The Devil's Apprentice by Patrick Stewart (polar express read aloud TXT) 📕

“We’ve met before? I’m Alex? Jessica rents a room in my apartment?”

There was a blank look in Kevin’s eyes. Then he shook his head. “No. That dude’s a skinny perv.”

Alex’s jaws tightened. Sure, he’d been skinny, and maybe had harboured lustful feelings for Jessica, but it was a bit rich for this guy to call him a pervert. Especially considering how he’d raped Jessica right in this garage, possibly in front of the three guys outside.

The nerves he’d felt walking in were gone. In its place was pure unbridled rage. His hand reached for the longsword by his waist. Kevin glanced at it, then dropped his controller and stood up. He was a tall fucker, but Alex was now taller.

“We gonna have a problem, brah?” Kevin asked.

“Did you rape Jessica?” Alex asked, his voice shaking with anger.

A question he hadn’t been planning on asking. Why did he ask it? He didn’t doubt Jessica. Violence. Alex was seeing more of it recently, but there was still a small part of him that wanted to walk away from this without hurting Kevin, without resorting to violence.

Kevin glanced at Alex’s waist once more and the sword that he had partially drawn. The exposed dull grey metal was oddly shiny.

“You’re the guy she’s been sleeping with?” Kevin took a step forward, a smile spread across his lips. “Yeah, I ripped off her panties, held her down, fucked her cunt right there,” he pointed at the desk behind Alex. “Then I took her outside. I laid on her on the floor and fucked her in front of the boys. She’d stopped resisting by then. She just lay there flat, her legs spread.” Kevin let out a crooked laugh. “Maybe she started to enjoy it.”

There was going to be violence. The only question was, how badly was he going to hurt Kevin? Alex drew the longsword out from the scabbard and held it with both hands across his body.

“The fuck is that?” Kevin asked, bemused.

“It’s a sword, dipshit. What else could it fucking be?”

Kevin frowned. “Antiquated piece of shit.”

Alex wanted Kevin to be afraid. But the guy seemed far from it. He raised his hands, now curled into fists, he stood with his body angled to the side, his back slightly hunched. A boxer’s pose.

“I’m going to cut your balls off,” Alex told him.

Kevin’s frown deepened. “The fuck is wrong with you, man?”

“What?”

“You wanna protect your girl’s honour, I get that. We’re gonna have a bust-up, that’s cool. You brought a fucking…” Kevin rolled his eyes, “sword, I guess. That’s a strange choice of a weapon, but that’s still cool. Then you gotta get fucking weird and threaten to cut off my balls?”

The way Kevin spoke, his voice measured, he sounded so reasonable. Alex almost apologised. A part of his brain kicked back. This guy was a rapist, and apparently had morals that belonged in the stone ages, or before.

Alex stepped towards Kevin, sword in hand, determined to hurt him. He saw it coming from the corner of his eye and turned. But he was too late. The guy that had been underneath the car, he raised a large spanner and brought it down onto Alex’s head.

It should have been game over.

A strike like that, Alex should have been on the ground, bleeding from the head. Instead, he took an unsteady step back, the sword wavered in his hand. Kevin launched at him, fly-kicking him in the back. Alex staggered forward. The guy raised the spanner and swung it, aiming for his face.

Alex raised the sword to block the spanner.

He missed and caught the guy’s arm instead.

It sliced right through it.

There was a moment of stunned silence. And then the bloodcurdling scream came. Alex had sliced the arm off at the elbow. The spanner still in hand, it hit the ground with a thud. Strangely, no blood gushed out from the wound. The flesh appeared burnt, as if the sword was flaming hot.

Still screaming, the guy dropped to his knees. Then his eyes lolled, his scream stopped, his body tilted to the left and he hit ground, unconscious. Alex felt the dull grey blade. It was warm. Clean too, not a drop of blood on it.

“You… y-you chopped his arm off, man,” Kevin stammered.

Finally, the rapist was afraid. Alex grinned enjoying the sight of the once proud asshole now quivering in fear. Kevin reached for his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone. Was he going to call the police? The police couldn’t come, not yet. Alex wasn’t done.

He threw the sword at Kevin.

It was a brilliant throw. Too perfect, in fact. It punctured Kevin’s chest, lifted him off the ground and slammed him against the wall. The blade buried deep, only the guard, grip and pommel remained exposed from his chest.

Kevin stared at him, his eyes wide, his mouth open, no sounds. The colour drained from his face, leaving it a sickly white.

“Are you dead?”

A stupid question to ask… of course, he was dead. Nobody survived something like that. Alex walked up to Kevin’s now impaled body. He grabbed his sword by the grip and pulled it out.

Kevin’s body hit the ground. Once again, no blood spilled from the wound. There was none on the wall, none on the blade, none on his chest. Alex stared down at the crumpled body. He’d just killed someone. Yet, he felt calm, in control.

He slid the sword back in the scabbard and walked out of the office. The two guys that had stood by the motorbike earlier, both faced him now. One was armed with a spanner, the other held a grease gun. Odd choice of weapon.

Both were visibly shaking, the colour drained from their faces. They didn’t want to fight, Alex realised. They must have seen what