Title: Appetizer
Fandom: Ghost Rider (comics)
Rating: T
Length: 2500
Summary: A man faces his reckoning for the people he has harmed---and becomes a snack for a demon. Continues my previous fic in this 'verse, "You Must Feel The Burn," picks up after Ghost Rider Noble Kale, Robot Racer Robbie Reyes, and Blackheart's ex-hench-demon Black Rose leave a Buffalo Wild Wings in Indiana to go wreck some white nationalists. Breitbart-News-Reader POV, mention of previous sexual abuse and violence, torture, badness.
Fills the prompt "Point" and the bingo square "History."

Mark loved reading Clive Cussler novels, not starring in them.

He was stripped to his boxers, duck-taped hand-and-foot to his own swivel chair in his home office, his red hat gone, the crown of his head shamefully bare. It was supposed to be easy to get out of duck tape. Anyway, this was never supposed to happen to him.

He was the kind of man who did the taping. He'd thought.

He stared up at the six-point rack that hung over his PC, the antlers casting moving shadows against the corkboard as one of the intruders nosed around his ranch on a Harley soft-tail. The big gunsafe was behind him. He had his AR in there, and a shotgun and a box of 12-gauge slugs for hunting deer, perfect to put a hole in the trash invading his home, teasingly inaccessible. He scooted around anyway, dragging the tape around the chair base, to gaze at the safe.

When he got turned around enough to look over his shoulder, he startled.

There was a woman lying at the base of the gunsafe, her feet tied with something white, and her hands behind her back. A red-head. Two pig-tails, making her look younger than she was, which Mark didn't mind. The way her hands were bound, her chest pushed up at him.

“Oh, please,” she begged. “Help me. They're coming back—coming back to hurt me. I'll do anything!”

“I'm a little busy being tied to this chair, missy,” Mark grunted. “Wait a minute. When'd you get here?”

“I've been here the whole time,” the woman panted. “You have to stop them. You have friends. Guns!”

That he did, Mark acknowledged. Guns, friends with guns, and a few other things. “What do I want, what can I get,” he muttered. “What do I want, what can I get.”

“Could your friends stop them?”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Yeah, just got to get the message out—Roy'll get the boys in line, Roy's solid—unless he overdid the booze—and the whiz-kid. Ryan, Private Ryan. Whoever this asshole is, gonna be nothing but a bloody smear when I'm done with him.”

“The boys?” the woman asked. She had soft pink lips, and a little gap between her teeth. Freckles on her nose and her cleavage.

“Yeah,” Mark assured her. “My boys, me and Roy's boys, Forthreit Motorcycle Club. Not just motorcycles, not anymore. We're soldiers. Protecting the real America. Not the America pushed on us by the mainstream media, the @#&#$s and the $@&!%s and the fucking $&%@#s. The Real America. Real people, like you and me.”

“Shouldn't we call the police?” the woman protested. “Get them arrested?”

Mark bit his cheek, thinking of Ryan's stash in his old utility shed by the cow pasture. “Probably best we handle this ourselves.”

“You're right,” the woman said. She was standing now. Unbound. When had she—?

He wasn't complaining. “Hey. Hey, get me loose.”

“Call your friends,” she demanded. “Hurry.” And she ripped the tape off his arms with her bare hands. The tape tore at his arm hair, and he hissed. Stared at the gun safe.

“Forget the boys, just let me get into the safe! I'll run 'em off!” Mark leaned down to peel his legs free, but the woman stopped him with a hand under his chin.

“No. Call your friends. Tell them to come ready for a fight.”

“I'll handle this myself, it's just two guys—”

“No,” she insisted. “You're right. You need to handle this yourselves, but you've got to get the job done. That means everyone working together. You can't risk what you've built. Where's your phone?”

“Pants pocket,” Mark grunted. Wherever his pants were. He didn't remember getting tied up, he'd just staggered up from the couch at a loud knocking, opened the door to see a hippie wearing a Lakers jersey under a flannel work-shirt, a shrimpy Mexican with pierced ears, and...a female thing, behind them in the shadows. And he couldn't remember anything until a minute ago, staring up at the rack of the whitetail buck Ryan had shot last fall. His head didn't hurt, and he didn't feel nauseated. What—

He was tied to his office-chair hand and foot. A woman stood in front of him, holding out a cell phone. Short, freckles, red hair, cute rack. “Oh, thank Golly you're awake,” she exclaimed. “They took my phone, they're coming back for me, they'll hurt me, Mark, they're animals.” She held up his phone. “Call Roy. And Ryan. Tell them to get everyone, we need everyone here. We have to take care of this ourselves, we're too close! We can't risk what we've built!”

“What are you doing here?” Mark demanded, squinting. “Do I know you?”

“I'm Roy's...friend,” she said, looking down and blushing. “They dumped me here. They got your place surrounded, Mark. But they don't know us. They don't know Forthright Motorcycle Club.”

“No, they don't,” Mark agreed. “Get me loose.”

The woman set the phone down and tugged ineffectually on the duck tape. “I can't—they're coming! Should I call 911?”

“No, no.” Mark gave her his PIN to unlock the phone. “Get Roy, he's in charge after me.” She fumbled through the menus. Mark gritted his teeth; you'd think she'd never used a smart-phone before. “Roy. There! That's him. Call him. Just push Send. Green button. Oh, Jesus.” She dropped the phone, scooped it up, scowled at him. “I know, I know, taking the Lord's name in vain, now could you hurry the fuck up, lady!”

She called Roy, held the phone up to the side of his face. Mark clenched his fists, hoping Roy would pick up. Hoping he hadn't already drunk his way to sleep.

“Talk to me,” Roy said after the second ring.

“Scramble the men!” Mark yelled. “Get everyone out to the ranch, there's a #@%& and his %&#$ sniffing around, they tied me to a damn chair, they're gonna find the stuff, Roy. This is not a drill!”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone!”

“Even Private Ryan?”

“Especially Private Ryan.”

Roy paused, rustling over the line. “Say, Mark, what's the weather forecast tomorrow?”

“Blood and hailstones pouring from the heavens,” Roy chuckled.

“No shit?”

“No shit. Rubber hits the road tonight. At this point in history, someone's gotta draw first blood. And it's gonna be us.”

“No shit!”

“Hurry.”

“I'm hurrying.” More rustling. “I'll get the word out. How soon did you say?”

“Right now. Right now. They're sniffing around the ranch as we speak, I told you, I am literally tied to a chair right now.”

“You sure about that weather forecast?” Roy asked skeptically.

“Sure as anything. Got a little chickadee helping me, says she's a friend of yours.”

The woman's lips thinned.

“Carla?” Roy demanded. “Carla's with you?”

“It's me, Beth,” the woman interjected, grabbing the phone away. “Don't say you forgot me, Roy? Who's Carla?”

“Gimme the phone back,” Mark demanded, before they could get too distracted. “I'm tied to a chair, get help, get the boys to bring the thunder. And Ryan!”

“Who's Carla?” the woman demanded, her voice rising. Roy hung up.

“Find a fucking pair of scissors, woman, get me loose!” Mark demanded, as she stared down at the phone with a satisfied expression.

She tossed the phone over her shoulder and it cracked against the gunsafe.

“Woman!”

“No,” she said, turning her back. She went to the window and peered out, at the shifting lights that circled the ranch. “I'm absolutely fucking famished, Mark Thompson,” she said. Her voice was cold, suddenly. Strong, flat.

“Get me loose and I'll heat up a pizza,” Mark said impatiently. “The scissors are in that drawer. By your hand.”

“I feel like I haven't eaten in thirty years.”

“Lady, we got bigger problems!”

She turned to look at him over her shoulder. Mark recoiled. She had no face, just a black void, with two cold glowing eyes. Her hair loosened from its pigtails and rose around her head, live spiny black tendrils, and her clothing vanished like smoke. Not a woman. Not a human being. “They won't miss what I'll take.” And she stepped behind him, as he cranked his neck back to watch her, eyes wide with horror and muscles straining against the tape, and the hair on her head reached down, hooked into his skin, coiled around his throat, stabbed into his veins and nerves like roots seeking water, and pulled and pulled—

Mark stared down at his lap, dazed. He was duck-taped to a chair in his home office, stripped to his boxers, hands and feet numb with cold, and so weak he could barely lift his head to see the six-point rack that hung on the wall above the cork-board. The woman, Beth or whoever, who'd helped him call Roy, was gone, and she hadn't untaped him. His head pounded and he felt nauseated. He heard footsteps in the house.

“Beth!” he croaked. “Lady?”

Last he remembered, she'd said something about being hungry. Maybe she was making herself some dinner. But the footsteps sounded slow and heavy to belong to such a small woman. “Roy?” he called, hopefully.

Couldn't be the Mexican, He wasn't much taller than the woman. Maybe the hippie.

The footsteps drew closer. He could feel them shaking the floorboards. He heard a dull clink of chains—maybe Saul, he was a big guy. “I'm in here!” he called. His voice came out faint, quavering. “Get me outta here!”

A warm yellow light glowed behind him from the doorway, and he felt welcome heat on the back of his neck. “Oh, thank God,” he sighed. “Get me outta here, the keys are in the truck. I think I gotta go to the ER, something's wrong.”

“Yes,” said a terrible voice from above him. It was deep, thundering through his chest, but the words were almost lost under the crackle of flames and rush of wind. “You conspire against the innocent.”

Not Saul. Mark jerked in his chair, overbalanced, and cracked to the floor on his back. He stared up at a bright yellow light. The fire that illuminated his office. A human skull, stripped clean of flesh, tilting down at him in expressionless judgment. “What are you,” he hissed. “What do you want, what are you, you mutie fucker, you demonic sonofabitch—”

The specter reached down and grabbed the chair, jerked him upright as if he weighed nothing. It was a biker, human-shaped, wearing fucking blue jeans and a spiked jacket, gloves, and where he could see down its neck-hole, nothing inside at all, just bone and fire. “I am not demonic,” it boomed. “I am your punishment.”

As it reached for his face, Mark twisted his face away, looking for someone, anyone. He saw the Mexican kid standing in the corner, one eye flashing in the light of the ghost's fires, fists clenched. “Help me,” Mark pleaded. “Please. Don't let him kill me, I don't deserve to die—”

“Me, neither,” the kid said. “Shit happens.”

The ghost seized him by the jaw, bent low over his face. Mark stared helplessly into the voids of its eyesockets, at the little cracks and pores in the scoured bone. “Mark Thompson. You conspire against the innocent. Your intentions are evil and your actions cruel. You will feel your victims' pain.”

And in the ghost's eyes, Mark saw, Mark felt:

In 1992, Mark, with his friends Roy and Earl, had savagely beaten a classmate on two separate occasions. He felt his own boots in his kidneys, his own ribs shattering, teeth loose in his mouth. He felt the decades of fear, the long and stuttering recovery that was never complete.

In 1998, Mark had married Sophie Springfield, and he had used her when he'd wanted, ignored her when he didn't. He had raped his wife, and now he felt himself rape himself. He felt her despair, her guilt.

In 2001, Sophie gave him his first son, Mark Junior. She had not been ready for children, but he'd insisted. He felt her labor. He felt the future closing in on her, all thoughts of divorce and escape shuttering under the need to provide for this new life. He felt her give birth to their second son, Dave, and their daughter, Cindy. He felt her sleepless anxiety for the three children she'd brought into his home.

In 2002, Mark had swerved to strike a marmot as it crossed the road. He felt his pelvis shattered, the hours of agony before the blood-loss took him.

Between 2009 and 2014, Mark had begun to drink every night and regularly strike Sophie and Dave: Sophie because she did not love him, Dave because he was weak. Mark Junior, following his example, hit his sister, took her things. He felt every blow, felt the crawling anxiety that rose in their spines whenever Mark and Mark Junior came home, and the shame in Sophie's heart at Mark Junior's violence, and her failure to protect Dave and Cindy.

Since he'd bought his first car, Mark had plastered every vehicle he drove with his opinions. He felt the shock of fear, the guardedness, the paranoia he inspired in those he threatened.

In 2010, Mark stole wages from his ranch-hands and chased them out of town, bad-mouthed them to other ranchers. He felt their betrayal, their desperation.

In 2011, Mark lead Roy and three other friends to beat two migrant workers and burn down the trailer they'd rented. He felt their terror, their broken bones, the despair of one man and the helpless fury of the other.

In 2015, when Sophie divorced him, Mark had drugged and raped his cousin's wife. He felt her bewilderment, her shock, the terror that built and built as the evidence of what had happened mounted without ever answering who had hurt her.

In 2017, Mark had struck a counterprotester from behind with a tire iron. He felt the shock, the nerve damage.

In the ghost's eyes, Mark saw his life. He saw his value and his place in society, and the reward due him for his actions. As the ghost released him, his head dropped, but the pain and horror remained. Kill me, he thought, too weak to make words. Undo me, burn me away.

But the ghost turned away and left him.

The Mexican kid stepped forward, lifted Mark's chin, looked his face over with his mismatched eyes. Snapped his fingers behind his head.

“Kill me,” Mark managed.

“I don't need to,” the kid said. And he, too, turned and left Mark alone with the weight of his sin.