A bug crawled out of his left eye socket; it was this centipede-like creature. It slithers away after I turn the skull over with my cane. When I picked the skull up to place it upon the body, a slip of the hand had me touching the guy’s neck. Just some more blood on these drenched palms. There was more neck than I expected. I thought the rope would have taken more off then it did… I also thought about taking the skull with me. Don’t know why I wanted to; the idea came as quick as it left. That Apache, indians thing cross my mind as a reason to leave the skull. Also, my odor has been brought up a multitude of times, and bringing a rotting skull around seems like I’m actively trying to reek.

  Celeste has been trailing me; she has been doing it since I left the bar, and add on five minutes. I’m not sure what she wants, and I don’t much care to find out why. She can do whatever she wants; she’s killed a man, so if I ever held the slightest right to say she couldn’t do something, then that is now gone. I never did have the right to say what she could or couldn’t do, but I still did. Maybe it's that vague, strange sense of familiarity that the mind heads to sometimes when Celeste comes to mind. Maybe I’m seeing myself as younger being within Celeste… (aura? I don’t know.). Probably why we’re constantly fucking bickering at one another. Feel like I’ve come up with about fifty different theories for that one. I don’t know; Celeste has always been rather abstract to me.

  So Captain Ahab, I wonder what your white whale is. Maybe you've given up on it, and that's why you're such a fucking drunk. Walking through this town trying to find a man isn’t too awful interesting; it just looks bloody strange. Trying to take a look in some person’s basement when there a little window is also just a pain. My back and leg are all fucked up, so whenever I have to crouch down or get on my stomach, my bones ache and pain just radiates. That's what carrying five guns, four grenades, a bunch of rounds, three blades, a crowbar, and carrying only booze in the gut does to a body. As well as being one step away from being bluntly suicidal.

  Was torturing that guy really necessary? I’m not even sure how I cut off his leg, arm, and other things off with just that Bowie knife. What kind of point did that even make… he probably bled out. Maybe I was always damned; that cave just proves it. Proof that this world was not built for man or any being, and all of this was just some hell-fuck nightmare. All because of a bad roll of the dice.

  My back aches and my leg was bitching, so I slid down the house’s wall I was checking and just sat there. My hands are on the ground touching the grass, dirt, pebbles and taking a drink. I could still feel eyes on me, so I pick a pebble up and threw it in the direction of the eyes.

  “Ow, goddamn, V, just say something next time.” Celeste declares when walking up to me.

  I glance up towards her and drink a swig. “Next time just help me check these fucking buildings instead of looking at me for twenty minutes."

  “Like I said, you could have just said that.”

  “Well, you could have just stayed at the bar.”

  “I’m not just going to sit there and look after the kid. For one thing, Bear seems to be better at it than any of us, but I want to do more during these things.”

  “You’ve killed a man, so do as you please.”

  As the search for my Red October continued, Miyamoto once more found himself in a bar. He found himself one of four men in a died bar with the only others being a dog and a kid. The bottles were calling to Miyamoto's soul, but due to having a job to do, he wanted to stay sharp.

  There was a creak and swing of the door to the bar, and a man enter.

  “Oh, Katō didn’t think you'd come in today."

  “Yeah, the boss didn’t need guarding today, so here I am.”

  Miyamoto sits two stools away from the man named Katō. The man was wearing both a blade and a spear. He stood at five foot seven. He smells of cheap booze, but he’s not drunk. He also reeks of perfume, but he doesn’t smell like a woman has been wrapped around him. Katō starts to order his drink.

  “One whiskey… Well, what about you, Miyamoto?”

  “It seems that I have looked down upon your abilities of observation, Katō.”

  “I’ve continued my training the last we met, so don’t be too discouraged in your abilities. What will you be having?”

  “I’m on the job also with a kid and her dog, so I have to pass on it.”

  “Miyamoto, I’ve never heard of you to past on a drink; is this a show of mockery? Are you still angry about my former comment?"

  “No, Katō, my history with the bottle has grown rather acidic, so I’m trying to cut ties with such poison.”

  The bartender places a whiskey in front of Katō.

  “Come on, Moto, a glass shouldn’t be able to break you.”

  Katō throws a hand sign to show the tender to pour another cup of kidney death.

  Whiskey fills a glass, and coins are placed upon the table.

  The glass of half-full whiskey now sits in front of good old Miyamoto. His eyes take turns looking through the room. At his duty, at his comrades, at his thirst, and at an old adversary.

  "It's just one sip, Moto.”

  …

  “Like I said, I’m here on business.”

  Clang!

  A one hundred forty centimeter blade was stopped by that of a 52.4 centimeter wakizashi with a 1.4 cm curve and an eighty centimeter long Daito.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Well, it's good that you still have the ability to do something as simple as stopping my blade. When the sun is at its highest, we will meet outside of this bar.”

  Katō picks up Miyamoto's glass and consumes the liquid.

  “I know you won’t be late, Musashi.”

  The air calms itself.

  Miyamoto places his blades back into their sheaths.

  A glass is placed in front of him.

  “Water, please.”

  How would a person know if they can’t feel anything, if they can’t feel anything? Maybe that's the real difficulty: if you feel nothing, then you feel something. That feeling in the chest and mind where everything is cleaner than glass. When a man can understand what he really is, and whenever those scenes happen, my chest is empty and my mind apathetic. There’s nothing to get emotional over within these times; call it desensitization, call it mortal rot. The outcome is all the same; all roads lead to Rome, so they say. When the eye lays upon the worst of everything, then everything diminishes. Man has an animalistic motive to not pay as much attention to the horror, so the mind doesn’t break itself in two. When I reach my hand out, I realize it’s not my hand. Not my feet, or head, or skin, or anything, anything but the mind. The mind is the only thing that is needed to keep a man alive. His thoughts, beliefs, and other such matters are all what a man really is; his skin or appearance is nothing more than for the eyes. A human brain really is just everything: the sky, the stars, the black and the white. And this is the reason I no longer understand man… Well, I stopped trying to understand man in a few factors for a long time. I guess "understand" is the wrong phrase. I understand why man cares about something so childish as something like human gender/sex. Man and Woman are just the blueberry and red berry. Man’s brain is still just that of an ape, and all of reality can be understood from that one string. Man is just an animal with nukes; animals went to fuck to create offspring… I just wish humanity would accept such a simple statement, but due to man being infinitely as dense as any animal that is domesticated, extinguished from existence, or whatever man has done with cats. If I were to trade my current place with that of a man living in the desert near no man, I would not take it. Simple, because I would not trust the Devil, who would make such a deal. I must ponder if I would leave my comrades behind due to a simple lack of interest in them. I’ve done such a thing with people before… Do I get to deem Konran any more evil than I? In the end, both goals intertwine in the broad sense: we both want to be entertained. Konran may be playing god, but he is not playing whatever Amaterasu thinks she's playing. Koran wants nothing more to see the world burn at the speed of a fat middle-aged man running speed. Through the eye of monochrome, there’s nothing to hide behind. No beauty of color, only the harsh black, grey and white. My voice is that of a dead man’s, and so is my eye. Maybe the reek of death is from my decomposing corpse.

  Man lives in Hell; I never needed to do a single goddamn thing.

  “V, the white whale, has been harpooned."

  “Ok,” I step to the sound of Celeste's voice. She points to a covered window in the. I throw her my cane and get down to try to see how she knows. She does little hand movement with her hand and creates a hole wide enough for an eye to see through. I place my glasses off and look. An old man whose hair has thinned and grayed sits upon a chair stained with blood. His eyes are covered and body’s limp. I take in the four cement walls with nothing else inside, and then back at the old man… I’m not even sure what I would do if he already died.

  Probably drink.

  I throw a thumbs-up at the kid and place my glasses back on. “Nice job, kid.”

  “Not a kid,” she said while I stand back up and she throws my cane back at me.

  “Sure.”

  “How are we going to do this?”

  I start to walk around the house, and of course Celeste follows. “In situations like this I just use the front door.”

  “Why not have me create a hole in the wall of the home or teleport us into the basement?”

  “I know you are smarter than creating a human-sized hole in the wall of a building. And I don’t like teleportation; it kills you, don’t you know?" We find ourselves in front of a door. I once more throw my cane over.

  “What, you think I can’t kick down a door?”

  “I’m not kicking down a fucking door; I'm just getting both my pistols out.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Then don’t get hit.”

  “Just use your fucking sword.”

  “Throw me my cane back.” She did what I asked, and I pulled my katana out of its sheath, dropping my cane at the door.

  “What was the point of asking for your cane back?”

  “I was going to use it with my katana, then I realized I didn’t want to do that.”

  "You're fucking impossible.”

  My hand grasps the doorknob, and I open the thing.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Good thing the door opens inwards. Three rounds pasting through the body of the door is a rather warm welcome. Finding a katana to be a rather poor decision to bring to a gunfight, I sheath my blade and unsheath my Jericho in my left harness. Squatting down as far as I could, I take a glance at the three bullet holes. All three straight, or as straight as my eye could tell. I take a look at the ones to the farthest sides and the one in the middle. Measuring out within my mind that the man may possibly be standing two inches or so from the rightmost bullet hole. I get down on my stomach and position my body, taking account of the step. With my body on its front side, lying on the arm that holds the gun, as well as holding my gun as close to the door without causing it to move and fire a round.

  “AH, FUCK!”

  I crawl out from the door, grab my cane, and stand back up.

  “It seems that I have hit him.”

  “What?”

  I walk into the house, finding a man on the ground with a new hole in his leg, bleeding all over the wood floor. I use my cane to whack the handgun out of the vagrant's hand and pick it up, finding that it chambers in 9mms, so I grab any ammo he had on him. Then I unsheathe my katana once more and plunge it into his neck.

  “Wasn’t worth the round.”

  “Why did you do that? It's not like he could do something.”

  "Celeste, if you want to fight, if you want to kill, then people are no longer people. They are animals, and when an animal is wounded and then heals, he wants revenge. And I don’t want to deal with some dumb bastard who can’t understand that pride isn’t worth dying over. Celeste.”

  The faint sound of footsteps from a person coming down a staircase caught my right ear. The staircase seems to be behind this wall to the left of the dead guy and straight in front of me.

  The fainter mistake was the shout, “SNOW!” I point my gun at the wall and fire a single round into said wall, and then a drop from behind the wall gives the faintest of sounds. I look into the room with my right eye, finding the man on the staircase slump over. I stole every round on him.

  Another wasted round.

  In the room with the staircase going up, there was one that headed downwards. Celeste is still in the room with the first body. I don’t really want to walk down a staircase lest I become the body that lay inches from me, so I pick the body up and throw the corpse down the staircase. While the body falls down the stairs, I get on my stomach.

  Creak.

  Bang! Bang!

  A door opens, and two rounds are fired.

  The basement was filled with the echo of the gun.

  I fire a round.

  A third thud.

  I walk down the staircase.

  Two bodies lay still.

  I enter a room with four cement walls and nothing else but a beaten, bloody old man. The sound of snoring fills the room.

  …

  This world must deem my existence as a cosmic joke. "Ahab, wake up.”

  “What, you're here for another round?”

  “No, I’m here because Ishmael, or was it Lynch, it doesn’t matter, one of them said you’re the man to see for a trip to Zugzwang.”