Beer sloshed everywhere when I swung the half-full bottle of Corona at the cultist at the bar as he stood up and unsheathed his knife. The migraine disappeared in a wave of adrenaline as the awareness of danger sent my body into overdrive. The last one was drawing out his blade even as he stepped inside, and that was the signal for the others to follow suit. The next one in went to a table behind and off to the left of my position. The cultists walked in separately, about thirty seconds apart, three pale men in cheap business suits who clearly didn’t belong at Jorge’s. Said glimpses are never anything good, like next week’s Powerball numbers all my visions are of upcoming death and misery. One of my gifts is the somewhat erratic ability to catch glimpses of the future. During that time, I got one of my customary but never welcome migraines, and knew bad things were about to happen. I got to enjoy the ambiance and a few sips of my Corona for about five minutes before the assassins followed me in. The locals were mostly Puerto Rican when I ordered in Spanish they identified me as a Dominican and only the fact that I’m about as tall and wide as your typical NFL linebacker limited their hostility to glares and muttered comments. The place was dark, indifferently clean, and the regulars had been looking at me suspiciously since I came in. My contact, a hood rat by the street name Cornflakes, had insisted on meeting me there. Jorge’s began its existence as a second-rate Irish pub that shifted as the neighborhood’s demographics did. Not the kind of people you want to hang around with at a bar, or anywhere else for that matter. The pain of others is one of their few remaining sources of joy and pleasure. They like the smell of blood and the look in their victims faces as agony turns them into unthinking, dying beasts. Those who’ve turned their backs on humanity and reality itself like to feel flesh and bone parting under their well-aimed thrusts and slashes. However, that’s not the main reason why the blank-faced men drew Tanto-style daggers from under their jackets and went for the kill, silent as swooping sharks and just as intent on drawing blood. At close range, a blade in the hands of someone who knows how to use it is as deadly as a gun, and a lot less likely to jam or send a ricochet back in your direction. I knew it was going to be a bad night when three cultists of a Mad God tried to kill me in a shitty bar in New Haven.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |