Everyone Dies in the End #81
Susan
It was an office, or perhaps a private library. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a blue rug, filigreed with gold thread, filled most of the floor. Along the thick rug’s edges beautiful hardwood gleamed. In one corner sat a plush, leather-covered reading chair, a tall light glowing softly beside it. A stout wooden desk dominated the opposite end of the room. A pair of chairs faced the desk, another rested behind it. It was an office, then. One that was kept clean, and smelled lightly of furniture polish. Strange stuff in a world decidedly unclean that reeked of decay. On the opposite wall was another door, slightly ajar, and through it she heard muffled voices.
The muffled voiced frightened her, and she froze, barely breathing, slightly crouching, the butcher’s knife snug in her boot, the .38 in her hand. Ready. A moment passed, maybe two. Nothing. The muffled voices continued, but nothing else. She crept to the door, her footfalls silent as fear on the deep carpeting. At the door the voices were clear, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t voices, but rather one voice, a voice raised in impassioned speech, close but not too close. Holding her breath she peeked around the edge of the door and into a hall, dimly lit by a sliver of light at the far end. Like the office, the hall was carpeted, silencing her footsteps as she approached the sliver of light. It was another door, slightly ajar, and through it she could not only clearly hear the impassioned speech, but also see the man giving it. And she laughed.
Not loudly, and she we would soon be glad of that, but laughed nonetheless. The man was none other than Darth Vader. Of course that wasn’t possible. There was no Darth Vader. An English actor, David Prowse, wore the armor and James Earl Jones did the talking to Luke, but the character was just that—a character in a wildly popular movie. Nevertheless, there he was, or there was someone wearing the mask, standing on the altar of the cathedral.
The man in the Vader suit faced the congregation, or would audience be the better term? Behind him stood a tall, black woman, dressed in a flowing dress or robe, Susan couldn’t tell which, drawn at the waste with a rope. At the black woman’s side hung a sheathed scimitar. Her hand rested on the jeweled hilt.
In front of the costumed character slouched a woman—middle-aged, not bad looking, curvaceous body, shoulder-length brown hair, sweaty and limp. The woman faced the audience, her hands tied behind her, naked from the waist up, her curves laid bare for the congregation. Well, I bet that does pack the pews, thought Susan. Her heart went out to the humiliated woman. Susan’s trigger finger twitched when her eyes returned to the Vader pretender. The creep had paused for a breath. Now he continued.
“So now she stands before you,” he spoke, his voice amplified by a microphone clipped somewhere on his chest. “Stands naked before you.” The declaration drew hoots from the crowd. “Her sins revealed,” he continued, nodding at the catcalls from the audience. He raised his arms, the silly, black Vader gauntlets high above his head. “We live in a new world, a world where we must work together if we are to survive. A world that cannot suffer thieves, cannot suffer a woman stealing from her brothers and sisters.”
“But my children were starving!” the woman cried.
“Silence!” Vader thundered, punctuating the command with a snap from a riding crop held at his side. The crop drew blood from the bare back, and the woman screeched.
Susan almost charged then, broke from the door, pulled her gun, and shot the costumed clown dead, but her pentagram glowed, and she hesitated, always mindful of its warnings.
Then she saw the smoke.
It curled across her vision, thin, swirling, rich, yet at the same time repulsive. A cigarette! A muffled cough followed the thin stream. On the other side of the door, there must be someone, a guard, a crony, someone. And then that someone spoke.
“I’d like a few minutes with those hooters, wouldn’t you?” and then there was an answering chuckle. Not just one; at least two, she thought. So Susan didn’t charge, and Vader continued, unaware of the drama that didn’t play out behind him.
“So, citizens of Philadelphia
“Kill her,” echoed the thundering replay.
The Vader laughed. “Yes, no doubt she deserves to die. The food she has stolen may cause another to go hungry. Yes, I should make her an example. But we are not barbarians, are we?”
“Yes, Yes,” the crowd thundered back. It wasn’t clear to Susan if they were agreeing with Vader, or reaffirming that they were, indeed, barbarians.
“No we are not, so we will not kill this one, we will put her to work.”
He turned toward Susan’s door, and for a second she could swear that he saw her, but he did nothing yet utter a single word. “Guards.”
The smoker and his buddy approached Vader. The black mask whispered something to them that she couldn’t hear, then each grabbed an arm of the weeping woman, and turned to walk off the altar, toward the door which Susan stood behind. Oh my God! Susan wasn’t sure where the men were taking the woman, but it sure as hell looked like the taking would be right through the door where she stood. She turned and ran.
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