The War Backstory: The Demon of Sutton's Pyre

The belt came down upon his back. “Why are you cheating me out of my money you little shit!” Blake’s father yelled as he brought the belt down across his son’s back, slashing his flesh with each strike. Blake cried, he shrieked, he tried to find a way to speak but it never happened. The belt struck him again and again because he’s only brought home forty crownsmarks for his week of work at the local library instead of fifty. The library had been closed for a holiday so Blake’s pay was less but his father didn’t care to hear about such things. He knew his son was short money and he had to pay for that with his hide.

                Blake’s mother started pleading with his father to quit hitting him, to quit beating her son and to just leave him alone. His father turned towards her and started stalking her with the belt. Blake heard the strap smacking against he’s mother’s flesh, now she was the one screaming and crying under the assault of her husband. As Blake slowly got to his knees he stared at his father and watched as he beat his mother. It was in that moment that Blake decided to kill his father.

                The things Blake loved to read about in the library were the great war heroes of old. The men who had beaten back the armies of the Empire and allowed the Suttons to take a position of power when they finally agreed to allow their Kingdom to be annexed into the Empire. Dewey Steen, Arthur Walton, Bill Evans and others who committed acts of great bravery on the battlefield and turned the tide of war in the favor of their nation. Blake longed to be remembered like them, to have statues made in his image and for stories to be told of his greatness.

                He knew to be great like them he had to kill like them. Without hesitating and without mercy, that in battle one must end lives in order to secure victory. Blake knew killing his father would be an important step on his road to being a hero, but it wouldn’t be the first step. Other men had to be killed first to throw the police off. If he just murdered his father it would be to obvious who had committed the crime so some level of deception was needed.

                When work was slow at the library he spent his time drawing a crude design of a man’s face, only with evil looking eyes and pointed eyebrows. The mouth was a triangle, flat at top with pointy teeth inside the mouth. At the bottom of this drawing he scratched the word “Demon” Blake smiled as he looked at the drawing, it was to be his calling card, he would be the Demon.

                Three nights later he snuck out of his house and walked a couple miles to a local park. Both moons were covered in clouds so the area was nearly pitch black. Blake hid in the bushes with a brick in his right hand and a small knife in his other hand.  After a half hour of waiting Blake finally saw a man stumbling through the park, he was clearly drunk or otherwise impaired and Blake knew he’d found a perfect target. He closed his eyes and worked hard to control his breathing before creeping out of the bushes towards the man. The drunk continued his awkward shamble away from Blake without appearing to notice that Blake was closing in on him.

                The brick smashed into the back of the man’s head and sent him sprawling to the ground. Blake stood over him as the man made low groaning noises and moved his arms and legs in uncoordinated spasms. The knife was sharp and Blake was amazed how easy it dug into the man’s neck. A quick draw of the blade made blood pool all around the man’s head as his body went limp. Blake started to run and then stopped and remembered to throw his paper with the demon drawing near the body before he fled the park.

                The terror of that night made sleep impossible. He was positive somebody had seen him and that at any moment the police would show up and arrest him, the sun’s arrival brought with it a fitful sleep that was short lived. A couple hours later his father barged into his room screaming. “Why are you still asleep you lazy shit?” he barked at his son. Blake tried to protest but was met with a punch to his gut.

                Blake gasped and tried to get his breath when he was struck again, this time in the face by a backhand. He crashed out of his bed, hitting the floor hard he scrambled to his feet and fled the house. “Get the fuck out of the house! Do something you lazy scum!” his father screamed at him as he ran.

                As he ran outside Blake started to hyperventilate and cry. He hated his father he wished he’d killed him instead of killing that stranger. Blake touched his forehead and noticed he was bleeding from his eyebrow. He then looked down and saw blood on the left sleeve of his shirt. His heart jumped in his chest as he saw the blood of the man he had killed on his clothes. He had to cover up the blood and so he picked at the cut in his forehead and ripped it open even worse than it was before and let it cover his shirt. Once his shirt was good and bloody he made his way to the local hospital where a nurse stitched him up.

                The nurse knew his father beat him, she’d seen Blake shirtless before plenty of times and knew of the scars all over his body, but they both played along with the lie that Blake had just suffered a fall of his own accord and that’s all it was. Normally Blake would seethe with rage at the nurse’s apathy , how she could allow his father to do what he did, but today it served him well that she not ask questions about why a young boy was covered in blood the morning after a man had been murdered.

                Blake suffered his beatings at home and waited for a good night to make his second kill. The park was to open and he figured he’d been very lucky to have not been seen when he’d killed his first victim. He spent his days scouting out more concealed locations and found a nice alleyway near a street with small amount of foot traffic. That night he placed a small trail of half crownmark coins along the ground leading into the alley as a trap to lure a victim in. It didn’t take long for a man to find the first one and then move on to the second and third.

                The rock hit the back of the man’s head with a sickening thud. Blake brought it down a second time and then a third. When he paused for a moment to use his knife to finish the man off he noticed the massive pool of blood around the man’s head and that his body was completely motionless. Blake was amazed at how quickly he’d killed the man and how easy it had been to kill him. He took the demon drawing and put it inside the man’s shirt so the police would be sure to find it. He snuck out of the alley and made his way home and slept a peaceful night’s sleep.

                It excited him to read in the papers about the two murders he’d committed and how police were looking for leads in the case. He wondered about the nurse who had stitched his cut but he dismissed her as a thread. She never was concerned about him before so there was no reason to think she’d be concerned with him now. Blake never felt as happy as he did mapping out the murder of his father.

                Finally the night had come. The end of the workweek meant his father would hit a local bar known as Frankie’s and get drunk before coming home. Both Blake and his mother had learned to be asleep before he got home on these nights or else a vicious beating was in store for them. Blake waited across the street with his knife and a new large rock in hand. He’d spent the past few days scouring the streets for the perfect rock to cave his father’s head in and now he was going to put that rock to good use.

                Blake fumed as the bar closed and his father filed out with the rest of the drunks who wouldn’t leave till the owner of the place kicked them out. Blake pocketed the knife and hid the rock in the crook of his arm as he carefully followed his father from a distance. As he got close he couldn’t help himself, he broke into a run as he clutched the rock and then finally he swung at his father.

                The blow was a glancing one both of them fell to the ground. Blake had put himself badly off balance with the swing and his father landed on his hands and knees and rolled to his side. Blake rushed back to his feet to land another shot when he heard a voice call out “What are you doing?” a man shouted from across the street and started rushing towards Blake. Blake didn’t know how to react so he just charged the man. His charge caught the man off guard and Blake’s knife was driven into the man’s chest. Blake pulled the blade out and then ran it through the man’s throat. He watched as the color drained from the man’s face and then he crumpled to the ground. Blake turned and saw his father getting to his feet.

                Their eyes locked. Blake saw the rage in his father’s eyes, but he also saw fear. Blake reminded himself that his father was drunk and that it would be easy to kill him yet the years of beatings and abuse had conditioned him to submit to give into his father’s will. Blake let out a primal scream and charged at his father. His father charged at him and when the two met this time the rock hit home. Blake drove the rock right into his father’s face, shattering his nose and sending blood flying everywhere. Blake knelt over him and drove the rock down upon him again and again, the final time giving a sickening squishing noise as his father’s head had been completely shattered. Blake stood up and threw the paper with the drawing on his father and then he heard voices.

                The voices were coming for him and he ran. He ran down alleyways and the voices kept coming, he climbed fences and ducked into people’s yards and the voices vanished for a while but they kept coming back. He wondered if he should flee to his house or not, but then he figured he had nowhere else to go. The last three blocks had been quiet with no sign of anyone noticing him but he knew the killing of his father had gone wrong and he was sure he’d be caught.

                He opened the window to his room from the outside and snuck in, as soon as he got inside he room he felt how tight to his chest his shirt felt. He knew his clothes were caked in blood. He stripped naked and stuck all his clothes under his bed. He threw on a new pair of underwear and jumped into bed and laid there staring at the ceiling. Then came the knock on the door.

                He heard his mother answer the door and the police talking to her. He heard her scream in horror as they told her that her husband was dead. He listened to her wails of anguish and seethed with rage. How could she feel bad for the monster that beat us? How could she feel sadness from finally having him rid from her life? He waited for the cops to enter his room, to arrest him for killing his father. He heard the policeman talking to his mother in a quieter tone, he couldn’t make out the words but he knew it wasn’t a good thing. The policeman’s strides towards his door felt like thunderclaps in his ears and he heard the man’s hand on his doorknob. “Wait.” He heard his mom cry out. “Let him have one final night of rest before I have to tell him his father’s gone.” She said before going back to her sobbing. The man’s hand left the doorknob and the police filed out of the house.

                The next morning Blake woke up and looked in the mirror. His blonde hair had whitened a great deal over night and he swore that his eyes were now a much paler shade of blue than they had been before. He knew he was tall for a boy of fifteen but he hoped he’d grow even bigger, he wanted to be a strong imposing presence on the battle field and he wanted a body that would make killing even easier.

                He opened the door to his bedroom and saw his mom in the kitchen crying. “I heard them momma. I heard them say daddy is dead.” He told her as he started sobbing and ran to her. They hugged and cried and he fought to bring up tears as best he could to show her he was really sad about his father’s passing. The next two days were mostly him hiding his room, sitting on his bed on top of the bloody pile of clothes that would convict him. His mother barged in at all hours of the day to talk to him, to cry with him and for the two of them to comfort each other. He just wished she’d give him the time he needed to dump his clothes.

                Finally on the third day she was called away for funeral planning and he was able to bag the clothes and throw them into the ocean in an isolated cove that teenagers used to get drunk and have sex at. As he watched the tide drag the satchel away he felt a great weight off his shoulders, but then it was replaced by another weight. He would have to keep killing to cover up the fact that his father was the last murder. If he stopped now the police would think there was something special about his dad and might figure things out. He really didn’t want to have to risk killing another person but now he felt like he had no choice.

                Then the newspaper arrived three days later, the demon had struck again. Blake couldn’t believe it somebody else had copied his style of murder and had killed another person only a few miles away. The murders continued for months until finally the demon was shot to death by police after his eleventh murder. Finally Sutton’s Pyre could rest easy with the killer put to rest.

                A year after he had killed his father Blake went to his gravesite to place flowers. “Hey dad, you fucking prick. Been a year since I murdered you.” Blake said with a sneer. “Like my clothes?” he asked as he looked down at his nicely tailored black suit jacket “My new dad bought them for me. He’s a rich piece of shit that one. He and I don’t talk much, thinks he can just buy me off with gifts and money. I hate him. Not as much as I hated you, but he’s still a piece of shit. Just a piggy bank on legs as far as I can tell.”

                Blake knelt before his father’s grave. “Sad thing is I hate mom most of all. Dumb bitch never did a fucking thing to protect herself. After I killed you oh how she wept. I thought they were gonna commit the dumb bitch she kept carrying on weeping and blubbering. For what? Why she fucking crying? Cause you couldn’t scar her back with your fucking belt again? Cause you wouldn’t be there to beat the shit out of her? Then she meets this rich asshole and now she’s happy as can be. Why she happy dad? Tell me why she’s happy. She’s happy cause I fucking killed you. I did all the hard work, I fucking murdered you to get myself free of you and now she’s got a new husband who’ll never hurt her and gives her everything she wants.” Blake started crying.

                “It’s not fucking fair. I did it. I did everything and what do I get? Some crownmarks every now and then? Some trinket or toy and a pat on the head? He done knocked her up to. I’m gonna have a little brother or sister soon enough, ain’t that fucking great, even more of an excuse to ignore me. Why are they so fucking happy and I don’t get shit? Fuck this world man. Fuck you dad. Fuck you.”

                Blake fought to control his breathing as he stared down at the grave. “I’ll still show them all. We all know the war’s coming, those God fearing fools are coming closer to our boarder and we’re moving towards them. It’s not going to be long now, maybe a few years, maybe quicker than that, but its coming. I can’t wait for it. I’m good at killing, I proved that with you didn’t I? Fucked you up right good.  When that war comes I’m going to kill ever y last one of them God loving fucks I can get my hands on. Well not really.”

                He pulled back the suit jacket to shot a pearl handled revolver in a holster on his hip. “Dad didn’t get me this. I saved up my money and I bought it at the pawn shop. I’ve been practicing out at the cove where I dumped the evidence I killed you. I’m a real good shot. I’m going make every bullet count. One day the king himself is going to put a medal around my neck and declare me a Hero of the Kingdom, and they’ll all cheer for me. They will cheer for Blake Evans.”

                Blake stopped talking for a moment. “That’s right. I took my new dad’s last name. Think I’d fucking keep any trace of you in my life? No fucking way. I will tell you what I am gonna do dad. After I get that medal I’ll tell everyone I did it to honor you. I’ll come to this grave and I’ll kneel here, like this.” He said as he knelt beside the head stone. “Then I’m going to put my head right up against the stone and start sobbing.” He put his head on hard granite stone. “They’ll think I’m weeping over my poor dead dad, killed by the Demon of Sutton’s Pyre, but they’ll really be tears of joy cause I’m so glad I killed you. I’ll see you soon.” Blake said as he got back to his feet. The Demon of Sutton’s Pyre left the graveyard with dreams of carnage and glory in his head.