Chapter Text
The wind blew across the parking lot, dragging the river of blood with it.
The early October air cooled without the sun in the sky, even in Florida. Heat escaped from the pavement that had collected it through the day, meeting this cooling breeze and creating a faint fog that sunk in the parking lot.
The evening’s light was fading as the sun retreated to the horizon, but the parking lot was illuminated by the slow flashing of bright lights in a rhythmic pattern, blinking on and off in harsh, fluorescent glare and then darkness. When they illuminated the lot it was with a tinge of red that permeated the fog, emulating the sun’s last gasp on the horizon and making a silent alarm for anybody in the vicinity as the blood slid down the flashing headlight of the vehicle in a thick rivulet.
But the parking lot was deserted by anybody who could see the warning.
The car that was wailing its silent protest - a grey coloured sedan that was modern without being brand new, with a parking pass dangling behind the rear view mirror - was in the NXT parking lot, decreed by some to be the most dangerous parking lot per capita in the United States, so if people were there, it wouldn’t be all too surprising to see a car that had dents, scratches and broken windows, but it would be surprising to see the extent of damage to this particular car.
The hood of the car was twisted up at the left edge, four deep metallic scratches in it diagonally, like claws from a kaiju had tried to go through it, the side panels dented and scraped, hand prints of blood smeared as fingers were pulled away, flecks of skin still clinging to the paint. The driver’s side window had been smashed into something that was barely existing, the safety glass shards on the driver’s seat and on the asphalt around it glinting in the blinking headlights, refracting the eerie red glow into a shimmering sparkle, as though it was trying to catch someone’s attention.
Someone might look at the car and think that it was just a simple hit and run were it not for the body sprawled on the hood, unmoving and slack, unaware of the pool of blood growing steadily under it as the clothes and skin were unable to absorb any more of it. The blood trickled down the twisted and dented hood, down the front fender, and dripped to the ground out of time with the flashes of light but in its own rhythm all the same. It was joined by blood trails down the man’s leg and falling off the brown leather of his shoe, dripping straight down to join the others on the ground in a syncopated beat, like they were trying to create a song together.
The body’s slacks, an undeterminable colour between the darkness and the red fog, were wrinkled, pulled up his shins from how he had been thrown onto the hood of the car, small rips in the fabric from the sharp dents that had been placed in the hood and were now wrinkled from absorbing the blood. The white dress shirt fared much worse, the front panels free to ruffle in the breeze that flittered across the body’s back, the buttons torn from their placket, leaving gaping holes for the wind to whistle through. The collar was ripped, dipped in the blood flowing from above. With how it moved in the air, it was almost another silent cry for help, trying to attract attention.
But nobody came.
The windshield was cracked across the entire width of the car with a visible impact point on the passenger’s side, and an occluded impact point on the driver’s side, which was in part obscured by the head that was through it and laying on top of the dashboard. Glass from the windshield had broken the way it was supposed to, keeping most of the shards together, but the second layer had broken away to allow the head through it, and there were thick, jagged edges around the hole that had had pierced deep into skin and fabric, tearing a path until they came to rest, some pieces breaking free and leaving the gashes on the skin able to breathe, others still embedded with blood sluggishly seeping out around them.
It was the mask on the head that perhaps got the worst of it; its fabric was a lot easier to tear than flesh. Some might consider that symbolic, if they thought about it. Masks were thin veneers, something that people put on to change who they were, and they were easy to rip away to reveal the person underneath. But this mask – this mask was stronger than most because of the ferocity of he who held onto it.
The mask was torn and ruptured, ripped along the same lines as the gashes against the cheeks and brows, leaving pieces of fabric either hanging loosely and uselessly, or stuck to the skin thanks to the tacky gobs of blood it was saturated with, turning the silver into a deep red that seemed to throb in the diffused headlights as they pulsed. The wind didn’t touch these free shreds in here, the only motion from the shallow, shaky breaths of El Grande Americano’s unconscious form.
The warning SOS of the car continued to flash, continued trying to gather attention for anybody to come investigate. The blasts of the car’s horn had burned out a half hour prior, only on for a short time before giving up, back when the hot blood hadn’t trickled down so far and before the pools had settled. It left just the headlights, endlessly working to try and carry on the message in the growing darkness.
But nobody came.
El Grande Americano was broken, bleeding, unconscious and alone.
The wind blew across the parking lot, dragging the river of blood with it.