Joseph C. Weitzman was about to die. Nothing could change that now. When the 56yo ex-convict and career scumbag first laid eyes on his pursuer that night, he barely dignified the mysterious figure with a second glance, it would be a mistake he would immediately regret. Judgment had sent its agent for him, and that agent came from the deepest void, clad in black, took no prisoners, and never lost a target. Weitzman would know the true peril of being hunted by The Cimmerian.
It all started not an hour before. Weitzman could be found for hours at the Red Eye Dive, celebrating his triumph over the judicial court system and beating several sexual and violent charges placed against him for attacking a young woman and her male friend. He would proudly exclaim how he would add his latest sexual assault and battery charges to the ever-growing list of crimes he has yet to pay for. Many of his compatriots, fellow rapists, murderers, and unpunished felons, cheer his praise while the many sex workers and homeless crack whores cling to the back wall uneasy and on edge. After several hours of drinking, fornicating, and imbibing in every substance available to him, the party finally began to die out. As everyone began to stumble out into the streets, Weitzman poured himself another drink and was about to take a seat as he noticed he was not alone. In a dim corner at the far end of the bar, stands a peculiar figure dressed all in black, unwavering, and silent as the grave.
“Hey, buddy! Didn’t you hear the last call? Party’s over, so how about you get the fuck out so I can get some sleep.” Joe cried out, half expecting them to either wake up or fall over. With no response, he yelled again, “I don't care if you’re deaf or out fuckin’ cold,” Weitzman stands from his seat and grips ahold the pistol tucked into the back of his pants, “when I say get out, I ain’t asking!”
As Joe draws his pistol the strange figure doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, but throws open his eyes and glares down the villain mercilessly with a blazing pair of the raging violet oculus. Startled, Joe jumps a bit at the jarring sight before steadying his hand and taking aim. The shadowy figure began to slowly step forward, as though walking without a cane. With each step, Joe’s nerves begin to wear, watching this otherworldly... thing inch closer towards him. His trigger finger tenses, his hands go clammy, his vision blurs. The barely audible *click* echoes throughout the empty dive, a final warning. A deafening blast tears through the air, the figure stops dead in his tracks before falling face-first onto the dirty bar floor. Tending to his ringing ears, the disorientated crook looks back to where his foe once stood, a wicked smirk spreading across his face. “I warned ya, dumb fuck.”
Calmly making his way over, Joe looks across a bar table to find... nothing. The corpse Weitzman expected to find has vanished; no pool of blood, no sign he had crawled off, only a stained tile floor covered in dried beer cigarette butts. “What the fu--” he wonders as he turns away and stands immediately confronted by the violet-eyed, intimidatingly large, pitched skinned demon he had shot a mere moment ago. The Cimmerian begins his hunt.
The dreadful golem towers over Weitzman, clearing almost 7 feet tall. The features of what was an indescribable figure are now as clear as cut stone, though a thick black essence seemingly stains every inch of the hulking goliath. His hands have lengthened into jagged claws, the skin clings tight showing every vein and muscle under his skin as dark as coal. Looking up, its eyes still burn bright with a radiating violet hue; the rest of his face has changed, once cloaked in the shadows and hidden away, now flaunt its thin skeletal grimace as this child of the dark continues to glare down at its prey.
Joe screams for his life, instinctively popping off two more rounds from the firearm still firmly in his grasp. Unfortunately, it was all for not. As the bullets pass through the Cimmerian like stones through an open window, he simultaneously emits the most haunting blood-curdling scream that echoes through the empty city streets. A banshee knew no wail like a Cimmerian, a shriek of another soul damned to the void.
He ran. Joe didn’t know what that thing was but thought it best for his health not to find out. Tripping over hobos sleeping in the street, continuously looking over his shoulder, panic and instinct drive Weitzman from the Red Eye, down the street screaming like a lunatic. All those who looked out to the noise on the streets saw only a man raving in the night, brandishing a gun. No one gave him a second look, much less a second thought. Every chance he turned back to face the Cimmerian, sending shot after shot down towards the horrific specter, still marching towards Joe. Once his ammo was spent, he threw the piece away and realized the only thing that mattered; ‘All you can do is run.’
Ducking down alleys, hopping fences, cutting through parks and empty lots, every trick was tried; not once did the Cimmerian falter, never did he slow, for his prey continuously exhausted himself. The hunt would soon end.
Climbing up a chain-link fence and hurtling himself into the empty lot, Weitzman looks back to find the man in black still marching towards him, focused and unwavering. He takes this opportunity to claim a head start. Sprinting with what energy he could muster Joe got about 50 feet, reaching the skeletal framework of a semi built chemical factory. Collapsing behind the corner, out of breath and completely spent, Weitzman peeks back around the corner where he spies the burly figure approaching the fence, reaching out, and then walks through the steel woven fence as if it weren’t even there. Weitzman struggled to his feet and continued in through an open wall to the factory interior. While desperately searching for any means of escape, a *CLANG!* echoes out, sending all the vermin scattering from the shadows. The Cimmerian steps out from his cloak of shade, eyes still blazing with rage and determination only those born of the void can understand.
“For fuck’s sake!” Joe begs, on the verge of running once again until a seething pain pierces the back of each of his thighs. Joe falls to his knees to find a razor-sharp blade penetrating deep into the muscle. Falling onto his back, The Cimmerian approaches, forming the blades from the surrounding darkness and cloaking him in a shroud of black smoke-like wisps.
“What do you want? Money? Blow? Girls? I’ll give you anything. Everything! Just leave me alone you sick FUCK!!” Weitzman desperately pleads between blubbering sobs, all of which fall on deaf ears much like the similar cries of his v own victims.
With the sharp flash of movement, another razor-sharp onyx blade penetrates the prominent gut of the sniveling scoundrel, leaving him in a pool of his own blood and tears. The cimmerian begins to step towards him, amid doing so, folds the ebony wisps in on themselves over and over. Once finished, he drops his arms to his side and clasped tight in one hand is a rope and dark and deadly as obsidian shards. The Cimmerian reaches out for Weitzman, petrified by fear, produces on a whimper as his final words.
The cord flies over one of the high steel rafters. The cord pulled tight. Gurgling and deep struggled breathes break the silence. Weitzman dangles helplessly in the air as the rope cuts deep into his outstretched throat. His eyes begin to fade, strength all but gone, Joe feels his life slipping away with each passing moment. As his eyelids slowly begin to sink, the final thing he sees is the Cimmerian glaring up at him, his soon-to-be corpse.
At the moment of the scum’s passing, the Cimmerian shoots his jagged claw deep into Weitzman’s chest, grabbing hold of his still-beating heart. Digging in and piercing the endocardium, the heart begins to beat erratically while molding and shaping the lining of the heart into a strange and horrendous form. As he tears the organ, the man covered by darkness let loose another blood-wrenching scream into the night air, hoisting up the grotesque misformed human heart, cursed with the visage of Weitzman’s screaming visage molded into its walls, above his head in some long-forgotten ceremonial need. With the closing of the ebony hand, the cardiac organ vanished; the remains of Joseph C. Weitzman, a career criminal, and sexual predator hung swaying in the cool breeze of the night.
His hunt concluded, the beast now slain, the Cimmerian turns and retreats to a shadowed corner. As he steps into the shade, his figure becomes indistinguishable apart from raging purple stare, still unwavering and relentless. The breeze becomes sturdier, sending debris scattering about the site. Just as it enters his realm, his eyes snap shut. No trace of the shadow man can be found, other than the hanging trash shifting in the wind.
The next morning, a body was reported to the police at a local worksite. Identified as Joseph C. Weitzman, age 56, formerly of the municipal and county detention centers. His remains were found in an almost inexplicable manner: crumpled up on the floor, bone-deep punctures found on the backs of each thigh, a single large puncture mid-abdomen that reached through to his spine, rope burns and a multitude of small lacerations around the victim’s throat, his heart missing but with no trace of a suitable entry wound. No witnesses were present at the time of or leading up to the murder, or at least willing to come forward. Authorities believe Mr. Weitzman was a victim to a satanic cult, or perhaps a vengeful spirit of a past victim. No other evidence could be collected, no one even claimed the body, so the case was dismissed and put into storage.
Why seek out an answer to a question no one was asking?
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from Short Stories
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