The old man had to get a new guitar. He broke the last one in the village. He was still walking. The new guitar on his back. His shoe heels worn and his shoes patched with pieces of leather he had scraped from the roads he had walked. His long white hair was tied with a length of string and sometimes when wind blew, it picked out strands of hair and plastered them across his brow. He had a long way to go. His thoughts were his only company.
The butcher was fighting a war in his own head. He wanted to kill something badly. So badly. His hands itched to set something on fire. To take a life. To make nothing out of something. To feel the dark void again. The one second of euphoria when a soul left the confines of a body and went to meet the great unknown. He wanted to free all these beautiful people and send them home. But he was told to behave. The old man had appeared in his dream and told him to behave. To not kill. To not maim people. To act "normal". He was acting normally and sitting in his seat in a plane heading for a small city somewhere in England.
There were babies on the flight and all of them were crying in unison. At least to the butcher it seemed so. He wanted to throw the babies out of plane. No motherfucking babies on his plane. He gripped the armrest and grit his teeth. It will be over soon, he thought. But he was soon proved wrong.
There was movement near his leg. Something was tugging at his jeans. He looked down. It was a baby. Somehow the wretched thing had gotten free of its mother's clutches and crawled up to the butcher's seat. Now it was eating his jeans. He tried to shake the baby off, but it stuck to his leg like a determined leech. He reached for the baby and picked it up by the scruff of its neck.
"What the fuck are you?" he looked at the baby and growled.
The baby looked back at the butcher in the mad way that only babies can look at people.
And then it puked on him. A blue haze took over the butcher's eyes. There were screams. Someone thudded into him and he tasted the rancid carpet floor of the plane.
When the butcher opened his eyes again, he was lying at the back of the plane and his hands were tied behind him. Two policemen were holding him down. The pilot's voice on the PA system was saying that the plane would be landing at its destination, everything was under control and there was nothing to worry about. Someone lifted the butcher bodily and put him in an empty seat. His hands dug painfully in his back but they still strapped a seatbelt on him. He craned his neck to look at the seats in front of him to find some clue to what had happened. He saw the baby's head poke above the headrest of a seat some seats in front of him. The baby lifted its little hand and gave a little middle finger to the butcher and then it started to bawl in the way that only pissed off babies can bawl.
The butcher swore he'd deal with the baby.
Somewhere on another plane in another part of the world, Cin was having a mirror opposite experience of butcher's flight. It was a peaceful and comfortable journey. There were no babies on the plane and a cute guy also complemented on her blue hair. The flight was on time and there was leg room on her seat.
Life was good.
For now.
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This is sixth. Bringing in some kind of closure...
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