TWENTY
The man who had once dreamt he was Harrold Carrick felt like he had jet fuel in his veins instead of blood. And that fuel was alight.
When he had opened the door from the boatshed and walked out into the night he had been immediately hit by the storm. He let the rain hit his body and held his face up to the heavens. This was perfect, an almost operatic welcome back from the dead. Because he had been dead of that he was sure. He remembered dreaming of fire and pain and blood and of an incandescent woman filled with rage.
There were supernatural elements at play tonight, of that there was no doubt. He had always known he was special, even when he had stared death in its face earlier tonight he knew it wouldn’t end this way, as just another victim.
He was stronger than that. So much so that when he looked death in its face, it was like looking into a mirror. Ever since he could remember he had thought of himself as possessing the secret face of death. Murder incarnate but for a purpose much greater than himself. He should have known the creator wouldn’t let him die so easily for he still had so much more work to do, so many more lost souls he needed to guide to the heavens. Those poor unfortunates without wings needed his quite unique creativity to help them on their way.
And at that moment of utter power, he doubted he could die, even if he wanted to.
He could see at first what he thought was smoke rising up from his naked body, but as he studied his flesh he saw it for what it truly was. It was steam; every time a drop of rain hit his skin it hissed and evaporated away.
His resurrection had been perfect, but yet more perfect still were the fresh energy pulsating wounds on his back. He had always, deep down, envied those he had painstakingly (quite literally) bestowed the means to which they could ascend from this hell on earth to the heavens above. The wings so lovingly etched into their unworthy flesh. Wings which he now possessed, a gift no doubt from a higher force for a job well done.
As he strode through the wind and rain shrouded in a mist of steam he grasped the six inch screw driver he had taken from the rack of tools in the shed he had awoken in. It was hardly fit for the purpose of his celestial artistry but it would end a life if needed. He would have to find his bag of surgical instruments once he got his bearings again. He had it when he was at the docks, of that he was sure.
Then that strange woman had appeared and he had felt a feeling so alien to him that it had taken a few disorientating moments after her first onslaught for him to identify it. It had been fear, a feeling he couldn’t imagine he would ever feel again. Whether she had meant to or not, his would be assassin had left him not only with the exquisite wounds but power like nothing he had felt before. Power that had brought him back from the dead.
The instant his bare feet trod on the waterlogged ground it was dry, leaving a trail of smoking foot prints behind him. The power he felt surging through his body was almost over whelming at times. He knew it was a power he must harness if he was going to continue his much needed work. Work he would be able to do with impunity now that he was nothing short of a deity. No more hiding in the shadows always one step ahead of the police. Once he was in control of this new power he would be unstoppable.
P.C Ian Williams’ brain couldn’t work out what was the more surreal. The fact that the man he had himself pronounced dead was walking, naked, across a clearing close the lifeboat office. Or that he was smoking from head to foot. As he approached the oddity he could see what looked like arcs of static energy forking between the wounds on the man’s back.
He instinctively flicked out his extendable baton seeing through the mist that the man was carrying a thin knife of some sorts. “Hey,” he shouted above the storm and the man stopped dead in his tracks. “Put down the knife and turn around.” He ordered and was almost surprised when the man did stop and slowly pivoted on one heal to face him. He didn’t drop the knife however. “I said put down the knife.”
The man looked across the clearing to the drenched looking policeman who stopped some twenty feet away, apparently seeing something in his face that made the pig fear coming any closer, perhaps he sensed his new found power. He normally hated the police but saw nothing but beauty in his bedraggled uniformed creature. “Arh,” he said, his voice sounding alien to him, it had changed, it had more authority to it than it ever had before. “Another angel for the making.”