Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
“Yo, Halloween was last month,” I call out. “Come over here, buddy. Let’s talk.”
His costume is very good. The closer he gets, the more the streetlight outside the alley shines on him and the more I am able to make out details. He is pale all over except for long, dark hair. I am guessing that is some kind of cosmetic effect. He’s not wearing a shirt, or he wants to make it look that way. HIs body ripples with muscles that cannot be real.
What I thought was a cloak actually seems to be a pair of… wings? Nah. It’s a really good cloak. Has to be. My gaze is directly distracted from the wing / cloak situation because his pale abdomen would make any bodybuilder break down and cry out of sheer, unadulterated jealousy. I cannot imagine the amount of time he must have spent sculpting and airbrushing that torso. It’s a little fake-looking in how pale it is, but it does seem to move naturally, so that’s interesting. He even made a second pair of arms that look a lot like the first, except they emerge lower down his torso. I guess there’s a lot of silicone in there making that all look real. It’s quite astonishing.
His lower body is clad in black jeans. They look as incongruous as hell. His boots are large for a man, but don’t seem overly large for a whatever he’s pretending to be.
Where the illusion completely falls down is around his face. He’s handsome. Human handsome. Nice jaw. Good bone structure. The sort of face you see on people who are famous for being good looking, except I have no idea if he is technically good looking, because the upper part of his face has been altered with what I have to assume for sanity’s sake are prosthetics and cosmetics. His eyes are a terrible red hue, and from his head, two fern-like tendrils —I’d almost call them horns — twitch and move in the slight breeze.
I am tall for a woman, 5’11. But he dwarfs me. I assume he’s got stilts on under there somehow. No man is this tall naturally without having some kind of medical issue.
My training makes me check his hands. Hands. Hands. Hands are fucking everything. Where they are. What they’re holding. What they’re reaching for.
His hands are large, in keeping with the rest of his body. He is oddly proportionate for someone in a costume. Perhaps they are prosthetic gloves. I hope the claws are foam. If they’re not, they’re scimitars gleaming in the moonlight.
“Hello?” He speaks curiously and hesitantly, as if he is surprised to be spoken to.
“Buddy, dressing up the way you are is a good way to get shot. You’re scaring the hell out of the neighborhood.”
“Oh,” he says. “That would not be good.”
His voice is deep and raspy. It has a very curious quality that absolutely fascinates me. There’s something hypnotic about it, an otherworldly quality.
“You’re an eight foot…”
“Nine foot,” he corrects me. Nothing more human than being specific about one’s stats. Damn that voice. Thick. Rich. Intriguing.
“Okay, so you’re a nine foot high… what would you describe yourself as?”
“Justice.”
“Okay, and what’s justice, to you?”
“It’s my name,” he says.
“Oh. I see. Justice. And how would you spell that?”
“J U S T I C E.”
I’m going to guess he doesn’t have any ID with that name on it. I play along. No need to get hostile yet.
“Ah, I see. And where would you say you were last Tuesday night between ten pm and five am?”
“Hm,” he says. “Well. I don’t generally sleep at night, so I was likely out for a walk.”
“In the middle of Brooklyn in the middle of the night.”
“Yes. Probably.”
“I see. And while you were out for a walk did you happen to see, or perhaps do anything out of the ordinary?”
“MONSTER!” A passerby catches a glimpse of Justice, screams, and flees.
“People are dramatic here,” he observes.
“You not from around here, buddy?”
“West Virginia, originally,” he clarifies.
“I see. How long have you been in the city?”
“Around three months or so.”
That coincides with the first murders very neatly. The beast has been stalking Brooklyn for twelve weeks exactly. It is at this point the hairs on the back of my neck start to wake up from their perpetual slumber. I don’t get creeped out anymore. You see enough bits of people in various states, and you stop responding in a normal way. But this is different. This is starting to get weird.
For one, the way he moves is a little too natural. I’ve seen people in costumes before. There’s always something awkward and wrong in the way they move. A physical stutter. He doesn’t have that. When he looks around, moves his hands, takes a step, he does so like every part of him belongs to him.