Part 4: “To Be Quite Frank”
His hands shake approaching the monolith during a fog filled night. Low streams of gray wisp between building and tree. A horse cries in the night. Darkness looms and a howling low and guttural noise erupts. The horses go silent. Ernest continues forward driven by fear and abandonment through the cemetery. Fresh dug earth is in a pile next to an unmarked tombstone. He looks up at a nearby building at the edge of the cemetery. On the flat roof a pale -aced figure stands watching. A chill of fear races down Ernest's spine.
*This story contains graphic language and violence.
The opening is ahead. The figure points in the direction towards Gabriel's Tower. He weaves between grave stones. The howling echoes in the horizon. A purple sky reaches over everything with a claw of dark clouds. He sees the tall Earthen tower.
At the entrance, the stone is cold and damp, dressed with the aura of the dead that mined it. It is in here. Stepping over skull and bone Ernest continues down the narrow tunnel. Spiders drape from the ceiling. He sees it. Blue and magnificent, beauty. Its flicker without motion. His eyes lock on the object. Indigo glows across his face as he descends the stairs. He holds his breath reaching into the fire with both hands and feels nothing as he pulls the object free.
In his transparent palms glows blue. He sees right through to the darkness there bubbling. A small puddle of black, a shimmering pool of evil. The surface ripples and begins boiling. Two sharp hook appendages emerge. They are attached to the sides of the head growing out of the pool. A long centipede-worm coils out of the dark liquid. Its skin rivets a spiraling structure of tiny sharp spikes. It snaps forward in an instant, too fast for Ernest to react. The creature sinks its hook teeth into his stomach burying its mouth. He can feel little fangs chew at his flesh as the two hooks squeeze. Blood pools beneath his feet. Pain jolts through him. All he can do is watch. The worm digs deeper and rears back with a mouth full of intestines. There he sees it. The face of an infant in the mouth of the monster. He holds his insides with two hands.
From behind the creature approaches a beast, tall, and with the head of a bison. Long horns curve off the sides of its massive face. It lifts up a battle ax and slashes it down into the black worm. Bitter dark fluids splatter across Ernest's face. The beast pulls the body of the worm out of the dark hole it emerged. Ernest pales growing colder.
“Do not disturb my seal!” The horned beast speaks like an earthquake and brings the ax down on Ernest's head.
He shoots awake in a bed, panting in a cold stone room. His body shivers, sweating, but is hot to the touch, and the pain remains unbearable in his stomach.
Shuffle appears in the doorway.
“Now you see.” He says. “Now you know what I am asking. You must stop this horror. You must destroy the Blue Flame.”
An orange glow of moonlight leaks in through a small window.
Shuffle holds two glasses and enters. “A toast to your journey and a toast to nothingness?” he says. “Everything good and strong in this world decays, as if it were never meant to. Existence,” he continues, “is at best, an uncomfortable fluke. Nothingness is the true state of all things. A return to Void my friend.” He takes a sip. “Like boils desecrating angelic skin into blistering scabs, this existence oozes out from the Great Nothing and infects the universe with substance. Loud and over-saturated possibilities threaten to drown the Void. We exist my friend, on the front lines of this standoff, between eternity and nothingness.”
He takes a generous gulp and hands Ernest the other full glass. “Beauty is temporary.” Shuffle continues. “Everything created is destined to rot. Our suffering is what defines us, our lives, a transition between states of being, and not. We are passing mistakes, forced to desire, to suffer, and ultimately to die. This cycle. Useless. We must end this. You have the dignified honor of doing so.” He takes a sip.
Ernest looks to the other side of the room. Frank is there holding his face. Dark fluid drips between his plump fingers. “Don't drink the juice,” he whimpers.
“Tomorrow you two will be ready.” Shuffle says exiting the room. The large door closes and the room is dark. An echo of screaming fills the outside hall.
Outside: daylight beams dried earth, white and cracked. Their eyes blinded by days of confinement. They stagger in the dust squinting to understand their bearings.
“Follow the narrow path westward at the far edge of town. From there you will see Gabriel's Tower.” Shuffle informs. “Go to it. Inside is your salvation.” Chauncey closes the front door after Shuffle returns back inside never stepping out of the shadows.
Their eyes burn. The world spins in a dizzy blur, blinded by the daylight. Frank begins to vomit. Flecks of skin blister on their arms and face. Both men scream as sharp pricks and pain tingles across their body.
“They're in my fucking hair!” Shouted Ernest.
“They're on my fucking arms and legs! Oh God! They're all over me!” Screamed Frank. “Get them off of me! They're in my pants! Oh my fucking balls!” He begins to cry.
“Over there,” says Ernest pointing to the nearest shadow of an adjacent building. Both men scurry across the dirt road for protection.
“What the hell Frank?”
“I don't know.” Frank falls to his knees and looks up with scratches across his face. “I don't fucking know. Oh God Ern, what are we going to do?”
“I’m getting the hell out of here is what I'm going to do!” Said Ernest. “I’m getting the hell away from this town!”
“How are you going to do that?” Frank asks, holding his face. Dried blood on his fingernails. “How are you going to do that? This sun, across the wastelands, and the bugs. You can’t. There's no way you'll make it. Especially without a horse. Don’t you see? It's inside us now. That asshole fucked us. There ain't no going back.” He wept in his hands. “I'm just so hungry.”
“Might be better to die out there.” Ernest looks at the horizon pondering. “Sierra,” he whispers. Then looks westward. “Alright Frank. Let's get this fucking over with.”