Broken Epitaph
Written by Kay

The last of the withered, crimson leaves snapped free from their silver tails and drifted down to the wet pavement. A soggy, miserable autumn it was. Or maybe that was just his own little voice telling him that this autumn was a bad one.

"You were a fool to kill him," the cherubic voice of a boy would titter. "A complete FOOL!"

The outer rim of the neighborhood that he walked past was quiet and unpolluted, though utterly colorless and dull. His eyes aimlessly gazed at the small one-story houses on their poorly maintained .3 acres of land. Gray, gray, and more gray. What simplicity for a simple man in his dusty, gray overcoat.

The embodiment of his sins did not surface in his eyes in the form of a woman or a gun. As soon as he turned the corner, a fluorescent-pink depiction of the Virgin's face greeted him in all of her spray-painted glory against the memorial bench. Nuntius snarled as that glaring image of Mary's sorrowful eyes chastised him, blazing in his mind like wildfire and fading as quickly as it struck him. As he continued upon the chipped sidewalk, the messages and the colors blossomed like a poisoned flower.

"Was it guilt?" the little boy whispered with anxious glee.

.

Shadows danced. The heathen ritual of the wavering candle flame demanded it. He should have seen the gleam. He should have seen the curtain, how it shifted ever so slightly. He should not have only seen the scratching fountain-pen. But Nuntius did not see anything else -- he pushed forward.

.

The jungle of roses greeted him in flagrantly grotesque flourish. It was called Briar Path, in honor of John Briar, the "good-man," who forty years ago broke apart the big-time (witless, Nuntius thought) gangs symbolizing of arbitrary insanity. Motherless bastards they were, breaking windows and setting fires to the orphanage on the other side of town. Ah, but John stopped them all in their tracks. He did so until he died. Poor Good-Man John, getting gunned down in a bar after a drunken bout involving a dinner bill and something about a cross.

Nuntius snorted in his woolen muffler. The garden was failing before his eyes. The sweet scent of decay and rot from years of negligence made him want to vomit his cold turkey all over the fuming bed of crispy roses.

"It's not as if you won't fall," a black-haired little boy with malicious blue eyes said next to Nuntius. "Stall. Run away."

Crosses were the epitaph of John the Good-Man. John, the man who preached about curfews and tighter gun control, was half-alive on the walls of abandoned brick buildings. The crosses marred building walls. The kids (sorry little punks) drew those when they didn't have anything else to do (when looking for some thrill in this dead-end town). The Good-Man's legacy was a joke, the Good-Man's deeds but a passing myth.

But not to Nuntius. John's words (“go, follow your Good-Man shepherd, to the days when children play with grins, not scowls; days when the sun shines down upon peace, not war”) were alive in his memories. On autumn days just like these, almost twenty years ago, the Good-Man would walk around the main street (there had been a main street back then), twirling his night stick and barking at the little boys who ran across the road without watching for cars. Nuntius had been one of those boys.

Nuntius sighed. The stretch of wasteland that was the road, forever shattered by neglect, extended out for miles it seemed.

"Allí."

Nuntius whipped around so quickly that he almost lost his balance. His wildly frightened hands loosened the hold on his revolver only a bit as he saw the old, wrinkled grin of a toothless woman. Her complexion and black-streaked white hair suggested a Hispanic background, and her ancient face was a comfort to him in an obscure way. Nuntius stared, but she remained smiling and clutched her wooden basket more tightly. Inside that basket was what looked like a wrapped slice of lamb.

Nuntius did not see the black-haired boy narrowing his gleaming, steely eyes. Nuntius did not feel the boy retreating into the shadows.

"Sorry. I don't speak Spanish, ma'am" Nuntius mumbled.

Her smile did not waver. "Gabriela."

"Well, I don't speak Spanish, Gabriela. Do you understand?"

The old woman shook her head. Nuntius stared pointedly at her, vexed, wondering for a moment if she truly did not understand him or was playing with his mind. Nuntius did not appreciate it. He needed to stop stalling. He needed to cleanse his hands -- they were soaked with more blood than that lamb.

"El agua. Allí." She pointed her gnarled finger in the direction of the broken street. Nuntius remained silent. He could almost hear the gentle lapping of the river. He remembered.

The bridge was a rickety old thing -- moss-covered, cobweb-ridden, and ancient. Nuntius treaded carefully over the cracks as glistening water rushed one hundred feet below him.

Clop, clop.

The footsteps were not his own.

"Witch," the black-haired boy snarled as he stomped across. "Nasty, dirty old witch. Crazy old WITCH! Turn back! You'll die! Turn BACK!"

But Nuntius slowly yet surely approached his destination. The grand mansion towered above him like a sleeping beast. Drops of red streaked the sky and stained the clouds, further sooting the blackened knife-like appendages of the mansion with shadows.

.

BANG!

The crystal bottle shattered. Ink splattered all over Nuntius's pant leg and gun. So did the blood. The black-haired child shrieked in the corner of the room, azure eyes pooling with unbelieving tears. Wind rushed in from the open window.

.

"I'm here to see my uncle," Nuntius said quietly, calmly.

The guards stared at him for a few fleeting seconds. Then one of them nodded. "This way."

Dust and grime filmed the poorly kept mansion. Despite all of its lazy majesty, the mansion belonged in this ragtag town. Absolutely belonged.

"Through this door."

The dimly lit office jolted his heart. The man sitting behind his desk ushered him in with a raised eyebrow and a stern mouth. Nuntius struggled to breathe for a second as a wave of memories flooded his eyes and nose. He could hardly breathe. The little boy snickered, amusement gleaming in his pale, pale eyes.

.

"What -- what are you doing here?" Nuntius stammered, trying to hide his gun behind his back. As if the motionless corpse on the ground wasn't proof enough.

The wind whistled hungrily through the cracks of dim office. The boy retched but did not vomit, his eyes dancing with noiseless screams. He backed up from the corner as Nuntius approached him. The boy backed up, quickly, more quickly!

.

"I -- I come to you, Uncle, humble yet determined," Nuntius murmured, his eyes downcast. The air smelled of warm fire and soot. The hearth blazed quietly in the corner. The man did not say a word. Nuntius continued. "Release me from your service and from my damnation."

Startled silence first greeted this announcement. Then that surprised quickly melted into grating laugher. Listening to it hurt, as if sandpaper and not laugher rubbed against Nuntius’s eardrums.

"You look like a fool. You speak like a fool. But I know that you do not think like a fool. Why do you ask this of me?"

Nuntius's eyes glazed over.

.

"Come back. Come back!"

The boy backed away quickly. The window was wide open -- and the boy was tall and skinny enough to fall right out.

"Dead," the boy whispered, tears running down his skinny cheeks. "DEAD."

"You'll fall! You'll fall! Behind you!"

Nuntius charged. The boy, eyes clouded with tears, thought at that moment a black lion with terrible teeth and terrible hunger lunged at him. The boy's bottom bumped against the window ledge, and in a moment, his legs flew up as the upper-half of the his body shot straight out the window. Nuntius dropped his gun. And he reached for the one witness who could bring about the ruin of him and his uncle.

.

"I don't want to kill anymore. I've done many things. Terrible things."

Nuntius's uncle glared. "We all have. You can't quit now."

Nuntius's head throbbed with flashes of white-hot pain. "That man. That caretaker of the orphanage. I should have never shot him. He was the Good-Man's son-in-law. I should have never shot him -- I've brought a curse upon myself. All for you."

Nuntius's uncle jerked then snarled, "You worthless little son of a whore. You're blaming me? After I took you in when your wanton mother overdosed herself on her heroin? You're blaming the savior of this town? The man who runs the orphanage, all of the churches, the donation stands, the businesses? My money is what fuels this wretched place!"

"Your money poisons it!" Nuntius screamed. "Do you look at the streets? Do you see the graffiti? Do you see the blasphemous ditties against the Good-Man?"

"I brought order after the Good-Man died!" Nuntius's uncle roared, standing and straightening up to his full six foot six inches.

Nuntius did not falter. "That's like saying you burned the house to get rid of the fireplace. You killed the Good-Man! Like how you killed -- made me kill -- the caretaker when he refused to offer you a position in his drug cartel!"

Silence was what followed. Utter, complete silence. Nuntius dared not breathe for all time seemed to have stopped. Then, wordlessly, Nuntius's uncle flipped his hand toward the door, as if brushing away a fly.

"Away with you," he said in a trembling voice. "Rid those foolish fancies clouding your mind. You are my bondsman, and thus you will remain."

Nuntius's eyes widened in horror with each word.

"Until your death."

.

Nuntius's fingers found the boy's skinny little wrist. The boy screamed madly, thrashing his legs about. "Save me, mister! Please save me!"

Nuntius held on tightly, but reason faltered his instinct to save him. This little boy saw the murder. The boy saw whose hand it was that pulled the trigger. The boy was the one who could bring about Nuntius's ruin.

"Please, mister," the boy whispered, no longer struggling. He hung six stories above the ground, limp like a marionette without its master. Nuntius knew that the boy saw his hesitation. "Please."

.

Cold wind, similar to the whipping frost of that day, clawed away at Nuntius's skin as he fled from the office and out of the mansion. The giggles of the black-haired boy tailed his heels like rabid dogs.

.

"Please."

No. No! Nuntius's eyes widened as the boy's wrist began to slip from his fingers.

.

Water gushed through the bank, clouding up in white foam. Nuntius ran, uncaring of the wobble of the old wooden bridge.

.

The hurricane gust of wind was what made him do it. That and the fear. The fear of losing everything -- his life, his money, his pride.

.

The water. Nuntius climbed on top of the wobbling railing, unmindful of the cracking wood. He would serve his uncle until death. Yes, he would.

.

His fingers loosened. The boy fell, his eyes bugging out and his mouth wide open to release his last scream. He fell so quickly -- he was almost flying. And as soon as the small body hit the pavement, as that hail of black blood painted the sidewalk, Nuntius turned away to find deep, mad blue eyes staring into his own. Then the sensually pink Botticelli lips of the fallen angel twisted into a sneer, and Nuntius knew that his own demon had awoken.

.

But no. No more. Not anymore! Those eyes will close and never open again. Nuntius was sure of that.

And with his arms open wide and face up to sky, Nuntius plunged into the misty tempest that was the river.

-x-

Ribbons of satin red streaked the water. Yet it was an almost divinely beautiful sight, the river cleansing his soul. Gabriela traced Nuntius's submerging body from the broken roof of her house and laughed gaily as the boy's high-pitched wail faded into the sky. It was their broken epitaph.

finis.