Mizrah's Ladder Ch. 11

You can feel the flat, metallic weight of Percy's deep set eyes, watching you with gray concern...you can hear the bones working in Delilah's long neck, shaking her head as rips that bong of hers, halo of weed smoke floating away in the wind; the tangy stench lingers in your nose a block away as you leave Percy's apartment behind and get the 88 bus down toward your overpriced apartment on Park and DeForest.

That was disastrous. You can't help but muse, when would they stop playing with you, declaring you a lost cause? You probably still smell like the whiskey, sweated and burned out of your body into your clothes despite the humid frigidity rolling off the sea. Your thoughts drift inevitably back to Xia, hating that you're concerned about the wellbeing of a vile creature like her...what you'd done to her, didn't that objectively make you a worse monster than she?

Your imagination goes into overdrive as you seethe with shame, you burn with hate for yourself and for Xia; there it is, you feel the floor drop out from under your psyche and suddenly your mind is falling through a fire-and-plasma-lit shaft of barbed iron grating; heat-flayed, skeletal hands reach out for you, screaming and cursing in the voice of your victims, of Lena's and of the other Scions, and their bony claws tear away at the flimsy, paper-thin mask of decency and humanity you use to fool Isabel and everyone else you care about.

You land with bone-crushing impact upon the black basalt foundation of your subconscious and a cage erupts forth from the ground beneath you, clutched in Lena's massive, dead palm. She lifts you before her mile-high visage and the familiar mockery of her laugh is a demon's scourge spattering the reality of your soul across the rock; orange lightning wracks the sky and you SCREAM so loudly in your own head you feel as if you'll split your fucking skull from the jaws.

You can't go home. You can't be around people you know because right now, you're not the person you've pretended to be; that identity, 'Yusuf Avimalek Mizrah' has always just been a carefully cultivated Hunter's camouflage for you to draw in Prey and lovers, and you remember when the line between them didn't even exist.

At this point, you don't even want to put him - Yusuf - back on; the animal beneath your skin stirs from the pain of Charys' talons, and worse; the whip of Isabel's concern, inadvertently probing spaces of vulnerability she couldn't have known about, and you'd come so close to lashing out at her, worse than you already had. You can't go back to her, you have to put away this stalking, uncontrolled creature, otherwise she'll see you for who you are and she'll leave you. You'll be alone again.

"I can't take it, I can't take it I can't take it I CAN'T TAKE IT!" you suddenly shout, alarming the old drunkard riding next to you and a few other passengers. You don't even bother checking to make sure you're at the right stop, just rise with a clatter of leather and clinking buckles, shoving through the bus door and onto the concrete. Your palms come up and over your face, nails scratching red lines into your forehead and down your cheeks as you stuff down the siren call of Frenzy. To erupt here, in the streets and give in to the Savagery would be a disaster...how many dozens of these people die?

You take a breath - a humid, cool one, letting it out in a puff of steam - and a few heartbeats to acknowledge your surroundings; DuVayra Avenue and Catalan Road. Definitely a bad part of town, the masonry here is badly neglected; short buildings for The City, ten story buildings squat against the skyscrapers he could see looming over them, downtown. Fire burns in an oil drum a few meters ahead of you in an alleyway; the figures standing around it are thrown into blackened relief, the demons of your mind made manifest in the shadows of misfortunates.

It feels like fate is guiding you, once again, but to what? Relief, or to be thrown with bone-breaking force through the rapids of your atavism? If the latter, then what lay at the end?

If you follow the street a few blocks down and ask inside the Frail Maid, they'll let you take their elevator down to the 'abandoned' maintenance tunnels that run beneath much of the City, where bountiful Prey-entities dwelled among humans living beneath the law...but you aren't going down there to break into a Skitterling nest and feast on the weak, or to exterminate Spider-Ogres and crack their eggs between your teeth. The closer your steps take you to the Frail Maid, the louder it becomes...echoing up from underneath you; you can feel the heat from underneath the concrete.

You close your eyes, tracking Hell's location by sound and scent alone.

A crowd of humans who'd shucked their humanity, shrieking barbarism, their higher thought eroded by the need to see blood spilled.

The stink of piss-and-gore soaked iron grating, concrete that'd never seen the light of day, the breath of the wind.

The crack of shattered ribs; teeth knocked from smashed gums; a shriek of wordless pain.

You look up from the ground and see the unassuming dark green doorway. To your Afflicted hearing, the cacophony of The Pit was loud enough to hear above the snarl of The City's pulsing traffic, pipe-work and industry. THE FRAIL MAID is spray-painted across a stolen traffic sign.

It reminds you of all the horrible places so similar to it throughout Louisiana, dark holes in the earth or hidden alleys where an audience's Id-impulses were vomited into a cage, over two people trying to destroy one another. To the common passerby it might not look like anything much but the humidity leaking between the brickwork...the smell of cheap booze and meth being smoked in the bathrooms. Creaky wooden floorboards, some termite-eaten and dangerous.

So many scores were settled down here in the darkness, but you'd only ever thrown yourself down into the sweat-and-fear reeking dark to win cash and recognition for Lena's crusade; utterly selfless for her yet greedy for empty glory, to drown your horror at what you'd become by wounding and crippling those whose souls were twisted like yours.

Yes, you'd fought in Pits. Cages. Simple back alleys before screaming crowds.

The near-death dueling and barely regulated violence paled in the face of tearing into your ax's strings before a crowd, but...that is something Yusuf loved, and you weren't that man. Not right now.

That nameless part of you misses being this kind of animal.

You descend.

---

This harrowing begins and ends...

WITH A DESCENT INTO HELL!!!

The spotlight illuminates you and your foe; blindingly bright before turning over purple and pink, blue and all the sugar-brite lights of an acid trip. Your sweat gleams across your shirtless body, adrenaline making your chest heave.

"KILL HIM! KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKER!"

It stinks of sweat-streaked tightly-packed bodies in here...no air conditioning, poor ventilation but they don't care. Iron...old, broken teeth...beer, piss, vomit. You smell used condoms, people using condoms, but most of all you smell the chemical-reek of the twisted man before you.

"RIP HIS FUCKING FACE OFF!"

Screeching power metal distorts the air before enormous speakers suspended from the ceilings by chains and meat-hooks; faces illuminated in the crowd by nightmare-strobes of light are distorted by bloodlust. They don't even look like people in the few glimpses you get.

"BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THAT LITTLE BITCH, YEEEAAAHHH!"

Your foe is almost twice your size...swollen by steroids and chemicals, his skin stabbed with hard-edged tattoos proclaiming his HATRED with burning crosses, EZEKIEL 14:21 carved into his chest and filled with fiery orange. You recognize which Hate Group he trucks with - Revelationists, an actual threat back when you were nothing more than a mortal with more melanin in your skin than them and ancestry they reviled. Now, however...the kind of human prey you could make an exception for every. Single. Time. The ragged hole where his nose once was, shorn away in a street fight, snorts blood and mucous at you. The wound is edged with white powder, the brutal gash of his mouth opened in a rictus of curses as vile words pour forth. You've heard all the racism before, but it can only serve to heat the blood as he roars something about sending you in a casket back to Mexico where you belong...but before that how he's gonna skin you and keep you alive on a bed of icecubes after he's broken you.

He's by no means the first demonic soul wearing a man whose body and mind you've broken, and he most certainly won't be the last. If you turned the might of your Hunt against people like the Revelationists, then they would know to fear you like that one notorious Turnskin from Miami who'd all but driven them from Southern Florida...but Lena had never cared for such a noble cause.

This towering fool is not the only enemy for you to lay low either tonight, so...you'll need to be a canny warrior - what's this 'roid-swollen bastard's name again...? Didn't matter...by the time you were done with him he'd be disgraced, dissolving back into the sea of human-filth that spawned him, or in the hospital and on life support cuz that's how a lot of these fights ended. That's what the crowd wanted, and honestly how many degrees worse than your foe was the audience? Does a man's life and dignity have any worth to them? Does it have any worth at all down in this place, or even beneath the Moon's howling light?

Do you have worth, descending into the bowels of this fucking river of filth, battling demons for the entertainment of devils? Look at you now. What if Isabel saw you down here? Somehow, though, you know you need this. You know that to come back up into the light and find her, you need to purge yourself down here in the darkness and pare away the savagery. You are weak .

"ALL OF YOU HUNGRY HEATHENS ARE HERE TONIGHT FOR ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY - BLOOOOOD!" roars the announcer, a misshapen, hideous little man wearing a metal, spiked wreath as he shouts into a microphone from his wheelchair. "THE LAST FIGHT WHET YOUR APPETITES, BUT LET THESE TWO FILL YOUR CUPS WITH THEIR AGONY UNTIL THEY RUNNETH OVER!"

Red lights shine down on your opponent, whirling around him as if to limn him in flames as he holds his arms out to the screaming multitudes...there are probably a good four hundred people jammed into The Pit tonight. "REPRESENTING THE WESTCHESTER CHURCH OF THE FINAL REVELATION, DON'T MISTAKE HIM FOR A CHOIR BOY - SCOURGE!"

He raises his gorilla-thick arms above his head, doing a full 360 for the crowd. It doesn't matter to them who wins...they don't recognize you, you haven't been down here in years and you dont look like you once did for Lena. He grins a lipless, mirthless grimace and points your way - the challenge issued. There will be no quarter given.

The spotlight lances down upon you as you take three casual steps toward him, never taking your eyes from your quarry. There's no honor or glory here, you know, in abusing mortals but...at the least this particular Mortal is Prey you'd gladly devour, if not for the crowd. At the least you'll have the satisfaction of crippling him. "A NEW FACE TAKES THE PLUNGE DOWN INTO THE PIT - HE MAY BE PRETTY BUT WILL HE STAY THAT WAY AFTER TANGLING WITH SCOURGE? REPRESENTING NONE BUT HIMSELF, MIZRAH!"

A cage of links is lowered upon a chain around you both, and beneath your booted feet is an iron grate beneath which the other fighters wait, gazing up at you. Waiting for their chance for glory, or to meet their doom; unless one of them was like you, any who faced you would surely crumble...and it wasn't because you were some great fighter - yes, Mikey had turned you into a true competitor for a midweight boxing tournament if you so chose, but it was your unnatural ability to shrug off damage that would see you through.

A bell rings. The crowd surges like a swarm of rats.

Scourge draws his dirty nails across his face, splitting his skin as he makes for you; you respond with a warcry of your own, a full-throated howl that overtakes the hanging speakers in its sheer volume and do what comes naturally to you - charge forward screaming.

You relied on three main tricks in a fight - your unrelenting, berserk aggression, your ability to throw jaw-breaking hooks and uppercuts, and if necessary the sheer intensity of your presence could be heightened to cow a foe, skirting the edge of Bedlam; you didn't plan to rely on that against a human so instead you strike with abandon - he steps right into your jab, which would have broken his nose if he still had one but whatever he's rolling on he barely registers it. You're quick enough to skirt past his strangling fingers clawing for your throat, driving the steel-toe of your boot upward into his ribcage. He folds to the side with a crackle of rib bones.

He spits up red - "FIRST BLOOD!" the announcer shouts.

In your arrogance you move in, shooting low to take him down; wrapping your arms around his hips you nearly drag him off his feet but oh fuck he's really strong for a mortal, and you realize too late that trying to grapple him was -

"BIG MISTAKE MOHAMMEDAN!" he slurs - what the fuck did he just...what?! - but he's right, that was a mistake; those chemical-thickened arms wrap around your midsection and suddenly you're off your feet, oh shit you're sailing through the air and you recognize THE SUPLEX -

WHAM

You strike the metal ground with dizzying, bone-crushing force and feel your spinal cord creak. A crack runs through your skull, the supernatural energies that fuel your Cursed power flaring red-hot in your eyes as you will it to close. You're stunned, your world decayed into a spiral of colors and lights, and you realize he's already up and grabbing your leg to break it.

Your booted foot lashes out once, twice, kicking him in the head until he lets go and you scramble back to your feet. The crowd has been whipped into a froth to watch you thrown about like a leaf in a storm and some...off-color, hideous words concerning your heritage assault your ears; you block them out, for you are extremely dangerous**...it is deeply irresponsible for a time-bomb such as yourself to seek catharsis like this. Losing your mind on the bus would be a tragedy - how many hundreds would die to your uncontrolled Rage if you lost control?

"PERHAPS MIZRAH WAS TOO CONFIDENT IN THOSE MUSCLES OF HIS?! A DAY AT THE BOXING GYM DOES NOT A WARRIOR OF THE PIT MAKE!" The announcer laughs, and before you can even see red for this humiliation Scourge is back upon you, ramming you up against the cage. He slams you around by your shoulders, shaking your teeth in your skull; this time it is he who underestimates your strength, and dig your fingers into his wrists before thrusting your feet into the ground; before he can dislodge you from the earth, you slip a hand free and twist your body to hurl an uppercut into him.

It catches the Revelationist under the chin, throwing his gaze heavenward with a snapping motion; your sensitive eyes catch the tip of his tongue shearing off with a plume of red, falling between the grating at your feet, and you press your advantage with a gutteral vocalization and a trio of strikes into his guts; you feel something pop satisfyingly, tasting his blood as more gushes from his mouth upon your lips...it has the richness of a broken organ, driving you onward like an enraged bull.

Scourge scrambles back from your onslaught, a ragged cry from his red-stained lips swallowed by the crowd's chant for death as he throws a wild lariat against your forearms; it takes you off your feet with its force but you land easily, righting yourself as you're back on him like a wolverine.

You're actually physically mightier than he is, and when you wrap your arms around his waist you instead lift, pushing back on his heel with yours and bringing him down on his back, snapping ribs and driving the air from his lungs. You snarl like a beast through gritted teeth and straddle his chest, blood gumming your bristly dark hair as you drive your knuckles into his jaw, his temple, his forehead - cracking your own hand bones and regenerating them moments later, hand steaming as your cells break the laws of thermodynamics.

Scourge's mits shoot up for your throat, and you act on reflex - Lena taught you well as you twist one in your grasp, locking it straight and rigid before tearing the bone out of the socket. The Prey gives a panicked cry as his arm fall uselessly to his side, grasping it in desperation; his eyes are hot and animal with fear.

*Here now, the final strike; THE BLOODY KILL.*

You rise from him, take a step back.

"OH AND WHAT IS THIS NOW?!" the announcer, the whole crowd are leaning forward, practically tearing through the cage itself. "A COMEBACK - THE FINAL BLOW?!"

"No stop - " Scourge tries before you stride forward and kick his head like a soccer ball.

His skull cracks against the steel toe; Scourge's head whips to the side and his body follows, rolling across the cage floor gracelessly. He begins to convulse and you have to haul back from the desire to get down on your hands and knees like a fucking beast and dig your teeth into his belly, tearing out his guts like ropes.

Instead, you turn and face the devils in the bleachers, glassy-eyed and hollow souled...up there under the sun, they pretended to be respectable people with human morals, but down here you could see their distorted, twisted faces, the monsters that Capital bred from human souls. They drank, they smoked, they snorted and shouted and you could even smell some of them getting off somewhere...perhaps to your show of violence. Their din is constant.

You still see red, and you roar your own challenge to the multitudes...daring any of them to come down and face you now, but none take your offer. Instead, they call your name in adoration.

"YEEAAAAH MIZRAH FUCKING VICIOUS - "

" - Le pateó la cabeza a esa perra de su cuello - "

"FUCK ME LATER MIZRAH - "

There's no glory in this. This is just the thrashing of a desperate animal, seeking to escape itself, but you don't feel any better.

You're more alone than ever.

---

CRUNCH and a man screams like a dying dog; his body impacts the metal floor above, sacrificing his blood to the Pit.

You're down below again, and it's quiet like you remember. All the screaming and blunt impacts of flesh on flesh up in the ring felt...far away, like they were in another dimension, or separated by more than just a few meters of space and a grated ceiling - the only connection between these two realms that was of any material consequences was the viscera that fell from above. Teeth, gore, the occasional scrap of flesh, they splashed down the drainpipe in the middle of the round, empty space where the other fighters waited their turn. Nobody here was a professional; everybody down in the dark was somebody else up in the light, no exceptions, because...what sort of soul would simply identify themselves with this ugly place?

The telltale sound of someone's organs smashing inward; you smell their rich, crimson bouquet as the announcer laughs.

You sit with your back against the stone wall, running your nails up and down your upper arms, replaying the fight with Scourge through your head...you'd ultimately had the advantage, and even without the power of the Curse you probably could have taken him. Probably. Your eyes are closed...you don't want to look at the others, you might end up feeling some empathy before they were sacrificed to you in the Ring.