Wait,
why am I holding Chauncey? I should leave him here, right? Isn't that
the whole idea? Right?
Feeling
a buzz and tingle in my forehead, I try to push Chauncey away without
touching him, trying to twist and not have any contact with him at
the same time, hearing a gunshot as
POP
Smunch
face down in dry white cold, I close my eyes, blinking as I shake my
head. Opening my eyes and taking a breath of the shockingly cold air,
I see flames that are blood red. I see hooves. I see black hair
hanging down almost to the snow and I follow it up to where an
attractive young woman is slumped over the back of a donkey. Maybe a
mule.
The
only sounds are of the animals' breathing and the crackling of the
flames. Sitting up carefully, I see that the flames appear to
be burning in the snow itself, no wood or other material as fuel.
This is odd. The snow is cold, soaking through my hospital gown. I
want to stand and get my balls warm.
Something
moves to my right. I flinch away, throwing up my right hand to ward
off whatever it is. No blow comes, and I sneak a squinty glance
toward the movement.
Two
men crouch there in the snow, staring at me. The one in front is
young, maybe in his late twenties. But the man behind him ... I've
seen him before.
Staring
at me in frank disbelief is the fat old monk I saw standing over me
in my hospital room, what, minutes ago? It feels that way in my
timeline. Mother Henrietta and the hot nursies were going to get me
painkillers and I saw a flash of light and rolled myself over to
look. This guy was standing over my bed. Then some bright symbol
appeared in the air behind him, wrapped itself around him like
tentacles and he was gone in a flash of lightning.
He's
staring at me and his eyes travel to my leg. He breathes something to
the other man, shaking his head. The other man simply stares at me,
then reaches out with a dagger and pokes at my arm, drawing blood.
"Hey!"
I shout. They both flinch back.
"Robert?"
the old monk asks. Again, as before, it sounds to me like old French.
Not that I would know, I'm not a linguist. But that's the way it
sounds. I'm just staring at him and he says it again, pointing at me,
"Robert?"
Ah,
he wants to know if that is my name. I shake my head no, saying,
"Edward. Edward," pointing at my chest.
"Ehtwerht,"
the old monk repeats, looking at the younger man. "Ehtwerhd,
Ehdwehrt ..." It's as though he's trying the word on his tongue.
It doesn't seem to fit. I get an idea.
"Édouard,"
I say, trying to recall what Dr. Hodgson taught us at Chabot College
back in 1991 ... is the final 'd' hard or soft? I kind of let it
trail off, but the old monk's eyes light up.
"Oh,
Dieu merci! Je ne savais pas où je serais allé ou ce que j'avais
fait, mais sûrement, vous pouvez nous aider maintenant que les dieux
ont jugé bon de vous amener ici lorsque nous vous avons tant besoin!
C'est en effet un jour de joie! Ah, mais j'oubliais: je suis Frère
Rudel et c'est Hannibal le Bavard, tandis que là-bas sur le dos de
la mule et l'âne sont le Père Robert et une mystérieuse jeune
fille que nous essayons de sauver de ce qui semble être une brûlure
loup démon. Je suis désolé, je parle trop vite? Et quelle est
cette chose sur votre jambe?"
It's at a
time like this that I curse my younger self for focusing on girls
instead of French in my first two years of college. I say, "Uh
... I am ... how to say ..." but a sound comes from beyond
the red flames and I see something moving there in the snow, but it
isn't clear what it might be.
Following my
gaze, the old monk whispers, "Le démon brûlante loup. Il nous
a suivis pour lieues de la plus longue et la plus sombre de cette
nuit."
I can't see
it clearly. I find myself struggling to stand and both men are on
either side of me, supporting me and lifting me until I can lean
against the neck of the donkey, its warm wet fur a comfort in this
cold snowy night. Looking out beyond the red flames I see a large
pool of steaming, reddish-pink chunky fluid. It looks like raw pork
coagulating in half-cooked egg whites, except that it bubbles
slightly and there, crouched around its edges, are five small
abominations and one large horror. The small abominations are
drinking at the edge of the pool, sucking the thick, steaming liquid
in with relish, squealing and grunting with pleasure. The large
thing, torn almost diagonally in half, is stroking what appears to be
the remains of a literally monstrous cock and gazing ... directly
into my eyes.
A face is
beginning to coalesce in my memory around those eyes when the thing grabs one of
the little meatwads drinking at the edge of the disgusting pool and
devours it, blood dripping from its jaws, steaming in the red light
of the fire. The other little creatures go screaming, scampering
around the pool, trying to keep their distance from the thing but
unwilling to leave their meat soup. Lunging after them, the thing
lands in the pool of steaming meatjuice and I am surprised to see
that it has stumps of legs with raw, exposed nerves. They were buried
under the snow.
The
old monk says, in a tone of why-are-you-making-me-repeat-myself, "Le
démon brûlante loup," pointing at it with a gesture of
impatience.
"Oui,
je vous l'ai déjà dit. Pourquoi me fais-tu répéter les choses?
Vous venez de certains univers fantastique, vous devez disposer de
pouvoirs fantastiques. Tu ne peux pas faire quelque chose? Sinon,
comment avez-vous ici si vous n'êtes pas un grand sorcier?!"
Whatever he's
bellowing at me, he's confirmed that that thing is a demon. I've
never dealt with a demon before. Well, something like a demon, but
she's still in Massachusetts, as far as I can tell. And that was a
long, long time ago at TAC. I've kept pretty well to the bright side
of the ghostlight since then, and yet ... here I am in ... this
place. It's fucking cold. I'm shaking uncontrollably. And this fat
old monk expects me to banish what appears to be a wounded, flaming,
rapey werewolf that is wallowing in some kind of raw meat stew.
The little
meatwads have grown legs and arms and heads -- they are little
replicas of the werewolfy demon thingy. That can't be good.
He's
rolling over in the stew and it appears that the torn and broken half
of him is regenerating. No more flapping lung, no more broken ribs --
his torso is whole, pink flesh. And the parts of him that are
regrowing look entirely human. Maybe
he is a werewolf after all.
Whatever he
is, he keeps looking directly at me. Now he's drinking the soup and
his face and head are regenerating where they looked to have been
burned. And the face ...
I turn to the
monk. "Listen to me, we have to kill that thing and kill it now.
We have to stop it right where it is. We have to end its life now and
forever, here in this place. If we can do that, if we can kill that
thing, we will stop a great evil from spreading from here forward
through time. We can stop hundreds, maybe thousands of peoples'
deaths. Do you have anything, a sword, a gun, any kind of weapon?"
The
monk grabs me by my hospital gown, ignoring the frozen vomit stuck to
the front, bellowing, "Écoutez-moi, vous devez tuer cette chose
et la tuer maintenant! Vous devez l'arrêter là où il est. Vous
devez mettre fin à sa vie maintenant et pour toujours, ici, dans cet
endroit. Quoi qu'il en soit, partout où il est venu, il a le pouvoir
de se régénérer! Si vous ne le tue pas maintenant, il ne peut
jamais être tué. Et nous avons déclenché un grand mal sur le
monde!"
They expect
me to kill this thing, I think. Glancing at it, I watch it struggle
to its knees, testing newly-grown muscles. The face is that of a man,
a man I recognize, but something seems to be moving under the skin of
his skull. He is watching me, smiling, tugging on his now normal,
average human cock, reaching down to get a handful of the steaming
meatchunk juice in which to baste his penis.
"Oh my
God, he's masturbating with raw meat juice. Does nobody here
understand hygiene?!" I shout this, looking at them, but the old monk
and the quiet guy are staring at me, waiting. I don't know what to
say.
One of the
miniature wolfy demons grabs another one and starts to fuck and eat
it, devouring it and growing larger. A third sees this and grabs the
nearest little monster, trying to fuck its mouth. But the would-be
victim bites the cock off its attacker and fucks and devours it
instead. By the time the first one is done eating its litter mate, it
is the size of a tall child of ten. The other one isn't far behind.
They both turn toward the final little foulling, calculation clear in
their eyes, but in that moment the werewolfy fellow stands up from
within his raw soup and points. Directly at me. Then it opens its
mouth and a sound comes out which seems like speech but speech made
of screams. As though its voice is that of torment itself. Then its
shadow moves up from the ground to hang about it like a cloak, and
from the shadow comes a voice, thickly accented in a dialect I've
never heard -- but speaking English.
"You,"
it says. "You are like me. You are broken. You are outside of
the time from which you were spawned. I see places and things
sticking to you, I smell alien smells upon you. You are not from this
place, or from my place. Yet I see that there are none like me in
your time, and I would dearly love to have more playthings. If you
were more like me, you could be made whole in a stew of your own seed
and filth. If you make it easy for me, I can make you as I am. If you
let me into that circle, let me at that girl, I will make you just
like me. Take me with you to your place and I will reward you with an
inky cloak like mine. This is what you want, yes?"
I find myself
urged to say yes, as though a hand is pushing my thoughts to that
place. Talking is like running upstream in whitewater but I say, "No."
The man in
the puddle of raw meat smiles. The three little creatures have
gathered at his feet, the runt greedily gulping more of the
disgusting stew as they all smile at me.
His face, squirming this whole time, now
splits almost down the middle, just to the left of his nose. Hair is
poking out. The little beastlings are stroking their cocks, smiling.
This is some bizarre shit. No American filmmaker would have the balls to
put this on the screen. That thought has me thinking of Hercules
Saves Christmas -- what if the evil elves had wickedly stroked their
cocks and raped and eaten one another? Excellent family fare, you're
welcome Animal Planet.
I am brought
back to the present by his odd screamsong voice, and the accented
translation coming from the shadowy coalescence around him.
"No. Of
course not. But what if I simply give you the gift of a monstrous
cock? Doesn't every man wish for a little more? Doesn't every man ...
?" His eyes roll back in his head and his back arches and hair
sprouts over more of his body like mold, and his cock engorges like
someone is pushing their arm into it from inside him. It stretches,
bending forward and down.
Then it rips
and peels back and there is a great, bleeding, bulbous barbed thing,
dripping blood and some kind of ichor from the tip. He appears to be
in the throes of orgasm and suddenly arches his back as a great gob
of sizzling greenish jizz shoots from his horribly misshapen penis,
arching through the air over the fire, straight for the inert form of
the girl on the back of the mule. Donkey?
I'm turning,
panicked, watching, helpless, thinking
I could jump in the way when -- CLANG -- the demon jizz hits an iron
pan, sizzling, screaming, and the holder of the pan -- the old monk
-- whirls in place and flings it back through the flames wherein the
jizz really does scream, louder than I thought jizz could scream. The pan slams into the beast's face,
breaking nose and upper jaw and teeth.
This does not matter, because the face beneath is now free to push through.
It's the face of a wolf, if a wolf were a rapey demon.
The little
creatures around it, now as tall as its shoulders, join in the
howling. But their howls are nothing next to their father's.
In all my
life I have never heard the sound of doom. Until now. Final trumpets
of failed battles, babies trampled under hooves of invaders, mothers
dying as they are raped in childbirth, boys mutilated for pleasure,
families forced to eat the fresh entrails of their still-living loved
ones, atrocities piling up like plague dead -- and all of it spawned
in my mind in a moment by this howl, this certainty, this dark and
possible prophecy. I understand one thing now with complete clarity:
his howl is his promise. And he means to fulfill it.
He
turns to his left, grabs the smallest of his spawn, hoists it in the
air, then crouches. Ready to throw. He's
going to throw it over the fire. It will terrify the animals,
they'll bolt -- and he'll have the girl.
I shout the first thing that comes to mind.
Fascinating and incredibly disturbing.
ReplyDeleteGreat job!