CHAPTER 57: ONLY ONE WILL STAND
This chapter requires Emotional Tech Noir. Play the song when told.
Mane sprints down the sidewalk, turning a woman into a frightened statue. He staggers through traffic at an intersection and hurdles over the fence. He drops onto rocky soil, nearly falling over due to his weak legs. He lowers to the ground and starts to creep, slowly.
He prowls around a bulldozer with his eyes on high alert. He sees a building made of black windows. The building is partly demolished, and it may have been desolate for years. He spots a limping Hellhound entering through a broken window on the first floor of the building. Therefore, he darts towards the building and leaps inside.
Hellhound seems to have vanished into thin air. There’s no trace of him anywhere, so it appears. He instantly switches to prowler mode again. He creeps, slowly, with his eyes scanning every direction. The inside is a wide area filled with dust and some unused office furniture. The ceilings are supported by these giant concrete columns that are mounted into its foundation. Mane continues to scan the large area as he prowls low to the ground. He looks left, then right, yet sees no sign of his enemy.
"Come out, coward!" he yells as he traces the area with his eyes.
"Come find me," Hellhound’s voice echoes throughout the room.
Mane quickly looks left, then right, and forward again.
"Show yourself,” Mane says while examining his surroundings.
As Hellhound hides behind a concrete support beam, he sees a sludge-hammer resting on the floor in front of him. Quietly, he kneels down and lifts up the hammer, so Mane won’t hear the metal scraping against the floor tiles. Hellhound’s sinister laugh bounces off the tinted windows.
"I hope you’re ready for death, boy,” Hellhound responds.
Mane hears a sound of clinging metal in his left ear. He sinks low to the ground and prowls in that direction. Mane is ready to kill. You can see the determination in his yellow eyes.
"You won’t see the dark of night, Hellhound. I promise you that,” Mane tells him with confidence.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Mane continues to creep. He looks around for Hellhound, diligently. He listens closely to the silence of the building. He can only hear the loose plastic on the windows flapping hard against the wind. Hellhound’s dark laugh echoes throughout the building another time.
"How ironic…" his evil laugh is increasing. “Look at the floor…”
He’s laughing so hard that he can’t even finish the sentence. Mane looks down at the dirty black and white floor tiles. Although it’s hard to see because of the dust, the floor is decorated in a checkered pattern.
“I promised you a second round in chess, didn’t I?” Hellhound snickers. “I remain undefeated.”
Mane looks forward again and growls out the side of his mouth. Hellhound's laugh dies away and now it’s completely quiet again. Seconds roll by and Mane waits to pounce on him. He continues to examine his surroundings, watching and waiting patiently for the opportune moment. If only he would show himself.
Mane then places a paw forward and closes his eyes, hoping to find Hellhound’s location through vibrational waves. But it’s too late. He hears the sound of crunching glass behind him, as if someone is trying to sneak up from behind. Mane realizes that the predator has now become the prey. He growls and swiftly shifts his body, but a massive blow strikes him on his side. His body flies sideways and slides across the dusty floor tiles.
The hit from the sludge hammer breaks his right forearm and breaks two of his ribs. Now he’s on the ground grunting in torment. His black fur is covered in dust as he severely mourns.
“You don’t fucking listen do you! Now look at you! Whimpering like a fucking child!” Hellhound shouts.
“Oh God…” Mane cries out in agony.
“There’s no God here. Your God is dead. And so are you,” Hellhound says as he drags the sludge hammer across the floor.
He approaches Mane with a limp, ready to finally finish him off for good. Time is quickly running out for the lion and he doesn’t seem to have the strength to keep on fighting.
There’s nothing that Mane can do now
There’s no weapon in the world that can help him in this situation
However, he is not alone and his cry was heard
In his plea for help, he is given what he needs to fight back
I will give him a vision, just one
Play song now
As Mane twist and turns in pain, he sees a glistening gold butterfly coming into the building and lands in front of him, which catches his green eyes. He stops moving to stare at it. Slowly, the pain starts to subside as a cloud of death looms over him. He struggles to keep consciousness while staring at the butterfly softly landing in front of his paw. The golden wings resemble Iva’s butterfly hairpin that his sister gave to her.
He’s not sure if he’s hallucinating nor does he care, but he immediately thinks of Iva when he sees it. He has a flashback of her when he came down the stairs earlier in the day. He remembers seeing her standing in the living room, looking up at him, waiting for him to say something or even mutter some sort of a compliment. He didn’t of course.
It’s not that he didn’t want to speak, but he couldn’t because of the amount of beauty that radiated off of her. A beauty so glorious in his eyes that it made his legs buckle underneath his hulking frame. He remembers thinking about how captivating she was to his stern eyes, but he let his ego refrain him from ever admitting it. Mane's sentimental vision of the butterfly only lasted momentarily, but it was like a gift from God.
For the first time, life began making sense to him. Fear is not all bad. Earlier, he felt this emotion for the first time in his life. He didn’t know it then, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. That’s when he realized something. He wasn’t afraid of losing his own life, but he was afraid of losing her, forever. The fear he felt forced him to understand that he can’t live without her. That same fear made him realize that he was, indeed, in love with her. In many ways, it’s a tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme.
A tear, just one, slides down the face of the lion and falls onto the floor as regret takes over him.
He never felt like his life had a purpose. And he’s right. When he saw her earlier today, however, that’s when he knew he had a destiny. The butterfly then flies out a broken window, never to be seen again. And for the first time in his life, he is hit by something so powerful that it causes him to gain enough strength to lift his injured and weak body from off the floor. The power of unconditional love.
Iva has finished what his father had started. Love is now apart of him. Now, as Hellhound drags the slug hammer against the cold dusty floor, Mane starts to hear subconscious words of motivation telling him to stand.
“Get up!”
Join me, my readers, and tell Mane to rise, either verbally or consciously. Do it with me, do it now
Death is near for our hero. But the newly discovered love he feels for Iva is only a spark. Somewhere in his mind, he begins to hear a multitude of voices telling him to rise, and within his body he can feel that spark of motivation turning into a flame. He doesn’t know where these thoughts are coming from but they’re giving him the motivation he needs to finish the fight. The whispering voices in his head continues to form as he turns onto his stomach and takes in a deep breath.
“Come on Mane, get up.”
“Get up Mane.”
“Get up and whoop his ass.”
“Stop playing and get up.”
“Boy, get up.”
Words of encouragement travels into his mind as if they’re coming from another realm.
“You got this.”
“You must get up.”
“Don’t quit!”
“You gotta get up for Iva.”
“Rise.”
“Don’t quit now.”
“Get up, come on!”
“You can do it.”
So many words with so many different voices are whispering in his mind, telling him to rise. He ignores the looming sense of death that shrouds him and gives into the voices instead.
“I…” Hellhound says between heavy breaths. “…………Will.....fulfill….my…..purpose. I…….must.”
Hellhound notices Mane shuffling on the floor, trying to stand. The creature stops for a second and is amazed by his determination to stay alive.
“Still clinging on for dear life?” he says with a weak voice. “It’s useless, don’t you understand? I can’t be stopped. I won’t be stopped. There’s no one here to help you.”
One steady step after another, The Hellhound closes the gap between him and his arch nemesis. Let’s just hope Mane has the strength, determination, and will to survive; although all of the odds seem to be against him….