The post was couched under his right arm and on hip, and braced over his left forearm which held his gladius, point to open port. The damned thing weighed as much as Virgil had. He wheeled around and leveled the point upward and charged the loping monstrosity, which he noted carried some wounds to thigh and hip—no doubt Aptus’ attempt to slow him up for their sake.
They bellowed as one, Felix’s deep baritone roar, what he had always done in imitation of the lion whose head he wore into battle, submerged beneath the windy gust of deep cold hate that issued from the open mouth of the giant who was half again as tall as Felix and three times his girth. The plume of misty steam that marked the giant’s exhalation reached out ahead of it a full twenty feet to touch the tip of Felix’s massive crude spear.
Felix dug into the muddy sod with his heels and charged low.
The giant beat aside the point of the massive spear with his great black iron sword.
Felix righted the point with great effort to take the brute in the shoulder, not slowing one bit.
The brute beat the point off over its shoulder with the back of its left hand and Felix—his instinctual luck still with him even after this final affront to Juno—leaped in and shouldered the thick base of the post across the giant jaw, which sounded drum-like as the monstrosity staggered sideways and Felix tasted the kill.
Felix ripped a mighty forehand—albeit with his left—which took the beastly mockery of Man across the chest ripping through triple-thick hound and wolf hides, opening the massive chest beneath to the bone, but missing all vitals.
“Blast me on Vulcan’s forge!” Felix cursed as he sprang clear of the returning backhand from that mighty sword—switching gladius to low right guard as he did so—and came up with the killing gut-ripping ‘hump you in your eye you big barbarian buttholer’ finishing stroke that was his favorite—and his feet flew from beneath him, having been swept by the tree trunk left leg of the brute as he followed on with his wind-making slash.
Felix’s feet flew high and his back pitched back into the bloody muck that he had made of some poor milkcow tending wenches’ yard, as he cursed himself for a sluggish-footed rapist, and mused for the first and only time in his life—which must certainly be a dark omen of the moments to come—Right again you were Centurian, raping five barbarian bitches makes of Felix a dull boy.
Felix hit the ground flat on his back and it seemed too soft by far, like some senator’s couch. Up above him loomed the wide-eyed soul-slashed form of the giant who fell forward onto him with open grasping hands that clutched his shoulders like elephant vices. Those monstrous hands could have closed on his neck, snapping it like a twig without even wringing it, but the giant crushed his shoulders instead as he seemed to make of Felix a woman as his double-sized mouth opened for a deathly kiss.
So Juno, you old heavenly whore, you were listening after all, and this is your bully boy. So be it then—go nag Zeus you dust-clefted bitch!
With that Felix shoved upward with his gladius, shoved, and stabbed and strained as the great mouth pressed ever closer for its fetid kiss—for the breath was rank death itself. Yet the sword—the hard armor-piercing man-skewering tip of his gladius—would not penetrate this unarmed body.
He strained as if in a nightmare horror to keep the big slobbering man from kissing him. The towering wide-hipped and saggy-gutted black man was also a patient based on his smock, and the fact that he had dragged his own I.V. stand in behind him, just before he had climbed on top of Vitto for some slobbery hospital version of prison rape.
Unable to keep the great gibbering beast man off of him Vitto withdrew his head sideways and as far into the pillow as he could to deny the slobbery kiss. The man was too big, too strong. Vitto was panicking, tried to pull himself out from underneath the blubbery hulk by grabbing something, and then discovered that he had grabbed the I.V. upright and began stabbing the man in the belly with that, trying like mad to push him off—but nothing seemed to work. The lips drew closer and closer.
Then the cold click of steel and the hot quiver of a coldly passionate voice came to him, “Ease off, now!”
Vitto looked up to see a black boxy automatic handgun like the cops wore, pressed against the fat-rolled head of this monster from the hospital night and the big sloppy man slowly eased off of him, crawled off the front of the hospital bed, stood, and looked at him vacantly, as if he knew not what he did, or had just tried to do, and then walked off out into the hall.
He could feel his brow sweating, his stomach flipping, and his hand loosening on the I.V. upright, which he still held along with the bag and tube.
“Jesus Christ, what a freak,” hissed the soft feminine voice to his right, which belonged to the cute lady cop from Wysteria and the Diner. “I’m sure glad I was able to get in to see you after hours—what the hell was that?”
He looked up at her as the room began to spin and the rushing of waters came into his mind, and smiled—or at least he hoped he had—and drawled sluggishly, “You must be my guardian angel—angel for sure.”
This ends the online postings of Winter, which is concluded in the three part chapter Neptune’s Drink and the Epilogue: The Butcher in My Sink. The print novella should be on sale through amazon.com as of 1/26/15.
I hope you enjoyed the tale, and please, be mindful about shoveling snow this winter.
James, 1/21/15
