Ernst Salome and the Tigers

Ernst Salome and the TigersErnst Smoking The HookahErnst The Arab PrinceSeignac Cupid Disarmed
Ethan dropped on his assailant with both knees, driving the breath out of him, with luck breaking a few of his ribs and crushing his spleen to paste. He clawed at the gloved hand that held the gun, seized possession of the weapon, fumbled it, and with dismay saw it clatter out of easy reach.Although his skull must be ringing like the bells of Notre Dame, the creep flailed at Ethan and snared a fistful of his hair, twisted it painfully, tried to pull his face down toward to be dead, but he had seemed to be dead before. Fric watched the fight from an art-film angle and through a crimson haze, wondering why the director of photography had chosen to shoot an action scene with a distorting lens and a red filter.All this he wondered and worried about not with full attention but dreamily, as if he were asleep and having two nightmares at the same time, one involving two men in mortal combat bared and snapping teeth.Fearing the teeth, Ethan nevertheless clamped his right hand on the man’s throat to pin him, and then punched, left knuckles to right eye, and punched again, but still his hair was twined in those iron fingers and being drawn out by the roots. He felt a thick jewelry chain around the maniac’s throat and thought to twist it, twisted and punched, twisted and punched, until his left hand ached and the taut chain, having scored the fingers of his right hand, finally broke like cheap string.The teeth stopped snapping. The eyes fixed on something beyond Ethan, beyond the night itself. Limp fingers released twisted locks of hair.Gasping, rising from the dead man, Ethan looked at the chain in his hand. A locket. A glass sphere in which floated a watchful eye. Moloch seemed