BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

AFTERMATH

Vincent felt the laugh building inside him. It was like a buildup of steam in a covered pot. Like a volcano whose time to erupt has come at last.

He was being torn apart.

His arms were handcuffed to two parked diesel locomotives, and they were huffing and puffing, and smoke was coming up out of their undercarriages, and the locomotives were so hot that the steel side panels were melting.

He stood there between the tracks.

The chains were long. The engines would be able to build up speed.

“Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!”

He laughed, because it would be funny when his arms were ripped from his body, when the flesh tore and the bones popped out of their sockets like pulling the wings off a barbecued chicken and . . .

“Come on, man, lie down, lie down, lie down.”

Choo choo. Choo chooooooo!

“You’re going to be okay, Vincent.”

Who was Vincent? His name was not Vincent. His name was … What was his name?

A dragon, one of those Chinese dragons, loomed over him, a giant face, and there was smoke coming out of its nostrils and it was the same as the smoke from the trains that were starting to move now, starting to pick up speed, now.

“Uh. Uh-uh-uh! Uh! Uhhhh! UUHHH!”

The chains clanked as the trains pulled away.

“Take this pill. Take the pill, Vincent.”

Vincent thrashed, had to free his arms, they would rip his arms off, his arms would be dragged off behind the trains!

“Uhhh-uhhh-UUUHHHH !”

“Goddamn it, take the pill!”

The dragon was ripping his mouth open; he was going to split Vincent’s head open so that brains came gushing out of his mouth, vomiting his own brains and . . .

The Chinese dragon was a nurse now, no, a dragon, no, no, no.

“Nooooo!”

A vice closed around his head. He smelled a masculine perfume. Vincent felt muscles like pythons around his head and something was in his mouth, and the dragon/nurse held his jaw shut even as he tried to scream and beg for help.

“Keats. Help me! Get water.”

From the sky came a bottle.

Fiji water. Oh yes, that was the one with a square bottle, sure he would drink some water, yes, dragon, I’ll drink some water like a good boy.

“Get his mouth open.”

But the trains!

Vincent swallowed.

A voice he heard very, very clearly but through his head not his ears said, “They’ll kill you, they’ll have no choice, they’ll kill you, kill you, the mad king will send the mad emperor. Kill. You.”

But then his arms were ripped from their sockets—Snap! Pop!— by the trains and he laughed and laughed.

And he felt sick.

He wanted to throw up.

“Like my brother,” a voice said.

The dragon, who was really just a man who smelled like perfume, had an arm around Vincent’s head. The man was crying. So Vincent felt like crying, too.

The other one, Vincent thought maybe he was a devil, he wasn’t sure, he might have devil skin, and he had devil blue eyes.

“I don’t have arms anymore, Jin,” Vincent whispered.

“Jesus,” the possible devil with blue eyes said.

Jin—Nijinsky, the dragon, the nurse—didn’t say anything.

The drug came for Vincent. It called him to unconsciousness. As he tumbled, armless, down the long, long black well, Vincent had a moment of clarity.

So, he thought, this is madness.

She stood in the doorway, ready to help if Nijinksy and Keats had trouble getting Vincent into restraints. Ready to help. Her heart was beating as if it was made out of lead. That beat, that unnatural beat squeezed the air out of her lungs;, it clamped her throat.

Sadie McLure—Plath—had been just a little bit in love with Vincent. He had that effect on people. Not love love, not even attraction in the usual sense of the word—that feeling was reserved for Keats, who was working silently, quickly, to tie Vincent down. Keats looked as shell-shocked as Plath felt

.

So, not love love and not attraction for Vincent, but some weird amalgam of protectiveness and trust. Strange to feel that way about someone as cold-blooded as Vincent, someone so utterly in control. Well, formerly in control.

Her fists clenched so tight that her neglected fingernails cut new and too-short lifelines into her palms. She had taken too many hits, too many losses: her mother, her father and brother. What was left to her now?