“Why can’t we do it the other way?” Mike shot back.
“Because if something happens to you, I’ll lose my cool and probably finish you off myself,” Xander reminded them both.
Mike stepped away from the door, curtsying toward it. “Ladies first,” he snapped in conceit.
CHAPTER FIVE:
TRANSFORMATIONS IN PAIN
Xander opened the door carefully as it felt about ready to snap off of its hinges. A stream of light bled from beneath his feet, melting back into darkness about three yards from where he stood. He couldn’t see anything of the walls or floor from here, save for a few shards of broken glass strewn about in front of him. The smell of cheap beer and cheaper drugs assaulted his senses, along with a musty aftershave that he was sure he’d smelt somewhere before. He squinted, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the light as the floor groaned beneath him. Something deep inside of him cringed, like your stomach when you haven’t eaten in days, or organs addicted to nicotine and convulsing from withdrawal. He realized too late that it was the true Black Womb warning him of danger.
There was a sound like a firecracker going off right next to his head, something big slamming into it at the same spot. Pain shot through his skull, like shockwaves in a calm pool. The agony exploded out the other side of his brain, trying to find some place to escape. The pain was followed closely by numbness, a tingly feeling that crept over his skin, as though someone were tickling him from the inside out. His ears were ringing. What was worse was the harder he tried to concentrate on the sounds now coming at him, the more he heard the ringing. He clenched his teeth as figures started to emerge from the darkness. There were more than twenty at first, but Xander soon realized that there were really only two. His vision was failing him as well it seemed, the figures before him doubling and then tripling in a shimmering haze. It was as if he’d just gotten off the Twister roller coaster at Wonder World, the one that Sara was always so afraid of. Sara, he echoed, the thought shrieking high inside his skull. It cleared away the cloudiness brought on by the blow, his own personal lighthouse shining to bring him back to port.
The first man stepped out of the darkness, and his form expelled all of the shadows that were left in the room. His shoulders were broad and packed tight with muscles, the sheer width of him surely reminding onlookers of tractor trailers coming towards them full-steam. His nostrils flared, making deep huffing sounds to support that hypothesis. He was powerfully built. Beyond powerfully built, actually. His muscles seemed to defy all laws of human anatomy, Xander thought as his eyes caught some of the glare off of the man’s sweat-covered skin. It wasn’t hard to see a lot of that skin either, as the man wore a simple white wife beater that looked three sizes too small and was clinging to him for dear life. His eyes bulged with rage, but the most striking thing about him was his hair. Long brown hair that hadn’t been combed or styled particularly in his yearbook photos but was now drawn back into a pony tail with a blonde tip, revealing that it had been dyed not too long ago. His hair danced along the edge of his black denim jeans, nearly invisible against the shadows, except for the gleaming belt-buckle in its centre that was shaped like the state of Texas for some reason. His brow furrowed, making his face shrink into itself and his slightly elongated jaw seem even larger, like Jay Leno’s. He patted the piece of two-by-four he’d just used to strike Xander, ready to use it again if the boy moved. Xander recognized him as Bram Raine.
Which made the second man Allan Bishop, a theory that was proven when the slimmer man lumbered out of the shadows. His heels tapped softly against the rotten, moldy floor, hardly making a sound as he descended toward Xander. He seemed to be the source of the scent of cheap drugs, amplified by the fact that his eyes were bloodshot and bugging, seemingly beyond the man’s ability to control them. His pupils darted around aimlessly and his fists were clenched into small balls that moved so fast it was hard to tell if those blurry lines were in fact fingers. His hair was short and wiry, looking like something an army general might have, and was the polar opposite of Raine’s. He had a small mustache which looked like an earwig crawling over his upper lip that he was obviously too proud to shave. However, his face was trim and there didn’t seem to be any fat on his body. He was toned, even if he wasn’t overly muscular. He was breathing hard, making his loose t-shirt wave slightly as his chest heaved. It also made his sweatpants drop about an inch only to rise again the next time he inhaled. “Jesus,” he said, his voice coming in quick bursts of air. His lips barely moved when he spoke, a trait that was typically learned in the harsher prisons. “He’s a friggin’ kid. Just some stupid kid.”
“Don’t matter,” Raine barked, his voice was low and commanding with a heavy New York accent. That made about as much sense as his Texan belt-buckle, and Xander decided that he was just faking such things as gimmicks to make himself look tough. “Kid’s still got a mouth, hasn’t he? He can still talk. We gotta shut him up.”
Xander coughed, slowly rising to his feet. It was like watching smoke billow upwards from a blast. He seemed to just keep rising and rising, until he stood at eye-level with both men. “I’m not here to talk,”
