Sunday, November 19, 2017
Last Call
Porter stains the counter top. Lights flicker between the fan blades. And the short sparks of light reflect in what's been spilled. The jukebox is quieter now, it's become a background noise to lost conversations and last call relationships. It's 2am and the doors get locked from one side. "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here" gets echoed around with stocky laughs like it's the first time it's ever been said. The staff sweeps drunks outdoor like the cooks mopping the kitchen. The air is brisk and sharp to breathe in November. Car doors and car engines rattle around the blocks. Lights edge around houses and speed off to join the pin-dot lights in the hills and the roads get a little less safer. At least it doesn't rain tonight, and the grey thoughts join the clouds overhead with the question, "How long will that last?" Sharks wait in the shadows to change drunks' destinations from a warm wife and unsoiled sheets to a plastic bench and a new portrait. Boots thump on the sidewalk over the roots eager for new rain. The buses don't run this late. Not for the crazies. And for all the people drinking warm in their hovels, only the ones to venture outside past midnight are the crazies. No matter. There's couches of friends not far. And luckily, for the times there's no response to the rough knocks and ringing phones there's still the Saints that leave their couches by the mailbox and give the weary a place to rest. Invisible men are pissing somewhere in the shadows. Someone's had a run-in with a dog two blocks down. Clumps of blankets stacked against the doorways hide the tramps. They'll be awake in a few hours with the joggers to dig their breakfast from the cans before they're on the clock and ready to work beside the exits. And me, I'll be somewhere near home with an excuse and stumbling feet like weapons quick on the draw.
Plagued: The Hunters Three
The air turns in a soft whirlwind around the flame. The sticks kick over and the embers roast and cool gently into the the branches above. I keep much to myself. I let the three hunters opposite me pass the story between themselves to shake the silence. I had walked through the thickets for days now. For how long or where I was now I was unsure. There were times I lumbered in the dusk before blinking my eyes and reappearing in the dawn. I was losing hours at a time to the rot. Meaningless to track the time, all I can say is somewhere in the void, there was a glow. I walked toward it, my sword as a cane, to a fire in the clearing. The campfire was long in my watch before I looked away, to notice three men that sat still in my presence. They were shocking to behold, I must admit, as stone-like as they were. I begged their pardon that I may join them, if not for warmth of fire then warmth of companionship. They didn't seem odd to the request and obliged heartily. They apologized to me for not having the manners to offer food or drink as an offering. They claimed to be hunters and unsuccessful ones at that. Their belongings lay matted in the dirt beneath them. In the dark they seemed raised on thrones. I speckled questions between their tales, never listening to their replies, but to fill the absence of noise in the forest. The more I inquired into their hunt the more they dotted their eyes to one another. The reflection of the fire moving with their glares. So I stopped. I let them carry on with their tall tales of parties and women and war. And I pretended to listen and laugh along.
I awoke when the sun stretched her fingers through the trees, and felt the hot breath of dawn. The hunters were gone, their belongings absent but for the footprints they left in the soil. My sword was several feet from me, perhaps feeling the weight before realizing it was too heavy to steal and I was too worthless to kill. I loosed myself from the dirt, carried my companion, and continued toward the sun. At the time the day had passed me overhead and heated my back, I claimed for rest against the bark. I smelled the burning pitch before I saw the soft silk of smoke lingering over the forest floor. I brought myself on even ground with the horizon, my sword as a crutch. The walk wasn't long before finding the source in a decline in the ground.
The forest floor took a sharp dive several meters down before relaxing into even ground again. In the middle of this new land, the vines conquering their way up the crater of the scarred earth, was a shell of clay. Round, no larger than a hovel, and smoke stack beaming with putrid air. A hut in the middle of nothing, with one circular window staring up at me. When my focus glared into the dark insides of the forest home through the window, I gleamed a shade of black, changing colors from within. Someone had shifted their weight. Not a moment later, a robed figure slid to the outside and around the back of their home. My curiosity fueled my feet to tread around the rim of the small cliff, my eyes focused on the round home in the center of the precipice. The cliff-face sloped slowly downwards, the edges on each side creating a raised horseshoe shape with the ends sunk into level ground. As I neared flat ground I could see the other side of the home where the robed figure was... and noticed I was alone.
While I stared at the nothingness, I noticed a second window. Yet again the shades changed but this time in opposite contrast. The shade turned dark before a bolt lodged itself near my collar, just beside my windpipe. I dropped into the vines that littered the forest floor, down among the tar smoke. Were there two people leading me to a trap? Or only one? If there was only one person, how did they get back inside their hovel if I had eyes on the only door? No, there must be two. My eyes watered from the sting in the air and the sting in my chest. Through the decomposing fog I saw the door open again and the same hooded figure as before step through. They brandished a dagger like a badge and stepped cautiously through the weeds. How did they appear back inside the hovel? What did I follow? An apparition? I worried these meaningless thoughts as death grew near. Each breath flexed my throat and cut against the edges of the bolt. I managed to gasp a swear at the figure before they knelt. They answered back in kind.
"Son of Lilith," she said, "hunting me will lead to nothing but corpses. You want to sport my head like a trophy, and I'll use yours to feed the flies."
Half-aggravated by her deduction at who I was supposed to be, my reply was both explanation and insult to her demeanor. "I'm a king."
She quickly let down the knife and let up my head, pulling the bolt from my neck roughly. The shock nearly hastened my life. "What did you say?"
I gasped for anything I could breathe that wasn't tar smoke. But she waited while I could explain. Not in finest detail, but enough to not stutter her belief. I tied together all my tales by saying "And so we met. You greeted a king with an act of treason. Needless to say, a spot of wine and a fur to lay would not be an unjust start to an apology."
There was no fur, only a bed of sewn straw. And there was no wine, but the ale did its job well enough for her to close my wound with hot pitch and tell me of her woes.
"I'm a witch, so they say, and nothing more can be said to change a peoples' minds. I'm unwed, poor, and speak not for a belief in God."
I shook with pain from the scalding. "What is this liquid pestilence?"
"It can serve as many things. Mostly I use it to fix any damages that befall my home in the storms. And apparently it can work for any man."
"You weren't sure?'
"The smell keeps others away, let's them not discover me while they believe they've loomed into a mass grave, unmasked by landslides." She dipped her blade into a boiling pot of tar, sliding the excess back into the brew with the edge of her knife. I could not brace myself for the heat, as much as each time I think I could.
Between chattering teeth I spoke. "What were the charges? Why here?" My interest waned from the moment she first spoke, but I had to keep my mind occupied as she pressed the side of her blade against the wound to flatten the tar and declined my tolerance for pain.
"I moved away from Southern lands. Illness took my family. The towns here had heard word of the sickness and granted no access past their gates. I made this hut out here for shelter. Rudimentary at first, its walls became thicker and the outside smoother. I stole and continue to do so from the town that left me to die. As new sicknesses spread, they remember that I was the last to survive the old ones. To them it counts for nothing that I'm the only one to not live cramped amongst their filth and livestock. They only see the witch from the wood." And what to do with the Son of Lilith? "He's become a self-titled judge as the builders of law die from plague or The Son's own assassinations. Now that the law belongs to him, to be built in his image. He's brought back the old ways; with magic beliefs and bounties on undesirables."
"Being far from civilities shouldn't make you immune to illness. Death will catch up to you."
She walked away from the bed and took with her all her devil's tools. "I doubt that. I've stayed in one spot for so long waiting for so long I've grown to believe that Death doesn't exist."
* * *
I could've slept a season, had it not been for the pitch smoke setting fire to my lungs. The cries of violence was a simple thing to slumber through, but the stink and taste of the fog filling the small hut was too vile for my liking. I awoke to the window from which I was shot from staring darkness back to me. I twisted my body 'round once I heard a repeated shout, realizing it wasn't from a dream. The way I rolled my shoulder did something to my forgotten wound that shocked my entire body. I stayed close to the cold ground once I recuperated there, until I realized the fog coming from the kiln was heavy and sinking fast to where I was.
I scrambled to the door but found it fastened shut. The round window above the bed was too small to climb through, as was the other, and offered no support to my shrinking lungs. I could only see hints of the turmoil outside, but cared not for the resolution. I had to leave. I covered the smogging kiln with random bits of furniture, eventually knocking it and the vile liquid over. Whatever good it did at this point mattered not. The hut was now a shade of black an arm's-length around me. I ran at the door, trying to bust it down, and saw what jammed my exit was the body of a man on the other side, wildly stabbed, chest left open. I tried to muscle my way an opening, but the smoke had drowned me for too long, left me weak. This felt an unfitting end, if this was a way to die.
Between the yells, I heard a trickle from the other end of the hut. The spilled kiln was leaking its contents under a clothing chest and down some drop. I shoved my way across this wretched home and tossed the chest to the side, finding it empty and weightless. A hole was dug underneath, large enough for a person to crawl through. The kiln spilt its contents down the hole and left itself in the way of my escape. I found an exit, and the Lord was testing my will. I pushed myself down the slope where the fog was thickest. The gunk that was brewing was left in a pool on the bottom of the hole before curving upward again to the outside. I slid my body into the bile of this dirt stomach, scalding my skin with the tar. I raised up, out of a false ground, covered with vines and bits of wood, on the outside of the hut, the opposite side with the door. Now I knew how she disappeared to arrive back inside her home. I exited her escape hatch and shook with wild breaths.
The cold air steamed from my body. Patches of tar spotted my skin and matted my scalp. My eyes watered away the blindness as I drew another breath and stared at the moon peeping from above the wooded canopy of branches. My eyes drew downward, led by a straight line that cradled gently. It was a rope. And leading at the end was the witch, kicking for leverage. Two spectators watched. I stood waist-height in the hole, my tongue leading my mind. "Hey!" I shouted for attention. My lungs as black as they were, the word came out more as a guttural yell. They turned around and watched as I picked myself from the hole, the tar still covering my flesh and the steam trailing. I marched towards them.
Their eyes grew wide and the width of their legs further apart as they prepared to fight or flee this monster. One made some primal sound of surprise. The other readied the crossbow already in his hand and the knife in his belt, unsure of how to handle such a situation. I lumbered forward, grunting with dead breaths and shrunken lungs, realizing I'd forgotten my sword inside. My hands can do plenty. The hunters stagger in their steps, not sure what to make of me. The moonlight serves as the only light to the garden floor. Through the slivers of light they see the towering golem march before them. The one with but a sword steps to the side of his friend, who through his courage, raises a bolt to me, fires, and misses. The same man, an animal afraid, cries out in a broken yell and raises his dagger above his head. My hands go out to where I think he'll strike-- down towards my heart-- before I feel the blade's edge cut and stick to my throat. The tar had hardened thick against my skin. Though I feel the cut, the knife refuses to slide away back into the hunter's hand. He pulls away shocked by the way his knife has absorbed to my skin. I jut the blade off my neck myself. I barely bleed but they know not what they really see. "Swing for its head!" the bowman calls as he steps back to load another bolt.
It was the turn of the other hunter, his eyes glinting with fear and apprehension. He yelled nonsense to boost his courage, his knees stuttering to launch his body forward. Nothing in his mind worked in tandem. By the time he ran up to me it was then that he realized he hadn't cocked his sword to strike. He stopped a few steps away before drawing his sword back behind his shoulder like a delinquent about to bat a window. I reach out and plant my left hand on his face, gripping his skull at arm's length like you would a child. The knife I'd held onto was returned, further than his throat, 'til I felt the point click against the vertebrae. I felt tears warm my palm before I dropped him, just as the other hunter raised his crossbow before me.
He knew this was his last chance to slow me, as did I. He released his held breath and the night listened just to him. I held my own, as did the trees, as did the hung witch whose shoes stopped tapping against the trunk. The fire spread through the witch's hovel, the heat and smoke building, trapped. The clay structure could deal with the tensity no more. The roof caved with a powerful sound, startling both the hunter and myself. While he's distracted, mine own eyes never leave his. I jump closer to him before he realizes his mistake, my hands already wrestling the crossbow from his arms. His grip tightens as the bolt is released. He yelps and shoves me away before stumbling away to the woods. I see the bolt sticking through his side before he ducks behind a trunk for rest. I use this time to quickly drag the blade from the other hinter's neck to saw away the rope that hangs my benefactor.
They tell you tales of witches floating about the ground. Their toenails graze the floor and their feet tap against the stairs on their way to the children's bedroom. This witch didn't float. Her body thudded to the dirt, bouncing against the roots roughly. I could still hear the panicked breaths of the hunter not far from us. As I picked the witch up over my shoulder, I could hear his breathing becoming sharper, ending in groans. Familiar, I thought, He's attempting to loose the bolt from his side. I've heard it from the wounded before. If he were wise, he'd leave it where it lay. That bolt is the only thing to keep him from death.
Flame struck through the witch's den, crumbling her home and history. Smoke funneled through the trap door thicker than clay. I huddled with the witch's body against the cliff-side, behind the fire. A wisp of the putrid smoke swept across us. Strong in scent, the tar-smoke must have pulled the witch from Hell, for she sputtered a breath before rolling away from me to her side, falling away to dream. The flames and smoke were thick enough for me to conceal myself. I knew that if the huntsman was back on his bloodpath, he'd have to get fairly close to volley his shot. My blade was still licked by flame inside the chaos, nowhere to be seen. My hands were my only weapon. So we're even.
* * *
The flame cooled away with the morning sun. The smoke stopped stinging the senses long ago. And the witch twisted her limbs throughout the night in her rest, letting me know she lived. At some point while the stars were overhead, the hunter quieted his pleas. Perhaps he rested. Perhaps he died. If not, I was to make it so. I got bored in my complacency, picking my second skin of tar clean from my flesh. I sifted the soot and ash, finding my sword once the Hellpit had cooled. I waited for no fair fight. I planned to take the huntsman's head for companionship until I find the nearest pile of shit to allow him final rest.
When I treaded to the trunk that should've hid my newfound friend, I found nothing but a dried spot of blood. No bolt lay on the vines. He was wise enough not to unsheathe it, was he? No blood to track as well. But the bushes were stomped in the direction of the hills. However, I cared not to track vermin over hills and fields. I am no huntsman. With one look over my shoulder I saw the witch, pretending to sleep, but her heaving shoulders gave her away. And so with only my sword to follow, I walked again toward the sun. Borne from the ash, smoke, and earth I tread. Looking for a God to stop me.
I awoke when the sun stretched her fingers through the trees, and felt the hot breath of dawn. The hunters were gone, their belongings absent but for the footprints they left in the soil. My sword was several feet from me, perhaps feeling the weight before realizing it was too heavy to steal and I was too worthless to kill. I loosed myself from the dirt, carried my companion, and continued toward the sun. At the time the day had passed me overhead and heated my back, I claimed for rest against the bark. I smelled the burning pitch before I saw the soft silk of smoke lingering over the forest floor. I brought myself on even ground with the horizon, my sword as a crutch. The walk wasn't long before finding the source in a decline in the ground.
The forest floor took a sharp dive several meters down before relaxing into even ground again. In the middle of this new land, the vines conquering their way up the crater of the scarred earth, was a shell of clay. Round, no larger than a hovel, and smoke stack beaming with putrid air. A hut in the middle of nothing, with one circular window staring up at me. When my focus glared into the dark insides of the forest home through the window, I gleamed a shade of black, changing colors from within. Someone had shifted their weight. Not a moment later, a robed figure slid to the outside and around the back of their home. My curiosity fueled my feet to tread around the rim of the small cliff, my eyes focused on the round home in the center of the precipice. The cliff-face sloped slowly downwards, the edges on each side creating a raised horseshoe shape with the ends sunk into level ground. As I neared flat ground I could see the other side of the home where the robed figure was... and noticed I was alone.
While I stared at the nothingness, I noticed a second window. Yet again the shades changed but this time in opposite contrast. The shade turned dark before a bolt lodged itself near my collar, just beside my windpipe. I dropped into the vines that littered the forest floor, down among the tar smoke. Were there two people leading me to a trap? Or only one? If there was only one person, how did they get back inside their hovel if I had eyes on the only door? No, there must be two. My eyes watered from the sting in the air and the sting in my chest. Through the decomposing fog I saw the door open again and the same hooded figure as before step through. They brandished a dagger like a badge and stepped cautiously through the weeds. How did they appear back inside the hovel? What did I follow? An apparition? I worried these meaningless thoughts as death grew near. Each breath flexed my throat and cut against the edges of the bolt. I managed to gasp a swear at the figure before they knelt. They answered back in kind.
"Son of Lilith," she said, "hunting me will lead to nothing but corpses. You want to sport my head like a trophy, and I'll use yours to feed the flies."
Half-aggravated by her deduction at who I was supposed to be, my reply was both explanation and insult to her demeanor. "I'm a king."
She quickly let down the knife and let up my head, pulling the bolt from my neck roughly. The shock nearly hastened my life. "What did you say?"
I gasped for anything I could breathe that wasn't tar smoke. But she waited while I could explain. Not in finest detail, but enough to not stutter her belief. I tied together all my tales by saying "And so we met. You greeted a king with an act of treason. Needless to say, a spot of wine and a fur to lay would not be an unjust start to an apology."
There was no fur, only a bed of sewn straw. And there was no wine, but the ale did its job well enough for her to close my wound with hot pitch and tell me of her woes.
"I'm a witch, so they say, and nothing more can be said to change a peoples' minds. I'm unwed, poor, and speak not for a belief in God."
I shook with pain from the scalding. "What is this liquid pestilence?"
"It can serve as many things. Mostly I use it to fix any damages that befall my home in the storms. And apparently it can work for any man."
"You weren't sure?'
"The smell keeps others away, let's them not discover me while they believe they've loomed into a mass grave, unmasked by landslides." She dipped her blade into a boiling pot of tar, sliding the excess back into the brew with the edge of her knife. I could not brace myself for the heat, as much as each time I think I could.
Between chattering teeth I spoke. "What were the charges? Why here?" My interest waned from the moment she first spoke, but I had to keep my mind occupied as she pressed the side of her blade against the wound to flatten the tar and declined my tolerance for pain.
"I moved away from Southern lands. Illness took my family. The towns here had heard word of the sickness and granted no access past their gates. I made this hut out here for shelter. Rudimentary at first, its walls became thicker and the outside smoother. I stole and continue to do so from the town that left me to die. As new sicknesses spread, they remember that I was the last to survive the old ones. To them it counts for nothing that I'm the only one to not live cramped amongst their filth and livestock. They only see the witch from the wood." And what to do with the Son of Lilith? "He's become a self-titled judge as the builders of law die from plague or The Son's own assassinations. Now that the law belongs to him, to be built in his image. He's brought back the old ways; with magic beliefs and bounties on undesirables."
"Being far from civilities shouldn't make you immune to illness. Death will catch up to you."
She walked away from the bed and took with her all her devil's tools. "I doubt that. I've stayed in one spot for so long waiting for so long I've grown to believe that Death doesn't exist."
* * *
I could've slept a season, had it not been for the pitch smoke setting fire to my lungs. The cries of violence was a simple thing to slumber through, but the stink and taste of the fog filling the small hut was too vile for my liking. I awoke to the window from which I was shot from staring darkness back to me. I twisted my body 'round once I heard a repeated shout, realizing it wasn't from a dream. The way I rolled my shoulder did something to my forgotten wound that shocked my entire body. I stayed close to the cold ground once I recuperated there, until I realized the fog coming from the kiln was heavy and sinking fast to where I was.
I scrambled to the door but found it fastened shut. The round window above the bed was too small to climb through, as was the other, and offered no support to my shrinking lungs. I could only see hints of the turmoil outside, but cared not for the resolution. I had to leave. I covered the smogging kiln with random bits of furniture, eventually knocking it and the vile liquid over. Whatever good it did at this point mattered not. The hut was now a shade of black an arm's-length around me. I ran at the door, trying to bust it down, and saw what jammed my exit was the body of a man on the other side, wildly stabbed, chest left open. I tried to muscle my way an opening, but the smoke had drowned me for too long, left me weak. This felt an unfitting end, if this was a way to die.
Between the yells, I heard a trickle from the other end of the hut. The spilled kiln was leaking its contents under a clothing chest and down some drop. I shoved my way across this wretched home and tossed the chest to the side, finding it empty and weightless. A hole was dug underneath, large enough for a person to crawl through. The kiln spilt its contents down the hole and left itself in the way of my escape. I found an exit, and the Lord was testing my will. I pushed myself down the slope where the fog was thickest. The gunk that was brewing was left in a pool on the bottom of the hole before curving upward again to the outside. I slid my body into the bile of this dirt stomach, scalding my skin with the tar. I raised up, out of a false ground, covered with vines and bits of wood, on the outside of the hut, the opposite side with the door. Now I knew how she disappeared to arrive back inside her home. I exited her escape hatch and shook with wild breaths.
The cold air steamed from my body. Patches of tar spotted my skin and matted my scalp. My eyes watered away the blindness as I drew another breath and stared at the moon peeping from above the wooded canopy of branches. My eyes drew downward, led by a straight line that cradled gently. It was a rope. And leading at the end was the witch, kicking for leverage. Two spectators watched. I stood waist-height in the hole, my tongue leading my mind. "Hey!" I shouted for attention. My lungs as black as they were, the word came out more as a guttural yell. They turned around and watched as I picked myself from the hole, the tar still covering my flesh and the steam trailing. I marched towards them.
Their eyes grew wide and the width of their legs further apart as they prepared to fight or flee this monster. One made some primal sound of surprise. The other readied the crossbow already in his hand and the knife in his belt, unsure of how to handle such a situation. I lumbered forward, grunting with dead breaths and shrunken lungs, realizing I'd forgotten my sword inside. My hands can do plenty. The hunters stagger in their steps, not sure what to make of me. The moonlight serves as the only light to the garden floor. Through the slivers of light they see the towering golem march before them. The one with but a sword steps to the side of his friend, who through his courage, raises a bolt to me, fires, and misses. The same man, an animal afraid, cries out in a broken yell and raises his dagger above his head. My hands go out to where I think he'll strike-- down towards my heart-- before I feel the blade's edge cut and stick to my throat. The tar had hardened thick against my skin. Though I feel the cut, the knife refuses to slide away back into the hunter's hand. He pulls away shocked by the way his knife has absorbed to my skin. I jut the blade off my neck myself. I barely bleed but they know not what they really see. "Swing for its head!" the bowman calls as he steps back to load another bolt.
It was the turn of the other hunter, his eyes glinting with fear and apprehension. He yelled nonsense to boost his courage, his knees stuttering to launch his body forward. Nothing in his mind worked in tandem. By the time he ran up to me it was then that he realized he hadn't cocked his sword to strike. He stopped a few steps away before drawing his sword back behind his shoulder like a delinquent about to bat a window. I reach out and plant my left hand on his face, gripping his skull at arm's length like you would a child. The knife I'd held onto was returned, further than his throat, 'til I felt the point click against the vertebrae. I felt tears warm my palm before I dropped him, just as the other hunter raised his crossbow before me.
He knew this was his last chance to slow me, as did I. He released his held breath and the night listened just to him. I held my own, as did the trees, as did the hung witch whose shoes stopped tapping against the trunk. The fire spread through the witch's hovel, the heat and smoke building, trapped. The clay structure could deal with the tensity no more. The roof caved with a powerful sound, startling both the hunter and myself. While he's distracted, mine own eyes never leave his. I jump closer to him before he realizes his mistake, my hands already wrestling the crossbow from his arms. His grip tightens as the bolt is released. He yelps and shoves me away before stumbling away to the woods. I see the bolt sticking through his side before he ducks behind a trunk for rest. I use this time to quickly drag the blade from the other hinter's neck to saw away the rope that hangs my benefactor.
They tell you tales of witches floating about the ground. Their toenails graze the floor and their feet tap against the stairs on their way to the children's bedroom. This witch didn't float. Her body thudded to the dirt, bouncing against the roots roughly. I could still hear the panicked breaths of the hunter not far from us. As I picked the witch up over my shoulder, I could hear his breathing becoming sharper, ending in groans. Familiar, I thought, He's attempting to loose the bolt from his side. I've heard it from the wounded before. If he were wise, he'd leave it where it lay. That bolt is the only thing to keep him from death.
Flame struck through the witch's den, crumbling her home and history. Smoke funneled through the trap door thicker than clay. I huddled with the witch's body against the cliff-side, behind the fire. A wisp of the putrid smoke swept across us. Strong in scent, the tar-smoke must have pulled the witch from Hell, for she sputtered a breath before rolling away from me to her side, falling away to dream. The flames and smoke were thick enough for me to conceal myself. I knew that if the huntsman was back on his bloodpath, he'd have to get fairly close to volley his shot. My blade was still licked by flame inside the chaos, nowhere to be seen. My hands were my only weapon. So we're even.
* * *
The flame cooled away with the morning sun. The smoke stopped stinging the senses long ago. And the witch twisted her limbs throughout the night in her rest, letting me know she lived. At some point while the stars were overhead, the hunter quieted his pleas. Perhaps he rested. Perhaps he died. If not, I was to make it so. I got bored in my complacency, picking my second skin of tar clean from my flesh. I sifted the soot and ash, finding my sword once the Hellpit had cooled. I waited for no fair fight. I planned to take the huntsman's head for companionship until I find the nearest pile of shit to allow him final rest.
When I treaded to the trunk that should've hid my newfound friend, I found nothing but a dried spot of blood. No bolt lay on the vines. He was wise enough not to unsheathe it, was he? No blood to track as well. But the bushes were stomped in the direction of the hills. However, I cared not to track vermin over hills and fields. I am no huntsman. With one look over my shoulder I saw the witch, pretending to sleep, but her heaving shoulders gave her away. And so with only my sword to follow, I walked again toward the sun. Borne from the ash, smoke, and earth I tread. Looking for a God to stop me.
Plagued: Dirge Of Humanity
I... had no idea I didn't publish this one already. Dear God I've been slacking. But for good reason! I've been working really hard on getting more stories out into the thickets. And the best way to do that is to leave me alone to the music and the drink. Not a lot of music or drink around these parts, however... Ladies and Gentleman, on with the show:
The wood becomes home again. I stay close to the thick trunks; they become the walls of my cave. The spires of my campfire create dying stars in the night. And for the first time in several nights, I eat. Don't mind what, just know I've had feasts more grand. The morning rolls through the trees and I hold spite to know that when I pass the days will toil on just the same. It will even lay claim to my property, without the utterance of a word, and with no one to fight against it. I've grown used to the warmth in my blanket of earth. My wakefulness to the songbirds. And the taste of my own blood since the night. I walk the edge of the wood that corners the castle Murray, hoping to find both the least occupied entrance and my courage. My feet sift through bramblebushes, long-forgotten to react to pain. I find the road less-traveled, and begin my trek. When I was met with fate and the pride to swallow, I made my way to the West gate. All through my life, a chorus would sound when I walked the procession to my throne. My walk to the gate through the hardened ground... naught but the birds sang for me now. Dogs crowded the carts selling meats and nipped the hooves of horses. Soon the flock of scavengers got wind of old blood. Me, a thing yet living, who smelled and looked of a corpse. Their bark melted slowly into the still of the air, and the carts followed the dogs' stares, and pulled away to let me pass. The shirtless, bootless man with a lancer's sword drug behind. The road quieted, and the birds sang into their second verse.
The four guards at the gate, donning the Murray colors, follow the parting ways of the crowd. Surprisingly, they see me as no threat 'til already I see the polluted whites of their eyes. They halt me, and ask me of my business. I tell them that I have slain enemies beside the Murray name before, and wish to seek counsel with their king. They laugh, as anyone would, and continue to do so as I name the battlefields in which I bare my proof. My mind is tired and wags my tongue as if it juggles coals in my mouth and my words begin to stumble. I'm pulled backward, a guard I did not see. When I look from the ground, I see contemptuous stares from those who laughed before. "Leper!" they cried and the people tore from my way more. "He carries the sickness with him!" They must've not seen my spots before, until one walked behind to inspect the hysteric they claimed I am.
"The mark of death bares upon him!" I hear the familiar insults. The recognizable stares. The choir of birds break into the rising notes of children. I look up at the guards. One yells at me while the rest throw a chain upon my neck. His helmet splits at the top and hangs down-- much like a jester. The others come 'round to him. They no longer bare the colors Murray. They bare mine. I look around to meet the stares of dogs and men. Familiar faces all. When they pull the chain, it comes studded with jewels. Ones from my crown. I fall onto the ground, carpeted like my courtroom, and am dragged from the West gate. As I choke for air, raked across the stones, I watch the sun get brighter, the choir louder, and my body colder.
* * *
I stare at the wooden gate, scarred from the scratches of the dying. Those left alive scatter from the streets. I've been quarantined from the rest of the kingdom, along with the other ill and infirm, and sectioned into an abandoned part of the city. The dead are piled higher near the door from which I came than they are in the gutters along the road. People who have attempted to flee when the guards open the doors to bring a new arrival no doubt. It takes no second look to see that this is some quarter of the kingdom to wall-off only the infected. Murray has made himself a city of the dead. Peasants with open sores bleed through the streets and into the alleyways. Their clothes and rags stretched tight around their otherwise naked bodies. I stand alone in the quiet of the road. Not even the birds sing here. The muffled sounds of the rest of the healthy population rise in a wave over the large, stone, battlement wall and echoes between the derelict buildings. They dangle the freedom of these prisoners in the form of a broken and battered gate. It focuses their attention from both sides. All my thoughts tell me to find another way out, away from their distractions. I turn around and face the long road ahead of me. I know this place. Visited often after battle. I've been here, myself.
This is what they've called "Pleasure Square", now littered with the coughing and groveling of bounded strangers. As the day went on more people would dance in the street. Now the wind is the only thing moving with grace. The dead mark along the roads where the women sold their flesh. The streets are long with the dead and grime of those left to the gutters and rainfall to wash the meat from their bones. There were people in the gutters then, too. They laid among the piss and trash. Though not as many were dead as there are now.
It's harder to navigate the roads when it isn't filled with people standing. And yet I know exactly where I'm going. Even without a sword holstered in my palm, the infected stay to the walls and let me pass. I skirt the wall leading to the inner city, passing the puddles of blood and piles of filth. The masses of what I assumed were the dead move and speak here and there, always garnering surprise. It's not long before the purple royal flags of Murray, draped over the upper bannisters, draw me like a beacon to the house against the barrier wall. The roof nearly comes to the top of the mortar, just barely out of reach to anyone dreaming escape.
It was a large enough building to house the legions or rather their ghosts inside. The door clicked against its own broken hinges. This place was long-since ruined by the ill masses that couldn't accept their fate. Curtains were thrashed from the walls. The kegs were split in desperation long ago. The ale had dried since, warping the floorboards and draughting a molding scent. No one lived here. It's been abandoned for the next target, something else that's reminded them that happiness and freedom was ever such a thing. No candles to light my way upstairs. Only through the broken windows can you see what kind of air you breathe, what floats in it.
Bundles of clothing and rags carpet my walk through the upper hallway and softens my footsteps. The doors lay away from the privacy they used to hide and banished to the floor. My curiosity does not wander to the other rooms, for my intent is clear-- I will escape through the last door on the right. The room is punished in every manner, just like the rest. The bed is gone, the window shutters fallen to the street, the clothes and costumes of whores thrown and torn to the wayside. Of all the furniture destroyed, the large oaken wardrobe still stands.
This room is far and away the largest room in the whorehouse. Royalty has slept here. Myself among others. But there's reason to not be seen entering such places. The wardrobe was always our in. Today it marks my way out. Frustrated at not being able to tip the wardrobe away from the wall-- and for good reason-- the rioters cut into its sides with pokers and whatever else they found to chip away at the wood. But the proud bastard still stood. The doors were gone, like all the rest. I stepped through the rib cage of the leviathan and felt to the back of its throat. The back panel slipped away silently, folding itself inward to the dark passage behind. The draft of old air smelled as good as mountain's breath after the death I've walked through. A discarded brown blanket lay among the scraps of others next to the wardrobe. I swiped it and with a last look to ghosts' past, continued through the tunnel and shut the way behind me.
There's a gap between the false back of the wardrobe and my escape. About ten meters I walk through the foundations of the building, through the battlement wall, and through the walls of the building on the other side. Wide enough to carry a soldier in full armor, or a king in all his elaborate garb. I opened the false backing to the wardrobe that connects me to the inner city and stood in its emptiness. But the doors to the wardrobe itself wouldn't budge. It wasn't more than the thought that I might be truly trapped in a dead city that urged me to break shoulders and forearms against the closed doors. I didn't care if someone heard. You must understand, I was desperate. A mere 4 centimeters of wood between myself and freedom. The walls closed in as if I was already buried. When I heard the wood crack and splint I half-expected my mouth to fill with dirt. With a final shove, I fell through the doors and onto the floor of a dark and forgotten room. The taste of dust was all but a relief, as good as fruit.
I jutted my head upward to make sure I didn't seal my fate with all the noise. This house was used for diplomatic hearings. A courthouse of sorts, but for matters off the written record. Souls were sold between the murmurings of generals and colleagues in little more than a private library. Now it appeared to be abandoned. The wardrobe I was birthed from had been boarded, and left to someone else's responsibility. What furniture was left in the place was held unceremoniously against the walls or turned in no special or remembered way. I was alone. At least in this particular room. I froze my movement and listened hard for anyone coming to inspect the sound of my abrasion. I hadn't listened for the sounds of the crowded streets since I entered the whorehouse, but I now realized the roads were quiet since I broke free. Was I so loud the whole town stopped to listen? Stumbling my feet on my brown robe, I huddled myself against the wall near a window and peered out. The streets were empty. I cared not to find out if the rest of the building was occupied. The sun had now baked its color against every building, coloring the road a stark white against the stones. I walked out onto a nearby patio and hung myself over the rail before dropping down back to the ground. I was free again. Practically naked and without a weapon, but free to roam. My instincts and curiosity fought at the front lines of my brain. Should I leave this place? Or should I sate curiosity and find where everyone, seemingly the whole town, has gone?
The sounds of shouting crowds pull me down the empty streets. Nearly all are gone from the many doorways and gardens that line the way. I pull the brown cloth tighter around my face the closer to the noise I become. Dotted colors wave themselves about toward the end of the street-- a crowd gathered and shouting exclamations of both anger and joy. In the back of my mind I believe the riot is meant for me. I don't long to see the unmuzzled hatred from crowds again. So I join their ranks instead. I meld myself cautiously to the backs of the shouting masses. Their shouts bound off the stage in the middle of the open courtyard. The executioner stands strong, as if to say, "Bring me your sins. I absolve all." The crowd shifts as a man is led up the steps, the cries for murder echo off one another. My eyes take awhile to settle on the accused and the executioner and the third man met by cheers before I realize they all wear royal robes. So it's a revolt in the upper echelons. Treason? Hearsay? Nothing is said by the judge that is heard over the interruptions or the distance. I don't wait for the axefall. I've seen my share. Instead I voyage to the West gate, passing few people on the way. Talk of the execution finds its way to many of them. The crime seems small-- a writ against the king's line. Apparently the accused claimed his innocence before he stood for the trial and sentencing of his blood. No one seems to mind whether he's innocent or not, just that the punishment is served. No one spoke for him. No one cared. It seems my search for honor in death was unjustified. And I no longer know if it's what I want.
The walk to the gate is daunting, with me thinking I'll be discovered through my disguise and offered as a second course to the jackals at the center of town. Every child that skips the steps past me takes a moment to stare. The meddling cut-throats. Reaching the final roadway that leads to the large, wooden, open gates I notice a lull in the noise. The town falls silent. And an uproar tumbles over the rooftops to fall upon me like a hushing wind. The royal prisoner is dead. And the songbirds sing their dirge.
What with the world's population contained in these walls centered at its core to watch the death of another bug, only two guards stand at the entrance to the West gate. Neither pay me mind. Neither thinks twice about a stumbling cloak, a drunk who could afford to do so, until my hands are already upon the face of the guard nearest me. You must understand, I'm no monster, but I refuse to leave without what's mine. Conversation was long past. They tied a chain to me and drug me like bait. Like my life meant nothing before I was already an empty husk. And here, now; yes we could've conversed. We could've bickered and argued and gambled and parted ways amicably for what was given me. But you must understand, I didn't want to. The new invigoration to live surged through me, and turnt itself from a divine gift to a weapon of newfound hate.
His head turns quite easily and the neck follows suit. It's luck that the other guard doesn't yell at first, he simply stammers and charges for me in a straight line beyond the body of his fallen friend, too shocked to understand the correct actions to take. He's too close to draw his sword effectively. He's young and in a blind rage. So I stick my thumbs in his eyes and blind him for good. This is when he finally finds a voice. What few citizens are around stop to stare. They don't see the danger they're in for themselves until I pluck the knife from the soldier's belt and thinly drag it across his throat while he kneels before his judge. The people flee. It means nothing all the same. They can find the nearest guard if they wish, I'll be long gone into the thick of the wood by the time they investigate.
I unfold myself from the blanket with unclean hands and disarm it to the mud around the wheel tracks in the road. The small guard post welcomes me, an invitation to not forget my things before I vacate the town. Inside is any small number of contraband, none of which concerns me but the lancing sword I've grown to care for like a friend. It stands up against a table, straight-backed with good posture and gleaming with tales and rumors. I leave without hurry. Together we walk down the road past the shocked eyes of many, and across the fields to my cathedral of trees.
I hear the commotion at the gate a league behind me. The shocked questions and the hurried answers. As I step back into the bramblebushes and into the shadows of the wood, the noises of civilization are drowned by the choir of nature. The crackle of trees reaching for sunlight, the hushed silence of wind. But the songbirds, they no longer sing for me.
* * *
The wood becomes home again. I stay close to the thick trunks; they become the walls of my cave. The spires of my campfire create dying stars in the night. And for the first time in several nights, I eat. Don't mind what, just know I've had feasts more grand. The morning rolls through the trees and I hold spite to know that when I pass the days will toil on just the same. It will even lay claim to my property, without the utterance of a word, and with no one to fight against it. I've grown used to the warmth in my blanket of earth. My wakefulness to the songbirds. And the taste of my own blood since the night. I walk the edge of the wood that corners the castle Murray, hoping to find both the least occupied entrance and my courage. My feet sift through bramblebushes, long-forgotten to react to pain. I find the road less-traveled, and begin my trek. When I was met with fate and the pride to swallow, I made my way to the West gate. All through my life, a chorus would sound when I walked the procession to my throne. My walk to the gate through the hardened ground... naught but the birds sang for me now. Dogs crowded the carts selling meats and nipped the hooves of horses. Soon the flock of scavengers got wind of old blood. Me, a thing yet living, who smelled and looked of a corpse. Their bark melted slowly into the still of the air, and the carts followed the dogs' stares, and pulled away to let me pass. The shirtless, bootless man with a lancer's sword drug behind. The road quieted, and the birds sang into their second verse.
The four guards at the gate, donning the Murray colors, follow the parting ways of the crowd. Surprisingly, they see me as no threat 'til already I see the polluted whites of their eyes. They halt me, and ask me of my business. I tell them that I have slain enemies beside the Murray name before, and wish to seek counsel with their king. They laugh, as anyone would, and continue to do so as I name the battlefields in which I bare my proof. My mind is tired and wags my tongue as if it juggles coals in my mouth and my words begin to stumble. I'm pulled backward, a guard I did not see. When I look from the ground, I see contemptuous stares from those who laughed before. "Leper!" they cried and the people tore from my way more. "He carries the sickness with him!" They must've not seen my spots before, until one walked behind to inspect the hysteric they claimed I am.
"The mark of death bares upon him!" I hear the familiar insults. The recognizable stares. The choir of birds break into the rising notes of children. I look up at the guards. One yells at me while the rest throw a chain upon my neck. His helmet splits at the top and hangs down-- much like a jester. The others come 'round to him. They no longer bare the colors Murray. They bare mine. I look around to meet the stares of dogs and men. Familiar faces all. When they pull the chain, it comes studded with jewels. Ones from my crown. I fall onto the ground, carpeted like my courtroom, and am dragged from the West gate. As I choke for air, raked across the stones, I watch the sun get brighter, the choir louder, and my body colder.
* * *
I stare at the wooden gate, scarred from the scratches of the dying. Those left alive scatter from the streets. I've been quarantined from the rest of the kingdom, along with the other ill and infirm, and sectioned into an abandoned part of the city. The dead are piled higher near the door from which I came than they are in the gutters along the road. People who have attempted to flee when the guards open the doors to bring a new arrival no doubt. It takes no second look to see that this is some quarter of the kingdom to wall-off only the infected. Murray has made himself a city of the dead. Peasants with open sores bleed through the streets and into the alleyways. Their clothes and rags stretched tight around their otherwise naked bodies. I stand alone in the quiet of the road. Not even the birds sing here. The muffled sounds of the rest of the healthy population rise in a wave over the large, stone, battlement wall and echoes between the derelict buildings. They dangle the freedom of these prisoners in the form of a broken and battered gate. It focuses their attention from both sides. All my thoughts tell me to find another way out, away from their distractions. I turn around and face the long road ahead of me. I know this place. Visited often after battle. I've been here, myself.
This is what they've called "Pleasure Square", now littered with the coughing and groveling of bounded strangers. As the day went on more people would dance in the street. Now the wind is the only thing moving with grace. The dead mark along the roads where the women sold their flesh. The streets are long with the dead and grime of those left to the gutters and rainfall to wash the meat from their bones. There were people in the gutters then, too. They laid among the piss and trash. Though not as many were dead as there are now.
It's harder to navigate the roads when it isn't filled with people standing. And yet I know exactly where I'm going. Even without a sword holstered in my palm, the infected stay to the walls and let me pass. I skirt the wall leading to the inner city, passing the puddles of blood and piles of filth. The masses of what I assumed were the dead move and speak here and there, always garnering surprise. It's not long before the purple royal flags of Murray, draped over the upper bannisters, draw me like a beacon to the house against the barrier wall. The roof nearly comes to the top of the mortar, just barely out of reach to anyone dreaming escape.
It was a large enough building to house the legions or rather their ghosts inside. The door clicked against its own broken hinges. This place was long-since ruined by the ill masses that couldn't accept their fate. Curtains were thrashed from the walls. The kegs were split in desperation long ago. The ale had dried since, warping the floorboards and draughting a molding scent. No one lived here. It's been abandoned for the next target, something else that's reminded them that happiness and freedom was ever such a thing. No candles to light my way upstairs. Only through the broken windows can you see what kind of air you breathe, what floats in it.
Bundles of clothing and rags carpet my walk through the upper hallway and softens my footsteps. The doors lay away from the privacy they used to hide and banished to the floor. My curiosity does not wander to the other rooms, for my intent is clear-- I will escape through the last door on the right. The room is punished in every manner, just like the rest. The bed is gone, the window shutters fallen to the street, the clothes and costumes of whores thrown and torn to the wayside. Of all the furniture destroyed, the large oaken wardrobe still stands.
This room is far and away the largest room in the whorehouse. Royalty has slept here. Myself among others. But there's reason to not be seen entering such places. The wardrobe was always our in. Today it marks my way out. Frustrated at not being able to tip the wardrobe away from the wall-- and for good reason-- the rioters cut into its sides with pokers and whatever else they found to chip away at the wood. But the proud bastard still stood. The doors were gone, like all the rest. I stepped through the rib cage of the leviathan and felt to the back of its throat. The back panel slipped away silently, folding itself inward to the dark passage behind. The draft of old air smelled as good as mountain's breath after the death I've walked through. A discarded brown blanket lay among the scraps of others next to the wardrobe. I swiped it and with a last look to ghosts' past, continued through the tunnel and shut the way behind me.
There's a gap between the false back of the wardrobe and my escape. About ten meters I walk through the foundations of the building, through the battlement wall, and through the walls of the building on the other side. Wide enough to carry a soldier in full armor, or a king in all his elaborate garb. I opened the false backing to the wardrobe that connects me to the inner city and stood in its emptiness. But the doors to the wardrobe itself wouldn't budge. It wasn't more than the thought that I might be truly trapped in a dead city that urged me to break shoulders and forearms against the closed doors. I didn't care if someone heard. You must understand, I was desperate. A mere 4 centimeters of wood between myself and freedom. The walls closed in as if I was already buried. When I heard the wood crack and splint I half-expected my mouth to fill with dirt. With a final shove, I fell through the doors and onto the floor of a dark and forgotten room. The taste of dust was all but a relief, as good as fruit.
I jutted my head upward to make sure I didn't seal my fate with all the noise. This house was used for diplomatic hearings. A courthouse of sorts, but for matters off the written record. Souls were sold between the murmurings of generals and colleagues in little more than a private library. Now it appeared to be abandoned. The wardrobe I was birthed from had been boarded, and left to someone else's responsibility. What furniture was left in the place was held unceremoniously against the walls or turned in no special or remembered way. I was alone. At least in this particular room. I froze my movement and listened hard for anyone coming to inspect the sound of my abrasion. I hadn't listened for the sounds of the crowded streets since I entered the whorehouse, but I now realized the roads were quiet since I broke free. Was I so loud the whole town stopped to listen? Stumbling my feet on my brown robe, I huddled myself against the wall near a window and peered out. The streets were empty. I cared not to find out if the rest of the building was occupied. The sun had now baked its color against every building, coloring the road a stark white against the stones. I walked out onto a nearby patio and hung myself over the rail before dropping down back to the ground. I was free again. Practically naked and without a weapon, but free to roam. My instincts and curiosity fought at the front lines of my brain. Should I leave this place? Or should I sate curiosity and find where everyone, seemingly the whole town, has gone?
The sounds of shouting crowds pull me down the empty streets. Nearly all are gone from the many doorways and gardens that line the way. I pull the brown cloth tighter around my face the closer to the noise I become. Dotted colors wave themselves about toward the end of the street-- a crowd gathered and shouting exclamations of both anger and joy. In the back of my mind I believe the riot is meant for me. I don't long to see the unmuzzled hatred from crowds again. So I join their ranks instead. I meld myself cautiously to the backs of the shouting masses. Their shouts bound off the stage in the middle of the open courtyard. The executioner stands strong, as if to say, "Bring me your sins. I absolve all." The crowd shifts as a man is led up the steps, the cries for murder echo off one another. My eyes take awhile to settle on the accused and the executioner and the third man met by cheers before I realize they all wear royal robes. So it's a revolt in the upper echelons. Treason? Hearsay? Nothing is said by the judge that is heard over the interruptions or the distance. I don't wait for the axefall. I've seen my share. Instead I voyage to the West gate, passing few people on the way. Talk of the execution finds its way to many of them. The crime seems small-- a writ against the king's line. Apparently the accused claimed his innocence before he stood for the trial and sentencing of his blood. No one seems to mind whether he's innocent or not, just that the punishment is served. No one spoke for him. No one cared. It seems my search for honor in death was unjustified. And I no longer know if it's what I want.
The walk to the gate is daunting, with me thinking I'll be discovered through my disguise and offered as a second course to the jackals at the center of town. Every child that skips the steps past me takes a moment to stare. The meddling cut-throats. Reaching the final roadway that leads to the large, wooden, open gates I notice a lull in the noise. The town falls silent. And an uproar tumbles over the rooftops to fall upon me like a hushing wind. The royal prisoner is dead. And the songbirds sing their dirge.
What with the world's population contained in these walls centered at its core to watch the death of another bug, only two guards stand at the entrance to the West gate. Neither pay me mind. Neither thinks twice about a stumbling cloak, a drunk who could afford to do so, until my hands are already upon the face of the guard nearest me. You must understand, I'm no monster, but I refuse to leave without what's mine. Conversation was long past. They tied a chain to me and drug me like bait. Like my life meant nothing before I was already an empty husk. And here, now; yes we could've conversed. We could've bickered and argued and gambled and parted ways amicably for what was given me. But you must understand, I didn't want to. The new invigoration to live surged through me, and turnt itself from a divine gift to a weapon of newfound hate.
His head turns quite easily and the neck follows suit. It's luck that the other guard doesn't yell at first, he simply stammers and charges for me in a straight line beyond the body of his fallen friend, too shocked to understand the correct actions to take. He's too close to draw his sword effectively. He's young and in a blind rage. So I stick my thumbs in his eyes and blind him for good. This is when he finally finds a voice. What few citizens are around stop to stare. They don't see the danger they're in for themselves until I pluck the knife from the soldier's belt and thinly drag it across his throat while he kneels before his judge. The people flee. It means nothing all the same. They can find the nearest guard if they wish, I'll be long gone into the thick of the wood by the time they investigate.
I unfold myself from the blanket with unclean hands and disarm it to the mud around the wheel tracks in the road. The small guard post welcomes me, an invitation to not forget my things before I vacate the town. Inside is any small number of contraband, none of which concerns me but the lancing sword I've grown to care for like a friend. It stands up against a table, straight-backed with good posture and gleaming with tales and rumors. I leave without hurry. Together we walk down the road past the shocked eyes of many, and across the fields to my cathedral of trees.
I hear the commotion at the gate a league behind me. The shocked questions and the hurried answers. As I step back into the bramblebushes and into the shadows of the wood, the noises of civilization are drowned by the choir of nature. The crackle of trees reaching for sunlight, the hushed silence of wind. But the songbirds, they no longer sing for me.
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