Vindex

• Mitchell Pemberton, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2014

He had to be quick. If he wasn’t quick they would catch him. If they caught him then….. He wouldn’t be seen again. Unclasp, wait……and grab! He didn’t wait to see what he’d got. He backed away slowly. The guard wasn’t moving from his chair. He didn’t move a muscle, which was odd because he was on watch. If the captain saw him like that, he’d be taken away faster than an urchin like himself. Something was wrong. He stepped forward, cautiously. Every part of him screamed trap but they would have sprung it sooner than now, back when he was waiting for a snapper. Snappers are essentially mousetraps which guards stuff inside their pouches, but with an evil twist. Snappers were spiked, and contained a strange poison designed to incapacitate a target. When the snappers came more urchins were caught than fish in a net. But now they only activated when they opened. They were also one-time use. He hadn’t activated one which meant that someone had been here before him. He reached the guard, slumped on his chair. He looked around the conceivable area, and listened. Nobody was nearby. It wasn’t that surprising, as this was a low-priority area. Some nights they didn’t even bother with one guard. He stepped into the circle of light cast by the guards flickering lamp. The guard didn’t stir but he hadn’t made a sound anyway. He stepped towards the guard, a chill running down his back. His head was also down, but his chest wasn’t moving. The urchin lifted the guards head up with a small amount of effort. The guard’s eyes were lifeless and the muscles in his face slack. He’d been killed. The urchin had seen dead people before. When it’s truly Dark, bodies litter the sidewalks. They’re deformed. From the sickness or just the usual malnourishment it was hard to tell. Blue skin, and puffed up faces. But this was different. This was by no disease. His face was normal. In fact the only thing that was different was the small red slit in his neck. He hadn’t seen someone killed, ever or even a body which had been murdered but…. He knew that from a slash to the neck there should have been a lot more blood. He should have been standing in a puddle of it, and it should have still been throbbing from the guard’s injury. The wound was dark red. He’d seen this before. It was clotted blood. He’d had to navigate the rough walls and roofs back when he was a bad thief and got caught. The guard had been murdered, and the wound had been covered up, maybe with a poultice or something. But he was still dead, which seemed like poison instead of blood loss. He was warm so it mustn’t have been long ago and his death had been covered up. The urchin ran, careless of the money he had got. Tenebrarum Vindex had been here, and he brings trouble.