Interim Ep. 3: Fury

[Bannon]

“Don’t you ever tame your demons, but always keep them on a leash.”

((This takes place shortly after Jason leaves Atomic Aftermath.  Warning:  The following contains scenes of violence some may consider extreme.))

Liam had come home after the pain of his stricken stomach had faded and whatever that fucking bitch Lona had done to him had seemed to wear off.  He was certain she’d done something… Maybe she’d kicked him harder than he thought, and ruptured something inside.  Pulling up his sweater, he examined his stomach in the mirror – no marks.  No bruising or weird lumps.  He prodded tentatively, then harder, and felt nothing.  He sat down and lit up a joint, turning the TV on to help him think, and pondering for a while, but came up with no decent reason why a touch of Avalon’s foot should make him hurt so damn bad.

Weird.

One thing wasn’t hard to understand.  She’d told him to leave town like some crazy psycho woman, pressing a sharp stick to his throat like she was going to use it… but she hadn’t.  Why’d she been so intent on making him leave town?  Liam was sure she was probably going to run straight for the sheriff, but maybe she wouldn’t.  Maybe, he considered with a small smug grin, she couldn’t.  After all, it was her word against his, and he could establish an alibi easily enough.  His mom was upstairs, dosed out of her mind on pills and booze, but she’d swear blind to the sheriff that she’d heard him come in shortly after the game had ended, just as she’d done for him over a dozen other mishaps.  Liam nodded as he considered.  Yeah.  He’d gotten away with it, and just needed to make sure that none of Little Lona’s little freak friends tried anything.  Not that they’d be able to do much – he was a couple years older and bigger than most of them, even the glamazon quarterback.  And Cade Allister, though huge, was too much a daddy’s boy to go all baseball-Batman on a guy.

He recalled something he’d heard, about Jason Bannon nearly gutting Cody Sikes with a hayhook back at the fair, and experienced a moment’s disquiet which he shook off easily enough after a brief chill.  The same booze that had fuelled his attack on Avalon was also buoying his courage.  Bannon was sixteen years old, a Junior.  Smart, and his dope was, well, dope.  But seriously, fuck that gangly piece of trash.

Yeah.  It was all coming up Liam.

He went through to the kitchen of the small home, peering into the fridge to see if there were any leftovers. Straightening up with a box of half-eaten noodles, he closed the fridge door and turned to look straight into the pale eyes of Jason Bannon.

The teen was standing outside his kitchen window looking in, his face pale in the fluorescent light of the kitchen.  His expression was that of someone considering a curiosity under glass, head tilted slightly to one side.

“Th’ fuck do you want, freak?” Liam called mockingly.  “Gonna stare at me while I piss, too?”  He snerked, forking a mouthful of noodles between his lips.  Then he noticed the look in Bannon’s eyes.  It was a look that didn’t belong in the eyes of anything human.

The eyes blazed as though backlit by the fires of hell.

Something grabbed him and slammed him up against the refrigerator, causing him to drop the box of takeout as his head cracked against the appliance.  Then the same something picked him up like a toy and hurtled him into the kitchen table, cracking his head against that too.  It was as though someone had looped a long scarf around his head and was using the tether to bash him off the furniture.  A third surge of force, and he flew straight up into the light fitting on the ceiling, the cheap strip bulb and it’s plastic cover shattering against his back.  He felt fragments digging painfully into him even as he registered he was falling back towards the table below.

He landed, smashing the thing to pieces, splinters gouging his face even as a hand grabbed his hair and pulled him upright once more.  He flailed for purchase with his feet barely touching the floor, his own hands going up to grab his attacker’s hand.  But there was no hand.

There was no-one in the room.

Even as he realized this, through the haze of blood over one eye he saw Jason staring at him with that intent, hellish predatory fury.  Blood was trickling from the lean youth’s nostril, but his concentration did not waver as he smiled a thin, merciless smile.  Liam tried to understand what was happening, but through the chaos if his thoughts it seemed clear that it was Jason doing this, somehow.  And it was because of Lona.

And there was no sign of remorse or restraint in that stare.

He pissed himself, then.  Dangling by a painful invisible grip on his hair, Liam pissed himself while Bannon watched.

“Nuuhh…” he whined softly, shaking his head as best he could.  He realised dimly that his jaw had been broken, it hurt when he tried to speak.  A thought came.  His mother!  She was sound asleep, bombed out on pills… but surely If he screamed the neighbours would hear and-

Even as he opened his mouth to scream a second invisible, intangible hand clamped on his throat, hard enough to stifle his cries as he was sent slamming into the wall, then the floor, then dragged through the splintered remains of the table with terrific force.  It felt like Cade Allister was working him over – fuck, it felt like Cade and Cade’s dad were working him over.  Mostly senseless, his face was pressed up against the glass of the kitchen window inches from Bannon’s.

“If and when you wake up, you will confess what you tried to do.”  Jase told him calmly, green eyes boring into Liam’s single open one. “You’ll say nothing about me.  Nothing about my being here.  Blame two big guys… a gang of Nepalese midgets… I don’t care.  Because if you try to finger me, or avoid confessing… I’ll know.  And then I will finish the job, and take my time over it.”  He leaned forward so his nose was almost against the glass, his voice a hiss.  “There will be nowhere to run.  Nod if you understand, cockroach.”

Liam slowly nodded.  Jason stepped back from the window.

“You’ll live tonight because I think it might actually distress my friends if I kill you. Even Lona.  Something that baffles me, but perhaps I will understand one day.  You won’t speak to her again, but in your heart you will thank her for your life, every day.”  Jason paused, then gave Liam a direct look.  “Nod if you understand.”

Liam nodded again, feeling consciousness slipping away.  He was jerked away from the window to slam into the wall opposite.  He felt something snap in his right shoulder, and then was tugged away from the cracked plasterwork and forwards with terrifying force.  As he hurtled through the air, his last conscious sight was the pane of the kitchen window rushing towa-

The loud splintering, tinkling crash was enough to wake Mrs Day from her slumber, making her sit up with a small shriek.  It was also sufficient to alert the neighbours, at least those that weren’t out celebrating Shelly High’s win tonight.

When they came to investigate, they found Liam day laying face down on the grass amidst the ruins of the window some five feet away from the kitchen.  He looked as though someone had beaten him within an inch of his life, and the kitchen was a blood-smeared wreckage.  As a few neighbours tried to calm Liam’s mother down, others called the sheriff and the paramedics, then stood around and tried to reason who could have wanted to do so much damage to a man while the one neighbour who worked as a nurse at the med center tried to make sure Liam was still breathing.

Spoiler

Liam is in critical condition.  He will, however, live.  A beating that severe could easily put him in a coma, but Mercy Hospital is a state-of-the-art facility.  It's reasonably certain that at some point Nina deems convenient, he can wake up.

 

[WS ST]

Several minutes before...

 the door jingled and the office was practically vacant.  She'd phoned ahead and the man she'd come to see was thankfully already there waiting.  As she approached he stood and cast a massive shadow over her.  She extended her hand and he shook it with practiced diplomacy.

"Are you going to tell me what this all about, Marissa?"  He asked.

She inhaled and put on her best diplomatic smile, the one that won over the mayor and now was going to win over... "Of course, Sheriff Allister.  I'm sorry to call you on your personal line, but, there is something I really need to talk to you about.  It's about Liam Day, can we perhaps... talk in your office?"

"Liam?"  That wasn't the name he was expecting hear.  "Yeah, of course.  Please, right this way."  The small town glass pane in his door rattled as the door closed.  Marissa sat down and began to explain to the Sheriff what she knew about Liam and his 'jumping' Lona.

After listening to the young woman Sheriff Allister grew more and more angry, not at her, but at the asshole who did this in his county. "I should have shut that little jerk down a long time ago, goddammit."

He puts hands on his hips. "I'm going to need you to sign a statement but we'll file it as anonymous. There isn't much we can do if Avalon doesn't make a complaint, but at least i can bring him in maybe get him on something else..."

The door opened and Deputy Crawford stuck his bald head in, "Boss, we just got a couple of 911 calls, looks like we might have a body at the Day residence, some sort of accident maybe an explosion.: He shrugged.

"The Day residence?" Allister gave Marissa a look, "Okay send Becky in here." He faced Marissa. Marissa I'm gonna have Becky take the statement then you can go. And Marissa, Thank you."

Ten minutes later...

The deputies had cleared the onlookers back and taped the house off. The 'body' had been that of Liam Day, only he wasn't dead at least not yet. He had been transported to the trauma center along with his mother, where he was in critical condition. Allister had already gone through the kitchen area of the hose where whatever had happened happened. It hadn't been an explosion that much he was sure of. Damn odd coincidence this . "House is a crime scene,  I want it searched top to bottom. I'm going to the hospital to talk to the mother, call me if you find anything."

 

Marias Medical Center...

Cook stepped into the security office a scowl on his face that made the chief security man cringe. 

"This better be fucking good. I am getting rather tired of being called down here after i have gone home for the night."

"It is Doctor," Chief Brody pressed some buttons and Cook started watching the screen all he saw was one of the subjects standing outside a house.

"What is this? Proof he's a peeping tom?" Cook sounded even more irritated.

"Almost there sir"

The figure on the screen suddenly shifted his head to the left and the video frame froze. The screen split and another angle of the house was shown from a camera further away, the subject could still be seen but it showed that he was at the back of the hose just then a plate glass window exploded outward as a body flew threw it. the screen froze.

Cook stared at the screen for several seconds, leaning close to them as if that would make them clearer then he straightened, "Okay this is rather interesting."

Spoiler

ok at this moment you may recommence your posts. anyone with law enforcement ties or hospital will learn of Liam Days "accident" in the morning. The Sheriff will go out to Lona's home in the morning to speak with her. if she is not there he will simply ask her mother to either call when she is back or bring her down to the station.