Suggested Audio Candy

 

Hirax “Hellion Rising”

 

Friday 21st June 2013 10.00am

 

The time has finally come for me to put my money where my mouth is. To say that my sleep patterns have been disrupted for the past few weeks would be a severe underestimation and plain tormented would be a far more veracious term.

Each time my eyelids close, it is his face which decorates my psyche. It is his vacant, emotionless leer which pins me there, as if martyred, but without any hope of redemption. As the time has relentlessly marched on these imaginings have gained undesired clarity, to the point where each of my senses have been filled with his terrorizing presence. The lines between my dreams and reality have become increasingly blurred as these chimeras bleed into my everyday life with increasing regularity. I’m beginning to resemble a self-harmer and my wrists are in fleshy tatters from the coarse rusted wire wrist bangles which have bound them tightly. In an attempt to conceal the wounds, some of which run hazardously close to the tendons, I have wrapped them in dressing but they still soak through and infection appears to be setting in as they are discharging yellowish pustule now. Still, I cannot bring myself to have them examined as I would likely end up sectioned. It may seem evident that this would afford me the sanctuary I covet but Marcus Miller would still locate me. Besides, these abrasions were contrived amidst one of these dingy dreamscapes so there is evidently no end in sight to this particularly truculent storm.

No, I need to face this full-on, stand bull-headed and with conviction. If I turn back now I do so without my integrity or indeed liberty, and I swore blind to the Grueheads that would remain intact. It’s do or and die; whatever savagery awaits me I must accept graciously, take one for the team as it were. Maybe a higher power will intervene, some loose scaffolding could plummet down on Marcus or he may simply not be home? I cling to these vein hopes like a lovesick koala; in sheer desperation, all the while fully aware that I shall not be provided with such respite.

I stand before my potential sepulchre now, behind that large oak door lays my judgement. The judge, the jury and the executioner await within; all inhabiting one unsympathetic shell. I’d pray for a swift demise but I know such a communion would fall on deaf ears. Instead I just appeal that, by the umpteenth blow, my nerve-endings are frayed enough to not register the pain any longer. But then there is this swelling disparate feeling; it is of gratification and dark enchantment, the most heinous of hard-ons for I will soon become the recipient of the suffering I’ve become increasingly accustomed to.

I pull the iron latch and hear the mechanism strain the opposing side as it lifts from its corroded casing. And no sooner have I rested weight on the door than the fetid bouquet has rushed forward to greet my nostrils like a barbed wire cuff to the face. So strong is that putrid stench of despair and expended life force that it hits me in the back of my gullet. It suggests decaying cadavers, further accelerated by the searing midday sun. My sound mind urges me to rotate 180 and go back from whence I came but that merely equates to around a quarter of my grey matter. So unwillingly I push on.

I’ve been here previously, albeit in my delusions, and it is just as I recall it to be. The beacons of radiance dancing in from the elongated elevated windows should settle me but they only serve to illuminate the dried brown grue speckled across the stone floor before me. I begin regretting the decision not to bring sacrificial offerings as suggested by Mike but I deduced that it would only sate Marcus’ thirst for bloodletting which would invariably lead to me getting it worse. It is then that thirty years of dedication to horror offers me solutions to my current grim quandary. Laurie Strode, Sally Hardesty, Ellen Ripley, all masquerade around my inner-cranium. All three evaded the foul clutches of their assailants, there’s much to be gleaned from their courageous exploits surely? Nope they all belong to the female strain of their species and the term Final Quill just doesn’t sound right. Besides, Marcus Miller could come away intact from brawling each or all of these supposed death-bringers, of that I have no qualms. I’ve seen Leatherface in claret lipstick now; the trepidation has long since dissipated. Maybe if I visualize him naked, he won’t appear so ominous? Negative, he’d likely have barbed wire wrapped round his cock.

‘Press on Quill, if you turn back now he’ll slay you for sure’. Thanks mind for the sobering nugget of legitimacy. Press on I do, sidestepping the smattering of blood and shattered glass, towards the altar. God evidently has no place in this institution, the floral arrangements are as lifeless as the former occupants and there is a palpable vapor of putrefied flesh hanging in the air. As I reach the altar I spot something from the corner of my eye that causes a succession of heartbeats to go astray. A timber crucifix hangs wayward from the vestry wall to my left and framed upon it is the clergyman who suffered his own pitiless decree at the hands of Marcus during his dogged pursuit of Audrey.

His cadaver is locked in taut with barbed wire manacles, not dissimilar to those which have shackled me in my nightmares. They’re draped around his entire carcass, noticeably across his eyes and still gaping mouth. I can just about make out the vacant stare of death in one eye from behind the thorny display, the other punctured by the jagged wire. Then my gaze wanders to the priest’s left hand, or rather stub; unevenly carved away from the marrow and now the resting place for all manner of flies and lice. I suddenly feel a sharp twinge in both wrists and at once the metallic tang of warm bile rises in my esophagus. Both dressings have bled clean through, the crimson and pus-like secretions lattice to create a profoundly obnoxious secondary colour through my swabs. The deep red which has begun to form on both palms symmetrically is the more pressing concern, as the smarting pain reaches both in turn. A singular bloody rivulet trickles from both lesions and I can hear the pitter-patter of drips to the ground with disquieting regularity. It is then that the Keeper of the Crimson Quill passes out into welcome oblivion…

Click here to read Verse VIII

 

I implore of you to make it fleeting,

 

Keeper of the Crimson Quill

First Knight of TOK

Copyright: Crimson Quill: Savage Vault Enterprises 2013 (Revised Edition 2015)