Ashes to Ashes, Blood to Blood

January 22, 2013February 8, 2013 ~ blazemcrob ~ 27 Comments

The breeze, gentle at first, carries the voice to my mind. “No, not again!” I think, cupping my hands over my ears, trying to keep from hearing its taunting, knowing that I can handle only so much of this.

Night after night it comes, and even though I expect it to surround me, it finds a way to sneak in when my guard is down. I’m leveled by its assault, barely able to think, and unable to retain any semblance of vertigo. I fall to the carpet, writhing in pain, and my mind gets ever so close to the abyss separating sanity from insanity. Nearer and nearer I approach the gash dividing reality from what does not exist. And the drop from the precipice to what lies below is long and deep. Yes, it is like a bottomless well, devoid of water and waiting to fill itself with whatever it can.

“No, you can’t have me!” I shout. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

Laughter . . . laughter joins in with the whispered words, knowing I will crack, that it is only a matter of time. If anything, the laughter is worse, forcing its way on my entire body, its vibrations rubbing against my flesh, working along the distraught hairs on the back of my neck and radiating outward from there. I retch from the sensations of thousands of bugs crawling over me, knowing they will bite, but not sure when. The remembrance of biting bed bugs from a long ago place and time reach my mind, and I fear that they are here in my study and attacking me with their taunting presence before they bite and suck out my precious life-giving fluid.

Slapping wildly against the onslaught, I know I have stepped over the line when their teeth find their mark and my body convulses in the agony.

Just enough biting; just enough blood removed; and just enough crawling. Always the push is ever so close, enough to push me to the brink, but not all the way over. Yes, the voice knows; it always knows. Enough of the voice! I must defeat it.

“You cannot ignore me forever, you know,” the voice whispers in my ear, the words moving the bugs to the side. “You will listen to me; you have no choice.”

“No! Leave me!” I holler. “You don’t exist.”

Silence . . . blessed silence, but it does not last.

“Ah, but I do exist. I existed before, I exist now, and I will exist in the future.”

The present; the future. I must not allow this creature access to these two-time continuums. If I do . . . No, I cannot even think of what might happen.

I force myself up, working against the vertigo problems, not wanting to subject myself to attacks from above. No more can I grovel before the beast. It must be dealt with from a position of strength. Heh, heh. This is how I will defeat it.

A clap of thunder encapsulates my room, and a rumbling beneath me rises up and splits it in two. One of my feet is left on one side, and the other one struggles to maintain balance on the opposite side of the tearing. The chasm becomes wider, and I push off with my right leg, attempting to propel my body to the other side, but my efforts are not enough. My hands grasp the far side as I slip and slide back, reaching for a secure hand-hold but not finding one. Ever closer I get to losing my grip and falling into the darkness below. My body flails against the side of the abyss, looking for a place where I can gain a foothold.

None is to be found.

Blood pours from my hands as I pull myself up ever so slowly, getting away from the forces waiting below. Every hand hold comes with a price attached, my body wracked in pain from the physical assault and the tearing inflicted on me. Finally, with a last heave, my entire body is out, and I am secure under my desk. The two sides slam together in defiance, as if to show me the power still resides within the room.

This time I’m not in any hurry to get back up. My body is beaten down, and I need to recoup. There is more to come; there is always more to come.

The breeze switches to a gale-force wind and blows a dense fog into the room. This is no ordinary fog: I’ve experienced it before. Now! Now is the time to get up.

My head demands release from the torment, but my body is not cooperating. I bob and weave like a punch-drunk boxer having gone one fight too many. Yes, I can’t conceive of fighting even one more round.

The fog is up to my chest, concealing what lies beneath. More suspense; more agony.

Serpentine entities wrap themselves around my legs, squeezing, relaxing their grip then repeating their torture. The veins and arteries in my already pummeled legs scream out in pain, not knowing what the next moment will hold.

“I take it you’re not enjoying the massage the vipers are affording you?”

Staring into the coal-black eyes of the horned beast speaking to me, his prominent brow and deeply creased face glaring at me, the hairs on my body once more tingle. All the stops are being pulled out tonight.

“I’m talking to you, boy” he says, “And I don’t like to be ignored.”

Rage replaces my fear. “Fuck you! Your presence is unwelcome here.”

Lightning and thunder reverberate through the room, being the outlet for his anger.

“Not welcome here? You have no choice in the matter. You don’t dictate what happens. I do.”

Scenes from days gone by play like a panorama of horror against the walls, ceilings, and floors of my room. And then . . . and then they become alive once more, the dancing, naked bodies and their conjuration circle; the altar with a frightened virgin laid out upon it, her virginity attacked mercilessly as demon after demon take her and inject their seed into her, so many of them that the blood from her womb flows out onto the altar and then to the floor, the rivers formed from the confluence of blood and juices beating a horrid staccato against the floor.

And they come to me, tearing my clothes off and leading me to the altar. As before, I am always the last one to penetrate the woman lying before me. I cannot fight it. The forces against me are too strong. How I am able to rise up and perform as a man is a mystery. I am disgusted at what I am forced to do, and yet, at the same time, excitement bursts from my loins and I do what is demanded of me.

She stares at me, still in shock at what has transpired, but her eyes tell me she understands.

“You are weak,” the horned one says. You have always been weak. But that doesn’t matter. You were not conceived for the purpose of your own strength. Yours is another facet of birth.”

His words fly into my mind, knocking my mental stability down even lower, but the anger in me from what he has implied – no, more than implied – keeps me from going over the edge. What is he saying? I must know.

He laughs. “No need for you to speak to me. I know your thoughts. Ah, it is not for me to answer your questions tonight. She . . . she will answer them.”

My mind swirls from all I have seen and done, my eyes closing, attempting to refocus. When they open again, my study is as it was before anything happened, and I am clothed once more. It is as if everything that happened was only present in my mind.

But I know better.

The voice returns to me again, this time more insistent, not attempting to convince me now. Demands are hollered into my ears, my head shaken by the impact.

No more can I hide in my study. It is time to confront my demons.

I follow the voice to the cemetery. Yes, I know where it is coming from. As much as I have feared this moment, I realize it is necessary for me to attack the demons running rampant through my mind.

The mist, the same fog as before, has settled over the grave, but it parts when I arrive, exposing a shovel resting against the headstone. Trembling with fear, I take it into my hands and start digging.

With each pass through the dirt, the voice gets louder, telling me to dig faster, echoing its need for release. Sweat pours off me, my confusion and fear melding together. What do I do when the source from which the voice emanates is laid out before me? Releasing the demon cannot be a good thing but, then again, how do I silence the voice forever?

Shovel after shovel removes the dirt until I hit the top of the coffin. Instead of an increased volume from the voice, there is silence. A trick! Yes, this is a ploy. I am supposed to be lulled into a sense of false security, but that won’t work. I can’t be tricked that easily.

But what do I do now! I need to open the coffin and satisfy my curiosity once and for all. If nothing is here to worry about, then I can put my mind at ease.

Then again, the possibility exists that maybe all of this does reside entirely in me. Am I losing it? Is my mind going?

I must find out! I must!

With a vengeance, I tear the shovel into the coffin, not caring about any damage I might incur. What difference does that make? She is already dead. When I’m done, I’ll cover everything back up again.

I grasp at the last remnants of the lid and tear it off. I must see her now!

Looking down, a bright moon at my back, I stare at her and smile.

There’s nothing here to worry about,” I think. “She’s dead. As dead as they come.”

Starting to shovel the dirt back in on top of the coffin, I stop as soon as I start. She sits up, pieces of flesh dangling down from areas on her skeleton, teasing me with their very presence. The musky odor surrounding her almost forces me to pass out, and her eye sockets, long ago remaindered to empty holes, take on a red glow and stare at me. A smile breaks out on her skull, flashing those perfect teeth she always had when she was alive.

“I knew you would come, my son,” she says. “It took you a while, but my faith in you never wavered.”

My heart beats faster than it has ever beaten before. Never have I been so afraid. All the things happening around me when I was growing up are nothing compared to this. My mother, dead for five years, is still alive: if you can call her condition anything close to normal. All these years, she has called to me, imploring me to come to her, but I refused. Until tonight. My supposed closure is anything but.

“I gave you life years ago,” she says. “Now . . . now it is your turn to reciprocate. You will give me life.”

My mind reaches for an answer to what she is saying, but none is forthcoming.

“You are confused, my son. Don’t be. I pushed you out into the world forty years ago, and now you will do the same for me.”

Horror burns through every fiber of my being as she grabs me and pulls my body into what remains of her vagina. She and I both convulse as my adult persona is totally absorbed into her birth canal. She writhes in pain as the size of me works past her vaginal opening and rejuvenates her long dead body, bringing life back to her once more. My blood pours out of me and into her, supplying her with the precious liquid she so needs to live once more.

I scream out in pain, the sounds muffled between her thighs and that part of her expelling me so many years before.

She lies in the coffin a little longer, waiting for the pain to subside and the transformation to become complete. Five years is a long time to wait for a second coming.

“He was such a good son,” she says . . .

~ Blaze McRob

Run

January 1, 2013July 29, 2013 ~ Joseph Pinto ~ 46 Comments

A run; a run no different from any other morning that had come before. The sun groped with lazy fingers the mounds littering the reed-choked hills. Above the slickened grass, the evening gasped its last breath in wispy tendrils of fog. Boots pounded broken road; dew kicked up against sodden pants. A run; a run with the dirt-laden shovel cradled in his arms. The mounds forgotten at his back.

But on this morning the old-timer sat. Waiting.

He froze, keen to the presence of another set of eyes, sweat in long strands down his cheeks. Tongue darted corner to corner along his mouth, tasting, swallowing. He enjoyed the tang of his toil. Eventually he cocked his head. Saw the old-timer slumped within a rocker, set up on a sunken porch just off the lane. He stared the old-timer down. The old-timer stared back.

“Ayup,” old-timer grimaced, lips pinched by unseen fingers.

Gravel crunched beneath boots; slowly the shovel lowered from his arms. “What are you doing out here?” he uttered, stoic in the middle of the backwoods road.

Old-timer: “Naw much. Jus joyin anotha morn.”

Chest heaved despite his calm; he took a step closer to the old-timer’s ruined cabin. He had run past it a dozen times. Always seemed deserted. He regretted that he never checked. Never bothered to force his way inside. “Too chilly for your bones, don’t you think? A fellow your age should keep inside. Stay warm.”

“Wutha-man says gonna warm soon nuff. I believe in wut tha wutha-man says. Don’t ya?”

He looked around. Chewed at the bottom of his lip until it oozed coppery satisfaction. From the road: “I don’t believe in much at all.”

Old-timer: “Nope, I s’pose ya don’t. I s’pose ya don’t look tha type ta believe in anythin tha wutha-man might have ta say. Ya look a different type ta me.”

“And what type might that be?” The blade of the shovel tapped his boot; fingers squeezed upon its hilt.

Old-timer laughed; a warbled thing like a frog caught in death throes. “Type tha takes mattas into his own hans.”

He propped the shovel against his side, studied his hands. Nails chewed and rimmed with dirt, calloused palms caked black. Intrigued, he looked back up. “Never seen you before.”

“Were ya s’posed ta? Ya do nuthin but run. Run is all ya do.”

His eyes narrowed into slits. “So you’ve watched me.”

Old-timer: “Ayup. Lotsa times.”

He clutched the shovel again, scraped it along gravel in the road. “I enjoy my runs,” hissed through clenched teeth.

“Course ya do. Yer fit as a fiddle. I wus like tha once. Long time ago… long time.” Old-timer shook his head, jostling sparse white hair. “But things change afta long times go by, ayup.”

He stepped closer to the cabin’s decayed porch. “Time changes everything.” No bother taken to disguise the rattlesnake in his tone.

Old-timer, squinting: “Yer him, I’m sure ya are,” then swatted at ghosts circling his skull. “People been talkin bout ya ‘fore tha wutha-man comes on at night. Yer him, yessir ya are. Tha runner.”

Eyes drifted to his boots, laces awash in mud. “I told you, I enjoy my runs.”

Old-timer nodded, pleased. “Ayup, tha runner. Knew it was ya. Just knew all tha time. So tell me, runner, where ya runnin to?”

He stalked deliberately, leaning against the old-timer’s fence post, rotted and crooked as a hag’s nose. Shovel tap-tapped atop his boot. “I’m not running from a thing.”

“Nah, ya wasn’t hearin me. Ya wasn’t listenin careful nuff. Didn’t say ya was runnin from somethin. Asked what ya runnin to.”

Doubt lit his eyes. He always had answers.

“Man runnin from somethin is a man in fear. Man runnin toward somethin is a man ta fear. Ayup.”

Tongue slithered inside his mouth, toyed with a pulpy strip caught between molars. He had eaten not too long before; suddenly the urge to eat again seized him. He licked at his lips. “You have something to fear, old man? Maybe something like me?”

Old-timer quipped: “Fear ya? Not t’all.”

He always had answers. Now he searched for one.

Old-timer jerked his head. “Lemme see em.”

“See what?”

“Yer hands, course.”

Hesitation. Eventually he raised one above the fence. Old-timer, eyes sparkling a shade below madness, rose from his creaky chair. Head crooked atop stooped shoulders, old-timer hobbled down the porch steps, across the front path, alongside the fence. “Ayup, tha runner alright.”

“I’m getting tired of this,” he hissed, the shovel slowly ascending above his head.

With deceptive speed, the old-timer sprang over the fence, seized his free hand. “Tha runnerrrrr…” he cooed.

They remained that way, runner and old-timer, hands interlocked like lost brothers now found, eyes fixed and steely. The runner blinked first, noticing the old-timer’s chewed nails, crusty black around the beds, grime etched into wrinkled skin. The shovel lowered.

Old-timer’s hands. So much like his own.

He always had answers. Always, his victims spoke to him. Now he had none.

“I wus fit like ya once. Long time ago… long time ago.”

He jerked his hand back, but old-timer would not let go.

He glanced over old-timer’s shoulder.

“Somethin ya should know. Somethin ya should learn right quick.”

He looked beyond old-timer’s cabin. Glimpsed what had been hidden from his sight for so many runs. Glimpsed for the first time the uneven rows, the shovels pitched crookedly into the dirt, marking each grave.

Mounds littered the hills, both new and old.

“Ya see, I wus tha runner long before ya came ta town, son,” old-timer sang quietly. “And I gots no fear of ya t’all.”

He broke the old-timer’s grasp; shovel clanged to the road. For the first time, the runner ran from something. Ran, boots stumbling across divots in the backwoods road, rising sun looming large in his frantic eyes. Ran from old-timer and his dirty, chewed nails. Ran from old-timer and all the ghosts that kept pace at his side.

“Wus a runner long ‘fore ya came ta town,” old-timer continued to sing. He turned and hobbled back atop his porch. Hobbled into his chair. Sat. Waited. He had plenty of time. Even more shovels. “Be tha runner long after yer gone. Ayup.”

~ Joseph A. Pinto

The Devil Comes To Whitby

December 18, 2012February 8, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 23 Comments

“One must be possessed of the Devil to succeed in any of the arts.”
Voltaire.

When darkness falls the Devil comes to Whitby.

As the sun fades, an old man sits writing in his study. He has lost track of time, though he knows from the light that it is evening and the day is almost spent. He has been sitting here for hours, his head bowed, spine arched from the back of the chair. The study is warm. The house quiet. The soft sound of pen against paper fills the room.

Outside the great bay windows, the seaside town of Whitby passes him by. Traffic backs up in the road; a line of brake-lights glaring like red eyes through his window. Sometimes, as now, the road is busy. Cars shudder and moan as they inch slowly forwards, exhaust fumes pouring into the cold. If he looks carefully, he can see figures in the drivers’ seats. Faceless shapes press against the car windows, their mouths long, eyes wide, limbs thin and hard from living. Life makes ghouls of most men, he thinks, and skeletons of the rest.

Dusk paints the vehicles orange and deep purple. The sea too catches the last colours of the day, the cold tips of its leaping waves silver and gold. It makes a magnificent sight in the evenings. From where he is sitting he cannot see those waves, but he knows that they are there, just over the hill, behind the Church of St. Mary. He walked there often enough with his old girl, before she passed. Pearl loved the sea. His knee still remembers the grainy dampness, from when he proposed to her on the beach almost fifty years ago. His eyes still remember the glimmer of the ring, so much like the shining tips of the waves.

“Sleep tight,” he says quietly. His breath is barely words. His fingers tighten around the pen, which flies faster down the page.

Outside, the shadows lengthen. The street begins to grow dark. The bay windows allow for light into his study, but there is little of it left. The old man stiffens in his seat, knowing without turning that soon the shadows will reach his chair and then they will not be shadows at all, but other things. It is the same every evening.

Each night the Devil wears a different shape.

The road is not always busy. Sometimes hours will pass without him seeing a single soul, except for the cats that stalk the streets. He has always been more of a dog person. Their last, Russell, was a haggard Highland Terrier. The dog had loved Pearl almost as much as he had. She had chosen Russell herself. He still hears the dog, sometimes, barking at the morning post, although he knows that is not possible.

He hears many things, though he does not hear the Devil when He comes.

The sun is a sliver over the rooftops, then it is gone. Darkness spreads through the room, followed by the cold that accompanies it, and for the briefest moment the old man pauses in his writing. Then the lamp on his desk flickers on. With a cavernous gurgle the radiator revives itself, a wave of warmth spilling into the study. Shadows flee across the walls from the lamplight, scuttling like vast beetles into the corners of the room.

He can feel the Devil standing over him. There is no reflection in the bay windows. He sees only himself at his desk, and the inside of the study reflecting in the blackness of the glass, and the weak, sporadic flashing of the Christmas lights in other gardens down the street.

Sea breath blows down his neck, accompanied by a voice.

“Hello, Joseph.”

His hand is a flurry of movement now. Words spill across the blank pages beneath him. The room begins to spin. He writes more than he has written all day. The words are not especially eloquent or sophisticated but they are honest and – he dares to think – beautiful.

The Devil is by his side now. He can see Him out of the corner of his eyes; a small, naked figure in the lamplight. Sensing He has been noticed, the Devil barks and begins lapping hurriedly at his jeans.

At first the old man flinches. He does not want to look to the figure by his chair but his eyes are drawn there nonetheless. Turning, he looks down. His face contorts, the pen slipping from his hand.

This is the shape the Devil has picked today.

She is not as he remembers her looking. Her hair is matted and wet. Eyes stare back at him from the bloated cushion of her face. Arms that had once been soft and dry are limp and pale, like two starved eels at her sides. She is how they found her, when they pulled her from the sea that cold December afternoon.

Grinning, Pearl licks faster at his legs; long, lapping motions revealing a fat, discoloured tongue. Two beetles tumble from the hollows of her mouth.

Snatching up his pen, he gives himself to the Devil.

Tears fill his eyes as he writes. This is not the hurried scribbling of before but careful, considered work. Sometimes the Devil comes as strangers, or friends he has not yet met. Once, Old Nick wore the skin of his mother, and it had been her, down to the flick of her hair, the age of her eyes, the humble pink of her cheeks. She had passed less than a week before and he could have hugged her and kissed her and spent the rest of forever lying next to her on the hard wooden floor of the study.

Every time the Devil visits, he feels. Sometimes he laughs. Mostly he cries. Always, the Devil drains him dry. Hell hath no fury like a man inspired.

Presently, he realises he is alone. He senses it is very late. The hush of the sea is quiet in his ears. Looking down, he stares at the pages below him, though he cannot bring himself to read them back just yet.

He wonders who is better off; the ghouls who live or the skeletons in their graves.

He rises slowly from the chair. His hands push back against the armrests. Bones crack as he straightens up, and again when he turns. Switching off the light he exits the study, pausing only to kiss a photo of his wife as he passes it.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, “Rest in Peace, Love, even if I can’t.”

Taking himself to bed he falls quickly asleep, and half-wakes only once that night, his eyes wet, to the whimpering of a dog, downstairs.

~ Thomas Brown

Diseased

November 20, 2012January 14, 2014 ~ Daemonwulf ~ 34 Comments

I’m infected. Chewed up by an army of secrets, I’ve felt a thousand sets of viral teeth feasting on me over the years. I shouldn’t have let it happen, but there really wasn’t much I could do.

The noise surrounding me is deafening. It’s a tremendous ringing in my ears that pushes the memories of the many things I’ve done first into, and then out of, focus. At times, it seems almost a blessing that remembering has become difficult.

From somewhere far away, a woman’s voice calls out.

“Gaaaaaaabrieeeeeelllll…!”

The veil of clarity parts, and I realize who I am.

My name’s Gabriel Merchant — of Hastings, Nebraska. I was a small-town, farm boy who once played wide receiver for the Kenesaw High Blue Devils. On the outside, I was popular — at least for all those things I allowed people to see. But on the inside, I couldn’t have been any more alone.

“Gaaaaaabe! C’mon in! Supper’s on the table…”

I see Mama. She’s standing on the back porch. A grease-spattered apron tied around her waist covers the house dress she’s worn most days since Daddy’s departure. Her sad eyes search the yard and periodically gaze into the cornfields as she nervously dries her hands on the filthy dish towel she keeps by the sink.

At my feet, the body of the dying calf convulses, belching its fluids onto the dirt floor of the barn. The slit I’ve opened in its belly is a jagged line connecting groin to gullet. Blood, bile and bits of undigested food create a stew of filth on the ground, while layers of exposed flesh, splayed open, begs me. It will need to wait. Mama’s calling…

I drop the still-warm carcass into the hole I’ve dug. It lands with a heavy thud atop the pile of rotting animal skins and maggot-scavenged bones of the others. Anticipation stirs my groin, promising more pleasure than any unfulfilled romance I’ve contemplated. And my insides quiver with the knowledge of what’s to come, feeding my illness.

Mama’s urgent calls echo in my head as I drop the cover on my secret grave. Before the plywood slams shut, I reflexively avoid the empty gaze of the human skull that stares up at me.

With Rusty my Pointer at my side, his tail battering my leg, I leave the barn. The mare in the corner stall snorts her approval of our departure.

Mama’s face fades. Rusty’s no longer there. Instead, I’m lying in the mud. It’s dark. It’s still raining. I’m back on the island. And there’s so much blood on my hands…

The clouds have been open for hours. And a cold wind blows across the field. The frayed leather chinstrap on my helmet tickles my right ear as heavy droplets of rain fall from the sky. They slap at my face and bounce off my helmet – a tinny metal drum that beats inside my mind.

Tap…tap…tap…

Bullets whiz past my head. Incoming artillery fire spits mud into the air. It splashes in great chunks around me as I listen to the roar of the propeller-driven engines on a squadron of planes flying overhead. The earth rumbles, shaken by the impact of the payload dropping through the night sky. In the distance, explosions draw a hellish orange line that stretches across the horizon as far as my good eye can see.

My situation’s clear. I remember who I am. I’m Private First Class Gabriel Merchant, 4^th Marine Division. It’s Wednesday, March 7, 1945. I’m on Iwo Jima. And I’m dying.

Tap…tap…tap…goes the drumbeat of rain on my helmeted skull.

My left eye looks out into a hazy world of liquid red.

There’s so much blood on my face…

I know its blood — I’ve tasted it so many times. What most people don’t know is that’s quite different depending upon how it’s drawn. Mine is warm and oily on my tongue, laced with the familiar notes of fear. It streams into my throat, and I feel it dripping out again through the hole in the back of my skull.

My disease is killing me.

This isn’t how I’d imagined my end would come. Not that I ever gave it much thought. But it never crossed my mind that I’d die alone, lying in the mud, in a place I’d never heard of, somewhere in the middle of ocean I’d never seen, and with my right arm holding my stomach tight to keep my bowels from escaping their rightful place inside my gut.

Tap…tap…tap…

I didn’t see him coming. His first strike entered my body just beneath my right eye and continued on until it shattered bone at the back of my head. As he withdrew his weapon, my spine shuddered, his blade scraping against bone much like fingernails on a chalkboard. He offered only a momentary pause, before plunging it in again, this time deep into my abdomen.

Slamming me onto my back, he drove me into the mud with a force that ripped the M1 from my shoulder, shearing its leather strap in two. Now, my only weapon lay somewhere off in the darkness out of reach.

Amid the barrage of gunfire and the shouts of the others in my platoon frantically barking orders back and forth, a familiar odor assaults my nostrils. It’s the smell of cinnamon, or what I know to be the scent of death.

For the first time in my life, I realize how they must have felt.

Tap…tap…tap…

There’s so much blood on my hands.

Back home, I was always the predator. Without much else to do, hunting was my life. I never tired of the comfort of a trigger or the satisfying kick into my shoulder as the bullet left its chamber. Maybe the only thing better was the heft of a knife and the satisfaction as it cut life short, shearing off the fingers that, inevitably, tried to fight back.

Tap…tap…tap…

He stabbed at me with a fury I hadn’t thought possible. The speed and precision of his attacks were almost painless as he stabbed through layers of my flesh and into bone. The missing fingers on my left hand ache, having been sliced off, reducing my arm to a leaking stub that now spilled blood onto my chest.

Even through the din on the battlefield, I hear him breathing. While I haven’t seen his face, I imagine the look in his eyes. I sense his accomplishment as it oozes from his pores and slickens the skin beneath his clothing. Oh, the satisfaction. I know it all too well.

Tap…tap…tap…

I became infected at the age of 10. It all began, innocently enough, with a rabbit in a trap. While only a few months old, it had so much zest for life that it nearly chewed through its own leg to escape. And, once released, it was barely able to move. But I followed it for nearly an hour as it dragged itself around the pasture. I’ll never forget the brightness in its eyes as I lowered my axe on its neck. I watched, intently, until its lights went out.

Afterwards, my disease quickly spread — my actions growing worse as each day passed. If Daddy had been basic training, the Marine Corps was my proving ground.

Tap…tap…tap…

The bringer of my own death stands quiet. As he moves to my side, I see the outline of his body for the first time.

A criss-crossing pattern of tracer bullets strafe the night sky, cutting through the smoke from anti-aircraft fire. The shape of Death strobes in and out of focus. I find it hard to believe what I’m seeing. He’s much larger than expected. And he smells of shit.

The odor fouls the air. It takes a moment, but I realize it’s the smell of my own bowels as they evacuate my body for the last time.

In his left hand, Death carries multiple blades. They glisten with a mixture of blood, viscera and rain that courses off their impossibly sharp points.

Funny, I think, I’m left-handed too.

Thump… Thump… Thump…

My heart slows.

The rain falls harder. The bombers continue past.

How long has it been? Two minutes? Five?

Time no longer has meaning, but it’s the only thing left.

Breathing heavily, Death closes in, lowering his head toward whatever is left of mine. I can barely see him, but I smell his diseased breath. It’s sour with the same infection that feeds on me.

Thump……. Thump……. Thump…….

As my lungs drown in blood, Death kneels at my side. Rainwater streams off his contorted head and batters my face as he brings his nose close to mine. I see his eyes for the first time. They’re blue, like mine.

Thump……………… Thump……………. Thump……………..

Blood rushes into my throat. I spit it from my mouth. It splashes onto Death’s chin. An impossibly long tongue slithers from between his thick lips and licks it away.

Thump………….…………………..…. Thump………..…………..…………..

His jaws open, revealing a maw of sharp, yellowed teeth. Their tips glitter in the darkness as long tendrils of saliva slip from his gums. The face of Death isn’t at all what I’d expected. Death wasn’t a man at all…

Thump….…………..…………..

My heart stops. The final beat ends the symphony of rain, gunfire and battlefield shouts. Now there is only silence; and the blue eyes of Death staring into mine.

Then come the screams. They were the anguished howls and the cries of all the souls whose lives I’d ended. They pummeled me. Daddy’s was the loudest.

I’m no longer inside my body, but instead somewhere above, peering down at the wreckage of the life I’ve created.

Death calls me. I go.

Drawn into him, I’m instantly no longer alone. His eyes became mine. The talons on his hands move as my own. And he shares all of his memories with me, and I with him. There was a sense of communion unlike anything I had felt before.

Death had been the source of my disease. He was also my cure.

Looking down at my old self now, I watch as filthy raindrops baptize my broken body in the mud. I lean in closer, inspecting my farm-boy face. And with a new set of razors in my mouth, I strip the skin that was my mask from my one-time skull.

Bombs explode in the distance, ending uncounted lives and sending the fires of my new Heaven mushrooming into the night sky. With the flames dancing around me, I place upon my head the last remnants of the old me. And from behind my new, contorted features of shaved flesh and pure hatred, I howl at the rising moon.

I’d always thought I’d been infected. But after a lifetime of searching for a cure for my disease, I now realize I was always as I should have been.

I, Gabriel Merchant, am home. And along with all those who came before me, I’ve become Death. And together, we are the destroyer of worlds.

~ Daemonwulf

Grieve

October 23, 2012May 1, 2013 ~ Joseph Pinto ~ 58 Comments

Enter.

Sit before the Tale Weaver.

Through this open sash wafts the spice of golden autumn, yet lulled into complacency dare be not. A harbinger, this essence, of sinister entities soon to stalk the sanctity of your threshold. Hastened your pulse, and so should it be. For in due time the graveyards beyond shall be born once more. My skeletal hand now take, and open your dormant senses to such truths as only the Tale Weaver can reveal. Yes. Yessss. One foot fore the other; step now from my tenebrous haunt.

Behold my playground! Behold the majesty of rot neath your apprehensive feet, these glorious, rusted arches serving as gateways for the dead. Across the chilled flesh of your cheek doth flit moonlight embers, or so your consciousness should have you believe. Tis the fingers of lost souls caressing your countenance, mourning the shell of humanity you now possess. This wayward wind aches under the weight of their listless repose; cease the shuddering of your limbs and heed their moans! As you are now so once were they; for what they are now so soon shall you be. Death, perhaps for you, is final, yet for these entities only in death do they flourish.

Cautious, ever cautious should you step tween the ever-sentient monuments and moss crusted sepulchers; their domain you tread. Respect these hallowed grounds, respect this kingdom of decay, for to the purveyors of putrefaction tis their crown jewel. The swirling mist; it jerks at your wrist, starving and desperate for your attention. Yes, ignorant one, tis the dead! They watch us…watch you…their doleful eyes shimmering tween the slender silvered cobwebs of the tombs. Their tendrils seek you, enamored with the stink of humanity, and in slow solitaire turns do they wish to dance at your side, their darkened cathedral of sorrow echoing with the strained chords of the damned.

The pathways, the hills, teeming with specters of eras long gone; this necropolis of the horrific busying itself for its grandest day — All Hallows Eve — so bear witness the blessings of death these hapless beings do perceive. In turn, treasure your own worthless existence and end your common grievances, lest you return, doomed and fated to roam deeper chasms of despair than you can possibly comprehend.

Your attention…drawn to the small clearing just yonder. Investigate you may; the ghouls I shall restrain whilst you stride tween the jagged teeth of plot and stone. Yet you turn to me, confusion etched deep into your brow. Aye, tis what you believe it to be…here the obscure sorrow more profound than anywhere else…here the cloying agony more suffocating than anywhere else…here the tiny monuments adorned with docile lambs, yet greater in stature than anywhere else…the final resting place for the young souls given no choice tween exemption and sin.

Dare not judge me, for your God I am not and do not wish to be. Even I cannot fathom the laws of what you call fate; aye, nor abide by its rules if I could. But these younglings I do watch from the distance, ever mindful of their misplaced light in this land so very lost.

You hear her, do you not? The long, drawn mewls of agony and torturous sobbings of a heart long since raped; tis the guardian of these younglings, there…there…tattered wings draped in black strands over the faceless, nameless tombstone upon which she perches. Yes…she…the dark angel for these beacons of light.

Gaze upon her grotesque beauty, this devourer of purity, yet your head turn from her tears. Her anguish respect. Protects these younglings at all costs and yet mourns her greatest loss, this dark angel does. I speak of a soul abandoned by its Maker; a soul denied entry by equal parts Heaven and Hell. A soul delivered from the abyss, cast back to the abyss. For eternity has the dark angel brooded upon her cold throne of shattered dreams, compassionately embracing the young that seek comfort at her thorn laced feet whilst inconsolable her own charred essence bleeds dry. For eternity agonizing over the light left unclaimed as her own.

The dark angel seethes – such is the price of unsatiated grief. Mouth jagged, a twisted hole of silent fury; swarthy locks entombing stricken face. Yearning, yearning for the sunbeam she may never hold. Beautiful, wondrous and macabrely awful…the dark angel bemoans what is beyond even my capacity.

Leave now. I command – leave now! Across unholy crypts do run with tail tween legs, and pray your ragged breath not be stolen by the ghouls at your heels. No longer I offer protection; no longer your welcome honored in our sanctuary of desolation. For on this Stygian night the abomination I am becomes something wholly else; only on this Stygian night do I ignore my own sentence of perpetual condemnation and become something other than the insidious being you loathe. Into these debased arms do I lift the dark angel and remove her from her watch. On this endless night of Stygian nights, protector I become. Upon my lap I lay her wicked head down, my sweet angel of depravity, and so she will mourn. And hold her evermore, until all that remains of us is the rot tween our bones.

Until next I summon you, be gone.

So the Tale Weaver speaks.

~ Joseph A. Pinto as the Tale Weaver

As a proud participant in this years Coffin Hop 2012 blog tour, I’m giving away an e-copy of my novel Flowers for Evelene, plus a print copy of Twisted Realities: Of Myth and Monstrosity featuring my story Memorial.

If you’d like to be one of the winners of my give away, please leave a comment on this post, and on November 1st, two random recipients will be chosen.

Don’t forget to visit the rest of the Coffin Hoppers at coffinhop.wordpress.com!

Wretched Harvest

May 22, 2012January 14, 2014 ~ Daemonwulf ~ 28 Comments

A stale wind blew through the Appalachian woods, sending the branches of the trees into a frenzied dance and driving a flock of birds from their nighttime perch.

As they took flight, she coughed. And when she did, she coughed up blood.

Bitter warmth streamed into her mouth, pooling thick at the back of her throat, choking her struggling breath.

Behind teeth that ached with the pain from gums swollen by repeated blows to the skull, her bloated tongue tried desperately to form a sound. Willing her vocal cords to act — to speak, to scream, to do anything — all she could muster was a small whimper as her body ignored her pleas.

She was naked, bathed in fear. The threads of rope that secured her hands over her head burned, turning her wrists to pulp. A fallen tree branch stabbed into her side as the humid tongue of autumn licked at her exposed flesh and wet, blood-soaked soil sucked her backside and buttocks into its hungry mouth.

Amid the renewed hammering of her heart and the gurgle of blood and saliva bubbling over her lips, she thought about how her pathetic existence had brought her to this moment. She had despised her life in this small, North Georgia town. It had been one consumed with brutal drudgery and unbearable insignificance. But, somehow, it never seemed more precious to her than now as she lay on the ground dying.

Her body ached; bruises welling up on her legs. On her back. And on her arms. A swollen cheek squeezed closed her right eye, and a broken jawbone obscured what little view she had left of the world from which she’d spent so much time planning escape.

Through dwindling sight, she looked up into the face of her killer.

And he stared back.

His striking features no longer embodied the big-city charm and grace that had drawn her to him in the bar and later successfully encouraged her to his side as they left arm-in-arm. This man that she, for a moment, had thought could be her savior from small-town agony was now little more than a fluid silhouette fumbling in the shadows above, the faint glow of moonlight creating a shimmering halo around his dark frame.

His eyes gleamed from deep sockets, and gore-smeared lips smiled at her as he did little more than grunt, assessing her with as much significance as would a butcher to a hog.

Repulsed by the sight of her own fluids coating his face, she looked helplessly into the night sky. As a child she’d been fascinated by the stars – always a source of hope and the promise of far-off places. And there as usual, the bears – major and minor — glimmered in the dark expanse. Crouching nearby was Orion the Hunter, leading his rag-tag band of gods into battle with lesser creatures.

Her murderer breathed into her face, stealing away any thought of rescue from above. His was little more than a cruel wheeze, accompanied by the falling leaves that glided silently through the air, intermittently obscuring her view of the heavens. Several of them clung to his bare torso; her own blood serving as the glue that kept them in place.

Through tear-filled eyes, she noticed pieces of her self clinging to his chin. She thought he must have bathed in her, smearing her essence in great swathes across his body. Bloody handprints, like those of a child artist with bedroom wall as canvas, crisscrossed his chest and shoulders.

Squatting over her, his weight was immense. His powerful thighs rested on her own. He said nothing. Oddly observing. Burning menacing holes into her brain. Her would-be knight, was no longer the man he had appeared to be. He was, instead, an animal wearing the skin of her Lancelot.

Perhaps it was shock, or impending death playing a dirty trick on her mind, but behind him the darkness seemed to part; as the curtain of night was silently drawn back. A void appeared where there had once been only shadows, and through it stepped a small boy. His skin was smooth with youth, surely no more than 10 years old, and dark, unruly hair poked playfully from beneath the brim of a ragged baseball cap. The child’s shocking blue eyes glimmered from behind his caramel-colored features.

She felt an odd sense of calm in the young boy’s face.

In his right hand he carried a large coin, flipping it over and over, its silver guilding glinting in the moonlight.

First heads, then tails.

He let the coin fall to the ground. It landed with a dull thud that silenced the voices of the forest.

Tails.

Once again his eyes met her’s, and he calmly said, “Last call… Looks like this time you’ve won.”

With the boy’s words, her killer plunged his hands into her body. The horror in her midsection was like a brush fire through dead wood. Flames of pain spread through her as his sharpness sunk deep inside her bowels. His was a penetration that was never deeper, a violation never more extreme. Oily pieces of her slipped through his fingers, and she shuddered as his rough hands snapped a rib.

She fought the urge to look down at her abdomen. Instinct told her to grab at the coils that now burst from her stomach like meat from an over-ripe melon and shove them back into her vented cavity. But the rope held her instincts in check.

An audible smack accompanied her intestines as they sloshed onto the soggy ground beside her. From the exposed mass, he retrieved an unrecognizable piece of her, something that vaguely resembled a photo she’d once seen in a schoolbook.

Vomit urged her throat open while the bears looked down from the sky. They snarled, ravenously. All of nature, it seemed, had turned against her.

He shoved the bile-coated organ into his mouth. And just before her eyes closed forever, she saw him flash a set of perilous razors as he bit off a section of raw meat, her juices spilling over his lips and dripping onto his chest as he chewed.

The boy standing beside her looked on quietly as the Liberator completed his task.

And somewhere in the distance, from the grainy speaker of a jukebox in a roadside bar, Charlie Daniels played a vicious, dueling fiddle.

~ Daemonwulf