I publish these tales here on this site every weekend as mental escape. Enjoy them, but do not steal them. If you do, I will come to your window while you are sleeping, my friend.
In the magnificentValleyofPlenty, there was once no reason for hunger to
exist, at all.
When the Armedmenia arrived, their greed overtook them.
Their avarice, their vices overtook them, and this became the
downfall of everyone else.
0
“In the Times of the End; hunger and the eating of those
Dead-from-Hunger revealed one of many Truths. It was this:
The angry Sun cast a white light with black shadows upon the capacity of Men to
dig for bones in the desert.” --Minister Glinty McFlintlock
Sven eyed his “brother” sitting there across from him at the
tri-legged table in the secret chamber.
The Chairman paced back and forth, slowly, lost in thought,
looking back at Sven and Christopher every now and then.
Sven snuck a look at the one in pain, and he savored it. The
other man was on the point of breaking. Such exquisite agony, and not
hidden all that well.
But what would it serve Sven to allow his “brother” to completely
lose his hold and then bring the eyes of them Purple Robes upon their secrets?
Sven said, “Ahem.”
Chairman Hegan and Christopher both looked over to him.
Sven said, “I think we should eat now.”
Christopher felt and heard his own belly rumble.
Fuck.
He was infected with the animal desire of the Cannibal, from the
one who had infected him with this disease.
He nodded, and at the same time, his ire arose. Fuck the
Cannibal to his own hell.
He said, “Who can eat at a time like this?!”
He spoke a lie, of course, and not the first, but would it be his
last? He wanted his time alone with Sven. He wanted to show Sven a
really good feasting.
Hegan said, “Agreed. We should not eat now. I would
like to ask the both of you a couple of questions. Prince Richard, if you
will permit?” He looked directly into Sven’s eyes.
Sven did not falter. He’d been waiting for a good
game. He looked up and nodded, and smiled. The bandages on
his face dangled from his constant smiling, each from an end, revealing his
injuries.
One eyebrow: missing.
The skin from his cheek: bitten away.
Blood seeped anew from the loss of the salve.
Sherry “the Maid” had done this to him.
Sven smiled again. Such a face, when it smiles, will not
allow the viewer to smile back all that well.
Hegan said, “Are you still high from smoking crack?”
Sven/young Prince Richard sat back and coughed. He thought
about his options. Yes, the pain from his wounds was quite lovely to
feel, but he needed to explain without giving anything away.
He said, “Yes.”
Hegan felt relieved. To him, it explained all of the
grinning, in spite of the pain.
Hegan nodded back and then turned to the older brother. He
said, “Prince Wahunt?”
Christopher the Chauffeur continued to look down at the table,
lost in his own pain, and forgetting his new name.
He had lost everythi---
SMACK!
Sven swung his hand at the face of his “brother” and the smack
echoed in the chamber.
Even the bodyguard snapped his head back. “Whoah.”
Christopher stood up. He said, “Fuck You!”
He held his hands straight out from both sides; fingers snarled into
claws.
Hegan shouted, “Secure him!”
Christopher hopped back as Sven slipped sideways.
Christopher dove forth and the bodyguard caught him and wrapped his thick arms
around his body.
Hegan said, “You and your wife are in this together!”
Sven smirked for a second and then hid his pleasure. He
played them cards right.
The words held in the air as if someone had pasted them across its
surface.
Chairman Hegan stood up and his chair toppled over onto the stone
floor. He said, “She must be hiding!”
The two brothers looked up from where they sat at the tri-legged
table. One smiled at him and the other couldn’t seem to focus.
Hegan wondered which one of these men before him had a hand in
this. No one could be trusted. A high position of power lends
itself to paranoia, and rightly so. One must always guard the door on
both its sides.
What he did not know was this:
Both of the men before him held hands in this thing.
They were connected now, one from the other, like a devil spawn.
They were connected by hate
…and by hunger.
Climb as he might, the Chairman would soon find that his ladder
was constructed with rungs of air.
+ -
Emeralda drove without looking back. She was no wife ofLot. Glass pebbles sparkled in the
sunlight like diamonds, strewn across the dashboard in front of her, in her
hair, and over the blanket covering her baby.
The rear end of the huge vehicle was crunched up from impact
against the high adobe wall, but you should know that adobe bricks are not make from
cement. They are made from mud and straw.
Her world had been walled in with this.
How easy to break out, or perhaps, to enter? It was
false. All of it.
Her teachings back in the old country spoke of it to the youth,
and now, she came to understand their meaning.
As she drove south, she saw it.
Car wrecks, people running after others, and none of the traffic
lights worked.
All the power was gone.
At first she thought is was a blackout in the neighborhood,
probably from one of the car wrecks, but soon, she found that the blackout went
much further across the desolate city, as she drove to her daughter.
It entered her mind that perhaps her daughter was in danger.
All of Hell appeared to be breaking loose, and she did not know from where it
originated, nor how.
But she knew why.
She tried to push such thoughts away, to clear her mind for the
task at hand.
Numb.
Rescue.
Fear.
Escape.
Was this city isolated in its evil wash, or did it go
further? To where could she escape? Where was safety, now?
Such wondering can lead someone to panic.
She felt like her world was coming to an end.
If only it wasn’t that the prophesies could be coming true.
It must be something else.
Yes, that was it.
Nothing bad was occurring.
It must have been the pride of them Purple Robes. They had
caused their own downfall. They had their dues to pay, evidently.
Most assuredly, that was it.
But do you know, Emeralda felt as if the threads of her life were
beginning to unravel.
Indeed.
The threads of reality, there in that desert megalopolis called
Fuckno,
The words held in the air as if someone had pasted them
across its surface.
Chairman Hegan stood up and his chair toppled over onto the
stone floor. He said, “She must be
hiding!”
The two brothers looked up from where they sat at the
tri-legged table. One smiled at him and
the other couldn’t seem to focus.
Hegan wondered which one of these men before him had a hand
in this. No one could be trusted. A high position of power lends itself to
paranoia, and rightly so. One must
always guard the door on both its sides.
Birds chirped in dew-sparkling palm trees that stood tall against
the bright blue sky. The desert air of theCentral Valleylent itself to aridity, but the night held
a mist of cold in its fading arms.
Sunlight warmed the cracking, faded asphalt of the street, making
ants scurry more quickly. Brown adobe bricks in a long, high wall grew
lighter as they warmed and dried in the fresh air.
The thin whine of cicadas and heat bugs declared another hot day
ahead. Their buzz grew louder and louder until it became a howl.
Dogs in nearby yards began to howl along with the heightening whine until a
cacophony of discordance culminated in an explosion of adobe and hard plaster.
A Chevy Suburban smashed out onto the street in reverse, then
swung around and sped forward, hopping over the jumble of bricks and dust
strewn across the road.
Emeralda did not look back.
+ - +
Inside thePurpleMansionof them Robed figures from Armedmenia,
alarms awoke anew. Lights flicked on along a map on the wall beyond the
bank of security camera video feeds, each in a small black and white
television.
One light showed that the garage was open. Motion sensors
announced that motion had occurred in the far-off back quadrant of the
expansive estate. Another light showed something quite odd. It was from
the rear wall itself. The wire inside of the wall had been cut.
This meant only one thing. The wall had been breached.
The Chairman looked up as the bodyguard pulled out his radio and
said, “Come again?” His earpiece fell out of his ear so whipped the cord
out of the plug. The radio squawked.
A voice said, “We have an intruder from the North East. A
wall appears to have been opened. This is Lock Down.”
The Chairman shook his head. He said, “Call the meeting of
the Heads off. This is not safe for them. We will need to meet at
the Armory.”
The bodyguard relayed this information as the Chairman looked back
at the other two who sat across from him. He said, “We will need to close
up, compartmentalize. Guards at every door, outside and within.
After we find the intruder, then we will leave.”
Sven smiled back at him, and Christopher kept mumbling. He
was saying, “Gone. Gone…”
He was correct. His real wife was gone form him forever, and
now, the wife of the man whose body he inhabited had also flown the coop.
No one knew that yet, and this lent her time to escape without detection.
+ - +
Workers poked about the charred walls of the staff lodging.
The communal room leered a gap-toothed grin from its missing doors on each
wall. Blackened bodies lied in various positions of pain and
prayer. The darkest part of the day was over. The supply closet
still smoked, and within it, on the floor, lied the crisp body of the woman who
had started the fire.
The maid had been overtaken by a the soul of a vindictive
woman. That one sought revenge for the death of her man, Lenny Sustenuto.
Lenny had opened the Gates of Hell.
Sherry did not know that Lenny walked, as she did, along the
eternal plane of the Walk-Ins. If she had, she might not have caused so
many to perish in such a horrific manner. But now, she was without the
only one who loved her, and she was without her own body. She had lost
everything. No one deserved to have anything of their own. She
would find the man who had taken everything from her, and she would kill him a
thousand times. She figured that she could follow him after she killed
him, to see where he next would Walk-In.
She was correct that this was possible.
What she didn’t know was that an army of Walk-Ins was growing in
that hellhole called Fuckno, and soon, unconscious bodies to inhabit would
become a rare commodity, for all.
If you want to know how to write about evil, then you have
to dance with it. Writers may talk about
characters, and discuss how evil is not real; that it is a construct of
religion and morality and ethics, but for the purpose of writing, nothing suits
us better than to explore this thing.
To dance with evil is to explore an area inside you, inside
each of us all, that we all share. What
sets us humans apart from undomesticated animals is that we control our innate
impulses. Sociopaths may not have this
tool.
What is it that frightens you most? It may different for each of us, and whether
it is due to nature vs. nurture is beside the point. We can talk about writing, or we can use
words as tools, those colors of our palette, to reveal to ourselves what it is
that we fear the most.
When you work at digging deep in the boneyard, then others
will be drawn to your honesty. Writers
may be telling a story, but a tale that reveals the truth about ourselves rings
true, like a bell. Others will see this as bravery.
Otherwise, we are writing on the surface of a lake, instead
of diving into the dark depths.
Your antagonist should contain those things you fear. Reveal to your reader your fears through the
evil character. Your protagonist should fight those fears, win or lose.
