“What the…” Medium was in shock. And that was the moment. One of the sharks circling the skies turned downward to face him. Then, with unbelievable speed, it plunged toward Medium. He didn’t even have time to react.
The shark’s jaws gaped open, revealing a mouth full of raw redness, and Medium saw that it was packed full of layers and layers of sharp teeth.
A cry of despair escaped from Medium’s lips. A cry that seemed to be squeezed out of his whole body.
Medium raised his left arm reflexively to protect his head, and it was this that the shark bit into.
The next moment, Medium’s whole body was lifted into the air.
“Aaaargh!” Medium shrieked. The flesh on his arm was being shredded noisily, Medium’s own body weight pulling him down against the teeth. The pain was unbearable. Completely disorientated now, he swung his knife wildly at the shark, and there was an explosion of sparks and noise.
The magnetized blade didn’t reach the shark but instead was repelled in midair amid a blaze of sparks and lightning.
“Agh! It hurts, it hurts…aarrgh…”
Half-crazed now, he waved his arm around like a madman, but then another shark’s teeth took hold of his knife-wielding arm. Medium’s body was spread in a Y-shape, and he was lifted through the air in a giant arc, no more than a meat puppet.
His legs flailed in the air, and two more sharks bit into each of them. He was now splayed like an X, ready to be ripped to pieces. His flesh was cut to ribbons, almost as if he’d been run through a giant sewing machine, and there were loud ripping noises as the sharks tore the meat from the man’s bones.
Medium cried out, piercing and shrill. His lungs and throat screamed automatically, so intense was the pain of being ripped to pieces. He lost all control of his body, and urine started dribbling from his crotch.
Then Medium’s voice stopped. He was so overwhelmed by fear that he could no longer make a sound.
A number of other sharks approached, prodding his crotch with their snouts. They seemed drawn to the smell of his urine.
Before long, one of them bit into his crotch. Medium could only cry out in a pathetic whimper. Then, as if that was the signal to go, the sharks all piled into the area between his legs, teeth bared.
Medium’s unearthly screams echoed throughout Paradise.
≡
“You poor thing. What a violent visitor you had to put up with, Tweedledee,” Faceman said, staring into space. “Head straight on over to First Aid and have them fix you up. Your arms should be better in two or three days. There’s a good boy. Let’s just check that there were no other victims. We’re fine over at this end.”
Faceman then turned his attention back to that which was right in front of him: Boiled.
In turn Boiled tried to guess what Faceman’s words had meant—all the while with his gun pointed firmly at the Professor’s face. His own expression was blank and inorganic, as if his face were competing with the muzzle of the gun to see which could come across as more inhuman.
Faceman looked him up and down for a good while, then sighed deeply. “Violence comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.”
That was the moment a piercing scream ripped through the calm of the white birch forest.
First there was the scream. Then, a sharp silver object. It fell in an arc, but was repelled by Faceman and Boiled’s
Boiled glanced toward it. A knife. The one Medium used. Its blade was shot to pieces, with magnetized sparks flying off it.
The screams came closer and arrived like a storm.
Faceman was still looking at Boiled, and at that moment something fell from the sky and nearly onto Boiled’s head.
Red droplets.
A handful dripped down on the grass here and there. Then, all of a sudden, redness fell like rain.
Boiled and Faceman were in the midst of a sudden vermilion shower. Blood and flesh rained down from the heavens.
The cries grew closer. They were now almost overhead. The white birch trees were streaked with red. Thousands of unidentifiable pieces of crunched-up flesh and bone rained down, catching on the leaves, drawing down the branches with their weight.
The surroundings were now painted a vivid white and red, and a suffocating smell of blood filled Boiled’s nose. Faceman, of course, had a nose but no lungs.
Only the areas immediately surrounding Faceman and Boiled remained clear.
Beyond their invisible domes were the fleeting shadows of the giant fish, cutting through the red and white.
“The Cherubim—guardian angels of Paradise. They’re particularly obedient to Tweedledee’s orders.” Faceman’s eyes narrowed, and he looked up at the school of sharks flying around overhead. “They have installed in them a type of
