Faulty

I listened to his voice, he was a man who sounded to be in his mid thirties but looked at least ten years older. His eyes encased in dark circles and he leaned forward over the table with a cigarette clenched between his index and middle fingers. His voice rasped a little as he rocked toward the table some, “Back then I didn’t know anything but drugs,” he continued telling his tale to the woman who sat across the table from him., “I lived for the drugs and used drugs to feel alive.”

My fingers went around the top of my cup, the smell of the sweet coffee wafting out filled my nose and I sighed. I glanced down in the cup and I could make out my own reflection. My dark curls bunched up around my head, in the surface of the liquid my eyes appeared to be little more than dark holes.

I take my final sip from the glass and glance over at the man sitting in the corner booth, his back is to a window. He’s sat back some now. The waitress hovering over me with my ticket in hand grabs my attention, “Would you like this now, sweetheart?”

I nod to her, “Sat it down,” my arm goes down to the ash tray and I retrieve my cigarette. With a long slow drag I flare the ember on the business end and then flick the remains down in my coffee.

“I know what you mean,” the woman across from the table with the man was talking now, “I’ve been clean and sober six months and it still feels…it’s still like something is missing.”

Just lifting the glass slightly, I slid my ticket and my money under the still half full mug and get to my feet.

“Then maybe there is,” the man answered her as he took a drag on his own cigarette. “Who are they to tell us that we’re not right…its not our fault that we were manufactured with these…Faulty Souls…that some God saw fit to make it where we need someone else to feel right…we can’t all find someone else, its not just that easy. And when no one is there, we need something to hold us over.”

I smiled slightly, “I thought so,” I mutter under my breath.

“I don’t know…” the woman said.

“Maybe drugs are the answer,” he said now, “Maybe all that shit they’re pumping into our heads down there only works for some of the people out there, what about people like us…”

My fingers fumbled down the buttons of my coat, they were large metal buttons and I had always had a hard time getting out of them, when I reached the last one I dug into my coat, “People like you, you say?” Both of them looked up at me.

“Lady, do you know how rude that is?” asked the man.

“Where are my manners,” I said, “I might care if you actually were a person…”

“What’s that…”

“Demonic scum,” my fingers curled around something cold and metallic. The look of shock on his face was priceless. When I leveled my gun at him and fired the gun through his face, his blood painted the wall and that look was suspended there. The glass window nearby was shattered and in the panic the woman cried out going to hide under the table.

I scoffed, the smoke in the room now wasn’t the kind from a cigarette or match. The dimly lit diner was filled with the sounds of glasses rattling and confused screams of panic. Demons masquerading as humans, preying on the weak. Wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I made my escape in the blink of an eye. A tuft of black feathers left in my wake. In this kind of justice there’s no jury, no witnesses, no one is all that sure what they’ve seen. I took orders straight from God for so long that to me, there’s no reason to be discrete or to show discrimination between demons, whether it’s a low level trying to con a woman into carnal or chemical pleasures, or something far more sinister.

The truth of the matter was something was stirring, deep within the Earth. Something so horrid that it had the demons heading for higher ground, every now and then they’d attempt to blend in and act right. What could cause them to seek shelter so vigorously?

I didn’t know, but as I watched the commotion inside of the diner from the next parking lot over, I was sure I would find out.