The Warrior

The symphony of battle echoes low from the outside into the hall: explosions, scattered gunfire, clanks of metal, horse and engines revving. The woman marches down the hall like a hunter in the woods. She reaches the end of the hall to her personal party room, the smell of wine, beer, candles seep out. She enters scanning the room like a vulture for roadkill. The fireplace still lit and the electric lanterns still on and candles scattered about. She scans the room,

“Get over here kid.” The little boy curls in the corner of the room inside the cabinet, quietly catching his breath with his hands pressed against his mouth. “The last ones didn’t seem to complain much.” As she creeps through the room. She lifts the table cover, to no avail. Breathing through her nose in a fit of rage, she pulls the cover sending cups of wine and dirty plates across the room. “WHERE ARE YOU?! YAH LITTLE SHIT!!” A cup lands on top of the cabinet behind her, wine seeps through the cracks, dripping into the little boys in the eyes, a cry slips out. Her head turns, sights locked on the handle. An impish smile grows while a strut tunes into her walk as her way to the cabinet. “A lot’a men would think this is cool. Give yah a pat on the back. Earn some street cred.” On the way she grabs a nearly empty pitcher of wine, gulps down whatever’s left, more spilling down her chin and neck than making it into her mouth. She chucks the pitcher at the cabinet door. The boy covers his mouth, on the verge of crying; the little tyke can barley keep his cries at bay, little whimpers slip out. He can feel her presence grow as the vibration of her footsteps grow closer. “Your daddy would think so, I can tell yah that much.” The cabinet door opens, all breathing stops, the impish smile now ear-to-ear, “Hi”. She grabs and yanks the boy by the shirt, leaving marks at the chest, his lower half is dragged on the floor as the other half is held up by the woman’s talon like grasp. He squirms around for any sort of out as she tries to pin him to the ground. It’s not till the moment she reaches to yank his pants down, that he lets out a shriek of shock, his hands burst into flailing at her face and one of his unkept fingernails slit her cheek right under the eye. “AH!” She pulls him up and slams him back down shaking the floorboards, silencing him to a heavy breathing. Her eyes stare down his eyes like prey and speaks through her teeth, “I just lost a war because of you. You! Owe! Me! This!” she starts to remove his pants.

Both startled by the sudden sound of the door exploding open, he takes advantage of the moment and escapes her grasp, stumbling to pull his pants up. She’s met face-to-helmet with a warrior. Their armor burnt, leather wrist braces cracked and brittle, dried-up blood on their exposed hands, a dagger riddled with blood and mud shaped like an ink block. The woman chucks a nearby plate at the warrior shattering on impact against the warrior’s head, as the little boy, now back in the cabinet, watches. The warrior recovers from the plate to have the woman shove the warrior offsetting them, giving her time to grab a kitchen knife.

Now, a standoff they stare at each other, eyes moving- examining what the next move should be. They both rush each other swinging. The woman charges the warrior pinning her to the wall, she tries to stab through the armor at the forearm, but it grazes giving the warrior the opportunity to shove her off onto the table. The warrior pins her with their elbow on the woman’s chest. The woman still holding the knife, sees the dagger coming down and moves quick to stop the dagger-wielding hand, the woman swings her knife at the arm holding the dagger and cuts through the brittle wrist braces cutting the warrior’s skin causing them to grunt and their head to pitch down. The warrior anticipates the movement of the knife, the arm on the woman’s chest is now used to catch the arm holding the knife. Now the warrior holds both the woman’s hands on the table by the wrist. The woman uses her shin to kick the warrior’s groin, the warrior’s hand weakens as they bend down into the woman in pain and drops the dagger, giving the woman the confidence to then kick and kick again. Warrior then uses their helmet to headbutt the woman a couple times, still holding her against the table. The woman now dazed, loses her grip on the knife and it drops. The warrior then lets the woman collapse to the floor onto her belly and with one quick stomp breaking the woman’s kneecap followed by another stiff stomp on the woman’s spin. The warrior picks up the kitchen knife and drives it through her second kneecap, then picks up the dagger and sheaths it.

The warrior turns their head and sees the boy shaking in the cabinet. They calmly walk toward to the cabinet all while the woman attempts to crawl to some broken glass ahead of her by the door. The boy looks up, and the warrior slowly shuts the cabinet door. Footsteps move away from the boy, then dragging can be heard with the woman groaning, the room is suddenly shaken by the bassy sounds of stomps and high cries of the woman fill the air. The boy so scared, his hands launch over his ears, he presses down on them while closing his eyes knowing his sight doesn’t matter. Stomp after stomp, after stomp. Cry after cry, after cry. The woman progressively gets quieter reaching the sound of nothing. A pause falls over, the boy thinking it’s over, slowly removing his hands from his ears…only to have his hands jump back toward his head, missing his ears and catch the sounds of a few more stomps without the cry but instead the combination of low squishes with crunching. Footsteps move to the cabinet, the warrior opens the door, gets on their knees to reach out their hands and in that moment, the boy explodes with a cry and desperately he tries to crawl through the wall he’s up against. The warrior holds hands out to calm him down.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s me” the helmet comes off, “it’s me…it’s mama.” The boys cry fades away and turn to heavy breaths. “It’s me babe, it’s only mama.” The boy gazes upon his mother in silence, tears roll down his cheeks as her arms slowly reach out to him. “Come on…let’s go home.” Slowly he crawls back out to quickly have his head fall into his mother’s shoulder and sob into her neck. “Oh sssshhh ssshhhh, it’s okay baby, it’s okay.” She holds her son tight to her, standing up and turning to see the woman’s dead body a only feet away. Her hands run through his hair as her neck stiffens, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She begins to walk toward the door cradling her son, and as she walks the boy moves his heads out of her shoulder. She tries to stop him, but the boy insist that he sees the woman’s caved in head. He stares with a blank face, as does his mother as her chest rises and falls. “She will never hurt anyone again.” She walks.

“Wait” the boys cries out.

“What is it?” The boy points toward the direction of the cabinet, directly at her helmet still on the floor. She walks back to bend and pick it up, but she places it on the boys head. “Here, hold it for me. You’ll have your own someday. Papa and I will show you.” She walks out the bedroom into the empty halls toward the sounds outside the walls.

“Where is papa?”

“He and the army are finishing the rest. We’ll meet him outside.”