Duke of Albion Chapter 3

Chapter 3
Back in the Grind

After a lengthy selection process, Peter settled on a pair of leather boots that he fancied and trudged back to the spot where he had agreed to meet his other half who arrived from the café at precisely the same second.
Both lads were tired by this point due to the extensive loss of blood that occurs when one is missing a complete section of their body, but were nonetheless thrilled to see each other. Separately observing himself, he decided to head straight to a hospital and place his fate in the hands of a doctor who would be able to remedy his condition. Finding a surgeon capable of this Humpty-Dumpty procedure he had deemed necessary was no problem and Peter soon found himself whole once again and on his way back to his musty flat.
The stitches that ran down his front and back were somewhat of a nuisance since they stretched not one bit and slowed him down, but he eventually made it home and immediately set to working on his latest obsession.
For several months, Peter had been collecting any small pieces of metal that he happened to find on the street and storing them in a plastic box. By now, he had about 67 bits and pieces of this and that and had but one goal in mind. He desired more than anything in the world to melt the pieces together and create a set of rings for himself.
Taking out the soldering gun he had managed to acquire from his father’s garage several years ago when he still knew who his parents were, he melted, tortured, and carved the piece that most intrigued him into the shape of a simple ring. After verifying that it was the proper size, he marked the outer part with a small X and smiled crookedly at his work.
Jewelry pleased Peter in a way that nothing else was able to. Still holding the soldering gun, he considered taking it to the sheers mounted in his bathroom and destroying them. He was certain that they smelled his fear this morning and had a sickening feeling that they were plotting some kind of corrupt revenge. He’d had enough of blades for the time being and was in no disposition to get more stitches either.
He stood, ready to head into the bathroom, but decided against this as he did need his sharp friends to fight off those birds if ever they decided to return. Return they surely would, especially once they caught the scent of his fresh wounds.
Ravaged, they would come swarming in, and head instantly for his neck. Though their beaks were not sharp, they were quite the bother to Peter since he was still not entirely sure if they were real or not.
He did not like feeling confused or possibly insane, so he would do whatever he could to keep the pests away, and sleep with his sheers, ready to slash, under his pillow. He would have to conquer his fear and have faith in their forgiveness. They would probably be grateful to be free from their restraints and in their state of happiness fail to realize what Peter had thought about them that very morning.
Staring at the new ring on his finger, Duke was hit with memories of his only love. Like everything else he seemed to enjoy, Peter had found his girl in the gutter of a small alley at the complete opposite side of the city while on an outing one afternoon. Do not be fooled into thinking that our noble hero found one equally as insane as he to cherish. This interest of his, while she was real enough to him, was not to others.
She was small enough to fit in his hand and her features ignited something in him that he couldn’t explain. Her vinyl face was dirty from lying on the filthy, wet stones that made up the road, but her blue plastic eyes still contained a powerful glimmer and the look of this tattered and forgotten plaything gave him a feeling he had never before experienced.
Acting on his impulses and not bothering to clean her off, Peter brought the doll back to his flat and deemed one of the chairs hers, placing her upon it. Her slumped, unmoving form continued to delight him for the three years that she occupied her throne until Peter grew angry with her for never contributing anything intelligent to conversations when he hosted parties for the few friends he once had.
Once he turned on La Petite VanyVictoire, as he called her, he was done. She had to be destroyed as soon as possible. He gripped her round the neck, dragged her feather light form out into the putrid and humid air of the city, and tossed her, clear across the street, into the nearest storm drain.
He regretted his action even before Mademoiselle Victoire finished her aerial descent, but what was done was to remain that way. As penance for his folly, he declared that he would never again open his heart to anyone. It had been roughly five years now that she was gone and although he did not want to admit it, Peter knew that she was partly the reason for his continuous journey into the world of the Insane.
Deciding that he needed some slight distraction from his recollections, he pulled himself from his chair and disinterestedly floated over to where he kept his most prized possession.
Having been an avid admirer of music his entire life, but never enjoying the fact that it is not interactive, Peter built a contraption to make it so. Taking the bones of an old record player and haphazardly rearranging them into a manner that fit his purpose, he later attached small cables to the device that were particularly conductive. Through some rigging of his own, he set the creation up so that each individual chord of a song would be physically felt traveling through the wires and directly into his body.
He wanted so terribly to feel the emotion in songs that seemed so empty when heard over a regular system. These lyrical drug injections turned him into a being even more bizarre and depraved than he already was. After the first test and use left his pupils dilated and his tongue dry, Peter decided that he ought to keep at it every day and see if his cranial capacity, or any other physical ability, might improve.
Now, in his sate of reflection and remorse, he wanted nothing more than to block out his thoughts and replace them with pure jolts of raw feeling more enticing than sex.
He selected the record that he knew would not fail to excite him out of his current state. It was dusty and warped from being too often played and left on the machine for weeks at a time but it was no less glorious. This piece, this gem that Peter looked upon as a kind of child since it was something that he created with the same sincerity, was a combination of the concertos of Beethoven and the sounds that wild animals make when dying of starvation.
The howls and cries mixed with the ingenious crescendos of the Master made Peter’s breathing grow heavy and hot. His eyes grew unfocused as he retreated into his mind and began to see fantastical visions of mice taking over the European consulate and enacting their own doctrines (most of which revolving around cheese and dirt) to better the world.
He saw houses deconstructing themselves and the inhabitants being forced to flee to the countryside and seek shelter under rocks and in trees where things were dreary.
As a smile strained against his now white lips, his hands began to tremble with excitement. Falling to the ground and now seeing that which he saw so vividly that his eyes began to burn and tear, a laugh louder than the very noises he was currently blasting into his muscles resonated throughout his flat. The wires were doing their job.
Writhing on the floor at the height of his journey, Peter somehow became aware of a rather odd noise emanating not from his musical invention, but from the street outside.
Quickly tearing the wires free from his now painfully pulsating muscles and wiping the tears from his eyes, he crawled over to his window and poked his head out just enough to observe whatever the event may have been.
Two men were clearly engaged in an argument of some kind and when Peter, already smiling like a mad cat, realized this he immediately scuttled over to his door and dragged himself, legs still incapable of supporting any weight thanks to his electrical session, closer to the scene.
Kneeling in a small black puddle and sweating profusely both from the excitement that had just passed as well as what was to come, he waited patiently for this much anticipated battle to begin.
Peter loved fights above all things. Clenching his hands together in rabid rapture, he let his eyes roam with the now escalating movements of the lads. Oh! How he wished they were beasts! Had this been the case, there’s no telling what he might have seen.
He decided to assign the men animal equals so that he might better profit from his current observations. The slighter of the two had dark hair and fairly scrawny legs which brought a crow greatly to mind. The other was not much larger but had upon his face such a regard of displeasure and anguish that Duke could assign him no other creature but a raccoon.
Savage identities now set, the fight could progress with true purpose and the ever mounting fever within Peter could continue its ascent to his brain and start to pour out of his eyes, drawing the attention that he so often avoided.
When this fever brought on by displays of human nature showed its face, our hero would lose all control of his senses and start on a behavioral journey like no other ever before dreamed of.
As it was, Peter Duke was quivering, laughing, and sweating blood that smelled of stale cigars and cold tea. As much as he wanted to witness this impending row, he could not deny that remaining as a spectator in his condition would quite possibly kill him, and so, reluctantly, he hauled his momentarily useless form back up the stairs to his flat, sprawled on the filthy Oriental rug he so adored, and finally allowed himself to be absorbed by sleep.