Mr. Kite’s eye twitched like he was on the verge of having a stroke.
That snobby bitch just poured $30,000, 50 year aged whiskey onto the sidewalk like it was sewer water and turned one of the only two things my father left me into a scrap of paper…
He almost forgot to breathe in the face of the pure audacity and absurdity of what his
Servant, the Heroic Spirit
He had summoned and
He commanded, had just done.
Eventually he sucked in all the air his lungs could accommodate without bursting and expelled it toward the sky in an earsplitting scream of rage that rivaled those of long dead battle crazed barbarians, tearing the map in half with fists clenched so tightly his fingernails almost drew blood from his palms and his knuckles threatened split the strained flesh covering them.
He stood there panting, face still contorted with rage for a moment before noticing the bewildered and terrified tourists and locals gawking at him.
“What the fuck are you all looking at?” he spat with eyes that spoke of eviscerations and maimings to any who dared answer. His tone translated perfectly despite the words being spoken in English. With that he stormed off, tossing the scraps of seemingly worthless paper, that had once been a priceless family heirloom into the gutter like the garbage it now was.
The scream had served to spew forth as much of the seething hatred and contempt that had been on the verge of overpowering him as possible, but there was still enough inside him that he needed to be alone, lest he murder the next person he saw.
Shaking hands
pulled a cigarette from his pocket and clumsily lit it. He took a drag so long and deep that it was little more than a the filter in a matter of seconds. He held the smoke in his lungs for an almost inhumanly long time, trying to let every molecule of nicotine from the tobacco and THC from the marijuana he’d hidden among it seep into his body before blowing it out a cloud almost the size of the ones in the sky overhead. He tossed the butt aside and lit a second which enjoyed leisurely this time as he scowled his way through the suffocating corridors of the city.
What does she know about me and what I’ve been through?
Did she ever opened the front door on a cloudy Autumn afternoon to find the uncle that raised her staring at the door from his favorite armchair with the cold, lifeless eyes of man who’d drunk himself to death mere hours before he’d gotten home?
Did she have to give up her dreams of going to college and getting a PhD. in Mythology and Occult Studies because that same uncle only left behind enough money to live off for a month, forcing her to drop out of high school and work five different part time jobs just to keep from starving to death?
Did she spend a year homeless, sleeping on the couches of anyone and everyone that pitied her enough to let her stay the night, even if it meant using herself as payment for the lodging, and sleeping in alleys that reeked of piss and fermented garbage when there were no couches to left to surf?
Did she mold a ragtag handful of outcasts and degenerates into an army and lead a revolution against some of the most corrupt and vile sacks of shit ever to lie, cheat, and kill their way into positions of power in North American history?
…
Was her family brutally murdered by zealots and bigots who were willing to kill every man, woman, and child they could get their merciless hands on because they believed them demons and monsters?
No, that was
his life.
Those were
his memories.
His suffering and
his victories.
Mr. Kite sighed in exasperation, finally calming down.
Why did he want the grail?
Because he wanted, he
needed power.
The power to make sure that no one else would have to live a life like that ever again.
“A child she calls me…” he muttered bitterly, pulling out his phone to figure out where the hell he’d wound up and how to get back to his garage so the he could spend the night trying to get drunk enough to erase this whole day from existence,
“Whatever child I may have been died along with the rest of my family 20 years ago.”