Peak Oil

“Evil - I want to taste raw evil. I want to see pure evil. I want you to bleed as I cry. I want to see evil. I want to see raw evil. I want to see flowing black ink-like raw evil from a pure spring. I want to see the skin pricked and raw evil bubble to the surface. I told you, I want evil. Pure evil. Raw evil from the pure source of a spring. I want to see a needle prick his skin. I want to see that hide severed. I want holes. I want oil. I told you - I want evil. Raw evil. Pure evil.”

Seeker walked down the hallway of the den, that house, another of many monuments to decay as the soil bubbled up the black fog beneath this part of the city.  Haruspex was in the corner clutching something glass.

“Know your fucking place, girl.” The old cunt was babbling. Seeker could see the back of Haruspex’s bottle. Some old relic of the sea, Africa-boys in pith helmets astride boulders with some Rudyard Kipling ad copy printed beneath.

“Ignore her.”

“I was going to.”

Seeker and The Man walked past her. She grumbled and looked up at them, swaddling the blanket over herself, sinking deeper into the inky shadows like oceanwater made solid.

There were ghosts painted on a wall. Haruspex’s husband was almost dead, Vegas-bloated in his stained jersey and jeans, slumped like a sack of potatoes on the rotten couch. Behind him, water stains obscured the ancient murals. An old officer of the empire in his cap and epaulets, stands beside the minister in all his pulpit’s dignity, beside a cathedral, a castle, a gentleman. A bottle falls off Haruspex’s husband’s belly, bopping on the floor. Seeker  kicks it aside, letting the Queen’s face turn back to the molded carpet. A deer is hung in trophy above the television playing the colors behind them. We’re all too numb to be affected by the hypersaturation and the deer is suffering from Chronic Wasting Disease.

Seeker and The Man walk past him, out the clattering screen door, struggling with cigarettes and lighters against the winter wind that doesn’t much want to allow either. There’s an old pickup wedged into the snow of the backyard, unshoveled but trampled into a hard floor by countless footsteps. An empty container of used motor oil is leaking, black and thick off the porch, down the wood steps, their rot stopped by the cold, mold frozen in progress until the next spring.

“Did they tell you about the body out there?”

“The bear?”

“No, the wolf. And the hobo.”

Seeker didn’t respond to The Man as they both got their smokes working. The Man puffed like machinery with it soaking in the corner of his lip. Seeker couldn’t stop pulling it in and out, in and out. Her fingers were freezing red.

“Cold?”

“It’s like, what, one? Zero?”

The Man unholstered his gun.