a necessary evil

And still, he persists. Something of a drunken stupor pulls him to his feet, and he’s got his hands on Gami’s chest, and— God, they’re huge— he’s easing into the pressure, bringing his hulking body closer to Gami.

“Doesn’t that bother you, Death?” His words are a slurry, Gami’s seen it before, an emphatic effort to speak concisely with a racing mind. He’s delirious, hoarse. His voice is livid. Frantic. Fucking deranged, for all Gami cares. His ears are ringing. Sabbath’s right against his ear, too. “And your reputation— think of that! It must bother you. Why let me live on, then, and defile everything you work so hard to maintain?” Fuck this guy. “Come on, end it. End it here— do it!”

Gami hates every second of it. It rises in his throat like bile, that hatred, works its way like a parasite into his head; he hates that he’s in this situation, hates this fucking asshole, hates that he’s playing right into this freak’s fucking hand. He was used to being goaded by shitty punks. Why was this any different?

He doesn’t notice the silence Sabbath’s frenetic speech once punctuated until it’s too late, until he comes out of his head and realizes his hand’s outstretched, now, wielding his blade, its hilt flush against Sabbath’s chest. Sabbath breathes steadily. His hand’s at his back, where Gami’s blade has speared straight through his skin.

Yeah. Sabbath had him right where he wanted him from the very beginning.

Fine, then. Might as well play all the way into his shitty, crooked hand. 

In an instant, dozens more blades shoot out from Sabbath’s chest, skewering him from the inside. They’re razor-sharp, serrated, and where they tear from Sabbath’s body in a violent display of power, his skin flays. Twists around them, like they’re trying to keep them in. Idiot.

“Is that what you wanted?” Finally, Gami huffs. Sabbath is dead, now. Silence. He wasn’t too fond of the quiet, most of the time. But now, more than ever, he’d cherished it.

So he sits back down, and reaches for his drink.

There’s a gentle drip, drip, against the bar’s hardwood floor, and after Gami takes an earnest sip of his rum, he casts a tired gaze towards Sabbath’s corpse—

—and something of a corpse it is.

Sabbath is sat, calmly. More importantly, he’s very alive. One hand is pinned behind him, impaled on one of the swords jutting from his skin. The other one reaches slowly, up to his face, and to his nose, now, where he bleeds. It’s the only place he’s bleeding, actually. Gami’s face pales. In an instant, his hands are palmy around his glass— he’s hardly holding it anymore.

Sabbath just smiles. Brushes his finger under his nostrils. That crimson blood smears across a long finger, and he revels in it, the warmth. He can hardly contain his sharp-toothed smile.

“I’m alive, Death.” He’s grinning wider. “I’m alive. Would you look at that? I’ve got a soul, after all.”

Gami is a proud man. Here, however, he is everything but. Out of frustration, or fear, or a lovely cocktail of the two, he shrieks, in an utterly human fashion, wrenches both his hands around the handle of his sword and pushes it— and Sabbath— as far away from him as he can.

The mass of metal clatters in Sabbath’s chest, hollow, and Gami, in a fit of unmatched strength, throws Sabbath out of his seat. He falls to the floor, then, utterly yielding in his descent. The sword hits the ground first; punctures the hardwood beneath it as it splinters in and upward in a cascade of shards. Sabbath follows shortly, cast limp over the blades. Gami swears he’s seen this scene before: a fitting death for a traitor, a sinner, to be pierced on countless blades. How utterly horrific— how deserving.

Shaking, Gami watches him. Even as he’s limp, his nose still bleeds— the steady trickle faces the floor, now, and it oozes methodically onto the floor beneath him. It’s only through the slivers of Sabbath’s punctured turtleneck that Gami sees exactly what he’s been put up to. 

What a horrible life, this poor soul, all patchwork pieces with suicidal stitches. At least he’d vanquished the horrid thing. He’d begun to sympathize with it. 

Were the circumstances any different, Gami’d wish for that mercy, too, the mercy of death. 

And still— its nose bleeds. That horrible, endless dripping. It forms a steady puddle under his corpse. As Gami moves to dispose of his body proper, what remains of Sabbath is wracked with a new sense of life; because he’s breathing, now, a steady inhale, exhale.

Only.. well. He’s not quite breathing, is he? The clearer the sound becomes, the more Gami feels it again, that wicked flame of hatred starts up in his soul.

He’s laughing at him, isn’t he, a raspy he, he, ha. 

And then, in a moment Gami can only think describe as a moment of perfect clarity and grotesque flair, Sabbath comes to his feet. The blades shift in his body— Gami hears them do so— but Sabbath simply takes the reaper’s sword by its very handle, and pulls it straight from his chest.

The mass of blades, all originating from the first point of impact, tear gruesomely from Sabbath’s body. Gami watches him, horrified, as Sabbath then casts the sword to the side. Absolutely effortlessly. 

And then, that hatred swelters, and it’s all pointed inward, now. Gami hates himself. He hates this. When faced with his natural enemy, he thinks Sabbath looks rather beautiful. His eyes are half-lidded, swept by lovely, delicate eyelashes. The muscles in Sabbath’s arm flex as he throws Gami’s ancestral weapon to the side, unceremoniously. Sabbath's bored, he's had his fun. 

Gami hates himself— he’s delirious too. He had to be; in fact, he was no better than whatever this thing was.

“Thank you kindly, Gami.” Sabbath speaks, now, and Gami nearly shouts in surprise from it. The grotesque thing’s voice is a low croak, hardly loud enough to leave his throat. 

Gami could figure out why. There are holes torn through Sabbath’s chest, piercing straight through his body. Where he’d stabbed, Gami thinks, he must’ve at least hit some of his organs. Would explain his faltering voice. At least he could reason that much. In a moment of hysteria, Gami actually thinks to note that down for future reference.

And then he laughs. Why would he ever see this thing again? Willingly?

Silently, Gami watches as Sabbath leans up to his barstool, picks up his long-discarded lab coat, and digs around in it. Slings it over his shoulder after he’s found what he wants. Gami briefly wonders if it’s Sabbath’s turn to retaliate, if that’s what he came here to do in the first place. He’d certainly have his motives, now.

Instead, he pulls out three, neatly-kept five dollar bills. With care, he puts them on the counter. Smiles. His nose is still bleeding. “And thank you for the drink. I look forward to our next one.”

Then, as unceremonious as he’d arrived, that macabre imitation of a human soul walks out the door. When it closes behind him, the bell above it chimes once to mark his exit.