Chapter 9; Never seen silver
Breakfast, a time where people are forced to eat at an unholy hour. At that
time particular kinds of people become dangerously irritating or irritated.
Laugher crackled their ears as Jack and Riddick went down stairs to check out. No good reason to stay in this dump any longer. The smell of fresh food enticed Jack. Elbowing Riddick, who's attention proved hard to get.
-"RI...CHARD!"
His sunglasses up, people tended to stare enough at him already...the goggles didn't help. And... all the women who stared, drooling like dogs bothered Jack. Outraged jealousy. The drive of her words. Drive of her tone.
-"Fuck, can you smell this?"
-"It's just food, Jack."
Riddick seemed to be indifferent to food. Food was food, nothing more, just to keep the body going. At least at the moment.
-"No, it ain't JUST food, it's a fucking buffet. We can eat all we freaggin want! I mean, how long has it been since that happened?"
Absently he replied.
-"When we cheated our way into the Ritz."
-"Just how fucking good was the food then...this even smells better!"
Ten minutes later Riddick surrendered to his stomach and to Jack. Ten seconds later they were standing in line, loading their dishes up with everything their mind desired...when it came to everyday food.
Eyes stabbing into Skylar's radiating being. Happy, delirious.
-"Somebody got fucked last night."
Jack slammed her dish on the table and looked under it. On the other side of the booth a familiar face grinned. Ebony skin and fine braids. Radiating joy and warmth. Her voice stuck. For some reason all she wanted to do was to cry. Though no tears existed anymore, no more to spill for the day.
His fingers moved in a tingling "Hi". No words. Just that move, that familiarity.
-"Macy."
The joy faded way out into space as Jack sat back up. Mild giggling carried away from with under the table. Odd.
Macy finally decided to join the rest of "humanity" and sit up straight. Eyes looked at Riddick for quite some time. The thought, the moves, the looks said that both of them knew the other very well. A dark face leaned over, inches away from a dark soul.
-"Never seen silver before."
Macy's voice covered in that obscure tone of curiosity, with an underlying tint of fractured mentality.
In some symbolic way Riddick picked up the knife, playing with it between his fingers.
-"Slam. Shine job."
Macy sat back, one arm around Skylar, who apparently was completely out of the world. A smile filled with lethal humour thickened on Macy's dark lips.
-"I know.....but I've never seen silver before....I've never seen anyone making it out of the slam."
Riddick's knife jammed down into a thick piece of half raw meet. A faint smell of blood.
-"Well, I'm here. No way you can get rid of me now..."
The look in Riddick's eyes was far from being that of humour, far from being anything else than the animal cruelty he had as an operating mind.
-"Riddick...you said it yourself. Only took care of yourself..."
That smile returned to Macy's lips as his eyes wandered over to Jack.
-"Until now, or it better be that way, Richard B. Riddick."
Riddick leaned back, seeming relaxed, cool, and ready to take a table knife and gut Macy alive.
-"Assholes…"
Skylar hung over the table, kind of lying on it in a disturbed time of rest. Looking at Jack in an alien way. Tiring.
-"Can't we fight AFTER this mother fucking mission! Can't 10 mils shut you up for freaking once?"
No longer did starvation tremble in Jack's stomach. Just sickness, queasiness over the entire thing. The fighting, the conflict, the sickening air filling her mind's lounge with anything but peace.
Silence. Swallowing silence filled with acid. Worse shit than Jack had ever dropped.
*I'd fuck for a fix right now*
-"You left booze lying around on the ship. Morphine as well."
The darkest thoughts entering Jack's not happy head. Skylar's blackness faced a silvery night.
-"Long trips get boring."
Her presence said that she was just about ready to skip away from the conversation now turned on fire.
-"It's in the blood then."
Skylar, now utterly looking depressed didn't bother to look back at Riddick.
-"Yes."
-"Lock the shit down, or Jack, either way, keep the those two separated."
*Damn, he just has to act as if he cares about me*
-"Fucking can't, she used it all."
Skylar's eyes contained that heavy gaze that would usually make people run away screaming, never to regain their sanity ever again. Riddick's sanity.... What sanity?
Flickering a fork between her fingers, an unofficial threat to the unspoken issues that crashed between the two of them.
*Now we just need Macy to start to play with the spoon!*
-"WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Unexpected from herself, probably expected from the rest. A red face infuriated
with the tone her skin carried. Blood. Anger. Passion.
All emotions dancing across her body language, a sore voice speaking. A
girl's voice? A woman's voice?
-"I'm fucking sick of this. I'm a drug addict, so fucking what, it's not like any of you actually care!"
The entire room had their attention immediately. Who would let go of a good show of real emotions?
Skylar flicked the spoon away, hitting someone who didn't expect to get hurt over breakfast. Not cold, but angry, worried.... the maternal concern?
*No goddamn way*
Jack's eyes wondered over to Riddick. His face by far less than friendly. Homicidal. The old Riddick. He had this strange combination of calamity and killing upon his lips in that very so not humorous smile.
His hand roughly pulling her closer, by her hair.
*Damn me for letting it grow out*
A hissing gentleness, smooth, low and flowing. No detection of a human being crying under his olive skin.
-"Why, Jack, are you finally realizing the truth?"
Terror collapsing onto her. A paralysed tongue wanted to scream at him or beg him or do what ever would make him say the opposite.
She never got a chance.
Riddick threw her away in anger, a pretty face crashed against the booth and a broken soul stared back at the violent act Riddick had performed.
Someone had been about to speak. Someone who cared, really, really cared.
Never could though.
Riddick stormed off, not a person even trying to approach him on the event. More like everyone getting outta his way so they'd live another day.
Someone out on the streets wouldn't.
Rubbing her face, feeling like she'd been slapped by Riddick, not the booth. Her lips bleeding and a bruise already forming out of the redness. Crumbled, broken, desolated. Crawling together as the outside world disappeared. Tears struck her eyes. The pain on the outside paled compared what had just exploded within the girl-woman.
Gentle arms wrapped around a weeping being. A familiar scent filled her existence. A scent she related with comfort. A perfume she herself had later come to use all the time. Just like big sister. A hand running though her messy hair, soothing every single pain into a sleep like state. Humming. How strange, but how utterly familiar.
-"Excuse me."
A voice not belonging to the group of three,
-"You're scaring the other guests, I don't mean to sound rude, but could you please leave?"
Nothing else came from the boy, except maybe a few trembling steps after a homicidal look from Macy.
The same arms as held her lifted her up from the place of a sad event. Words mumbled from her bleeding lips, even as Skylar lay her younger sister onto the bed.
***********************
Blood, pain and everything else.
Why not.
A body under his feet. Recently dead. The scent of blood made him feel somewhat alive. Took away some of the pain earlier inflicted.
Sitting on a trash can that belonged way into the 20th century. A hand holding a shiv resting against his face. Thoughts, unstoppable.
He'd lost control. One more word out of her mouth and the shiv would have sliced her face in pure delight.
He couldn't help but to feel hurt. Almost like human. Her face still frozen in his mind, the pain in her voice. What in hell had induced those words? What the fuck had she really been talking about? Hadn't some of the shit been solved earlier? Then again, the kid had been decently drunk and high. Jack, who's actual name was Jackleen.
*Doesn't become her*
Looking at the body, unrecognisable, wouldn't be related to him as his own handy job.
*I'm fucking dead*
Or maybe not. Wasn't the old Riddick clawing his way up to the surface with every single moment that passed? Perhaps it'd be for the best if Jack would remain in her present process of thought. If the girl would think he didn't care then maybe... No, he just couldn't.
-"I'm fucked, ain't I."
The thought of leaving Jack was too heavy to even consider. She helped keeping him alive. Yes, he'd remain human without her, but having her to care about made it so much easier. But his old self wanted to rip the little pixie into pieces and leave her body never to be found.
Riddick lifted the body's detached head to his own level.
-"The worst part is...I don't think I love her like that."
***********************************************
Jack still lay in the bed, Skylar running her hand though her hair. Speaking in a sisterly tone.
-"What's in your head Jack?"
Blurry eyes stared into oblivion, ready to speak or ready to leap for the next lie.
-"He doesn't give a shit 'bout me."
Skylar shook her head silently, looking at Macy, who lay sat on the other end of the bed.
-"But why did he get so pissy?"
Jack's question a mark of recovery in her emotional state. A thin hand taking the tears away.
-"You know why Jack…"
A quiet look.
-"You know he cares, I think it's you that just can't handle it, can't handle that all of us care."
More tears insisted on visiting Jack's cheeks. No fear in her eyes
-"I dunno."
The only thing to say when a girl didn't know what to say.
-"It's cool Jack, not to know. Makes you human."
A flicker of pain appeared in a woman-girl eyes. Brown and hazy. Not from drugs, not from tears...but from the old past. A kiss, down onto her cold sweating face.
-"I need to go love, things to handle...things to do."
A single final hand running through her hair. Saying goodbye. A final look to Macy, saying all that'd be needed to express.
*Take care of our Jack*
********************************
A church. Pretty, pretty thing
The confession booth decades old and deteriorating. Entering slowly, slightly, slyly.
She knelt slightly, ready and willing.
-"Forgive me father for I have sinned."
-"Speak child."
-"It's...well...I've been very bad, Father, you see, I do my job very, very well, but I'm afraid that I've become stuck in a routine and that really ain't so good."
-"Go on."
-"And...I dunno, it's just that...it's not kind of good cuz I've got all kinds of shit after me now. Mercs, police,…Civilians, people who want me to kill their family members, best friend, ex boyfriend, wife…
She could feel his fear
-"And paedophiles."
She grinned at him.
-"Oh, yeah, this is about my job...little Malcolm says 'hi!'."
Her hand barged through the fragile glass between them. A hand around his throat. Vicious eyes.
-"I really can't stand paedophiles."
Her voice soft as she dragged out one of her precious weapons...a knife. A very sharp pretty knife.
A blood curled scream colored both the confession boot and the air. This priest would talk no more.
It aimed for his forehead, cut horizontally over it, his screams nonexistent, she'd cut his tongue out. Slowly enjoying cutting beside his cardio veins. Enjoying seeing him squirm. Every single time. The priests face gone, replaced by her cursed daddy dearest.
-"You can't hurt me now, or Jack, or mom...never, you fucker."
His entire body covered in sliced lines, flesh barely hanging on him, his mind delirious, knowing nothing but pain in his unsensed world.
-"You see priest, I'm the Child Saver, or so the press calls me. Yah know, the serial killer. I kill paedophiles."
She shook her head, as if she were talking casually to a friend, but not a half alive corpse.
-"The truth is, I'm not. I'm an assassin."
She started to play with her blade. His eyes begged for forgiveness and for a chance to die right away.
-"Usually I'd just give you a bullet, poison or any other petty way."
Her grin changed into that of a demon. The catholic priest now faced the worst enemy of his God. Satan himself. And she was a woman.
-"But, for you I have a special treatment!"
Rapidly she towered over the priest. A panther, a cat with rigid moves. Hissing at its victim.
- "Cuz all of you deserve to take on all the suffering of all the children you demolished!"
Her knife ran into his throat. Subtly into his skin.
There would still be precious few more minutes until the fucker would give up permanently. She sat down on the altar and watched. Slowly enjoying seeing his life fade out.
-"Oh, and father..."
Frighten eyes stretching into a world of infinite darkness and light.
-"Tell your God that I absolutely hate his guts."
A gun raised in her hand. Powder dusted hand after the shot ran off. A hole in his head, dark blood seeping through. The little the ass had left.
Skylar noticed something of interest in the corner of the altar. A devious smile. Grabbing the "Blood of Christ" Raising it to the cross.
-"THANK YOU LORD! I need to get wasted."
The woman took a big swig of the wine. Tasted just like blood. The blood on her lips. The blood of a dead fucker.
A message transmitted to a man sitting in a bar.
*Daddy's dead*
******************************
Jack slept, after having a long understanding talk with Macy.
*Odd how she can talk to someone who nearly killed her father. Then again, she's been living with Riddick*
A message left on someone's certain answering machine.
-"Well, Mr Cold...Malcolm Bannier, the priest is dead. And if you tell anyone about this, I promise you...I'll cut you dick off and make you eat it......"
Macy closed the phone. Lay down on the floor, staring at the air.
*One more paedophile's dead*
With some sense still within the walls of himself, Macy leaned forwards. Worried. Not about Skylar getting caught.
*Skylar love, you'll be ok, you survived Riddick, pre soul era*
The thought would not stop. He was worried about Jack. Who wouldn't?
This was a girl with more than great potential. But she was wasting it. Drugs and booze. Was the girlie trying to forget? Did she already remember?
Then Macy thought also of Riddick, worried, actually worried about the motherfucker …and perhaps, what he'd do to Skylar.
They'd met in a slam...some obscure place for the homicidal insane. The name of the place wasn't even worth remembering. Skylar had back stabbed Riddick. Pinned all of her crimes on him. She'd just killed her old man...the rest was a special gift to Riddick.
*Yeah, I'm proud of my lady*
How ever, that had pissed Riddick off. Oh, God, he remembered that.
-----------------------------------
Riddick, smiling so very, very abruptly.
*No, no, oh, no, Skylar...no....damn bastard, mother fucker, son of a bitch*
Macy squeezed the gun. Skylar... dead. So much for a bullet-proof plan!
Riddick, without emotion, toyed with his knife. A shining Swiss army blade. Stained in blood. Skylar's pure blood.
-"You fucker."
Riddick barely looked up, barely bothered to listen to a man's wounded heart. Not even to his once so-called friend.
-"Really sorry about that Macy, but your bitch attacked me."
The gun aimed steadily. No emotion except for that single tear on his cheek. Macy, crying...mourning. Already. The only beautiful thing in his life, ...dead.
-"You betrayed us."
A laughter, cruel and brutal laughter carried from a madman's lips.
-"A payback, remember, a prisoner transfer to Tangier?"
-"What are couple of lives in exchange for HERS! There was no reason to blow up our apartment."
The stealing smell of blood touching every single sense of his. He'd killed, lied, cheated, died, tortured, been tortured for that dead little pixie creature.
And Riddick would no longer be... the now heart broken assassin decided.
-"Well, Macy, are you gonna use the gun....or just stare at me?"
How cold of that man. One had to admire that.
This time...just this time, a lustful smile spread over Macy's lips.
-"You know a merc called Johns? I hear he's very....good...also that he was sent after you Riddick, after that escape from Slam City."
Fuck it
Fuck it
Fuck it
Fuck it
Fuck it
Fuck it
Fuck it
*Well, one good thing about being on record...mercs can find you like not even a piece of cake.
-"You're not the only one who's betraying here."
The smile stolen from Riddick's lips, planted on a shade's lips. A devil's lips. Johns lips.
-"Meet a pal of mine. ...Riddick, meet Johns."
The knife ready. Very so ready you slice the two enemy throats.
-"What are you gonna get me for, I'm not wanted in this system, however your dead cheating girl is."
Macy smiled even broader. The gun aimed at Riddick spoke.
-"This gun ain't meant for you."
Aimed at his knee.
A gun shot ran off and echoed in the darkest of nights.
---------------------------
That's how Riddick got sent to the slam. The fact that Skylar had survived was a fucking miracle. A year in a hospital. A very illegal hospital.
The explosion Riddick had sent off in their place had been meant for both of them. Skylar love had heard the sound of a ticking bomb. Not everyone survived the explosion.
But...Johns, a merc they were dealing with. A merc they sold morphine to was after a man called Riddick. A simple call. A short call. And Johns was ready to rock, semi sober.
It had been a trap, to get Riddick alone. The fucker had almost killed Skylar.
-Strange...Jack, you've created a very dangerous thing. A human monster with silvery eyes.