CHALLENGER'S RAP

• The little girl knelt before the tome and recited the passage in its cursive language and poked
• her finger with the tip of the knife, pressing the blood against the bottom of
• the page. sparks crimson ink lifted off the page like a storm of snakes braiding upon
• themselves. a terrible, beautiful woman, covered in cursive lettering of the
• sutra, appeared before the girl.
• ---"why do you summon me little one? are you too stupid to know that i find no
• joy in this disgusting human world. speak before i return to ash with you at
• my side."
• ---"please. help my mommy. they hurt her. really bad. they hurt her really bad,"
• ---The woman, Ammit, as that is her sacred title, sighed. "oh how I despise my oath
• to bear out justice when the weak and vulnerable ply my heart. stay here little
• girl and lock the door."
• ---with that, Ammit exited the small bedroom where she was confronted by three men
• who stood before her. passing a bottle around, with their belts undone and sloppily laughing.
• One stepped foward to grab her, but he was easily deflected. the other two also
• advanced but she swayed past them with a seductive grace and looked into
• the room from which they had just emerged.
• ---the motionless body of a woman lay there, ensnared by lengths of coiled sheets and
• a rope knotted around her neck. whatever warmth there was in ammit's eyes froze over
• as if jettisoned into the vacuum of space.
• ---In a single fluid motion she struck back at the men who had so defiled the woman
• in that bed. she dropped the first man before anyone could blink, exploding
• his lower jaw up into his face while the back of his head snapped back to
• touch his vertebrae.
• ---the next man met a slower end. seizing his neck while braced against his back,
• she incrementally fractured every bone in his spine working from the bottom
• up. the sickening crunch of bone helped to release a few grains of sand
• from her desert of despair and vengeance. third man looked to be making a move
• towards escape out the front door. ammit dropped the second man in a crippled pile.
• ---"stop!" he cried. "i can give you whatever you want. i am heir to the most
• powerful family in this city. please have mercy."
• ---"you have nothing. but i will take everything that you have." she selected the
• sharpest knife from the rack and placed the blade in the furnace of orange
• coals. She grasped the glowing steel and straddled the man in a display of
• power, not lust. "stop! you must stop! anything! i'll do anything!"
• ---ammit's lips curled. "okay, big man. show me what you've got." snatched open his belt and
• grabbed his genitalia. the blade hissed for but an instant, her act of justice
• swift as lightning. she tossed the severed tissue into the stove and finished
• cauterizing the flesh. his howls annoyed her so she seized him by the upper
• jaw, and dragged him outside with the sharp points of her nails embedded
• in his upper palate. she threw him down the stairs and then threw him into
• the center of the cobbled street.
• --ammit was tired of the violence and death, but that did not stop her from snapping both his knees
• until they were bent ninety degrees in the wrong direction. she did his
• elbows much in the same way, so that they could spin like the blades of a
• windmill. and she pulverized every digit, carpel and vessel in his hands until
• they were no more than a lumpy pulp within a glove of skin.
• she used the paring knife which she stabbed into his tongue and roughly bifurcated
• it, uncaring as to how much she cut or
• didn't cut. the result was so repulsive that even she nearly had to turn away
• from her handiwork-butchery. and in a last cruel gesture, she used the knife
• to carve into his forehead a forbidden character from the language of hell,
• denoting a class of demon so vile that even the devil's great halls of
• suffering rejects them.
• ---ammit returned to the apartment where she delivered a halfhearted
• roundhouse to the man with the silly-straw spine, collapsing half his
• skull in upon itself. she threw the corpses into the street, at last satisfied that she
• could do no more justice upon these men and left them to rot.
• ---she then went to attend the girl's dead mother, patiently taking the time to
• wipe the woman with a warm cloth and dress her in a elegant, colorful garment
• hanging in the closet.
• ---finally, ammit carried the woman's body over the little girl so that she may offer her prayers
•  
• with final tears, ammit spirited away the little girl. away from her father's atrocity.