TCC CH 8 BLUE CRESCENT

Here we go.  It gets ugly.  Sorry about that.

Rose Tattoo   by Dropkick Murphys  

Gregor watched the spark disappear into one of the sparkly gems.  The gem blinked out of view.

Occupied.  Somebody’s in here.  Fuck off.

There were others nearby, and he went to inspect them.  Each of these were dim sparks, and when he got real close and peered inside, he could see nothing.  He thought, they must have their eyes closed.

He backed away from them, and as he did, one of them dimmed until it became nothing.

He did not want to be near those gems anymore.  He looked about and saw another gem, and it was not dim.  It shone and gleamed like it had been recently polished. 


He flew up to it and looked into it.  He was surrounded by the white bars of a tiny jail.  Above him dangled a curious looking assortment of carnival animals. 

The walls beyond were painted bright pink.  

Baby girl.

He smiled. 


It was his oldest son’s third baby. 


All of them were daughters.  No sons!  In the old country, a man would have a son to pass everything on to.  Gregor thought, a man gets things done.  Women are to be taken care of, but a man is the boss. 



He would not return as a baby girl. 

He turned and flew onward to another gem when one appeared in a flash off to his right.  He halted and considered things.  Why had this one just shown up like that?  What was going on with it?

Well, or course, he closed in on it and peered into it. 


He could see his youngest son, Richard, bending over and looking right into the gem. 

Then he saw Richard back away and pull up a baseball bat over his head.  Richard swung down at the gem and the gem flashed out of view.

Gregor shouted, but in the void of black eternity, he did not have a body or a mouth, nor was there air to carry the sound of his silent scream.

He had just witnessed a murder.  He had seen his youngest one, the troublemaker, kill someone with a baseball bat.  He had seen this happen through the eyes of the one who was killed.

It was a bit much to take in.  But he knew one thing.  He needed to get back there and take control of the situation.  He needed to find out why his son had done such a thing.

Do you know, when you are in a desperate frame of mind, that is the worst position to be in to have to make a decision or pick a choice.  Never go to the market when you are hungry, never buy a car when you have just received a large sum of money, and never, ever quickly pick a new body when your son has been taken over by a cannibal Walk-In.

But Gregor did not know that this had happened.  In his panic, he went back to the group of gems that were dim.  He picked one, any one, and he entered it.

Instantly he felt searing pain.  He tried to open his eyes, but they were gone.  He felt for them.  The eyelids were swollen shut, and when he pried them open, only fluid gushed out.

His face felt crispy.

He smelled burnt hair and fried steak.  Something very bad had happened to this body.  It was not long for the world.

Dead End Friends   by Them Crooked Vultures  

His wife, the high priestess of them purple robes, well she had her own shit going on.  She knew that Gregor had left, and she would not blame him.  She figured that in his passing on, he might still be around and about her.

She hoped this was so.

But for all she knew and feared, she was truly left alone. 

Indeed, she was, in that dark tunnel with them hungry visitors from the Gate of Hell that had been opened by Lenny Sustenuto, he of the Sausage-Arm Clan.

Those creatures were bad enough for they were eternals much as them Walk-Ins were, but now they had the added aspect of cannibalism and the hunger it caused.  Where once they sought only to escape the depths of despair held tight behind that gate, now they were free to roam again.  With a new hunger that went bone deep.

Chrysalis stood and looked up to the source of the weak blue light.  She saw that it was a hole in the roof of the tunnel and there were hand rungs in the sides of the hole, all the way up.  She left the body of the burnt man and the one that had held her beloved and she grabbed onto the first rail.

The voices of those far off, running to her from the fire back there, well, they were saying things.

“…the screaming woman is lit by blue…”

“…she looks to be fair fare…”

“…I will have her flesh for myself…”

“…No!  I will have herrrrr!”

She did not turn to look.  She felt her skin crawl. 



It would be a very bad way to die, and slow.  Eaten alive.





She pulled her sluggish body up them rails, one at a time.  Her drugged-out body did not respond well, and her grasp on the rungs felt like rubber hands with slippery fish-fingers.   She had expended what little adrenaline had been available in this body she now inhabited.

She did not want to fall.

She did not want to be eaten alive.

She rose up to the top rungs as the ones who followed her arrived at the two bodies below.  They dove right onto the bodies and fought over the meat.

She heard them rend flesh and chew and fill their bodies, and then they retched the contents up and out,



...and they began to eat more flesh.  It was not the full belly that they had hunger to satiate.  It was the pleasure they found in eating: nothing more than that.

But one of them, the one who wanted her all for himself, well, he grabbed the lowest rung and began to pull himself up. 


He was coming after her.

Chrysalis pressed up at the door that covered the entrance.  But she found that it was not made of wood.  It was warm from the sunshine that shined down on it, and it was hard as iron.  She had always wondered what kept them man hole covers in place in the street.  Were they lids with locks?

Did they have hinges and knobs?

No, mistah, she found out that it was one thing after all.

They were heavy as hell and they were made out of pig iron.

She thought, “Oh...  Fuck.”

The lid was set like it had been partially placed back, and the sliver of light from the crescent on one side was from where the blue light had been shining down.

She put her fingers through the crescent and tried to slide the cover away.

It was too heavy for her over-dosed body to move.

She felt a hand wrap around her ankle and she kicked it away. 

It came for her other leg, up higher, along her thigh.

The creep was right under her.

Well, the human body is quite amazing.  There is, indeed, a final store of fear-induced stimulants that the liver will deliver, and this is at the final stages of life, when the body knows that it is truly about to die.

It is not good for ten minutes like when you are fist-fighting.  It is much less than that.  Along with the energy, the body also is flooded with an amazing amount of endorphins, in order to stave off the pain of the inevitable.  It’s the body’s last gift for the mind.  No one knows how this evolved, but those who are going to die will appreciate it.

This burst of energy exploded within her, and she screamed and yanked on that lid and that lid slide aside another good five inches.

Sunlight poured down over her face and she breathed in the dusty air of the desert.

She felt so happy.  The sunlight coursed down over her side and into the tunnel below her.

She heard shrieks.

“It burns like fire!”

“What is this?”

“No!”

The grasp on her thigh let go and she heard a loud, wet smack from the floor of the dank tunnel below.

She thought, What is this?  Sunlight is painful for them?  Who are they?

She pushed her arm up through the widened hole as she felt that last burst of energy from impending doom begin to diffuse and fade away.

Her body had become much weaker than before.

The hole was about half a foot across at the widest part.

It was not big enough.

The expenditure of adrenaline will leave you weak and trembly, you know.

She pulled her arm back and then squeezed her head through the hole.  She looked about and could see dingy, forgotten buildings, bright blue sky, and the almighty desert sun.

She could smell fresh air.

She could taste freedom.

And then her fingers weakened, and her body was made of rubber again. 



She tried to strengthen her grasp on the hand rail, but there was nothing left in her.

As she fell downward, her head banged against the rungs set into the sides of the entrance. 


She saw the blue crescent above shrink away as she fell. 


It was like a pebble sinking down in a jar of honey. 



Slow,



soft,



...death.





She felt the cement floor of the tunnel smack her head and her neck broke, and she faded into the dark again.

At least there was that, for her.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

Love Song   by  The Cure, tribute here by 311  

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