Black Sun by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 27

The following day was met by the continued gnawing of what had Eli had seen the previous day. He would spend most of his time peering through the curtains of the living room window, ready to escape through the back door in the event of a visit from the police. However, his anxiety would soon be alleviated as the blue sky of morning lit up with long curtains of colors lights, something he had never seen but had read about in school. Looking up at the northern lights, Eli stared, not in wonder but in apprehension, knowing that such phenomena should never happen this far south. “What the fuck?” he whispered.

His parents were also home, but did not see the living lights that hung over the skyline of Albany. They suddenly had more pressing matters to deal with as the sound of his mother’s voice pierced the quiet space of their apartment. The single scream brought his father running to the kitchen, where he found her on the floor, lying in a pool of blood.

“Eleanor!” he called. “What is it!?”

He tried to rouse her, in spite of the heavy bleeding that poured out through an open wound in her chest. Looking up, he found Eli standing silently in the doorway with an unemotional expression. “Eli!” he called. “Get a towel and help me.” Eli soaked in the sight of his dying mother, never having seen such a graphic injury. But under the surface, there was something else, a sense of relief. He had come to hate his parents for no particular reason. As part of the change he had gone through earlier in his life, he became hateful of all people, seeing them as being far beneath himself, deserving to die. Now, he longed for the opportunity to bring an end to their miserable existence, at least as many as possible.

His father called to him again, but instead of retrieving a towel, he reached down and grabbed the pacemaker that now lay partially exposed, surrounded by burnt flesh.

“Eli!” his father screamed. “What the hell are you doing?!” With only a slight bit of force, Eli pulled the bloody device from his mother’s chest, then watched as she took a last gurgling breath. “Why did you do that?!” his father screamed. “You just killed your mother! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He looked at his father with angry eyes. “Who the fuck cares?!” he replied.

Eli made a closer examination of the pacemaker, and thinking aloud, said, “I always wondered what these things looked like.” Enraged, his father raised a hand and struck him firmly across the face.

“You ungrateful shit!” he said. “You’ve never appreciated anything we’ve done for you, and I’m sick to death of your laziness! You don’t do shit around here! You’re a complete failure! You couldn’t even make it through high school without fucking it up! And now, your mother is dead, and you don’t feel a thing, do you?” As his father ranted, Eli held a hand to the side of the face, nursing the sting of swollen skin. But, as painful as it was, his eyes reflected the rage of a wild animal and moments later, he struck back, cutting his knuckles against his father’s teeth. Now, the animal was out of its cage and standing over his father, Eli continued his barrage of violence. Striking his father’s nose, he heard the faint crack of broken cartilage, and it was this experience that brought something even more dangerous – pleasure.

He felt his face flush as the sensation of arousal quickly took over, spurring him on in escalating violence. Now, his father lay near unconsciousness next to the body of his wife. During his tirade, Eli had not spoken a word, but allowed his actions to speak for him. He had never had a reason to hate his parents. There was just something about him that had always fought to escape, something primal. Perhaps, it was an accident of nature that he was born harboring a monster, that God had forgotten to give him a soul. Or maybe, the monster within him had simply consumed it as something inconsistent with its own dark nature. Now, the feeling of pleasure began to peak as Eli reached up to the sink and grabbed a kitchen knife. Without a moment of hesitation, he turned back to his father, straddled his stomach and began plunging the knife deeply into his body. His conscious mind had been replaced by the indescribable monster that had finally made its way to the surface.

Each time Eli pulled the blade from his now deceased father’s body, the momentum of his swing sent long trails of blood across the walls and ceiling. But, Eli was entirely unaware of the gruesome mess as he continued in his assault, stopping only out of exhaustion. Near breathless, he fell back against a cabinet near the sink and made one last examination of his parent’s bodies and after a long silence, he addressed them.

“Well, no more bitching now, huh?” He crawled over to his mother’s body and within inches of her face continued his one-sided dialogue.

“And you, I always knew you were afraid of me. You never knew when I’d snap, did you? Well, I snapped.” Sitting back against the cabinet, Eli suddenly burst into laughter. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stop. Eventually, once again, exhaustion would force a calming hand as he began to drift off slightly, only to be woken by a sticky sensation that seemed to hold his hands to the floor. Pulling them up, he saw a heavy layer of gelatinized blood covering his palms that sent streams of dark red down his arms.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed. “What a God damn mess! Why do people have to bleed so fucking much?!”

Hurrying to his feet, Eli stripped off his blood-soaked clothes and rushed to the slower. Ten minutes later, he was dressed in a clean set of clothes.

While buttoning his shirt, he walked to the doorway of the kitchen and retrieved the knife he used to end his father’s life. He found the sight of its bloody blade more than fascinating but chose to clean it and after running it under the sink he examined the shiny stainless steel blade. Seeing his face reflected back at him was something he found rather disturbing, but quickly found a distraction when he ran a fingertip across its sharpened edge. This brought a pleasant smile to his face as he wondered what other damage he could do. Even a stray animal would be enough to satisfy his need to witness the pain and suffering of others, but what he craved was a human target, something that would cry, beg, and bargain. The more he thought about this particular pursuit, the broader his smile became and soon after, he had flown out the door, into a world of potential victims as well as the abundant dead.