Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

“Welcome back Herr Telemark.”

Stupid to be here. Stupid should take a different room tell the hotel—

Too tired to be clever. Call Doc. Fuck this shit just—

Sit down on the bed and sleep in my heat packs and my borrowed sweats and Egyptian cotton sheets the good kind not the bullshit kind they sell everywhere now.

All fine all fine sleep—wait what is that smell that is weird is that those nasty chocolates on my pillow or some kind of floor polish—

That is when Evil Hansel falls from the fake A-frame rafters like a giant bat and slams a plastic refuse sack over my head.

I fucking hate Switzerland.

It is a Swiss refuse sack and so it is paid for by taxation at point of sale and you have to use these sacks to get your refuse taken away although recycling is free but that is not the point the point is that it is tough and thick and industrial and Evil Hansel gets it tight over my face so that the lip of the sack is pulling up under my chin like the strap on a helmet. He is actually standing on my shoulders and lifting with his legs strongman-style. I struggle of course but he’s a limber little shit heel and I cannot get rid of him. I smash myself against a wall but he shifts grip around to—I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to say anything.

Hypoxia is amazingly quick and faster when you’re working hard. You have breathed every second every day of your life. Try not breathing and running at the same time and get back to me.

I try to breathe and the air in the sack tastes of solvent and hydrocarbons and a hint of antibacterial cleaner. At least the floor polish smell is gone now all I can smell is my own dying. I guess that is Swiss. Evil Hansel is killing me with a sterile murder weapon.

Sterile and gray. Battleship gray like the doors of the Festung which if I die here I will not rob. Gray plastic and gray steel. I cannot see the gray plastic because it is opaque and over my eyes. My face feels as if it will explode off the front of my skull.

Well I guess this is going to suck but at least Doc will have to shut up about it.

Doc would not give me a tracheal stent but she gave me a modified tactical pen. This is an ordinary pen but made of titanium dragon penis or something and it does not break and the edges, if you remove the rollerball cartridge, are really sharp. The front inch or so is detachable to make an emergency stent and Doc and Charlie gave it little tick arms so that once it’s in it’s in.

I flick the lid off and punch myself in the throat with it.

The sharp end of the pen cuts right through my skin like almost too far. It hurts like fucking hell and then I heave my chest and something goes SPLURT and that is the little plug of me flying out of the tube and then I am breathing through a surgical hole in my neck.

I am a fucking genius. I totally saw this coming and I planned for it and I am a fucking genius bleeding all over the sheets.

Evil Hansel says something that sounds like “ach, you minor goofy” and the grip slackens. I figure he is right now pretty fucking startled and maybe a little horrified even if he is a nine-year-old psychopath with impeccable Aryan hair. I buck and feel him rattle against my torso so I do it again and then I catch him in one hand and pull at the bag with the other and I pull them apart and—

The world is still there.

Bright and dizzy and I am alive and FUCK YOU AGAIN FUCKERS I am alive.

I look around and see Evil Hansel and his whole face is covered in red me-funk. I wait for him to pull the knife and come at me but—

But Evil Hansel is just completely still.

I realize he is listening to my breathing which is a weird fucking noise like a seal barking in a plastic box.

“Yeah you little Nazi I’m breathing through my neck hole! You try it and see how that goes! C’mere I’ll show you ya little fucking Heydrich on a tricycle—”

I can say this because my special tactical trache pen is fenestrated to allow for speech it is not like that thing you see in movies where the guy sounds like a kazoo. Doc has all the best stuff.

Evil Hansel actually flinches.

I wonder for a second if he is afraid of blood but he can’t be that’s not it.

I wonder if he thinks I’m just going to kill him now with laser vision or something I mean in the end he is nine so—

Evil Hansel runs out of the room and I swear he is crying.

Well sure fine be a kid suddenly. Be a fucking kid and run away you little—

Fuck you anyway you murderous little bastard.

…

…

Fuck.

Fuck fuck FUCK IT.

I’m standing here with another fucking hole in me and breathing through a TUBE for the love of—

And HE’S the one crying that is just—

Fuuuuuck it FUCK it.

How the fuck do I feel like I’m the monster here?

—

Call Doc. Doc sends Saul. Saul comes and carries me down to the goods bay and we disappear. It’s not the most sophisticated disappear not like we have actually vanished more like quietly left and not waved at anyone. There is blood everywhere in the hotel room so we may assume the management will be calling the cops on Banjo Telemark.

catastrophe artist missing after terrorist shootout

It’s a headline, but it’s one of those headlines. It’s too obviously something from a movie to be actually true, especially in Bern. The truer it seems the more there is something else going on particularly when you throw in the presence of a