Final Season Piranhas, “Desert Heat”

Piranhas Final Season, Desert Heat

The wind was even wilder than yesterday and the day before that, yet it was without the mercy and presence of the Gray Wolf. Nelson was desperate, unable to stand up, both legs broken with the easy work of a heavy hammer. He welcomed rescue, whether from humans, animals, cryptids, or the Gray Wolf. Nelson had been seized on his way to his white sedan, which he parked in front of Smookies Vape and Cigarette shop before he could meet and tell Silverback of his secret.

The Surreal Red Forces had come for him when the summer moon was at its lowest and most vibrant with orange iridescence. When his brother was handling a situation for the Boss. In the shed, his prison cell, he was entertained by black clouds that hovered in the desert sky. They were touching the tall, live-wired electric steel fence. that surrounded the shed. What Nelson knew, he read in those black clouds, and the steel cuffs that surely kept him bound, as freedom seemed so far away. And the whole city, beyond, was the same as him, locked in a strange, nervous state. Nelson tried and tried to scratch off the burden of fear.

The desert sky Nelson looked up at was a vast, dark expanse of incredible darkness and coldness that hung high above the cracked ground that stretched through the sweaty canyons and spread out, cutting into dry riverbeds. Nelson sighed because he was no meteorologist, but there was no possible way it could rain, for the clouds refused to split open. There was a mix of rocks, glass, and chewed-up tire tread on the old highway that vanished a quarter mile ahead. Nelson had looked through the windows but could see nearly nothing, as there were no lights outside. The windows were insignificant compared to the giant, solid wood walls of the shed. Nelson’s stomach growled, and in his pain, Nelson turned his head. He heard nothing but the hammer of wind. No calls from the Gray Wolf, the Scarlet Horned Owl, or the Gorrillias motorcycles approaching the shed where he was stored until disposal.

The dirt of the desert covered Nelson’s consciousness with the suffering of guilt, but something else he didn’t recognize. Because he’d betrayed too many, including his holy spirit maker, and he reaped a nightmare drawn by the Surreal Red Forces and the faceless serial killer. His punishment waited in the corner of the shed: a bathtub filled with piranhas; Nelson was to be their bloody nourishment. Suppose he couldn’t solve his dilemma. Time was working against him, and the infection was spreading into his blood and bones. This couldn’t be my destiny! Did I request my death?

Was it truly justice for stealing the Scarlet Owl Ring? Silverback and The Surreal Red Forces easily saw Nelson’s deception, but his punishment was to confine him to a shed somewhere in the stale desert, where not even the stars’ light reaches the tail of the city.

The leaders of the Surreal Red Forces could never know this secret. Now they had all the cards except one, the ace. Ace was the master engineer of the Great Horned Owl Ring. Of course, I would end up here, knowing that fact. I am a sick man, disabled even before birth; the Surreal Red Forces had broken his legs below the knee. But his feet had always felt weighted by sand, but now he could not stand. With a bit of luck, the wind would slide the door open, or the windows would blow off, and he’d have the remains of energy from the Owl Ring to pull himself along the bare and cracked concrete floor out of the hell that he made.

Nelson screamed, ‘Anybody there? Take it away, ‘ Then he saw them: the poisoned walnuts. He could eat them or better feed them to the piranhas once he sauced them with his fresh blood!

Nelson had bled heavily over the coir mat. He was dizzy and nauseous, paranoid, but he was alive. Bill’s annulled marriage with Ivory had now made him the sole target, and the Surreal Red Forces’ capture and interrogation were over. “Drown me or fucking let me go! Silverback goes with a wild pack, the ruthless Gorillas. They don’t back down! They will have revenge, maybe not for me, but for stealing Ivory’s piranhas.”

The Surreal Forces walked closer; they did not blink. They had a flat expression, no emotion, not even when they had broken his legs. “Let me go, please! I will give you the Utah Killer and Silverback. But I warn you, the rumors of the Grey Wolf are as real as those damn piranhas.” Nelson looked directly into the tub and dipped his thumb and index finger, releasing a walnut. One, two, three, four piranhas took the walnut and swam to the other side.

“I witnessed a legend with my fading diabetic sight. Savage, wild like the wind outside, riding the tracks like a supernatural express train. Claws like a bear, teeth like a bull shark, and intelligence like a raven. Undefeated. Brave like a glorious gladiator. Its name is the Gray Wolf. Calculating, patient, with a bite force like a damn crocodile. Just ask my brother Bill, alright?”

The unblinking eyes of the Surreal Red Forces fixed on Nelson’s in the vivid spotlight of the ceiling’s fan-hanging bulb lights. “The Gray Wolf never forgets… no regulation or moral codes; it haunts until it erases any being’s human or artificial tracks from this planet. “

Nelson stopped suddenly. He was hurting and damn hungry. The pain in his legs and the growing fever were caused by a quickly developing infection from the many ignored injuries. Nelson said: “By a miracle, my brother is only missing a finger; it’s waiting to consume him in entirety, soul and body, striking only when the order is given. Yet, its hunger remains unsatiated, like that of a Komodo dragon.” Nelson looked carefully at the group for a sign.

No response. He finished by saying, “My brother’s doomed; you’ll all be too!”

Nelson huffed in the corner of the shed beside the bathtub of piranhas. His pain was the mission of the Surreal Red Forces. One of the Surreal Forces wrapped his legs with a makeshift bandage, his red gown swinging in a machine-like motion. Nelson needed a hospital, an emergency room, and a team of experienced doctors to help him if he were to have any chance of regaining the ability to stand up on his own, let alone walk again. His blood pressure was low; he had some confusion, not fully understanding whether the pain was greater in his stomach, legs, or head. The Surreal Red Forces observed with plain interest, as one member gathered the rest, and they prepared to leave.

The Surreal Red Forces followed one another as dolphins in the sea—a synchrony of steps and an unreadable decision shared between their brows. One by one, they blinked before they left the room; there were a dozen of them, including the one with the red gown.

Nelson had forgotten that the Utah desert and canyons had been expanded by a flash flood. The dry landscape had always held. On cracked ground, there was a landfill-sized number of victims, the serial killer’s property, and the rows and rows of blond grass and green cacti grew over them between the cracks in the ground. No Yeti, but a monster nevertheless, a serial killer that nobody, including the FBI, the Surreal Red Forces, or Silverback, had yet discovered. Suspicion fell on the number one suspect, a member of the Mountain Gorilla, the leader, Silverback. Ivory had let his aliases slip: Silverback, the Gray Wolf, and Adam.

That is, until the driver’s license of one of the Utah Canyon victims and a Polaroid picture of a mysterious man stabbed to death in a big rig truck hauling rock. Silverback had sent the Polaroids to the trio of detectives who had held the evidence. Bill left it behind, even though the Boss would have paid whatever he wanted, since it was his client’s precious nephew’s haunting face on instant-color film. Had Bill not been distracted by his finger torn off by the Gray Wolf, the abandoned motel would still hold that clue. Bill ran not from his sin but from the endless dangers of the desert that were simply called the Utah canyons. Somewhere in the desert’s yucca and cacti were a serial killer and a Gray Wolf. Which one was going to survive?

The desert stars spiraled and protruded with arrowed points; they were a warning to any naive invader. Nelson could hear the piranhas vomiting up the walnut crumbs and drowning. Nelson understood the many different kinds of monsters that marked the desert canyons—their sole territory, totally uninterested in the beauty of flowers and phases of the moon. The entire desert was a realm of predator and prey.

It was foolish indeed, for Nelson was only half aware of his recklessness, which made him no match for his challenger. Sure, something happened when he put on the Owl Ring. A fluid of rich bravery and strength, the abilities that he had carried somewhat in his youth. Now, he had nothing to defend. No youth. No Owl Ring. Just a doomed man whose thoughts blurred.

The stars doubled in the late hours; they reigned all together at midnight. Over the desert canyons, the serial killer slept easily; the critters had no urge to stir at all, as if they sensed the evil that made Nelson’s stomach growl, shift, and brake, and it all kept him awake.

The desert had plenty of monsters that would torture first and kill last. Was that the Surreal Red Forces’ new plan for him? Leave him for the serial killer when he’d rather die there in a bathtub of piranhas. Nelson threw in the rest of the walnuts. The piranhas that weren’t floating at the surface came up quickly and crushed the walnuts with their sworded teeth. Nelson gave out a heavy breath.

Nelson lied to the universal supervisor of earth and heaven, the one who ultimately matters. The ways of the Utah desert had trapped him; no Gray Wolf transformation had come to free him this time.

The desert canyons were suddenly crawling with black beetles and centipedes. Nelson was once convinced his diabetes would end up killing him; it had indeed worsened as a consequence of his criminal actions. The numerous involvements with brother Bill’s kidnappings, robbery, and beatings. He hadn’t killed anyone like his brother, but he was almost there. It was a little amusing that it wasn’t diabetes that caused his feet and legs to swell and blacken, but rather the insanity of the Surreal Red Forces.

What was the reason for returning to hunt for the Owl Ring that led him into a trap? The simple answer was that the Owl Ring possessed Nelson. It pulled him in like a wave’s force, like the evil that haunted the desert. But that fact didn’t raise his blood pressure or anxiety. No, it was those stars that looked down over him at his fate.

Nelson lay still in front of the shed’s sliding door. The abandoned motel was never marked on a current visitor map as a hiking trail or any sort of camping location. No. The Surreal Forces dropped him exactly there; he was mumbling for a blanket behind the abandoned motel.

The stars had overthrown the moon and now ruled the desert, if just for tonight. And all that moved and glistened were nocturnal toads, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes. The parachutes of stars were the chimes of the desert night sky, which became like a dining table laid out with a feast and drink. The wind was an incredible sight, loosening and flipping over rocks! Without warmth or peace, but with illumination. The moon was like a hidden door. Temporary protection from the mystic Gray Wolf, scorpions, biting bats: The large Juniper bushes and little cactuses shuddered by the dozens. Nelson gulped for air, realizing he was live bait in the desert’s darkness.

Nelson never wanted to deceive Bill or even Silverback, and it wasn’t his will anymore, because he couldn’t fight the urge that came like forked waves, the vangs of the Scarlet Owl.

Nelson felt a fever; Its bite was mean and chewed on his soul and diseased body. He had abandoned his brother back there in the desert for the sake of survival. Nelson couldn’t explain it anymore. The need for proof that he was still human and compassionate, that it had not left as he bled out, and that he had not fallen over the edge of depravity, what he recognized in Bill’s eyes as he cut Silverback in the lavatory like a shark with pitch black eyes, with a goal focused on blood, flesh, and bone to devour simultaneously in a controlled attack.

How often did Nelson take no action but follow the will of another, his brother Bill, who didn’t need permission or to be stopped by his younger brother? No, it was a direct fear of Bill and what he had become after contracting with the Boss as his top hitman; Nelson was the assistant. The drugged syrup was a device Nelson made to weaken, lose consciousness, and damage a few of the pathways of the brain, to break the target slowly and methodically. No permanent harm.

Bill makes victims of his weird and depraved intentions. It was ironic that Bill and the Boss were never on the radar of the criminal investigations unit because they left no trace or scent of their deeds, just as the Surreal Red Forces always cleaned up to an extraordinary degree of detail and precision.

Nelson smelled the bristlecone pine and heard the sidewinder rattlesnakes from the open lavatory window of the abandoned motel, softly calling the name of the Scarlet Owl. It had to be here, and he wouldn’t leave it behind or lose ownership of it again to the Surreal Forces. Bill, the Boss, had merely borrowed it. Ivory had borrowed it. Silverback had the Gray Wolf, or it had him because of its incredible, unnatural magic, though he continuously failed to manage it. The Owl Ring belonged to me only.

The Great Horned Owl Ring Nelson sensed was here beneath the mustard-sand colored stars. The mountain gorillas were demons, yes. But Silverback was their king, and Ivory was his queen. I must reverse the betrayal, tell them that Ace was the key. Once he managed the energy and order of the Gray Wolf to lead the Mountain, Gorrilias’ Then power would be greater than the Surreal Red Forces, and anarchy would be dealt with by employing necessity and balance.

Nelson barely lifted himself with his arms and hands, bashing open the door with his head, shoulders, and fists, inhaling Ivory’s rose-lavender perfume as he fell back outside and viewed the back door of the abandoned motel’s back office. If the Gray Wolf showed up, it would be more fortunate than the mysterious hovering of the black clouds. The Gray Wolf would gauge the unblinking eyes of the Surreal Red forces. I may or may not understand the concepts of kindness and justness. Destiny had me join a brother I loathe. The cosmic Gray Wolf was free, and so was the Canyon’s serial killer, but one of them was just for a while longer. Neslon pushed himself across the ground toward the abandoned motel.