Breaking the Third Leg

He stepped over bodies and broken bottles. “Ow what the f-“ but he pressed onward ignoring the resting or dead. It smelled like urine and sulfur, but he wasn’t concerned with it. Just one foot in front of the other like he’d been doing for the past 3 years and 274 days.

Dusk was near, only the tip of the first sun remained and the second was fat and red. Crimson reflections bounced from skyscrapers and left the city in fractals of gleaming fire. He kicked a rat and it screeched and ran away. The impact left a jolt in his front right toe that climbed under his knee. The pain radiated up between his privates and jolted his spine. So much pain. For a moment there was nothing but hatred. Beyond cranky. Years of accumulation. “Nothing feels better with time,” he thought. “It only gets worse.”

His vertebrae were degenerating and there was nothing this world could do to save him. There were innumerable names for what was happening to him, yet in other universes there were none. But one thing remained: pain. It was worse with stagnance. Stillness destroys. Time to think again and again. Each nerve ending, some crushed, some trying to live, some thriving for a moment before sputtering to death. It was a taxing life.

He stopped for a wink of breath. Enough to survey the night and to attempt minor meditation. “There is only balance in pain with awareness,” he thought. Yet he felt his heartbeat pulsing in the side of his head like a crescendo of hungry earthworms. “It’s better I don’t carry a gun,” he thought.

Nothing mattered. This miniscule journey would end soon with the end of two lives. “Miniscule or grandiose? Grandiose or monumental? I’m tired. What am I amidst the dust of a star? Or am I the dust of a star?” The night happened as it does, suddenly. That was a pleasant thing, a distraction. Two suns left enough light for seven moons. Some were already creeping into existence like eyes caught candidly mid-blink, but three full moons shone brightly. He was caught by predators covered in moonlight.

“Nice locket blue blood,” admonished a pearly-eyed vagabond.

“Lookin pretty lost stranger. Maybe you oughta take off your clothes and show us a good time,”

He didn’t make eye contact. Just stared at the ground. Broken concrete with a pathetic excuse for vegetation trying to survive through the cracks. Tonight, he knew he would die, but not because of them.

“No serio-"

There was no time for this. He rushed forward with an urgency undefined and disappeared. The retaliation was a hail of bullets that hit nothing but glass, mortar, and each other.

“Where did he go?!”

“You guys shot me!”

“Shut up we’ll get you to a ripper before dawn. Where did he go?”

But he was gone. Vanished. The headache came before the reality. When reality hit blood shot out of his nose. Gack. It hurt really bad. The locket cracked. There wasn’t much energy left. He coughed and spit more blood onto the sand. “Where am I?” It was harder to aim than it had ever been before, but it was close to four years now, the energy was near expired. Only half a mile. He was at the lake in central park which was better anyway. He was closer to his destination. For some reason, it was easier to ignore the pain when he had a purpose. A fight would’ve been fun in a past life, but now it felt meaningless. Devoid of pertinent energy, he spit a blood clot to a gang of hungry irradiated hermit crabs and watched them consume a damaged piece of him.

Onward. His ragged trench coat flapped as the wind picked up. The locket let out a hiss and a drop of blood. “That’s right you little bastard. Feeling a little homesick are ya?” he taunted. A band of wild dogs trotted into the alabaster moonlight covered in grit. Their ears went up into points upon seeing him and two of them lowered their shoulders. He smiled. He loved dogs. “Here ya go you rascals.” He threw his last bit of jerky at them and watched them crowd around and start fighting over it. One of them slowly walked closer and put its ears down for a pet. He presented his fingers and allowed a few licks. The dog was dark with brown eyes. “Good luck out there huh?” he said.

It took another three hours to get there. There was a green sign that read metropolis riddled with bullet holes and faded with fire and time. It only red “ME-ROPOL” but he was very aware that this was the right place. He squeezed the locket and muttered under his breath until it began to glow like a lantern. The subway system was dark and he would need light. Down the stairs, over the admission gate, and into the tunnel he went. “In three miles there should be a door,” he thought.

The tunnel felt ominous, like walking inside the intestines of a giant sea creature. It dripped. The silence was louder than sound. His breathing sounded haggard, and the locket kept whispering. Eventually, he came upon a subway car that had been derailed and flipped on its side. He tried to find a way around it but instead had to go through it. He hunched and clawed and stepped over bones and plastic. When he got to the other side, he saw the door. The old red door.

Was he supposed to feel elation? Terror? He felt nothing. This world had chewed him up and spit out the pulp and the supposed alacrity for the anticipation of this moment was lost in his drive to finish.

He kicked the door forward and reveled in the electric physical pain that jolted his nerves. There was something euphoric about it. Pain felt better maybe because of its familiarity. He went down the stairs even deeper into the beast until he entered what appeared as a generator room, but he knew was more than that.

The locket almost sounded like a voice now. He placed it against the wall and said “Triskelion.” It sounded like thunder. Caked dust and rock crumbled. The wall opened like a stone sarcophagus billowing out a vacuum of ancient smelling air. He stood still amidst the cacophony of sound that was so jarring it gave him goosebumps until all was quiet. He gazed at the newly opened darkness and stepped forward into it. Once inside there was nothing to see. No walls or ceiling. Just a vastness that felt infinite. The thunder appeared again, and the stone mouth that he entered through slowly closed until he was engulfed in silence. The locket began to tremble and hiss frantically, and he finally took it off. He held it in front of his face. “Well,” he said. “Let’s see if I can get my body back.”

The locket was an angry bee, it sputtered and quivered and shook. He placed it on the floor and took a knife out of his pocket. “Okay.” He gave it one last look at smashed it with the butt of his knife. The locket screamed. The room screamed. He felt the screams of infinite universes shock his body. He smashed it again and it broke open spilling out a slimy organic discharge. The screaming made his ears ring and bleed. The whole universe was screaming, and he was smiling. He felt wind. He felt burning and drowning and electricity. He felt like an avalanche and a volcano. He saw one hundred thousand worlds living and dying in less than one second and then he saw himself. “It’s me.” Things narrowed down and sped up frantically like a twisted time lapse. “You stole my body.” He saw himself as he was before he was sucked into this dying carcass, he was living in. “YOU STOLE MY BODY.” Whatever was inside his old body peered back at him through space and time. Its eyes narrowed in hatred and was that … fear? “I destroyed your anchor you leech!” He felt a vacuum, a vortex. Rays of green light like lightning bugs or gamma rays shone from his old body and his new. “And now I’m gonna destroy something else.” His arms were stiff and difficult to move but he managed to bring the knife to his neck. “Let’s see what happens now!” His old body contorted as he slid the knife slowly from ear to ear.