Chapter 3 - Into The World (redux)

      Reginald Jenkins, who had never in his 47 years of life gone by Reggie, awoke promptly at 9 o'clock Sunday morning. He was not, by his nature, a fastidious man, but he did like a good ritual. He set about his morning routine that day with the same determination that he did every other day, leaving his wife to sleep a little longer, which he usually did on the weekend. His wife, Edina, had awakened several hours before and had immediately set herself to the task of going back to sleep. She usually went along with her husband’s rituals because, though she was not a particularly big fan of rituals herself, it was easier to play along than to deal with his dour mood when she didn't. Sunday, she had insisted long ago, was the exception.

      Reginald went into the bathroom and looked himself over in the mirror, ultimately arriving at a verdict of “not too bad all things considered”. He splashed some water on his face, brushed his teeth thoroughly, and swallowed a handful of vitamins and supplements. He did not notice the small pile of broken tiles lying on the floor, nor did he notice the smallish hole in the floor next to it. It was hardly his fault though. The hole was almost completely behind the toilet after all. You really had to look to see it.

      For the past several months Reginald had endeavored to be healthier. He did not consider himself to be an unhealthy person but he had decided that he could stand to put a little more effort into it. He'd hoped that by doing so he would start to feel better, maybe lose a little of his extra weight around the middle, and have a bit more energy for doing whatever needed doing. He was somewhat disappointed. If anything he felt worse than ever. His muscles ached, he often felt rundown and tired, and he found he had to use the bathroom with a great deal more frequency… and urgency. He'd read that, initially, this was to be expected, but as time went on he became more and more disheartened by his apparent lack of progress. It was true that he had lost a little of the excess weight, and he'd noticed a slight increase in his strength, but these things were negligible in contrast to his discomfort. He had considered the possibility that he might simply be too old to embark on such an undertaking, at least to the degree he was attempting, but he had dismissed such thoughts as soon as they had arisen. Those were the thoughts of quitters. Reginald Jenkins was many things but a quitter was not one of them.

      Reginald had also deliberately neglected to consult his doctor before embarking on his new adventure, believing that doctors were one of the biggest rackets on the face of the earth, advising you to consult them for every damn thing they could think of. If he had, his doctor might have discovered the previously undetected defect in the wall of Reginald's heart. This oversight, ironically, would prove exceedingly fortunate for Reginald in the immediate future.

      After a series of stretches and simple exercise Reginald went downstairs and set about the next order of business that morning: breakfast. Eating healthier was another part of his regimen and it was easily his least favorite, but he wasn't one for doing things half ass. For the sake of efficiency Reginald had taken to blending his various fruits and juices into one, easily consumed beverage, a feat he accomplished with the assistance of his somewhat old and worse for wear blender. Reginald always made sure to cut the fruit into small pieces because he was convinced that his blender, old as it was, would not stand for chopping up a whole piece of fruit. It was a little extra effort but Reginald was not one to waste things. If a little extra effort meant his aging blender would hang on for a little while longer then it was a small price to pay.

      As he was blending Reginald failed to notice the two parallel rows of small, oddly shaped footprints tracked across the kitchen floor. This too was hardly his fault. Their color blended in almost perfectly with floor and whatever had made them had cunningly remained close to the wall. The footprints disappeared into the lower cupboard where Edina stored her pots and pans, the door to which was now ajar, which Reginald really should have notice, if he’d been paying proper attention.

      Reginald dropped the last handful of sliced bananas into the swirling vortex of the running blender, as he always did, relishing the moist chopping sound, as he always did, then put the top on and left it to run for a few minutes while he washed his hands and rinsed off the knife, as he always did. Then, in a radical departure from usual procedure, Reginald's left leg erupted in a storm of agony as something tore into the flesh just above his heel. Tiny, white-hot needles of pain shredded his ankle, slicing effortlessly through his achilles tendon, and the leg buckled. He opened his mouth to cry out when his heart, it's weakened structure unable to withstand the sudden strain, exploded spectacularly in his chest. Reginald was, mercifully, quite dead as he collapsed to floor and did not have to suffer through the horror of being burrowed into and having his insides devoured by the thing that had bitten him.

Both Edina, asleep in her bed, and her son Archie, asleep on the deck, awoke to a disturbingly harsh, metallic whine. This was followed by a series of, equally harsh, ratcheting clunks that signaled the death of the blender, which up to that point had been running ceaselessly for over an hour. If Archie had not awakened in considerable pain, both in his back (from sleeping on the deck chair) and his head (from lack of alcohol), he might not have wasted several crucial minutes mustering the will to get up. Subsequently he almost certainly would have made it to the kitchen before his mother did. If he had then his mother would have been afforded the opportunity to see her son one last time in her life, albeit not under the best of circumstances. But he did, which meant he didn't, and so she wasn't.

      Edina entered the doorway and saw Reginald, surrounded by an enormous pool of blood, lying on the floor. She had just enough time to feel the icy fingers of fear slip over her heart when, failing to notice the brownish green shape darting towards her from the far corner of the room, she quite unexpectedly joined him. Edina, like her husband, attempted to scream, just as the brownish green thing, with its unearthly white teeth, tore out her throat.

      So it was that Archie stumbled sleepily toward the kitchen with absolutely no idea of the unpleasant fate that awaited him.

Chapter 2 - Progeny (redux)

      Archie unlocked the front door to his parent’s house, returned the key to its place in the belly of the ceramic frog, returned the frog to the place it had occupied since before he'd been born, and crept inside. It was quiet. Both his parents were undoubtedly asleep and, unless things had changed, nothing short of a earthquake would rouse either of them. Morning was hours away, plenty of time for him to do what he needed to.

      In the kitchen Archie pawed through the refrigerator’s contents, selecting a container of turkey slices, a bottle of mustard, and a loaf of bread. He made himself a simple sandwich and scarfed it down quickly. It wasn’t much, but for him, after several days without food, it was heaven. He slapped together another sandwich, using just a little more turkey this time, devoured it with equal gusto, and washed it down with a glass of milk. He returned the items to the fridge, making sure to arrange them in as close to their original configuration as he could. His father, Master of Order and Discipline that he was, would surely notice if anything were out of place. Archie wanted to buy himself as much time as possible to be gone before they realized he'd been there, if they ended up suspecting him at all. After that he figured a little missing food would be the least of their worries. It was possible that his mother might notice anyway; the turkey in particular, which he'd eaten more than half of, was nearly gone, but that was a risk his empty stomach was willing to take.

      When Archie closed the refrigerator door he was suddenly confronted with his own smiling face, albeit decades younger. Little Archie, no more than eight years old, leaning over a bridge railing, probably on some family outing he’d long since forgotten, smiling at his older self from another world. Little Archie, who liked to read and to wander the woods behind his school pretending to be the characters he read about. Little Archie, who would grow up to be an unemployed, homeless, alcoholic and break into his own parent’s house because he was broke and too proud to ask for help. He tried to think of what he might say to that little guy. What advice could he give his younger self about the terrible life that was coming his way? What wisdom might he impart about pitfalls to avoid? He couldn’t think of a damn thing. And wasn't that the real tragedy of his life? He had managed to flush it all down the toilet and he couldn’t even remember how.

     Archie, still hungry despite his feast, opened one of the cupboards over the sink, where his mother kept the snacks. A lonely box of crackers greeted him and he grabbed it eagerly. A jolt of pain exploded through his hand as he did so and he dropped the box on the counter. Archie flipped on the small light over the kitchen counter and held the palm of his hand under it, illuminating a large, and very painful, blister. Three days before, stumbling out of a bar he could no longer recall the name of, Archie had gone sprawling and landed on his hands and knees in a puddle of foul smelling goop. After washing his hands in a gas station bathroom he had deemed the damage, a few shallow scrapes, to be negligible. The next day his palm still hurt and had begun to turn red. The day after that a large blister began to form and he felt nauseous (or at least more so than usual). On the third day the blister was huge, painful, and warm to the touch. Fearing infection, and ignoring the nagging internal voice of his mother telling him that doing so would only make it worse, Archie had tried to pop the blister. The pain had been unexpectedly immense. It had occurred to him that he might find something in his parent’s house to help him more effectively deal with it. 

     This was of course, much like the acquisition of food, not his true purpose in being there.

 

     The whole thing had been Caleb's idea, or so Archie tried to tell himself, skillfully forgetting the times he'd mused over doing exactly what Caleb had proposed. Forgetting, it seemed, was a skill for which Archie had discovered a previously untapped aptitude. He'd run into Caleb at The Foundling (such a weird name for a bar) the week before. Archie was in the process of thoroughly drowning his sorrows when Caleb had materialized on the stool next to him in that way that people always seemed to when he was seriously drunk. Old friends, when they managed to recognized Archie beneath the layers of self-destruction, all seemed to start off with the same “how have you been?” riff that Archie always found extremely annoying. As if it weren't painfully obvious just by looking at him how he had been. Which was why, when Caleb showed up and said “wow, you like hell”, Archie hadn't given him the brush off the way he usually did. Somewhere in Archie's alcohol addled brain he knew that Caleb was only looking for an angle, because Caleb was always looking for an angle, but he didn't really care. For once someone was talking to him without pity or sympathy and that made Archie feel more like a human being than he had in a long time. So, when Caleb finally danced his way around to the subject he'd undoubtedly had in mind all along, Archie kept on listening. Of course that little voice in the back of his head was not pleased with Caleb's proposal, but that little voice had grown weaker and weaker over the years, and it rarely held sway over Archie anymore. The deal was struck and now Archie stalked through his parent's house, mentally cataloging their possessions, and trying to remember if his mother kept her jewelry in their bedroom or not. The next order of business however, now that hunger wasn't burning a hole through his insides, was his hand.

     Archie made his way through the living room and into the bathroom. He searched the contents of the drawers, hoping for some sort of sharp blade, but the best he could come up with was a small pair of scissors. He found a box of large bandages in the medicine chest, as well as a tube of antibiotic ointment and set to work. Gritting his teeth against the pain Archie pinched his palm and carefully snipped a small slit in the skin over the blister. Archie had popped his share of blisters and so believed he knew what to expect from this one. He was wrong. From the slit poured a thin stream of clumpy, brown fluid that made his stomach roll and clench violently. The smell of it was worse than anything he, even in the depths of his worst drunken escapades, had loosed into the world from throat or bowel. Archie let out a gasp of disgust and frantically worked the skin around the cut, forcibly expelling as much of the noxious substance as he could, the pain lost in that special breed of panic reserved for grave bodily damage. Only when blood began to well up from the cut did he start to breath easier. He gave the blister one final, painful squeeze and held in under the blessedly cool water pouring from the tap. Once the wound was clean and dry he applied the ointment and wrapped his hand tightly in several layers of gauze. Still in pain he grabbed a bottle of painkillers, swallowed several, and dropped another dozen into his pocket for later. Finally he wiped down the sink and counter has thoroughly as he could and left the bathroom.

     In his disgusted preoccupation Archie never noticed the tiny, translucent blob that squirted from the blister and fell to the floor.

     Archie stepped through the back door and out on to the deck behind the house. The night air was cool and refreshing on his face.

     In the bathroom a tiny wisp of smoke rose from floor as the blob quickly melted through the ceramic tile.

     A mild breeze drifted in from the backyard, carrying with it the faint smell of lilacs. Archie settled into one of the deck chairs and yawned deeply. He knew he had work to do, and an ever shrinking window of time in which to do it, but he was suddenly very tired.

     The tiny blob continued its journey, melting its way through the floor, burrowing down into the hardwood beneath.

     Telling himself that his parents would likely not awaken for several more hours Archie decided he might take a short nap.

     Beneath the tiles the tiny blob, a small clump of pulsing cells wrapped in a layer of protective, organic gel, grew and split rapidly.

     Archie closed his eyes and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

     In the bathroom the floor started to warp and pulse.

Chapter 1 - Smoke Sigils (redux)

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly."
- Richard Bach

      Outside the city slept.

      Gang walked across the room, naked and drenched in sweat, leaving wet footprints on the dusty floor. Two bare bulbs dangled from the ceiling on frayed wires, hanging from crooked nails pounded into the rafters. Every window was closed, the seams and gaps sealed with gray tape several layers thick, as was the door. The air in the room was stale and still. The day had been hot and the day’s heat now remained, though Gang seemed not to notice. His heart did not race. His hands did not tremble. His breath remained steady and slow even in the stifling air. Drops of sweat beaded and fell from every inch of his slender frame, leaving a trail of perspiration behind him as he busied himself with his final preparations.

     Carefully, he made one final adjustment and surveyed his work: a seemingly random array of some two dozen electric fans, ranging in size from the tiny, desk sized variety to larger, commercial models, no two alike. They sat on the floor or on tables or hung from ropes and chains, pointed up and down and every angle and direction in between. The largest of them hung from the ceiling, a monstrosity cobbled together from an industrial motor of unknown origin and five lengths of ply wood as long as a man. Electrical cords covered the floor in snaking, multicolored lines that wound their way through metal boxes, each filled with an engineer's nightmare of exposed components, before terminating at a large, Frankensteinesque, toggle switch bolted to the floor.

     Gang nodded at the scene and made his way to the center of the room, careful not to so much as brush against anything along the way, and seated himself on the floor in the middle of a large, chalk circle. Before a him was a small bowl of dull metal with a pile of black, paper strips in it and a single wooden match lying on the floor next to it. Next to him sat the switch. Gang crossed his legs, took a deep breath, held it, and waited. Around him the air, briefly stirred by his passing, settled back to stillness. Slowly he reached over and eased the switch into it's “ON” position. Sparks erupted around the room and the stench of ozone tickled Gang's nose. A dirty plastic fan atop a slightly bent pole began to turn, followed by beige box fan, it's dial set to “LOW”, followed by a bright red desk model that creaked faintly as it's aging motor cycled. One by one each fan came to life, filling the air with motion, until a hundred conflicting air currents whipped and curled around Gang's seated form, the motors droning a white noise chorus in his ears. Goose flesh covered him and he fought back the urge to tremble. Finally the huge ceiling fan began to crank around, slowly at first, gaining speed with each pass. As it achieved full velocity Gang sensed a change in the flow of the air as the currents around him died away. He picked up the match, struck it against the side of the bowl, and smiled at the steady, unwavering flame, before dropping it into the bowl. The paper flashed and burned quickly to ash, releasing a ribbon of black smoke that drifted slowly upward and slipped into a current of rushing air. The tendril followed the current around the room, looping and turning, leaving one current and entering another, fed by an endless drift of smoke from the bowl. Black lines crisscrossed the room, joining and splitting, growing increasingly intricate, until the room was filled with a mass of smoke-drawn swirls. As Gang watched the ever shifting patterns in the smoke he felt his focus begin to waver, his thoughts becoming hazy like the smoke around him, and he clamped his eyes shut with a shudder.

 

      Mustn't watch, he thought, not for me to see. Not yet.

      Gang reached into the bowl, collected a handful of the black ash, and smeared it across his bare chest. With his eyes closed, he placed his finger against his chest and began tracing symbols in the mixture of sweat and ash. His muscles began to twitch and writhe beneath his skin. His back arched and the tendons in his neck drew taut as his head flew back. His lips peeled into a terrifying rictus and split, spilling trickles of blood down his cheeks and across his teeth.

     Slowly another sound crept in under the hum of motors and the rushing air, growing louder until it challenged the din of the fans and then overtook it; a terrible, ceaseless moan that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

     Gang sensed something approaching.

     All around him the fans began to whine as their motors revved beyond capacity. Sparks and smoke belched from within their housing. The humming chorus rose to an ear splitting scream of grinding metal. In the air the pattern began to falter and warp as the current fell out of balance. Finally the lights flashed blindingly and exploded, showering Gang with sparks and glass, as the whine of the fans slowly died.

     
     The air stilled.

     The smoke dissipated.

     Out in the street the lights died and the city plunged into darkness.

     Gang fell back on the floor, panting heavily, and waited.

     In the silent darkness of his room something moved, heavy and wet. Gang remained still. He listened to the sound as it drew closer, inching along side of him, causing another violent shiver to roll through his body. Slowly something damp and slippery slid across his chest and neck. It flowed up his chin and across his mouth, pausing for a moment on his bloodied lips, and covered his face. The smell of it crept into his nostrils, thick and cloying. Images filled his mind, sense memory visions that were not his own. Great, pillared cities buried deep in the earth, where nameless. shapeless things dreamt terrible dreams, and black winds howled through endless caverns forever. His lips parted as something thick and cold dripped into his mouth and slid down his throat, gradually twisting it's way inside of him, until it reached his stomach. A sudden bolt of excruciating ecstasy slammed into his mind and every muscle in his body stretched to capacity and then beyond, ripping free from bone and tendon, producing a level of pain Gang had never imagined possible.

     In the dark the crawling chaos slid off him and moved away, thumping and sloshing and dragging across the floor. Gang heard the room’s door open, then the door to the outside. The dragging sound drifted away but, as Gang slipped into unconsciousness, he imagined he could still hear it, like some gruesome lullaby, sliding through the midnight streets.

     Outside the city slept and its nightmare stalked the darkness.

BOOK I: THE CAPTIVE GOD