Neon Crimson

This story was doubly inspired. First, by the book-tube event Giallo July (check out the video by the Bookubus HERE), and secondly, by a photo prompt for which I was tagged by Conor MacCormack about a month and a half ago and can no longer find.

The city’s bright lights transformed the narrow strip of visible sky into a fathomless void. The killer stood next to the tree trunk sprouting from a four-by-four square of soil in the sidewalk, hidden in the shadows of its boughs. Across the street rose the stately and elegant Hotel now plastered with a panoply of neon signs, behind the tree stood a pastel, art deco mausoleum trimmed with digital billboards flashing hieroglyphics he couldn’t read, and adjacent was the many-columned temple now housing a dance club; parishioners of another sort stumbled in and out in a steady stream.

The dueling lights had turned the area beneath the tree, covered by drooping branches, into a nook as empty as that starless strip above, and he was dressed in all black and waited in the darkness, leaning nonchalantly against the trunk, and though he made no extra effort to conceal his presence, many night owls passed within several feet without realizing it. If anything, a few of the more sensitive, or sober, partygoers might have felt a chill creep along the back of their necks. A couple might have paused and looked around, but the gaudy lights would have caught their attentions and shifted their minds elsewhere before they could take in the slight shift of black leather boots near the base of the trunk.

The killer breathed deeply and pulled the gloves over his hands. Next, from its rolled-up position on the top of his head, appearing as nothing more than a black knit toboggan worn slightly out of season, down came the mask over his face, and out came the hunting knife from the sheath in his boot. If light could have penetrated that dark halo it would have gleamed along the blade and winked at the end where the tip curled to a wicked point.

No one noticed the killer, but he noticed all of them. They were no ones, empty, and as such, were safe from his blade. He knew the one he sought, and he waited for his victim there in the shadow of the tree between the mountain of lights, adverts, and distraction. A ghost of flesh and blood. Only one thought, one image, passed through his mind, the now destroyed polaroid of his victim; it was as committed to memory as the photograph was to the heap.

His breath caught and he pushed off the trunk to stand rigidly as his victim strode up the street, moving closer and pressing his face through the velvet leaves, and watched his victim come.

Her red dress glowed in the lights and climbed up her legs and down her bust. Dark hair flowed from her head over her shoulders and bounced with each step, and she strode down the street as if she owned it; the killer thought anyone foolish enough to watch her long enough would come to believe that she did in fact own the whole street. She moved with the authority one would imagine the statue of liberty moving with were it to come to life.

A taxi blurred past, twin rockets of color and light, honking as it swerved around her, but the victim waved with one hand and flipped the cabbie the bird with the other. By then she’d drawn alongside the tree and just past.

The taxi disappeared at the next block, and the empty streets vibrated with the thump-thump-thump from the clubs and all the colors, bright enough to put out an eye, reflected off the damp asphalt. A man crossed from the other side, coming from the big club. His hair was shadow and he wore a long brown coat and the killer couldn’t tell much more about him. He spoke rapidly and gestured about as he approached the victim and she turned straight toward him. Both of them were clearly furious with the other. They met at roughly the center of the street and stood nose to nose yelling and cursing and now that they were distracted the killer decided to move forward. The killer wasn’t interested in this new man and didn’t care what happened to him unless attempted to play the hero then he’d be dealt with. If, however, he simply fled, the killer decided he wouldn’t pursue.

The killer created the barest rustle when he left the shadowed boughs and crossed the flaming expanse. Had the pair been watching they might have had time to flee. As it was, they weren’t paying any attention to anything other than each other, and they never had a chance.

The fog of a past life flowed over the street, swallowing the killer as he met his victims. A carriage rumbled over the cobbles, and fuzzy lanterns glowed in the distance. Someone, a beat copper more than likely, rang a bell on a nearby corner, but the fog covered the killer and his deed.

They hadn’t seen him then, over a century earlier, and they wouldn’t see him now, bathed in neon rather than fog. The blood was the same. Sticky crimson. Coppery odor. Warm as it splashed over the hunting knife, slicked his glove, and splattered his wrist and jacket.

The man stood frozen in shock while the killer gutted the victim. The knife was sharp and she went quickly and dropped to the street, and as he raised himself up, he noticed the boyfriend still there, staring, a pink flashing tear boiling over the edge of his eyelid and sprinting down his cheek. He appeared to look at everything without seeing anything and seemed to carry the Ostrich version of the fight or flight response. Easy pickings. And just like that, the victim’s boyfriend was upgraded to victim number two.

He stood there, arms out, staring down at the once-beauty but now spoiled. The killer leapt at him and as he stepped in and drove the knife home, the boyfriend’s arms closed around him in some sort of neural misfire, hugging him as a lover might after a long separation.

The killer left them there to be found later, disappearing this time in a flash of strobing lights as the fog dissipated.