The Ace of Skulls

Prologue- They Will Remember Us


Barry woke up from a long nap. He felt like he had gone through hibernation with as well rested as he felt. He was feeling cold, though. The blankets probably just fell off the bed during his slumber. But when he tried to reach for that warm, soft shroud of comfort, he found himself incapable of moving his hands. Hell, he couldn’t even move his arms. Probably just slept on them funny, he thought. He decided that he would open his eyes to see to check the time. He had an important deal that needed to be made today. A deal that could make or break his career as a salesman. Barry opened his eyes, and what he saw scared him momentarily. He did not understand. Why was he scared? When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing. Nothing at all but the same liquid black he saw with his eyes shut. It was as if he had never opened them to begin with. He went to feel around the sockets to try and locate the source of the problem, and as such, tried to move his arms again. This time he was successful, but something was wrong again. When he tried to move his arms, they moved up about 4 inches and hit something cold. Something smooth. Something metallic. He tried with the other arm. Same thing. He even tried moving his legs. Same thing. What the hell was happening?

“Hello? Anybody there?” Barry was getting more and more concerned with each passing second. Where was he? Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he see? And why did he smell the smell of something he was all to familiar with? “Don’t strain yourself.” A voice answered in response to Barry. “You don’t want to overreact too much. It wouldn’t be right to live your last moments in fear.”

“Who the hell are you?” Barry asked. The voice that was speaking to him was cold and dead, but not human. It was almost as if the voice was being twisted or warped, and sounded very throaty and scratchy. It sounded like it was being fed through some type of voice distortion box. The kind they use on TV shows when they want to mask someone’s voice. “Who I am is of no concern, Mr. Sawyer. What matters is who you are. What matters is why you’re here.”

“Please, I’m just a nobody!” Barry yelled, panic and terror enveloping him now. What did he mean when he said live your last moments? “I haven’t done anything wrong! If its money you want, I got that. Just don’t hurt me!”

“Are you trying to gamble with me, Mr. Sawyer? Interesting, since that’s how you lived a particular part of your life.” Barry felt the cold, rubbery feeling of a glove pass over his forehead. “Why revisit such a dark past?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about! Just tell me what you want!”

“What I want? What I want is of no importance. It’s not about what I want. It never was. It’s about what this city needs. This monument to the filthy, repugnant, putrid people who have shaped it into what it is today. That’s what it’s about, Mr. Sawyer. And you, you will serve as a message to the people. You will show them how low they’ve let this city sink.”

“I’m not doing anything for a sick freak like you!” The fear in Barry had subsided, and was being overtaken with anger and rage. He could barely even speak, and every word that rolled off his tongue still had a hint of fear to it. “Now let me go, or you’ll be sorry!”

“I had a feeling you’d answer like that. Have you ever heard of a bluff, Mr. Sawyer? It’s a move in poker where you try to mask what your true feelings are. And you just failed it poorly. Miserably, even. No matter. You don’t need to speak your message, Mr. Sawyer. No, you will simply be the vessel that conveys it. You will be the one who gives it life. Vitality. Essence. However, there is a small, how do you say, complication. You see, to give life to the message you will convey, you will have to give up your own.”

“What the hell does that mean?!” Barry was practically thrashing at this point, trying to free himself from his bindings. All of his pounding and straining was to no avail, though. No matter how he tried, he could not get out of this predicament. “Let me go, you insane freak!”

“I’m afraid that’s no longer an option. You asked what it means to be the vessel? Well, it means you’ve doubled down and failed, Mr. Sawyer.” The voice responded. Despite the whole situation going on at the moment, the voice seemed unnaturally calm. “It means you’ve been dealt a losing hand. It means, very simply, that you’ve lost this game.” The last thing Barry felt was a syringe slide into his neck. The hypodermic, clean kind of needle, like the one you see in doctor’s use, not the rough, street needles one would use to shoot heroin. Barry knew how that felt. Then, he started blacked out. Barry drifted into a sleep that he would never wake from. He suddenly started having weird flashbacks to certain points in his life. When he was a kid and tried weed for the first time with his friends. When he was a teen and drank booze at a party. But the worst was the last one. When he was 30, and got caught shooting heroin. Barry had a moment of clarity. Maybe this was the way he was going to be punished for all his sins. But just before he finally lost all cognitive function, he heard four final words.

“They will remember us.”