The Red Man And The Blue Man
Genre: Horror -- CW: Gore, Children In Peril -- About 6,600 Words
“The Red Man and The Blue Man are coming to take me away.”
That was the line. The line that chilled his heart. He thinks about it as he plays that riff it inspired, the one that was supposed to be a hit, man. That was, if Jimmy Gresco could ever sit down and actually record a fucking song.
Jimmy used to come over to Adrian’s mother’s house after school to escape his father’s “hellhole of a pigsty.” They’d write a song the whole night and agree to record it the next time he came over. Of course, every next time came with a new idea that just had to be added to the song: a bigger thump to the bassline, a breakdown after the new second verse (which Jimmy had come up with at home), three more fills from the drum machine they were (supposed to be) recording with, or a different melody altogether. That was a long time ago, though. Back when they were writing an album. Back when they were 'friends.'
To his shame, he didn’t drop the bastard when he’d called him “red man,” which Custer-Eyed Jimmy thought was so funny because of the light complexion he’d inherited from his mother. Jimmy (like everyone) didn’t like to hear him talk about his Blackfoot heritage. Jimmy would interrupt stories he recalled from his grandmother to use terms like “white privilege” while questioning his blood quantum the way you would a dog. What a cute boy, do you know the breed? Oh, yes, he’s one fourth Blackfoot, with some Seneca, Oneida, and there’s a little bit of Sioux on his mother’s side. Jimmy was a white fourteen year old in a white sixteen year old’s body, thought slurs were funny just because you weren’t supposed to say them. Not that he’d seen Jimmy call his black friends the ‘N’ word.
Not that Jimmy had any black friends.
To Adrian's shame, he didn’t even drop Jimmy after he started dating his ex. Sure, they stopped talking for a whole summer, but Jimmy weaseled his way back into his life through the constant guilt that Adrian couldn't shake. There was some bullshit excuse about how people should be free to date whoever they want, and if the two had broken up, Adrian shouldn’t care. Except he had cried to Jimmy about the girl, opened up in ways he’d never opened up before. What did Jimmy think of all those things? Lies.
It was pretty sweet when she did the same shit to him, though.
No.
No it wasn’t.
He hated Jimmy, but he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor fucker, stayed in his life up to the point that he heard from Jimmy’s new-ex-girlfriend that he’d robbed her blind. They'd moved in together, put all their stuff in the same apartment. One day, Maria comes home and doesn't even have a bed. Jimmy'd come over, pulled a story out of a hat about how horrible it was to be with her. Adrian didn't believe it. He'd met her and she was nothing but kind. He didn’t feel sorry for Jimmy anymore after that. He met with Jimmy once after, confronted him about what she’d told him. He never would have guessed Jimmy would pull a knife on him.
The cops still haven’t found Jimmy.
The riff is faster now, more aggressive. It growls through two pedals and an amp that’ll squeal like a rat in a glue trap if he stops playing for just two seconds. He rarely stops playing when the guitar is in his hands, though.
Red man.
Take me away.
Blue man.
Take me away.
He hears the lyrics in his head, doesn’t sing them, can’t sing them. He loves to play guitar, he just doesn’t do it often enough to know how to sing while playing. It’s a skill he’s always wanted, just never really picked up, never really tried.
Red man.
His hands go crazy, chucking through a cacophony of notes along the grimy fretboard. The rat squeals. He unplugs the pedals and turns off the amp, leans his guitar against it.
He leaves his room, walks to the kitchen of the compressed apartment, feeling his hand along the wall for the light switch as he recalls the story.
His little sister, when she was so young she doesn’t even remember it anymore, had wrapped her arms around him in a hug as tight as a child can show her love.
“Goodbye,” she’d said.
“What do you mean ‘goodbye?’” he asked.
“The Red Man and The Blue Man are coming to take me away.” Calliope had said it with such belief, the kind that a child’s imagination can’t make up. He was shocked, didn’t know what to say then and still doesn’t now.
Then, she’d gone and done the same thing to Mom and Dad. They asked her when the strange figures were coming.
“Tonight,” she’d told them.
It frightened all of them. His dad called the father from their church who instructed him in a ritual, the kind that Christians pretend makes more sense than a sweat lodge, vision quest, or smudging. He'd anointed some oil and taken it to each corner of the house, said a prayer as he flicked the holy oil onto the walls. They assumed it worked - Calliope never brought them up again.
Adrian’s fingers flip the switch and the lights go on, taking him out of the dark and into the present.
Red man.
He flicks his eyes to the living room separated from the kitchen by little more than a counter and a cabinet. He blinks twice. It’s not the first time he’s seen something creep out from the corner of his eye, but those things usually hide when he turns his head. Here, stretched up from the center of the living room carpet back to the wall, stands an untethered shadow.
Except shadows aren’t red.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know if this thing can hear, can even see, but he doesn’t want it to. He stands still, aware that it's not helping him at all, but what can you do when you see the terror from your childhood for the first time as an adult and it's standing between you and the front door?
Go out the window he thinks.
He sidles from the kitchen towards his bedroom door, flicking the switch again, for whatever good that might do him. The Red Man remains visible, as if glowing, but nothing around it is illuminated - only the threat. The shadow slinks across the floor, reaching a hand out to grab him, or do whatever two dimensional hands might do to a three dimensional man. He stumbles to avoid it, his feet bouncing awkwardly over the paper tripwire of its fingers.
It. Him. The Red Man.
He rushes into his room, shutting the door behind him, certain it won’t help. The first problem that The Red Man presents (if that really is The Red Man) isn’t that it - it, he, whatever - is two dimensional. It also isn’t even that he doesn’t know what it wants with him or why it’s here, though that is on his mind. The immediate problem he has is that The Red Man’s presence implies the presence of The Blue Man. Except he knows where The Red Man is.
The Red Man seeps under the door after Adrian, keeping time with his frantic rhythm. He tosses the T.V. between him and the window off of the dresser, cursing himself for leaving his phone to charge on the nightstand across his bed. It’s too late now, though. He tears the curtain from the thumbtacks holding it over the window and desperately lifts the glass open, kicking the frame out and sliding through.
It’s late, the darkness of the nighttime almost swallowing him except for the few dim streetlights ignoring most of the parking lot. The Red Man pours out of the window after him. He dashes for the car, knows it’s unlocked. Not that he has his keys to help him peel out of this mess, but he knows what’s in the car. The knife has an aura of welfare wrapped around the handle. It was a gift from his father, passed down through a couple generations of genuine Blackfoot fighters. Despite being used in more world wars than plains wars, it’s one of the few Blackfoot objects he has. He reaches the black SUV, glances through the window.
Blue man.
Oh well. The knife wouldn’t have helped anyway.
Probably not, at least.
His only option now is to run. He supposes he could knock on the doors of his neighbors, but the things move so fast that they’d probably catch him before someone answers.
He remembers, as he runs for the road - across which is just more apartments, no cars coming or going - that he doesn’t actually know what being caught looks like here. The horror of the story had always been a guess. The horror is the same now, but much more real. None of the ideas he came up with late at night sound pleasant or plausible. None of the nightmares either, but he remembers them all. They flash by in broken moments, his idea of The Red Man and The Blue Man tormenting him since childhood.
He imagined they were dead people - well undead people. He imagined The Blue Man had been drowned and The Red Man had been flayed. He’d asked his sister what they looked like a couple of times, but she couldn’t remember. Now, he doesn’t know what to think.
He falls on his back, surprised at the direction he’s tripped before rolling over and realizing that he hasn’t tripped. He’s being pulled. The Red Man has a hand wrapped around the shadow a streetlight casts from his body. His arms scrape against the asphalt, the legs of his knit pajama pants tearing through at the knees. The Blue Man disappears, most of The Red Man diving though reality as well, but that hand remains on his shadow and starts pulling him down.
“Arggh! Goddamnit!” His face crushes against the parking lot, breaking his nose. Pressure builds around his forehead, and then his whole body. Before he knows it, he’s being dragged through the asphalt, the earth swallowing him on each side. There’s no air to breathe, and even if there was there’d be no room for his lungs to expand. All he knows is that he’s being pulled down toward a fate he cannot see.
He curses Jimmy for being such a lousy fuck head, never being happy with the songs and wasting so much of his life.
He curses his father for abandoning his roots, turning his back on the tribe, keeping his Blackfoot heritage buried under hushed tones and stories from his grandmother.
He curses his sister for forgetting about The Red Man and The Blue Man. Maybe if she hadn’t, they’d be taking her instead.
Take me away.
***
He wakes up in a pile of bones, blood, and gore. Gore everywhere. Gore galore.
Heh, he thinks, Gore Galore would be a brutal song title.
He tries to move, pain shooting out in all directions from his gut, grasps his hand to it. He looks down at all the blood on him, knows that some of it is his. He’s been lacerated across the stomach.
Hope I don’t get any diseases.
He reasons that his humorous thoughts are coming from the blood loss. Either that, or he’s lost his mind.
The stench ambushes him, its presence greater than the strange light (what is that green light?). Rotten odors slither up to his nose and strangle him. It’s too much. The pain is terrible as his body heaves forward, launching vomit up from his hacked stomach, burning through his throat, and ejecting out of his mouth. It’s another disgusting sight, but the least disgusting of it all.
He looks up from the slasher scene, surveys the walls around him. Green light permeating the air, not coming from anywhere in particular, reveals the hard rocks of a cavern. At the end of the hellish pile, the cave closes in on a small passageway, as if the tunnel was carved out.
He crawls across the viscera toward it, hands and knees bleeding, slipping along the blood lubricating the organs and skulls, hearts and livers identifiable from the pictures he saw in high school text books, but the texture is nothing like he thought. The hearts are more firm, the livers spongey. His body shakes, pain cutting him in half at the bowels. Blood splashes up around him as he slides on, dirtying his face, his hands, his clothes. His blood-soaked hand lands on a misshapen skull that catches his attention.
Wait, it’s not misshapen. It’s the skull of a dog.
He stops, caressing the fallen pet. It seems significant. It’s all significant, he realizes, but by the same virtue none of it has been significant until this, the cadaver of an innocent pup, found its way into his hands.
Tears swell in his eyes. He can’t help but cry, wailing at the horror of it all, the atrocity. He tries to keep himself quiet at first, afraid that someone – something – The Red Man or The Blue Man might hear him. It doesn’t matter, though. He’d rather be heard and killed fast than made to endure a life after this.
Bones clatter to the left. His eyes dart over catching the end of a slight shuffling. He inspects the organic rubble, ready to strike, to lash out at whatever horrible thing he can, bait it into ending his life. Then, his eyes make it out. A shape covered in the same blood red as him blends in to the carnage.
He’s looking at a child.
“Hello?” The question is all he has. All he can give.
The child lifts a shy hand, offering a slight wave back. Her hair is drenched in red, stuck to her like she’d just found shelter from a storm. Her dress reminds Adrian of Calliope when she was young.
The curses come back to him, remorse at the memory of those nasty thoughts, which he admits have always had a way of poisoning his mind. “Sorry,” he whispers.
The dog skull clatters, discarded by Adrian who puts forth a hand to start his way over. She leans back. Small reassurances croon out as he approaches. “It’s okay,” he tells her, though it really isn’t. “I’m Adrian, you can trust me. What’s your name?”
He’s close now, close enough to put a hand on her if he wanted. She shakes her head, doesn’t say a word. There isn’t much he can get from that. He wants to shake his head too, wants to scream the word ‘No,’ like he has any say in all of this. He wants to fight against the circumstances, but there’s nothing to fight. They just need to escape. He looks to her, inspired by the twinkle in her eye, the kind only a child has, the kind only a child could have through all of this. Just seconds ago, he was desperate to die. Now, he’s eager to live.
His fingers move forward, slowly taking her hand in his. He starts to guide her along, away from the organs, the bones, the death. They slide down from the pile, make their way to the passage.
He peeks around the corner, one hand on his gut, the other by his side holding hers. The cave through here is narrow and dim, only the supernatural light from this alcove seeping in for illumination. After that, they’ll have to walk through darkness until their eyes adjust. No sign of life, though.
They walk in, Adrian leading the way, hopefully to safety. As they reach darkness, Adrian wonders if he might be dead. He thinks that it hurts too much to be dead, discarding the thought for making no sense. Or maybe it makes too much sense? He’d rather accept that he’s dead than alive. Life shouldn’t be this grotesque. But if he’s alive he’s gonna keep on living. He’s gonna keep living if he’s dead too. He has to. For her. For No.
No. No isn’t a name, more of a statement, but it’s all he really has to call her right now, all that makes sense. Besides, he’s met people named Guy, Lance, Hunter, June, Joy, and even a man who called himself ‘Dick.’ No’s much better than any of those. He isn’t just going to think of her as ‘the child’ or ‘the girl.’ He can’t.
As they walk through the darkness, the pain flares through him like a fire burning his limbs, his entrails, everything. He winces, but he has to keep walking. They have to keep walking. He realizes that he should have inspected No for any injuries, made sure she was okay. Too late now, though. He doesn’t want her to feel any more uncomfortable than she is, and even though it could save her life there’s a very slim chance of survival, so he discards the thought of inspecting her wellbeing with his hands in the dark. He’s sure she’s fine, though. He convinces himself, at least.
Then he wonders what cut him. Wonders why.
***
He doesn’t know how long they’ve been walking in the dark, but he starts to drag his leg every other step or so. It could be from the length. It could be from the blood loss. He feels lucky, chuckles a bit at the idea of luck here – wherever here is. It’s true, though. The Red Man and The Blue Man might not haunt this place despite his assumption that they do. Something else could be here too, but if something is down here with them it hasn’t shown its face.
Different sounds have been tossed through the cave, all of them unidentifiable in origin or identity. He can’t tell what’s down here with them, if anything, but that doesn’t stop his imagination from creating hidden monsters. It doesn’t stop the memories, the nightmares.
After another curve, something shines through up ahead. He picks up the pace, just a tad, the rhythm of her footsteps syncing with his. They get to the light.
The chasm is large, another piece of the cavern. It’s about as big as the last area they came from, but empty. The walls are taller, leading up to a small collection of openings above them. He looks up and sees a star through one of them, the light of the absent moon illuminating this place. It looks almost magical.
Adrian’s head turns down to No. She looks up at the stars, the hint of a smile glimmering in her eyes, denied on her mouth. Underneath the blood covering her is the wonder he misses from his childhood. The story of Kutoyis, Blood-Clot Boy, greets him from the memories of his grandmother. He had transformed from nothing other than a small clot of blood in the dirt to a hero, travelling the land and fighting for justice among the people of the plains. Maybe telling No a story would help her. Maybe it’d help himself. He longs to sit by a fire under stars like this, smoking a pipe of sweet grass, telling that story and making up a few others for an audience of children, No included.
He hasn’t ever smoked sweet grass, though. He’s smoked weed before, knows it’s not the same.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
No looks at him for a second. He’s not sure if she understands the question. Maybe she just doesn’t understand the answer. He asks to see where she’s hurt. She just stares at him. He takes a deep breath before kneeling down. She watches him feebly lift her dress, eyes scanning her limbs, stomach, back. He doesn’t see any wounds, drops the skirt of the dress and offers his hand back to her. She takes it.
There are two exits across the way, both leading to more darkness. On the left, it seems the path curves upward, promising the starry sky they’ve seen. The other way tilts down.
He leads her across the chasm, eager to finish the campfire story. He walks up to the opening on the left, but she holds him back, tugging at his hand. He turns, looks down at No. She points to the other passage.
“We need to go up,” he says. “We need to leave.”
She shakes her head, points the other way again. The architecture of a cave isn’t predictable, and there’s no clear evidence that this place was carved out. The vulnerability he felt being dragged through the ground, something that shouldn’t have ever happened, shouldn’t have been able to happen, surges through him. He tenses up, swallows.
“This way. Come on,” he asserts.
She tears away from him, runs down the other passage. He watches her go for a second, takes a deep breath in through the nose and walks after her.
“It’s okay,” he says when he catches up, “we need to stick together.”
She looks at him, hesitates for a moment before offering her blood soaked hand back to him. He takes it, and they walk.
The pain is unbearable. He doesn’t really know how deep the cut in his stomach goes, doesn’t know what’s even been sliced, but it feels like it goes right through him. The hill of gore shocked him at first, but now he can barely picture it. Every minute that passes, he forgets a little bit more about the awakening. The pain must be distracting him. Part of him wishes No was injured so she could forget as easily. Those wishes upset him.
His hand feels along the cavern wall for the turns, No's feet inching forward behind his so he can protect her from any drop offs. His hand reaches a dead end, but something is strange. It’s not rock, but wood. He inspects the area, finding that it’s carved, perhaps even decorated. It’s familiar, his fingers reasoning that this must be a door. He draws his hand around the frame, hinges popping out to greet it. He moves to the other side, inspects the dark for a knob. It’s brass, has weight. He twists and pushes.
As electric, yellow light pours into the cave, No rushes inside the space. It’s… a bedroom? There’s wood boards on the floor inside, connecting to the stone. He steps in.
Children's books decorate a shelf in the corner. A door stands within the other wall between it and a small bed in the other corner, a chest placed in front of the simple bedframe.
No bolts to the chest. She opens it, dives in and pulls out a doll while Adrian tries to wrap his head around the place, looking at a pitch black window. She steps up to him, presenting the doll that now has blood all over, soaking into the felt dress. Adrian takes it, runs his fingers through the yarn hair and presses into the plush body like he’s checking a fruit. He hands the doll back to No. She hugs it to her cheek.
Adrian sits down on the bed, lifts up his shirt to inspect the cut. It crosses the width of his stomach, looks deep enough that guts should be pouring out. It aches like nothing else he’s ever felt in his life. No sees the wound, gasps, and runs over to the dresser set beside the bookshelf. She pulls open a drawer and takes out a tiny, yellow sweater. She brings it to him, presses the torso to his stomach before hopping behind him and tying the sleeves in the back.
He thanks her, wants to rest a second longer. His legs tremble as he stands. He sees himself caked in blood in the mirror above the dresser and isn’t sure if he should frown or not.
He takes her hand and presses forward, through the next door.
Through there, he finds his old childhood bedroom. It’s exactly the same down to the chips of paint flaking off his night stand. He shuts the door behind him and finds that, on this side, it’s even the same as his old door.
He shakes his head. This doesn’t make sense, but neither did the other room. None of it makes sense at all, and it hasn’t for a while. It’s best not to stop now and try to think about it, he guesses. Of course, he hasn’t tried it yet, doesn’t really want to.
He walks up to his amp, takes the guitar beside it and plugs in. He puts the strap over his shoulder and starts playing the same riff he was playing before this all began. His stomach rumbles louder than it did then, but he’d pushed through then just to play a little bit more. He’s hungry now, starving really, wishes he’d kept snacks in his room as a child. No has to be starving too.
The riff snarls from the speaker, his hands summoning it like a spell. He plays it slower, the way it was written on this shitty amp his father passed on to him. The distortion sounds more like fuzz on the small thing, but it’s good, almost better. This is where that hit was written. The new amp is loud, sure, but there’s nothing quite like this little relic.
“Red man.
Take me away.
Blue man.
Take me away.”
It’s the first time he’s sung the words while playing, and it might be slow, but it rips. Like Neil Fallon or Pepper Keenan or any of his favorites, really. Yeah, this would have charted, he knows it. A smile dawns on his lips as he notices the blood on the strings, the first time he’s gotten blood on a guitar since his thirteenth birthday. He played that guitar all night, retreating into his room as soon as he got it. He’d been learning on his father’s old Strat, but the humbuckers on this leviathan shout just the way a guitar should. He was so happy that he played it until he cut his fingers open. Calliope picked up the drums a few months after just to play with him.
He looks at No who covers her ears. It must not be her style. He turns off the amp, leans the guitar against it. Before walking away, he reaches a hand around the back of the amp to the old hiding place, the space where you see the speaker pressed against the grille. There, he picks up the knife that’s supposed to be in his car and probably still is. He inspects it. It’s an exact replica.
An exact replica.
The artefact goes in the back of his waistband, sheath, comfort, and all.
He looks at the closet on the other side. Nowhere to go now but back to the other passage. He takes No’s hand and walks towards the door.
Tap tap, tap.
A chill rushes down Adrian’s spine and his hand clenches tighter around No’s. He takes a deep breath. He knows that rythm.
Tap tap, tap.
It’s the thump of the baseline that’s supposed to come after that riff he was just playing.
“You gonna let me in?” It’s Jimmy’s voice.
Adrian turns around to look at the black out curtain next to his bed. His heart plays blast beats in his ears as he puts his hand in front of No. He inches forward, climbs onto the bed. His gray bedspread gets covered in blood as he climbs over it. Adrian swallows. Then, he wraps his fingers around the edge of the curtain one by one and slowly pulls it aside like turning a page in a book.
“Took you long enough,” Jimmy smiles outside of the window. Darkness surrounds him, but the light leaking in from the room is enough to illuminate his blue eyes. Teeth beam out from Jimmy’s unmistakable grin. “Look at all that blood,” he cackles. “You really are a red man.”
“You’re not real,” Adrian says.
“You think so?” Jimmy says. “You really think none of this is real? Shame. Guess it means that knife won’t protect you.”
Adrian notices his hand gripping the dagger’s handle.
“If it’s not real, why are you protecting her?” Jimmy nods at No. Her eyes are locked on his unrelenting smile.
“Don’t talk to her,” Adrian says.
“Or?” Jimmy winks. “Tell you what, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you open this window and we can stop measuring dicks with our words.” Jimmy reaches into his denim vest and pulls out the butterfly knife he slashed at Adrian with the last time they met. “Show you mine if you show me yours.”
Adrian takes out his dagger. “You sure you want to?”
Jimmy’s eyes dare Adrian to break contact, lose the staring contest that feels like it determines the fate of the whole goddamn world. His blade reaches up to the window and he starts carving into it. He doesn’t even have to finish the first letter, Adrian knows what Jimmy’s about to write. It makes his chest tighten, his breath starts rushing out of him like a bull.
No starts pulling at his hand. When he looks back, he expects No to have a look of disappointment, trying to dissuade him from this fight that Jimmy is obviously goading him into. The look on her face, though, is one of pain. He’s white knuckling her hand, and she just wants to be free of the crushing pressure.
Adrian lets go. No pulls her eyebrows together and stares a hole into him
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have hurt you.”
No sighs and looks at the door.
Adrian gets off of the bed, lets the curtain fall behind him.
“Afraid you’ll lose?” Jimmy calls out from behind him. Then, an outburst of laughter, the same laughter that Adrian used to love.
He takes No by the hand and walks back through the bedroom door.
***
The darkness consumes them. He can’t see if his sight is getting blurry, but his eyes feel blurry. The pain feels like all he is. No time has passed in the clutches of eternity, but they continue on. Perhaps there is no exit. Perhaps there is no light. All there is now, and all there has been for a while, is a girl with a doll in her hand, a knife in his waistband, and the pain seizing his body.
He collapses to his knees. Death has already taken him, he knows. Jimmy’s laughter rattles through his skull. It doesn’t matter if he died before and this is some evil afterlife. It doesn’t matter if death will meet him soon with only emptiness to offer. He’s a dead man.
No gets under him, careful to avoid the cut. She struggles to lift him, the effort forcing out a grunt. It’s the first time Adrian has heard her voice, even just a hint of it. It reminds him that she’s alive.
He quakes as he stands up, his hand rippling as he takes hers, gripping his knife in the other. He carries it in front of him, scraping the handle alongside the cave walls.
They turn a corner, the first corner among the many dips and rises in this passage. There, they see it. Small, a distance away in the dark, are the shadows. The Red Man and The Blue Man stretched out against walls they don’t know, can’t see.
This is where Kutoyis does something really cool: takes the sweater wrapped around his wound and turns it into a bow, scrapes arrows from the rock surrounding them. Except folk magic like that doesn’t exist here. That’s a story, and he’s made of flesh.
He steps forward. No holds him back, the grip on his hand tightened. He doesn’t want to whisper, doesn’t know what they can and can’t hear, but they aren’t coming after the two of them yet. In fact, they move out of sight, implying that there’s more curves down the tunnel. Either that, or another open space.
He brushes his hands through her bloody hair. He feels her looking up toward him in the dark. His knife is out, and he’s ready to defend her, ready to do anything.
Slowly, his feet lurch forward, No hesitant to follow but walking along. The rest of the tunnel is short, the two of them reaching a breakaway before they know it. They find themselves in a large chamber. Light leaks in from their right, an opening leading to a wooded area outside. Between them and escape are The Red Man and The Blue Man.
“Get behind me,” he growls. The shapes make the vague motion of turning, the way only shadows can. No steps behind Adrian, peeking out from the edge of his leg.
The Blue Man lunges as The Red Man lingers, some form of calculation somehow emanating from its indefinable glow. Blue claws stretch from a paper arm, Adrian guiding No away from the grasp. He twists down, just barely avoiding The Blue Man’s wicked reach. He chances stabbing the thing, knife going down, the blade reflecting a little light from the exit. It enters, sliding down as if it were passing through molasses, slashing The Blue Man open. It leaks a violet light, Adrian dragging the knife through the entire shape until it becomes two halves.
Focused on The Blue Man, he hadn’t noticed The Red Man moving along the wall, along the floor. The hand that stretches out from the shadow now crawls along his leg and slips into his wound. Blood pours out, his guts spilling forth as he drops the knife. He screams in anguish, punching down into the red liquid capturing his leg.
His assailant almost doesn’t exist, so faint he can’t even tell if he’s actually touching The Red Man or if he’s going around it. Trying to kick it off, kick it out, he writhes in a desperate effort to escape.
He’s never felt torture like this. Every inch of him screams out for mercy. His legs tremble. His mind starts to cloud, vision blurring, giving up on him. Ringing pierces his ears and he can swear that Jimmy is still laughing deep inside the cave.
Then, the knife is going through The Red Man. At the point where The Red Man slips up from the ground, the blade dips and cuts through it. That doll is on the cavern floor, the handle of the knife in No’s hand. She splits The Red Man in half. Adrian can feel the grip of the thing struggle and start to loosen. He puts out his hand, gestures for the knife which No tosses to him. He takes the blade and stabs it down into the rest of the shadow. The agony of his leg tells him he’s cut right through it, violet light spilling out from The Red Man.
The grip withers, becomes flaccid. Adrian stands, shaking The Red Man off and dropping the blade to trade for his intestines. He carries them toward the exit of the cave. They’re free.
No grabs the knife, leaves the doll.
He limps along the shadows of the thick trees, occasionally catching spots of sunlight shining through. It’s silent out here, nothing but their own footsteps to listen to. No paces alongside him, holding the knife in two hands, eyes never peeling off of him. Just ahead, peeking out from the trees, is a field long and lush with tall grass. It will be a good place to die, despite Adrian’s wishes to see No to safety.
“Agh!” No yelps.
He turns around, the tunnel vision leading to the field now broken. A great purple monstrosity is folding out of the shadows, violently rippling as if it can’t even sustain itself. Regardless, its will propels the horror outward in three dimensions. From the shadow it casts - violet like the blood the shadows spilled in the cave - he’s sure, somehow, it’s the combination of The Red Man and The Blue Man, forces that should be dead now surviving through each other.
Maybe they shouldn’t be dead. He doesn’t know what they are. Never has.
The shape is absorbing No, dragging her back to the cave. It’s already taken in her head, silencing her screaming. Adrian rushes to it, the pulse of adrenaline burning through his wounds, shooting through his spilling blood.
He drops his guts, drags them behind him. Not like this he thinks, not for her. He reaches the abomination, plunges his hand in and starts tearing it apart. This amalgamation must not know how to sustain itself in three dimensions. It’s easy to take it apart, his arms flying wildly in and out, taking pieces and slinging them into the field. His head thrashes back and forth as he digs for No. In a violent moment, he notices that the pieces dissipate in the sunlight.
This is it, all he can do and all he will do. It’s not the way he saw his life ending, but it’s a life well lived. He throws his arms around No, pulling her with all his strength. She leans out a bit, but the monstrosity pulls back. He struggles against it, but starts to drag the blob with her. It won’t let go. Good. His legs are heavy, his entrails dragging behind her and falling under the thing. He doesn’t care. This is over, he’s demanding it.
Fighting against the thing should be easy, would be if he weren’t on the precipice of death. He is dying though, and there’s nothing he can do about that. Both he and the monster are struggling to be, fighting to live. At the threshold of the dark forest and the field, the thing starts to weaken, as if considering retreat - as if it knows.
He pulls as hard as a dead man can, lands on his back, taking No down into his arms and kicking the whole thing up, violet shadow and all. It lets out a sound for the first time since this nightmare started, a cry of desperation. The thing evaporates in the sun. It’s over in a moment. She is safe.
No gets off of him, tries to lift his arm, but he can’t help her. He smiles faintly, eyes closed as she shakes him, begging him to get up without any words. The screams say nothing. The screams say everything.
This is a good death, a hero’s death. Blood spits like lava out of his leg, out of his stomach. The pain swells and starts to disappear. He thinks of Kutoyis, wonders if a clot of his own blood will appear in an elder’s story somewhere far away, in a place where tribes still roam the plains and the Blackfeet never had to give up their traditions, their stories. He imagines Calliope might play his story on a stage one day.
His hand squeezes No’s. His eyes open one last time, scanning her for any wounds. There aren’t any visible. Tears roll down her cheeks, cleaning off some of the blood. They fall on him.
The riff plays in his head, except it’s slower than he ever thought to play it, ever thought to write. There is no distortion. There is no fuzz. No more pain.