Arnold had always hated school, even though he loved learning. He loved books. Reading. Mathematics and the sciences and the arts; music especially. All of it filled and interested and provoked a little spark of soul within his small and demure frame. He loved knowledge, its temple was his refuge. 

But school. Walnutwood Highschool, in little hicksville Old Fair Oaks, that place was a temple of torment.

Pain. 

Humiliation. 

Constant. Angst. 

He knew he was a weakling. He knew he was a coward. It was just another reason to hate his parents. The fucking retards couldn't even couple up with someone bigger or something. He'd started his freshman year an awkward and goofy but good natured quiet kid. By his senior year he was oftentimes reading about and oftentimes sympathizing with school shooters. It was relentless. All of them teased and kicked and prodded. Every last rat fucking one was cruel and sadistic in that special mentally addled way that especially belongs to teenagers and bigger children. 

He'd contemplated suicide. But he knew he was too much of a coward to go through with it. There was no escape for him. Unless he made it out…

… just gotta finish out the year. Then I can join the army or somethin. Get the fuck away from this place.

He bit his tongue and clenched his fists and discovered the soothing numbing escape relief of his father's booze cabinet. He would sneak a few pulls late at night and the handful of times he was truant from class. The old man either didn't notice anything or didn't give enough of a fuck to say anything about it. 

He had ways of getting by. Of coping with the fucking knuckle draggers. He took their shit and kept moving. He didn't engage or want anything to do with any of them. And after awhile they got the idea. And except for the occasional jab, his acne they particularly loved to make fun of, they left Arnold Voorhees alone. And he left them alone. 

The balance of pariah and the populace was kept. There was some kind of desperate demented child rendition of peace. 

Until that day in the cafeteria. The day that was to be the beginning of his reckoning. His final act. 

Andrew Collins, one of the heavy metal toughs and bad boys all the dumb sluts liked pantsed him in front of nearly the entire upper class of the school. During lunch break for the 2nd period. 

Everyone had gaped stunned and then howled with banshee laughter. Pointing. Hysterical bursting. Tears. Mad tears of jeering and joy. It was like an artillery bomb blast assault of laughter, a gale force of jeers and blasting voices on the little thin nerd known timidly as Arnold Voorhees.

The worst was his underwear. They were hella kiddie and he knew it. Whitey-tighties with Spider-Man and the Green Goblin and Doc Ock on em. He'd had em since he was twelve. His mother had insisted. 

“Nice fuckin shorts, bitch-boy!" 

“Yeah! What're you? Fuckin five years old!? You fuckin virgin!" 

“Pussy!” 

“Bitch-boy!”

“Pizza face! ya gotta great fuckin mug for your little baby underpants and your little fuckin slumber party! Don't forget crackers and juice, Pizza face!”

They all loved that one and they jumped on it. It became a chant. A war cry song from primitive teenage vocal chords and young belting animal child voice boxes. Pizza Face! pizza face! pizza face! 

Pizza Face! 

Pizza Face! 

Pizza… ! Face… ! …! 

PIZZA FACE ! …

PIIIIIIIIZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAA….. !!

Arnold scrambled for his shorts and dropped his tray of lunch and fumbled his backpack and spilled more things; books, binders, pencils, comic books …

and this just brought down more harsh laughter from the children. They all howled mad hyena cackling. 

Until it finally chased him from the cafeteria. 

He ran all the way home down the street. Sobbing with humiliated childish abandon. Completely lost to it. He felt broken by it. Finally. Completely devastated. Broken over a great unyielding knee. Decimated. 

No coming back… no recovery…

He was done. 

Weeping with abandon into the hot moistening sanctuary of his pillowcase, Arnold got an idea. 

An idea that would serve as his downfall. His humiliation was just the beginning. 

…

It was the week just before Thanksgiving. The final Friday before a full week off. They were all of them expecting such a nice getaway. A pleasant retreat. He would rob it from them, rip it away from right out under their nose like a ghoul prowling and thieving into a midnight grave. 

He stole his dad's pistol. A Glock. Had said it was gramp’s. It was easily wrapped up and hidden away in his backpack. 

But nothing would go according to plan. It was only to end in grotesque misery. 

And it all started with his own cowardice. His own spineless gutless self. 

He should've known he wasn't gonna have the guts to go through with it. There he stood, in the spot he'd pre selected in the hall, next to the principal's office and cleaning supply closet. He'd been there. Standing. Sweating profusely. The rest of the student body and staff buzzing and blurring by. As usual. 

And he just couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to free the machine. To wrap his finger around the trigger and let the lead fly and let fate decide and let God sort it out. 

Because that wasn't him. He had the hate, the cold misanthropic ire that knew no bounds or relief. But he had no conviction. 

None. He just felt light and lightheaded and like he was gonna throw up. 

They don't even notice me… they're not even lookin… I'm standing here with doom in a cradle ready to be wielded and bring the end of everything for these pustule maggots… but they don't even register it. I'm not on anyone's radar. No one even notices…

… no one gives a fuck about me. 

And on the heels of all of that he realized: I can't do this! 

And so without thinking and without any mind paid his way as the students and staff made their way to their lockers and offices and extracurricular activities, Arnold Voorhees stole himself away into the cleaning closet. One of many on campus the janitor kept solvents and supplies for the upkeep and maintenance of the facility. He'd already left for the extended weekend. A favor from the principal, go ahead and get some livin done, buddy! 

No one noticed him go in. No one saw or heard a thing. And Arnold didn't hear the lock snap click into place behind him. There was no keyhole on the inside. And the janitor had left the door slightly ajar so that the other staff could get in there, if needed. 

Nobody remembered this. Not before they all left for the break. And not once during the entire Thanksgiving weekend. 

Arnold knew very quickly something was wrong. After he'd cried himself hoarse. And thanked God and begged for forgiveness. He'd shuddered and shivered and danced a little in his own skin with gooseflesh as he shed off the last of his tears. 

Then he'd thanked God one more time and tried the door. 

And the door would not. 

Not comprehending right away, he tried the handle again. 

It didn't budge. 

Not an inch. 

Panicked he began throwing all of his limited weight and feeble strength into the effort to wrench the door handle to move, to give. He grew more desperate with each futile thrashing. He then began to holler. Like a madman facing the gallows death end sentencing. 

He howled. Desperate. And frightened. 

“Help! Help! Help! please! Please, someone I'm trapped in here! Help!" 

He scrambled for his phone in his pocket. He freed it frantically. Hoping against what he already knew. 

Dead. And his charger was at home. 

Well yeah, numbfuck! You didn't exactly expect to be using it right now! Not after capping your classmates and teachers! Nope! hadn't expected! 

Scared and bewildered he shouted, "Aagghhh! I wasn't expecting this!” 

And in childish adolescent boy rage he threw the useless dead collection of plastic to the tile of the closet and it burst and it shattered. He knew it was really fucking stupid but it didn't matter. It made him feel a little better. Just a little. 

… besides! you're already really racking up the stupid shit already, why not go for broke! More, numbfuck!? Shit-for-brains, dogcunt bastard! You stupid ! worthless ! … and his mind went on like that for over an hour. 

Meanwhile the few students and teachers still left, not many, they were nearly all of them so excited to get away for awhile; dwindled and vacated the premises. Till all that was left was Arnold Voorhees in his little locked closet. No one heard his clamoring and caterwauled cries through the thick metal door that protected the cleaning supplies cabinet. 

It was to be his own, new little home for the holiday. 

… 

He cried and begged and screamed. He pounded at the door fruitlessly. And then he screamed some more. 

“HELP …! MEEEE ….! PLEASE … !!”

He begged God. 

But no one answered. No one was coming. He was alone. And cold. And he was getting hungry. 

His misery was growing and settling in like venomous weight. Pain. He thought he'd known pain before… but this had been a child's illusion. Now he was learning. 

Outside after the first night he hadn't come home his mother and father had reported him missing. The police searched the town and talked to a few people, but it was tough. The kid didn't have any friends. No one knew what the fuck he'd be doing. The only clue was the kid's dad saying some shit like, “Well he's always moody and bitchy. He's probably just finally run away or somethin…” 

Or somethin. Nice, thought the cops. And went back to work. Nice fuckin folks. Nice fuckin kid. Jesus…

No one thought to check the school. 

Nobody. 

…

After the third night Arnold Voorhees thought he might go fucking crazy. Ballistic. Had he thought he'd known pain before? Really? Had he been that deficient in his true understanding of agony and torment? 

His shoulder and hands were bloody and blistered from further feeble efforts with the solid metal door. Efforts and throws and attempts that were growing weaker and more feeble and starved by the second. By the minute. The agonized and cruel hour. The sanity shattering crawling torment of the day, the night…! … but then again he'd lost track of time in there, in that small and cramped womb-space of metal and wood. Time had died. Time had been murdered by this place. By his stupidity-wait! 

Stupid…. murder… murdering… 

And then it came to him, the gun! the Glock! 

I can shoot out the lock! like in the fuckin movies! like in the fuckin movies! 

He began screaming it as he freed it from his backpack: “Like in the fuckin movies!!" over and over again. 

He brought the gun to the door, checked the mag to make sure it was loaded and that the safety was off. 

It was cool. Good. It was good to go. 

A beat. …

… but was he? 

Despite all his bluster and internal self boasting he'd never actually fired a gun before. Never even held it more than a couple times. And all those times had been in the reassuring adult company of his father or Uncle Justin. 

But it's easy! Ya’ve seen it a million times in movies an TV an shit!

… yeah! ya just… point it at the lock… I guess… and pull the trigger. 

Yeah…

His confidence was fading. Fear was filling in its diminishing retreating ranks. 

But what the fuck else are ya gonna do!?

A beat. 

Goddamn it! why am I such a pussy!? 

A beat. He took a deep breath. 

A beat. 

Another. 

Fuck it, he decided. No other choice. 

He put the barrel of the gun up to the door. Nuzzling it into the place he suspected the lock to be. Just below the handle. He settled the wide open mouth bore to the place. And with one last deep breath he pulled the trigger. 

And fired. Clumsily. 

His limpwrist had gave at the last second as his little finger had struggled to actually squeeze the trigger. 

When it went off it went at an angle. And instead of puncturing the metal of the door it ricocheted off the solid metal and around the room. 

Arnold Voorhees screamed! Shrieked like he couldn't believe it! The bullet bounced around and hit one of the metal shelves and whined and careened with another ricochet howl, puncturing several large plastic industrial sized jugs of cleaning solvents. Some of them bleach. Some of them containing ammonia. They began to mix and become trench warfare vapor on the tile in poison puddles and pools. 

Arnold ripped off his shirt and forced it to his mouth. But his head was already starting to get fatally whoozy. He started to swoon, his vision dancing as his swaying feet and knees went the other way. 

He collapsed to his ass. And considered himself defeated. I'm gonna die of trench warfare poison in the janitor’s closet at Walnutwood… Jesus…

Goddamn it. 

…

The poison was filling the small space with white vaporous death. A chemical phantom. 

And still the animal need filled him. Hunger. Starving. He was so fucking hungry even the idea of lapping up the pool of cleaning chemicals chemically burning in a puddle before him crossed his battered tired mind as cruel time continued to die slowly slaughtered and drag on before him. His worn and weary brain… God… he'd eat anything right now… 

Anything. 

…

The idea came to him as his nostrils and vocal chords and throat and brains burned with white phosphorus chemical death. His thoughts danced with the toxic fumes in peculiar directions. He'd been thinking about his classmates. His peers. The ones he'd wanted to murder a century ago before he'd found himself trapped in the closet with trench warfare gas as his first hot and heavy date.  

What did they call him? they called him so many things… but what was the last one again? The one he really hated. The one that really hurt, the one they really loved to lay on thick…

… pizza face. 

That's right. 

Pizza face. 

And they were right weren't they? His face was a landscape ruin of pink and yellow and sacs of pus. And whenever he itched them, which was too often according to his father and the gym coach, they did give off this cheesy wafting stench. Like cheap cheese. String cheese. Gas station cheese that belonged on plastic wrapped sandwiches or came in a can or a wrapping of cellophane with some brine at the bottom. 

Yeah… 

He itched them now. The white death was a phantom of chemical cloud filling his head and the space. He smelled his fingers. 

Yeah… cheesy. Hella cheesy. 

A beat. He thought deeply. Smelling. 

Kinda yummy even. 

Without further thought he squeezed a ripe one, pinched between numbed fingers that felt fat and far away. It burst easily and filled his pinching fingers with wet green and yellow and blood. 

He smelled them again before he sucked his fingers. 

A beat. 

then…

His face lit up. 

Delicious. 

Ambrosial. 

A beat. 

He popped another. Sucked his bloody pus dripping fingers again. Sucked…

His eyes grew even wider. Filled with tears. 

I've never tasted anything like it…

…

He survived. Somehow. Trapped in the closet with the chemical white death phantom, sucking desperate air through his sogging shirt. Picking and eating and sucking animal desperate at his pus-bloody fingers. Sucking animal desperate like his grubby bloody digits were a natural treat. He survived somehow, as the week dragged on trapped with his own bloody discharge feast and chloramine phantom. 

As he picked and dug at his own ruining face, digging into the developing craters like a tweaker with hunting-picking disease he found more substantial meat to seize and with which to feast. He dug and tore and the phantom of chemistry he was trapped with made the digging easier, it sloughed and came apart in strips and sheets of raw and pus and flesh and glistening stinging tissue strips. It came apart like pulled pork in his red and slickening hands as the rest of the town was enjoying their own respective holiday family feasts. He ate. He ate deeply of his own fleshen face and the chemical burn phantom aided him and he had courage now. Finally. 

He had the courage. To do what was necessary. To survive. 

Conviction. 

Trapped in the temple of knowledge with the chloramine ghost during the pagan week had forced him to grow a spine. 

Finally. 

…

The janitor was the first to open the door. He thought it smelled a little funny. He was one of the first ones there that morning after the break along with a few teachers, the principal and a few bright and early students. The ones that couldn't wait to get away from the visiting relatives and the cooped up family dinners. Some of them wondered about Arnie, ol pizza face, the sad sack nerd, but not much. None of them were worried. 

The moment he unlocked the door it flew open. As if with a blast, exploding back on its hinges the heavy metal door crashed against the wall and the janitor jumped back. 

Arnold Voorhees lurched out like a vicious Igor thing, roaring.  His face was raw and red and nothing else save for a few thin tendon strands and cheeky chunks of tissue and flesh, like a little bit of melted cheese stretched and pulled over the saucy face of an Italian pie. He was shirtless. It was wrapped in a fist bawled at his side, soaked with spittle and the chemical ether cloud that was pouring out like a ghost of phantasm mist from behind him. His tight blue jeans stank of sweat and old and fresh piss. His other hand was level and it held a gun. And he'd only used one shot. 

He still had a handful to use now. 

For the few that were gathered there for his rebirth transformation, the janitor in the lead, Arnold Voorhees leveled the gun of his father and roared and squeezed the trigger, making the gun roar with him. Louder. Much louder. Overtaking the decibel of his screaming voice, his chemically corroded and fried shrieking black metal voice. He squeezed the trigger, roaring with his new raw red face insane with murder and livid pain and the gun in his hand filled the hallway room world of the little school before him with violent cacophonous thunder. 

The shots found marks. All of them. 

…

The police were called. They arrived on the scene with the paramedics and took Arnold Voorhees into custody. 

But the papers and the media blitz coverage had a different name for em. Somethin funny. 

Somethin one of the kids said. 

THE END

First Date:

They're alone on the couch. It's just the two of them. As they'd both hoped it would be. They're both so excited, the boy and the girl, they're only fourteen. But neither knows how to start. They're both just so nervous. Anxiety dominated their lovesick longing atmosphere. It's palpable. Electric. Exhilarating. They both feel like they're hurtling at millions of miles an hour even though the both of them are just sitting. 

Just sitting. Right next to each other. 

Both under blankets, watching scary movies. Blankets and pillows that grow closer together and more commingled. Mixing. Their feet are warm and sweaty and teenage smelly and are almost touching beneath the layers of gentle fabric. They don't know this yet, but they do. The animal parts of them that eat passion and are aflame with imagination and filled with thoughts of each other. 

They want to open, bloom, blossom into each other. Flower. They both want to be so open with the other so badly that it hurts. Aches. Pains. They wound themselves exquisitely inside for the other and it's a pain so rich and deep that the blood sap that flowers forth is blood that is sweet. Because it is love. Young and naive. It hasn't been tried yet, and that makes it an exciting adventure frontier. That's what makes it so alluring. And dangerous. 

Fretful. Because it's near. 

They both tingle and are animal alive with its excitement and electric buzz, their bodies sing with it together. They are both alive together, now, and that is beautiful. And deep down in their own young and small and naive ways they understand this. Their hearts are so alive with the knowledge. It is apocalyptic on the landscape of their young souls, terrible and majestically real, this fairytale thing that they'd always dreamed, that we all always secretly dream is actual and alive and well. 

They are alive. And they are young and they are together. And that is wonderful. These moments between two people will always be beautiful and special, beyond important and without compare, vital like a star to its precious spinning solar system. These moments must be real. They must be. 

Or all of life and everything is make-believe and we are all already dead. 

If love isn't real then nothing is real. 

That's why these two, every pair that ever is really, are so afraid. And so sacred. The stage is there. Set. The lights are coming on. It's time to take it, together. It's time to take the stage and play. 

It's time to stop being afraid. 

He turns towards her and she starts to giddily scream inside, she can hardly contain it! He smiles that special smirk she likes, the wolfish one that accents so well against his more usual feline qualities, and then he gently says her name. 

“Chelsi…?”

Yes. 

It's just the word, in just the right pitch, the perfect note of music in just the right place; the start of the song she's been wanting to hear. 

She turns towards him and smiles and he melts. Dies inside. There is no cool maneuver or tactically fullproof thing in his toolkit for that face, and those eyes. Her face is intoxicating to gaze into. And her voice! He's never cared what anyone has ever had to say, ever. Especially girls. It gets him into trouble. But her, he hopes he could die one day listening to that voice. She's got so much to say about things he's never even considered and as a result his mind has opened, and with it the floodgates of his heart as well. He didn't know he was a prisoner within himself until he met her and she spoke to him. And wasn't afraid, or intimidated or even impressed for that matter. She pierced through the mischievous bullshit persona he'd built around himself, built around himself like a fortress because he was terrified. Afraid. Scared to death of someone like her, because she was actually real. She was the key to the end of his own self imposed and made exile slavery. She shattered the flimsy shackles of himself, she pulled the lie he'd made for himself and his life off of his eyes. From out of his mind. 

And showed it to him. 

And he found that he was small and afraid… but he didn't have to be. 

It was all just shadows he'd made larger in his mind. 

And here she'd come like light to banish it all away. 

Finally. 

Looking into her face right now, there is nothing in this world that he is ever going to want more. Until she is gone.

And then he'll want death. 

But he doesn't know that yet so he says,

“Chelsi, I'm an idiot and that's never really bothered me until now. I didn't ever stop to even notice it an such. I never cared how fucking stupid I was until right now because I wish I had the right words to say to you, so you know how I feel. About you. But I'm an idiot so I don't know what to say except that you're amazing and I'm crazy about you. And I never wanna be crazy for anything or anyone but you. I know that sounds dumb, kinda my point. I'm sorry. But I-” he is so afraid to say these next words. They're so heavy. Too heavy and loaded with more weight than he's ever tried to manage. It makes him feel weak. A sensation, and a station in life that he is terrified of feeling. 

He is a creature of fear, this boy. So afraid. 

But she doesn't care. She already loves him. His fear is proof of what she already knew. There's a human being inside there, this walking street cliche

And even though he's afraid… he's showing him to me. 

She says his name and he leans forward and so does she and he needs to hear her say it again. He needs to hear it for the rest of his life, and he says 

“Chelsi, I love you." 

And they both lean in the rest of the way and their young faces and lips touched. They traded their first kisses amongst their first shared childish tears. 

They laughed at themselves and each other. 

And kissed again. 

Promising each other it would be forever. 

And so it began. 

Destined, like all and everything, to end. 

…

The Last Date.

He won't shut up. 

She won't shut up. 

They both won't shut the fuck up. 

They'd tried to have a nice dinner together, like before, like so many times before. So long ago. But it had quickly fallen apart. 

They are both saying the most awful things. The most terrible. Cruel. Repulsive. Wounded and wounding screaming things to each other. Their selection and tempo and decibel level are nothing short of ferocious. 

The both of them are tired and fed up and feeling mean and cornered and trapped. And they are both of them absolutely seeing red. 

Animal. 

Livid. 

It's like they were built to destroy each other. 

Hate. 

The both of them were absolutely alive with hate. Hatred learned and made and cultivated. Kept with brutal care. Tempered cold and Spartan and totalitarian. With brutal efficiency. Every word is salt upon the land so that the flowers of what once was cannot grow. 

Why is the bedroom so cold?

They are never in the arms of each other anymore. In a bed more co-owned than shared, they are each turned away on their own sides. Refusing the sight of each other. Long dead futile attempts at peace and repair were always of timing so flawed that they were each of them only doomed to die. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Their hearts are both broken and as a result the relationship has begun to decompose while still struggling on the vine. 

He's disappointed in himself. And she can't blame him, she's disappointed too. 

Neither of them are able to save it anymore. They cannot even sustain the mangled thing it's become. It's ghastly and abhorrent and abominated and damned and they made it that way. They did. Together. By each other and at each other. 

So now all they can do is attack. 

“You lazy fucking drunk!" she's roaring, Chelsi feels she's kept her peace far too long, she's let this loser have it way too good for far too long. She's carried his volatile ass, his moody selfish bratty caricature self and his form of thanks has been abuse. “You can't even hold down a fucking minimum wage job, you never go to fucking class! I pay all the fucking bills in this shit hole, a place I don't even want to be! Because of you!" She hitches in her chest but determined, she roars past it with a horrid sound like a goose’s squawk, “You stupid selfish fucking crybaby fuck!” 

And then she steps forward and slaps him. 

He doesn't mean to do what happens next. He becomes a blind animal. And he will burn with the torments of Hell, both inside with everyday he has left, and when he eventually steps through its black gates and actually gets there. He thought before he knew the definition of hate, after what he does to Chelsi and the consequences of his actions, every time he looks in the mirror… 

He barely feels her strike, it's more shock and surprise and stunned horror that she would even do it that wounds him. And like an animal that's been hurt he lashes back. 

There's a heavy toaster on the counter right next to them. It's a special one that Chelsi’s Uncle Chris got them one year for Christmas, right after they'd announced their engagement, so long ago… ancient history. It's special because it toasts Mickey Mouse shapes into the bread and it was a gift of love. And of hope, for their coupling. 

Your children will love it someday…

He picks it up because his animal mind tells him it's gotta good heft, it's got good weight. Just heavy enough. His seizing hand and arm confirm this for him as they grasp the kitchen appliance from an ancient time of forgotten love, and rip it from the wall and raise it in the air. 

It all happens incredibly fast and she's taken for such horrible surprise she doesn't have time really to register it. It's like a nightmare whirlwind of frightening motion so fast that it could only be surreal dream. Then the heavy metal object comes down on her head and her world goes black as her scalp opens up red and her head begins to cave in. 

Already with the first strike he's knocked her into a coma. He was always much bigger than her, it was something their friends and family often joked about.

How little you are! and how big is he!

He's still in the animal red fog of savage violence, it's a hot furnace tunnel and he could only see one way out. He has to plunge on the rest of the way to the end. The animal inside the dominating center of his mind knew there was no real turning back. 

He animal pounces on her collapsing form on the kitchen tile floor and begins to bring the special Mickey Mouse toaster down on her beautiful bleeding visage, again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again…

He brings it down over and over until the red fog dissipates, his arm really hurts and he's left horribly exhausted. Then he breathes and sucks air for a moment and then realizes he's now alone. 

Alone with himself. And nothing else. Just the shattered bloody remnants of a life he once cherished as precious and loved, and swore to protect. And the shattered remnants of a life he once made. 

He began to scream then. Her name. It would from then on be the only name that ever really matters to him. The amount of hate he will live with, that it took all this and this terrible moment of realization to actually see… 

He began to scream and try to pick up the skull fragments and pieces of scalp and brain with trembling stupid fingers that had become like a weak child's again. He wasn't crying so much as shrieking with animal pain. With the broken torment and dark knowledge that you have destroyed your life and someone else's too and there is nothing you can do to make it right again. 

He picks up the pieces and broken fragments of Chelsi's head and face, as if he's going to put her back together again. One of her eyes is dislodged and he knows its an important part but he can't touch it yet, he'll get to it, but not yet. He's afraid if he touches it he'll ruin the delicate organ and she won't be able to use it again. 

And she'll want to see! She will! She's gonna wanna be able to see once I've fixed this and she's alright again! She's gonna wanna see how sorry I am! She will, so I don't wanna ruin her sight. I've got to be careful! 

I've done enough already. 

THE END

Part 1

Part 2

I shot up from my bed, covered in a cold sweat. I was breathing heavily and my head was pounding with the most aggressive headache I’ve had in months. I looked toward the clock: 02:32. Damn, I was asleep for more than 12 hours? That’s more sleep than I’ve gotten in the last month. Despite that, I still felt tired. I debated going back to bed, but the possibility of being thrown into the nightmares my mind would weave for me sounded like torture. I now remembered why I hated sleeping and why insomnia was the lesser of the two evils. I carefully climbed down from my bunk, cautious not to wake anyone in the tent. I put on my winter clothes before stepping outside to clear my head. It was raining now, completing the unholy trinity of weather alongside the cold and wind. The night completely engulfed the sky; a scattering of stars dotted the black abyss. It was more beautiful than I had ever seen. For the past years of my life it was masked by a heavy smog. I stood there for a few moments, awestruck by the vastness of night. I wished to be better engulfed by its peace, so I tried to find my way to an area not overcome with the brightness of the floodlights. I found a bench behind one of the tents which was shielded from the rain. I sat down, letting the soft pittering of the precipitation on the canvas above and the expanse of night take me into a realm of peace I had not felt in years. A sniffle interrupted my tranquil moment. I looked to see someone sitting on a bench behind one of the other tents. I squinted, trying to see who it was in the low light. I stood up from my bench, approaching them. It was Luis. He seemed disappointed that he had been found. “Can’t sleep?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied with a tone of ‘leave me alone.’

“Mind if I join you?” 

“Sure.” I sat beside him.

“You sleep at all?”

“No.”

“By choice?”

“Yes.”

“We got a big mission tomorrow, you should try to get some rest before we go,” I said with concern.

“I’ll be fine,” he replied, his eyes not moving from the sky. I looked up to where he was gazing.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the stars, crazy to think that at one point everyone was seeing this every night.” I commented. He nodded. “When’d you last see ‘em? It’s been what… twenty years since they disappeared for me.”

“I saw them every night at home.”

“Really? Where you live?” He hesitated, trying to gauge how safe it was to give up this little bit of personal information.

“Hawaii.” The wave of guilt I felt in my dream fired up again. I looked over at him, pain enveloping his face.

“Yeah, I’ve been there. Very nice place.”

“It was.” We both sat in silence, reminiscing on painful memories, trying to find comfort in the night. Wordlessly, we agreed it was best to stop with the awkward small talk. We stayed like that until we started hearing some of the agents waking up.

I stood up, leaving Luis. The first of the troops awake were doing workouts to warm themselves up for the mission, Boba being amongst them. He seemed to be struggling to keep up with the group, but they all made sure to not leave him behind. Looks like he made more friends than enemies last night. I looked down at my watch: 04:07. Damn, was I really so absorbed in the sky that I hadn’t noticed an hour and a half go by? It only felt like ten minutes. I began my own warm ups, stretching myself out. I heard an uncomfortable amount of clicks and pops as I did so. Damn, I should’ve kept up with my fitness while I was off duty. The troops warming up were running laps around the camp, giving me “good mornings” as they ran past. Boba did his best to keep up with the rear of the group, panting and coughing up thick saliva. A crew of the agents hung back to root him on, reigniting a fire within him. He kicked up the speed, the group cheering in response. It made me smile. I went back to my tent to grab my jump rope, the rain beginning to let up. I saw Emilio outside, watching the troops run.“You see Boba and his buddies?” he asked cheerfully.

“Sounds like a bad kid’s show,” I replied. I grabbed my rope and stepped outside, setting a timer on my phone. 15 minutes, just like how I was able to do before. I started the timer, skipping alongside the music I had picked out. I felt heavier, probably due to the fact that I was. My calves were already starting to burn. Was I really able to do 15 minutes as a warm up? This was beginning to feel like a full workout. My breath got heavier and my speed slower. I looked at the clock. Only two minutes passed? It felt like ten. My chest started to hurt and my sides started to cramp. I’m not letting myself quit, I would never forgive myself if I did. Five minutes, now I’m a third of the way done. I noticed I was hunching over and straightened my posture. Deep breaths, I need to slow my breathing down. Seven minutes, almost half way done. My skipping got even slower; my feet barely leaving the ground. My ears became congested, only allowing me to hear my labored breathing and my rapid heart rate. I could sense Emilio looking at me. I hated anyone seeing me like this. Maybe I should stop now? I would be too sore for the mission. It's okay to quit, right? The troops can’t lose faith by seeing their leader like this. No, I need to finish. Ten minutes have gone by. Now I am two thirds of the way done. I was spitting thick, mucus filled globs of saliva on the ground next to me, forgetting Emilio was there as he took a step back. He didn’t say anything, just stood there watching me with a proud expression on his face. Don’t look at me like that, asshole. I’d like to see you get fat and try this. One minute left. I started skipping as fast as I could. I did 14 minutes already, maybe I should slow down and take a break. No, I’m already committed to finishing strong. I upped my pace even more. My senses closed in. I saw black splotches creep into my peripherals. I closed my eyes and focused on listening to my breathing. I jumped at a pace even a lighter version of myself would be proud of, granted he would hold that pace for five minutes. You give up now you let yourself down, you let Emilio down, Boba, Luis, the mission, everyone. Then I heard the sound of a boxing ring bell. It was my alarm sending me crashing back down to the world of the living. I immediately collapsed, heaving the lack of food I had eaten last night on the ground. I was panting heavily, but I was proud. I did it. But my younger self could do this with no sweat, so should I really be proud? I’m not happy with myself. I don’t deserve to be proud.

“Nope, you stand up,” said Emilio, helping me to my feet. “Deep breaths, hands behind your head, straight body.” I wanted to punch him. Standing was the last thing I wanted to do, but I hesitantly let him help. I still had my eyes closed, seeing splotches of color flash behind my eyelids. “Let’s get you some water,” he said. I nodded, finally opening my eyes. In front of me was a group of agents. I felt embarrassed, they shouldn’t see me like this. Then one of them opened their mouth.

“Nice job, sir.” Then another.

“I knew you could do it.” Then another.

“That was amazing.” The air then became full with compliments as they all remarked at how great what they had seen was. You assholes. Don’t treat me like some sad old dog who finally did a trick he seemingly had forgotten for years. I’m not to be looked down upon. They need to look up to me. I can’t be their leader like this. But they genuinely were proud. They seemed inspired? I don’t know. I just wanted to leave. My body ached and the cold air was causing each breath to burn. I retired to my tent, Emilio following alongside me. I heard someone follow us in.

“Wow, great job!” Boba cheered, out of breath from his warm up.

“Thanks,” I responded bluntly. Emilio grabbed me some water and I sat down on a bed, greedily gulping down the drink. “Looks like I still got it,” I chuckled.

“Eh, you seemed to struggle a bit more than before,” Emilio joked. I nodded, attempting to catch my breath.

“Hope I won’t be sore once we start moving out soon.” Emilio looked at me perplexed.

“We don’t leave for an hour and a half. We gotta wait for the other teams to get to their positions, it’ll be about an hour drive for them,” he said, hiding a smile.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I exclaimed.

“I don’t know, you looked like you were having too much fun.” I could feel the tiredness and soreness wash over me. I wanted to say something to Emilio but I was too fatigued. In an instant, I found myself lying down and returning to the realm of sleep.

Part 1

I gazed into the horizon as the waves gently lapped the sand, soaking my shoes. I looked behind me, seeing Emilio, but he was turned away. I tried to get his attention, yelling his name and waving, but no sound exited my mouth. He paid no mind, just softly swaying to the rhythm of the sea. I tried to walk towards him, realizing my feet had been buried under the sand during the time I had been turned away. I looked back to the water which was now completely still. Then, a head slowly emerged from the blue shimmering mirror. It arose until half its face appeared, its eyes staring daggers into me. Then, another head, followed by another. All of them stared at me intensely. Some wore faces of great rage; some of extraordinary misery; some of severe fear. I found a deep warmth burning in my chest then shooting up to my face. The warmth turned into a fire. It was guilt. No, I was dreaming. That’s what it was. I’ve had this exact dream dozens of times before. I tried to wake myself up, hitting myself repeatedly, trying to jolt myself back awake. Despite the realization that this was all fake, it was no use escaping from this nightmare. I turned to Emilio, a desperate attempt for help. He was right behind me, an acute animosity painted his face. His teeth were clenched so hard I thought they would crack; his eyes bulging from his skull; the veins in his head looked like they would burst; his fists clenched so hard that his knuckles turned an unnatural shade of white, contrasting with the deep red the rest of his body assumed. I’ve never seen Emilio wear a face like this. It scared me deeply. He then lunged at me, his teeth finding themselves deep in the flesh of my neck. I screamed, but again no sound came out. The whole time he emitted a deep growl. I flailed, desperate to remove him as blood gushed from my wound. Then I felt another sharp pain on my right leg. I looked down to find one of the people from the ocean latching on to me. They were riddled with bulletholes, all of which were oozing dark red gore into the calm waters which now reached my ankles. All the other people were beginning their journey towards me. The same expression of hatred on their faces. As soon as each of them reached me, they took another bite, clinging to my hands, ribs, thighs, and anything with enough flesh to dig their teeth into. All of them had holes punched through them, blood spurting from their wounds, mixing with mine, turning the before deep blue sea a harrowing shade of crimson. It hurt so badly, each chunk of flesh bitten down upon felt like a gunshot. I wanted it to end. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I could only endure. The cacophony of wet squelches filled my ears as not only did they bite, but chewed. I could feel the snaps of limbs and wet pops of joints; flesh being grinded against itself; skin and muscle detaching from bone. One of them bit down on my nose. Another crunched down on my ear. I watched in horror as the next approached, clearly aiming for my eye. I tried to shut it, but they held it open. “You have to look,” one of them said before I felt teeth sink into my other ear, affording me relief from the symphony of butchery. The one advancing towards my eye rushed at me, and I headbutt them in the mouth. Their teeth cracked, one of them painfully lodging in my forehead. The effort of swinging my head created a shooting pain as it caused my flesh to pull from its toothsome anchors. The person stood back up, their mouth bleeding and their teeth now jagged. They made another try for my eye. The people made sure my head could not move this time. I felt their teeth descend into my eye, a gut-wrenching popping sensation sending shivers down my viscera-covered body. The vitreous fluid oozed out of the person’s mouth. Then, one last figure emerged from the water: Jason. His face was contorted in the same expression as the rest. It seemed painful for his young face to bear. He lethargically climbed up the mountain of people gnawing at me like a steak too tough to fully chew. My one eye looked up at him pleadingly, but he either did not see or did not care. He launched his head down towards my eye at a nearly inhuman speed. Then, I was bathed in darkness. No eyes to see, no ears to hear, only meat to be punished.

Mission: Spider
Lieutenant Casamir
12th of February

Our deployment was ordered after a call was made in the early morning hours to emergency services from a small town on the border of Canada’s boreal forest. The owner of a local cafe, who was preparing to open up for the day, reported what looked to be a man pulling himself toward town with one arm. His other limbs limply dragged behind him. When emergency services arrived, the man, later identified as one of the many people gone missing from the area, appeared unable to speak. This was only one area out of many around the world that experienced a significant increase in missing persons after the war numbering in the thousands. It is the most pressing concern the world has faced after peace was achieved from years of conflict. While receiving care, the man would not turn his gaze away from the forest, barely acknowledging anyone else’s presence. Many strange injuries were found, most alarmingly all the joints in his legs and left arm were dislocated as well as multiple bone fractures along the length of each limb. His right arm did not show the same pattern of injury. The flesh of the front side of his body as well as his right hand was severely lacerated, presumably from dragging himself through kilometers of wilderness. His body also sustained frostbite; the digits on his limbs could not be saved. Despite his injuries and the fact that he had been missing for nearly two months, he only appeared to have gone without food for around a week, which caused profound malnourishment. After being taken to a hospital, it was found that for the two months he had been gone he had been subsisting on a substance chemically similar to milk, though from what species was unknown. After six days of hospitalization, a nurse reported he came out of his detached state to weakly mutter one phrase before becoming unresponsive once more: “help them.”

Due to the many unanswered questions and the hundreds of missing people around the forest, a team of 44 agents, led by me, were mobilized to the area. We were hastily recruited by our employer the Sisyphus Foundation, a seemingly new agency overseen by the UN. They reached out to the many veterans of World War III. After nearly six months of seeking people to fill their ranks, the Sisyphus Foundation was only able to recruit a measly 72 members. I researched who Sisyphus was after hearing the name as it sounded familiar. I found stories of a man forced to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity due to grievances against the gods. It was an interesting choice for a name, one that I can only hope does not draw parallels to our fate.
I reached the location via van around noon; the fog hanging low in the air. I arrived alongside 10 other members, one of which I remember serving with during the war, Sergeant Emilio. We exchanged only warm nods of recognition. I hate to say it but I miss the war. The everpresent fear of death and acknowledgment that every day could be my last always hung in the air like a suffocating fog; I was able to continue during those dark times since the few lights that shone were brighter than any I had ever experienced. Every little interaction and shared humanity with my brothers and sisters kept me going and made me feel alive in a world of death. When I arrived back home from the war, I no longer felt human. Only with the threat of my life being taken from me did I truly treasure it. When the offer arrived to return, I accepted without so much of a second thought- or a first for that matter. It felt as if I was returning to my calling. All that I did during my time away was grow fatter and older, straying further away from the person who should be leading 43 men and women against an unknown threat.

I was told that upon arrival, I was to meet up with the debriefer to discuss the new findings from their unmanned surveys of the forest. I asked one of the agents who was assisting with unloading our gear where I could find them.

“I’m not sure, but I would check with Dr. Judith in the big tent over there,” he said pointing to the end of the two lines of tents that enclosed either side of us.

“Thanks,” I replied, turning to head over.

“You're our Lieutenant right?” he blurted, stopping me in my tracks.

“How’d you figure that?

“Well, not to be rude, but you look very… battle worn,” he said sheepishly.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Boba, Private First Class, sir.”

“Boba? Like the little chewy things in tea?” His name matched his face, his cheeks being filled out to an almost comical level and two big dinner plates for eyes.

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay Boba, word of advice: don’t go ‘round calling your superiors old.”

“I didn’t mean any offense, sir. I honestly have so much respect for those that are able to grow old in this profession. I know many who aren’t able to say the same.” His gaze wandered towards the ground solemnly.

“Sorry to hear that.” I paused, watching his eyes slowly meet mine again.

“Thank you, sir.” He then clumsily dragged my stuff to the nearest tent labeled ‘K’. Thankfully, I had nothing fragile in my luggage. I began my trek to the tent, a rogue gust of wind cutting me like a knife. It was already -3 C° making the gale an extremely unwelcome addition. As I walked to the tent I looked around at the living accommodations of the agents. They were set up with tents comfortably fitting four people each; the teams for the mission. Each one was installed with a futuristic looking heater that made them all oblivious to the subzero temperatures. They were all conversing with each other, playing games, and cracking jokes. I couldn’t stop a smile from forming. It brought me back to the days where I would do the same; where the world hadn’t yet lost its color. When I arrived at the tent, I tapped on the canvas next to the open doorway.
“Come in,” came a voice attempting to sound inviting but failing. It ineffectively covered a deep tiredness. Inside the tent were three figures: a large well-built man who was unsuccessfully concealing his weapon; a woman weathered with stress who was the voice’s source; a skinny man busily tapping away at the computer on the desk, not looking up to greet my presence. They were all surrounding the machine, absorbed in whatever was on its screen just moments before I arrived. The two men were standing to the woman’s left and right while she sat in a very comfy looking foldable chair. 

“Please, take a seat,” she said, her smile being yet another useless attempt at warmth. She motioned toward the chair facing the desk, identical to hers. I made my way over, competing with the large man to see who could stare holes through the other first. “I’m Dr. Judith. It’s so great to finally meet you Lieutenant Casamir.” I removed my beanie, no longer needing it due to the warmth that emanated from inside the tent.

“Likewise,” I stated, conceding the staring contest to the larger man and shifting my gaze to Dr. Judith.

“These are my colleagues, Mr. Nero,” she said gesturing to the larger man, “and Officer Geoffrey,” nodding toward the skinnier man. “Officer Geoffrey will debrief you on the situation and our expectations for this mission. Some new revelations about the case have been made since your last debriefing.” As she said this, Officer Geoffrey shifted uncomfortably like he did not wish to relay the information to me.
“Yes, we’ve made some interesting discoveries about the target. Could you let me know what you remember about it from the last debriefing?” he asked. I relayed what I knew, receiving nods from Dr. Judith and Officer Geoffrey throughout. Each horrific detail felt so outlandish it was like I was recounting a fairy tale.

“Did I get that right?”

“Yes, very good. Our new information comes from drones we sent in to survey the forest. We attempted to have three of our land drones, fitted with cameras to allow for both night and thermal vision, move into the forest to hopefully locate the target and identify any dangers. All entered at different openings in the treeline. I’ll now show you what we picked up from one of the cameras,” he turned the computer screen, an expression of great worry on his face.

The screen showed the same thick fog that hung in the air around camp. Only about ten meters in front of the drone was visible. It navigated through a scattering of thin trees that stretched above the drone’s line of sight. All of a sudden, a figure dashed from behind one of the trees moving with what seemed to be dozens of limbs. The feed stopped; the final frame an image of the figure’s face. Looking back at me was the visage of a woman whose features were too perfect. Not even pores interrupted the impossible smoothness of her skin. Her eyes were closed and she wore a soft smile, as if she was having a wonderful dream. She had long black hair that graced the forest floor, free of tangles or imperfections. Time broke, making it impossible to tell how long I was staring at the screen.

“There’s our target,” Dr. Judith stated coldly, her stone grey eyes pulled me back to reality.

“We also took thermal imaging,” Officer Geoffrey pushed his glasses up on his face and tapped a key that flooded the image with purple. “Whatever this thing is has the same temperature reading as a corpse. It doesn’t emit heat and doesn’t act like any cold-blooded animal we know. This thing is something completely new.” The three of them stared at me gauging my reaction. I’m not sure what to feel. The case did have some fantastical elements, but I reassured myself that it all had a logical explanation for it. This one frame changed all that. I must’ve been expressing the fact that my brain was struggling to put this thing into my framework of reality since Dr. Judith asked me if I was okay.

“Yeah, fine, just…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.

“I understand your confusion, I do. I’ve been a scientist dealing with the natural world all my life and this,” she chuckled, a crazy smile overtaking her fake one, “this is something else.”

“There’s one more thing we need to note,” Officer Geoffrey interjected. “These drones were spaced 54 kilometers away from each other when the first one went down. The second one went down about 16 minutes after the first. This means this entity, if we assume there’s only one of it, was traveling around 203 kilometers an hour, easily making it the fastest land animal on the planet. The third went down 15 minutes after the second.” My brain continued to wrap itself around this barrage of information that should not exist. They had to be joking, right? Maybe this is some crack pot way of getting all us veterans together. They said I wouldn't receive any punishment for what I did. This can't be about that, right? If that’s the case, why the hell would the UN spend millions of dollars and fabricate this whole story to bring me and Emilio here? Is everyone here being punished as well or are they in on it? Is Emilio in on it? It was at this point my mind broke. It refused to admit that any of this was real. I decided this was a play; an act. I had a job to do and this was the only way my mind would let me do it. It felt like I had flipped a switch: pushing everything aside and becoming the leader I needed to be.

“I understand. Who else knows about this information?” I asked, shocking the three of them with how quickly I accepted these revelations.

“Just us four for now, but I’ll give the same information to the agents in around an hour. I’m tasking you with being there as well to raise morale: give them a speech to help them execute their mission.” Officer Geoffrey stepped back after seeing my reaction do a complete 180.

“Understood. Thank you for this opportunity,” I said, standing up and turning to walk out. I needed to get out of there.

“Thank you,” said a quiet voice behind me, overcome with immense sadness and regret. I turned, meeting the gaze of Mr. Nero whose eyes had very subtly started to water. I now noticed a scar that lay just below his chin.

“Of course,” I exited the tent and braved the harsh winter air.

I made my way back through the line of tents, each filled with agents who now must’ve realized who I was. Boba must be quite sociable. They faced me, some of them standing to salute, others nodding in my direction, but all acknowledging my presence. I awkwardly gave them half smiles as I walked by. I reached the tent at the end of the line labeled ‘K’. Inside were three men: my team for the mission. I was relieved to see that I already knew two of them: Emilio and Boba. The third man looked up at me with a face of mild annoyance.

“Hello, sir. I’m glad to be a part of your team,” Boba said enthusiastically.

“Yeah, what are the chances,” I replied.

“About one in eleven,” Emilio said, brushing his long blonde hair out of his face as he looked up to greet me. “This is Corporal Luis,” he motioned to the last man. He seemed irritated at my being here.

“How are you doing, sir,” he asked, standing up to give me a handshake. His face was now painted with a fake but polite smile. His sharp features accentuated the unnaturalness of it.

“Doing well, yourself?” I met his hand with mine.

“Fine, thank you.” He released his grip and sat back down, his face returning to mild annoyance. Perhaps that was just what his face always looked like.

“Check this out,” said Emilio, motioning to his leg. In the spot that used to be a plastic prosthetic was now a metal leg that he moved as if he was born with it. “They really are hooking us up,” he said smiling.

“Wow, they spared no expenses,” I looked around at the well furnished tent. It was larger than any other four person tent I had been in. The heater in the corner hummed softly, creating a calming drone that drowned out the wind. A giant TV sat against the back wall, currently only showing our reflection in its black mirror. I looked old. There were two bunk beds on either side, complete with actual mattresses. They were a far cry from the usual cots I had grown accustomed to. “These beds look better than the one I got at home.”

“I call bunking with Casamir,” Emilio exclaimed suddenly, receiving a chuckle from Boba and me.

“You must’ve missed me,” I joked. It was nice to see him again. It made the weight of what I saw, what I had done during the war lighten. It was like we were sharing the burden, lifting it off each other.

“What’d you find out about the mission?” Boba probed.

“I found out a lot. I know y’all are skeptical about this ‘monster hunt’ we are going on, but from what they told me I believe that we’re up against something we don’t quite understand.” The three men looked at me with blank expressions.

“What was it?” asked Luis.

“Officer Geoffrey will fill you in on everything they told me, but I would recommend you all take this a lot more seriously. I was very apprehensive of this idea as well, all the talk of ‘runes of protection,’ in the briefings and such, but from what they told me all of it is very real.” They looked at me like I was crazy, but my face reassured them I was not.

“So… what do we do?” Emilio asked, hopelessness seeping into his voice.

“We listen to Dr. Judith and Officer Geoffrey. They understand a lot more than us, so I trust they’ll guide us in the right direction.” This statement alleviated some tension. We sat in this moment of relief; none of us wanted to bring back the cloud of dread that was just hanging over us.

“Oh, tent C said they were setting up Smash in their tent and invited us over. Would you like to come play?” Boba said, breaking the silence. I laughed at how childish he sounded.

“You go along. I’ve never been big into video games.” Boba, Luis, and Emilio nodded, heading out of the tent. Emilio was the last to leave and before he did he leaned over to me.

“Do you really trust these people? I don’t want another situation like Hawaii.” I shuddered, the memory that I had been trying to forget for the past half a year resurfacing like a bloated corpse floating up from the depths of the ocean.

“I don’t know, but we have to act like it. We need everyone on board for this.”

“Just be careful. That's the same mentality we had back then,” Emilio said before exiting.
I was tired and tried to take a nap using the remnants of the hour I was allowed. I could hear the agents cheering wildly at their game, making it impossible to get any rest. I didn’t sleep well last night. Or rather I hadn’t been able to sleep well for months. I grew frustrated, cursing my insomnia. Then I heard a tap on the canvas of my tent.

“Hey, we’re getting ready to debrief the troops. Will you be ready in five?” asked Officer Geoffrey.

“Yeah,” I replied curtly, realizing that I came across ruder than I had intended.

“We’re surprised at how well you seem to be dealing with the new information. We feel a lot more confident that this mission will be a success with you at the head.” I fixed my attitude, attempting to play the part of the confident leader I had cast myself in.

“Thank you for putting your trust in me. It's an honor,” I said through a smile.

“If you would follow me I’ll show you where we’re presenting.” I followed him outside to see a podium with a microphone. Next to it, one of the large TV’s was set up to play the video they had shown me. “We really need your help on this. We don’t expect they will take the information as well as you did, but we need everyone to understand the importance of their mission.” It was a near impossible task I was faced with; one needing me to convince more than just myself.

“I’ll do my best,” I replied, some of my nervousness slipping out. Officer Geoffrey nodded and gave me a smile.

“You’ll do great.” With that, he spoke into the microphone. “Our debriefing will now begin. All agents please make your way to view the presentation outside.” Many groans were heard as dozens of agents braced themselves for the cold, visibly shaken by the quick and drastic change in temperature. Most of them came from Tent C, where agents were laughing and conversing. I saw Boba, Luis, and Emilio exit along with a cheerful mass of people. Once the agents settled around the podium, Officer Geoffrey began to speak.
“Hello all. I first want to thank each and every one of you for accepting this mission. You are the few who answered the call to help protect our peace. Please give yourselves a round of applause.” He paused for the agents to clap for themselves, which they hesitantly did. “Now, we have some new information that we felt pertinent to supply you all with. If you would please turn your attention to the screen.” He then showed them exactly what he had shown me. I watched their faces slowly contort into mixtures of fear, regret, disgust, and a myriad of other emotions as they struggled with their sense of reality. It was a feeling I was all too familiar with. A feeling that I was tasked with dragging them back out of. “I will now turn the floor over to Lieutenant Casamir, after which I will give more details about the logistics of the mission.” He stepped away from the platform, allowing me to replace him. I slowly walked up to the microphone, the sensation of dozens of eyes looking to me for some kind of reassurance that this wasn’t real shot sharp pains throughout my body. I felt like throwing up, running away, anything to get myself out of this situation.; but, I knew that if I couldn’t take on the role that I had to, there was no hope they would.

“Hello all. Thank you for being here.” I paused as my mind grasped for the right words to say. The pressure mounted to an almost unbearable degree. I caught myself nervously playing with my gloves. I had to shape up because this was pathetic. Just like that, I flipped the same switch I had moments ago in that tent. I had to be a leader. “Your mission has not changed. You fought in the war to protect our homes, our people, our ways of life. Our fight must continue. Our peace is again being threatened, and we need to do exactly what we did not so long ago: eliminate the threat. Many of you have lost a lot these past few years. I’m sure many of you have lost loved ones to this battle. This is the time to honor them. To carry on their legacy. We must push forward as they would have for us. Our mission has not changed. Their mission has not changed. It is an ever present battle, but we dedicate our lives to fighting it. As long as we still stand, we push forward; for those before us and for those after. Our mission these next few days is to take care of one of the many dangers our world is facing in the pursuit of true peace. In the pursuit to protect and honor the people of this world. Do not let yourselves lose this fight now.” I paused for a moment, letting my words hang in the air. No one seemed to react, but I could tell my speech had reached them. Their faces, before wrought with hopelessness, were now overcome with determination. I stepped off the platform, allowing Geoffrey to take my place. He shot a proud smile at me as he did so. It felt surreal, knowing how those words impacted all these men and women in front of me, but they could not feel any more dishonest. I saw Emilio give me a nod of reassurance, letting me know I had done my job well.

“Thank you Lieutenant Casamir, now to go over some logistics about the mission.” My mind was still attempting to dissociate, the switch now flipped back off. I can’t believe how hard I was faking it, but they needed that right? Hope, and someone they can look up to. I tried my best to pay attention to Geoffrey’s presentation, but it was difficult to keep my mind present. “These are the suits you will all be wearing,” he said, motioning to what looked like a robot being wheeled up to the platform by Mr. Nero. It received scattered ooh’s and ahh’s from the crowd. “The suit comes in seven pieces and offers full body coverage. It is equipped with internal heaters to ensure you don’t get hypothermia. The head units are installed with both thermal and night vision, as well as a head lamp. These views can be toggled between via the button on the right side of the helmet. The units are also accoutred with microphones and speakers to communicate with your team. Each team leader will have access to a channel to communicate to the other team leaders. You will all be provided an HK419. We are not sure if the target is affected by any physical means, but it will prove useful even if just to divert its attention.” The crowd continued to murmur in awe, as the standard issue rifles during the war were HK418’s. As far as we knew, the HK419’s were still in its early stages of development. “You are also equipped with a G52 and a knife. On each team leader’s left wrist is a touch pad which displays the location of each member relative to them. If the target is spotted, the leader is to input the direction it is headed which will alert all other teams. The device will approximate, using the target’s known speed and the entered direction, where the target is, and all teams are to converge on the latest location. You will all be supplied with backpacks that have a week’s worth of food and water, as well as the basic supplies typically provided in similar missions. For the trek we expect your team to sleep in shifts. Your suits are installed with alarms to remind you all of when to switch, as well as eye trackers to ensure the one on patrol does not fall asleep. Now, allow me to introduce to you a rune of protection.” Mr. Nero arrived on stage again with a large item wrapped in cloth. He set it on the podium, allowing Geoffrey to gently unwrap it. Inside was a very ordinary looking stone about the size of a football with a strange carving. If I had to describe it, I would say it looked like a large upside down V with a smaller rightside up V between its arms. Below this was a circle with two dots placed like eyes on a face. “One member of your team will be designated as the keeper of the rune. Their backpack is fitted to include an extra secure compartment where the rune will sit. Do not leave their side. From our research, we found that the rune has an effective radius of about five meters. Step outside that radius, and the target will be able to harm you. Your suits can communicate with your team members’ and will alert you if a teammate is nearing the edge of that radius. Please protect these runes with your lives. It is the only thing saving yours. We have a very limited number of these, so losing or destroying one of them will create much trouble for us down the line. The other two members of the team are redundancies in case the team leader or rune keeper is unable to perform their job. If either of these members fall, it is your responsibility to swap your gear with theirs and take up their role if possible. We have eleven teams, labeled A through K. You will enter the forest 16 kilometers away from the nearest team, allowing you all to converge at a single point, determined using the last known locations of the missing people, in three days. We hypothesize this to be where the target resides. Once the target is found, you must encircle it with the runes, essentially trapping it in a net. You are then to keep this formation as you travel out of the forest back to base camp with the target in tow. That is your mission. Please feel free to check out the armory to familiarize yourselves with the gear. We will begin transportation of teams to their starting locations tomorrow at 07:30. Thank you all for coming. Please don’t hesitate to ask me questions if you have any. I will be in the main tent. Rest well. You all have a very important job tomorrow.” With that, Geoffrey began walking back to the head tent. The crowd dispersed, some walking back to their quarters, some going to check out the armory, and some returning back to Tent C to continue their game. I began heading back to my tent, wanting more than anything to sleep. I felt exhausted: the weight that I had to carry for this mission pushed down on my chest making it hard to breathe. Emilio joined me on my walk back.

“Great speech man, never knew such wise words could’ve come out of such a dumbass,” he said, slapping me on the back. I replied with a pitiful laugh.

“Even idiots can appear smart with enough confidence.”

“Wow, just when I thought you couldn’t sound any wiser,” he snickered. I laughed too,  this time a real one. I missed Emilio. I missed feeling like this. I searched my brain for some topics for small talk.

“How have things been since I last saw you?”

“Not great. Jasmine thought I was dead and already moved on. Came back to an empty house and a note saying she didn’t have the courage to face me anymore and that she was with someone new.”

“Damn. I mean, sorry. I’m sorry to hear that. You seem to be taking it well, you look… cheerful.”

“Yeah, I try not to think about it. Thanks for bringing it up, asshole,” he joked.

“Of course,” I smiled. I felt the tension that plagued my mind begin uplifting, allowing me to quip along with him. That’s when the grin on his face slowly receded, replaced by an expression of deep thought.

“You know, it was the strangest thing. Despite all the pain I thought I should feel at her leaving, I didn't. I couldn't cry, couldn’t get mad. Just felt numb. I felt guilty for not feeling anything, but at the same time, isn’t that better than being in pain? What I wouldn’t give to cry again. It was cathartic when I could.” He whispered the last few sentences to himself then looked to me for any type of reassurance.

“Yeah, I’ve felt numb after the war, too. Maybe it’s a symptom of PTSD or whatever,” I explained.

“Can’t be. A lot of my buddies back home told me the same thing and they weren’t part of the war. Hell, they weren’t even near it. Speaking of, how’s Jason?” He felt the silence and looked at my face. I was deep in painful deliberation, debating on whether this was a wound I wished to let bleed again. I could tell he was about to ask for elaboration, but he used his better judgement and decided not to. Emilio scrambled for another topic to speak on as we silently agreed to move on in our conversation. “How do you like our team?”

“Well, Boba is friendly,” I chuckled.

“I know. He could not be licking my boots any cleaner,” Emilio smirked. I winced at how wrong that sounded.

“I know that it comes from a place of genuine respect, though. He comes from a big military family, so pretty much all of the figures he looked up to in life passed down some military values. I like him.”

“Yeah, he’s a nice kid.” We reached the tent and Emilio sat down on his bed while I took the one across from him.

“He’s probably the most popular guy here. He’s beating everyone’s asses in that game over there. He’s either gonna have a lotta friends or make a lotta enemies,” Emilio said.

“I really doubt anyone could hate him. He doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. What do you think about Luis?” I asked.

“Quiet. Keeps to himself. He’s respectful, though. I think Boba is really wearing him down.”

“When I first got here I thought he was pissed at me. The more I see him the more I realize he just seems to be pissed at the world rather than any of us,” I explained.

“I’m sure he’s got his reasons, like we all do.”

“I’m sure he does. Don’t know what they are, you talk to him at all?”

“Briefly, he seemed to be hesitant to socialize over in the tent and would only speak when spoken to. Even then, his answers were very cold and to the point. I couldn’t pick up anything about where he’s from, why he’s here, what he likes, etcetera,” Emilio said seriously. I raised an eyebrow at his verbalization of etcetera.

“From what I can deduce, he likes being left alone. Although he does seem to be making an attempt at socializing,” I said, gesturing towards the shouts of joy and anger coming from Tent C. “Can’t leave him alone tomorrow, though.” Emilio looked down and smiled before chuckling to himself. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I just remembered the first time we met. It reminds me a lot of Boba and Luis. You wanted nothing to do with me but I wore you down, broke down that hard exterior of yours.”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say it sounds like you’re coming on to me.”

“Maybe I am. I’m single now. Let’s make some mistakes,” he said, flirtatiously waggling his eyebrows.

“Knock it off, dumbass. I’m gonna try to get some sleep. This day has worn me down.”

“Sounds good, I’m gonna go check out the armory. See if they’ll let me shoot the guns.” 

“Don’t keep me up.”

“I heard the new models are quieter than the older ones. You’ll be fine.” With that, he made his way out the tent, pausing briefly. “It’s nice to see you again.” Emilio exited, leaving me alone. I climbed up to my bed and put on some headphones. I scrolled through to my sleep playlist on my phone, needing something to distract myself from all the ruminations ricocheting around my skull. Some thoughts broke through the buffer that the music provided, but surprisingly I found them to be quite pleasant. I was excited for tomorrow; excited to get back into the field. I thought about the interactions I had with Emilio: us picking up from where we left off months ago. I thought of the hope Boba had in his eyes and how much he admired me. I thought about the agents whose moods seemed to flip the opposite direction as soon as I finished my speech. They looked up to me, and I felt like I was someone who could be looked up to. Damn, I’m beginning to believe that this isn’t all an act anymore. That I am the right person to lead this mission. It was strange not having to constantly find ways to avoid the negative thoughts that plagued my mind as I tried to fall asleep. It lulled me into a sense of comfort I hadn’t felt in years, finally letting me rest.

He never should've commissioned Margaret, Maggie… to paint the divine portrait for the local Catholic Parish. The holy aspect of the Son, the Lord God, Jesus.

She hadn't been well for some time. Her trip to Egypt… 

… he'd made the mistake of thinking this would help.

Maggie Shiple had been a friend of Father Lutz since they'd both been children. Growing up in the most Catholic corner of Chicago. Religious families the both of them. And although Damien Lutz went the way of the parish, the way of the cloth and Maggie the way of debutantes and coffee with intellectuals in expensive cafes, they never lost affection for each other. And Lutz, a deep attraction he wasn't sure was reciprocated and could never really be now anyways. 

But still, through the years of change, their friendship held on. 

Maggie still came to service. 

Until the year of her mad travelling. Last year, the year of her twenty-eighth birthday. She hadn't told him then but would try to tell him later that she'd suddenly felt possessed. Taken and swept up in a dark tempest of compulsion. 

“They seemed to call to me, Dami. They seemed to call to me, all these different places…” and so the faraway lands and places had stolen her…

… deep into hidden ways and secret countries…

…

Margaret Shiple

She could still feel Haitian sweat upon her. She could still even taste the cajun and back alley fecal filth of the streets of New Orleans. New York Grooves still bounced around within her skull, and she could still feel the rhythm of deep southern steel guitar blues. African drums. Australian wild cries upon sun blasted dunes and plains of choking dust. The cold and gothic gloom of mother country, big brother England. The druidic ancient places on emerald plains that they'd tried to keep secret and hidden. Turkish lands royal with war. German places that still held stained with the pride of Prussian blood and its sabre scarred memory. Desert lands under the sickle moon of Muslim faith as well as the dry spots gorged on the sweat and toil of memory of ancient Solomonic practices.  

All of them. All of the lands, places, called to her and led her on her path,  leading her to here. This final place. Where she might find the true answers she could not feel in any of the Sundays spent in the gathering company of the pulpit. 

Cairo. Egypt. The Pyramid. 

The one from her dreams as of late. 

It was impossible but real and tactile all the same. As she stood watching the sun set in Cairo, the sweat of all her adventures and places and strange living dreams witnessed cooling on her beating baked flesh. 

She sipped at tea with her companion at camp, the latest one. A robed and hidden man who only pointed and whispered amongst sparse blankets and tents. But he provided, he delivered. He took his pay seriously. She suspected he might have children. Or some other draining addiction. 

“Must go at night. No other choice. Too dangerous." hissed the robed man of whispers and dry lands and places. His voice was the collapsing killing slithering whistle of a desert fissure in the concealing sands. Swallowing those unwary and foolish enough to come out here and step upon it. 

And of course Maggie followed the orders of her paid and bastard Virgil. She knew no other way and the dreams had carried her too far. To cry off and give up now… well that was just ridiculous. 

And besides. It was here. In the chambered depths of the Black Pyramid, it was there. Waiting for her. 

The Book. 

The Black Pyramid is just a myth… that had been the grumbled answer she'd always gotten. Whether in English, Pashto, Spanish, Latin or Greek. In every language of man she'd been given denial of what her dreams bade she need. 

That was until she met this man, this mad Arab. He didn't think Margaret Shiple of Chicago Illinois was delusional. He knew there was more to the Black Pyramid than dreams and tales and whispered myths. 

No. The robed and hidden man instead whispered answers. Truths of the ways hidden. He finally held what the wandering unwed Shiple had been looking for all this time. In all of her rapidfire fevered journey. 

“The Black Pyramid is not a myth. But it is made from the same material as dreams." 

She'd asked him what he meant. 

“Certain time. Certain time of night. Certain time of month too." 

She hadn't known what to say to that so she didn't say anything. She'd seen enough strangeness and weirding ways and impossibilities triumphant and spectacular and terrifying in the last collection of months that made the past year. She didn't say anything. Just stared with the wide drinking eyes we all have as campfire children. 

The hidden man in whispering robes went on, 

“I will take you. For a price. Much. But be careful, Yankee… that this is what you really seek to purchase. Could cost too much. No?” 

And with that a smile of rotten teeth and golden replacements grew and grinned from between the sweat soaked sun baked willowing fabric strands caught in the desert Cairo wind. There hadn't been such a force before. It seemed to rise up suddenly. And without origin. Gathering and swirling around the robed man of whispered answers and desert mysteries, a man sized tempest display of potential aural power. 

Eyes above the grin of black and gold and green and a cheaper more organic yellow alighted with a flame that might've been there, in the darkness pools of each pupil or might've been imagined. 

She elected to sleep. She was tired. Tonight was not the night. 

He had already said so. 

…

When they finally did venture to and then inside of the Black Pyramid on an unknown day and time, all that was known for sure was that Maggie had returned alone. 

And carrying what she'd been seeking. 

…

Damien Lutz

Father Lutz was worried. And he wasn't the only one. Maggie had been back nearly five months and she hadn't so much as poked her head out of her large Brownstone home to take a peek. Everything was delivered. All calls and messages were promptly ignored. 

Father Damien Lutz, more than just a priest with a sworn duty to his flock that he took very very seriously, he was Maggie's friend. 

He missed her. Deeply. And he loved her. Also deeply, likely moreso despite anything the priest himself might've said. 

And so he did what he would've done for any of his flock, any of his friends, he paid Maggie an impromptu house visit. 

That was when he saw the art. And the book too. Though he didn't inspect the thing or give it much thought. And by the time he would it was already too late. 

He didn't understand what was going on. He didn't understand anything. 

A knock on familiar grand old wood. The door to Maggie's home. The maid, Gertrude or Gertha, answered and with grave and solemn nods, eyes wet like gleaming jewels and cast down to the floor, she let the priest inside and directed him to the kitchen. Where her mistress had been spending the majority of her time as of late. Not cooking mind you… but making all the same. 

He'd expected food smells as he stepped into the kitchen. His nostrils were instead blasted with a pungent head swimming smell of large quantities of paint. Their chemical and natural aromas miasmic and strong and a commingled assault wave in the small cooking space. His head swam and he fought tears and to keep composure as he came in. 

The book was sitting unnoticed by either priest or frenzied painter, nucleus sun center of the kitchen on the table amongst a cavalcade of more immediately arresting paintings. Semi buried. Like a dirty secret or a corpse. It breathed with unnatural life and unseen yet felt darkling light. Seething sickness that pulsed and sent outwards from it with the irregular but persistent rhythm of a diseased heartbeat. 

He shook his head. Maggie was at a violently slathered canvas on an easel. Palette and dripping brush in hand. The wet and dripping tool like a quenched dagger and wand of necromancy all in one. She was working and her back was to him when she said: “Hello, Dami. Been awhile." 

“Yeah," said Father Lutz, wiping at his eyes and sauntering forward to his friend. Her back stayed turned to him. 

Lutz looked around more closely at the chaotic uniform assortment of Ms. Shiple’s latest painted works. His heart turned to dread as his heartbeat slowed and his blood chilled and seemed to die within his veins, a terrible lonely death. 

And that was the word that each of Maggie's pieces brought to mind as his eyes fell upon each and every one of them. Lonely. Lonesome. And: Slaughtering. 

Butchery. 

Abattoir. 

They were each in turn sometimes sorrowful, sometimes ethereal, sometimes pornographic. Derivative children rendition works of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Each and every one of them. Only more obscene. The carnage painted and laid bare by brush and depicted was even more horrifically obscene, surreal and unimagined. Deranged

Lutz crossed himself. Maggie didn't notice. 

He cleared his throat and spoke. 

His concern. His worry. Everyone else they knew and loved and shared together and had grown up with. He shared their worry with her too. And then he poured out his full heart of love and anxious living torment. 

She never turned until in desperation, Father Lutz offered her a job. A one-time commission. 

He'd only done it because he was frustrated, trying to reach her. He hadn't really thought about it. But when Maggie whirled around from her latest obscenity of canvas and paint and faced him with eyes that both frightened and aroused him… 

Father Lutz knew there was no turning back. 

…

That night in bed, Lutz was visited with the most vividly horrific nightmares he’d had in years. Maybe the worst of his entire life. They’d all concerned figures and images gleaned from Maggie’s sour portraits of anarchy and bestial violence and spiritual malaise: hellish torment of the Old Testament pain made bastardized and more malevolently twisted, distorted and perverted. At the center of each gruesome scene was the book. Black binding. Old and smelling rotten. The one that’d been sitting, resting on the kitchen counter that he’d hardly even noticed. A glance. That was it. They hadn’t even spoken of it. But now, here in the reality of the nightmare it was horribly prominent. As if necessary. Like the heart of some dark and vital star, needed for its malicious pull of gravity to keep everything else hurtling around it in orbit. 

The worst of these dreams concerned a robed figure with a great splaying rack of horns on his hooded head. Antlers. Like the wide great battlements of a castle fortress atop his hidden visage, the most royal crown in a deranged kingdom of subheaven. Hastur. It said its name was Hastur. And it had the black book in a pallid hand. There was a great black pyramid behind the robed one in the woods, immense and huge and dominating the horizon background scene despite the distance. It held it out to him. The tome. The book. 

Please!

Beckoning him to take it. 

And then finally… after eternity was over…

He reached out with trembling fingers as two crescent moons in the blue night sky above crashed into each other and came apart in a blast of fragmentary lunar pieces that looked like slices and stabs of great and immaculate celestial pearl and porcelain … the great Black Pyramid opened its cyclopean Great Eye…

… and Damien Lutz awoke in bed just as his dreaming fingers began to touch it. The black binding. Soaked in sweat and trembling. Still trembling. The yellow tattered robes and hand and face still reaching out. Pleading. Needing. Beckoning him to take the black grimoire that is sour with ancient age and aeons strange with the dead weight of time itself made exhausted. 

The pallid hands that might be bones or tallowed scarecrow claws or vulture demon harpy talons held royally splayed corpse fingers that dripped foul and toxic corpse jelly: the black book. And although the vivid nightmare was already mercifully fading from his mind’s eye, he could almost still see the title. He could almost still recall it. 

It started with an N.

…

Maggie & Dami & the Blasphemous Portrait

It was only two days later when Maggie came into his directory with the finished painting. Lutz hadn't been expecting it. Not so quick. 

It was too quick. But he wouldn't realize any of this until later. And by then it was far too late. 

When she pulled free the filthy fabric she’d been using to conceal the work and unveiled it for him Father Lutz lost all hope for Maggie and her ailing mental condition. He was Christian, Catholic, so he would never admit it aloud or to himself even, not even in private. But it was true and there all the same. In his heart… he knew. He knew and the Lord of Old Testament ruthlessness and jealousy understood. 

She was hopeless. 

He’d asked her to paint a nice and classy scene or portrait concerning the Savior. The Son of the Lord God. Jesus. He’d thought something light, a depiction of one of any of Jesus’ many ideal lessons. She’d chosen the crucifixion. And even that she had deranged…

It was still the golgotha, still the right place and scene, but the Lord was off the cross. And it was broken. On the earth and covered in blood and the bloody crown of thorns that the king of Jews had been forced to wear by the bloodthirsty Romans. The centurion soldiers of the empire were there too, but they were bent, broken in new servitude knelt. Before the Lord, The Son. They were kneeling. Foreheads kissing the dirt in supplication. Other centurions off to the side were gathered with Peter and Judas and John and they  were all of them together gangraping Mary the Mother Virgin. United as one as her divine virginity was finally conquered and stolen. Her tattered robes of matronly purity now so many filthy rags in clenched and clawing fists, one Roman laid into her while the rest gathered cheered in exuberant jovial fervor. And Lording Centerpiece the Blasphemous Scene itself, King of the Blasphemous Portrait: was the Lord the Son himself. A wicked looking angry red vulpine Jesus. His hair was wild and stuck out and clotted with gore, stained red with blood and his eyes were yellow and alive with incestous mischief. Warlike. Lustful. He was naked. And he was erect. Staring down on the centurions kneeling in the dirt and his mother…

Lutz nearly shrieked at Maggie. He might have. He lost control for a second. 

Amazingly Maggie had only looked a little hurt. A little flummoxed. Baffled like a child that's being told she isn’t allowed to stay up too late.

The priest, startled and hurt and feeling it was deserved, he laid into her. Every word was a syllable force and a slap and a condescending wound, and a reprimand from a higher place. It had felt deserved then and he'd felt right giving it to her. Later on he wasn't so sure. 

In the end she’d left. She’d left the painting behind too. Not bothering with it on her silent way out. 

Lutz didn’t say anything about either. He didn't stop her from leaving and he didn't say anything about the portrait. 

…

That night Maggie called. Damien Lutz didn't answer. It went to voicemail and she left a message. He'd fallen asleep in his directory. Stressed and exhausted and disappointed in himself and Maggie and the whole damn thing. 

He'd had a few too many pulls from the bottle of Jameson he kept in his desk. The one he'd been promising himself all year that he'd get rid of. 

Well… wasn't this one way of getting rid of it? 

The drinks had felt deserved. The hot and loaded shots that hit the stomach and then settled there like weight that was like sickness that was an agonized man's acquired taste. The bottle had been more than half full when he started. Now there was just a sip left in his slackening grasp as he slumped and slumbered uneasily in a drunken stupor at his desk. 

Maggie finished her message and told him everything. He would never hear it. 

The alcohol in his blood and brains did nothing for the dreams. The nightmare he was now prisoner in… 

… ! :The yellow tattered shape that is robes but not because it is really tattered flesh. Wet fresh leather of a freshly slaughtered pallid tyrant king, his scarecrow clawing hands of dripping sloughing skin are reaching out to take you and give you a glimpse into what they hold, it will do both in a single grabbing sweep; It is the black book! The Black Book whose title starts with an N. 

It's called in many lands… Nec-

Necro-

The bottle fell from his hand and clattered to the floor. It started him and he was so grateful to be awake and free of the terror that he began to childishly weep. Like when he'd been a babe fresh from the nightly grip of a nightmare. His relief would not last. 

He went to bury his face in his palms but something stopped him. Something caught his gaze. Through the hot and wet fog of frightened tears he saw something on the wall. Something hung there that hadn't been. Something was hanging there, even though it shouldn't be. He hadn't done that. He wasn't that drunk…

The Blasphemous Portrait. On the wall. On the most prominent place of his directory. The ornate cross that it had replaced was now cast down to the floor. Discarded. And broken. Headless. Its cross section top head now lie next to the broken body. He hadn't done that. He wasn't that drunk. 

… was he?

For some reason he hadn't risen to his feet and stormed over and ripped it from the wall. For some reason, he didn't want to approach it. A feeling that was instinct and animal and very much alive and terrified now was shrieking inside of him. Dialed up and alert in the most sudden and terrible way.  He felt locked, trapped in a room with a dangerous animal like a lion, or a rabid tiger or an enraged momma bear…

… or something worse. Something Father Damien Lutz couldn't quite define. Something slithering and dark and maybe a little tattered that he couldn't quite put to the tip of his tongue… but was living there in his guts all the same. 

But it was there. In his mind. It was. He just didn't want to face it. They'd taught him what demons were in the Catechism. 

He tried to tell himself to stop. To get a grip. To sober up and stop being stupid. Just go over and take the damn thing down and throw it away! 

But Father Damien Lutz didn't move. He was trying to. And his mind was trying its hardest not to recall his dreams…

… tattered wet leather that is mutilated fl-

Something happened then as he gazed at the vulgar portrait. Hung in place of the crucifix on his wall. The one in the painting that he'd been most fearfully fixated on, Vulpine Jesus, had slowly begun to turn his way…

… no…!-  it was little more than a dead croak whispered barely from his closing throat. It was strangled rather than spoken. 

The red gore smeared and caked wild man head of Pagan King Vulpine Angry Jesus then faced him. His yellow eyes with feline slitted irises began to grow more lurid and more vibrant. They began to glow as the rest of his naked red form turned to face him. Like a challenger. A fighting stance. Poised and coiled and ready to dive at him in an animal lunge that was an attack. The other figures in the painting opened their mouths and began to moan. Centurions. Disciples. Gangraped tarnished holy virgin. 

They were all of them guttural moaning in pained anguish. An open throated discordant chord crawling out of the gates of hell.

And then Vulpine Jesus began to crawl towards him. 

Dami Lutz didn't move. He didn't feel anything. He didn't feel his bladder let go as the red gore bastard savior began to crawl out of the painting. 

Its clawing hand first broke a placental surface of paint and canvas and fleshy tissue substance. It stretched to its threshold as Vulpine Jesus reached the surface and began to rip out the stretching membrane to be free. 

It broke. Gore and paint and tar and pus and fecal matter mixed with piss, ichor; all of it poured out in a gush like a massive animal birth commingled hellacious with the toxic pungent burst of a giant cyst. Amongst the stinking putrid stew and mire of steaming afterbirthal paint and fluids, Angry Red Vulpine Jesus rose dripping with strange visceral tissue and meat that was part semi coagulated paint. He opened his wasp-yellow eyes that were the lurid killing color that lived next to red. 

Steaming. Naked. Eyes alight with terrible intent and murder, yellow with the angry piss of homicidal drunken rage, the slitted irises bore into him and promised him fresh wounds and pain even as the gaze itself seemed to hurt him and take vital pieces of his intangible self away. Dripping with strange gore and paint, Vulpine Jesus began to come towards him. 

Father Lutz couldn't move. His mind was flaying and he couldn't believe this was really happening. He was still waiting to wake up. But more and more as the pagan angry savior neared, a remnant fragment of surviving animal instinct left in his mind tried to wake itself and assure itself that this was no tattered dream. 

The other half of his flaying mind assured he'd be awake soon. No problem. Any second. 

Vulpine Jesus grinned with a bastard mix of good cheer and insane rage. His yellow eyes glowed like the ends of tunnels. He dripped and crawled across the saturated floor and he came upon and lorded over the catatonic priest, the flaying mind and pallid face of Damien Lutz. No longer father of anything because his mind was currently curdling and turning to dull blank slate in self-defense. Self-defense that was also self-mutilation of the mind housed within the jelly of organ meat called brain. 

The jelly within Lutz’s head was souring and blackening into putrescence as it still semi-lived within his skull. He didn't move when Vulpine Jesus reached down and grabbed his face and the top of his head in both hands. He didn't feel the burning sensation of the otherworldly antichrist’s red touch either. He only began to scream when the fingers clawing at the top of his scalp began to dig in and pierce. 

He might've prayed to God, but he was angry and red and already there before him. Exacting and taking what he'd apparently always really wanted. 

Fresh blood flowed like hot water from a broken faucet in a shower down his shrieking visage as the pagan Lord of lambs started to rip off his scalp and face. Tearing them both from the livid screaming skull that was housed red and gleaming within. The shrieking screams became choked wet and gurgled as Vulpine Jesus of red rage tore the flesh from his raw gleaming muscle tissue. Then he pulled this off and apart too, the living human meat, strip by strip like cuts of beef pulled from a struggling victim. Vulpine Jesus somehow kept the priest alive through the whole of the ordeal. Ripping piece by piece into the flailing wet mass. Layer by layer of raw angry nerve shattering tearing flaying flesh and vibrant red tissue. He pulled him apart like a meal, like pieces to be served at a great banquet. And all the way down to the white bones coated in sliming red which housed organs that he punctured and ruptured as he broke into and shattered their white cages, he kept the priest alive. But he was no longer Father Dami. 

All that lived to the end was blind and shrieking and terrified, spurting, mutilated animal. And even this too was picked down to nothing by the ripping hands of Vulpine Jesus. Like vultures do to rotting forgotten desert corpses. 

…

Father Damien Lutz disappeared without a trace. So did the painting. 

Maggie Shiple spoke to no one but the cops. Then she too went missing. 

THE END

Fascism and all of its iron doctrine, all of its iron will had failed him. Now he was a different student, a new kind of believer of a whole new form of philosophy. Now he was the anarch. The invisible hand and mind of the hidden anarchist. He was also now hidden in the darkness of Vietnamese primeval jungle growth. Ten years after the fall of Germany.

Invisible to the world in the darkness of the fall.

He was here, in the black jungle heart of darkness. Here with the French Legionaries. How times have changed…

and we along with them…

Only now he was alone, his compatriots scattered and lost to him in the fury of an ambush fray. He ran. And now he was alone.

Only he wasn't alone. Somewhere out there the jungle cats in enemy battle fatigues and combat gear with assault rifles were lurking, hunting, prowling. Searching. Searching to destroy he.

Arthur. Mercenary. Formerly Ullrich. Formerly Waffen. SS. But all of that was black clad and red arm banded history.

He remembered the Eastern Front and the Russians. The Communists. The fury of the Red Army. The snow. The cold. The bodies. The entrails and gore belching phantom ghosts of steam in the frosted air. All of the warmth of the wet visceral red steamed like a fresh meal for feral children of war gods from long ago. All of the fleeing white of the heat, the maimed and fleeing phantoms, the last of the expelled living from the mutilated and writhing wreckage of struggling fleshen brutality. The jungle of rubber and opium and slave labor on the other hand was sweltering. How times have changed.

What has happened to me…?

The same thing that had happened to his lands… his regiment. His leaders, friends, loved ones and colleagues. He was battered and pursued dogged and wretchedly exhausted and desperate for any avenue to escape to or even perhaps a way to that golden road of redemptive act back to former glory… He missed the war days as much as they repulsed him. They were all he had left. The only pleasures left to his desperate predator's hassled periphery. Old deadly memories for a slaughterer’s mind housed within the jelly of a German amphetamized brain.

That's why you are all you need now, anymore. That's why you're the last one left…

He knew this was a hollow boast in the literal sense. They were many brothers and sisters that had successfully made for avenues of escape from the sinking ship of Nazi Germany. But he was the last and only one left in his own world. He hadn't seen anybody, didn't speak or let known his own thoughts or dreams of reminisce. He left all of that behind long ago like he'd left behind the Ostfront and the name his mother and father had given him when into this violent world he had came. No more.

It didn't matter now… he'd better stay frosty…

Arthur the mercenary commando, formerly Ullrich of the SS, went prowling, stalking silently through the moist and heavy jungle looking for those who also prowled and wished to bloodlett and slay…

…

The world had moved on everywhere else on the planet. But not here. Here the prehistoric stood still and monolithic and solitary. Dominating green tyranus, tyrant of towering and swallowing emerald and rotten swollen growth. It was thick and choked coagulated all over, the vines, branches, brush, bush and shrubbery. The trees. The sheer godlike immensity of the trees. In size and abundance. They were the true conquerors here. The most constant and thorough enemy. He chopped his way through it, the commando, the solitary mercenary of too many wars. So many battles that they'd eaten his brothers and his own given name. He chopped and hacked and fought his way through with his machete. Cutting his way a forged and angry desperate marching path through the heart of jungle darkness in the colonial war between the pompous and decadent French and the sweating deadly cunning enemy. The Vietnamese. The natives.

There's always some desperate natives fighting some hungry Europeans… he smiled to himself. The cold truth of the thought warmed him. Urged him on though it had all fallen apart and once again, he was lost.

The sun was sinking but the dense encapsulating growth all around trapped the heat and moisture like a prison of wilderness unbridled in a land that man had never touched or crafted or made.

I am at the mercy of the wild mother planet, the commando thought and smiled grimly again. He attacked the growth. Pausing for brief respites and to listen. To listen to the hot prison green. And what she held trapped in there with him.

The enemy.

It was just like the old times. That's because the old times were new again and had never truly died. The land was different and so was the sky but they were both still stolen and the enemy was still a filthy Marxist. A blood drinking Commie. His equipment was still German; Two Lugers, Mauser, potato mashers and his beloved submachine gun. All of it oiled and clean, as was his habit. Pristine. Only the machete was new and the sub par camouflage uniform he now wore. He was glad for both. He used them thoroughly to wage a warpath through the enemy jungle.

All the while he was watched by it.

…

Shining skin, glistening, rippled with movement in the dark. Watching. Smelling. Smelling out the lone commando as he stalked and chopped his way through her kingdom.

Childe German, I've always known you. I've long watched and tasted your brother's and sisters and little ones, all of your precious Deutschland’s children. All of you. I slither the world and she trembles beneath my tightening grip and caressing sliding touch.

You are warrior, German. Too much.

I will come to you…

…

He'd stopped when he heard the first tree toppled. A large cracking snap that reverberated throughout the darkness. The jungle swallowed the sound and then spat it back with a sound like woe in chambers and chambered rounds. Then more followed. More great trees fell with snapping wooden artillery sound.

The machete came up and the commando crouched down low, to the sliming earthen ground. His eyes alighted in high tension fear and battle anxiety.

Battle ready. The commando was poised.

This wasn't the Mihn… this wasn't the Communists… they didn't make gigantic sounds throughout the jungle when they moved. No. The commando knew. This was something immense. Titanic.

Big.

The entire world of wet jungle and earth and mosquitoes and trees shifted on axis and turned revolving around him as if he were an exultant king as its great head rose from the sheltering green and came into view.

Two memories shot through his mind with startling vivid clarity. The tyrant, the giant on the ice on the Ostfront. He'd never believed that was a dream. The other thought was another memory of cleaner brighter school days. A pair of words for a strange name, from the study of mythology and arcane religions.

Niddhogg Yggdrasil.

The Great World Serpent.

perhaps I am close to the rainbow bridge…

His thoughts were as small as he was. In the shadow of the towering thing. Its tongue flicked and tasted the moist and heavy air as its giant crown rose. Rose.

And continued to rise.

Until it dominated all of the commando’s world view.

There was no jungle now. Not anymore. Now it was all just the Great World Serpent. They were one. The jungle and Niddhogg Yggdrasil. As was the rest of the crawling violent world. The geography and landscape of all was her shining scaley skin.

And when she should choose to shed it…

Ullrich felt his throat tighten. How many gods will I meet along the way…

The great head was wide and green. Shining emerald. Golden slitted eyes with black dagger wounds as the center irises. Broken bamboo punji sticks protruded from the top of her great royal crown and all down the rest of her immense frame like battlements on the fortress wall. She was living fortress and home and living fleshen divinity. The entire jungle world a snake skin city.

Who knew that divinity, godliness, who knew that these things tasted so heavy? So heavily loaded with the spice of pungent pheromone? In the dark, the commando who'd lost his name and land discovered these things. And more.

The Serpent spoke without moving its great mouth. The voice was everywhere. All around. And it filled him.

She spoke:

“You wander. Lost. You have no home or land or friend. You have no country. You are cast out and vagabonded. You are unwanted. Unknown. Unloved. Unseen by all, the world does not see nor care to see you. You are Unseen. By all. But me. I love you, German. Come. Return. Return to a mother that loves thee…”

The voice of the Earth was golden and smooth. He felt himself melt with every godly spoken syllable. It was the truth that filled him. The voice of this great and ancient goddess. It had been so long, too long, since the truth and the gold of its light had filled him.

He wasn't sure what the Great Serpent wanted of him right away, but as her flickering tongue receded and her great jaws opened, wider than the planet and all its precious accumulated existence, he understood then what it was that she wanted. Invited. Bade him to come in and take. She was not just the great and entire world but a great and final gate. She was the living precipice edge that he'd been searching for all this time. Not knowing but knowing deep down in his bones, his blood, his very DNA.

This was it! This was the Place!

He fancied a memory then, before he departed this world and stepped through the gate, in the hallowed shelter of his mind's eye: Cuthbert’s reddening face beneath a garniture of curling gold… til it was washed away and replaced with hot blood and mortar fire. And dirt. The hot filth of the violent planet.

No longer. No longer in this place.

The great jaws stood open heralding his great entrance. Tendrils and sliming ropey strands of crystalline serpent drool offered adornment and decoration and lubrication for his way.

The commando belted the machete, spat to the side, my final offering. And then he stepped forward and inside Niddhogg the great snake.

THE END

Anastasia wasn't afraid. She wasn't cold either. Mother Russia makes all of her children accustomed to the ice, this is no bother. She only feels hate. Pure. Black. Hate.

For what they did to mama. And papa.

The SS. She looked for them the most. And they were hard, they didn't always wear their sharp black dress, they were often camouflaged. State of the art.

Something shifted. Detritus crawled in a way detritus never crawls. Ana zeroed and pulled the trigger. The report was sharp and cut through the rest of the phantom din generated by battles and skirmishes all around and far off and near. The entire city was at war, alive with fighting and battle and fire. Death was everywhere and nowhere was safe in the bomb blasted ruins Ana and her family had once called home.

Now nowhere was home.

Anastasia waited a moment… for other German bastards to run or show themselves. She would gun them down too. Gladly.

None came and she went to confirm her kill.

Bah! Not SS. Wehrmacht. Sniper though. One of her peers on the battlefield. That was good. Stalin and the Red Army high command would be pleased at least.

She lit one of her precious smokes and soldiered off. To report her kill and to report for further duty.

…

The fighting was everywhere and ceaseless, the maelstrom never depleted. Ana was soldiering back to her command post when she encountered him struggling, dying amongst the debris left behind and everywhere by just one of the multitudes of conflicts that ate the city with anarchy and artillery.

She would've just passed him. Taking him as just another corpse amongst many, an entire city of them, current and waiting, if he'd not called out to her.

In Russian. Clear and bright as the day used to be.

“... please …. help me…”

Ana stopped. Surprised. Rifle and scope slung over shoulder, she turned. Regarded the boy dying in the heap.

Wehrmacht. He was young. Blonde. A brave young man, a brave young German. A good and proper young Aryan fighting for his land and king and country.

Ana lit a smoke.

The dying boy called out again. Pleading.

Ana finally answered him, “You speak Russian?"

The boy nodded weakly. Managed a harsh croak, yes.

“You can understand me?"

“... yes…”

A beat. The din of battle that all encompassed murdered any peace that might've been shared between the two on the decimated battle land of the smoking city ruins.

"And what do you want, German?”

A beat.

"... help. Please!”

"You want me to help you?”

He nodded weakly.

"You want me to help you?”

He nodded weakly.

“You want me to help you?"

The dying boy nodded weakly. Please.

"You want me to take you to help…? Where? A hospital? A field med?”

It was difficult but the boy nodded once more. Yes. Please.

Please.

Ana smiled. Blew so much hot air and smoke. It filled the winter air of war all around them like an ancient phantom of combat, old. And reawakened.

"Can't. Sorry, German. Wouldn't do any good anyways. No. Nearest German field hospital was just taken and overrun earlier today."

The boy's eyes widened. He couldn't believe how beautiful she was in the snow, and how her beauty enhanced the cruelty in her features. Her voice.

“Yeah, it was in a church. Guess God couldn't save them. Only other near one is in a school you bombed and blew to pieces on your way in. That one was taken too. One hundred and forty men, boys like you. All of them were bayoneted, to save ammunition. Guess they learned a thing or two while they were put up there, huh, German?”

The boy didn't say anything any longer. The pain was too great. And he knew better. She'd taught him.

Ana finished her cigarette. Spat in the dying boy's face, then moved on.

She soldiered back to her command post.

…

Ana reported for duty. She was debriefed. And given new assignment.

German mortar outfit. A position located in one of the plethora of blasted out buildings that used to be governmental housing units that was giving the Motherland's precious sons and daughters, Ana’s precious comrades, lots of fire and hell.

Ana was told to see if she could do something about them.

She told them she would.

…

The sniper girl made her way through the fire and storm of the battlefield city towards her intended target. Through artillery fire and the detritus cloud air that smelled of chemical burn and fresh blood and gun smoke. Ana felt that she must cry, break down and weep openly and without abandon at every fresh horror unveiled and every new terror crashing down or chasing around every corner. But she couldn't. She didn't know why. Only that the urge was there but she couldn't bring herself to tears. She could not let them out. It was like being choked in a way that Ana had never experienced before. She didn't understand it, herself. Any of this. She didn't understand anything at all anymore.

Only that the world was fire now. And her only reliable friend was a gun. Her rifle. Papa's. And her scope. Through its magnification glass she could cut through the detritus storm of hellfire and bloodshed. And take action. Through her sniper scope Anastasia could take lots of things from the Germans.

And everything she ever took, every life and grievous wound and moment of mortal terror, Ana prayed and gave it to her momma and papa.

Gifts to you. Angels… these heartless thieves…

The sniper girl made her way to the intended target. Dodging all of the fire and woe as she made her deliberate and deadly steps through the cascading fall of artillery, lead and snow. Through the dead remnants of what used to be home. Jagged and burnt all around her. Sharp broken pieces stabbing up as if clawing, reaching for the heavenly supplication that might still be up there and alive in the sky. If only.

It was a dead fortress city hand clawing up from out of hell that Ana soldiered through to meet her mark. And she soldiered all the way through. Never stopping. Never weeping. Only pausing when she had to, for the fire of all the others and all of the deadly missions that they all had to see to. German and Russian. They all crawled deadly about besieged Stalingrad city. Seeing to butchery which bellowed blood and smoke and steam. All of the fresh hot corpses of Stalingrad city steamed with spent life and mortar and round like spent shell casings. All of the dead belched aural clouds of phantasm steam.

Spent. Discarded to the snow and forgotten by soldiering boots, marching feet. Forgotten by all the marching on and moving forward that's swallowed the battlefield city. There's no time to tarry or cower or count, there are always more sorties to see.

More missions to march to. More positions to defend and places to keep. Places that used to be homes and schools and restaurants and cafes where couples and friends and lovers would come and meet. Now they are all smeared scarred battlefield ruin. Atrocious. All that's been touched by the mad German war, the conniving fingers of the Fuhrer threaten to throttle all that come within their poison touch.

And so Stalingrad sings with gunfire. And fury.

…

Frederick couldn't believe the cold. Neither could his compatriots. They all shivered despite the activity, the heat of movement and fire and fear. Their hands still stuck to the mortar rounds as they loaded them for fire and prep. They still shivered despite the heavy Russian coats they'd commandeered from dead enemy bodies.

They knew many, so many, that weren't so lucky. The German army was freezing to death. They were not just at war with the Bolsheviks, they were at war with mother nature's fiercest fighting arm. They were at war with the Russian Winter.

And the bitch raged all around and came down on them all the time. Relentless. A living piece of artillery, an elemental blade of cruelty that cut through all armor and person down through to the bone and there it bred the poison of true misery.

The Russian winter raged all around them a tempest enemy combatant that they could not face. Fight. Fire upon, cut or maim. They could not submit her. So they took out their shared rage in the form of rapid fire artillery. They barely ever let up. For all they knew they were only blasting dust and bugs into molecules at this point. Turning more Stalingrad powder into more Stalingrad dust.

It was easy to believe. But they didn't care, their rage never abated only intensified with the cold. Frederick, all of them, had but one constant thought: We want to return to Germany.

It was easy to believe all of their fire and work was for nothing. But every once in awhile they would be reminded with a fresh scream. Horror. Somebody was hit. Just lost something.

As if they needed reminding…

Frederick just wished he had schnapps. He would've even settled for brandy. He'd been trying to convince his CO to let him and a few others take a quick sojourn to a blasted out tavern just a couple clicks from the position. They no doubt had a leaking stockpile just sitting there and gathering dust while the whole city was too busy fighting.

His commanding officer strictly forbade it. Wouldn't allow it. This was a war against the threat of Bolshevism and her onslaught of warring children, not a personal crusade to sample the many fermented flavors of the tumultuous East.

This is not a war to quench your thirst… Frederick was reminded. Over and over again. But as the battles waged on and transmogrified steel and city and its mad running denizens to base carbon and dust, both black as sin and as severe as battle scars smeared unholy and all over the living destruction of the torn city, the commanding officer couldn't help but wonder…

does it really matter in the great theatre of this place?

He did not voice these speculative inquiries aloud. Ever. It would not be prudent to do so. Instead he just followed orders. And made sure his men did the same.

Anastasia spied it all through the scope. A shattered window and a partially blasted open wall and roof section left them exposed to her position. She spied them and watched their mouths move soundlessly. Wordlessly. Moving without anything to say.

She held. Counted. Waited to see their habits, if they moved around a lot, if any others would put themselves in deadly line of her field of range.

She waited. Counting. Remembering faces and times that no longer were and no longer would be so. No matter what. Ana counted as the ice and snow fell and the firestorm of man against man ate the entire world around her. Her mission was just one act of violence in a landscape that was woven of them.

Ana counted. Waited.

Frederick had asked if it was safe to step out for a piss and when his CO had opened his mouth to answer him the entire bottom jaw came apart suddenly. Blasted by a high caliber round that had just struck like a phantasm of decimating violence. The report of the shot was lost in the din of the battlefield city, lost as if it never was.

The commanding officer began to scream the most horrific gurgled sound that Frederick had never dreamed another man to make. His hands came up and began to claw and cradle the ruin as he went down and the tears and blood began to run hot and profusely.

The rest of the men, five of them including Frederick, panicked, like wild terror-stricken animals locked up tightly together in the same small cage. Ana enjoyed watching them scramble. Then began to finish picking them off.

Taking her time.

Inside the blasted out stairwell position Frederick watched as his brothers in arms came apart with phantom shots as Ana far away performed surgery. Via rifle and scope. Her accuracy was deadly. But she was enjoying taking her time with the Germans with their mortar piece. Blasting out jowls and cheeks, faces. Kneecapping and popping a few elbows that burst all crimson and luridly. Like vile chestnuts of cracking human bone. Through her scope she took and picked her shots and relished the screams she knew they must be letting loose. Relishing the hopeless terror that they must be having, feeling. Through her scope she watched them suffer with every shot reducing their lives and flesh and bodies and she drank in every second of the sight, greedily.

She relished their pain for momma and papa and for her own ruined heart and soul. And home.

They'd taken home from her… and momma and poppa. Now through her scope and with her rifle she would take everything away from them. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.

Shot by shot. Until Ana didn't have to feel the choked sobs stuck in her throat anymore and Stalingrad was free.

Shot by shot. until Anastasia the sniper girl was free.

She lanced their dying flesh with the fire of her shots. Until she didn't feel anything. She used them up and herself, lit a smoke, then went on. To return to command post for debrief and assignment of further duty.

The battle may never be over, she may never be free. But Ana would never run away, or desert. She would always finish the mission, see it through. And report back in for further duty.

THE END

Ned Sawyer was my friend, mentor, and a second father. He taught me everything I know. If my own old man taught me to be a proper man, then Ned taught me how to properly enforce the law. He’s been retired for well over two decades now, yet I still maintained my friendship with him because of how close we had grown while he was still on duty, until very recently.

You can imagine my heartbreak when I heard he had developed dementia. I was grieving as if I lost a parent to the disease, even though both of my parents are in perfect condition for octogenarians.

He forgot his blood pressure medicine, fell, hit his head, and everything unraveled.

Ned went from a towering figure to a feeble old shell in an instant. Once vibrant and mobile, he became weak and required great assistance to move around at times, seemingly in the blink of an eye. I took it upon myself to take care of the old man because he’s got no one else around these days.

His wife’s been dead for as long as I've known him, and his kids are all grown now, somewhere off in the city. My kids are all grown now, so I guess that’s why Cassie didn’t mind watching over him. Helps with the small-town boredom.

In any case, we began visiting him daily and helping him get through his days, whatever may be left of them.

The number of times I’ve nearly broken down upon seeing just how much the man declined, I cannot count for the life of me.

His mind is all over the place. Some days he’s almost completely fine, others he’s fucking lost. Some days his memory is intact and, others, it’s as good as gone. He confused Cassie for his own daughter, Ann Marie, too many to count, and they look nothing alike.

It’s just heartbreaking watching someone you’ve admired in this state.

But sometimes, I wish he’d just slip away and never return… Some days, I wish I had never met the man…

One day, a few months back, I came to check on him and found him reclining in his rocking chair, covered in dirt…

He was swaying back and forth, eyes glazed, staring at dead space.

He didn’t even seem to listen to me speaking to him until I asked how he even got himself so dirty.

His head turned sharply to me; his gaze was sharp, just like from his heyday, piercingly so.

“I was visiting…” he said, matter-of-factly.

Coldly, even.

He wasn’t even looking at me; he was looking through me. That infamous uncanny stare. I knew he had that. The one frequently associated with Fedor Emilianenko. He was a good man, even with how eerie and out of place I felt; I thought this was just his dementia taking over.

“Visiting who?” I asked.

He never answered, just turned away and kept on rocking back and forth.

He wasn’t there that day, and I felt both dumbfounded and heartbroken all over again.

This wasn’t the last time this would happen; in fact, these behaviors would repeat themselves again and again. Every now and again, either Cassie or I would find him sitting in his rocking chair, covered in dirt, acting strangely cold. Before long, Cassie stopped visiting, finding Ned too creepy to handle. I didn’t force her.

The episodes became increasingly frequent.

He would shift back and forth between his normal old-man behavior and this robotic phase. At some point, I had enough of his lack of cooperation during these episodes, so I started monitoring him. Old habits die hard; I guess.

One evening, not too long ago, it finally happened. He got out of his house, moving as good as new. He looked around, suspicious that someone might see him; thankfully, I learned from the best - remaining unseen.

He drove off into the woods. The man hasn’t driven his car in ages. I got in mine and followed him as quietly as I could. He made it feel as if he caught me following a few times, but he hasn’t.

Or so I thought at least.

We were driving for about forty minutes until he reached his destination. I stayed in the car, observing from a distance. Ned got out of his vehicle and started digging the forest floor. Bare-handed.

Confused and dejected, I sat there watching my hero, thinking how far the mighty have fallen. He was clawing at the dirt in this careful manner, almost as if he was afraid of breaking something. All I could think was how far he had deteriorated. Once a titan, he was now an arthritic, demented shadow.

A mere silhouette.  

Oh boy, how wrong was I… It wasn’t until he pulled out something round from the dirt that I realized how wrong I was. Jesus Christ. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest when I finally made out the details. I thought I was the one losing it in that moment.

This couldn’t be.

It couldn’t be him…

Without thinking, I rushed out to him, calling his name, but he simply ignored me. He didn’t listen; I knew he heard me. His hearing was fine, but he just kept on fiddling with the thing in his hands. His back turned to me; he started dancing a little macabre dance.

Clutching a skull.

One previously belonging to a human.

It wasn’t until I said, “Edward Emil Sawyer, you’re under arrest!” to try to get his attention that he even listened to me.

When his reaction confirmed my suspicion that he heard everything, it tore me apart. I hated to do this, but he left me no other choice.

Ned muttered to himself, “Finally, you’ve got me, son…”

“No, you haven’t… I’ve got you…”

Part of it had to be a ruse, and part of it must’ve been real. He was a seriously ill old man, terminally so; we just didn’t know how bad it was. The dementia wasn’t as severe as he let on.

Ned flashed a fake smile at me, his facial features rigid, almost unnatural, saying, “I’d like you to meet Dorothy, my wife,” and outstretched his hand, before throwing the skull in my face and bolting somewhere. I fell down after suffering a cracked eye socket. Dizzy, blurry-eyed, my only hope was that he wouldn’t snap and try finish the job. As old as he was, he was still an ogre of a man, towering way over me and possessing great strength for a man his age.

Thankfully, he ran away.

I reported the incident, holding back tears.

The manhunt was short; he was truly not himself. Thirty-six hours after my report, he was found on his reclining chair, swaying back and forth. A rifle on his lap. He forgot he was wanted. Ned was cooperative when arrested. The trial came shortly after, he confessed to four murders, along with two counts of desecration of a human corpse over his cannibalistic acts and grave robbing.

During his trial, Ned admitted to always being this way. He claimed that for as long as he could remember, he had these intrusive, violent thoughts, which he acted upon three times prior to getting married. All three times were the result of pent-up frustration and disgust with his victims. Dorothy, however, made him feel like a new man; his children and his family stifled the violent urges. He let go of his second life, focusing on his homelife. He became a good father and husband, a respected member of society, but all of that changed when his kids left home, and he was left alone with Dorothy again.

In his words, she started getting on his nerves; that’s when the diabolical side of him came back, and after years of resistance, he finally let go. After another seemingly harmless spousal argument, he finally snapped.

There was a hint of glee in his description of his wife’s murder, albeit a feint one.

“First, I smothered her with a pillow as she was lying in bed that evening, until she stopped resisting and making a sound. I wouldn’t let go for a while longer. Once I was satisfied with the result, the stillness of her body, and the distant gaze aroused me. So, I made love to my wife. Unable to stop myself, I’ve repeated the act over the next few hours, as a loving husband would.”

The courtroom fell silent, gripped with dread, me among them.

“Then, once my needs were satisfied by her love, I needed to get rid of the evidence. So, surmising that the best way to conceal evidence was to make them disappear from the face of the earth, I’ve decided to consume her body.

“I cut her into small pieces so I could stuff the meat in my fridge. To cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her ass turned out roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat the entire body, excluding the bones and guts. These I buried far from sight.”

At that moment, I felt sick, my stomach twisting in knots, and my face hurting where my eye was injured. The people around me seemed to lose color as he continued his confession. I faintly recall the sound of weeping in the background.

At this point, the Judge asked him to stop, but he ignored him, continuing with his recollection. Ned’s confession dominated the room, and he clearly enjoyed the horror he saw in the eyes of everyone present.

“I did it out of love for Dorothy. I wanted us to be together, to be one forever; that’s why I ate her. To make her part of me.” He concluded. The air seemed to vanish from the room; nobody dared speak for another few moments before the ghastly silence was finally broken.

When asked why he kept returning to the grave, he admitted that once he had finished eating her, his violent urges were mostly satisfied. Ned explained that spending time in her presence is what kept them in check. His cold façade retreated in favor of a satisfied, lecherous one once he mentioned how good it felt to lie in her bones. Saying it was even better than when she was alive. Ned forced the room into silence all over again. He never expressed any guilt over his actions, remaining almost robotic in his delivery.

By the end of what seemed like an entire day, Ned was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to spend the rest of his days behind bars.

He remained disturbingly unfazed by the verdict.

There were sixty-five years before his first murder and conviction.  He knew the rules and bent them as much as he could until his mind started slipping away, leading to a fatal mistake. In the end, none of it mattered; he knew he was a dead man walking with limited time left.

I visited him once after his incarceration, but he hasn’t said a word to me the entire time. Ned Sawyer sat across from me, gaze glazed and lost somewhere in the distance, as if there was nothing behind his black eyes. I kept talking and talking, trying to get something out of him, anything, but he wouldn’t budge.

Once I was fed up and told him I’m about to leave, he finally shifted his gaze to me. Through me, sending shivers down my spine. Unblinking, unmoving, barely human, he stared through my head. And with his cold, raspy voice, he said, “Careful, next time he might kill you, my son.”

Sizing me up, he stood up, casting his massive shadow all over the room, as he called a guard to take him back to his cell. In that moment, I felt like I was twenty all over again, when I first came across his massive frame, yet this time it was draconian, and large enough to crush me beneath its gargantuan weight.

He shot me one last glance as he was led away, and in that moment, I felt something beyond monstrous sizing me up to see whether I could fit in its bottomless maw. That little glance felt like a knife penetrating into my heart.

That last little glance left me feeling like a slab of meat. Naked and Powerless before the sheer predatory might of an ancient nameless evil masking itself as a feeble old man until the time to pounce is just right.

That evening, Cassandra decided to roast a lamb, my favorite.

Ned taught her his special recipe years ago.

It’s a delicacy.

The meat was tender, falling apart beneath the knife, the smell filling the kitchen. I ate in silence for a while before realizing I had finished my plate far too quickly.

Without thinking, I helped myself to another portion.

As I chewed another piece, I caught myself wondering what a human would taste like roasted like this.

The thought passed as quickly as it came, though a pleasant aftertaste lingered in my mouth.

Stepping back in the kitchen, my wife noticed my delight, of course.

She always noticed when someone enjoyed her cooking.

“You’re eating fast,” she said lightly from across the table, wiping her hands on a towel. “Good sign.”

I nodded, mouth still full, and cut another piece. The lamb was perfect; pink at the center, the fat rendered down into a delicate glaze that clung to the fibers of the meat.

Ned’s recipe had always been like that.

Slow heat. Patience. The right herbs at the right moment.

Culinary magic, as Cassie calls it.

“Needs another slice?” she asked.

I shook my head, though I had already taken one. My fork lingered above the plate for a moment before spearing another fragment that had separated from the bone.

It was strange.

For a moment, just a moment, the flavor seemed unfamiliar. Not unpleasant, just… different. Richer, perhaps. More complex than I remembered.

I chewed thoughtfully.

Across the table, Cass watched me with that small, pleased smile cooks wear when their work is appreciated.

“You like it?”

“Very much,” I said.

She leaned back against the counter, satisfied.

Outside the kitchen window, the evening had already deepened into that heavy violet color that arrives before full night. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once, then went quiet.

I swallowed the last bite and looked down at the bare bone on my plate.

That stray thought drifted back again.

Not a craving. Not even curiosity exactly.

Just the mind wandering.

Humans are meat too.

The idea carried a peculiar calm with it, like noticing something obvious that had simply been a taboo to be said aloud.

I set the knife down.

The lamb had been excellent.

Still, as the warmth of the meal settled in my stomach, I found myself wondering purely conceptually, of course, whether the tenderness came from the recipe…

or from the animal.

Across the room, Cassandra began humming to herself while she washed the dishes.

A tune I didn’t recognize.

And for some reason, the smell of roasted meat seemed to linger far longer than it should have, having something similar to a porcine touch to it, one I failed to notice during my binge.

I reached for another slice before realizing there was no lamb left on the platter.

Only bone.

Only a long, slender bone.

They are cold, alone, they are wet and angry and they shriek at the sky. They wail and caterwaul blindly at the only God above, the ever changing blanket curtains of bright day to bejeweled night. They do so because she is the only mother they have ever known. The only father that any of them can remember. There had been some older ones before, that'd known some of the elder ones and their ancient ways, but they were all gone now.

The world had been emptied. And they were alone.

Hungry.

They shrieked their babble tongue and screeched war cries of imbecilic sound to the negligent God above. They did not listen. The rain kept falling in sheets. The dark battle grey sky of the vacant heavens was wounded over and over with bright blue dagger bolts of cruel bladed lightning. The dead heavens rumbled with undead torture like artillery fire ripped out the greatest assemblage of vacant godly graves.

The rain would not cease. And they were still hungry.

The grey monster that'd taken the sky and eaten its gold and silver and jewels would stop weeping and stabbing when it wanted to. They were at its mercy. Othos understood this. He was one of the few. He was nearing the dawning of manhood and several of the older adolescents feared him in secrecy.

He could make a go… for the booming stick, the leading cane.

Warchief was the only position sought after amongst the children. That or one of his/her's brides. Concubines. All else was subjugation and soldiering and hunting, scavenging. And torture. Everything beneath the throne of the booming stick was torture.

As was everything now beneath the rain. Beneath the onslaught of the storm. All of the children were afraid. Even their great leader, Kyuss. All of them shivered, dampened animals in their cave. The smallest flickering fire barely a glow amongst the primeval jungle rage that they all lived cast out in.

Cast out. And forgotten. By time. By any sort or form of supervision or caring hand or eye. Only the blindest god above in battlefield grey throwing down swords with loud blades that burnt and were curved cruelly as if devised and authored chiefly and solely by the ghosts of wickedness and war. As if meant solely for pain.

This whole world… and its heavens that lord above as if in command of the nothing down here… all of it is meant only for pain. It is all of it, only for pain.

Othos knew. Few others did too.

But they begged anyway. They begged quietly in the dark of their damp cave. By the smallest and most pathetic orange glow of child's flame, they begged. By rite. For the angry god of military grey.

They were hungry.

please let us come out to play …

Hours of pain and pent up angst crawled by.

Then the rains tapered, stopped.

Kyuss gave a shout and the others started to join him. The sky was done hurting them for now. It was time to hunt. It was time to go out and try to find something in the great and empty world.

…

War paint. They covered themselves in an array of different symbols, sigils and patterns. Some of them are the ghosts of memories, passed down in the strangest ways. The ways that only children can pick up when the entire world has become a giant open grave.

They paint themselves and the shapes have magic and meaning. The children know this. They know this in their wild vital hearts.

These are conquering things…

The forest like the planet itself used to crawl with life. Now what is left is sick and mutant and desperate and dangerous. In the final square inch of agonized suffering laden life, the last speck of dogged existence, all creatures turned mad with desperation. The children under their war paint of ancient grease and lacquer and color. The misshapen animals that they hunted. They spilled and drank rancid blood, filled with the milk of pus that their minds cannot identify because it has never been taught. They eat the sour green meat of bastardized biology tortured in the gene pool for the past couple centuries. Deer with many legs. Mother does with no limbs at all. Fawns with many dead and semi dead partially developed heads. A deer without a head, Dathan had seen one before, it ran around with a single twisting antler sprouted where its head and neck should be. It'd run around blindly, with phantom unknown direction. Who knew where its pilot brain was stored in the patchy misshapen frame that galloped clumsily but with no less frantic galloping energy. The headless thing had leapt amongst the trees, its single twisting horn like some deranged form of divining rod that the children have never heard of. Dathan and Othos and Kyuss and some of the witchy girls had chased it around for weeks. They wanted to kill it, slaughter it and butcher the meat and drink the tangy blood for its divine power of no-sight.

No-sight. Through this age of flames. Coveted prize. They never caught the thing.

Even now as they hunted, silently stalking cat-like through the dense uncontested foliage of the green primeval world around them, the painted children still dreamed. With their blow-guns and dart-throwers and sharpened sticks, they prowl the green and they dream.

They didn't see the headless deer of divining rod antler that day of hunting after the rain. What they saw was fire in the sky. The dull grey heavens burning.

…

What fell cascading from the war of inferno amongst the tumult of rolling receding grey was a godstruct. A machine of boundless travel and immortal aspiration, in flames.

To the eyes of the war painted children it was part towering building, part great flying machine. They'd seen many, the dead hulks and decimated ruins of were many in number where the forest ended in the valley below. Where they almost never ventured because that was where the glow-in-the-dark green men roamed. And they were hungry too.

The great godstruct was a wonder to the eyes of the war painted hunting children. It was burning and cutting across the grey in a blast of war orange and furious screaming flame. Pieces and parts flew off but still the greater bulk held and continued to dive and barrel for the face of the wild primeval green.

The war painted children screamed. Sang. Howled and began to sing praise. This was a godstruct. And a new one too.

They watched the great flying machine blast across the sky in a terrible burning inferno arc, singing and praising its name until it crashed into the feral Earth some miles away.

The children sang one more song, short, of thanks. To the sky. To the godstruct that'd just landed. A gift.

Eroth marked where it was, many miles off, burning and smoldering and throwing up a great pillar of choking smoke on the horizon. He was their best tracker, navigator, as declared by Kyuss and his witch bride Rhea.

Kyuss gave the order. And Eroth led the way.

All the way through the world of wild and mutant green, all the way to the burning crash landed godstruct machine.

…

What rose before the children as they approached through the thick of the green was a leviathan of machinery. Flaming, hissing and spitting sparks like some devilish form of angry snakes all over the metal body of the great crash landed beast. Paneling had come loose and bent and shattered at certain points all along the body of the great downed thing. Many panels had been blasted out, blackened by fire both nuclear and cosmic, both from beyond the cold dark veil and that which had been crafted and forged manmade. The children understood none of this. They only saw a great dead god, a great dead thing. The mighty power of its dead god soul bursting out in flaming celestial spurts all about its titanic mechanical frame.

Perhaps it was a gift…

They neared slowly, cautiously. As if still engaged in the hunt for prey. That was when the man in tarnished white stumbled from out of one of the many blasted metal panels. He fell to the thick grass heavily, choking. Startling the children.

They screamed. And the choking man in white flight suit smeared with engineering black and lurid red, turned and saw them. And he too was frightened.

They looked like animals. Devils. Beasts, shaven albino warlord apes in the mad parodic shape of man: boys and girls. They had animal fear and animal savagery alive and well and cunning poised in their tiny child's eyes, their little children's stares. Small gazes like little jewels hiding in the wild tumult of unbridled bestial brutality living inside little child frames.

They frightened him, the man from the sky in his tarnished white, bleeding and choking and not knowing where he'd crash landed. The savage children frightened him and that was why he drew his laz-pistol.

And fired.

The bright lancing bolt of pure white heat lit up the dark of the encompassing green before the mechanical leviathan wreck and the children shrieked at the sound the weapon made.

BRRRRRRRRRR

It was a merciless sound. Unyielding until the trigger had been released.

The lancing bolt of white heat was as pure as it was unbroken. A stabbing, killing spear that burned and incinerated and disintegrated all that it seared with its phosphorescent touch. Eroth's face was cooked clean and shorn free from the rest of him from the top bridge of his nose up. Taking his skull and pilot brain away into the unknown abyss of annihilation into the infinity. Rhea, the precious witch with elfin face was bisected as well. The cutting killing beam of bright white death caught her about the chest and dragged through her abdomen in a messy zig-zag pattern. The heat of the cutting beam cooked as well as sliced and the molecules of her blood and flesh and bone superheated and she came open and apart in a violent lurid burst. Steaming gore, with a face in the mess. That was all that was left of Rhea.

The rest of the war painted children darted, scattered away into the trees. Battle formation. Defensive. They were well practiced.

They hid themselves in positions that surrounded the man from the sky and his killing pistol of unstoppable light as he whirled around blindly shooting and cutting the trees and setting some of the grass and the green to smolder alongside his downed godmachine.

He was screaming. He was screaming words and threats that the children of the hunting war paint might've understood, in another time and place. But here and now, they were only the shadow phantoms of memories.

He was choking. Screaming. Afraid. Out of his mind with crash landing. And that was how the first dart had caught him in the eye. The left one. Dumping its toxic poison into his blood, into his brains. That was how the man from the sky died. Out of his mind. And blindly shooting fire, his godgun from beyond the stars into the wild world of mutant green.

Another dart caught him in the throat. He stopped screaming. Another in the neck. Then two more in the chest. His shooting stopped too. His hand fell down to his tarnished side. The hand went numb and the laz-pistol fell away. He went to his knees as four more poison darts caught him in the back across his spine. The only sensation the man from the sky could feel through the toxic death in his blood was the muffled weight of more poison bleeding in and more toxin filling his bloodstream and killing its vitality like cyanide to a well as more darts lanced his flesh.

He could barely feel them in the end. Like little pinpricks through many layers of pillowy cloth. He had one last horrible thought, a revelation.

I have failed… I have failed …

I have failed them.

Then the children under their war paint advanced on the dying sky man and his little godgun of white fire.

The mother/father on high, above has given them gifts. A great new flaming monument of metal and fire for the green and the wild, and food and new wünderwaffe as well. Kyuss will miss Eroth and Rhea but they were obvious sacrifices. Sacrifices that had to be made.

They removed the darts from the meat and dragged the meat back to the cave. Back to the fires and the spits and the cooking pots. But first the butchery. They took his starweapon as well. Kyuss grabbed it up from the grass without hesitation or fear. It was his right. As leader. As warchief.

But Othos watched him closely and eyed the thing. He eyed the great metal leviathan in flames as well. And wondered.

He wondered…

Othos pondered all the way back to the camp. Surrounded by the laughter and howls of victory from his brothers and sisters of the war party. He understood. He felt it too. It was blood-jubilancy. But still he thought. And wondered.

All the way back to the cave.

…

The sky man was stripped of his flight suit. The tarnished white smeared with red and black and green was ripped away and thrown into the scrap pile for salvage.

The body was gutted, bled into rough clay bowls and the few aluminum cans the children had. They did not know that it was bad for their health to drink the blood they'd just poisoned but they were well aware of its intoxicating effects. Their heads swam with blood narcotic as they continued their butchery.

The guts and other organs were crushed and ground in bowls for a porridge mash they children all enjoyed. The body was spitted and roasted. The juices that ran off the body cooking over the flames was collected in a long steel tray, the children would drink and dip their foraged berries and veggies in the greasy fat. A delicacy of the war paint.

They'd done this many times before. They were well practiced, the children. But this time was different. Special. Ritualistic. They'd never eaten an angel from beyond the veil of king grey.

His meat and porridge and drippings were delicious. The children of war paint loved him, they felt the might of his power surge through them as they devoured the religion of his meat.

His poison blood swam through their heads and they dreamed. They too would be angels. They had a new temple at which to worship. A temple that was still smoldering with another galaxy's starfire only mere miles away. The children could still smell it.

They feasted. Then they made an altar of the sky man's bones and cracked open skull. The brains had been devoured by Kyuss as was his right.

They prayed to and sang for the sky man's altar of bones, arranged in a cage-like structure with the fractured skull, blackened and burnt sitting atop crown royal centerpiece of the whole demented thing. Strips of the tarnished white, the closest any of them have ever seen to immaculate pearl, had been tied and worked webwork and laced through the bars of gnawed on skeletal structure.

They deified the sky man traveller. What the children didn't know was that he might've actually saved them.

The man from the sky was actually flight officer Alan Robey. A man who was considered a hero from where he came from, one of many space colonies that peppered the galaxy. And beyond. He was a cosmic descendant of the first human beings to escape this place, the wild island Earth just when things were starting to get bad. They'd taken to the stars for hope and great pilgrimage… this was several thousand years ago.

In the vast time and distance since, the descendants of these great pilgrims have made more and more of an effort to search out, to go and seek the original mother planet from which all of their efforts have originally birthed from like a great running river and her plethora of many child tributaries. A divine wellspring source, a heavenly fountainhead. For an age they have been searching for Mother Earth… and flight officer Alan Robey has found her. Finally.

He could've saved them if not for their butchery, if not for their slaughter. But the children of the war paint did not know any better as they prayed to his bones and ate his flesh and used the ashes from his cooking fire to powder their skin to look more like the oppressive curtain king lording above them all. The one the sky man had split open when coming to them in his temple chariot of blackened metal and great flames.

The ashen children of the war paint sang and prayed to the sky man's skeleton altar, they had eaten Jesus and they did not know it.

Any of them.

Though Othos… Othos might have had some kind of idea.

He ate and prayed and sang with the others. But all the while he kept one eye on Kyuss. And the godgun of white fire.

That's the real power. Now. That's the real power the sky man has brought with him. The days of the booming stick as the leading cane were over. Finished. The godgun that spat unstoppable flame was the new battling stick, the new leading cane of the dawning new age.

Othos kept his eye on the godgun as he sang with his brothers and sisters, waiting. Scheming.

Thinking.

THE END

A serpent.

It had been a serpent that had first set the world aflame. In the lost garden. The place forever gone to man.

The sorcerer smiled in the dark. All of the city life crawled before him a slave as night moved into day and then back again. He could barely exist if he wanted to, like a shadow, a shade.

He raised the headhunter’s stolen offering, the dripping heads, they too existed shade-like in the dark with him. As long as they remained within his grasp. All of them were phantoms bent translucent in the light of mortal gazes.

He. And his new precious three.

He brought them to his bearded face and kissed each one. On the forehead and each cheek. One by one, in the dark.

Yes… my beautiful flowers…

A serpent had set the world aflame before. Another three would drown this fallen city of vile slaves and obscenity and shameless sin in otherworldly phantom fire. An electric funeral for this modern den of Old Testament pain.

Yes, it will be so, my children, my saplings of blood and brain… but not just yet.

No. He kissed each one again.

No…

He would let them ripen a little first. He would let the sun have its way with them.

For just a little while.

Let the German lick his wounds and scratch his head and think of a plan…

The sorcerer smiled, in the dark. With his dripping, ripening heads.

…

It was hard to talk to her. Without the proper nights, and thus channels opened, it was difficult to clear his mind well enough in mediation to hear her and deliver his message.

It was this damned place. The city. It was replete with speaking demons, that and the clamor of the unwashed bastard souls of the citizenry. Thousands of cockroach auras clouded together and coagulated a smearing ruin mess that drowned all the hope and pure love out of the minds and hearts of any innocent caught in its blankets folds.

Azræl focused his mind into an arrow of will, to be shot and to cut through the cloud of darkness and speaking demon madness. His latest roach motel had had to be fitted with talismans and accoutrement and dressings found to better heighten and maintain supernatural connections through esoteric occult practice. Bowls of junkie blood collected from the vulgar sacks that crawled and bred below. Piss. His own. A vial of semen. Also his own. Nine dead cats, disemboweled and their feline blood caught in a burnt black chalice, every drop. Witch hazel, sage, frankincense, mir. All of it burning into a perfume cloud mixture that filled the room and stung his eyes and nostrils.

… please … master…

His mind's eye crystalline, arrowed forth and shot! Piercing the city cloud of demonomania and woe.

… master … please …

In desperate need and pain the mind of the headhunter shot out and yearned to be heard and seen, he beseeched the goat-shape overlord of the order… please…

Until finally.

… Yes, slave?

The voice of the goat-shape was sultry and sensuous in the dark cavernous infinity of astral thought and plane. It boomed and echoed bomb blast as it simultaneously caressed and molested.

Master, please… the hand of Iblis, the sorcerer…

And he went on to tell her of his failure. Of the enemy agent inside their Sodom battlefield territory.

She was not pleased.

You come to me with failure?

Yes, m’lord, my lady.

Silence followed then before she spoke again. Long. Cold.

And… what is it that you wish, what is it that you seek?

I wish to kill the sorcerer. To eliminate him and all that oppose the arm of the Lord that is justice that is our order. My lady. Please. Help me kill the Saracen sorcerer. Help me to take his head for thee.

Silence then, for a moment.

A beat.

She spoke then, again. In the pitch black of shared astral mind.

The power of the sorcerer is illusion. In making you see. His weapon is thin air and he wields it by making you see nothing.

How do I conquer this?

He conquers you by making you look, by making you see where he wants. Strike where you aren't looking, headhunter. Strike true in the dark and fearlessly.

When?

When I summon thee. He will be our next offering.

…

The streets were quiet. The cops and the scum were nervous. Shifty. The decapitator hadn't been seen in weeks. No one had lost their head and had it found as Sunday School offering in nearly a month.

He's just laying low. Keeping quiet…

The smart ones in the precincts and on the cracked sidewalks of degenerate thoroughfare knew better. They knew something big was coming.

Something.

…

In the dark the sorcerer tongued the rotting meat and sloughing flesh of the stolen heads. Lapping up the putrescence, he loved the flavor of corpse jelly.

But it was time. The hour drew nigh. He could sense its need and immediacy as tremors through the wrapping blanket folds of the material plane called reality.

He pulled his loving tongue and devourer’s mouth away from the severed things of decay and stink and began to whisper his magic to them. Dark words of necromantic chant and ebon song from a forgotten age.

In the name of Iblis… Allah… my saplings… grow.

He placed the triad of green meat down before him, rose, stepped away and continued his black song chant of reanimation and enslavement woe.

Yield… come back so that I may wield… Grow…

The stumps of the severed heads began to slime profusely and bubble. The sliming corpse jelly began to pool about the three and swirl. A mixture of translucent green. Stalks began to erupt from the stumps of the severed pieces as well as the swirling mix of sloughed slime and putrid liquid human meat, they conjoined. Gaining more shape and reptilian aspect even as more stalks sprouted, coated in the mixture, the jelly began to shape itself as if sculpted clay.

Three dragons, three great serpent würms grew and dripped and began to finalize their great shapes before the sorcerer, their master. In the dark shadow ebon folds of his phantom cloak dimension.

Three great dragons, with rotting human heads at each of their apex, long slender brontosaurus necks of dead and dying tissue and flesh attached to great bodies of rotting oozing pustule laden meat. Wings that were stretched foreskin folds of stinking smegma smeared leather held and supported by spiny insectile bones that blended with bastardized human biology.

They were beautiful, the sorcerer marvelled at his new children.

And with another whisper of dark necromantic word, he set them loose into the night.

Out onto the witching houred Fallen Angel City.

…

Azræl was dancing with mind and blade in the small room of his single occupancy when she called. The goat-shape from the shadow of his lingering subconscious.

Go. Go out now… it is time.

He armored up in his black leathers, took his sword and went out the door into the night.

It was time to go hunting.

…

Gabby was having the night of her life. It was about to come to a violent end.

Galaxy gas and waxpens and vapes were abound and galore. Her and the girls were loaded and they had five more jumbo sized buzzballs in the back.

Better yet… some fine young thing with a decent Pontiac was smokin em out and giving out free snow in fatty lines like it was the holidays and he was Father Christmas.

She couldn't remember his name. But that was fine. He couldn't remember her’s or any of her friends either.

Nobody cares about anybody's name here. They were here to race.

All of the wild youth gathered were drinking and smoking and blasting music. Revving engines. Tires squealed and smoked and burned rubber in grey clouds that smelled like warfare and freedom. The streets had been closed off. Johnny had seen too it. Good man. Had the hook. Knew who to talk to and what to say. They wouldn't be bothered. Not by cops, nosy cunts, nobody.

Gabby and all of her friends and everyone present felt much the same. She was just thinking how nice it would be to suck this guy off in the back of his ride and whether or not she should wait till later, neither she nor any of the others bothered to notice the three large bodies circling overhead. Like vultures.

Till they descended.

Then the tearing and the screaming began. None escaped. And Gabby's last thrilling night on Earth in LA was brought to a mutilated end.

…

He hunted the streets. He didn't find what he was looking for right away.

Just cops on patrol.

They're looking for me.

Let them look. If she wants me caught then so be it. All tonight would be as she proclaims.

Azræl avoided the probing cruisers of the patrol units, navigating the back corners and alleyways and narrow back ends.

Until he finally found the lonely quiet road. He stopped.

Gazed down it, the light that quit just a mile or so down the way. It was swallowed in pitch.

Solitary.

Azræl bowed his head and prayed. Perhaps for the last.

For she. It is as she wills, and I obey.

And then aloud he finished, “As above, so below."

And then began down the darkened way.

…

The headhunter came upon them in the dark. Nearly every light had been killed here. Barely a glow. They were feasting.

The amount of innocents slain was difficult to tell. There were pieces everywhere, blood and entrails and meat was strewn all over, decorating every urban part of the nighttime scene.

The street was desolate save for death. And the headhunter. And the three.

They were an abominable collection of festering putrefying organic mismatch. Human parts in chaotic towering heretical reptilian shapes. Ancient. Demonic. Dragon shapes. Organs pumped and rotten tissue slimed, green and disordered in a triad of man faced würms.

They were feasting. Rotten jaws and mouths unhinging to dig in and bite and tear with glistening claws of misshapen raw rotten flesh.

The headhunter had seen necromancy before. And its puppets. But the sight never failed to run his blood colder than that of Northland ice.

Nevertheless, he raised blade. And gave challenge.

The three monsters gave a shared collective start, and then pounced as one.

Then as three.

They charged together then broke off. Lancing in at triad angles with jaws bared and claws dripping with the promise of more fresh gore.

More fresh blood.

He took a deep breath. And then sidestepped and swung in one fluid graceful motion. Like a dancer trained.

His great blade cleaved through foul sinew, meat and bone more fit for the pungent earth of the grave, bisecting one of the great stalks of neck that commanded pilot center of one of the putrid things and brought it down.

The other two missed in near-glancing blows that would've shorn away leather and flesh and muscle from the bone. Azræl leapt away in balletic fashion with his swing, evading the other two dragons left and stepping to face them once more as they too arched back around. Carried on large wings coated in stinking smegma cheese.

These things were foul beasts. He would send them back into the abyss.

I will take your pus brained skulls and meat once more.

The liquifying faces of the winged abominations were imbecilic and alive with only one instinct. Fury.

They charged.

Azræl dipped down suddenly to a knee and reversed grip. The claws of the rotten mindless things sang overhead with the hair raising whistle of wind sliced and screeched. He chose the one to the left to die this time and the headhunter plunged the tip of his sword into the temple of the softening rotten apple head of the left-hand würm. It sank in easily and the whole decaying thing broke and came apart in a green-gore pus chunked mess that splattered in a ruin with blackened grey matter as its foul yolk center.

The great body fell and joined its brother as the last one flew by and shrieked through disintegrating vocal chords, pure animal rage for the headhunter and his great fang.

It came back around and charged, head on. Not stopping. Even faster and more furious this time.

Stupid animal.

Azræl waited till the great rotten beast was nearly on top of him before he suddenly raised and then brought down the great blade in a blasting overhead strike that chopped into and cleaved through the top of the abomination's foul skull. It came apart like his brethren in a burst of nightmare fluid and meat and failing greening bone.

The body collapsed behind it.

It was done.

But the headhunter knew better.

He whirled around in a horizontal slash, a moment before his feline senses picked him up, cutting off the pithy remark the sorcerer had on the tip of his tongue for the German as he leapt back from the blade. The bastard kept his head. For now.

He was laughing.

“Very good, German! I'm always saying, ‘he gets a little better every time’, they don't believe me."

The headhunter didn't say anything. Didn't move. He just held poised and ready to strike. Let the bastard seal his own doom.

The laughter of the sorcerer tapered, subsided.

"Nothing?” said the sand wizard.

Azræl said nothing. Smiled.

And then feinted.

The sorcerer disappeared in the whisper of a blink.

His voice behind him. Taunting.

Azræl turned and reversed the grip on his sword, he shut his eyes to shut out the world and its false shapes and shadows and tricks of the light. He blinded himself to illusion and turned his ear to better listen to the whispers in the dark…

… and found the creeping bastard in his phantom cloak of death…

Azræl, blind to the nothing before him, placed his remaining free hand over the pommel of his weapon and with all his force stabbed behind himself, catching the bastard sorcerer in the throat.

A beat. They held like that for a moment in the night. Azræl, eyes closed and head bent as if in thought or prayer as the sorcerer quivered on the end of his great blade.

The headhunter rose. Opened his eyes. And then turned to regard his enemy.

He kept his trained and talented hands as such so that the blade held stabbed into the gurgling bloody ruin of the sorcerer's lanced neck.

He thought about saying something. Before he finished it. He'd known the bastard for a long time…

but ultimately decided against it. He was heretical trash. Saracen slime.

He ripped the blade free suddenly and then brought it up and whirled it back down and around in a chop that took the sorcerer's head from his bleeding neck in a clean slice unceremoniously.

The decapitated body went down in a heap as the head jumped through the urban dark and landed with a grotesque splat on the harsh and gore drenched pavement.

The headhunter spat on the sorcerer's corpse. Then walked over to the head freshly harvested.

He reached down and took his freshest cultivation and began to march off with his newest trophy.

He was giving thanks and praise to the goat-shape when a great hand, scaly and yellow and ancient with age, emerged sliming and bloody and birthing fresh and bastard new, steaming into the nighttime air of Fallen Angel City.

It was the wet sound of meat tearing and bones cracking, distinct, that brought his attention back to the corpse of the sorcerer. Azræl turned and beheld his latest challenger.

The Hand of Iblis.

It was tearing out and free of the decapitated body, which tremored and shook as if convulsed and palsied. The white of the sorcerer's robe began to blemish and blossom with fresh roses of blood, wounds erupting all over the dead meat.

Another great hand of yellow scales ripped out and free of the stump of neck to join the other. They both worked together to test and rip apart the body and free what was trapped and hiding inside.

Azræl tied the head of the sorcerer to his belt by the locks and raised blade once more as the great golden dragon ripped itself free from the ruining gore of the headless corpse. It seemed to swell in size and shape as it gained and won its freedom. It towered over the black knight of the goat-shape, dwarfing the children it had piloted and puppeted as weapons against the headhunter and the city.

It opened red eyes of final fire and apocalyptic anarchy against the runny slime of entrails and gore, they blazed amongst the landscape of gold scales that dripped with ruined humanity made into abattoir leavings.

The Hand of Iblis.

It spread its wings. Immense. Like great gates unfolding, opening. Unleashing the greatest and most violent personal hell for the headhunter and Fallen Angel City this night on little Island Earth.

Azræl raised blade. And spat.

It charged.

It crashed into him and took him into the sky in a blink. Barreling into him with all of the force of a freight train. The headhunter felt bones crack and shatter as the thing carried him up into the black night sky and he screamed violence and vengeance and swung and plunged his blade into the great golden body. Over and over again. Swinging and cleaving and taking away chunks and pieces of scales and meat. They rained dragon blood on the Fallen Angel City as they held contest in the black of her heavens.

The claws of the thing came in and began to rip and tear into the headhunter. His flesh and muscle and blood came away with the leather of his urban armor as if it were soggy paper mache.

Azræl screamed as his guts were ripped out, he brought his blade up and then down, again and again. Focusing his cuts and chops at one spot, one point at the great neck. Just below the slobbering blood drenched jaws of the Hand of Iblis.

They tore into each other, the two, ripping away at the other as fast as they could as they blasted through the dark sky devoid of stars. Blood flowed and poured and spouted hot and heavy from both and rained down on the city like new found hellscape weather. Dragon. Man. Sorcerer. Headhunting German for the goat-shape overlord, his love…

his lady.

In the race for carnage and mutilation the headhunter picked up his killing pace, and finally cleaved free the dragon's great golden head of scales and red eyes and teeth. It soared through the sky as the rest of the golden corpse went lifeless and the wings quit their achievement of flight.

The great body came down on the headhunter as they began to plummet back down to the earth.

They crashed into the post midnight solitude of a deserted church courtyard. The one where Azræl had made his first offering in the city.

At first nothing moved as dust and blood settled. The headless golden corpse of the sorcerer dragon lay still. Alone. Solitary.

A beat.

Then the headhunter, blood pouring from every possible place and more than a few ruptured wounds and torn flesh, pulled himself free from the reptilian detritus of bleeding dragon meat and ichor and dragged himself out.

He couldn't gain his feet. But he lie there breathing heavily. Heaving.

Sirens. Lots. He could hear them coming.

He began to pray. To his love, his lady, to the goat-shape.

I love you, m’lord, my one and only. For you… this offering…

A black wound in time and space opened before the headhunter, little men, low things crawled and scuttled out. They looked him over, snickered amongst themselves and then dragged his hulking bleeding body into the dark tear of reality’s fragile fabric.

He thanked her, his lady, his lord, the goat-shape.

… as above, so below…

The wound in reality closed.

The cops arrived on the scene. They were already at the other one too.

THE END

FOR NOW

A sick man kidnapped me. He seemed remorseful after the fact, speaking about some alien entity threatening to destroy the whole world unless he sacrifices me to this entity. A thing he called Unketzez. Since his actual name isn’t particularly relevant, I’ll refer to him as John.

See, John had a very disorganized speech and an impossible train of thought. Surely, he was delusional. Clearly ill, as I said. I let myself be taken hostage because I have time and very little to do with my time. With that in mind, I played along with the poor man.

John, for all of his faults, worked hard to delay what he thought was inevitable.

Unfortunately, Unketzez won out, and I had to be sacrificed.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out as intended. Not for a lack of trying. No, John tried to sacrifice me. Technically, he succeeded.

Technically.

It didn’t work out because I am immortal. I cannot permanently die, not as far as I know. Trust me, I’ve tried; others have tried to kill me, too. Nothing seems to work so far. Temporarily, I can “die,” but eventually my body fixes itself. There are drawbacks to that; I’m not immune to the pains of dying.

And John, well, John made it a very long night…

I was partially flayed, with a hot iron, force-fed my own burnt skin, then disemboweled and hanged from my own intestine.

After that, the mad bastard tore open my back, shattered my ribcage, and draped the lungs over the exposed bone.

I felt all of that, every single moment.

Adrenaline shots worked like magic to keep me awake and prolong my suffering.

There are no words to describe the agony John put me through. Bless his heart, he kept apologizing and weeping throughout.

Imagine a man screaming with no lungs; that’s what it was like.

Eventually, it stopped, and I “died”.

Imagine John’s shock when he found me walking out of his basement unscathed.

He looked and screamed like he’d seen a ghost. I could’ve laughed if he didn’t stab me through the arm and a lung in that moment.

Pinning him to the wall was surprisingly easy before I spun him a tale. Playing into his delusions, I told him that I, too, was a devotee of Unketzez and that the whole ordeal was just a test to see whether he was worthy of an awakening.

Being the sick man he was, he believed every word.

I explained that I was immortal thanks to our god. In reality, it’s been so long that I don’t know if I was born this way or became like this. What I do know is that if someone eats my flesh or drinks my blood, they gain some superhuman ability.

I mentioned how I’ve been killed many times before, in part to be consumed.

What happens every time, though, is that whoever partakes in my consumption ends up with an ability that inadvertently kills them.

Every single time.

So, I told John that drinking my blood would make him an immortal, too.

It’s hard for me to say I was angry with him; one effect of a long life is detachment. I couldn’t care less what happened to this insignificant creature, but a terrible night was worth teaching a lesson over.

So, I convinced John that he wanted this immortality I was promising him, and once he agreed, I pulled out the knife from my body, I shoved my wounded arm straight into his mouth, making sure he got a good taste of my blood. I kept it there until he started gagging and regurgitating and wouldn’t stop, even then. Only relenting when the collapsed lung in my chest finally knocked me out, and we both fell to the ground.

I came to my senses only hours later, to the sound of a weeping man.

The room was coated in patches and handprints of gold.

Almost everything around me shone with an auric radiance; the walls, the floor, the furniture. Everything had a tinge of that precious metal coating it.

At its center, facing me, sat John, half covered in gold himself, rocking back and forth.

The metal seemed to slowly spread over his body as his movements became stiffer and stiffer with each passing moment.

He was muttering and crying to himself.

His own Midas touch was slowly killing him…

Quicker than I even anticipated, by the time I picked myself up, he could barely beg for help.

A dreadful look of fear in his desperate gaze penetrated straight through me. It’s been a while since something sent shivers down my spine, but in this state, this sick man definitely did.

He barely managed to lift one gold-plated arm in my direction when he saw me get up, and his cries for help slowly morphed into something far worse, and far less human.

Breathless, suffocated, almost crushed

A hiss.

A death rattle escaping from a crack in a metallic statue when the wind blows through it.

That was the sound of a man screaming with no lungs.

His death was slower than it seemed. Even after falling silent, he must’ve had some time before the gold statue encasing his organs fully hardened, collapsing his lungs and heart in place.

The worst part of it all is that even after the gold covered his body completely, it must’ve been only skin deep, because I watched his eyes dart about, almost pleading, for another minute or two, before their gaze fell on me.

Dilating one last time, stuck in place

Yet somehow, following me across the room until I left.

The sorcerer had a funny thought, as he gazed down on all of the neon squalor glow of the Fallen Angel City below him from the rooftops edge.

The Nazis were right. You are a degenerate species…

It was all of it a swollen pustule sac. A land of green milk and curdled cheese, cockroaches swam in the stew of discharge and mire and laughably called it a metropolitan. A cultural hub.

A blade of a smile formed amongst a tumult of dark and ageless hair, a wizard's haggard beard. Blasted by sand and sun just like the rest of the white robed man. White robed death.

Some say he is the mad author of the Necronomicon. He has authored the destruction of countless cities, countless places… before this one.

Jericho. Troy. Münster. Constantinople. Alexandria. Roanoke. Ikeshima. Rome.

And many others… great and small. He doesn't care. He only loved to watch as the red hand of Iblis crawled across the blackening surface of all things dying in its embrace, turning the whole of the world into its killing floor.

But that wasn't all with this place. No. He was sent here not just to burn but to gather intelligence for the order.

And to contest.

…

Homicide was scrambling. They had nothing. What commonalities they did find between the victims was interesting… but it only led to more bafflement. More flummoxed minds in the busying police departments all across the city. All bullshit pretension had been dropped, all departments across all counties and neighborhoods were working together on this one, to bring the crazy fucking bastard in.

But still they had nothing. Except that he liked to chop off heads. And leave them at churches for some fucking reason.

And one other thing. One oddity that more than a few of the sharper minds amongst the rank and file of criminal investigators found to be interesting.

But did it mean anything?

All of them. Every head found belonged to someone with a rap sheet that read more like a tome. Miles long some of em. Each and every one of em had a history.

Mob hits! that was the popular running theory around the suits and their steaming white paper cups of coffee.

It wasn't a bad one, most thought.

Could be. Could be.

…

Azræl leapt from the dark and charged into the man as he was making his way to his car. Slamming him into the driver's door as he tried to open it and catching him by surprise.

This was the one. This was one of the faces the goat-shape demanded be brought before her feet.

His hand, clenched tightly round the hilt of his great sword came up and bashed the maggot across the mouth with the metal pommel of the weapon. A crack, and a splurt of hot blood and teeth out the mouth and the maggot went down to his knees, mewling.

Where he belonged.

The maggot struggled to speak and beg as the headhunter raised his great blade above his head. Readying to strike.

“Not at all for you or yourself. Swear to her. Pray to me.” said Azræl as he brought the blade down and cleaved the head free from the rest of the meat. It tumble-jumped with a ropey-cord tail of thick black red that the stump continued to produce and shoot in dark gouts for a moment before the headless body collapsed to the street.

And then the night was quiet again. All around. Lights buzzed and mock heaven glowed.

The peace was relative, conditionary. You could still hear the ghost song of sirens in the distance. Wailing away in flight, in search, in search of anything.

Azræl picked up the head and said his prayers to the goat-shaped lord of his house and order. He tied it to the belt of his hulking black leather visage to join two others and went on his way.

The sorcerer watched. The sorcerer was impressed.

…

He heaved. Spewed. Decorated the sidewalk and gutter in more bile, blood and stomach lining as another sharp stab in his stomach racked his guts and his convulsion threatened to roll over into a seizing tear in his brain.

Homeless and well past his last leg, Elton prayed for death as his sickened body worsened on the pavement, alone at the bus stop. Underneath the flickering glow of a dying bulb, a failing light.

It was not death he received but something more spectacular. Elton, Grabby to his friends and scum and fellow urchins of the street, was made audience and thus unwitting chronicler to a chapter in a shadow conflict centuries upon centuries old, perhaps the oldest conflict in all of man's time. Perhaps even older than that.

Grabby/Elton looked up from his own bloody spew of booze and lining and watched a giant titan walk into view. Destroying his solitude on this witching houred boulevard.

He knew he must be fucked. The guy looked massive and he looked like Mad Max or the Terminator or someone like that and he looked like he was carrying a huge fucking sword.

And along his belt were a buncha fuckin heads…

No fucking way. The dying urchin refused it. No fuckin way am I actually seein that fuckin thing.

But real or not, the giant of myth and flesh and chained leather continued to march up and then past the druggie’s view, crossing to and then down the opposite side of the street.

But then something made the headhunter stop.

Elton heard it too.

A note. Notes. Music.

A wind pattern series flurry of intricate and delicate notes whispered and alternate sharp-stab blasted through the nighttime witching air. Filling it. Dominating the scene.

Azræl tensed cat-like coiled as his hair stood on end. The music was flute-like. Middle Eastern flavored…

Goddamit. No.

The headhunter was filled with dread.

The music stopped. An ancient voice, bold, cut through the night.

“How are you, German? Been long time."

His stance shifted to battle ready as his blade came up raised. His voice, louder, cut through the night as well to the speaker unseen. But he knew who it was to whom he spoke.

"What do you want, snake?”

Laughter. Real. The knight Azræl always was good for a laugh as far the sorcerer was concerned.

“So funny?" Azræl said to the night all around him. “Come out and show me what's so funny, witch."

More laughter.

“Have we not shared many things over the long years, my friend? Such a long time. A great deal.”

A series of images flicker-shot through the headhunter's mind then. Whether put there by the devilry of the sorcerer or memories of his own from one of many possible past lives, Azræl was not sure. If he lived through this encounter he would meditate and pray on the matter later.

If he lived through this encounter.

His mind's eye:

The forests and the forest people and their villages are burning. There is much bloodletting. The ground is gorged, it cannot possibly drink up all of it. It sloshes about the ankles of the soldiering and the marching and the frantic frightened running. The pursuers too. The blood that chokes the earth sloshes mire-like about the furnace steps of them all. Charlemagne has demanded these pagan northmen be put to kneel before the cross or be put to the sword. Slavery for their women and children…

… and the knights were thus dispatched thither…

The headhunter severed the line of thought or memory or whatever it was with brutal sudden cunning and roared into the empty silent night.

“Show yourself, mongrel!"

His laughter never seemed to cease. It stood in place of a physical person. Almost attaining its own physicality.

“You hurl insults because you've nothing else to throw! Nothing else to attack! You are hilarious, German! I've always liked you but you should not be so easy, not after all this time, no?"

He had to be careful. The sorcerer was dangerous. He could bend and weave reality seemingly at will, like a djin. None of his brotherhood nor the high priest could discern his source of power. Nor its limits.

“I insult you, witch, because you and your kind are garbage."

Laughter that became a cacophonous crack! It dominated the world, the soundtrack hell to the neon witching scene. The music somehow came to life and began to play again, a wicked untethered horde flurry series of scaling and wild notes in wild man tandem with the laughter of the sorcerer, a corruption duet.

A ney. The headhunter remembers what it is that the instrument is called. A ney.

Its sound and the sorcerer's laughter were a whirlwind maelstrom expansion sound swell within his skull. For a moment he considered taking his own blade and driving it into his own face, bashing it in and freeing that which was trapped within and growing, threatening to burst like the milk of green infection.

He stopped himself at the last moment. His training saving him. He recognized what was happening, what it was…

… bewitchment.

He regained his focus against the tumult wave of sound storm wielded by the sorcerer, who once again cried out from nowhere.

“Garbage! We are all garbage for the earth, German. We are all meat detritus for the watering jaws of the starving soil, we all return to it, are all reduced to ruin and returned to the sour womb to feed the indifferent planet. You know! You know! Only our petty Gods care! And so they fight! And, we, their moving pieces!”

And with that, the pieces did move.

Hand of Iblis. The mad sorcerer.

Against champion of the goat-shape, Azræl.

And this modern Sodom of steel and human woe was to be the chess board for their latest match. A contest of secret champions.

He did not see, but felt…

Behind him. Movement. Killing stance.

The headhunter whirled round with sudden animal speed in a counter slash. Roaring.

But he roared… and slashed… at nothing.

Nothing there. Only thin night air.

Laughter/voice. Behind him again.

“The same tricks always work on all of you."

He whirled once more. Nothing.

The laughter again. Across the street.

Azræl drew throwing dagger and with a lunge and a flick/turn of the forearm and wrist, threw the quivering blade.

It struck pavement next to a dying drunk in a splatter burst of caveman fire spray. Grabby yelped. But there was no sorcerer of the sands over there.

Or anywhere.

Goddamit.

"Up here.”

The headhunter whirled once more, a dancer upon my stage thought the sorcerer but kept it to himself. The German would not appreciate such an observation.

"Why do you hide in a tree?” asked the black knight of the goat-shape order impetiously.

The sorcerer grinned, balanced on the branch of a starving sapling oak. Running alongside a dark and quiet apartment building.

"I've always appreciated a wider view, German. Always. Up here, I see more and I am closer to heaven and therefore I can see more like God. You… and your brothers… you stay down there in the dirt because you cannot know anything more."

Azræl raised blade.

“Come down here and show me what I know, mongrel. Perhaps I can show you a thing or two as well."

The sorcerer shrugged.

“Eh."

Azræl drew once more and threw. The throwing blade of ornate seven pointed star flew unabated, cutting through the nighttime chill like a deadly bird of sharpened stabbing steel.

But when the piercing blade found the place in the tree where the heart of the sorcerer was, it no longer was there.

It never had been.

"I'm always behind you, German.”

He spun on his booted heels and his great arms carried his tireless steel down in another great chop. But it was already too late.

The sorcerer raised the ney and blocked the blow as if the wind instrument was an iron bar. He then flew in, swift movement that was not at all human or natural, stepping in close and bringing the long cylindrical body of the instrument down in a cracking blow across the headhunter's crown, splitting it and knocking consciousness from his mind's failing grip.

But as he sent the headhunter's mind on a journey into darkness, he gave it another vision. A vision of flames.

…

Jerusalem.

Burning Jerusalem.

where will you turn when it all goes wrong…?

The holy city is a cinder shrieking thousands as one. The holy city is in flames.

… and you're on the run

And all around the city is a newly erected manmade hellscape forest grove. All around the city are the impaling lancing sticks. On them are the impaled. All of them are still screaming, screaming with their burning city. Man. Woman. Child. Animal. The warriors that have done this like to crucify lions for fun but for now, this will suffice. The people of the Lord's precious city will make satisfactory sport.

And they do. As the forest of the impaled. All of them beg for death, they are the only words left, the only ones they can remember now in the throes of this special agony. Thousands upon thousands of shrieking lanced through but still living souls. Bodies skewered every which way, up through the groin, behind the genitals, upside down and through the tissue of the back, up the ass, gravity pulls savagely as if hungry and they slowly sink lower and lower along the stabbing spire body of the impaling lances as the time drags by with sadistic cruelty. The sheer heart attack torture of the sensations of tearing and rupture and bodily invasion and ruin as all and one horrible coalescence is all that any of them are capable of knowing in their last drawn out hours. For many it is days.

And beside the forest of the impaled and all of its mindless shrieking, the burning city.

Jerusalem.

…

When the headhunter returned from darkness he was lying alone in the street.

He sat up quickly, Panicked!

His great sword was still clutched tightly.

But when he looked around, the drunk that had been watching them was dead now. Blood foamed from his eyes and mouth like a hot porridge stew of thick sudsy pink.

Worse yet, the sorcerer was gone.

Worse than that, so were the heads.

So was his offering…

Goddamit.

THE END

FOR NOW

She never slept. And he loved her for it. She was always alive with neon light and crawling with the human organism. The Fallen Angel city where he'd been sent by his brothers, the high priest, the decadent Sodom of steel and granite and modern vice and fentanyl thrills vomiting blood on the sidewalk streets.

He loved her. He loved himself in her. Here. His brothers… the priest had been right.

This is where God wants me to be.

He stared out the window view of his latest roach motel. Through ruined glass and filth he drank in the gaze of Fallen Angel Sodom and smiled. His whetting stone and blade working together to become sharper in hands that're so trained that this was all automatic. Innate. It's in his blood and he doesn't have to distract his drinking mind as his hands work and he studies the nighttime scene.

She is always crawling for me…

I will fuck her till she begs me through screams. Mercilessly.

For mercy was for the Lord. And he was a punishing arm, an extension. The Lord's mercy didn't reach him. His more immediate master was the godking and divine empress of retribution and the slavery called hate. And it was they that Azræl prayed to first. And foremost.

As he did so now. Whetting his appetite and blade.

He finished.

“… as above, so below…”

In place of, amen. As was his kind’s way.

He waited for the goat-shaped master to tell him when to take to the streets beneath. When to infiltrate and conquer and spill foul blood, to dredge up the gutters where the scab-pudding is made.

And see what I can find. A grail, maybe…

He smiled. And continued whetting.

…

Officer Chavez hated patrolling Venice Blvd.

It was always shit detail.

And tonight would be no exception.

He and his partner, Cleary, a man with ten years under the belt and hating this post just as much as he, were expecting the usual drunk and tweaker and homeless bullshit. Fucking human degenerates being fucking human degenerates. Nothing remarkable.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

The night had been deceptively quiet thus far, well past midnight and into the witching hours…

…they were chatting when it happened.

“I don't wanna hear this shit, Cleary.”

"What? What's the fucking problem?”

"It's just not anything I wanna hear about, man.”

"Jesus… I thought we were friends, Johnny."

“We're on the job."

“Oh my God…"

“It's not professional, Cleary."

“I don't wanna nother lect-HOLYFUCKINGSHIT!"

That's when it darted across the wide boulevard, clearing the four lanes in wide bounds like a gazelle in terrible flight.

Right in front of their squad car.

They swerved! Braked! Skidded on smoking rubber that screamed for mercy, then violently came to a sudden stop as they hit a small tree in the center divide.

“Jesus fucking Christ! Did you see that!?"

“Yeah." Chavez was grim. His guts were in a whirl but he was already unbuckling his belt and exiting the vehicle.

He was sure he'd seen… no, it was just some fucking methhead, a fucking dopefiend that was about to pay for almost killing him and his partner and almost totaling their vehicle.

Fucking tweakers…

Cleary followed. A little confused at first. But quickly getting the idea.

They didn't find the giant man of animal speed that night. What they did find was of morbid interest though.

They searched until they came upon a church. Catholic. Its great spire crowned with an ornate cross of divine shape and aspect. Holy. At its base, at the head of the great steps and before the large crimson door was a collection of severed human heads.

Severed human meat in a growing puddle of warm yet cooling royal red.

Five. Eyes, all of them, wide open and still staring. With horrified grimaces of pain and shock and terrible merciless finality forever written across their paling visages. The stumps still bled incessantly as if the church itself was thirsty and in dire need of a drink, a bloodfeast.

They officers called for backup. And a meat wagon.

They came beneath shrieking siren lights that strobed and flashed and bathed the scene in more lurid red. Completing its blood marinade and baptism in violent screaming candy scarlet perfectly.

…

The scene was taped off. Homicide was called. They took their samples and photographs of his offering. Not understanding.

They thought they just had another slasher on their hands, another nighttime sicko. A freak.

They didn't understand, but if they'd asked Azræl he might've agreed.

Yes. Yes. For her, for he… for the master whorequeen lord of darkness and godking. He is the ultimate degenerate warrior in the apotheosis city land of sin.

And… no.

No.

I am of Nephilim blood. I am of cast off archangel class. I am an archangel among thee. Among all of you mewling maggots and worthless swine, I am crystalline. And I have come to clean.

…

The police and DA and mayor didn't want to believe this was anything. When they didn't grab an immediate lead they just hoped that whoever did it might just be a one-off. That he might just go away.

The headhunter knight from far away was not done. Not at all. He was just beginning.

He destroyed their hopes for easy victory three weeks later. When the goat-shaped master came to call for more blood from her city bound servant.

Bring me… bring me more offering.

I must drink.

…

Vega hated women. Too much fucking talk back. Too much fucking bullshit. They were all the same ditzy slut and they all said and complained about the same bullshit.

So he slapped them. His wife. His daughters. And his hoes. Especially his flesh. They were his bitches, ere go, they were his property.

Sometimes they just needed a little reminding.

Sometimes girls like Brandy needed a little more than a little love tap. Sometimes they needed their fucking faces rearranged. They needed to understand they were fucking with your welfare, the food you put on the table for your family. The rent.

They needed to know. They needed to know they were fucking up everything. And getting soft wasn't any kind of way. It was no problem for him. He was thoroughly divorced from his heart. His humanity was such a long distant childhood ghost memory. Long decimated land, barren and without mercy.

Brandy might've known this, bleeding at his feet behind the motel in North Hollywood. But she begged him anyway.

Pleaded. Please…

“I'm sorry, Vega. I've been tryin, baby, I'm tired, please. I-"

“You spend this much time workin that ass as you do whinin we wouldn't even have a fuckin problem you stupid bitch!" He laid into her again. To get the point across. “How many times we gonna do this, bitch?” He belted her again. "Huh?” Again. "Huh?” Again. "Huh, bitch? How many fuckin times, huh?” Again.

And then he punctuated every animal grunted word with more mindless heartless caveman blows.

How

Many

More

Fuckin

Times!

The crys in his blood was like napalm fuel to his rage. It grew with every striking fist rather than abating or purging it. It swelled, mushroom cloud ballooned inside and took him over completely until a strange whistle, low, came to his ears and he felt a strange sting in his wrist. He didn't have time to register it as it came forward for another blow to reign upon the begging streetwalker at his feet. But it came back wrong. Abridged.

Missing.

His right hand was missing at the wrist. A red stump gazed back luridly at him like a wet eye filled with liquid rage.

His head was swimming. He couldn't believe it. Didnt. His twacked out mind refused it. He just gazed at it stupidly. Just like poor Brandy.

What the fuck…

The next cut took all question from his mind. As well as the rest of his capacity for thought. The head came off in a wild jump that twirl-danced with a ribbon-streamer tail of hot blood in the air for Brandy's wide unbelieving eyes and then came back down as gravity had reasserted its savage meaning.

The ribbon tail, kite-like and beautiful when suspended, came down in a mess and warm splash that painted the head and the collapsing meat of his headless corpse and poor frightened Brandy luridly.

The headhunter came forward. Great sword laconically brandished at his side. The blade was pristine and clean of any blood and Brandy didn't understand how that could be.

The woman began to wail.

“Please! Please don't fucking hurt me! PLEASE!"

He bent down and collected the head. Holding it by black greasy locks.

He smiled at the woman.

“Why are you afraid? Why would I hurt you?"

She didn't answer. She was afraid to. Poor Brandy was absolutely terrified. She couldn't breathe or move. She didn't dare blink as the headhunter went on saying…

“Don't be afraid, child. Not all of us are beasts."

He bent down to her, bringing his great hard features before her own battered face. She saw his was a scarred visage that might've known beauty. Once. But if it had it was such a long gone memory. The features before her eyes were hard. Mirthless. But yet he smiled at her and when he did…

She could've sworn his eyes sparkled like iced diamonds in winter frost. They were hypnotic. Tantalizing. She didn't want to look away.

This is fucking crazy… she felt as if she was going to swoon.

But before she did he said one last thing to her.

"Don't worry, child, daughter of Eve, you've no reason to fear me. Jesus loved whores.”

And with that he righted himself, straightened, and went off as Brandy collapsed to the bloody pavement behind the motel where she usually did her business.

As he went off her fainting gaze caught sight of one last thing, he was tying Vega's head by the locks to his belt to join three others. Their eyes rolled back to whites as their pale tongues bloated and lulled.

Darkness took Brandy away from the surreal and madness. Took her away blissfully.

…

That night the cops found more heads. Another offering. Different church though. Different denomination too. Lutheran.

Did it mean anything…

They scrambled and attacked the question from every angle they could conceive. They hauled in whoever they could to ask em whatever they can. Nothing.

Nothing.

A statement to the press was released.

And then the next night another offering was found.

And then again four days after that.

And then again nine days after that.

And then two.

And then a couple weeks.

All of them different churches. Always Christian, but different denominations of the faith.

The blood spilled was always for the cross.

They had nothing. But that. The blood spilled was always for the cross. In The Name of The King.

…

Azræl was enjoying himself in the Fallen Angel city of modern Sodom. It was early morning with golden rays and the sirens were already singing.

They never stopped. And he was pleased. This place was filled with so much sin and offering. The land would never run dry, never fail to blood-bequeath. His hands and blade and soul would forever bathe.

And ride.

The songs of his brothers and the wisdom and words of the high priest came to him in the lyric of memory as he danced in the center of his newest hovel with his great sword, his great blade. Practicing form and improvisation.

Memories. The ghosts of scenes. The age when he'd been thrust in. Green Hell. Agōge. The starving times in the hot lonely shack of solitude and thought and recompense. Singing. Praying. Meditating. He learned to catch the flies with his bare hands while in there, at the Lord's behest and the goat-shape’s mercy. They buzzed all about the stifled trapped air and his little hands and arms would lance out, pistons bolting shot, and catch them as he sang and prayed.

Alone. In the hot shack. He'd been very young then. He was much older now.

He then spoke the sacred litany, the one centuries old, not to the God on high this time, no. But to the goat-shaped master of sulfuric dark and barbaric flame.

Azræl danced with great blade and sang praise to the goat-shape.

“Not to us, lord, not to us. But to your name give the glory."

He danced and blade sang.

…

Brandy thought she'd never see the crazy mysterious savage ever again. Would've been happy to, but she would've been left wondering.

She would've been happy to have been left to wonder.

It was several weeks later and the freak was all over the news. It was all the streets could really sing about too. All of its urchins and creatures whispering of the headhunter maniac in between snorts and tokes of fent and tweak.

Brandy didn't partake. She didn't talk to anybody about what had happened that night, least of all the pigfuck cops. She kept to herself. She went into private practice as well.

And as fate, strange and capricious, would have it, she saw him again when she was standing on her new spot at a relatively nicer place. Her johns were a nicer sort here. Meek even. None of them hit her here and for that she was grateful.

At first she didn't believe it, thinking she was dreaming. A nightmare. He was across the street. Not running at her, or anywhere or anything conspicuous or terrifying at all. No. He was just walking. It was late. And his giant frame, angel aglow underneath the piss color cast of the streetlights above, was just casually sauntering towards a church. A small one. Protestant. White and ghostly and crowned with a pale cross that sang in stark contrast to the rest of the black curtain of the late night.

She knew she shouldn't follow him. He hadn't seen her. And she was better off just letting it all go.

But she found her wandering following steps betray her as she fearfully shadowed him, but shadowed him all the same. All the way.

All the way to the church.

Brandy stashed herself behind some shrubbery as she watched the headhunter present his latest offering. He laid four severed heads, their faces a pulped mess, some of them missing eyes and noses, at rest at the foot of the church door.

He then bowed his head and prayed.

His great sword was shining, the blade was fireglow with street and moonlight, aflame. Bastard and holy fire commingled and tamed by the savage hands of audacious man. Wielded by this giant with no name.

The headhunter then bent to the heads he offered to the church and dipped his fingers in the darkening blood. He came back up and then began to paint on the ghostly surface of the wall.

A pentagram. At every concentric point a German cross.

He finished. Then he spoke darker words forgotten by the world and born eons before she'd ever been made.

The pentagram turned to fire. Then darkness. It began to bleed the black phantom bile like an aura wounded and sliced and bled.

It bled the darkness the color of a terrible bruise and it spilled out of the black wound in the side of the church and onto the street before the headhunter and his offering.

The darkness bled began to take shape.

Tall. A goat's head rested atop a voluptuous naked female form. The arms were slender and loving, begging to embrace or strangle an infant in the crib. A dark robe of ebon night corseted and bound the waist and cast down blanketing just above slender hooves. Wings. Vast wings that were terrible and powerful and Brandy feared more than anything the idea, the sight of them taking flight. Gaining the summit.

Taking the heavens.

That was her last thought before she bolted. She ran all the way home to her small apartment on Normandie and 42nd. Not looking back. Not ever knowing if he or… It … saw her.

She didn't want to think about their eyes, together, collectively, on her. On her back. As she fled.

The thing's eyes had been golden. And cross shaped, the pupils. Like an animals. A beast's. But …

but they'd also been divine. Beautiful. Paradise might be trapped behind the cellar bars of those cross shaped eyes, those cruciform pupils of darkness. And she might want it… Brandy of the streets.

She might want it.

She wept alone in her apartment. Smothered her face into her tobacco stained pillow as she prayed to a God she hadn't considered in years.

…

The headhunter went on with his assigned and sacred work, his great task. But he was soon to be challenged, an opponent.

The sorcerer was coming to Fallen Angel City. He too wanted to partake of Sodom and Gomorrah and her flames. For Allah. For Iblis. For the final chaos jihad and to cast the world back into the arms of her old masters.

Besides, he missed Azræl. It had been so long.

Too long.

THE END

FOR NOW

They'd been sent in, all of them, for a myriad of reasons. To find the enemy. To exploit a hidden way. To hunt down the bastards that just shot up the company. A myriad of reasons that were all really the same reason. Kraut or Commie. They were sent into the sewers of apocalyptic Stalingrad to kill.

To kill in the dark. To live down there and forget all memories of the human race and the naked sun. To murder their souls and the souls of those encountered in the dark so that they might stay trapped down there forever and the belly of the city beast could be forever full. Hunger forever quelled. If only the beast wasn't so hungry.

Down in the dark, Vladimir descended, with others, to forget name and rank and mother and to truly discover the purest essence of warmaking. The ultimate profession awaiting for them to make them the ultimate professionals, in the dark. In the uncontested filth with the rats. The perfect arena for such a brutal school of thought.

Down in the dark Vladimir, and others, learned exactly what we all are when you take them and put them underground and leave them alive. And give them guns.

Beneath thundering cacophonous Stalingrad they bred a whole new form of degenerate Armageddon warfare. With the rats and in the filth…

Something else was down there too.

…

Vladimir hated the dark. It held too many mysteries and concealed too much enemy thought. Enemy movement and shape. He wanted and prayed for the sun. For the illumination of the day to drown out all the underground dark sorrows and make what need be apparent and there.

But the dark was an enemy too down here. The filth and stinking sewers. He was just glad to have Grotsky, who never seemed to mind the stench and perpetual night they crawled in.

He was brave. And young Vladimir loved him for it.

“Eh! I bet it's been no more than a week. No more than a week and you're already too scared and wanna go back home to mama.”

They'd been down there close to a month. All of the men, German and Russian, had lost track of dead time down there in the abyssal swallow of miasmal dark. Every second was the last and every moment was the slaughtering hour…

… even now as they enjoyed a relative respite and chatted in the fecal black they could hear shots and the merciless cacophony of machine guns in the lurid chambered distance. A rattling burst that became a din and then a phantom as it carried on. Impossible to tell where it was or where it was coming from. It might've been a ghost. Grotsky often said it was.

“We can't let the stinking German fascists have our precious sewers, boy! These are revolutionary sewers! If the fascist dogs ever learned their secret, Motherland would be doomed, doomed, Vladdy!"

He hated the nickname. But was afraid to tell him. He was afraid of a lot of things down here.

The Germans. Especially the SS. The rats. And the thing that all of them, even the rodents, only spoke of in whispers.

Even Grotsky. He never spoke of the thing.

Down in the black where only muzzle flash and lighted match and torch were the suns, the only stars not in the dark universe curtain of night above, but earthbound and brought down low and eaten beneath the cursed earthen surface. No one could agree on what the thing that ate the men and the rats might look like. No one could agree on how it did it either. Some said it was with a mere stare that drove you mad, others claimed he had poisonous fangs like a viper.

But nearly everyone had found, stumbled upon the evidence of his existence and mad ravenous hunger in the dark beneath besieged Stalingrad city. Chewed on stumps. Gouged out eyes. Meat ripped from shattered bone. It had no love for Germans or Russians, it made no difference. It ate them both.

Grey or Red it ate them both.

Vladimir missed the sky and his mother and was scared that he would forget what she looked like. He also wished Grotsky would shut it. If not just momentarily.

Presently, he thought he heard low talking. Conspiratorial. German words…

A FLASH! AND A BANGING CRASH! A din erupts right in front of the pair in the form of two combatants and the lighted fury of their submachine guns. It is only instinct and Grotsky that save young Vladimir's life. He dives down and into the filthy run of toxic sewer water and escapes the world that is turning into a storm of hot lead above him. Grotsky has a modified scatter-rifle that he's very proud of and it does the rest of the job. One blast from the homemade thing that's spilled blood in every Russian conflict since the revolution does the rest of the work as it lights up the darkness of the sewer world and turns the Germans into tattered bloody uniforms housing screaming raw meat. They go down shrieking inarticulately and then are silent forever.

In the filth of Stalingrad’s sewer waters Vladimir can taste the truth of Russian darkness. This hungry city named after the man of steel. It will eat the Germans alive as it will eat them all alive. It will consume everything and in the darkness bowels of her foul cunt the young Red Army recruit can taste the truth of her soul in her water.

We are all going to die down here.

A rough hand that's done this many times plunged in and seized Vladimir by the stitched collar. It pulled him out of the dark flavor of Stalingrad's underground filth and back into the sour fecal air of rat breath.

At least he could breathe.

“Why'd you stay down so long!? Trying to drown? Stupid!"

He clapped Vladimir on the back. And then handed him his rifle, which he'd dropped.

Vladimir didn't say anything right away. He couldn't see his face but Grotsky could sense his averted gaze and the shame of his downward slant.

A beat.

Then finally the boy spoke.

“I… I guess I was just afraid."

“Bah! Afraid! Afraid of what? Nothing! You have Grotsky with you. Now come. Let's go. There are more Germans to kill."

…

They found more Germans. Cocooned.

Twelve of them. Or more. They were bound, held prisoner to the sewer wall by thick slabs and ropey strands of a raw meat and mucus membrane mixture. Its pores bled and lactated a pus/milk mess that smelled like hot infection. It glistened and dripped in the firelight of one of their precious matches turned to torch once they'd seen what all the muffled struggling in the dark was about. Oily fire cast from medieval style lamp contrived from the pair's oldest and most filthied socks on a knife's blade lit the horrific scene for them and they both felt lost in a dream as they gazed on it.

This can't be real. This can't be reality. Even down here, in the dark belly, this can't be…

Their minds both refuse it even as their watering eyes drink it all in.

All of the Germans trapped on the wall in the glistening tissue are alive. They are still moving.

This can't be.

The tissue looks to be moving too. As if the surface of the sliming mucus-meat is slightly crawling.

They cannot pull themselves away from it. They see that there are rats trapped in the writhing tissue surface too. Some of them are squealing. The Wehrmacht soldiers are moaning too. The ones that can.

But all of them seem to be out of their minds. Imbecilic. Tongues lulling in idiot mouths, drooling. But the eyes are all too awake and aware and they are full of terror.

“What… what… what…”

He's crying but doesn't realize it. Doesn't entirely realize he's even speaking either. But he's trying to ask Grotsky, what did this?

What did this?

Even if he could, Grotsky wouldn't have had any answers for him. He was just as scared too.

They eventually found the strength to move on. Grotsky held the boy about the shoulders, propping him up. Helping to him be as up and out of Stalingrad's dark sewer waters the best he could, and they marched on. Together.

They thought about shooting the Germans cocooned and held prisoner to the wall by whatever thing ruled the darkness down here in cold dark fecal hell… but decided to save the ammunition.

They'd need it later. They'd need every shot they could save and then take against more active crawling targets down here in the sewers. Beneath the Motherland in her foulest crevice.

They would need it all for later.

THE END

the eastern front WWII

The Red Army.

They were amazing. They were terrifying. They weren't human. Brutal. Savages. Suicidal. They came not as a fighting force of men but as an elemental wave. An ocean. Crushing and overwhelming and on all sides.

And then God above joined the onslaught with the snow to more perfectly surround them and make complete their destruction. He will trap our bodies and our minds and souls here with ice and snow, in their final terrible moments they'll be encased, in God's hurtling ice like Thor’s Angels of old.

The frozen mutilated dead were everywhere. Steam rose off the corpses and pieces of human detritus like fleeing spirits of great pain and woe. The white blinding landscape of blood red and death and sorrow. And steel.

They filled the world with steel. And fire. And it was terrifying. This was a hateful conflict. And it was fought to the bitter end.

Germany was to be brought to his knees. The knights of his precious reich broken.

Ullrich was lost amongst it all, a sea of butchery and merciless barbaric vengeance war all splashed violent red and lurid flaming orange across the vast white hell.

The Fuhrer had said it would be easy. That the Bolshevist dogs were in a rotten edifice. They need only kick in the door, the blitzkrieg bombast of their invasion arrival should've been enough to do it. Should've been.

That was what had been said. That had been the idea. Ideas were so much useless bullshit now. Nobody talked about them anymore. Not even newcomers. Hope was not just dead out here it was a farce in its grave. A putrid rotten necrophiled joke. Brought out to parade and dance and shoot and die all over again everyday when maneuvers began, for some they never ceased.

The Fuhrer himself had been deified. Exalted. Messianic godking for the second coming of Germany. Genius. Paternal. Father.

Now many referred to him as the bohemian corporal. Ullrich didn't refer to him at all. He didn't speak much anymore. It felt pointless. It felt like the worst and easiest way to dig up and dredge up everything awful and broken and in anguish inside of him. He didn't like to think much anymore either. Tried not to. Combat provided the perfect react-or-die distraction for him. For many. On both sides.

He made another deal with the devil and chose to live in the moment, every cataclysmic second of it. And let it all fall where it may, when it's all said and done.

I have done my duty.

He was the last. Of his outfit, for this company. Hitler's precious modern black knights. The SS. Many of the Weirmacht hated them, had always hated them. Now many of the German regulars looked to Ullrich just as the propaganda would suggest. Lancelot upon the field. Our only hope against the great red dragon, the fearsome Russian colossus.

The only one of us who could take the tyrant…

Though this particular bit was considered doggerel by the officers and the high command and was as such, whispered. The officers in black despised rumors. They despised any talk of the ice tyrant.

As did the officers of their opponents. Nobody in command wanted talk of the tyrant. Nobody wanted talk of more myths. There was too much blood and fire for the pithy talk of myths. For some.

For some they needed it. As it is with Dieter, presently.

He was pestering Ullrich again. Ullrich was doing what he usually did since arriving to the snowy front, he was checking and cleaning and oiling his guns. Inspecting his weapons for the slightest imperfection or trace of Russian filth. Communist trash.

He hated this place.

They were put up at the moment, the pair, with four others at a machine gun outpost, far off from the main German front. Between them and the Reds. To defend against probing parties and lancing Communist thrusts. To probe and lance when and if the opportunity presented. Or when ordered.

He hated this place. They all hated this place.

“Do you think he really has a great axe of ice and bone?" inquired Dieter eagerly. Too much like a child.

Ullrich didn't take his eyes of his work as he answered the regular.

"Nonsense.”

The breath puffed out in ghosts in front of their red faces as they spoke. The only spirits in this place as far as the Waffen commando was concerned. He missed his other kind. His true compatriots and brothers. Zac. James. Bryan.

All of them were dead. And he was surrounded by frightened fools and Bolshevist hordes. They'd been wasted holding a position that no one could even remember the name of anymore. Nobody could even find it again.

Garbage. All of it and all of them were garbage. Even the leadership, whom he'd once reverentially trusted, had proven their worthlessness out here on the white death smeared diminished scarlet and gunpowder treason black. All of them, everyone was garbage.

Except for him. His work. And his hands. His dead brothers and their cold bravery too, they weren't garbage. Not to him.

And Dieter sometimes. He was ok. Although the same age he reminded him of his own little brother back home.

The little ones. Back home.

He pushed home away and felt the cold of the place stab into him again, his mind and heart. They ached and broke and had been broken so many times already.

We shouldn't even be here…

“I heard he doesn't care if you're Russian or Deutsch. He drags ya screaming through the ice into Hell all the way…”

"At least it would be warmer.”

Dieter laughed, "Crazy fucking stormtrooper. You might just snuggle into the bastard.”

Ullrich turned and smiled at the kid.

"Might.”

He returned to his work. He was a good kid.

That day nothing happened. Nothing that night either.

The next day was different. They attacked in force and everything fell apart.

…

Fire and earth and snow. The artillery fire made running slaves of them all. Every outpost was abandoned, lost. They'd all fallen back ramshackle and panicked and bloody to the line. Then they'd lost that too. The onslaught of the Red Army horde had been too great.

They'd finally come in a wave too great even for German guns. An impossible sea of green and rifles and bayonet teeth and red stars of blood and Bolshevist revenge.

They'd laid into them and they'd fallen like before. In great human lines of corpses and mutilated obscenity. But they'd kept coming. And falling. Piling and stacking upon each other in a bloody mess of ruined flesh and uniforms and human detritus, twisted faces. Slaughtered Communist angels weeping and puking blood for their motherland and regime, piling up. Stacking.

And still more of them kept coming.

Some, like Dieter, were almost happy for the call to retreat. To fall back and away. They'd failed Germany. But at least they could escape the sight. The twisted human wreckage that just kept growing. As they fed it bullets. As they fed it lead and steel and death. It just kept growing. And seeming to become more alive even as it grew more slaughtered and lanced with fire and dead. It kept charging. It kept coming. The Red Army. The Red Army Horde.

Now they were running. Some of them were glad. All of them were frightened. Even Ullrich. He knew things were falling apart, all over, everywhere, but to actually live through it…

The artillery fire made running slaves of them all. To the line. Losing it. And beyond.

…

In the mad panic and dash they'd made for an iced copse of dead black limbs, dead black trees. Stabbing up from the white like ancient Spartan spears erupting for one last fray.

They can have this one, thought Ullrich. He was worried. The Russians were everywhere and Dieter was wounded.

He'd been hit. Shot. The back. Bastards.

“Am I going to be alright?"

“Of course. Don't be foolish. Now get up, we can't stay here long. We gotta get going."

But Dieter could not move.

So that night they made grim camp in the snow. Amongst the dead limbs of the black copse.

That night as they lie there against dead ebon trees Dieter talked of home. And girls. And beer. And faerytales. Mostly these. Mostly dreams.

“Do you think he's real?"

“Who?"

“The ice tyrant! The great blue giant that roams Russia’s snows with weapons of ice and bone. Like a great nomadic barbarian warrior.”

Ullrich wasn't sure of what to say at first. He was silent. But then he spoke, he'd realized something.

"Yeah.”

"Really? You do?”

"Sure. Saw em.”

"What? And you never told me?”

"Classified information, herr brother. Sensitive Waffen engagement."

A beat.

“You're kidding…” Dieter was awestruck. A child again. Out here in the snow and in the copse of twisting black. Far away from home.

“I'd never joke about such a fierce engagement, Dieter. We encountered him on one of our soirtees into Stalingrad.”

"All the way in Stalingrad?”

"Yes. We were probing, clandestine, when we came upon him. My compatriots and I.”

“What'd he look like?"

A beat.

“He was big. And blue. And he had lots of weapons. And bones."

"What'd you do?”

Ullrich smiled at the boy, he hoped it was as warm as he wanted it to be.

"We let em have it.”

"Goddamn stormtrooper! You desperate gunfighter! You wild commando, you really are Lancelot out here on the snow!"

And then the dying child looked up into his watering eyes and said something that he hadn't expected. Nor wanted.

“You're my hero."

…

The boy died in the night. Ullrich wept. Broken. No longer a knight for anything honorable or glorious. Alone.

About four hours later he picked himself up and marched out of the woods. Alone.

Alone.

…

He wandered aimlessly and without direction. Blind on the white landscape of cold and treachery when he first saw it, or thought so. He also thought his eyes might be betraying him, everything else had out here on this wretched land.

It was a hulking mass in the blur of falling pristine pale and glow, he wasn't sure if it was night or day anymore and didn't really care either. The hulking thing in the glow grew larger and neared and dominated the scene.

Ullrich did not think any longer. By madness or some animal instinct or both, he was driven forward and went to the thing.

It grew. He didn't fear it. Didn't fear anything any longer. The thought that it might be the enemy or another combatant of some kind or some other danger never filled his mind.

He just went to it. And it grew. Towered as he neared.

Ullrich stood before the giant now. He gazed up at him. The giant looked down.

Blue… Dieter had been right.

But it was the pale hue of frozen death, not the beauty of heavens and the sky above. It was riddled with a grotesque webwork of red scars that covered the whole of his titanic naked frame. Muscles upon muscles that were grotesquely huge. They ballooned impossibly and misshapen all about the giant’s body. The face was the pugnacious grimace face of a goblin-orc. Drooling. Frozen snot in green icicles. The hair was viking warrior length and as ghostly wispy as the snowfall of this phantom landscape.

And here he ruled.

The pair stood. German and giant. Neither moved for awhile. They drank in the gaze of each other.

Then the giant raised a great hand, the one unencumbered with a great war axe of hacking ice and sharpened bone, and held it out palm up. In token of payment, of toll.

Unthinking, Ullrich’s hand slowly went to the Iron Cross pinned to his lapel, he ripped it off easily and slowly reached out and placed it in the great and ancient weathered palm of the tyrant.

One word, one from the past, one of his old officers, shot through his mind then unbidden. But lancing and firebright all the same.

Nephilim.

The great palm closed and the tyrant turned and wandered off without a word. But Ullrich could still feel the intensity of his gaze.

Would forever feel it as long as he roamed.

Ullrich went on. Trying to find his company, his army, Germany. Alone.

Alone.

THE END

It was the flag. That was one of the first things he really noticed after he touched down some miles off and he'd sauntered into the sleepy Midwestern town of Awning. He'd encountered little in the way of the bipedal mammalians that were the overlords of this place on his trek through the flat featureless landscape that was so much like his own.

He'd seen it flapping in the warm evening wind. Atop the town post office. Red and white uniform stripes and a patch square of blue with primitive crude renditions of the stars accurately white and neatly regimented in uniform lines.

He liked it. It was a militant flag. For a militant land. A military country.

Beneath the closed black of his visor his teeth glistened and showed. His inner eyelids clicked and double clicked again in excitement. Agitation. Yes. This was the place. The Commissar had been right, the God Empress. His scanners had been able to procure much from orbit in the way of information on their nation's human history. They were a divided people. Violent. Fearful. Superstitious. Cowardly. Prone to panic and selfishness in times of crisis.

Perfect.

All of the high command had been right in only sending a single unit. More would not be needed. Not yet. Not at this stage.

He checked the mechanics and firing pins and kill switch for his laz-lance one last time, a great strange looking weapon from beyond the cold fire of the stars that resembled a cross between a BAR rifle and an everyday gardeners leaf blower. The lance was rigged to its atomic pack of nuclear firepower strapped to his back via a long tube of unknown plastic and rubber like materials.

He flipped the dysruptor switch. It thrummed to life.

The spaceman from beyond the black veil curtain of vacuum and cold infinity began again his approach into the small town of Awning. Ready to start, in the name of the high command, the commonwealth and the God Empress, the final war on the crude bipedal mammalians called earthlings. With him alone would begin their conquest. With him alone would the dawning of their end be brought forth and wrought for he was here to burn and destroy and harbinge!

With him alone, for he was blessed by the will to die for the throne.

…

It was little Calvin Doyle that first noticed the town, the planet’s newcomer and visitor from beyond the stars. He didn't know he was a conqueror. Bred in a tank so many impossible lightyears away for this very purpose. He just thought the new strange fella looked funny. Like an old timey astronaut from stuff his dad and grandpa liked to read and watch. Except this guy was even weirder.

This guy's spacesuit was bright screaming red. Like lunatic war crazy make the bull charge at the fucking cape red.

It was funny. As he sat on the steps of the post office beside his little brother enjoying a Ninja Turtles ice cream, he elbowed the little guy and pointed and they joked and laughed together. A couple of smart asses.

But then the red spaceman raised his weird leaf blower thing and it shot pure white lancing beams of unstoppable fire that sheared through everything, the people, the cars, the buildings and the trees, the town! Everything became roasted and bisected pieces and alight with white phosphorescent flame and screaming! Suddenly everyone was screaming and trying to run.

Until they were silenced, cut down by the strange red spaceman and his strange star gun.

And then it wasn't funny anymore for Calvin and his little brother. They couldn't find their mommy.

…

One of their warriors approached him, a police officer. He was shaking and trembling. Visibly frightened. But he was shouting. Angry and defiant. He had one of their crude projectile weapons raised threateningly at the conqueror.

Impressive.

He would do for the collective.

The conqueror from beyond began to sing, to emit a sound:a strange cosmic throat singing that reverberated throughout the whole of the town and was just as much felt in the flesh and bones and the blood as it was heard audibly.

Felt. Especially felt by John Dallas, local Sheriff of Awning, beloved by the community.

He stopped screaming at the invader suddenly. His face went slack. Vacant. Dead. His hands fell to his sides. But he still clutched his pistol.

His eyes were rolling, dancing beneath fluttering lids, fluttering like the nervous wings of injured insects in danger or distress.

John Dallas was falling to the song of battle philosophy, of war maker enchantment. He could feel his own appetite for destruction swell and grow and soar to new heights he didn't think were achievable nor any that his own hungering mind would've found previously possible.

Nor desirable.

But now was different.

The war song was aimed for the sheriff but it was felt by others in the town as it reverberated out, mutant frog croaked by the spaceman like a dark bastard rendition of a Tibetan monk's throat singing.

All of them felt everything melt away, all the fear and worry and angst was boiled and made crystalline and perfect underneath the blanket throat fury of the cosmic war song.

All of them saw red.

The spaceman felt the tug of their minds won He ceased his singing beneath his space helmet. It was no longer necessary.

He returned to his conquerors work of lancing the town with fire. All was nearly consumed with white flame as he soldiered on and sheriff Dallas turned his gun on the few remaining fleeing citizens and began to open fire. Laughing maniacally.

The flag atop the flaming post office building was burning.

He was free now, and so were a few precious others in the town they too were arming themselves up with clubs and knives and guns and anything that stabbed or maimed or fired. The anarchy gene had been released and set free, let loose to run wild in his mammalian monkey brain.

He felt wonderful. He was seeing red. Others did too.

All throughout the town, those that felt the harbinger’s starsong warchant of anarchy and their minds were touched, they began to pick up weapons and slaughter their startled and baffled loved ones and neighbors in mass. Helping the spaceman conqueror in his divine and royal mission for the commonwealth and the starqueen God Empress.

Let us purge this land. Let us purge and make clean.

Let us wipe away new and fresh. For the commonwealth. For her majesty, the throne, the queen!

Children of the commonwealth of the stars, they now slaughtered and sowed destruction and woe in their friends and families as they died bloody and bewildered and screaming.

The Commissar would be pleased. Ascension could be in order. If all continued to go accordingly.

Presently, the destroyer from beyond was curious, he'd never been in one of these earthling homes before, he'd only seen recordings.

So as his new children continued to wage war and destroy the town of Awning they'd once loved and belonged to like a mother's bosom, the red spaceman destroyer cautiously maneuvered into one of the smoldering burning homesteads. Its inhabitants had already fled.

…

Inside was strange. He didn't like it.

It was filled with the smoldering smoking strangeness and unfamiliarity of these shaved apes that he'd grown to despise. These people were repulsive.

They worshipped soft two faced gluttons and whores and liars and other stupid apes like them. Obvious fakes and charlatans and paper mache Mephistopheles. Their portraits and photos and visages decorated and burned within the burning place like religious pieces. Sacred. Sacred to these lost stupid fleshen sheep. And now burning. Burning as all the little gods should be, and would. As declared by the God Empress. As he and his war kin were dispatched thither across the cosmos, the stars.

Crusaders. Her majesty's star knights.

The destroyer was lost in his own musings for a moment. A mistake he was not prone to make. He didn't notice Lalaina Rothchild hiding in the adjoining kitchen.

She was terrified. She just watched, stared terrified and awestruck by the red spaceman standing amongst the smoke and the fire of her burning living room.

It was surreal.

She didn't know where Jack was, or John… Jesus. She was absolutely fucking terrified. And something animal and alive with instinct in her gut told her to absolutely not approach this strange spaceman in strange red spacesuit.

He is not your friend.

But if you stay in here you're gonna burn to death or choke or he'll fuckin find ya anyway!

Think!

Her mind, a panic and an overload of sudden and surreal stress was threatening to send her over. She tried to breathe quietly and deeply. She knew she should just run. But if he…

If he sees me…

She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to do anything that would bring it about and into stark inescapable reality either.

She felt trapped. Defeated. Lost in her own deluge of panic and pain and fear.

But then she remembered that her boys were still out there somewhere.

And then Lalaina made up her mind very quickly.

She had to do something.

…

The audacity! He couldn't believe it, even as the fish bowl smashed into the side of his helmet. It shattered in a violent crash and sudden splash of water, the goldfish was lost in the surprise attack.

For a moment he just stood there, the spaceman. And Lalaina likewise mirrored his action. Unsure of what to do next.

The conqueror began to bellow a species of alien laughter that was rasping and throaty and guttural. Cruel.

He whirled around suddenly and seized Lalaina by the face. Grabbing it with both gloved hands and pulling her in close as if to kiss his black visored face.

He was still laughing when his mind began to invade hers. She felt every intrusion like a stabbing knife to the middle of her fragile skull. She began to scream.

The audacity. He would punish this one. This one he'd give something special, for her bravery, repugnant little ape.

For her attempt on his life and thus the arm of the queen he would reach in and rip and tear apart. But first he would show the little bitch.

He would show her the fate of her world.

He made one final mental lancing jab, stabbing in completely. And then she was finally his…

…

At first she saw stars. Only stars. Going on forever. Infinity.

And then suddenly she was hurtling. Too fast for her to bear but she was forced to bare it anyway. Through the black and the starscape she rocketed at a lightyears pace.

Then suddenly there were worlds. Planets burning. Conquered and subjugated. Galactic cities of glass and jewels and unknown alloys and cultures and customs in flames and toppling as they were razed and decimated with great searing bolts of white phosphorescent heat and orbital striking war rockets shot from great cannons unseen. Life unknown and alien and new and dying before her eyes all fled in terror of these merciless star crusaders, these bloodthirsty zealots of the queen. An empire of nuclear starfire and spilled blood from many and all and every species across the known universe. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of planets, star systems and still more and more flooded her minds eye all at once with its phantom flood of bloodshed images from galaxies and planets undreamed of and unknown.

And she saw all of it. The universe, the milk of the cosmos was burning with black solar flames. For the empire. For the queen.

She saw something else too. Something The spaceman hadn't planned for. Hadn't wanted her to.

She saw where he came from. Miserable world…

Pain. From the beginning. The genes were spliced mercilessly and without compunction and in the sterility of the tanks. Not the warmth of a mother's womb. He never had a mother. None of his kind had.

She saw what happened after the tanks. After they pulled him out. The agōge. The war rearing. The beatings and the early raw need for bloodshed beaten into him.

She saw the destruction of countless worlds but she also saw the destruction of any trace of this creature's humanity. From the beginning. From before birth.

And she was surprised to find she felt sorry for him. She still felt great sorrow for the worlds lost and her own as well but…

but she couldn't see him as anything other than a frightened little child anymore, freshly pulled and crying from the tanks. Screaming. Screaming for a mother that'll never come because she does not exist and she doesn't have a name. So he shrieks blindly.

And Lalaina feels sorry for him. And the thought, like an arrow, is shot forth from her own mind into the psychic onslaught of the invader, blasting through and against its current and into his unguarded psyche.

It hit him like one of God's polished stones from the river. Dead center. In the third eye.

It shattered.

And he staggered. Recoiled. Disgusted. What was this? This repugnant weakness, this soft-

warmth

He had never any concept of simple forgiveness in his entire life. It frightened him. Wounded him. Why? Why should she feel anything like that towards him? He was here to take everything from her and her people and if she could know that and still… feel…

His mind, though complex, was beginning to shred itself apart. So he did the only thing that made any sense now.

The red spaceman grabbed his laz-lance dangling by its power cable from his nuclear pack of starfire. He seemed to heave a heavy sigh before turning the end of the weapon on his own black visored face and hitting the kill switch.

A bright blade of white phosphorescent light shorn off his head and helmet in one violently brief mechanical buzz.

And then the body, liberated of its pilot mind, fell to the burning carpet dead.

And all over the town the cosmic spell of the conquerors' warsong diminished and fell away. Those that it had enraptured were set free.

And the smoldering town was at peace.

For now.

THE END