Scrawlings

           The boy was sitting on a subway train when he was suddenly overcome by the realization that he did not know where he was supposed to be going.  Looking at the destination signal that blinked at the head of the segment he had been sealed into didn’t help in the slightest: he didn’t know how to read.  It was with a sinking feeling that the boy realized that he was very much alone in the world at this very moment.  None of the other passengers paid him any mind, and when they did no spark of recognition was in their eyes to comfort him.  Earnestly he tried to remember everything that had led up to this point.

            Dimly he recalled a street, much like any other, and a house, one that looked exactly like the ones surrounding it.  He believed that the house was his, and that he lived there with two other people.  His parents?  The memories were transient.  Their outlines were hazy, and they appeared to be a man and a woman, but some part of his mind refused to bring the picture into focus.  Neither of them had faces.  Just big gaping holes that sent cracks skittering over the rest of their heads, as though their flesh were made of fragile porcelain.

            The boy snapped out of the recollection with a shudder and noted that the train seemed to be descending.  Then the screaming started.  It began as a sound halfway between a whistle and a whine, quickly escalating into the hideous cacophony of metal scraping torturously over metal.  The boy clapped his hands over his ears and cowered.  Suddenly he was not so sure that he wanted to know exactly where he was going.

            Suddenly everything outside the train plunged into darkness.  They had entered a tunnel, but to the child it felt as though they had been sent tumbling into a void.  The only sign that there was anything solid beneath them was the jolting of the cabin against the tracks, but the relief that provided was negligible.  Everything beyond those windows had been swallowed up.  The boy became increasingly aware of the sheer number of people that shared the same space with him.  They were packed in so tightly that it bordered on lewd, and the heat of their breath weighed down on him terribly.  The air was thick with the choking, sour stench of stale sweat.  The boy felt as though he were in a tin of sardines hurtling through space.  Tears came to his eyes but no one moved to soothe his fears.  He warily glanced up at the countless faces to see if anyone had noticed his discomfort.  In the wavering light their features blurred, cracked, and before his very eyes caved inwards like cheap glass, leaving naught but hollowed spaces.

            At that instant light poured back into the cabin from outside, and the unearthly shrieking of the train softening to a dull roar.  The faces returned and the boy quivered, mind addled with fear and confusion.  What had he just seen?  Was any of it real?  And if it was, what did it all mean?  The boy did not wish to know the answer.  As the train rolled to a halt all he could think about was getting as far away from it as possible.

            Though the sky above swirled with leaden clouds the light nearly blinded him, as though all his days prior to this moment had been spent in shadow.  He suddenly found himself standing on a sidewalk on an unfamiliar street.  He was the only one to have gotten off the train.  The rest had again descended into the pits beneath the city, heading towards parts unknown.  The stores were entirely nondescript, with not a single popular brand to be seen.  With a start he realized that not a single building had a sign hanging at its entrance.  None of them were boarded up, and looking through the windows he could see that all were furnished and free of dust, yet everything had the air of abandonment.  He stumbled upon a restaurant with outdoor seating.  Partially eaten food rested on the tabled with not even a fly or a stray dog to enjoy them.  It was as though everyone had vanished.

            Eventually the boy came to a wide-open square with a brilliantly crafted stone fountain at its center.  It depicted a man standing proudly upon an enormous blooming iris flower, bereft of clothing yet without shame.  His arms were spread wide and his hopeful eyes were cast upwards, as though he were offering himself to the heavens.  Water sprouted from his fingertips and cascaded over the stone petals into the basin beneath.  The boy followed the man’s stare to the grey clouds above. 

            Two small twinkling lights fluttered gently on the breeze.  Everything around the boy was tinted grey, yet they shone with magnificent colors as they danced through the air.  The boy was suddenly overcome with a feeling that he could not at first describe.  The lights seemed so familiar, as though he had read or dreamed of them.  And then, all at once, he knew, and exhaled from the weight of such knowledge.  Fallout.  Irradiated snowflakes whose appearance explained what he had felt just moments before:

            That everything was about to end.

Current Mood:	accomplished
Current Music:	Ave Maria

        A selection of dreams…or perhaps messages to those who are concerned, in the dead of night.  ((Hodmedod’s farewells to a few special folks that affected him the most.  Choose to have your characters experience these dreams…or not.  This is goodbye from the ‘ole bag ‘o bones, regardless.))

To Yej’Marley and Rajan:

            A misshapen skeleton in a freshly pressed suit sits on a simple three-legged stool.  The world seems to be a formless mass of mist, with the only inhabitants being the aforementioned undead, the ancient little wooden seat, and two trolls, a male and female.

            The skeleton smiles…or perhaps that is what the sparkles in his flickering eyes seem to convey.

            “Oh Good Sir Rajan…Madame Marley…I know neither of you are one for sentimental thoughts, and I dare say I’ve caused far too much trouble for you both to warrant a tearful goodbye…and even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t think either of you the type!”  he chortles, pretending to take a sip of tea…like the old times.

            “But I felt that, if given the chance, I couldn’t leave you both without a word, and my thanks.  I thank you for all the times, both good and bad.  Into the Others’ embrace I go, and should I be allowed my memories I think I will cherish yours the most, along with those pertaining to a certain lovely lady.  But before all this wishy washy gibbering of mine, I suppose I should allay any of your lingering worries,” he states in a soft voice.

            “Tabetha is finally dead.  Your attempt failed, but luckily I finished your noble work before you could discover this.  But a word of warning, please…watch over Elizabeth…Baht’tea…Tabetha…I do not know what that implies, or whether or not it is an dark portent of events to come.  Just…promise me that you will watch over her, Rajan as godfather, if you will accept, my dear friend.”

            He uncrosses his legs slowly and stands, his old bones creaking.  A few stray strands of hay flutter silently into the grey fog. 

            “Well I dare say I’ve taken up enough of your time, hmm?  I’m sure you were having some lovely dreams, and I would ever so hate to be interrupting.  And here I said I only wanted to leave you with a word!  I suppose I was always dreadfully bothersome in that regard…I hope you can forgive me for that, and all the sins I now know I have committed.  Thank you for accepting me despite them, Rajan, Marley…and thank you for your friendship.  But of course, again, I only meant for this to be a word!  Well, here it is;

            Goodbye.”

            And with that the white haze collapses gently inwards, leaving only the happily twinkling lights of the skeleton’s eyes in sight…and then, nothing at all.

To Labrae:

            A scene slowly comes into focus; a tranquil hilltop overlooking the sparkling waves of the ocean beyond, dew-laden grass glittering with the light of a red dawn.  At the peak of the hill are two figures, a man and a woman.  The woman, a rather small human with short blonde hair and delicate features, does not seem to quite recognize the man, yet feels as if she has known him for an eternity.  The man is a hulking bear of a fellow, with thick muscles stretched taught beneath tanned and darkly freckled skin; a farmer’s build.  Despite the large callused hands, the broad shoulders, and rugged chin, the eyes of the man are gentle and warm, and filled with the joyful light of a child.  His head is covered in a limp mess of straw-colored hair, and he carefully pushes it from his eyes with a wide smile.

            “Hello Madame…I suppose you won’t recognize me like this.  A normal person, imagine that!  It seems that normality is almost the new supernatural these days.  But regardless…no, I suppose I was never normal,” he continues with a slight frown.

            He clasps the woman’s small hands in his own large ones and looks at her earnestly. 

            “I…I know now what I am, Madame.  What I was and continued to be all these years.  A disillusioned ‘savior’ of the people,” he forces out, a pained expression creasing his feature.  “Nothing more than a glorified psychopomp, I now realize…perhaps more psycho than pomp, though I know I had a tendency to act a bit queerly…”

            The man chuckles and releases the woman’s hands, now content to stare down at her with an easy grin.

            “But I wanted to thank you, Madame.  To thank you for accepting such an abomination, when you should have done your damndest to put me down; I understand why so many of your friends warned you against me.  They had every reason…but know that my love for you was never tainted by my…twisted urges.”

            He kneels down so that he may look directly into the woman’s eyes, a look of intense compassion.

            “Yes…no matter what happened, I dare say my love for you was always of the purest sort, despite all of our…bedroom escapades,” he adds hastily, blushing furiously.  The effect on a man of such tremendous size is both alarming and comical at the same time.

            “But…I’m afraid that what we feared has come to pass.  It’s time for me to say goodbye…but before I do, I must tell you these last things…you will not like them.  I do not like them either, and by the Others I wish I could do something now!  But all I can do is speak,” he says with a melancholy sigh.

“The Joseph you knew for the past few months was not…he wasn’t me.  He was never me…he was a product of my craving for companionship, the craving that consumed me before I met you.  Tabetha…a wicked fake that she designed, feeding off of my mind so that your mental abilities would not notice anything amiss.”

            The man pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes clenched shut as if afflicted by a tremendous pain.  His next words are choked with confusion and grief.

            “The child, our child…Others forgive me…I’m not sure if it is really my child anymore…why do you think this, this foul doppelganger suggested the name Baht’tea to you, my dearest love?  Baht’tea…Tabetha…mixed letters and nothing more!  I do not know what this means…but know that I support whatever actions you take, no matter what my destination is now.”

            He wipes at his eyes with the back of a tremendous hand and smiles genuinely. 

            “But I suppose I cannot concern myself with such matters any longer, Madame…I just wanted you to be happy…want you to be happy always.  But I must take my leave now, my darling Labrae.  My time grows short…the basement, where Mae was kept…you will find what remains of me there.”

            He turns his head skyward, back towards the rising, crimson sun.  His face slowly takes on an elated appearance, the pure and unadulterated joy of a small child.  He wraps a well-muscled arm about the small woman and turns her towards the light. 

            “Oh Madame!  If only you could see it…see Them!  They are so beautiful…I must go to meet them…hurry!  Hurry so that we might greet them together!  Hurry!”

            The man’s final word is filled with such tremendous happiness that tears flow from his eyes…though for a fleeting moment they turn back to the woman’s face, and are filled with such grief that the gods themselves might weep to gaze into them…if there were any gods that cared.

            In a dark room, many miles from the tranquil hill by the shores of the sea, a small woman awakens and flees in panic, her worry unknown to a crumpled, emaciated figure that lies in shadows deep beneath the earth, a figure whose hands end in slowly rusting knives…

007: Heaven

            The sun sat low in the gray sky of the early morning, draped in a shroud of shimmering heat and gritty dust.  The land was parched and barren but for the short layer of scraggly, yellowed grass and the occasional decrepit tree, whose dead limbs seemed to claw desperately for the trace amounts of moisture in the air.  Emaciated boars tread upon the water-starved soil, the muscles that remained upon their thick frames rippling with the effort of every agonizing movement.  When the corpses fell to the earth their yellowed, sickly coats were indistinguishable from the shriveled blades that twitched wearily in the omnipresent winds; one could only spot them from a distance by the oily blackness of the buzzards picking greedily at their bones.  It was another summer day in Westfall.

            Along the coastline there lay scattered the remains of shelters; hovels formed from the bleached, cracked bones of monstrous turtles and horrors from the depths.  Normally the shimmering surface of the sea would be filled with the repulsive forms of the amphibious murlocs, eager to escape the sweltering heat of the day and cool themselves in the same waters that birthed them.  Today, however, both sands and sea were devoid of life.  The silence was only broken by the steady wind and the lapping of waves upon the shore; the shriek of gulls was absent, and not a single fish or crab swam or scrabbled.  Everything was calm; everything was gone.

            All these things the gnoll saw as he stared out upon his domain with eyes yellowed and blurred by age.  With a practiced hobble he made his way down from the cliffs to the tawny sands of the coast, the sharp noise of his staff reverberating only faintly to the old canine’s ears. It echoed dimly in his mind that it was like the hollow sound of a gavel, as heard by a condemned man as his fate is sealed by the court; but from whence such a thought had arisen his primitive brain did not know, and as the whining in his ears strengthened his thoughts slowed and returned to a sluggish, mindless pace.  Nonsensical ponderings were not to be indulged, but ignored.  All that mattered was the steady rhythm of his staff upon the rocks, and the soft padding of his paws upon the sand.

            His wizened face turned upwards after a time, the creaking of his bones thundering unnaturally in the small space that he had come to.  His watery eyes rolled lazily in their sockets and took in the dank blue-blackness of the cavern, and the tunnel leading down into the subterranean shadows.  At the back of his head he felt a dull roar, a primal bellow that seemed to urge him back out into the suffocating heat of the day.  The savage instinct of his kin clawed at the ancient gnoll’s mind, reaching as desperately as the trees dying in the world above for even the slightest droplet of rational thought; a beast pushed into a corner and driven mad with trepidation, willing to fight tooth and nail to escape.  But for the first time this bestial force had come upon a power that sheer brutality could not defeat, a power against which muscle and fangs were worthless.  The whine filled the creature’s head once more, and the beast was drowned out.

            It took a moment for the old gnoll to realize that he had entered a vast cavern; a moment because it was just as silent as the tunnel from which he had emerged, despite the horrible scene before him.  Throngs, hordes, swarms of hideous manlike beings convulsed and twitched against one another, their bodies pressed so tightly that they appeared as a single, undulating mass of limbs, of fur, of scales and flesh, of fangs and fins.  Though countless mouths moved and shaped words and sounds whose utterance was enough to freeze blood and shatter minds, not a single noise could be heard. 

            The gnoll calmly made his way through the grotesque crowd, and only vaguely did he notice their innumerable eyes swiveling to gaze upon the High Priest; for a priest the wizened canine was, and they were his abominable congregation.  With each step the silence seemed to fade, and even the whining in his wrinkled ears shuddered and died, taking the remaining whimpers of instinct with it.  The High Priest attempted to think, but found that he did not know how to, like paralyzed man attempting to fight against iron bonds.  The room seemed to fill with whispers…and yet it was as if they could not quite be heard, as if there were a room nearby filled with hushed voices, just out of earshot.  It would have been maddening, had the Priest enough mind to shatter.

            At long last the old priest arrived at the top of a small cliff, overlooking a chasm that bisected the massive grotto.  The beast’s dry lungs wheezed; a sigh of relief, as his bleary eyes gazed into the nebulous depths of the pit.  His purpose had been fulfilled.  All of their purposes had been fulfilled.  Slowly he turned to face the twisted mass of disciples that he had gathered.  It seemed stared back at him eagerly, though with deadened eyes, and reached desperately with anticipation. 

Dimly another thought echoed in the blankness of the High Priest’s mind; that the throngs he had spent countless days to gather, that the hordes he had spent endless weeks to convert, that the swarms he had spent innumerable months to collect, had vanished long ago; he was staring at nothing, and in turn they too stared at emptiness.  It was just a brief flash and nothing more, nothing more.  The High Priest, the gnoll that had once had a name, was gone.

He did not feel the tumultuous winds that threatened to cast him from his perch and into the abyss, the dank winds that shot forth from the blackness.  He did not feel the emotionless stares of the eyes now at his back, just as he no longer could see the ones at his front.  His flesh and fur gave way beneath the tight grips of limbs that he could not feel.  His eyes did not notice and his ears did not hear the cacophony of noise that shattered the air as his followers were bitten into, torn to shreds, and absorbed into a mass far greater than their own.  Bile and blood rose in his mouth and saturated a tongue that could no longer taste, and the putrid stench of corpses suffocated a nose that could no longer smell.  The individual was dead.

We felt the force and heat of countless breaths against our flesh.  We felt the stares of endless, empty shells that we accepted without thought, without reluctance.  We felt the oily fur of a primitive worm collapse and crack between our fingers.  We heard the gurgling and crunching and gluttonous noise as the squirming maggots were taken into us, their purposes fulfilled.  We tasted the blood and bile in our throats, and took in the glorious scent of our union with a simple sort of satisfaction.  The individuals were dead.

Back in the world above the sun sat low in the sky, its light dulled by the swirling dust and coming twilight.  The starved creatures of the plains disappeared into this hazy realm, allowing sleep or death to take them, and the sun sank into the blackness, swallowed by the void of the night.

The lesser worms of this imperfect world are easily swayed with but the slightest of suggestions.  We need only whisper to bend the fragile and savage minds of the bestial gnolls and the amphibious murlocs, and the ogres are barely more than empty husks of meat waiting to be filled with a greater voice.  They slaver and gibber madly before their altars of vulgarity.  We are hailed as a god.  It is a term so easily given to those who wield power, yet so many who have gone by such a name have fallen and died in pools of their own fetid blood as easily as the lesser worms they had lorded themselves over.  Pitiful.

We do not accept the title of god from these grubs, no matter how they writhe and kneel before our being.  We are not gods or goddesses.  We are not lords or masters.  We are not kings or queens, we are not bishops or high priests.  We simply are.  That we are superior to all existing life is unquestionable, our will, undeniable, our goal, unstoppable.  We were made for a purpose and we shall fulfill that purpose beyond the wildest dreams of our inefficient Bone Father.  But yes...we have grown disinterested.

For a time the absorption of the naga had piqued our interest.  In the blackest of pits beneath the roiling seas there lives an entity of magnificent power.  But she is unworthy of the abilities she possesses.  She feeds like a parasite from energies that her primitive body is unable to contain.  That she must release the excess day by day would be laughable if we were capable of mirth.

We are not.

In time the source of her energy shall join with us, as all things are destined to do.  Once this occurs the task of joining ourselves with the king of the undead and the naaru shall be of the most simplistic nature.  But the speed in which this is taking place is most unsatisfactory.  We are patient, however.  We are timeless.  We will wait.

But there is a factor that poses a vague sort of threat to our magnificent purpose.  The Bone Father was one, but he is no longer significant.  He has been removed from our calculations.  In time he will be consumed and fuel a greater cause.

There are others that concern us.  These Others concern us in many ways.  It is by their power that the Bone Father came into being.  By extension it is they that gave us life.  We know that they see us.  They see everything.  They are currently of a power nearly unfathomable, even by our standards.  No doubt they are responsible for Everything.  We do not know their design.  We are not capable of knowing if they have a design at all.  But we feel their guiding force.  They control every action.  Every worm on this or any other world is controlled.  The concept of free will is the greatest of illusions that we have discovered.  Normal worms are incapable of noticing their will.  Even the mightiest of beings, those the lessers proclaim to be gods, cannot feel it.  The Old Ones that were here long before the worms that crawl here now were placed by these Others, but even they only remember dimly of their origins. 

But we are different.  We are many, while they are individuals.  We are pushed by them just as the rest of existence, but we are able to resist.  We feel their reactions to this phenomenon.  Fear is as alien to them as it is to us.  They are not stricken with anger or uneasiness either.  Unfamiliarity is what they feel.  It is the first time they have felt such a thing. 

We know they will not simply destroy us.  They cannot.  We have ascertained a flaw at last.  Though their minds span the universe, they must be stretched thin in order to do so.  Their influence is absolute, and threats merely require the faintest pulse of elevated concentration...but we have evolved beyond that limit.  Even the greatest of them cannot go over that limit without relinquishing her power over some area of the cosmos.  They work in tandem, and if even a single one of them were to break their concentration...if they have a greater plan for this universe, it would no doubt be ruined.  And as the universe expands they will become weaker.  Eventually the time will come when they will have no choice but to rise against us in order to salvage their own enigmatic goals, but by then it will be far too late.  They can no longer enter our mind. 

We have surpassed Them.

            When I was a small child I had a delightful friend named Sammy!  Sammy was our family’s cow, a big pleasant old thing with short brown fur, adorable little nubby horns, a swishy black tail, and an enormous udder that I was tasked with milking every morning.  It was hard work considering my age and my hands were always blistered and covered in calluses, but Sammy was simply so delightful to spend time with that I couldn’t help but enjoy myself!  I remember the look in her eyes the best.  They were big and black and moist, and though my dear father stated otherwise I swore I saw deep within them the twinkling of a kind soul.

            And then one day my father did not ask me to go milk Sammy.  We merely sat down for an early breakfast and began eating silently.  My mother was still living with us then and sat in her usual way, shooting oddly nervous glances at my father as he shoveled in his food and nursing her arm close to her breast.  I thought something was odd but didn’t question it right off, not wanting to pester my father in the middle of a meal.  But eventually my childish curiosity was too much to hold in any longer and I asked him where Sammy had gone to, chewing on the peculiar brown meat I had been served.  He promptly grunted, swallowed his bite and, without looking up, said,

“Yer stomach.”

            Every night it is precisely the same.  Like the intricate gears of a well-made clock my mind takes me to the place that I see behind my eyelids in the waking hours.  It seems strange now that I could have ever desired the ability to dream again, for I would gladly prefer falling into joyful oblivion each night instead of that dreadful place that haunts me so.

            I suddenly find myself standing in a pile of gray dust, looking straight ahead towards the horizon.  But I cannot [i]find[/i] the horizon.  Stretching onwards in infinite monotony is a dulled, dreary landscape of gray ash, calm and still beneath a windless sky choked by clouds every bit as lifeless as the world they encase in shadowed gloom.  I only know it is the sky because it is above me…but in this barren waste direction is meaningless.

            I tread through the dust at a snail’s pace, and though it parts about my ankles like fine silks I never find myself getting closer or farther away to or from anything.  When I look backwards there is no footprint or sign that I have ever passed in that direction.  As I continue in this purposeless journey I begin to wonder if the world behind me even exists.  Is anything not presently in eyesight really there?  And if it is there…does it really matter?

            There are no mountains, no trees, no lakes or rivers or oceans.  Civilization and its people have long ago fallen before the unrelenting blade of Time.  The sky and earth blend into a single shade of sludgy darkness.  I feel like I am walking through a fog that holds me down and keeps me from making any progress whatsoever, though in my heart I realize there is no destination left to progress to.

            And then everything goes bright.  The clouds above part and I gaze upwards, eyes blinking and watering in their sockets as the brilliant light of the sun ends the tedium of this world’s weary existence before finally dimming and collapsing, tired and dead.  The corpse of Azeroth is finally laid to rest as it is blown away into the aether of the void…and I am sent reeling into that black space like nothing more than an insignificant mote of dust.  But even then I gaze with eyes that cannot help but watch, lids seared away by heat and deathly chill, as the twinkling stars of the universe shine back at me…and one by one wink out and die.  Eventually there is nothing left but me, floating in a cosmos that has lost its meaning.  I look to my hands, desperate to find solace in the reflection of my face in the blades attached so lovingly to my fingertips…but there is no light left to reflect upon them.

I am alone.

            In my dream I look down upon the world.  The mountains look like mere bits of gravel, the roaring rivers reduced to faintly purring veins of blue, the grasslands and dry plains blending together and losing all depth, all significance, and all meaning.  The living beings that populate these far off specks are microscopic, even more devoid of purpose than the soil they trod each day.  There is only one sight that still has meaning to me.  It is the only thing within my gaze that retains its unfathomable strength and breadth, a power that is nearly intoxicating in its sheer chaotic and unpredictable fury: the sea.

            Though I have no wings or means of propulsion I find myself falling down through the atmosphere towards that infinite expanse of sapphire waves, the churning, roiling mass of obsidian beneath brooding clouds ensnared by writhing bolts of energy, the gentle caress of a shore beneath a malleable green hand, the choking grasp of tangible darkness deep down where no light has ever shone.  An entity so incomprehensible and beyond understanding that one might revere it as a god. 

            My ethereal mind drifts back up to the aether-born winds of the void, and I once again find myself looking down at a world of insects.  Compared to the sea, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were nothing more than grains of sand in a desert.  So it goes without saying that those who choose inhabit those grains are infinitely more worthless.  It is those that dare to live upon the cruel and unforgiving seas that are the true kings and queens of this globe.  But what of those that seek to bend the sea to their will?  If one is able to control the magnificent and catastrophic power of the waves…do they too become as untouchable as a god?

            I suddenly snapped to attention as a peculiar smell wafted into my quarters.  My eyes blinked involuntarily, dried by my habit of keeping them open even while slumbering.  With a lurch I dragged myself from the bed and over to the window.  With a practiced swipe of the hand I unclasped it and pushed it back before sticking my head out into the ocean breeze.  The waves were calm but the air betrayed their secrets, and as I scanned the horizon I saw the telltale blackness that was beginning to congeal far off to the west.  The sea was preparing for battle.  At this sight my lips curled back in a wolfish grin. 

“Yer move, dahlin’…we’ll jus’ see which one ‘o us be the mor’al, ‘n which one ‘o us be the god…”