Thursday, April 27, 2017

Demon Axe, Chapter 21

Arthur Triscloud stared at Raven and Shawn with intense neon fury, his sword gripped tightly by his side, his other hand stretched out like a monster’s claw. His daughter and her cop friend held their ground with their own weapons in hand, though they secretly hoped they wouldn’t need them in this unnecessary battle of family bloodlines. The elf princess and the cop nodded at each other and made a mad scramble towards the once noble king.

Arthur held them back with quick and technical swings of his sword, but Raven swung back even harder in an attempt to knock the weapon out of her father’s hands. Shawn tried circling around his opponent, but he was met with wild slashes as well, which he barely dodged. The only thing Mr. Triscloud managed to hit was a piece of Shawn’s black T-shirt. A conservative amount of blood trickled down, but the hardnosed detective brushed it off all the same.

Raven tried to enter her father’s range with more aggressive swings of her blade, but her weapon was chopped in two by the king’s mighty sword. The zombie-like warrior held his blade against his daughter’s throat with her hands high in the air. Shawn ran in from behind and bear hugged Arthur around the middle of his arms.

“Get the crown! Get it off his head!” shouted Shawn, who was being tossed from side to side by Arthur’s thrashing. Raven rushed up to her father with her chopped up blade in hand in an attempt to pry the thorns loose. After one lethal spin from the monstrous king, both of his assailants were chucked through the air and down the steep hill. The two of them lost their weapons along the violent roll down, which left them with bumps and cuts everywhere. They didn’t stop rolling until they were halfway down the hill, where the animal skeletons halted their momentum.

The two fighters felt sore enough to barely move after such a rough tumble. Shawn slowly reached for his shotgun, his lack of speed the result of not wanting to aggravate his injuries. He had his fingers on the barrel when Arthur appeared out of nowhere and stomped on Shawn’s hand, creating a cluster-fuck of popping sounds and getting a painful cry out of the detective’s voice.

Arthur picked up the shotgun and aimed it at the fallen cop, still with his foot on Shawn’s hand. A resounding pump-action later and Raven yelled, “Stop! Stop it, Father!” The king looked at her with deadly hatred in his eyes, but she stood firm with a human arm bone in hand. “That look you’re giving me doesn’t mean shit right now! Roger Zee is out there somewhere and you’re just halting progress!”

“Progress? Progress?!” bellowed Arthur in his demonic voice. “Master Roger hates that word. It’s a word associated with fruity values. It’s a word associated with reverse discrimination. It’s a word associated with disdain for traditional beliefs. Come to think of it, I hate that word just as much as he does!”

Raven raised her bone club and threatened in a low voice, “If you hurt my friend, I swear to god, I’m going to…”

“You’re in no position to be making threats, my dear daughter!” shouted Arthur. “I am the king around here and Roger is going to be my successor! If you take another step closer, I’m going to blow this faggot’s head clean right off his shoulders! Your friend knows exactly what kind of danger he’s in. Look at him shivering like a little bitch!”

Shawn had had enough of being talked down to by a guy who was clearly brainwashed by a torture device. He wanted to restore the dignity of the Paulson City Police Department to its former glory. He wanted to be the hero that he couldn’t be to his wife and daughter. With clenched teeth and trembling muscles, Shawn whispered, “Go fuck yourself, you demagogue piece of shit!”

With one jerk of his hand, Shawn pulled King Triscloud off his feet and caused the shotgun to fire a round into the sky. Raven used this opportunity to run up to her fallen father and perform a body splash on his torso. Both Raven and Shawn pinned the corrupted politician to the ground while the former lodged the bone club into the base of the thorns. The more she pried, the louder Arthur’s screams became. Thrash around with newfound strength he might, he still couldn’t get all of that weight off of his chest and legs.

Arthur managed to free one of his legs and kick Shawn in the face hard enough to break his nose. With nobody to hold his legs and the detective grunting in hardcore pain, the king’s leg thrashing gave him more power to toss around Raven while he was on his back. And then the sound of wood snapping echoed across the Holy Mountains. As Arthur laid still and bellowed in agony, Raven jammed the bone club in further and pried even more pieces out of his head until the crown was completely broken.

With a bloody ring around his skull, Arthur’s demonic eyes slowly began losing their glow. Raven stood back with Shawn as her father made the transformation from brainwashed zombie to regal king once more. His eyes dimmed some more and he tossed and turned until he ran out of energy and passed out. His body was as limp as lifeless as any corpse found on the mountainside. For the longest few seconds, he didn’t move a muscle.

With Shawn still holding his broken nose, he and Raven approached the elven king for fear that they might have inadvertently killed him. “Come on, Dad! Breathe! Breath, goddamn it!” roared Raven with tears in her eyes. Her father still didn’t move and even more tears poured down her cheeks while Shawn used his free hand to comfort her shoulder. Another death in Roger’s long and torturous campaign of slaughter.

And just as the sun rose over the mountainside, Arthur’s fingers twitched slightly. His eyes slowly opened. He stretched out as if he had taken a long nap. Raven and Shawn pulled him up in a seated position and then the elven princess hugged her king with all the tightness and tears she could muster.

“Raven, I’m sorry for any pain I’ve caused you, my dear. I never would have dreamed of doing this to my own flesh and blood,” said Arthur in his warm and loving elderly voice. The father and daughter duo hugged it out for the longest time while Shawn stood up and watched with a smile on his face despite blood pouring down his lips. Arthur then broke the embrace and asked, “Where’s Daniel? Did Roger take him?”

“He pulled Daniel underground once the battle began,” explained Shawn. “Where the hell’s my shotgun; I want to blow this cocksucker’s head off!”

“Did you say you were looking for a cocksucker?” asked Roger, who appeared out of nowhere with a sick grin on his hideous face, his machete in one hand, and Daniel’s microphone in the other. Shawn, Raven, and Arthur gazed at the zealot with horrified eyes as he reached down and pulled Daniel out of the ground by his hair like a vegetable. “Your cocksucker is right here.”

Though still alive and breathing, Daniel was curled up in the fetal position with his shorts and underwear around his ankles and white and red fluids coming out of his mouth and anus. The once intense heavy metal singer was reduced to a thumb-sucking mess who rocked back and forth and held his broken ribs like a mother cradling a child.

While Shawn and Arthur’s eyes grew even bigger and more horrified than before, Raven had a new reason for tears to pour from her eyes like waterfalls. “What have you done to him, you monster!” she shouted at Roger before rushing up to cradle Daniel’s traumatized head in her arms.

“Nothing you wouldn’t have done on your honeymoon, sweetheart,” said Roger in a cold tone. Raven could do nothing but sob for her sodomized boyfriend and rock him back and forth like the baby he felt like being. Even Shawn and Arthur had tears in their own eyes after watching such an evil display of control.

Roger lifted his machete over his shoulders and said nonchalantly, “Well, I had my fun for the day. Should I just kill all four of you now or should I wait until your so-called friends get here, my liege? Heh, some friends they are. What kind of people leave their bestie high and dry like this? Reminds me of someone I know, someone who’s weapon of choice was the almighty Demon Axe. But hey, Daniel, don’t worry about a thing; I’m sure your old band mates forgive you, right? I bet those two blowhard wrestlers forgive you too, considering they come from an industry that just bathes in friendship and love.”

Daniel didn’t respond to these slanderous accusations. He just curled up and allowed Raven to mother him during his moment of psychological numbness and infinite terror. Right or wrong, Roger Zee made more sense to him than anybody telling him it wasn’t his fault. It was always his fault. Anybody who said differently was a bigger liar than any politician on TV.

The sun continued to peak over the horizon, but none of the four heroes felt like fun in the sun. They could do nothing but stand there and watch Roger laugh like a psychotic hyena. They could have just as easily picked a fight with the guy, but what power did they really have? They were just four guys and Roger was the ultimate fighting machine with a penchant for rape and “fun”.


By the time the sun flooded the clouds with intense color, Roger’s laughter mysteriously came to an end as he saw something in the distance. He didn’t know what it was, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it.

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