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.

Demon Axe, Chapter 9

“Daniel! March your butt right back here! Now! Open your goddamn ears for the first time in your life! Get back here, you big baby! Come on! Move it!” None of these energetic threats from Raven could slow down the clomping thuds of Daniel Mercer’s boots. Determined that his newfound “weapon” was still just at toy, the rock god marched back to the portal to the “real world”.

“You can run away all you want to, but Roger is eventually going to hunt your ass down!” shouted Raven, who was floating through the portal space with him. “And then what will you do? Are you just going to give up? Are you going to kneel before the same son of a bitch who murdered your friends in cold blood?!”

Daniel was more distracted by his own angry thoughts than he was by the colors and wavelengths of the portal world. Raven’s words snapped him out of it and earned her a vicious glare from a stone face. “Be angry all you want!” she said. “But if you don’t channel that anger towards bringing justice to your friends and your audience, then you’re just a heavy metal hypocrite.”

“You want to know what a real hypocrite is, Raven?!” roared Daniel. “A hypocrite is someone who has an entire army of soldiers to hunt down one guy, yet still claims to be powerless to do anything about it! Your father is a typical politician: full of empty promises and full of bullshit! Who the hell voted for him to be king?! Seriously, what is he doing with all of those soldiers?! Are they just a bunch of paper-pushers with medieval weapons?!”

The allies were so busy bickering that they failed to realize that they had been shot out of the portal and onto the grassy field of the outdoor arena a.k.a. “the real world”. They stood back up (without each other to lean on) and dusted the grass blades and dirt off of their clothes.

Raven shoved her finger in Daniel’s face and said, “Listen to me, you fucking jerk! I don’t ever want to hear you talk about my father like that again! Some things are out of his control, but he knows exactly what he’s doing by sending you out to fight Roger Zee. Whether you like it or not, you represent this human world. You have its entire weight on your shoulders. If you humans don’t learn to help yourselves, then nobody else can help you either. This is my father’s way of teaching you pathetic humans self-reliance! If you can update your fucking Twitter page, you can goddamn jolly-well learn to catch a terrorist!”

Daniel leaned closer to Raven so that they were face-to-face and said in a hushed, yet angry tone, “There’s a huge difference between self-reliance and complete abandonment. Not only is Roger Zee a product of YOUR society, but the only thing I have to fight him with is…” He swung his “magical” axe microphone in the air and sprinkled more gold dust around. “Tell me how any of this is supposed to make sense!”

“When was the last time any tragedy in this world made sense?” asked Raven rhetorically. “When was the last time that a zealot thought rationally about what he or she was doing? Sometimes things don’t make sense at first, Daniel. Sometimes the best answer to all of this is there are just too many assholes out there. But you…you make more sense than a lot of people from your culture, and that’s saying a lot given your affinity for drugs and alcohol.”

“Then riddle me this, Batman,” said Daniel. “How exactly is a stage prop supposed to slash the head off of someone who can do the same thing to me with just a flick of his fucking wrist?”

“That’s the million dollar question, Mr. Lord of the Pit!” said a gravelly, demonic voice only a few feet away from the conversers. Daniel and Raven looked at each other fearfully and gulped saliva before slowly turning their necks to see that the voice belonged to an enslaved Johnny Vega, his partner Sonia Marquez flanking him. They stood there with arms folded, muscles thumping, veins protruding, eyes glowing, and teeth bared.

Raven took notice of the crowns of thorns on the assailants’ heads. “These wrestlers don’t know what they’re doing. The Order of the Spider once used those crowns to glean information from prisoners. Roger has found a way to use them for complete mind control.”

Daniel patted Raven on the back and said, “Well, Mrs. Warrior Princess, this is your cue then. You’re the only one between the two of us with an actual weapon, so why don’t you just…”

Raven was knocked backwards so far that she rolled across the grass field, all because of a flying martial arts kick from Sonia Marquez, who proceeded to crack her knuckles after such an accomplishment. Daniel trembled as he watched his ally holding her stomach and gasping desperately for air. Sonia mockingly patted him on the shoulder and said in a succubus-like voice, “Well, what are you waiting for, honey-bunny? Why don’t you try that new weapon of yours on me? I promise I won’t bite…hard!”

Daniel looked down at his “toy” and gripped the handle with a warrior’s resolve. His trembling of fear turned to trembling of anger. He glared with deadliness into Sonia’s demonic eyes and said, “Die, you motherfucker, die!” With reckless abandon, he hacked and slashed with his magical axe like a battle-hungry berserker. He slashed at her neck, arms, ribs, and legs while screaming every swear word imaginable until his veins burst like dynamite sticks. By the time his vicious attack was over, he doubled over in exhaustion and wheezed hard while spitting acidic bile onto the grass.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to be nice to your toys?” said Sonia, who didn’t have a single scratch on her, not even a small bruise of sorts. She stood with her arms folded and her smile arrogant. Daniel on the other hand whimpered so gently that Johnny Vega couldn’t help but give him a “comforting” shoulder squeeze.

“It’s alright, you big baby girl,” said Johnny in a mocking bass voice. “It’s not your fault that you hit like a two-year-old…or cry like one. You probably should have brought a gun with you of some kind. But then again, those are big boy toys and you’re just a little bitty baby. Maybe you should have one of those rifles with a wooden cork at the end of it.”

Sonia and Johnny were laughing it up in their monstrous voices while Raven was squirming on the ground like a snail, trying to get back into this battle, but hurting badly. She was the only one who had true fighting experience and she was easily vanquished. Daniel didn’t think he had a chance in the world. To him, this was truly a shitty way to die. He didn’t know what the minions were going to do to him, but it probably would have involved a shattered skull or a snapped spinal cord. Hearing them laugh about it brought angry tears to Daniel’s eyes.

The Lord of the Pit grit his teeth hard as he thought about Roger secretly laughing about slaughtering his band mates. The trauma of their severed heads came rushing back to him, the voices blaming him for being a failure and running away in cowardice. His adrenaline was heating up like molten steel. His muscles twitched and ached. His heart felt like a bomb vest ready to explode. With one final outburst, Daniel yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” into the microphone like the true heavy metal god he was.

The sound waves of the throaty growl knocked Sonia and Johnny back like human cannonballs. Their crowns of thorns showed small cracks in them as well. Everybody on that battlefield good or evil showed shock on their faces with wide eyes and deep breaths. “Holy shit,” said Daniel softly.

The initial shock wore off and was replaced with vitriolic, passionate fire from the Lord of the Pit. Instead of imagining his band mates as floating heads, he imagined them as full bodies, in their costumes and masks, playing behind him like they were at a concert. Vulture Man strummed his guitar like a wild motherfucker. Pig Man slapped his bass guitar like a pimp who was owed money. G-Pac bashed the drums and symbols with enough anger to put dents into them.

“Alright, motherfuckers!” the Lord of the Pit shouted into the microphone yet again. “You want a battle? Here’s a war!” That last word was prolonged with a raspy roar as he imagined the grinding music in the background. The louder Daniel yelled, the tighter everybody around him gripped their ears in pain. He wasn’t even singing a real song; it was just a firestorm of hateful, disgusting swear words from “cocksucker” to “motherfucker” to “prison bitch” to “Jesus Christ”.

The sound waves from the microphone blew past everyone like a hurricane and smashed their eardrums like G-Pac on his kit. The crowns of thorns formed more cracks. And more. And more. Then the artifacts of control shattered like glass and blew away in the heavy metal tornado. Johnny and Sonia’s heads were bleeding, but not profusely and they were still awake. Raven was shaking her ears with her fingers, trying to get the buzzing out. The Lord of the Pit looked around at what he had done and dropped his microphone in disbelief. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.

Demon Axe, Chapter 3

The audience at the Black River Arena mumbled somberly to each other while the wrestling ring in the center was dimly lit. They held up signs for their favorite wrestlers, but with weak arms. They “wooed” and cheered, but few did it with them. Some stood up, but the rest of them stayed seated. This audience was more like a graveyard than an arena full of wrestling fans. The sadness in their eyes was obvious as some of them were shedding tears.

And then the grinding sound of Demon Axe’s number one hit “Zombie-Ogre” boomed from the speakers like a cannonball. Any sadness or zombie-like behavior transformed instantly into raucous rage as the audience shot up from their seats and cheered like wild motherfuckers. The throaty chants of, “Vega! Vega! Vega!” echoed off the walls and created a symphony of adrenaline for the seven-foot tall world champion wrestler, Johnny Vega.

With his blood red hair in a ponytail, his beard scraggly, his green overalls fitting snuggly around his muscles, and the golden world title strapped around his waist, Johnny Vega looked out into the crowd and nodded at the love he was getting. He enjoyed the adulation so much that he clapped and cheered along with them as he strutted down to the ring. Once he climbed up on the apron, stepped over the top rope with his gigantic legs, and held his world title in the air, the crowd’s verbal assault hit its crescendo with fire and spunk, highly unlike what they were feeling before.

The minute Johnny Vega grabbed a microphone from the ringside attendant, the chants of his last name continued to put a huge grin on the champion’s face. But even a tough guy giant like him wasn’t immune to the tears in his own eyes. He wiped them away with his thumb and inhaled snot back in his nose much to the clapping approval of the crowd who came to see him.

“Thank you, guys. Thank you so much, you have no idea how much that means to me,” said Johnny into the microphone. “But as much as I love hearing that kind of energy from you guys, tonight is not about me. I know why you guys were in such a sour mood before I came out here. I feel it too. It’s about what happened to my favorite metal band Demon Axe a few days ago.”

The audience booed at Demon Axe’s fate while some of the members reverted back to tears. Johnny said, “I know, it pisses me off too. What in the hell would motivate some asshole to kill off so many people like that? What kind of message is that supposed to send? What are we supposed to learn from all of this?”

He teared up a little bit at that last sentence and then toughened up yet again. “I’ll tell you what we’re supposed to learn! We don’t back down from shit-heads like that! I don’t care how many people this moron kills, because we’re here to put on a fucking show and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it!” He received a sonic boom of cheers and raised fists once more. “This is America, baby! America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists! America doesn’t back down every time a tragedy happens! America gets back on their feet, dusts themselves off, and keeps on going until they can’t go anymore!”

Just when the audience was ready to explode with excitement, the sounds of sarcastic clapping into a microphone filled the arena and the boos were as brutal as ever. A man dressed in a purple robe with a hood over his head and a vulture mask over his face entered the arena and put a confused slash angry expression on Johnny Vega’s face. The wrestler said, “You’re not Vulture Man. You’re not G-Pac. You’re not Pig Man, though you are a pig for coming out here and interrupting me. Who the hell do you think you are, little man?!”

The robed figure said with a chorus of boos in the background, “Relax! I’m not here to spoil your fun. I’m just another guy who wants a crack at that championship you’ve got there. Because there’s nothing more manly and gutsy than two muscle-bound men fighting over a belt.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, pretty boy! And take off that mask, you don’t deserve to wear it! That mask belonged to one of the greatest heavy metal guitarists of all time and you’re running around like you’re God’s greatest gift to professional wrestling! You ain’t shit, motherfucker! I take dumps bigger than you! You want to come out here to run your big mouth and wear that fucking mask like you actually own it, then get your ass in this ring so I can snap your goddamn spine!” shouted Johnny, much to the roaring delight of the fans, who chanted his last name once again.

The hooded figure drew more boos as he cackled into the microphone. “You misunderstand me. This isn’t about a mask or a belt or any other piece of god-awful attire. This is about my mission. This is about my people. This is about the wonderful friends you call Demon Axe parading their disgusting music all over holy ground. That ‘arena’ they played at wasn’t just for show. Whoever built that abortion of a structure was trampling all over my race’s sacred pastures. Yes, the building has been around for years, but I was the only one with the guts to do anything about it. And now here you are disgracing my people once again by speaking highly of these Demon Axe infidels!”

Johnny formed a wicked smile on his face and shook his head before saying, “So you’re the lunatic who carved up all those people at the Demon Axe concert.” The boos grew heavier and heavier, but Johnny held up his hands and said, “Nah, nah, cool it, guys. It’s actually a good thing that this dumb-ass came here in the middle of a wrestling show. Because now, I have a reason to kick his ass!”

The champion wrestler threw down his microphone and belt before jumping over the top rope and bull rushing his way toward the robed figure. Johnny cocked back his sledgehammer-like fist and took a wild, brutal, head-crunching swing. The minute his fist made contact with Vulture Man’s mask, the entire robe collapsed into purple smoke, leaving the audience and Johnny shrugging their shoulders and looking around aimlessly for answers.

The lights in the arena blew out and left everybody in mysterious darkness. The grating sounds of the terrorist laughing drew the loudest boos of the night. Red smoke appeared in the ring and revealed the figures of the machete-wielding elf warrior and a fellow wrestler on her knees with a crown of thorns on her head and a neon red glow in her eyes. The lights came back on and revealed a wide-eyed, shocked expression on Johnny Vega’s face. He shouted, “What the hell did you do to Sonia?!”

The woman everybody knew as Sonia Marquez donned gray MMA shorts, a black sports bra, and a black ponytail behind her head. Her muscular frame, sinister gimmick, and vicious martial arts skills made her a perfect slave for someone like the mysterious elf terrorist. Despite how real and genuine Sonia’s brainwashing looked, everybody in the audience assumed this was part of the show and booed accordingly rather than rushing the ring.

Johnny Vega rushed back up to the ring, leaped over the top rope, and reached his hands out in an attempt to strangle the elf terrorist until his head burst like a pustule. Mr. Vega was met with a kick to the liver by Sonia after she jumped up from her kneeling position. Johnny held his ribs tightly and dropped to his own knees before coughing up a liberal amount of blood.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Sonia,” ordered the elf. “We need him to cleanse this earth of anybody who would dare disrespect my people’s heritage. He’s big, strong, and wouldn’t dare resist the power of one of these.” The elf presented a magical crown of thorns to Sonia, who gladly accepted it with a wicked grin on her face. The elf jerked Johnny’s head up by his ponytail while Sonia slipped the brainwashing device over his head. Johnny protested with yells and “No’s”, but it was too late. The crown was already hardwiring his brain by stabbing its prickly thorns into his skull. A few more exhausted breaths later and Johnny slowly stood back up with the same red neon in his eyes as his female counterpart.

Once again, the fans didn’t know if this was part of the show or if this was really happening before their eyes. The elf could have been some asshole in makeup. The neon eyes could have been electrified contact lenses. The crowns of thorns could have been props for a hardcore match. One zealous fan in a Johnny Vega T-shirt and blue jeans jumped over the barricade and rushed the ring with a steel chair in hands. He immediately had his head chopped off by the elf’s machete.

The audience screamed like horrified babies while shooting up from their seats and bolting out of the nearest exits with their arms flailing. The black shirted, big bellied security detail stormed the ring only to be met with slashes from the elf’s machete, big boots and clotheslines from Johnny Vega, and elbow smashes and knee strikes from the MMA enthusiast Sonia Marquez. This didn’t look like “fake shit” anymore. Every slash unleashed a tidal wave of blood from the security detail’s guts and throats. Every clothesline knocked heads off of shoulders and snapped spines like toothpicks. Every MMA strike broke bones so badly that they jutted into vital organs. So many security guards’ corpses filled the ring and left behind a sea of blood and disgust in their wake. The Black River Arena made battlefields and car crashes look mundane.

The elf warrior raised his machete to the sky and yelled, “Nobody disrespects my heritage! Nobody disrespects my nation! Remember the name of Roger Zee! Feel the trauma every time that name is blown up on your TV screens! Know that your heroes and your military are powerless against me! The world will respect my race if I have to chop the heads off of every man, woman, and child on this sick fucking planet!”