"Игорь подожди! They're out.... The merc and...."

  "Тогда почему вы теряете время? Get Budimir, дерьмо hey! Careful he got tagged, get him, get him up and...."

  "I see lights at the end of the alley."

  "Pigs or Qin? ..... Lee, get up here what are you...oh son of a,”

  "What now?

  "Igor, it's a fire truck..."

  "Start the fucking engine!"

  "Hey hey!"

  A firm palm webs my shoulder while something forces a sense of light into the lower edge of this world of floating hues in different black and sore grey blossoming as I'm getting used to it before realizing I'm a part of it.

  A shift to that force, at the back of my neck there's a squeeze, a grip, then all the hues tilt to the left with a sense of familiarity.

  ***

  Back against the reinforced steel panels inside Igor's Van hits like a puncturing wound through my body and stiffs the breath of fresh air straight out as immediate kinetic pain thrusted me off the limbo. I can't feel my arm moving despite what I told myself to.

  "Cut his shirt open, see if there's any other wounds..... and don't fuck him up while doing it!"

  "Христос.... No, he's clean. Just the arm."

  "But I can't see the pupils, stab him one."

  "Which one?"

  "капитан. Where to?"

  "You didn't see any bugs? None?"

  "No."

  "To Marcelo's. And get the merc a shot now! Give that to me. Блин, быстро..."

  "Arm, shoulder hold them still. Watch his mouth, if it starts bleeding you pry it open. Some have stronger reactions to this."

  ***

  Bright crimson. Spotless and plenty. Smacked right into my face like a moving train rams through my body as I toil under the wheels, dismembered a thousand times and the train keeps moving. Limbs, shoulder, heart, lung, liver, temple, lesser vein to artery each pumped full of corrosive substances to digest your flesh from the inside.

  Like the muscle reflexes when you vomit blood for the first time. Your body shoots back to the void and folds in zero gravity, perpetually spinning but each time the senses run to pain, the more vigorous I feel until it's about to explode through all these inaction. And I see, my arm's still hanging like a cut of meat on a hook. And I tear the bleak liquid death I was drowning in.

  ***

  "Hold him still!"

  "Alek, how much longer?"

  The vision before me makes no sense. It's all lopsided into a blaring white and yellowish brown of old papers like the way of bigotry against balance. My jaw hurts as well.

  "Nikto shut him up or give him something to bite on. Alek, how far are we?”

  "10 blocks but there's a...."

  "Why are you stopping at a red light? The road's fucking empty... Nikto, get back to it....Yeah, the mask, why not."

  ***

  The colors keep changing as figures start to form in shapes without silhouettes like flat puzzle pieces. And something greasy and....rough is being pushed against my lip. My jaw still hurts and I think I know why. To endure the pain burning through my headache and freezing vain, straining heart. Unclenching my teeth is equally unpleasant since the roughened object immediately invades my cavity.

  ***

  "Shed some light on him."

  ***

  A redness pierced the flesh and felt into a stretch of deep violet and bright nothingness in white then the flesh was pierced as well.

  Like a screwdriver through the skull, the pain was a calculated thrust to the softest spot of human body and the unnerving sensation urges you to close your eyes but you can't. You are scorched with your hands non-responding, eyelids paralyzed half shut as you float between pain and liquid death. Such a stare is a million seconds and one all at once.

  The fear, of spending another moment like this pushes me off the beyond. Like a wave from the angels as they grin the devil's fangs.

  ***

  I slam my head into the mute's as the shock made Nikto fall back and cuss something before my head hits the interior steel like ramming a fucking bell you're enveloped in. The back of my head's a cork drive and a twist, rolling nerves into a knot as I spit the rag, a taste of iron burns inside my lips...

  Igor climbs forward waving his hand in front couple of times. As soon as he made sure my eyes were following them he backed off to where a pile of rag lies. It took a confounded second to realize that's what's left of Budimir.

  In the desolated state I'm adjusting off my system—I’m convinced the kid was done. Most likely I trot a corpse through the fire in disarray.

  "Alek, crack the windows. They need air. Lee, take your breaths slow, keep your head up.

  Nikto, hold it still! He's barely breathing." Igor shouts next to the pills of bloody rag while the mute gets a grip over my nape and holds me up for better breathing when I realize I'm bare-chested, holster tossed to the side.

  I sit against the wall, Nikto resumes back on applying pressure to the clothes which has blood seeping through the lower mops of torn bandages and they keep adding more on top. Igor folds the dying's legs back to tilt his body slightly off the ground, keeping the blood flowing inwards while Nikto pries another mouth open. Budimir's face is a bit swollen but pale under the spot painted around his smoked eyelids and philtrum turning black but the lips are whiter than blue. He looks like an offering in deep slumber to an anthropophagy god.

  I try to move closer but the pain inserted through my thigh pulls my heart and ribcage in a tight fit. Breathing itself hurts enough, the small panics upon each failed inhale are worse. My heart's pumping way faster than needed as the shot of cordial destroys my body on a mission to save it. Blood flows through my numbed left arm and just left.

  Budimir's on one of the benches for them to operate him away from death. The truth is everyone here knows we can't do shit, the kid's in an unconscious state with major blood loss and possibly infection from all the smoke-induced on every inch of us.

  I carefully scratch the edges of my wounds as the ash and soot grind to the flesh. Some blood got on my fingertips before I mopped it under my chin. Oil, ink, grease, dust. Rough and itching me to tear my skin off as I tried to take a larger breath.

  I'm of no use.

  There's a fog in my mind where things only make sense when you stare at it. The sudden movement could send me into shock at any moment just by how much smoke and pain I endured.

  The car's picking up the speed but each turn comes with a pedal and Igor and Nikto would do their best to keep Budimir from flipping.

  I roll my head against the wall until the window's in view. The street lights are rapid but quiet, warm behind small blocks of confined frames on either side going by.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Have we gone east?

  The light went through a few green phases of corner store flypaper drunk on strong lights dimming from through window shops. I take a breath in and slow down before another. Driving under a bridge turned the view into plain black while the flashlight on the ground rolled by the acceleration, the window caught the light in that three-second time gap making the inside of the van brighter for once, reflecting the interior onto the frame. Every little detail is on display through distorted lenses.

  Now I know why they want me to stay put.

  A smear of dark charcoal dirtied the seams that were on my balaclava. Making my eyes even harder to look at, there's no white in my pupil

  just red lines web woven leading to the center of problems. In such contrast, the rest of my face is wiped in grey by ashes and my reddened lips bleed and swollen like Budimir's. My hair cramped in hard tresses sticking on my forehead and over the ear with their ends pale creased in with sweat and moist. And those are the presentable parts.

  My left arm's a million strolls of red leaping down, wounds open and close with carbon particles big enough to be perceptibly gathered around like pieces of gutted fish lying at an endless noon rotting into dissolve while my torso's bare naked in its twisted glory. Old scars dripped in blood as if resurrected. They seeped into my shirt during various parts of this blasted night had set dots of them still on my chest, abdomen, and shoulder while a ring of thorns of blackened skin fixes around my collar bones vertically along the arteries. The space that isn't painted in the glittering brown scar, smoldered tissue, and red unfinished dots, are the grayish green of the devil's show of hand.

  My hands disappeared into glimpses of the night sky as we passed under the bridge before I had a chance to wipe them clean. Alek turns half a nod towards the back to stare straight at me.

  "We're almost there."

  ***

  Three turns and a couple of whimpers at the back happened before we were there. Behind four buildings with distinguishing little Italy ruefulness carved into the lightless stripes of a back alley, parked in front of a short wall and a blasted TV thrown from one of the broken windows.

  Illumination's gone as soon as the engine stops, Alek slips off the driver seat like an actual paramedic while Igor gestures to Nikto to grab the 10th Street's shoulder.

  "Move him to the ground first, it'll be easier to carry him." Igor leans back to claw the slider's lock open as it moves by the driver who pokes his head in, snorts his nose, and hinges the door lock to keep it open.

  "Do you need help?" He asks.

  "No."

  "Do you know Marcelo?"

  "No."

  "Can you walk?"

  "Hope so."

  "Walk up to the red door and ring whichever bell that reads 'Gianna's lasting grace'. To whoever answers the call, say we got four live ones for him." I nod motioning towards the door. Alek gave me a pull off the crawling state but almost tripped me off balance on the uneven asphalt.

  Truth is, I don't have a single clue about my condition. As soon as my hip left the panoply before I cross my first step, extreme nausea clouds me in its sudden laughter drilling into my mind. I fell on both knees, a pair of palm on the asphalt road like the paws of a dog. The sight of my bloody wounds blinking long slits of chunks of blackened crimson and soot while moving liquid swirls through them, leaking.

  I spit out the first rush of bile and the coming along until my throat's dry as the acid in my stomach is strained back by repulsive reflexes from boiling up, yet the dizziness remains. Not as drunken druzy. The sweating, and eyelids twitching; this is from the devoid of oxygen.

  Huffs and puffs.

  Biting tongue.

  I press my thumb against my right temple with enough strength to bend and snap the digit, forcefully turning the elicit sickening into familiar pain... at least my leg still works. And all the little and great discomfort swirl behind a fog.

  "Алек, switch!"

  Pushing myself to lift the left knee off the ground. I curl my elbow upon my thigh for support as I lean on the side.

  Huffs and puffs....

  Biting tongue, chasing them off.

  Forearm, bicep, under armpit.

  A lift, a trot.

  The mute pulls me off the ground by locking both arms on my left, he pulls the mask off. Moonlight shines him not, streetlight shines him none yet those dark eyes glint on its turmoil spiraling.

  Wordlessly he held me through the garbage-filled courtyard, newspaper and porn in pulp sticking to and blowing off the wall up and down as the humid caught onto them in one of the cages made of concrete and metal scraps, downward spiraling souls of window-side junkies licking the sunlight off the dust. Lord almighty does not exist. For the first time in many nights, I fell a coldness upon my skin. Like my screaming tendons. Thighs, wrists, arms, both arms, hip, temple, two digits of every finger on my right hand, sore mind.

  "You alright?"

  "Yeah."

  I spit out the last soak of bile from the bottom of my throat. A trot and another we move through the small clearing like a squad of burial service or the ghost of día de Muertos's after-party. Served in death, smelled the same.

  The alleyway is L-shaped. The West front made of double metal fences, southern entrance's where we parked the Van. The other exists are confined gaps along the north-eastern corner, where barded doors and seedy windows are clamped in between each panel divided by grey tubes and new brick walls. The red door's at a nook behind a stripped, slat bed frame leaning by as hangers for Nitrile gloves.

  My vision's not so painfully stereo now but the vertigo feeling did not subside, it grew into a strange disengagement. I move my line of sight to the kid carrying me like I did Budimir and found the corner of his lips dropping, lips apart and close like the question not spoken but probably recited a thousand times during the ride here. Even now the inquiry continues in his eyes. He wasn't hesitant on the question since he knew the answer but not asking it just wasn't how it was supposed to be, as meaningless as these things are in this state, do you not dare to ask?

  What about Har?

  He screams wordlessly like my first impression of the lad.

  "Get me to that red door." I squeeze the words out of my slowly losing mind.

  And so he drags me there as each step is a desperate grab on his shoulder or the rough service of the back alley outer leaf. Upon the red door, under the poster of the local church printed in Italian, Spanish, and English, welcoming you to masses and Sunday sermons at the church of Saint Vincent.

  In a small fit of frustration, the mute tears the paper off revealing the buzzers on the wall. Seven of them, half got their nameplate scraped, one of them got the button itself plugged out with snapped cables leaking out, the two underneath looked like the plate was freshly screwed in, the last one at second-floor spells between broken letters 'Gian las ce' with a tarnished mark of a lying woman caressing her belly.

  I miss the taxi stand.

  Nikto smashes the bell without a second thought and pulls my right arm further up to balance my lopsided body. I blink a couple of times, he smashes the bell again and again with his thumb pressed into the notch for ten seconds straight. The buzz rings so consistently even on this side of the door I could hear the static inside. Until the com above the scraped resident name plates open with a squeak. Then came a quick and desultory male voice.

  "May I help you?"

  "Got four live ones..."

  "Don't know you."

  The com squeaks off the channel. Nikto gave me a frowning glance, I squinted at the poster on the ground and held my dry-blooded left arm up to the buzz at the second floor again, the cuts tickling before the pain resumed. It took 15 seconds to answer this time, by a stoic woman's voice.

  "May I help you?"

  I take a step back so that wherever they hid a camera would have a better view of my face.

  "Il signor Lingua d'Argento vi sarà personalmente debitore." Nikto's brows grow closer but at least the kid knows better not to speak.

  "One second,"

  Five seconds passed. My blood had inked into the notch of buzz, Igor and Alek had held Budimir over like it was a fucking parade. The poor bastard got dirty rags from different torn fabrics soaked in blood hanging on all those knots and pads they pressured upon his wound, his eyelids ain't opening but I can see his chest heaving.

  "What are you doing?"

  Igor tilts his head left and right as if there's some clarification block by me and Nikto at the door. Under the poor fucking lighting of this alley I was reminded by his strained voice and a layer of sweat on his wrinkle-carved forehead he was wounded too. His dark green sleeve absorbs most of the blood without a shade.

  "Sons of a bitch won't open the door." The mute hisses out in a barely contained voice filled with sarcastic contempt as he holds a clenched fist upon the door like a threat.

  "Nikto. I'm still on the com."

  "Ну и что!" He blurts out. The voice of everything boiling up his brain unreleased the first time. It echos upsloping the squared alley, circle after circle.

  Igor didn't say anything. He simply looked at the latter, eerily absent of expression before moving his lens switch to me.

  "Did you throw my name to the doc?"

  "No, I gave mine."

  Two buzzes on the com came through, three latches shell back as the red door unlocked.

  "You're going have to take turns, the elevator's not big enough." The male voice rings through the microphone as the door swings outward before Nikto reaches the handle.

  A short-haired woman in her 30s dressed in a blue raincoat got a stretcher slanted on her shoulder and a wheelchair in front.

  "What's his condition?"

  The voice reminds me of curbstones, her green eyes scan Budimir behind me.

  "Open stab wound in the abdomen. Lost as much blood as he has breathed carbon dioxide."

  "When was the last time you checked his pulse?" The woman nods and swiftly pushes the wheelchair to the side, bypassing me and Nikto to unfold the stretcher on the hard asphalt road for Igor and Alek to place Budimir on top. The bleaching orange of the fabric looked like a body bag.

  "A minute ago."

  "And?"

  And not a tinge of ill in her tone.

  "What do you think?" Nikto says scornfully.

  "Unsteady." Igor remains the same ever since he got off the van.

  The woman's stern gaze swayed by Igor's arm before referring to Alek with a nod. "We'll get him downstairs first." The driver shrugs as Igor stands clear for them to go through. Both are very familiar with operating folks on a plank.

  "That wheelchair is for Mr. Silver Tongue." Upon the doorway, she turns to Nikto but shows no sign of stopping. "Put him on before I return and try to keep him conscious." Her voice pierced the seedy hallway her figure leads. The stretcher and Alek wobbly follow behind to the elevator by the stairs. The inside's sharp-lighted and glinting in steel as they held Budimir slanted in the confined space, twitching the stretcher to

  a certain degree to fit both ends inside as if an oversized coffin. Fucking hell, that elevator does look a lot like a shining box of coffins....

  "Here." Nikto steps his left foot back and somewhat eagerly adjusts my weight down on the black wheelchair of few dozen useless poles and levers while none made the sit more comfortable.

  My palm found the handle, a breeze made my bare back tickle in later soreness. I can feel my head tilting to non-existent support until my neck strings it before it falls off. My breaths aren't becoming more coherent despite being seated, Igor takes off his jacket with some effort next to me as he hangs it by the nitrile gloves, the bullet must have grazed him on the left bicep, no need for extraction but a small chunk of flesh was pushed out and composed into blood by the bullet leaving a sawed mark like a dog bite. There are also signs of a skirmish on his vest, shrapnel flying off, black spots, and small pecks of soot here and there. He follows my gaze with a dull stare.

  Thanks for checking out my story! Be sure to leave a comment on what you think of it and how I’m to improve! ————————————————————

  Lots of things happened during my personal life just before the Easter break. I’m going on a long trip just about the time this chapter is released. I can’t predict the future but imma say the next two weeks I won’t have time to write…

  Just to be safe, I’d say the next chapter will have to wait till the very end of April. While I try to relax on the vacation and figure my stuff out I would also need to think about the story as well. And hopefully, I could return to the piece sooner than expected. ————————————————————

  Vienna, by Billy Joel

  I know this song is incredibly popular but lately, my friend asked me,

  “What do you think Vienna stands for in the song?”