V. Good Boy

There stood a building. Now stands a shell. The charred skeleton of the Arsonist’s first kill. After the first responders left. After chainlink fences were erected to keep out trespassers. After all of this. The burned out apartment complex is still noisy. The echoing cries of 37 human souls; thick in the air. It cakes the walls. Black. Stained. Agony.

Staring off with second sight. A pale maggot of a woman caresses the thick blackened cries staining the walls. She is tall. Regal. Impeccably dressed. Her head is almost skeletal. Empty eye sockets. Blind by all appearances. But that doesn’t slow her down. The Seer is slow and deliberate. A picture of perfect calculation. Never a misstep. She possesses a sort of second sight. Far superior to anything in the natural world.

Fossilized, molten polyester clings to the couch. Charred skin and fatty tissue still cling to it. The bodies having been removed, were imperfectly removed at best. The Seer’s companion sniffs at the metallic frame of the couch. Licking it, like a dog, to discern identity. A long human tongue slips out of his mouth. He walks on all fours but is unnaturally tall with long, lanky arms. Skinless, he has long since forgotten what he looked like when he was alive. His flesh is slick with black blood. Shining in the moonlight like an oil slick. Like treacle. Like pitch.

Moving his muzzle along the floor. His head swings slowly back and forth; leaving black blood in his wake like a snail. He finds the wall. Turns his head upward. Sniffs up the wall. Tracking some smell, some echo of a cry, up and up the wall. Standing on his hind legs. He hits his head on the ceiling.

“Now, now Dog. Back to the task at hand”

Dog slinks back down on all fours and tracks something down a hallway. Down a flight of stairs. In the basement. The Seer trails behind. Slowly dodging obstacles. Ducking below water pipes. Stepping over an old tool box. A single dresser drawer.

“I see it, Dog. It’s below those stairs. Behind that tiny cupboard door.

Dog changes course to obey his master. He lifts a tiny latch with long black fingers and drags out their prize. It’s a little girl. Dead from smoke inhalation. The coroner had all of the bodies removed. All but one. Dog picks the little girl up and presents her to the Seer; palms up, head low. In deference. The little girl is almost perfectly preserved. And that is precisely the point.

The Seer points a long thin nail. Slips it skillfully along the outside of each of the little girl’s eye sockets and then removes each eye with surgical precision. She places the little girl’s eyes in her own empty eye sockets; adjusts it gently.

“We have a witness, Dog.”

“She hid down here. She saw him upstairs. On the second floor. Singing to himself. It wasn’t the Angel. Another one of his pets, of course. Our little runaway seldom dirties his own hands. The Angel’s trace is all over him. The Arsonist. He’s in love. How sweet. We can start there, Dog.”

The Seer removes the little girl’s eyes from her sockets. Placing them lovingly back in her head. Dog puts her back down; crosses her arms. The Seer produces a bright silver dust from a small leather pouch. Spilling it on the little girl’s body she begins to burn white hot and vanishes in seconds. Not even bones are left.

The Seer is grinning thin and wide. She’s lets him lick the blood and ashen cries off her fingers. Licking her fingers dry and clean. She pets his head slow and lovingly. Dog is excited.

“Good boy”