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Slayer “Raining Blood”

 

So it has all come down to this. It has been a considerable length of time since my last entry and there is a most distinct and disheartening reason for that. The last time I logged events, I had unwittingly placed my head in the lion’s mouth, wound up in a most perilous situation. Perilous doesn’t cut it on this occasion; most would’ve been royally fucked perched mere feet away from Marcus Miller.

Just the faintest whiff of the flesh on my bones would ordinarily been ample provocation for him to have lunged forward and skewered my from the adjoining booth. But you see, that lucky rabbit’s foot stood me in good stead. The trinket I refer to is my Crimson Quill; evidently my instrument of reprisal was my Get out of Jail Free card and my reputation had apparently preceded me.

I recall most of the events that evening; most! I remember Marcus beckoning me forward to the flimsy grate through gesture, I obliged although it was some toss-up let me tell you. As I repositioned myself precariously, I caught whiff of his metallic breath, the same carbon-like tang which I had sampled habitually at the throat of my gullet since I commenced this pilgrimage. A guided journey into the darkest place imaginable, interspersed with visitations to both Matt and Diane. Everything had led me to the point I ominously stood.

I felt a mesh of delight and disappointment as I hovered, finally readied to feel his sweet reprisal. It didn’t come, or at least not then. Once the realization had sunk in that he would have ended me already should he have wished, I recollect a million thoughts coursing around my cranial receptor. Most of them involved wanting to touch his mask, feel its brazen material against the tips of my digits. But they were accompanied by a morbid curiosity. ‘What has my dark lord got planned for me? Will I be given instruction? How must it take to snuff out another’s mortal existence? There were, of course, many other posers but they weren’t to be begged at this juncture. By the same token, we weren’t looking like likely beer buddies; there clearly wasn’t a vaporizer in the vicinity and no sign of a round of Spartan Ops waiting in the lobby. Whatever should transpire next would undoubtedly be branded into my psyche for the remainder of my mortality.

Pain; that’s what I desired. That twinge of cruel agonizing bliss as my shell was breached, and the ensuing blood siphoning via whatever aperture was left behind. The adrenaline would take care of the smarting, my nerve endings would eventually be severed and I would be afforded the sweetest slaughter. The addressee to my own unraveling, all in vivid color. The sheer imagining sends blood gushing toward my genitalia; the Crimson Quill is bleeding through my chest pocket just recalling the instance.

The silence was louder than any muted moment in my mortality, I could hear a child jumping rope in the vestry, leaves blowing around the chapel, blood dripping rhythmically from the priest desecrated behind me, but no audio more palpable than the rapid beating of my heart which was threatening to burst through my rib-cage. What followed was the culmination of months of delirious dreamscapes, each one woven by Marcus Miller. He had summoned me, my presence before him had been merited and my pilgrimage had been foretold. All the blood circulating my ventricles was running cold, and it intoxicated the Crimson Quill. And then…

And then I felt the sweet agony for the first time. A screwdriver, already coated in crimson met its fleshy target, my lower abdomen. Not enough to bleed out entirely, but sufficient to make my eyes roll back in my skull like I’d just taken MDMA and was receiving a shoulder-rub with vaporub. As it pierced the top layer of my pelt, I felt a rivulet of deep red trickle from the precise cavity, and that dark pleasure spread through me like a vicious forest fire.

He strode toward until we were practically one entity, still clutching and turning the tool in my gut. Amidst second thoughts of my projected mortality were twinges of agonizing awakening. You’re never more alive than when closest to death, that’s the saying right? Well I was close enough to lick that glorious mask, and part of me desired that. It symbolizes my contorted soul; twisted, beautiful, hideous, tortured. I felt positively invigorated; my nerve endings were dancing and my darkened heart bleeding blissfully. “I shall let you remain.” His prose was delivered with a mesh of cruelty and empathy.

“On this condition Keeper, you shall continue to do your dark work but I am tasking you with the delivery of communications.”

Instantly, I was aware of his drift.

“My baby sister, that cunting whore and her foolish beau must know of my work. I want them to be mindful of my pilgrimage; their insolence has not gone unnoticed.”

My mind was racing at a rate of knots that almost sent it reeling, Audrey was preparing but was she aware of the enormity of her illegitimate sibling’s singular doggedness? I had to warn her and thankfully that seemed to be the task at hand.

“Return to your existence but when you do, know that it will not be the one you left behind you. If you wish to wear this mask, you have to soak in charlatan blood, consume it. Let it consume you.”

There was a fleeting halt in proceedings before he carried on

“I shall be checking in on you Keeper.”

With that verse ringing in my ears, the tool was slid from my appetite and he calmly turned away. Instinctively I vomited, as much crimson as bile. And then I shuffled towards the light in the darkness.

So, you see, I have managed to escape the clutches of the most notorious serial killer to disgrace our screens in three decades and should be feeling mighty grateful right now right? Why then do I feel so nauseous? Why does it feel as though this is far from over? I know only too well when everything paradise is less than well and this feeling of dread I feel right through to my very core is most disheartening. It would appear that, while I have endured the bloody battle, the war is far from over.

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Truly, Really, Clearly, Sincerely,

 

Keeper of the Crimson Quill

First Knight of TOK

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