By K.C. Ball
Skinny little thing stepping down from the bus, all Band-Aid knees and elbows and long black hair. Carrying her books close against her chest, as if they were a shield against the dangers of the world.
Clio Mayne.
What were her parents thinking? No one graces their children with such names anymore.
Even so, it has taken me weeks to unearth that shard of information. I have to be so careful. Imagine what someone would say if I were noticed.
“Yes, officer, an old man was sitting in a pickup truck, watching the girl. Sixty, maybe sixty-five. A big fellow. No. Large. Six feet four, at least, and three hundred pounds.”
In my dreams, every night for the past five days, the police come to my door and ask why I follow a thirteen-year-old honor student. A girl, at that. I tell them the truth. One day soon, little Clio will be murdered, walking from the bus stop home, unless I save her. They never believe me.
Would you? Would you believe me if I told you there are demons in the world, disguised as ordinary people? That God has granted me vision to see them as they are, wisdom to know the intent of their actions and power to defeat them? Of course not.
I still see them, saw them the first time when I was nine years old. Two of them, pretending to be paramedics, came to hurry my grandfather to the hospital, when he complained of chest pains. I whispered the truth to my father, but he shoved me aside, told me to hush such crazy talk.
Grandfather was dead upon arrival.
I saw them seven more times over the next six years. Always in groups, as few as two, as many as seven. Each time, within a week, someone died. I stopped them, for the first time, when I was sixteen, big for my age. Four of them went after a girl from my high school French class. I battered one unconscious with a baseball bat and scattered the others.
I expected to be a hero, even a superhero, someone in tights and a cape. Here’s what happened.
When the police were done with me, they turned me over to the shrinks. And when they were done with me, a judge committed me to a mental hospital for fifteen years.
I was released just after my thirtieth birthday, cured they said. All they cured was my willingness to tell the truth. Since then, I have rescued forty-seven souls, dispatched two hundred and three demons.
Law enforcement agencies across the country know of me. I have been number one on the FBI’s most-wanted list for seven years and my name has been mentioned on that television show. They call me The Cutter and claim I am a serial killer. It doesn’t matter. God gave me a mission, all those years ago, and I have labored without fail to fulfill it.
But in recent months, it has become more and more difficult. I suppose not even superheroes live forever. Clio Mayne may be the last I can hope to save.
The bus departs, after five more riders scamper off. All demons. Now the vision comes. They will attack as she takes her shortcut across a wooded lot. I abandon the truck, leave it in the street, even though I know it will attract police, and hurry after them.
She is surrounded, back against a tree, books scattered about her feet. Anyone else, come upon the scene, would think that five teenage boys were harassing Clio. A suspicious sort might think they planned to rape her. I know the truth. I shed my duster and wade into them. No battle cries. No fair warning. No spandex. Just jeans and tee shirt and Converse high-tops. And a set of Khukuri blades.
I sever one’s spine before they know I have arrived. A second steps close to Clio, pinning her to the tree, and the other three face me. They carry their own weapons, eldritch claws that leave no outward mark. They are wary, though, for their kind knows me as The Cutter, too.
I lunge to my right. When two fall back, I spin and attack to my left, chopping off the third demon’s head. Another rushes in, raking its claws at me, but I pirouette to safety and disembowel it. The third demon leaps, claws extended, but I slice its life away.
Even five years ago, it would have been easy work. Tonight I am winded. Before I can recover, the remaining demon abandons Clio and falls upon me, stabbing me with its claws, piercing my chest. My heart cries out in agony.
I lose both Khukuri and we go to the ground together, the demon on top. I fumble through my pain, grasp one leather-wrapped handle, and find the strength to push the demon upward. When it falls upon me again, I skewer it upon my blade.
The sirens call now, racing ahead of the police. The reporters will be close behind, sticking their noses everywhere, greedy and insensitive, and they will tell the world a crazy old man fell over the edge and slaughtered five children.
None of them believe in anything other than their career, but they will say, in their eleven o’clock reports, “Thank God, Clio Mayne survived.”
The police will tell her how fortunate she was to escape The Cutter. The shrinks will tell her she should not imagine anything else happened here tonight. There are no monsters, they will say, except for people like me. She may come to accept it all in the way that she is told. But at this instant, as I lay dying, she is looking at me and I can see that she knows I spared her life.
And that will have to do.
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To Each His Niche and Task was published in print in issue #5 of Morpheus Tales in June 2009.
