psychotic rush, twice falling down onto all fours and climbing in an animal-posture without missing a beat. He began panting, and every exhale was a loud and desperate growl, every turn in the well made his eyes widen and want to move faster, like a caged animal running for the first sign of the outside.
He tackled the roof-access door. He wobbled forward in a continued movement and stopped on one knee, wiping the excess drool from his chin, watered down from the rain. He threw his head back, screaming at the sky with a fire in his eyes as it tried, pitifully, to divert his gaze with forceful-falling droplets of water, and when it tried to back him down with a lightning flash and thunder boom the god-encrusted-adamant man roared at his loudest, highest voice, scraping his vocal chords with metal: “I AM JULIS!! I AM EXITIR!! THIS GODDAMN WORLD WILL BE ERASED!!!”
As though submitting, the storm began to quiet. The thunder and lightning fled into the distance, leaving the self-proclaimed Exitir to himself, alone, on the rooftop. His eyes displayed a glimmer of surprise, only for a moment, before he placed his hands on his sides and and threw his pelvis out, laughing at the chance of obedience from this convoluted world.
His laughter is broken by the ring of a cellphone. He thought it suspicious that he had a cellphone at all; he didn't put that program in, so how is it he has one in his possession? There was only one person it could be.
He pulled the bland-looking cellphone from his pocket, opened it, and placed it against his ear. In a completely different, uncharacteristically-mellow tone, he said: “This is Kaezrer”; he was choking on the very idea.
“Manssen Park southeast,” said Typlica in a reserved voice.
“Understood.” He hung up.
Exitir said not a word as he made his way to the phone booth called Manssen Park SE. As he ran to the booth his mind was replaying all those scenes long-and-recently-past. Was he wondering if he and Kaezrer were in opposing roles? Was he relishing in the triumph of satisfying his decades-old lust for vengeance? Was he beginning to sympathize with Cais, something he had never done? Was he thinking about how different this life could have been if Kaezrer had chosen the Blue pill?
Actually, he wasn't thinking about any of that.
As he placed his ear against the handset, he was just thinking how fun murder was.
“His” eyes opened sharply, and with a glance to the side he met, for the first time, Typlica, eye-to-eye. His eyes dulled, and he said in a matching monotone: “What.”
“What the hell Damon?” Typlica barked with angered eyes. “You know this is the time to sleep.”
“Right.” Julius had to remember to pretend to be Damon, because even after half-a-year Damon still hasn't told her about him, that motherf**ker.
“So why the hell are you jacked in by yourself?” Typlica's scowl tightened against her beautiful complexion.
“. . .you saw where I was right?” He was trying as hard as he could to wrap his mind to be as calm as he could and not explode in the building fury.
“Yeah. Is that where. . .” she trailed off in a somber voice.
He looked away, and in his own sombre, almost lamenting voice said: “. . .yeah. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. I figured I was having some kind of withdrawals, and so to wrap this all up I decided, no.” He looked back her with a strong stare, doing a phenomenal job of not trying to rip her arms off, and continued: “I had to go back there, just to be in proximity of. . .them.”
“So now?” she said very quietly.
“I feel. . .” he looked to the side, almost into a distant future of him mauling her with a socket wrench, “a lot closer to myself, like reinforcing myself.” He glanced back, picturing a bullet hole in her temple, and resumed his “stellar” performance: “ Does that make sense?”
She smiled, having no inkling as to which Kaine she's talking to, nodded, and said: “I understand. Ready to go to sleep?”
He smiled, curled his lips, nodded, thought about smothering her in her sleep, and said: “You know what – I think I am.”
He placed an arm around her as they moved back towards his quarters, thinking about how he would break her spine from the hips and crawl his pace to her neck. With the images of his old Bluepill parents' faces burned into his filmography, he said with a smile: “You know, I think this'll be the best sleep I've ever had.”
