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Dark Earth: Hunter's moon
Date: 21 May 2007, 1:24 pm
They gather and cluster along the westerly mountainous range, conspiring with mutiny in mind. The dusty lunar king does not see them, instead he beams down from up on high to the farm and its fields below. Their skulduggery will be in vain, many of his servants will fall on the swords of lofty clouds but they will fail in dethroning him from night's skies. The moon is in full bloom tonight and will rise again tomorrow. Minus my quarry, minus one small child.
Steadily as the night draws breathe and the clouds move in, I make good and proper use of the latter's distraction. A hunter's moon is no moon for sure on this tranquil october night as the trees: mournful of their stark barren branches, stroke the air in the hope of producing a dance that will appease Demeter's weeping earth and summon forth warmer climes. The gentle babbling stream that shall be my accomplice continues to sound playful and buoyant, oblivious to the sacrificial gift I shall intend to bestow upon her.
I will not be here by the morrow to hear the sobs and wails of a mother distraught, nor the rage and sorrow of a beast inkeeping with a man's broken fatherly duties. Neither will I hear the sibling's meekish calls, too young to understand the horror of my actions, too naive to realise that it could have been her and not her brother. They will live with their sorrow and spawn another to remind them of it. Bastards, the more I stoke the fires of bitterness concerning their decimation of our planet, the more I wish I was brave enough to confront them.
Do not think me cowardly and unkind, for that would be an injustice on both of our behalf. Do not think that I haven't considered many options prior to my decision. There are always other options when food is plentiful and shelter is close at hand: neither are my comfort: neither have I. Their seed and grain are poison to us, aides to further bring about our extinction. These beasts have chosen not to rear cattle -of which I would gladly take a fawn, therefore their child is meat for my kind. I dare not attack an adult, they are too large, too strong and too brutal, and in the case of the females: much too fast. They came with weapons so advanced and with soldiers so many it was a miracle we lasted as long as we did. But last we have not, scattered to the four winds and driven from the cities be the vermin-considered peoples of earth, reducing all to scavengers and thieves. Steadily reducing all to none. Virtue a mere memory, rotting, whipped and beaten in the furthest reaches of our minds, occasioning the odd trembling step before quickly being roared back into solitude by the ravenous needs of hunger and thirst. It is so. Food, shelter, company, anything else is denied by the gods of higher beings. Higher beings: ha. They shall reap the bitterness they have sowed within us and there will be more of their dead tomorrow. Though I try not to dwell on the anger which creeps up my arteries and rankles the oxygen carried to my brain, consuming my every thought, I know that I swear it and breathe it like an oath of unconscious breathe.
In my possesion is a chainmail gauntlet, a rucksack, a lure I was given as a lucky charm, a knife and a torch, they will all serve me well. Indeed, they have all served me well for succesive kills in the past. My first attack was an adult male and the fruits of my labour stood for nought, he brushed me aside and did not even kill me, instead he bore forth a hearty laugh that shrivelled up my insides until they begged me to run away. I did. The humiliating encounter handed me a seed of vengeance that rooted itself in my heart and soul beyond anything any religious text could exorcise. My second attempt was as successful as the first, only less so, the child I chose had an overbearing mother that caught me prior to slaughtering her kin and took offence to my desperate act. She chased me down towards a violent river and were it not for my accidental trip into its gushing arms, I would not be here to relay my predicament to you now. So rapid her legs: so fast her feet.
My third attack and first kill has been the most traumatic minute of my entire existence, so destroying was it that when it came to eating the spoils of victory with my party, I could not. Instead I watched as these four people -now the only people I know- devoured the flesh and meat of a beast that could pass for a similar age as two of our group. You see, I kill the children of our enemy to feed my own. Not that they are my children, they are the children of the two women that make up the rest of our pride. Pride, a word for my group, not a feeling any of them could ever know again if they discovered the truth about a small sum of my hunting trips. I suspect the boy's mother knows, I see her watch me from time to time, notice my behaviour around the two youngsters. I know what she is thinking, but nothing I could say would allay her mistrust. It is simply my lay attempts at understanding what I do in the twillight hours. If you could see these alien creatures in their early years, they run like children, play like children, everything about them is so reminiscient of our own young that sometimes I tell myself we shall live on tree leaves and that I shall live guilt-free. Then I hear little bellies rumble and the children cry. The tree leaves taste bitter and no lulling will hush them to sleep. It is then that the veil on life's idylic dream is lifted to reveal the bony ghosts of nowhere. There is nothing without sacrifice. The dead don't eat food and after a particularly dry spell our resemblance becomes uncanny. I suppose you could say at times that I, like the dead, lack a conscience. A worrying thought in the sleeping hours of night, when the burden of responsibility concerning three others cries out to simply slink off and leave them to nature's scheming ways...
No, I'm heartless in the face of my enemy, these people don't deserve my selfish desires. Whatever part of me confers to the contrary be damned I tell you. I shall not abandon them, not like I did the others.
Of course if our life is to continue in this mould then the boy needs to grow up and grow up fast. At the moment, everytime he scrapes his knee or gets hurt, even a little, he looks towards his mother for comfort. There shall come a time when such thinking will be destructive. I need him to realise that a scraped knee can be the least of problems when the stomach caresses no more food and begins digesting itself. He cries for food, indeed, they all cry for food and food is brought where possible. Despite them being close to a day's walk away, I believe I can still hear them now. Food is coming, just as soon as the light goes down and the moon is besieged. Food, is coming...
The adults always sleep in the northern most room, and when the children reach a certain age, they too sleep near to the north. Through willful ignorance I do not know its significance in their life, I simply press such an advantage to secure my kill. I choose a night when the winds blow towards any other direction, carrying with them any sounds and smells that may alert them to my presence. These beings have turned their backs on city ways for whatever reason, I suspect many of harbouring the same notions to leave such places as we humans ever did. Perhaps it is their dream to set up a small home and live on the lands away from the madness of metropolis. Neither is it in my interest to question nor to care, without them here I may have been able to build my group a home of our own, or just maybe, we'd be scarce our next meal.
The lure is a tinfoil angel and I set it on the end of a large branch some thirty metres back from the creature's bedroom window. It was made for me by the youngest of our clan and her mother, it has small glittery crystals glued onto its wings that when caught by light, radiate a whole spectrum of colours. It was while ransacking a small derelict schoolhouse of its pantries that I happened upon such idle toys and put good thought to them. The little girl appeared so made up, for once not having to just talk and act with her imaginary friends, now she could make toys to show them too. She made me the lucky charm as a sentiment, one that tries to say: 'thank you Mr paul,' across the wings in glitter but in all honesty, her smile at seeing the toys has been her greatest gift to me.
The torch is wedged into the ground somewhere beneath the lure, while the frequent swooping of the wind sends the lure into the beam's light, casting off parades of infinite colours. A little noise created outside the window should bring out its host to investigate. Perched forward by the left side wall perpendicular to the window, I await with my knife clenched white hot in my right hand and my gauntlet sheathed and shaking over the other. The charm itself has took on more of a twisted role than I dare think about, and as it glistens and gleams back to me beside the house, a third, even darker and more pendulous predicament is revealed. A child's eye to attract a child's eye.
I hear through the wall the heavy, uncouth footfalls of a creature not yet fully comfortable with its own body movements. The window slides open and from it looms a large head, complete with four lips sticking out like large bony fingers from its cheeks. They rear their young to be fearless, why is not always clear to me. I have watched from afar as a father would beat his young senseless, and then do so again a few hours later for no more infringement that to strike once his younger sibling. They stand proud over their kin only when they have endured mass hardship and even then it is a fleeting embrace of bathed glory.
It clambers shoddily over the sill and makes its way across the open plain towards the one shiny object amidst a world of darkness. The clouds are doing well to keep at bay the vicious rays of moonlight that shatters and separates their bodies. The creature gets twenty metres from the house and my pursuit begins. I kick up a faster and larger trail of dust with every shooting heel, my blade poised at my forearm with the gauntlet coiled at my chest. A few more seconds race by and then the knife is stabbed into the beast's lower neck while my gauntlet is sprung around the front and into the lips and mouth. I lean hard with my elbow into its back and push further my middle fingers down its throat, the rest of my hand stops the top and bottom lips from clicking out any code. I have known them pass out entire sentences without reaching for a chord. I twist and rev the bladehandle to eviscerate its descended brain and as the bedlam comes to an end, I hear a small whimper, knowing that something inside has died...
I have been known to wonder wether the noise is from me or my victim, but one thing is for certain, it is a noise that never leaves me. A noise that resides in the darkest of my nightmares but refuses to stay there, for even that would be too grand a mercy. It is a sound that acts as a sobering moment to end my most dazzling of dreams. It gatecrashes my happiest of days in the sun. When the children see again the same bluish meat of my trip, I hear it once more and its power in my life never diminishes. Sometimes it is a noise that comes to me when I dream I am awake at night. It is then, when our bellies are full and the moon swings low, beaming a vengeful, angry red across the sky, that I fear the consequences of my actions most.
Taking back my things and covering our tracks to the stream gives me time to concentrate on something other than my deed and I make good and proper use of their welcome distraction. The creature is dead and nothing will ever bring it back, just as we will never again rule this planet. Perhaps all is for the best and I am only a small part of the great horror show that life has become. Even with such thinking, absolution remains elusive.
By the brook I give the clouds their dues while they continue to struggle on in their fight, they have aided my hunt no end. I have only to cut up my prize into carriable sizes before laying what I find inedible in the stream. Despite their size, the creatures are incredibly light in weight. I hoist up the body over a strong tree branch that whispers low to the stream's joyous babble, entwining the creature's calves and feet to maintain balance for my ritual. It has passed over from presence to product, the eyes no longer giving light of life, limp arms no longer reaching out, a mind and curled claws no longer able to grasp anything. Mindless.
I begin the process of stripping my quarry. Though it is already dead I still slit its throat, gushing forth blood that gravity and pressure seem only too willing to help spill. Each drop in the stream turns the sound of her innocent laughter into a steady, drawn out sob and her wispy white shimmer is adorned of a dark and shadowed, crimson cloak. One that extends further and further, deeper and deeper. She will wash away my crime. At least, the evidence.
The first incision goes from the groin right down to the neck and I do so to gut and remove the slippery and spongy innards, since the intestines of vegans usually carry granules of seed and grain that leave a nasty taste in my children's mouths -wasteful though it may be- I have of late discarded this white offal. I hold tight the severed sphincter pipe and bulging gullet, this alimentary canal which evolution has taken millions of years perfecting and adapting, I cut, remove and sling as a bundle in seconds. Again the little river cries at my rancid offerings as piece by piece, more organs fall. What is left is a steaming cavernous wreck of a vessel. The empty lungs are added to the melody of her tears but the heart, the heart I keep. It holds a special place in our feast. I recall a time from when man ruled the earth that some indigenous tribes ate their dead elders to absorb their knowledge, I think it had more to do with respect for the sacrificial dead. It also has a smooth texture and a succulent taste that leaves my young ones stamping their feet and clapping for more. It seems we have always had a thirst for the result of the most horrific things. Once, whilst purging one of blood, the prize slipped from my hands and I began stalking it downstream, chuntering in the face of whines and moans I knew I would return home to if I lost it, all before finally managing to seize it from the dashing waters. The macabre humour, of which remains my loyal -if schizophrenic- companion, has often played salt to preserve the rots of my dwindling sanity. In this harsh new world, comedy has become a little vice, another welcome distraction from the disease of madness. Maybe just another symptom, who knows...
The meat of the back, thighs, calves and upper arms are arguably the best to help my children grow big and strong, while the forearms have a spindly toughness that we three adults might endure for sustenance: the children will turn their noses up at such meat. An action I deplore given our circumstances and readily rectify when I can. When that is, when I am allowed.
A noise outside the normal sphere of things sends my heart racing and my body reaching for the safe refuge of the tree. Though startled, I wind easily around the low branch and up into the stubby crown of pleading nodes that might act as bed and breakfast for other nightcrawlers. A sometime necessary bombburst of acrobatic energy for when I feel threatened. I hope it is the other child, please, not an adult. Dead leaves crushed underfoot and my heart is forcing its way into my throat, choking me of the life it helps give. Please god, a wolf, a bear, a bird, anything but an adult...
The band of trunk beneath me is festooned with plate-sized calluses: branches that appear strangled at inception with lips and mouths sculpted in the agonising throes of hunger. My deathly stature grants me camouflage amongst the barren and spindly tree nodes, all bristling and swaying in the void of night. The tree is encrusted in layer upon layer of dead bark, a thick defensive armour ensuring its ultimate survival. I hold tight in my right hand my only defense. The tree crown is broad enough to make a few steps in each direction and so I step surreptitiously for a superior view of the house. No lights. But the noise of crunching leaves is still heading towards me. An adult would have already roused the house. It has to be the girl.
The dainty figure appears from beneath a collage of black branches and between dark trunks, almost stumbling over a jutting root.
'Gudyana'mee...'
She whispers.
'...You come out here this very instant; I'll tell father.'
Her lowered voice is in fear of waking something evidently more terrible than the wrath of her father.
She stops at the base directly beneath me and puts her hand out for orientation. From behind I can hear the occasional blood-dripping mumble of the stream. I don't need this. My left hand slips over and into a yawning abyss that screams between us; middle fingers slipping inside to choke it into silence. I have enough food. From beyond my control my posture changes from a stationary vestige into a curled, striking poise.
She doesn't need to die.
My lean reaches close to event horizon.
It is not yet cast.
She'll tell.
She'll be too afraid.
What if she rounds the tree?
She won't.
She peers up towards the moon for help with directions, a breakage in the clouds sheds light upon the buildings that make up her home. The knife remains steadfastly clenched despite the current reign of dissidence. The child remains oblivious to the death that lurches above her.
'If you're in that shed, again!'
A tawdry imitation of her father's voice and mannerisms seems to give her the strength to stand upright and walk tall, until that is she takes a fall over the same nuisance tree tentacle whilst moving in the opposite direction. The creature nervously gets up and again begins whispering her sibling's name, her walk staggered and well staged, arms outstretched towards the sanctity of the farm. As she nears the buildings, I return to my knelt squat and momentously gather up composure over my beating heart and heavy lungs. Tonight has not done wonders for my nerves.
I slip down and over the low, bowed branch. The dead remains fall in a crumpled heap from a mistimed leap: hands open in the direction of the farm. 'It's dead,' I tell myself, 'coincidence from the way it fell, nothing more.'
I finish the task of stripping value from the corpse. Dissecting the waste into sections that will wash with the stream rather than sink. Removing, shallow burying and concealing beneath water rocks some of the larger bones. The whole process is completed before the meat is cold.
My hands are thick with a warm, viscous coat of blood that seems to take forever to come clean. Only when my hands are numb from the freeze of being held in the water too long do I remove them. They glimmer a pale bluish white in the fullness of the moon's luminance. So numb I can't feel them but I know they're there. Providing defense for that which is most precious: my family.
I sling the rucksack across my shoulder and holster the second strap for comfort and balance. I have what I came for, yet tonight, despite my best efforts, I almost ventured into something more sinister.
Dark Earth: Asylum
Date: 14 June 2007, 9:30 pm
Eleven years. It has been eleven years and more than a legion of volatile moons, moons that have sat in judgement of my nocturnal deeds. The current judge and gaoler, resplendent in his wholesome attire, ardently refuses to budge from station.
His throb and ambient monotone glow producing a lunacy that I am, at present, unable to escape. Flashes of my pride's slaughter at the hands of my enemy stab through my mind's contemplative silence. I have taken to mutterings and occasional idspeak. Insanity cannot be far away.
I traipse along the dirt path with my ear and voice borrowed out to bad company and with only the intermittence of birdsong, howls and scurrying to interrupt our telepathy. Birds and animals desperate to escape the same nocturnal madness as I. The last fourteen miles through acres of farmed land and bordering forestry have all been in an effort to be at my destination before dawn.
The small ridge gives way to a tidal wave of dingy huts: Insanity. The village barely stands as a shanty town and by contrast of the luxurious sky-rising cities our fathers lived in, is deserving of its surreal title; this human jungle is little more than a hovel an animal would refuse to crawl into and die. Still, the extinction order on our species has rescinded, allowing us to survive on a planet we once called our own. Giving homo sapiens the chance to pick up the pieces of a shattered psyche.
From my sporadic encounters with these towns, it is rightly suggested that we are indeed, little more than animals. All the men do is drink and speak forlornly of the bygone days of their youth, thrusting their genitalia in the direction of any passing female. Little point if the limb in question is predisposed come inebriation. Former hunters that are now pigs, minds rotting in nostalgic filthy sties with only seasonal rutting routines to shake them occasionally free; seasonal meaning those rare occurences when the beast is sober enough to take advantage of a chance erection.
The females for the most part do their best to set us above the common mould and begin anew the quest for civilised society. Aside from maternal duties, they gather and organise everything from the planting and rotating of crops to the bartering of equipment with nearby villages. Harvested grain is once more the currency: the arteries through which mankind survives.
I am led this way by a blood trail, the one child I could not bury alongside her mother and the rest of my party. Our dwelling, along with everyone barring the girl, were torn into shreds. The boy left hanging by his feet from a nearby tree, the scratches upon his knees a bloodstained lilac. Throat opened like a zip and bearing a gaping hole, an effigy of ritual slaughter much like my own.
Just as disturbing were the foetal remains I buried along with the girl's mother, her eviscerated belly sheathing an infantile body punctuated by several stab wounds. Hands no bigger than my thumbs. It has taken eleven years and many dreamless nights to erode the cliffs of visceral nightmares from which I cling and suffer plenty, it will take many more for them to disappear.
I am no longer tormented by the morality of destroying my enemy's children, in fact, I have on several runs slaughtered entire houses of them. Experience has taught me that some of the adult creatures can sleep through thunderstorms, allowing me ample opportunity to leave one of them alive, waking up into a world of horror and carnage. Opening their eyes to see the lifeless gaze of a partner whose warmth and presence had frozen and left them hours before. A dwelling where at every turn they are confronted with walls smothered in the blood of their loved ones. 'Vengeance is a right,' the words left at my camp and written in their native tongue, flicked on every walled surface with clinical exposition.
Gone are the days where I would kill them for food, now I do so for pleasure, it pleases me to see them in the throes of agonising death. Though I know it is even theoretically impossible, I imagine each and every one of them present at my pride's torture: their laughter in the face of the boy's frightened cries and his mother's throat-filled pleas. The constant throwing and kicking of the girl's mother as if she were some unwanted toy. The crying, the stabbing, the gutting. They will pay for every imagined sound they have wrought upon my scarred mind. I cannot define my anger at what they have done, but they will pay for it with their lives until mine ends.
Villages have recently had a population limit introduced that must not be exceeded, so my presence here will most likely be unwelcome. The three ornamental creatures patrolling the town's lanes were easy enough to avoid without being seen, let alone questioned for identification at such an hour. My only hope lies with an old friend, a forgiving old friend.
Knocking on doors is a relatively new idea to me and I shuffle nervously from one foot to the other as questions resurface in relation to our departing words.
"Who the fuck is that at this time of the morning?!"
Perhaps in lee of being woken up at three-thirty, it's understandable for him being a touch annoyed.
As I continue to shimmy, a guard rounds the corner at the end of the lane. Though their eyesight as a species is poor, their stafflight makes up for any optical shortcomings in darkness. It looms like a giant aqua-cyan eye, hovering some three metres above the ground. There are no gardens or obstructions to speak of, so looking down the lanes leaves everything and everyone exposed. With luck, the other two are at equal distances from this one. Should the need suddenly arise for an act of speed, violence or both, that distance will grant me excellent leverage; unless of course, my friend should open the door and make himself accessory.
The door opens as the guard spots me and issues a short grunt of an order.
"You there, be still and await my command!"
He is only a fraction into the lane and already the wheels are turning in regards to the positioning of his fellow soldiers.
"P-Paul, Is that you?"
I am just as taken aback by the clean and somewhat domesticated appearance of one of my old hunting troupe. I flash small squinted eyes to the encroaching cyan light and he recognises the danger.
'I had nowhere else to go.'
Along with the glaring beam, I hear the heavy trudging of the guard's demeanoured approach. It comes to stand less than two metres away, meanwhile its friends must be continuing their rounds and gaining on our position. Striking now would allow me a fast escape, but the corpse would leave my friend with some very awkward questions.
"Face me for retinal scan, human."
The knife's gleam, breaking cover from my cloak is caught in my friend's eye as he steps backwards in the doorway, objecting furiously.
"Face me for retinal scan, human; you will not be asked a third time."
I already know the result, so why wait for the conviction.
DJ steps out from the doorway and hustles me aside.
"What is this, officer?"
The two begin a small altercation, bursting forth a mirthful revelation.
"Mayor Judason, this human was loitering on the perimeter of your domicile; do you know of him?"
"Why of course I do, I-"
"Then he must adhere to a retinal scan for proof of census."
The bleep of a hidden retinal scanner sounds out as it catches my left eye as I peer over my shoulder at this sorry exchange: the forceful master and the bumbling slave. The guard looks over Dean and stares right at me, mandibles moving in mock puppetry of lips.
"You are not registered for residency and are in violation of the human settlement act. You will come with me."
My friend knows that the creature has only a few seconds left to live and reacts with almost poetic timing.
"Actually, that's what he came to see me about."
The creature's head never moves from my direction, while the weight of the beady black eyes slowly fall on the shoulders of my friend.
"Yes, see, he wants to apply and what with the waiting list en all, he decided to come to me. Beats awaiting trial and detention for non-compliance, right?"
The guard does not seem overtly impressed by the ruse, but a sweetener evidently helps.
"How's your companion liking that cider?"
The guard's eyes drift between us both, as if contemplating some difficult moral conundrum. A silly, naive human churned out as another settler that will not further his career, or more drug of choice. Hardly the most stifling of moral decisions. The guard acquiesced, preferring instead to propagate his chemical romance with one of mankind's oldest creations. Though the males refuse to admit their love of sweeted alchohol -and it is considered offence to ask, mind; females have been known to bathe in the puerile egg-stink.
"The preliminary completed form shall be with me by midday."
"That it shall, officer, that it shall."
The guard walked on as the beam from his compatriot's stafflight shone towards us from the opposite end of the lane. The bastard blatantly ignored the dispense of a goodbye from my friend, I didn't even offer the sentiment to be denied.
The front door lingers open behind me as I begin my attack.
'He called you: mayor.'
My saviour continues to have his back to me as I breathe in a good picture of the ageing warrior from his appearance and grotty surroundings. I note the turn of his head with a finger across the lips as a warning of company and hush my tone somewhat. The rectangular room squats at little more than two metres high, four wide and eleven long. Separated seven in by a large black woollen blanket that I presume hides the bedroom. Lined along either wall are two symmetrical windows, the right side of which have acutely angled rays of earth's eldest watchguard. The left side displaying only his most enduring of beams on the following property. There is a small wooden enclosure, like an upright coffin, made more conspicuous by the fact it stands against the wall directly between the right side, light-letting windows. I presume it to be the toilet, the thoughts of mangey, yet hygienic spring up one after the other. Especially compared to the more natural rigmarole that I endure.
My friend has gained significant weight to instruct a lifestyle change and now heaves his weight from one foot to the other in steps to get where he's going. Such is the time-honoured fall from grace that has shadowed all human beings: contentment and stagnation. He stands no taller than five-eleven, stocky, with a bulbous weight around his waist on the verge of devouring his entire torso. He seems no longer built for the rigours of heavy work. Thinning brown hair, slicken back with the occasional wily grey refusing to stand with the small herd. A nose hammered and flattened over to the point of a separate direction from his face, nostrils as if under constant plunder and shaping by large toes rather than thumbs. A thick and bristly moustache created from rebellious nasal hair. To consider him contender for world's ugliest mammal might offend his fellow contestants. Still, we were friends once on the hostile lands our birthplace has become. A friendship that has withstood the greatest clashes of ego, but not always for me: that most essential of human fibres.
A short, gentle jab into where his ribs should be makes light of his ignored weight problem.
"Certain responsibilities, certain perk- hey, cut that out."
He returns a similar shot, lifting what accounts for my shirt to reveal the poor state of being at the other end of the survival spectrum.
"Never figured you for anorexic; you look like death incarnate."
'I'm lithe.'
I retort.
'Built for distance and purpose: and you?'
"A libido furnace."
He slaps his stomach, producing a giant of a sound.
"This here's fuel for a sexual dynamo. One slap and I'm banging for hours."
He's disgusting but his quips have always been confidently funny. I snort a small laugh in bravo of such inane titilation.
A stirring from behind the curtain produces the voice of what sounds like a child.
"Who is it, darling?"
From what she says, I am most obviously mistaken.
"No-one, honey."
"Well, tell no-one to keep his voice down, he'll wake Isabelle at his current rate of tone."
Chastised but expected, I pull my lips in, spreading them across my teeth in a half-grimace and repeatedly tapping my left index finger over my mouth in exaggerated spankings.
It seems almost childish but I can't help myself, I question again in more jocular seriousness.
'He called you mayor.'
Dean reaches the safety of the fridge and opens its rusted door to reveal a cornucopian distraction of stored food.
"Someone has to take the lead. You look famished: what would you like?"
My eyes linger a second too long on the options and he quickly changes tact with an even greater hushed level.
"We're out of Sangheili children, I'm afraid."
It is the dark earth whose cruel plains I would rather not traverse and a sorry legend for which to be remembered, but tit for tat, his remains the worse of the two. I throw the considerable weight back at him, maintaining the indirectness of an otherwise excellent assault.
'Any human flesh on the menu, I hear on good advice that it has that certain je ne sai quois.'
I recognise in his eyes and I'm sure he sees in mine, the admittance that neither of us are saints in our struggle for survival. The long list of crimes against others that he is happy to forget, compared to the long list of mine that torments the hours and weeks of restless sleep, are the burdens that sustain us and break us. The flickering refridgerator light opens up a loud and malignant rhythm between us.
"Someone had to take the lead."
Sixteen men, women and children with the same food shortage as us, against a horde of fifty and not the least chance of being asked to join our clan. The decisive factor in my abandon of them as feral; as being less than human. Relinquishing their status as a species borne to a morality that set them apart from the kingdom. Even less than an animal. Animals do what they must to survive, they take all that they need for the immediate future because the immediate future is all they can see. Man changed all that. In his infinite wisdom and rationalising conscience for all his deeds, he was more than happy to commit acts of atrocity against his fellow man. Safe in the knowledge that come the morning, his conscience might well be long clear through dream and interpretation: intepretation that he, and not his victim, belongs to the higher purpose. Wars have been fought over smaller differences than the gulf that yawns between us, and yet, our friendship endures.
"Why have you come here, Paul?"
The light flicker draws to a close and the sound harps like a heart monitor grinding out its final few breathes.
"Is that what's been bothering you all these years, the childkiller come to exact a kind of revenge?
I have only the truth to answer with, I dare not give voice to the moral arm of his crimes as he mine. The war of words sixteen years ago remains at stalemate. Given my circumstance, I know better than to sound the horn for battle to resume.
'I'm in search of a girl that I knew once.'
Dean's stance changes, he closes the fridge door and folds his arms defensively; a little late but nevertheless.
"She get away? Run out on ya?"
Our link as old friends is a cruel, if honest one.
The scouring of the land for the last body to bury, the night after night of sleepless dream to the point of being unable to picture her face. The lure she made, the happiness by proxy that she crayon over my excuse for existence. He needn't know of my yearning for closure. I couldn't look after her now, but looking for her, seeing her comfortable, will make my last act in these conscience-strangling days so much easier to accept and perform.
'Not quite.'
Though the front door is closed and I have found sanctuary from the moon's lunatic pull, an odourous pus is already seeping from old, related wounds.
Dark Earth: Eos Ignored
Date: 6 December 2007, 8:51 pm
Selene's talons gradually evaporate over topics and memories, leaving me unburdened and free to enjoy the company of someone real. Between glossy re-tellings of old daring raids and living vicariously as a town's mayor, I watch as the nightfold of darkness incrementally evolves into dawn. But, the outside is outside: a world away from the boy I was that lived in his world and the life I had besides. It can turn and turn for my selfish moment's care. For now, I'm just happy chat to someone other than my devil's advocate or idly spin my moral compass like a roulette wheel.
The last eleven years have proved to be incredibly lonely, and what initally seemed like an idealogical solitude after the presence of my pride, has become a hotbed of internal voices with paranoid rumblings all vying to be heard. A lonely yet overpopulated island of just one man. It was once said that madness rears when you start talking amongst yourself, I believe it is when you receive the first disagreeable answer and continue to converse. Either way they are thoughts my mind and I look back on without remembering the dates upon which they occurred.
Having been given a seated, point-and-whisper tour of the cabin and its amenities, the chatterbox continued to reel off line after line of mundane village minutae. And I have to say, it was all wonderfully trivial. From local scandals like Jake Edwards' propping his harvest yield with sand and expecting no one to notice, to exotic village border skirmishes over plots of land and referee'd by creatures in specially built towers. Dean has always had a gift for the sublime and stupid, not to mention the stupidly sublime. He gives rise to such neat sayings and embodiment of people's characters that I am at once transported into their world and looking at them with my own mind's eye. With Jake Edward's swindle revealed and half the village standing there looking over and around one another, Dean said Jake's mouth looked all taut like a 'doe's asshole caught in the beam of a winter's nightlight, eye's owl-wide, breathing a whinny of shock and abject horror dripping down his face'.
Apparently, Jake's wife, Marissa, still has to bring his quarterly sheets in and no one has had any dealings with the crafty buffoon since his townhiding.
With the border skirmish, Insan Ess Ett'ee is the only village within a forty kilometre radius of the Citadel, Garranthanus. An endowment recently infringed upon by a little fruitvine town called Semp'Tau. Dean met Semp'Tau's mayor in the middle of the large valley being contested, along with several 'borrowed' fighters from Garranthanus' gladiatorial quarters that he sneakily passed off as average villagers from Insan Ess Ett'ee.
'Menbeast that wouldn't know a spade from a shovel but could hit you harder and bury you deeper than either', he had astutely confirmed. Still, it was Semp'Tau's mayor that accepted the challenge, his poor village folk taking a whupping from professional warriors before alien royalty. The salt poured over open wounds was the decision that the entire valley his villagers had sowed with their seed, was no longer considered their bounty to reap -even if their broken bodies had been willing.
Dean gloats constantly about the suffix of 'Ett'ee', claiming that it is bestowed on only the privileged few. As my translations go and with little contact outside of hunting their young, I relate the whole name to mean 'Fortunate Peoples', Dean's translation goes more along the lines of 'Fortune's Warriors'. He has had plenty of time to observe them in their more social environments. Accordingly, the 'Ett'ee' is alleged to carry some weight; hence the strong-arm favours and desirable close vicinity lent to Insan Ess Ett'ee by Garant E'cree, earth commander, holy guardian, mother goose and a whole lot of other names besides. His oversized mug is sported on one side of all the coins and notes of value in this world, a position quickly gathering momentum in the vacuum of a monetary union that the war created. Human currency is worthless, there is a new god in the world for people to worship, slave over, barter and ultimately kneel before.
Our banter delves deeper into a subject I despise.
"They're such elegant, beautiful creatures in water; like they were born for it, y'know. You should see them, next time I go Garan-way, I'll take you with me. That is of course, if you stay."
My hearing is acute from service time spent in the dark, sight clinical from exposure to the looping calendar's whims. I could ignore triggers from both senses and still, my sense of smell alone would hint at the spice only fear brings to the human palette.
It seems ironic that we're espousing the virtues of those fucking ugly bastards that now choose to control us, rather than hunt us into extinction. I offer my own, more damning verdict.
'Dogs: they're furless, rabid dogs, waiting to be put down.'
We're in agreement inside, the base of the sentiment belongs to us all.
"You certainly know how to kill a conversation, that's for sure."
An imaginary bulb, brighter and more alluring than the low wattage in the room, serenades Dean's attention.
"I got something that'll loosen you up." He says with a crooked wink and a wonky smirk.
I suspect it to be alcohol-based.
He takes a pear-shaped bottle with a crane neck from one of the tinier cabinets that line the left wall, a quart of mucky brown stuff dolloping around inside. I would hazard a guess at the thousand bubbles staring ominously and giddily making their way to the top for a better view, that this shall not be a pleasant experience. Still, his house: his guest. He thrusts the bottle at me like a challenge, one the masculine duly accept without thinking of consequence.
I clasp the dryed cork and twist it to bring the bung out, the satisfying pop bringing with it the awful sight of the cork's underbelly. Petrified and disintegrating. A bad omen for any liquid with the intent of ingesting. Looking down the thin tube I get a distinct impression of looking down a hole at diarhoea sprinkled with grass seed. The odour doesn't lunge for the exit, which makes me weary about putting my nose to the bottle in case it changes its mind. After several near misses, I thrust my nose over the cave entrance in the hope of learning more about the potential beast within. The smell seems rather mild and alongside the slight malty tinge, there is a distinctive aroma that defies description from previous altercations with alcoholic substances.
I go for a sip but a whine from my friend tells me he's disappointed; I change my action to avoid his resentment, tilting the bottom of the bottle up further to get a good swig.
"Good boy, put hairs on your chest that will."
The stream pours into my mouth and quickly overpowers all but my strongest of tastebuds, the sense eventually wearing on them too. A steady explosion of burning heat and bitter rancid flavour envelops the whole of my mouth and throat; tongue bearing the brunt of the insidious attack. It certainly didn't smell potent.
The rest of my mouth tries in vain to escape the fate of their marauded tongue: cheeks, jowls and lips shying away from tastebuds that rub themselves furiously across my front teeth in order to be rid of infection. I start a cough that whips up into a stifled gag, gulping down air to fight the onrush of bile I can feel charging up my throat. My eyes glaze and begin to tear. I close them and they remain so for several seconds, nose now weeping in evident sympathy. A muffled chortle can be heard emanating from Dean's direction. Heavy be the fall of the masculine.
Finally, I open my eyes and hand the devil back his poison.
'Good shit.'
Well, what other kind is there in this day and age.
"You used to pull that face when you were six. I thought for a second there, you were going to cry."
'I thought about it.'
I guess when you find something genuinely distasteful, the face of an innnocent six year old is instinctively made.
'What is it and what's it supposed to taste like?'
He grows a licentious grin that not only stretches from ear to ear, but also appears to alter the dimensions of his head. Maybe from imbibing too much of the tangy weedkiller my mouth is still jostling with.
"Whisky, three-year matured whisky to be precise."
'I think it's out of date.'
He waves me away with a mincing gesture.
"Ah, you have no taste."
'Neither will you if you keep drinking that gut rot.'
"Work in progress. One that you could help with if you chose to join us instead of gallivanting all over the place after some girl."
I hold an imaginary white flag at the bottle as he chugs down a hefty mouthful of the sickly brown stuff.
'Why on earth would you drink that crap?'
Dean holds it close to his chest, protecting it, comforted by it.
"Oblivion ain't a place you can live, my boy, but it makes a healthy vacation from time to time."
I suppose I should have known, the world is a harsh place in her most serene of times. I draw my hand from my heart and towards the bottle, Dean's head recoils backwards from the shooting of another mile-wide smile and I'm sure he gets the drift. Maybe I judged the bottle of sickly gunk too early. He hands it fro.
'Let me see if I can identify where you're going wrong here...'
During every subject transition and with every opportunity he gets, Dean chairs the same offer, pushing the benefits of a parasitic symbiosis with a species that originally came to wipe us out. Throwing around wild theories of other alien creatures that still wish to see us gone and how these Sangheili dogs have protected -even championed- us in the last few years. The black electronic book he showcased to me earlier rests upon the small table and is mandatory to all registered citizens. High tech wizardry, surreal amongst dark age surroundings. They grant the use of electricity only to power their gimmicks and for lighting. My tongue continues to lick the wounds of its domain and scrape itself clean. An act not only to remove the lingering taste of rotted alcohol. He interpretted the text to mean us humans when the descriptions appear so ambiguous and liberally vague, I mean, 'exalted spirits conquering fear through trial and tribulation,' could mean any crazy that wishes to be anointed in such a fashion. As it is on my mind, I return to the crux of the book, ignoring his latest persuasion.
'Do you truly believe a book they brought with them?'
He shrugs, as if unmoved by the question.
"It's just one of those things you do to get on in the world nowadays."
It seems like an odd answer to which I have nothing to add. As if the book was simply a means to an end. The hat does not seem to fit anymore, Dean used to be so venomous towards conformity, especially those of religious doctrines. Now he seems quite apathetic and altogether more in favour of the idea, where not having control of your own life is preferable to a life wondering the unknown.
A lifestyle he pushes on me quite zealously. Perhaps for all my musings, I am simply jealous of the greener pastures. A mind saved by the notion of being kept under control and out of any real harm's way. A life where the daily struggles are mundane and the options do not include death -except maybe in the extreme. Cultivating the lands with a sense of independence as opposed to hunting animals for sustenance and remaining tethered to their cycles. The great divide that separates us. Maybe it is time to make the leap.
He strokes his hands across the cover of the book and offers absolution once more.
"So, what are you saying, old friend?"
A burden still weighs me down.
'After I find the girl, I'll be in a better position to answer. Will you help me find her?'
Dean takes in a heavy breath before slapping his hands down either side of the book.
"You're a law and a fool unto yourself, you know that! There are over a hundred farms and mansions in this vicinity with slaves working so the rest of us can have a life free of servitude."
Despite the alcoholic freeflow, his tone and language seem a tad harsh considering what I said. Not to mention blindingly hypocritical.
'Servitude?!'
I look about my surroundings. As if he can call his a life that is free.
'The light that passes the windows every seven minutes should be enough to tell you that you aren't free.'
He thumps his chest and clicks his fingers as if chief of a little tribe.
"My guards, under my jurisdiction. They are my responsibility; I'm not theirs. I can have them switched like that."
Fucking deluded and stupid cunt. I feel indignation swirl and build in my gut, the urge to smash him about the head and wake him from his pathetic bubble needling my mind.
The feelings subside and brood silently within each of us for a time. I decide enough is enough and now is my time to leave. Heading for the door, I ask -nay- beg, for one small favour.
'Will you help me? I swear I'll never darken your door again. They'll never find out that I got the information from you.'
He draws me a solemn frown, a gaze that speculates the deep introspection I come to expect from a friend that has always had my interests at heart, even inspite of our current temperament. He knows that if I am caught upon their scanners again, still a nomad, I will be done for more than non-compliance.
"Towards the west, 'bout thirty and six mile. There's a couple of farms leading north and south with maybe four or five houses mixed in that bought girls to help with the raising of their young. It's a female thing; I don't know: they always want girls or young women."
"Look, Paul, with everything that's happened, I'm sorry things went the way they did, y'know?"
I don't know where it came from, I may not entirely grasp where it is going, but I am glad one of us had the balls to say it.
I reach the door and bid my old mentor and friend a goodbye. The curtain stirs and from beneath it, two small children fight their way from the draped blanket. Both are dressed in scraggy old nighties cut from what I would imagine is the same dull, pink silken cloth. A second, more concentrated look reveals that one is a child-sized doll dressed endearingly to imitate the little girl's appearance. Isabelle. She has a beautifully wild blaze of auburn hair, the doll lacks the vibrant colour but retains the scuffed frizziness. Brandy brown eyes that take the small light from the room and give out a heart-searing reflective sparkle. She waddles over with her hands clasped firmly around her synthetic sister's neck, dragging the mirrror-imaged mannequin along the floor and occasionally trampling on its legs, providing herself with an awkward momentum. Despite the obvious irritation, she refuses to let go of the doll.
"Hello."
I feel the bulge of a momentous ball slowly rise inside my chest and clog my throat, as if staring through a window into the past wasn't bad enough. Into my own dark world. The last time I saw Alyssa, she was about the same age. The hair colour may be different but the innocent gaze and genuine smile of kindness which Isabelle is blessed with, could pass for memories of my little Alyssa. Even my cold stare does not seem to frighten her.
I, I can't think of anything to say, it has been too long to speak to a ghost.
"This is my sister, her name's Alison."
Looking over Dean's bulky frame, friends come in all shapes and sizes -especially when you're young, I'd like to carry on believing it, even now.
Leaning against the door jamb, DJ jumps in with a gruff, somewhat exaggerated tone of authority.
"Alison should be in bed, you know, nasty men are on the prowl."
"Alison's not afraid, 'Sangeelee get the nasty men."
Her answer to banish the imagined scare tactic stumps both he and I.
They came here to destroy us, purge us from our own planet, none of us were safe from their blade, least of all our young; the fruit of our life's work. Now our children hold them up as just and believe they are under their umbrella of protection. How times have changed, how we have changed. As long as her father remains faithful to their will and cause, she will continue to be protected. I trust that Dean's new lease of life, away from both I and the misery past, shall provide for her in the long road that lies ahead.
The dawn ignored takes revenge in the full boom of a blossoming red sky, her sun, helios, emerges from the horizon to disperse shadow from the lands and hurt my eyes. Birds and insects sing songs of praise to the dayspring that I despise. The baggy hood, stitched into the hessian rag that passes for my cloak, is handy for such devastating invasions of colour and light.
Pinching each side of the veil and pulling the apex of the garment over my head, I gaze a long, hard look back at my friend and his daughter standing in the doorway of their home, knowing that this may be the last time I shall ever see them.
Sneakily traversing the alley in the pattern of the guard in front, thoughts come thick and fast but words to vent them are scarce.
'Goodbye Isabelle, I trust Dean will protect you better than I ever could my Alyssa...'
Dark Earth: Siren Chime
Date: 5 November 2008, 2:15 pm
Submitted for the HBOff: "You're doing it Write" Child's Play charity drive by Phaedrus: Child's Play is important.
Five houses, three farms and fourteen young girls: it seems we're breeding a new generation of pets for these creatures to rear as domesticated animals.
Maybe our appearance and mannerisms are as peculiar and endearing as that of the animals we once called pets. Perhaps at their gatherings our young are paraded around like bell-adorned cattle.
Man, the new best friend.
'A small sacrifice for the benefit of all', Dean would surely square. I can only imagine what shapes these poor young things would slot into such a box.
I am more than a touch surprised however, at how well these adolescents have taken to their pet roles. At the last house, a small brunette no older than twelve went about her chores as if she had not a care in the world.
Lost in the raking of her master's land, completely oblivious to the woes of her fellow man.
It feels like the abandonment of all hope but I guess this is what they had in mind for us all along.
The look of contentment, the mind wandering distant shores, the heart being emptied of purpose just as the hourglass is emptied of sand, blissfully gazing at the ruse year on year while the passion drains from their spirit. Divided and lost to the realms of fantasy is surely a race truly conquered.
The fingerfall of despair may be light on the body but it is certainly there, massaging and easing a drop into my shoulders.
Five houses, three farms and fourteen young girls: still no Alyssa.
The late afternoon sun clearly feels he has outstayed his welcome and bids me a slow wave goodbye, stealthily making his exit by sliding behind a fat roll of grey cloud beginning to dominate the horizon.
The cold makes itself known with every breathe, a drifting plume of rapidly-vanquishing smoke. Only a periodic sigh pushed free from the lungs exerts a short linger in the air.
The ground littered with frost shine.
I know that I should have slept this morning but with the hive of so much activity buzzing around the inside and outside of my mind, sleep would not have been restful.
What puzzles me most is the violent incident I witnessed this morning between the creatures and a fellow traveller, especially as to the rarity of such an explosive altercation by the Sangheili these days.
I had passed the man not some five miles back, donning a pair of shoes that clearly were not his own. His scruffy appearance standing in stark relief to the pristine glow of the girl's pink sneakers he had dubiously acquired.
Hardly a crime by any real standard for someone dispossessed of their own planet, but the retribution was swift and without doubt, merciless.
A little over an hour and with us travelling across parallel fields -his being the nearer to the road, meant he was the first to be seen and I was the only witness to see it.
Had things gone the other way, would I have ran the way he did?
It doesn't matter, the glint of light made a mess of his head before he could even consider the notion of surrender. Poor sod never stood a chance.
When I had finished crawling to the hedgerow, curiosity had me risk my own head to see if they had simply left the body to scavengers; as they were at one time, wont of doing.
They didn't.
They stood around the remains for a good twenty minutes arguing -mainly the beast with the stumpy white metal crown berating his cohort, the one with the large rifle. If they'd needed a facial identification, it was clearly out of the question. But if he were a nomad such as I, it would be unlikely he would come up on their scanners and who would recognise him anyway? Something about the whole torrid affair just doesn't ring true.
Wild paranoia would have me snatching at flies if I gave it half the chance but the occurrence still plays on my mind regardless.
As I clear the final field bearing down towards a large farm, I tell myself that this shall be the last one for the day and try to sound like I mean it.
I know deep down that it won't be, but gathering up the momentum for a second wind needs the nudge of a self-perpetuating lie every now and then.
The farm consists of four buildings: one for the farm's machinery, one for the stables and favoured animals, the main farmhouse and a building adjacent that appears out of sorts with the rest of the lodgings. Its centre-pointed roof hints at a church spire while the horizontal slats at the base give it the appearance of a satellite receptacle.
A communication device to the homeworld perhaps? With four small windows equally spaced and high up -indicating the possibility of multiple rooms, it could just be fancy housing for some special creature with particularly fussy needs.
The house is the nearest building for inspection, with the alien interpretation just a short sprint away.
I glance into the kitchen window to see one of the slaves dive into a cupboard of towels, her frantic search making it difficult for identification.
A scream from the alien building halts us both in our search. A primordial scream that pulses a shudder up my spine- a scream of deep and agonising pain.
The siren song touches a harmonious chord that proves impossible to ignore. I find myself compelled into the prevailing winds.
Alyssa.
The building takes on the most evil connotations imaginable as the ground and its frost shine blur amidst the rush beneath my feet. The darkening world inviting shadow to take hold of the spire.
I know that I cannot keep this pace for long but the will to continue drives me onwards.
A place of sacrifice, a place of untold horror.
A chamber of torture, of alien sadistic pleasures.
A laboratory for experimentation.
Again the unholy scream.
My lungs burn from their dogwork as I slam open the outer doors. The room resembling that of an average barn complete with farm tools hanging from the walls and supporting pillars. Perfect stabbing weapons.
The creature in the room half-turns towards me, flummoxed as to my appearance.
"A male: here, now. State the reason for your presence, human?!"
A further roar from the room beyond gives me reason enough. I take a pitchfork from a wooden pillar and charge it down.
With a left step back and a fighting posture, it gives me a chance to throw the fork.
The missile rips through the air aimed at the creature's left side, and as the beast steps backwards to dodge the fork's prongs, the step leaves my foe side on.
Without twisting round and revealing its back, it must surely right itself to fight.
A step being a step too far.
Even as the beast re-asserts its position, my blade goes plunging down into its chest with me thrown into the strike. We hit the floor with the victor clear.
I raise the knife to finish the fight but the scream once more permeates my bones.
Alyssa.
I claw out from our scuffle and leave the creature to die from its wound, sprinting towards the room bleeding out the hair-raising cry...
Adrenaline has fuelled my senses, giving urgency inroads to affect everything, a panic frenzy to even the silliest of ideas. Now, with the madness revealed, I'm feeling a little stupid, not to mention beguiled.
No human scream could have breached these walls.
The room is dark but at its centre...
"Aleese!"
I had expected many images to confront me in this room. Skin torn free of the body, mind and nerve-fraying operations, amateur dissections without anaesthetic. Had the need arose; I would have ended any pain with the swiftness of my knife but this...
"Aleese!"
It roars to the heavens for salvation from its labours, and this feels like comedy bordering tragedy.
The birthing pool breathes a vapour that ventures through the light and dissipates in the darkness. The creature on all fours bathing amidst the pool's centre has a tendency to loll its head back and forth, as if embroiled in a drunken stupor.
I risked life and limb, defied gravity and flew across the ground to get here and for what? To help a creature suffering labour pains.
I tap out a slow death knell with the knife's blade across the pool's skirting edge.
'Aleese won't save you now.'
Even as the words leave my lips, thoughts accumulate into a whisper in my ear.
Aleese?
Could she be screaming for one and I be searching out the same thing?
A second burst through the doors gives us our answer. I fall back into the shadows.
The girl drops the towels and sprays around her with a large syringe before drawing air into the cylinder she holds between her fingers, pointing it menacingly towards the all-pervading darkness.
"I'll stick you, you bastards, I swear I will."
She trembles in the limelight.
"We have food and money in the house, take what you want and just fucking go!"
The soft blonde hair tied back, her slight frame and the powerful glint to her eye. I recognise her immediately and step free of the darkness.
'Is that any way to talk to an old friend?'
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