Why isn’t he fighting? He doesn’t have a mask.Dessin!I try to wiggle free, but Martin is holding me from behind, keeping the mask firmly over my face.
“Lemmego!” But my scream is muffled. And the smoke rises to Dessin’s face, thin like a puff of steam from a cup of tea.Cover your face!
But that dazzling smile glistens through the fog, claiming ownership of the situation. My shoulders relax, and I stop fighting Martin’s hold. Of course, he knows what he’s doing. And as theatrical as he is known to be in moments of panic, he takes a deep breath in, letting the gasses slip into his nostrils, inhaling into his lungs.And nothing happens.
The men take hold of the weapons on their belts, looking back and forth between each other, confused as to why he didn’t collapse to the floor.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Dessin says calmly. “Have you missed me?”
Martin ushers us to the back wall away from the tension building in their stone faces, rising in their testosterone levels. And right on cue, the man with honey-blond hair, directly across from Dessin, draws what looks like a handful of darts from his belt, plucking them one by one and flinging them at Dessin, his arm extending then drawing back to snatch another dart. The ends are pointed with a needle dripping with red residue. A tranquilizer, perhaps? But his impressive quickness and precise aim are no match for Dessin. His body dodges the flying darts like the crack of a whip. The other men seek out their own weapons of choice, a maul, hand axes, daggers, a triple-bladed knife, and of course… The sickle.
My heart sinks in on itself. The weapon they forced on him to slice into his own mother. The weapon that obliterated his childhood. His family.
And the collision of the twelve men swarming in on one man whirls together in a heap of sweeping movements. It’s a strike of thunder without sound. The metal from their weapons clinking against each other, but in the center of it all, Dessin uses his bare hands. Deflecting blows by intercepting wrists, breaking arms, and whipping a stiff leg through the air, taking out three men at once.
It’s in this tornado of fists and elbows and grunts of agony that I catch a glimpse of blood splattering to the floor. Four men are unmoving on the ground, but only one with a forehead gashed open and a stream of blood flowing into his right eye.
The rest take turns swiping their blades at Dessin in what could only be described as a choreographed performance, like assassins being instructed at a ballet. Dessin takes a man’s head into his hands, using it as a handle to throw his exhausted body into two others, collapsing them to the floor like a house of cards.
It’s clear they’ve come from the same training. They know Dessin. They anticipate that he’ll overpower them. Yet, they have to put up a fight. They have their orders.
This is the first time I witness Dessin’s honed physical skills. If a stranger saw him swarmed and attacked by twelve capable men, they’d already assume Dessin’s fate was sealed. My chest vibrates as if an avalanche has fallen, and my heart thumps like tumbling rocks down a mountain. He’s down to one man. The one with the sickle. And I can see in his satisfied glare and the inferno under his flesh that he saved him for last, to take his time, without any distraction.
With a launch like a lion in the hunt, Dessin climbs up the wall behind the middle-aged man, spinning through the air to strike the last man with his bare knuckles three times against the jaw, the cheek, the bridge of his nose. And it’s powerful, like a shooting star crashing into a small meteor. His blows are violent yet sharp and contained. It’s a matter of calculation for him, measurements of where to hit, the angle, the power and passion to let explode from his body.
But it’s not enough. Not for the man wielding the sickle. He’s building up to the final decisive movement. He gyrates in the air with his leg extended, forcing a fatal blow to the side of the man’s face. It’s swift, without warning, and he falls to the stone floor, cracking his cheekbone like an egg.
Dessin hovers over him, seizes the sickle from his limp grasp.
“It’s time to come home, Dessin,” the man chokes out, spitting a string of clotted red saliva to the ground.
Home. I hope he doesn’t believe that to be true.
“How many of you must I kill until you comprehend? I cannot be controlled.” Dessin spins the sickle handle on his index finger, watching the hook of the blade rotate.
“You can be as long as she’s alive,” the man hisses through his bloody mouth.
The sickle stops spinning, and Dessin’s body tenses. A wicked smile with more edge and supremacy than a strike of lightning. His muscles bulge from his arms, revealing the indentations across his toned biceps as he presses the edge of the sickle across the man’s throat, pointing it there, showcasing what he could do if he wanted.
“I enjoy a challenge.” And he stomps on the blade, crushing it into the man’s trachea and slicing it down the bone of his spine. His arteries burst like the city’s fountains at midnight, spraying like broken pipes across Dessin’s white clothes.
Martin’s arms harden around me as we both stutter on a painfully broken gasp.
But it’sstillnot enough. He stomps on the blade once more, severing the spine and decapitating the man. His head, with a gaping mouth and glossy-blue eyes, rolls toward us. And in a ritualistic trance, he plucks a rusted knife with a wooden handle from his pocket, proceeding to stab him in the chest three times.
I’ve been standing with locked knees and clenched shoulders for long enough that I might as well be dipped in wet concrete, turning into a block of pavement. I can hardly take in a breath, barely wipe away the tears gathering in my eyes.What did I just see?
How can I unsee this? After everything, does he deserve to be executed? What kind of man is he? The thoughts are polluting my mind like a giant storm cloud carrying the makings of a tornado.
The guiltless pool of hot crimson fluids spills in spurts around the man’s severed neck. Dessin drops the sickle next to the head, staring at it, reliving tragedies, visualizing his other kills. Although I’m not certain of the last part—but it fits in like a puzzle piece with that haunted glazed look of his eyes.
My mind trails frantically back to the fight, to the men all lying helplessly at our feet, locked in this room with a genius executioner. It peels back my strength, unveiling the soft, gushy parts of my humanity. And it simply slips out. A piercing, guttural scream.
Dessin looks back at me, suddenly aware once more that I exist and that I was among the audience of two for the massacre. He takes a step toward me, avoiding the puddle of blood still growing in size. But he stops before taking another step, eyebrows rising as he analyzes my face—and there’s a question waiting on his lips, frozen in fear.Are you afraid of me yet?He wants to ask it. His brow creases in debilitating anticipation.
I want to scream at him—Yes! Yes, I’m terrified! This was nothing short of monstrous.But I gave him permission. I urged him to run to freedom. And even though this was like watching a tsunami wipe out an entire small section of civilization—I cannot be afraid of him. It would be like being afraid of the sky because at any moment, it could rain hail or fire. It’s intelligibly his nature, like a volcano.
As he opens his mouth to speak, Martin’s arms tense around me. I hold up my quivering hand to stop him. “Go see the stars,” I say weakly. If he goes to our secret place, at least I’ll know where to find him. At least I won’t have to suffer the idea of never being able to see him again.
