Page 50 of Not This Soon

The words hung heavy. Oppressive. The muggers took an unconscious step back.

A bitter laugh escaped Father's throat. Grating. Mirthless. "He seeks to punish me. To make me atone."

Father raised his head. Tear-stained cheeks glistened in the moonlight. His gaze burned into the muggers. Through them.

"And now... He has led me to you."

The tall mugger scoffed. Forced bravado. "You're crazy, man. Ain't no God here."

Father shook his head. Sadly. Pityingly. "Oh, but there is. And He is angry."

Silence again. Heavy with dread. The muggers gripped their weapons. White-knuckled. Trembling.

Father's hand remained in his pocket. Fingers curled around something unseen. "I am sorry, my sons. Truly."

He took a step forward. Then another. Slow. Deliberate. The snake wrapped around his forearm was dead, but he could almost hear it hiss.

The muggers retreated. Stumbling. Fear etched on their faces. Father advanced. Implacable. Inevitable.

A glint of steel. A whispered prayer. And then, chaos.

Father's lips moved in silent supplication, his words a deep, guttural groan that seemed to resonate from the depths of his soul. The knife appeared in his hand as if conjured by the force of his prayer, its blade catching the moonlight in a cold, merciless glint.

The muggers barely had time to register the weapon before Father was upon them, his movements swift and precise, belying his apparent frailty. The knife slashed through the air, finding its mark with sickening efficiency.

The tall mugger cried out, his voice cut short as the blade opened his throat. Blood sprayed, a crimson mist that hung suspended for a heartbeat before spattering the ground. He crumpled, hands clutching at his neck, his life pouring out between his fingers.

The short one lunged, his own knife thrusting desperately towards Father's chest. But Father was quicker, sidestepping the clumsy attack and bringing his blade up in a vicious arc. It caught the mugger across the face, laying open his cheek to the bone.

A scream, raw and primal, tore from the man's throat. He staggered back, one hand pressed to his ruined face, the other still gripping his knife. Father advanced, implacable.

"Please," the mugger whimpered, backing away, his feet slipping in his companion's blood. "Don't... I..."

Father's eyes were pools of sorrow, his face a mask of grief. "I take no pleasure in this," he whispered. "But it must be done."

The knife flashed again, burying itself to the hilt in the mugger's chest. A gasp, a shudder, and then he too fell, his body folding in on itself like a marionette with its strings cut.

Father stood over the fallen men, his breathing heavy, his hand still gripping the knife. The snake coiled around his arm like a bracelet, its scales glistening red. A single tear tracked down Father's cheek, mingling with the blood that speckled his face.

"Forgive me," he breathed. "Forgive me."

Father stumbled back from the corpses, his boots squelching in the spreading pool of blood. He wept openly now, great wracking sobs that shook his frame. The knife fell from his nerveless fingers, clattering on the asphalt.

"Mercy," he groaned, his voice a deep, guttural rumble. "Mercy, Lord, for these lost souls."

He staggered towards his ATV, his gait unsteady, his eyes fixed on the heavens. The snake hung limp.

"I am but Your instrument," Father intoned, his words punctuated by gasps and sobs. Sometimes… he wondered if the voices he heard really came fromabove.Or somewhere much, much darker.

He reached the ATV, bracing himself against it, his head bowed as if in supplication. The flashing lights of the approaching sirens painted his hunched form in alternating shades of red and blue.

"Mercy," he whispered again, his voice cracking. "Mercy for the wicked, for the lost, for the damned."

His litany continued, a ceaseless mantra of mercy and righteousness, even as he heaved himself onto the ATV. The engine roared to life, drowning out the wail of the sirens, the crackle of the police radios.

Father gazed back at the scene of carnage, his eyes wide and gleaming with a fevered light. "I am the instrument," he declared, his voice rising above the din. "A sword of divine retribution."

The ATV surged forward, bearing Father away from the bridge, away from the cooling bodies of the muggers. But his prayers lingered, hanging in the air like the echoes of gunshots, like the final gasps of dying men.

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