The Death of Jackie Holliday
content warning: vore (digestion), death, gun violence, violence in general, drugs, ethnoreligious tensions
It’s cold out here. Violent lakeshore waves crash against eroded concrete and exposed rebar. The rain hits like shit against the pelts of everyone present. The brimmed hats and sturdy long coats of all the geezers and snotnoses here are rendered useless by the torrent. Someone apologizes that he won’t be able to go out watching the sun rise. It was a kind and common courtesy extended to the unfortunate, all the more tragic that the ancient gods of weather decided not to cooperate. It’s supposed to be beautiful here by the docks, of course. Fucking rain getting in everyone’s way again.
Today is the day of the execution of Jackie Nabokov Holliday.
The great, broad-shouldered elk sits, contemplating his soaked jeans, the knees wrecked by contact with the concrete below. His sneakers crease at ugly angles to accomodate the intersection of his hooves and the pavement. The bomber jacket-- his jacket, with that shade of blood red crimson that fired bolts of straight fucking fear into anyone who ever checked their peephole-- can only barely keep out the cold and wet. His antlers drip. His nose drips. His front hooves, circling around each other, tied behind his back, drip too. His whole body melts into the gutter and flows out into the lake.
This was a favor. In whose name the favor was done changes depending on whom one asked. In the eyes of the old men with the gun, this was a favor for Jackie. This was the release of a half-lifetime of anguish and regret that would soon, mercifully, be over. The slumped shape in front of them may as well have not been Jackie at all, but rather an empty husk, bled dry from three decades of torment whose soul had left a long time ago. All that would be left to do was to turn off the lights-- whoever had lived in there had surely already gone, replaced by something terrible. Jackie sits breathing in front of them, muscles tense, tendons flexing, blood pumping, stomach growling, but all that remains is simply a minor devil inhabiting a rotted vessel. Underneath the wind they’re already praying for Jackie in heaven.
For everyone else on the underside of that god forsaken rust belt city, it was a favor for all. Jackie was a useful idiot who became a wretched menace. A disappearer who left trails of broken bodies and missing persons in his wake. A dearth of witnesses or evidence meant no one could directly accuse him of his own tactics, but everyone knew, deep in their hearts, what a visit from Jackie meant. Seeing that jacket, those kicks, those antlers, meant you were gone. A ghost. Sent to the essence. Jackie would see to you what he saw fit, and then you vanished. It only made sense that eventually he would get his lead out on the wrong person and thus have his string removed from the dense and fragile knot that made up this world before too many had theirs cut in turn.
Nobody could testify as to what happened that day, beyond the vapors of the afterimage, but everyone knew. There was the cradling of a beloved son’s tattered clothes, the tracing of paws across the claw marks in the wall, the obsessing for the rest of time over where a father was when he could have been saving his favorite child, nothing else. But everyone simply knew. There was no conclusive evidence to support any reading of the crime beyond its bare reality and the empty void in the rooms and in the halls left afterwards.
Therefore, it could only have been Jackie.
For the record, no one asked Jackie who he thought this favor was for. No one asked Jackie much. So no one knew.
No one knew about the rolling hills and the clear nights and, god, how green it all was. About the land of splendor and beauty, thousands and thousands of miles away from here. How he looked into the mirror every night, after another day of lead and blood, and saw a young, scared elk who hadn’t known what he wanted to be yet. How the world still felt so big and how he still felt so small. How he wished he could reach in and warn him away.
How he was there. How he was there in Free Derry the night the orange banners went up and the doors went down. How the lights went dim and the taps turned off and everyone was turned home out the back entrance because this one was different, this one was something else, this one wasn’t right, there’s a light in their eyes that you never want to see, so please get home safe because we want to see you alive tomorrow. How he was there as the paraders rounded the block again and effortlessly looped his arms in theirs and carried him off, drunk and stumbling away. How the patches went from unionist to paramilitary as he was dumped off at a blacksite buried deep in the countryside.
How they collared up his neck too tight as they told him how to correctly crunch down on the pills and how he’d be given food, conditional on compliance. How his teeth snapped around the pill and then his body reformatted itself to match its new reality. How he could feel his blood shift, his brain realign, his bones twist, his chest open. How his stomach got louder and louder each passing moment, how it silenced every other noise he could have made, he tried to make. How he bled through his eyes and his pores and screamed until his throat gave out.
How, when he looked in the mirror, all that was left was two bright gold dots punching their way through the dark as all that pain gave way to sheer hunger.
How they herded in another test subject. Someone just like him. A wolf, who cried as his teeth snarled. Someone whose eyes glowed as bright as his. Someone who, in a million other lives, would have been a friend, a collaborator, a brother, and yet who simply registered in his brain as food.
But he knew.
He knew how that wolf struggled just a half-second more as their collars unbuckled. How deep those claws embedded into his pelt. How desperately he struggled as he tried to cram him down his throat. How a deep craving unlocked itself, and how his sorrow and pain were drowned out by being satisfied and full. How desperately he tried to keep the wolf in there, screaming and whimpering and thrashing around inside a suddenly all-too-powerful deer gut. How his cries were buried under deep, infernal churning as the details softened and the surface rounded out. How the wolf vanished.
How he woke up, disoriented, concussed and broken, an ocean away.
How he stumbled, empty and hungry, with nowhere to go but deep underground, burrowing into the rust and snow. How the ones who vanished along his aimless trail landed him in basements with pliers and pipes and baseball bats. How he ended every night covered in blood, never his own, always moving, feeding, gnashing.
How it’s not a favor to anyone. Just a baring of teeth over a rotted prize corpse. Just another show of domination, a personal example to be made.
How he still kept one of those claws embedded in his jacket sleeve.
In front of Jackie, on the side of the dock facing the lake, are two enforcers. One of them, the one on the left with the Brewers cap, refuses to carry guns. Jackie knew this from previous encounters. He has a Bowie knife and a switchblade by his wrist, perhaps a baton hidden on his belt. He also has a thin kevlar vest, only enough to stop some small munitions fire-- your typical small-caliber concealed pistols-- but just enough to make it seem like the situation is hopeless at first glance. The other, the older of the two, the one with a thick and bushy beard, holds a TEC-9. Unreliable. Unfortunate. He does not know this man as well, but he was poorly chosen for this assignment. He has serious eye problems, judging by the thickness of his glasses-- and a fractured ankle. Or sprained, but it was enough for him to limp ever so slightly on his way over. Many avenues for exploitation.
Behind him are three men. One is an underboss, the intended reporter to the man Jackie wronged. He isn’t armed, and was rather slow in getting over. Likely chronic back problems, accentuated by a smoking habit that far outpaced even Jackie’s own. The second is the last enforcer, carrying a standard issue revolver. He didn’t see enough of this guy to surmise a potential weakness, but he can feel exactly where he is behind the rain. Front passenger door, leaned up against the old Capri. Weakness or relaxation? This will be revealed in time. The final man is his executioner, a mutual friend of his old boss. He carries a 1911 and speaks with a gentle upper midwestern accent. Sweet. Apologetic. He would have made for a good drinking buddy. However, present and enduring circumstances have determined that he is pressing the barrel of that pistol directly behind Jackie’s right antler.
Five men steeled themselves to watch him die. A routine disappearance, Jackie would end up the victim of a random robbery gone south. He would play the part of slumped-over statue, and then as the corpse left behind afterwards. Easy as pie. Five men were not prepared for a fight.
The kind midwesterner does not notice as Jackie flexes and breaks the zip-tie midway through explaining how his remaining assets will be sent back to his family in Ireland. He does notice, his last rites breaking into a quiet yelp, as Jackie drives his head back into his crotch, grabs the gun, pulls him over himself like a cloak and fires a shot directly through the middle of the mitt on the Brewers cap. The other enforcer unloads a panic shot into the ground and looks in horror at his TEC-9 as it jams, as TEC-9s do. His bum ankle rolls, unseating his posture as he attempts to clear the chamber, before he eats a bullet from the 1911.
The revolver behind Jackie fires, sending two doses of lead directly through the poor kind soul temporarily converted into a shroud, severing his spinal cord and puncturing a lung, embedding in the other side of his vest. The underboss turns to run to the car, fumbling with his phone. Jackie turns the gun back around, using the screaming body above him as a shield as he fires twice into the chest of the old man, who drops like a sack of rocks onto the concrete.
The guy with the revolver realizes he is currently fanning the hammer into his own friend, and hesitates, trying to line up a clear shot. It leaves Jackie just enough time to swing his arm and fire a prayer. It lands, the revolver exploding in the man’s hand, taking a few fingers with it. He clutches his fist, desperately trying to pull himself up into the passenger side seat, as Jackie walks over to the underboss, barely breathing. A hoof reaches into the old man’s coat and pulls out his wallet and smokes. He yanks him up by the hair, dragging his palm across the man’s neck, splitting it open with the wolf claw.
For a moment, Jackie considers doing what he does best as he turns to the last enforcer, nursing a handful of broken fingers as he weakly attempts to will himself into the passenger’s seat of the Capri. Allowing someone to disappear again, leaving all doubt behind about what happened here, felt fitting. But his stomach does not growl as loudly as the music his foot has started to feel. The sour notes of the brass, the guitar tones tuned to the sound of mud, the drums sounding like hate. The rhythm works its way up his leg as he looks out over the carnage, and then unto the final man, his plodding steps gaining a bounce with each footfall. He watches his victim shudder with fear, trying to climb into the seat as a giggly smile works its way across his mouth. The rain smears away the blood on his jeans, his jacket, his face. He drags the last man away from the car, lifts a foot directly over his jaw, and feels alive as it comes crashing down.
Teeth scatter across the concrete. The designated survivor, some years Jackie’s senior, coughs up blood and spits out bone. His foot raises again, eager to finish the job, before the scattered canines catch his eye again. A little memento that would not have its proper appreciation should the rest of the body remain. He did forget to eat under the pall of death, he thinks, as his hoof wraps around the survivor’s collar and pins him to the hood of the car. He could let good times roll, as he bares his teeth, herbivores’ incisors strengthened into guillotine sharpness, molars to bend steel, canines fully developed. The survivor recoils under the smile. He’s some type of canine. Jackal, coyote, some fucking mutt. It doesn’t matter. He’s unprepared for this world. He’s prey. He’s food. The maw opens and lets him inside.
The dawn vanishes into the clouds, casting three dead bodies and two wounded men in grey light. Jackie sits in the Capri of the softening silhouette in his gut, spinning the keys around his ring finger. He looks out across the din and crosses a hoof over his heart for the midwesterner, still barely breathing, who has somehow not passed over into the next plane. There’s other lives where this never happened, Jackie’s sure they’re both thinking. The glittering wet of the kind man’s eye finds the great elk, and Jackie darkens his gaze in response. A quiet agreement to allow both of them to drift out of each other’s existence forever. He hopes the paramedics find him before the cleanup does.
The forces that guide the hands wished for death and disappearance on this god-graced morning. They got their wish, however it may be, with the names of the entities and persons involved blurred under the rain. Jackie simply does what comes natural, and someone disappears. Someone will receive word of a struggle, ultimately resolved. Just an old wretched demon up to one last trick before finally being put down. A mysterious incomplete set of teeth will haunt a junior forensics researcher for years to come. Jackie works away the weakly-protesting, churning, fading answer to that mystery as he thinks into the future tense.
Neither the cops nor the help will find Jackie. No one must ever find him again, he resolves, as he pulls out from the docks in a blood-soaked Capri destined to embrace flames. The path to him will only result in unrealized realities and faces on milk cartons. There will only be silhouettes and shattered dreams and tears. As sirens blare in response to the gunshots piercing the dawn, he vanishes into the morning.
