Hunter of Vengeance

I never expected to wake up again, the human body is only built to sustain so much damage and remain functional and I knew from experience I had gone way past that level. I became aware but didn’t open my eyes for a long time… I looked back over my life trying in vain to determine if I could expect the pearly gates or a much warmer welcome. I had thought to be doing right by exterminating monsters from the world but the faintest hint of doubt had arisen in my mind. The only sure way to find the answer was to bite the bullet and look.

I opened my eyes and among all the possibilities running through my head what met my eyes was nowhere even I the running. I found myself in an open room that vaguely resembled a waiting area at a bus terminal. There were signs around the area in several languages I couldn’t recognize as they flashed off and on with their messages. Two figures stood waiting for me.

Ben, the demon lawyer of New York dressed to the nines in an expertly tailored suit complete with hat and cane, all that was missing was a monocle. Standing next to him, in a suit of vaguely Nordic armor that would give any monster pause, was Mist. Just my luck, most people’s version of the afterlife was being judged by angels and devils… I get the moral compass of a barkeep and a lawyer. Should have known the major religions got a few things wrong. They spoke like I wasn’t there.

“I don’t like this idea, it exposes us too much.”

“Relax, Mistie-boo there is too much at stake to just let him go without a fight. Besides, if he wakes up he won’t remember enough of this to believe it.”

“What are you two doing in my afterlife?” I tried sitting up, all the pain I had felt just moments ago was gone. My body felt like I was a young man again.

“You’re not dead yet, Hunter.” Ben offered me a hand up to my feet. “Though not for lack of trying, don’t have any clue what made you think you were bulletproof.”

I got to my feet on my own, I was already in debt to the demon and I had no desire to increase the tab. “So if I’m not dead what is this place.”

“I think your mind chose a fairly appropriate approximation… this is a waiting room that offers travel to a few other select destinations.” Mist gestured around the room at various stairways leading off from where we stood. “We’re just here to help you choose which train to get on.”

“So you two are to sit in judgment over me? You have Osiris hanging in the back with a bulk crate of ostrich feathers from Costco? Maybe I should save us some time and go back to sleep now.”

“We’re not going to judge you, just like at the bar we will get to know you and perhaps offer an insight into your situation you hadn’t considered. Then we will leave you free to choose what you will.”

“Okay, seeing as I have absolutely no better options I suppose I’m following you. So Virgil, where are we off to first, up or down?” They both looked at me a little surprised. “Yeah, Dante’s Inferno, among most of the major works of literature is required reading for agents joining ARC. Though there isn’t a lot about how to kill the angels or devils in there so it’s a bit of a letdown.”

“Okay, you are just full of surprises, aren’t you? Maybe I can give you some more reading materials when we get back. As for the tour, we’re not going to any existential plain we’re going into your very own thick skull to get to know you a tad better.” He rapped his cane a few times on the floor. “Okay, chaps, let’s get ourselves moving.”

“We’ll need Hunter to lead, we can’t access too deep in his mind without his permission. We can give the directions but he needs to open the doors.”

The two of them followed me through a maze of corridors with seemingly no rhyme or reason. The doors they needed me to open were odd, to say the least. Many would have an easily identifiable code, like a number sequence or animals and the answer, also, seemed to be obvious but that answer would be wrong every time. Eventually, I learned that whatever I thought the answer was I needed to ignore that answer and go with my guts. Eventually, Mist led us to a small room filled with monitors just off the main corridor. She led me to the main screen and hit a few key sequences.

“This is where your visual memory is stored. Everything you see and remember is stored somewhere in these banks. For example, up till two weeks ago, this is what you associated with the word werewolf.” The screen filled with an image straight out of my worst nightmares. Shadows, fur, and teeth flashed in a shower of blood. With every swipe of its claws strips of meat from an unseen victim flew into the air with a snarling roar. Even unarmed I felt my hand twitch and reach for a weapon that wasn’t there, the need to fight and kill the monster in front of me became overwhelming, due to its sheer deadliness. But I had seen this was less the unknown monster in the shadows and more a soldier standing tall for whichever reason it had chosen.

“Yeah, a lot of things have changed for me the last few days. I learned that the weres are violent unpredictable bundles of claw and fang but they aren’t inherently evil. Capable of evil, certainly, but that darkness is learned, not given as a birthright.” I had seen too many innocent people destroyed by getting on the wrong side of those six-hundred-pound shredding machines to let the respect I had gained for Mara give them a blanket pass. “If we’re going to dwell on things I was wrong about we’re probably going to need a computer a lot bigger than this one.”

“That isn’t the point I was trying to make here, you are only just learning that the alters are people worth getting to know better. Imagine the things you could learn of them… from them… if that isn’t worth waking up in the morning I don’t know what is.”

“There are plenty of monsters out there, Mist, not all of them even look like monsters but I have always felt and still feel that I am one of those who can keep the good people safe by getting rid of those monsters. Maybe now I might look into things in a little more detail to find out if they really are monsters but, in any case, they are there and I would do my job. Though that is no longer my concern anymore, Mara and Lisa might be better suited to this line of work anyway.” I had something like a month or more of vacation time stored up, time off would be kinda nice.

“Okay Mistie, my turn!” Ben laughed a laugh that slowly turned into a cackle as he spun on his heel and walked back out to the hall. “I hope, at least, that this part will be some more fun!”

Again the three of us traveled through hallways short and long through more complicated and ever-changing doors. No two of the entryways looked alike, wood, plastic, bone, red, green, striped, or spotted as we moved through the maze of my mind following a prancing man in a suit. Once we finally reached our destination at the end of a large hallway there were two doors. At Ben’s declaration of ‘here we are’ I reached for the door on our left which immediately elicited a cry of protest from my two protectors.

“No, no, no, boy… open that door, and the darkness within would swallow all of us before you could even see ‘where’d my arm go?’ Our destination is this door across the way over here.” He gestured to the other door and I opened it. Inside was a small cluster of rooms, the first one past the door was covered in junk, so deep that you kicked your way through with every step.

“So you brought me here for Hoarders: Mental Edition?”

“No, these are all the accomplishments you have achieved in your oh-so-tragically short life. Just look here…” He rummaged through the junk on the floor, on closer look they did vaguely look like trophies. Around the small room, there were pedestals and shelves obviously meant to house them but yet they were all cluttered around on the floor. Made sense to my thinking, most things I finished were just a stepping stone to the next job. Ben came up with what he was looking for with a shout of joy. “Here! Take a look at this!”

He held out to me a larger, maybe three-foot-tall golden trophy with an expensive-looking engraving on the side. It read ‘TO DEREK HUNTER- For saving the two million inhabitants of the island of Manhattan. It also bore today’s date… well the last date I remembered from being alive.

“You are a hero! Imagine the fame that could come from something like this. The interviews… Oprah, Larry King, Mei Ren, heck Barbara Walters would come out of retirement for the chance to share the screen with you for an hour, ninety years old or not.”

“Barking up the wrong tree with this one demon, just look around.” Mist yawned leaning easily in the door-frame. “If Hunter valued this type of thing they would be better taken care of. You can practically see the cobwebs down here for how often he visits.”

“Well you’re idea of looking at all the friends you might make was certainly successful wasn’t it?” Ben threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “None of this is going to help give him the strength to stand back up and walk out of the hospital.”

“Wait just a minute… THAT is what this all about?” I looked between the two of them in shock. “You think I want to stay dead? Hell no, but I know enough to realize that multiple bullets to the lungs and heart… It’s fuzzy but I think one went through my head. There’s no going back from that and even if there was… you two really have no clue about me if this was your plan.”

I picked up the trophies at my feet and looked at them. Spelling bee awards, a near-perfect bowling game, top marksmanship scores that very few people in the country could challenge but nothing close to what I was looking for. What I was looking for was larger… so much bigger than anything I was seeing here. I dropped the trophies I had and rushed off further into the rooms. I went from room to room looking for something I only felt should be there but did not know existed.

Finally, I found a smaller room far in from the entrance, this room was kept immaculate. Black velvet curtains lined the walls surrounding a pedestal with several spotlights. Atop the pedestal was a larger-than-life, detailed statue of my daughter Kaylie. The polished metal statue was so accurate in every detail that my breath caught in my throat.

“You want to inspire me, make me fight, proud, angry? Her! She is the only thing I have done in my entire time on this dismal planet that is worth knowing about. The one thing I did right was bringing her into this world even if I screwed up nearly every moment with her since then. She is the reason I get up in the morning and do what I do, to make a world where she will be safe. She is and always will be the very reason… the only reason I fight and will continue to fight for as long as I am able! If there is ANY chance to keep her safe, I will take it.”

“I think our boy is ready to put up a fight, Benny.”

~ * `

My eyes opened in an operating room, surgeons leaning over me, their faces blurry in the blinding lights shining over me.

“He’s back, doctor.”

“Good. Death is much too easy for this son of a bitch. He deserves to suffer for all those people he tried to hurt. Call me if he dies again.” The white clad-figure handed off the tools in her hands and walked quickly out of sight. I closed my eyes again to the rhythm of the beeping machine next to me and got myself ready for a fight.