Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift by Fiction River Page B

man’s throat had to be as natural as breathing.
    Side-step, feign, attack from the side.
    The fight was over, before the man realized it had started.
     
    ***
     
    The middle-aged-looking man was lying on the ground with Sam on top of him. Sam’s arm was buried in the man’s belly.
    Every intelligent foe had a nervous center or an equivalent. Without complex interconnections, no consciousness.
    “I would say I was going to make this quick, but I don’t want to lie to you.”
    The man was as cold as he was. Emptiness given form. When killing a human all Sam needed to do was shock-freeze the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that took care of things like breathing and maintaining a heartbeat. The subject would be dead before hitting the floor.
    With creatures from the Inbetween it was force. If he grabbed the high-dimensional bubble of consciousness in the creature’s center, he could literally squeeze the life out of it.
    “This is a special occasion, you see. It’s the big one-triple-zero.”
    The man lay still as death, but for the first time Sam could sense an emotion in him. It was fear. Nothing living wants to die.
    “My one-thousandth kill. You can take comfort in that. No matter how crappy your life was, at least you were special to somebody.”
    The man’s body lost shape. Sam was arm-deep in a black cloud now.
    “Goodbye, you pathetic little thing. Congratulations on your accomplishment.”
    The black cloud convulsed now, growing larger and smaller. Angry little tendrils shot out of it, thrashing at Sam, as the man’s most primal impulses withered and died, one by one.
    At the end, the man’s remains collapsed in itself, leaving nothing but a shriveled purplish-black potato.
    The Wishing Tree was looming over Sam. It was time for his sacrifice.
     
    ***
     
    Sam held the remains up in the air.
    “I give you this trophy. My one-thousandth kill.”
    He tossed it to the ground. A tiny black root shot up from between the bones and dragged the black bulb down, with eerie speed.
    Sam stepped up to the tree’s wound. And kissed it.
    The tree tasted like ash. The little resin that seeped from the wound gave him a tiny buzz. The tree was right. After one thousand kills his latest didn’t matter to him anymore. It barely even registered as exciting. A memory that was fading fast. Maybe the trophy could have become precious to him but, as of late, time was not something he had.
    He let the fingers of his left hand, his human hand, slide across the rough bark of the tree. What else could he give him?
    His car.
    It seemed like a dumb move, him being on the run. But he could always get another car. One that he did not love that much. This tree and its power were the only thing that could help him now. Desperation makes for shitty negotiations.
    He walked over and opened the trunk, intent on taking some ranged weapons. That’s when he saw the burlap sack and it took him back.
    Johnathan Whitestaff III. had already been an old man when he discovered the tree in Sweden. Sam had learned from his father’s notes that he was obsessed with finding immortality. So obsessed that he raped all eight of his housemaids, repeatedly, until they conceived. He locked them in his basement. Sam had been four years old when he had first seen the sun.
    Today Sam knew that his childhood was a mixed calculation. All the love and affection his father could put into him were making him a more potent sacrifice, but his father could only let Sam grow so old before his own body would give out.
    When the day came, Jonathan Whitestaff III. doped his eight children and carried them here. To this day Sam did not know how his brothers and sisters died. He only came to when his father amputated Sam’s right arm. Finally he seemed to have enough power.
    He must have chosen a poor wording for his wish. It was Sam that received the gift instead of him. It took years of pain and suffering until Sam’s flesh and the Emptiness had reached an