Introduction
"I prefer to go out at night, when the sun has rested after a long day of polishing the earth. The light is inherently forgiving in nature. It has a way of shining a false beauty over even the ugliest of situations. It gives cosmetic value to an otherwise worthless piece of merchandise. The light is the great deceiver, not the darkness. When the shadows close in around us and threaten to remind us of who we are, it's in the light we seek comfort and salvation.
I walk the streets of this forsaken city, past the dregs, junkies and whores. I see and hear everything that happens in these streets, this concrete Gomorrah.
I see a man, a spineless worm, unemployed and hooked on crack cocaine. He collects welfare checks from his brother's mailbox and lives with his girlfriend and her two small children. He spends every penny chasing a high he'll never satisfy and watches her kids suffer, neglected and deprived of a mother and childhood.
His eyes are fixed upon a young woman, a prostitute. Her long blonde hair, slim figure and schoolgirl face earn her the money she needs to care for the product of a trick gone horribly wrong. The uninvited seed of a low-life rapist. A foreign invader who left upon her both a gift and a curse. A bitter sweet signature left upon her world in the form of a pure, and life-long maternal love, marred by the memory of her violator every time she looks him in the eyes.
The pipe in his left coat pocket is still warm, and his mind races, the pane of glass between himself and reality slightly cracked and smudged. Only two things rest on his feeble, one-track mind. That perfect backside and the sexual release it will offer him, and the $600 which rests in her purse beside a loaded .45. Nothing good happens tonight, nothing that can be summed up beautifully, or packaged neatly by a deep moral observation.
People hide within the light, hoping, praying that all of their superficial bullshit is in any way true, or in any way will protect them from the cruel reality of the human condition... evil. Sin, and the capacity to commit sinful acts of violence, greed, or deviance dwell within us all. The road to heaven is paved with corpses... so watch your step."
—Preacher
Chapter 1
Darkness Ensues
This story is dedicated to Sunal Wolfsbane, my dear old friend
The night was hot and humid. The streets of New Haven were quiet and eerie. The orange light from lampposts was polished into a fine, dense glow by the heavy moisture in the air. It was one of those nights when the empty streets felt both inviting, and menacing. For Deputy Sheriff Owen Reznik, this particular night had been quiet, uneventful so far. He sat in his squad car eating a hamburger and listening to the radio at a low volume. He was putting in a solo shift tonight. New Haven was a fairly small, relaxed town. Deputy's often worked the graveyard shift alone, although backup was never too far, should it be needed.
Owen was a caucasian male of thirty-two years with short black hair and a hansom, defined face with bright green eyes. He had a small, jagged scar above his upper lip from when he was eleven years old. During a little league baseball practice, he had taken a fly-ball straight to the mouth after failing to catch it with his glove. Funny thing, fear. He never quite shook that one day, that one incident. As a result, he became a benchwarmer and didn't return for a second year. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, if I had caught that ball, that fateful day, could I be playing for the Yankees right now? Fate is not to be taken lightly, you see. Even if you don't believe in it. For fate in of itself does not exist, it's just a word we use to make the course of our lives more tangible; To vindicate our failures and glorify our successes. You get up in the morning and consider calling in sick. Instead you get in the car to drive to work, and you're T-boned by a semi two blocks from your home. Was it fate, or random chance? Could you have actually stayed home, or by your own will and admission, was it your destiny to cross that intersection that morning? It's enough to drive you insane. Luckily for Owen, he was a simple, new world man of simple beliefs. As far as he'd be concerned, fate would play no part in the events which were about to unfold.
The dispatcher, Carey came over the radio.
Owen. You're around Kennedy Park, right?"
He rewrapped the burger and put it down in the passenger seat, swallowing that last bite. Grabbing the microphone, he answered Carey. That old familiar doubt and anticipation lingered in the back of his mind. You never knew what your next call would be. What you'd be going into. A kid caught shoplifting, or a standoff with six heavily armed criminals. You could say it was like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get.
"Yeah, Carey. I'm sitting on Park Lane right now."
"I need you over on Agricola. Some sort of disturbance between two men. It's the alleyway by 85. Doesn't sound serious, but be careful anyway."
"Copy that, dispatch. Heading there now."
Carey was a sweet young girl, only 19. She was attending university to be a criminologist. Owen liked her. Figured if things were a little different, if he hadn't met Allison... but there we go, dabbling in that fate nonsense again.
He pulled away from the curb he'd been parked at, heading north on Park Lane toward Agricola Street, which was only a few blocks north-east of his location. Kennedy Park was a nice area during the daytime, but it seemed to change after dark. It got more gritty and dangerous. So this call came as no surprise.
Cruising slowly down the street, he came to the alley near 85 Agricola. He shut the lights off and stopped discretely, assessing the scene. He made eyes on a man hunched over and mounted atop another person. He quickly called for backup, exiting the vehicle afterward.
He approached the scene with his sidearm grasped firmly, the suspect directly between his sights.
"New Haven Sheriff's Department! Put your hands in the air where I can see 'em!"
He couldn't see the victim, but the person wasn't moving at all. The suspect however, slowly stood up with a menacing, hunched posture.
Owen's stomach tightened. "Easy! Keep your hands where I can see them, or I will open fire!"
The man slowly turned around, locking eyes with Owen. He held something in his right hand. Looked like a knife, or something long and metallic like a blade.
"Put the weapon down, and those hands up! Last warning!"
The suspect didn't comply, but rather advanced on Owen, as if to will his gun away and attack him as he had the poor soul laying behind him.
Owen panicked and squeezed the trigger as he'd been trained to for years.
A round exploded from the barrel and found it's mark in the suspect's chest. It pierced the left side of his breastplate with a vicious shockwave of recoil surging through tissue, flesh and clothing. What should have been a direct kill shot, seemed to have avoided him all together as he pressed forward still.
Owen squeezed the trigger again, horrified with disbelief. The man absorbed yet another 9mm round at close range. This one he actually seemed to feel. It slowed his pace, almost staggered him. That's when Owen heard the squealing of brakes pinching rubber. His backup had come crashing in at the sound of gun shots.
The suspect finally yielded, turning from Owen, dashing into the darkness of the alley, dropping the tool he'd been holding in the process. Owen took a few calculated steps to pursue, firing two more rounds which may or may not have found a mark.
What the hell just happened? Could what just happened have really happened? No time to really digest it.
His sight moved down toward the unidentified weapon. A long, metal spike, bloodied at the tip. This night couldn't get any stranger. With so much adrenaline and emotion surging through him, he almost picked it up, contaminating the evidence.
Settling down a little, he holstered his sidearm and rushed to the victim as another Deputy ran down the alley after Owen, gun drawn.
"What the hell's goin' on, Reznik?" the Deputy asked in a panic, looking around the scene frantically. He'd never had a call like this before. Shots fired and all. New Haven was a model American Town. Nothing like the neighboring city of Blackwater, which was full to the brim with crime and violence.
Owen kneeled next to the victim. There was blood everywhere. On the ground around him, soaked into his cloths, and all over his neck and face. As Owen went to check for a pulse, he took notice of two evenly spaced puncture wounds on the left side of the neck. He tightened his brow, perplexed even more than he had been. It would take a week to come off this adrenaline rush.
Hands slightly shaking, he checked the man for a pulse. No good. He was already dead.
Owen stood up slowly, glancing around the alley, inebriated with fear, shock, and confusion.
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