Page 1 of Taming the Demon

Prologue

“I’m not a fucking rat,” he said as he sat on the semi-stiff couch and looked at the stone fireplace.

In front of him, a glass and a bottle of whiskey.

The same words repeated in his mind as he spoke them. He wanted to rewrite the reality. The truth.

He stood up and skipped the glass, grabbing the bottle of whiskey, and walked to the fireplace.

“I’m not a fucking rat… I never was. I had a plan. I had a fucking plan. That’s what it was all along. I was going to bring things down. I had it all worked out. It was in my fucking hand.”

He drank from the whiskey bottle and then spun around and looked down to the floor.

“What do you think? How does that sound? I have to get this right. I have to sell it hard.”

That’s when Fitz began to chuckle.

He drank more whiskey, straight from the whiskey bottle again.

“Just have to line up a few more pieces,” Fitz said. “I wish I had a few more seconds with Priest though. To ensure he was dead.”

Fitz crouched down and rubbed his unkempt facial hair.

If someone looked at him right now, they’d see a man half dead. His eyes sunken deep into his skull. Heavy, purple-tinted bags under his eyes. A man desperate to stay alive, doing all he could to justify just how badly he had fucked up.

“I had to attack Priest to preserve the fucking story,” Fitz said. “Plus, anyone who knows Priest knows he would have tortured me. He and Cyrus… fuck. They’re sick together. So far up each other’s cock holes. You know? I had to get out of there. I had to come here. To think. To drink. To tie up loose ends… literally…”

Fitz let out a quick laugh.

He then slapped himself in the face and let out a loud scream.

“Have a drink, fuck head,” he said.

He stood up and stepped forward, rolling the detective to face him.

The detective’s eyes were tired, bloodshot, his left eye swollen shut from the first of several beatings he took from Fitz.

The detective’s hands were tied at his wrists in the front of his body. His ankles tied up too. A bandana that Fitz used to wipe after using the bathroom had been tied around the detective’s mouth and behind his head.

Fitz wasn’t a moron.

Hiding out here was indeed temporary. At some point people would come looking for the detective.

He tilted the whiskey bottle and poured the liquid onto the detective’s face. At his eyes. His nose. His mouth.

The detective thrashed and growled.

“Stop moving!” Fitz roared.

He picked up his right foot, then stomped down on the detective’s chest.

Fitz then smashed his knee down into the detective’s chest. Using his left hand, he grabbed the detective’s hair and pulled, snapping his neck back.

Fitz then poured the whiskey up the detective’s nose, making him gag and choke and thrash some more.

Once the bottle was empty and the detective hadn’t drowned to death, Fitz flicked his wrist, flipped the bottle and caught it in the air by its neck. He slammed the bottle down against the detective’s nose, shattering it, but not the whiskey bottle. Blood sprayed everywhere. Another hit and the detective was knocked out cold.

After the third hit to the face didn’t break the bottle, Fitz turned and tossed the bottle against the stone fireplace. That made the bottle explode. Finally.

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