Parts & Wreck by Mark Henry

Author:Mark Henry
Language: ara
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: funny, Humorous, posession, demon, parks, Romance, evil, quirky
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2014-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

A certain odor collected around the odd gathering of street kids, tourists and the pair of clandestine vivisectionists in the coffeehouse, pungent and earthy with a hint of Boone’s Farm, but the coffee was fantastic and for Wade, it seemed, that was all that mattered. Luce couldn’t complain, the drink was amazing.

“This is delicious,” Wade said, rinsing the shot of espresso around his mouth.

Luce looked up from her latte, foam mustache tickling her nose. “Somewhere between homeless and broken toilet lies Bulletback Espresso. Where did you find this place?”

Wade covered the scarred table between them with folders full of medical records—covering sex doodles and gang symbols.

“I’m privy to all sorts of insider information.”

Luce glared at him, a question at the tip of her tongue. Wade didn’t notice; instead took another sip, savoring it with an ecstatic smile. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the inky tattoos, pulled a pair of glasses from his pouch, and slipped them up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. Luce studied his face, the square black frames having changed the sharp angles. Softened him as much as the overlays of black crosses made him look hardened, criminal.

“Were we going to talk about the crosses at some point? The monastery?”

He glanced at her over the top of the glasses. “Are you harboring fantasies? Is this about that dream?”

Luce sat bolt upright. “What?”

“Your dream? This morning?” Wade pulled his glasses off and zeroed in. “Were you dreaming about…me, by any chance?”

“I don’t remember,” she said quickly.

Wade grinned, but ceded. “The tattoos are protection. This one”— he pointed to a circle encasing a plus sign on his left forearm— “is gnostic. It’s pre-Christian. This one’s Maltese.” He turned his right wrist to show Luce a cross comprised of four notched arrowheads meeting at the points. “The eight points each symbolize obligations. Truth. Faith. Repentance. So on.”

“The one on your back? The big one?”

“The Cross of Eternal Salvation. The coin at its center is Saint Benedict. The demons come in many flavors. All of them older than Catholicism, so you have to throw those ideas out the window. We fall back on some of the old rituals but obviously we’ve moved on to other methods to defend against their assault on humanity.”

“Scalpel.”

“One of ’em, yeah.”

“And the monastery?”

Wade rubbed his nose and chin. “I started getting the tattoos when I was twelve, which is where the monastery comes in. My father died after a series of possessions. I got to know the clergy rather well during those years. Five, to be exact. The demons would come in waves and be gone for months before coming back.” Wade pushed back from the table and drummed his palms. “Oh fuck. Who knows? Maybe they never left. Maybe they just went dormant for a while. Slept. Anyways, it’s not exactly The Thorn Birds. Sorry to ruin the fantasy.”

Luce winced. “Oh shit. I’m sorry, Wade. I was totally off base with The Thorn Birds. Everyone was.”

Wade put his glasses back on and opened the first file.

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