When Dancing with Demons – Book 1 Prolog
Zachary Moore
I have no idea what time it is. It’s dark, that’s all I know.
The tugboat horn woke me with a bone rattling blaaaaaarb. I should have been startled, but I was too soaked in bourbon for that. No tugboat horn, or anything else for that matter, was going to wake me easily. It’s like coming out of a fog too heavy to lift, so you just wait for the sun to burn it off until you can see farther than the reach of your arm.
I don’t remember walking to the docks off of Chartres St. At least I think I’m off of Chartres. I know there are docks there, I’ve walked past them a hundred times. But the dark casts everything to shadows. I look to my left. The stones under the dock are just a black and uneven texture. The weird looking piece of driftwood to my left is but one long, five-foot shadow. In the cool of the morning, I see the moonlight fighting its way through the old wood planks of the dock above my head.
Then there is the blood
At first, I thought the blood was water. After all, I passed out right next to the waterline of the river. A passing barge could have easily created enough waves to soak me. But water doesn’t coat your hand like this. Water doesn’t change the shade of your shirt to a sickening reddish black. At least, that’s how it looks in what little moonlight you get under a dock.
Water isn’t sticky.
A normal person would panic. A normal person would immediately remember what happened – or at least been able to put the pieces together after lying here and meditating on the night’s events.
I no longer remember what it’s like to be a normal person.
Under the dock, it is dank and dark and the Mississippi River water is sloshing in steady wavelets below my feet. The smell of the water is fish, and mud, and industry – and it is actually refreshing compared to the smell of the blood.
There has to be a significant quantity to fully comprehend the smell of blood. I’ve smelled it before – far too many times. I still haven’t gotten used to that smell. The feel of it is even worse. Slimy at first, then sticky as it dries. You wonder if you will ever be able to scrub your skin clean. You expect that you will remember the feeling on your flesh for the rest of your life.
I strain to catch a glimpse of the sky through the spaces between the planks.
What time is it?
The moon is low in the sky, but I have no idea if it is just beginning its climb or falling to the horizon. I don’t know that it matters. I assume it’s early morning since I don’t hear cars passing by, and there are no sounds of drunken revelers staggering home from Bourbon Street. All I know is it is still night, I am wet, and I once again I have some major issues to deal with.
You would think the first issue I would be concerned with was the blood.
You would be wrong
With the nightmare that has become my life, waking up covered in blood no longer surprises me. Waking up, remembering the night before, and not having something weird greet my waking moments, now that would be considered a welcome relief.
No, the first issue is this headache that feels like someone clubbed me in the back of the head with a two by four. Not remembering what happened before I blacked out, I could easily assume that some asshole did hit me with a two by four. I wouldn’t be surprised, except for the fact that I’ve felt this pain too many times. I know what being saturated in bourbon over a long period of time feels like when you wake up from another bender. It feels just like this: thwack, thwack, thwack.
“What’s your next move chief?” I ask out loud to no one except the moon.
The moon doesn’t bother to answer.
I make an attempt at sitting upright. An all too familiar wave of nausea comes over me as I smell the blood, and my head spins as I receive another thwack from that two by four. I put my fingers to my temples to try and relieve the pounding. It helps to lessen the pain, but only if I keep applying pressure – and I just don’t have enough strength for that.
So I sit here, looking around and trying to figure out what I already know.
I gotta get home.
I gotta put together the strength to make it back to my place, no matter how many blocks it is. Getting up is always the issue. Once you’re up, you can just lean forward and let gravity keep you going as long as you can keep your legs in front of you.
I take one last look around. In the shadows, that big piece of driftwood is no longer looking like driftwood – but I’ll be damned if I’m going to check it out. Another wave of nausea grabs me and I roll to my right, digging my elbow into the stones below me.
I dry heave once – then twice. The second time brings a little bile but not much else. When the nausea passes, I force myself to my hands and knees. I look up and find a large, rusting bolt that’s holding some of the planking together and use it to pull myself to my feet. I’m still crouching like a bad Groucho Marx impersonator, but I’m able to work my way to the end of the dock, which fortunately isn’t far.
I stand up once I clear the dock, and the two by four resumes its assault. The pain is unbelievable.
I stagger toward the road. At this point, I’m being driven by sheer will and my obsessive desire to get home and take a handful of ibuprofen before falling like a bag of bricks on my bed. Anything to stop the pain.
The thwacks drive me forward.
As I stagger home down the dimly lit streets of New Orleans, the pounding in my head almost drowns out two disturbing questions that still beg to be answered.
The first: What the hell happened?
And the second, more hideous question:
Why does it keep happening to me?