Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation

by Breaux, Kevin

  His eyes slammed towards the bar. Virgil was gone. The angel was gone. The tables were empty. Then suddenly he heard it; glass crashing everywhere, everywhere he could hear and everywhere he could see, he heard it shattering, slicing, falling to the earth in shards and unbearable thuds and blasts. Everything inside him awakened for his death. There was never any Virgil. Virgil was a man he created in his mind to protect him from the light, from the crash, from the end.

  He fell to the ground and grabbed his sax. The sax lay on the sidewalk. He wasn’t inside a bar. He was never inside a bar. There was no bar named Virgil’s. He made it up in his crazy head. He finally saw it, the great realization, when a flash of light filled his vision.

  He felt bright hot light surround him, surround everything, for what seemed like just a second, and then everything that ever was disappeared, the earth, everything. Everything was gone. Before him only space, black space, but for a reason beyond his comprehension he still had his sax in his hand. Instinctively, he pulled the instrument to his mouth when he heard a far off voice say in a whisper. “Blow, Gabriel blow.”

  IMPERFECTION

  by

  Michael B Fletcher

  “Bring the light nearer, damn you!”

  Gren edged closer and cautiously extended the candle over the thin right shoulder of Alchemist Bodick. The flickering light pushed back the shadowed edges of the large copper illuminating the pale liquid mass within.

  Gren watched mesmerised as the long white fingers of the Master wriggled through the substance like maggots fighting for bloodless flesh. He shuddered. A single drop of molten wax broke away from the candle and fell. Its descent seemed slow, almost slow enough for him to reach out and capture it before it caught Bodick’s attention. But it was a fleeting thought, a half hope only.

  He hunched, cringing, still keeping the light steady, not allowing his master’s work to be enveloped in shadow.

  “Arrgh! You idiot!” Bodick spat at the youth’s feet.

  “So…rry,” stammered Gren still concentrating on the candle. “Sorry.”

  “Pah!”

  The youth ignored the ache in his arm and focussed on keeping the pool of light steady - white hands in white fat.

  The odours from the copper were neutral. He found it strange that human fat carried almost no scent. The body had stunk for days as it was rendered down, but now nothing - even the smell had fled the remains.

  Gren’s stomach grumbled, disconcertingly loud, loud enough to break the Master’s concentration. He pushed a fist into his midriff, up into his empty belly horrified that he could even think of food in the close and noxious workshop. The movement jiggled his hand. A drop of molten wax fell.

  “Urgh,”

  A white hand grasped his throat, greasy fingers pressing hard into his windpipe. His head was slowly tilted back until he looked into glittering eyes staring out of the dissipated face, teeth clenched in an uneven line. Gren gurgled as the fingers, trailing lines of tepid fat, slipped up and over his chin.

  “You...you imbecilic bastard!” A spray of nauseous breath gusted over his face. The long thin fingers splayed out, digging into the hinges of his jaw. The pressure forced Gren’s head back until he crashed into the cluttered wooden shelves lining the stone wall. The hiss of Bodick’s exertions came through the clang of metal implements hitting the floor.

  “Finish scouring the bones then clean this up!” Bodick pulled the youth’s head down with surprising strength before swinging away in a swirl of cloak and rancid sweat.

  Gren peered up from under a tangle of untidy hair while his master relit the candle and propped it up where it could light his work. The youth slowly got to his feet and slipped silently out through the door to the cellar stairs. He pulled his dirty shift up and rubbed furiously at fat that clung to the stubble sprouting unevenly across his face.

  He stood quietly for a while in the dim light, sighed heavily and then reached to take the guttering candle supported in a sconce at the head of the stairs. He felt with his work-hardened hands for the security of the rough stone wall before descending in slow, trudging steps.

  The smell that rose to greet him was unpleasant. It caught, acrid and harsh at the back of his throat as he approached the long tin bath set on the floor. As he lifted the candle the light seemed to shrink away from the black liquid filling the bath. A bubble forced its way through the surface and popped flatulently. He gagged and half turned then shook his head, turned back and reached up to jam the candle into a waxed covered sconce on the wall.

  The bath farted noisily.

  Ribs, long thigh and arm bones, linked fingers and toes, vertebra still held together by connective tissue were gripped by the wooden tongs. Black fluid ran off as Gren lifted them onto the rough sacking spread alongside the bath. Several were re-immersed and shaken to dislodge the last shreds of meat and gristle. Occasionally bones twisted loose and fell back into the viscous liquid, but soon a glistening, almost complete skeleton was heaped on rough sacking next to the bath. He paused, scrambled to the foot of the stairs and took several whooping breaths before sinking onto the worn treads. Air shuddered into his body, cold fingers tracing the stone.

  “Gren!” his Master’s voice echoed sepulchrally. “Where are those bones? Hurry”

  Gren staggered to his feet, took a last gulp of air and returned to the pile of bones still streaked with black liquid. He took a quick glance and realised the skeleton was incomplete, the skull was missing. He remembered. The tongs had only just snagged the pelvis but were too small to grip the skull.

  “The bones! Now!”

  “Yes...Master Bodick,” he called in a strained voice before looking at the silent liquid holding the last of its secrets. He pushed his sleeve up past his elbow and eased his hand into the cold glutinous substance. His forearm burned as the acid began eating into the skin. He quickly slipped his hand through the mush on the bottom to snag the skull, finger catching an eye socket.

  He heaved it out, his finger, right index, straining under the weight. The skull shuddered so suddenly that he almost dropped it. A large liquid mass oozed through the neck hole and plopped back into the liquid.

  “Uhhh!” The orb of bone clunked onto the heap. Gren shook his arm vigorously as the pain along his arm grew. He snatched at a corner of the sacking and wiped frantically.

  “For the last time!”

  “Coming,” he gasped.

  Gren pulled the corners of the sacking together and lifted the bones over his shoulder. They clattered dully. “Coming!”

  His Master’s thin form half turned, pale hand gesturing to a long wooden table against a wall.

  “There! Carefully now!”

  Gren laid the bundle gently on the pitted surface and stepped back.

  “Ahh.” Bodick rushed forward and reverently pulled aside the sacking. The bones gleamed in the candlelight, the jaw of the skull half open as if welcoming the alchemist. “Yes. Tonight,” his voice in a reverent whisper, his long fingers stroking the smooth whiteness of the brow. “Then we’ll see.”

  “You,” he swung around in a fluid movement and looked Gren up and down, lips tightening. “Yes, I have an important job for you, but clean that filth off first.”

  Gren glanced down across his dirt splattered shift and black stained trousers, nodded warily and shuffled off to his small alcove at the back of the workshop.

  The fog thickened, its bulk making shapeless forms of the buildings along the cobbled street. Gren knew the way and hurried on. The house was distinguished from its fellows by a single red light flickering in a glass holder on the wall.

  It looks as though I’m expected.

  His feet moved him reluctantly up the step to pause at a solid mahogany door. Its brass knocker was a skeletal fist. He drew himself to his full five foot six inches and reached out. The metal seemed to glow in anticipation. He hesitated before using two fingers to gingerly lift it. But it slipped from his grip and thudded into the brass plate beneath.
/>
  The door swung open almost immediately.

  Gren looked open mouthed into the corpulent face of a middle aged man, shiny satin gown tied with a sash around a well rounded middle. The man pursed a large lower lip as he scanned the night over Gren’s shoulder.

  “Bodick’s bastard I assume?” His voice was surprisingly reedy for such a large man. “Inside and wait in the hall.”

  Gren made an ineffectual attempt to wipe his boots before ducking and scuttling in. The door swung to behind him brushing the edges of his ragged coat.

  “I’ll be glad to stop giving your master my cast offs. Wait here!” The big man pivoted, moved quickly along the corridor and through an arch into a well lit room.

  Gren waited shivering at the contrast in temperature as warm air trickled up the corridor. The gloom surrounding him showed that no light was wasted on visitors. He sighed at the delicious smells that wafted along knowing that his own fare would be far less appetising, when he could get it.

  “Here!” called the man rolling up the corridor with a large holdall in one hand. “Take this, it’s heavy.”

  Its weight, contents sloshing alarmingly, almost pulled Gren to the ground. He used a second hand to steady himself and waited for the man to open the door and let him out. But he just stood there assessing the youth.

  “Mind the dogs on your way back. They’d be grateful for those morsels. And,” he smiled, eyes cold. “You’ll need these too.” He proffered a small purse under the wary youth’s nose, fumbling open the small clip at the top. Gren looked in.

  At first glance all he could see were two eggs, pigeon eggs maybe. Then one rolled to expose a brown iris with an enlarged black pupil.

  “Arrgh!” Gren staggered back causing the holdall to wack into his shins. His back hit the door with a thump.

  “You be careful with what you’ve got, very careful. Master Bodick won’t react well to any damage you cause. And take these!” He quickly refastened the purse and pushed it into Gren’s coat pocket before pulling a large white handkerchief from his gown’s pocket, fastidiously wiping his hand and opening the door.

  “Out!” he ordered and stood while Gren manoeuvred his way around him and out of the door. It closed solidly behind him giving finality to his presence in the house.

  The gust of foggy air seemed almost clean in contrast.

  “What took you?” Bodick rasped as Gren slid the holdall to the floor. “That’s everything?”

  Gren slowly straightened pushing a hand into the small of his back. ”All…all he give me was this,”he nudged the large bag with a foot. “…and this.” He pulled the small purse from his pocket and held it out.

  Bodick’s eyes glittered avariciously as he took the purse and snapped it open.

  “Oh my,” he murmured. “The perfect eyes. Oh yes.”

  He closed the purse and leant over the carefully laid out skeleton on the work table to place it on the shelf.

  “Beautiful. So beautiful.” Bodick’s voice was so soft and low Gren had to lean forward to hear. “But not complete, not perfect…not ready…the hand…the missing piece -imperfect.” He turned savagely and hit out, cracking his apprentice across the face in uncontrollable fury. “You! You!”

  Hands raised to fend off another blow Gren screamed out. “I’ll go ‘nd look Master. Let me find it.”

  Bodick’s voice thundered. “Get out of my sight before I kill you!”

  The lean figure of the alchemist spun around, his black form blocking the view of the skeleton lying supine, white and delicate on the wooden table.

  Gren hesitated, waiting for the Master to demand more from him, to punish him further, but all the man did was to lean over and take the purse from the shelf.

  The youth crept silently away.

  An occasional noise threatened to rouse Gren but he slept like the dead. An errant sunbeam sneaking through a cracked shutter at the back of the workshop lit up his alcove and woke him. He sat up, looking around.

  “The Master. His breakfast!” he groaned, pushing aside the sacking bed cover and struggling to his feet. He dashed cold water on his face and slipped on his old boots. As he hurried into the work room he almost stepped in the pool of blood that lay around the table. The empty holdall was pushed against the wall.

  “Master?” he whispered. Gren stopped at the front door and gently cracked it open. The street was deserted but the low sun told him that it was nearing evening and that he’d slept most of the day. The quiet told that something was wrong. Where is he?

  Gren walked back through the house to the stairs to the cellar. A fug of odour enveloped him.

  He took the steps one at a time, slowly, candle held high.

  A body seemed to emerge from the long tin bath, arms and legs hanging over the edge. Then he realised that it had flesh; it was familiar.

  “Master?” he ran over and grabbed a foot to pull his master from the black liquid. The leg pulled loose, ‘Ahhh!’ Gren stepped back almost dropping the candle.

  “How?” he shook his head and took a deep breath before leaning over the body. The back of Bodick’s head just showed above the black liquid but enough of his neck remained exposed to reveal the long slash. There were other cuts on the arms, buttocks and thighs. His tendons had been slashed through. One arm hung loosely from a flap of skin, the other ended in a savage cut at the end of the wrist, the hand lost in the black liquid.

  Gren ran up the stairs gulping for fresh air. When he’d recovered he walked along to the work table with a frown creasing his forehead. The Master wouldn’t have stopped his work but the table’s bare. Has he hidden it? Why?

  “What am I to do?” Gren slumped down covering his face with hands that still had traces of black.

  He sat in the shadows on the top step watching the moon casting a pallid light across the boggy field that led to the start of the trees. Below him, in the cellar lay his master’s remains, ripped and butchered; blood and black viscous liquid coagulating in pools on the stone floor.

  He’d be blamed. They knew how the alchemist had treated him, abused and humiliated him, but it wouldn’t matter even if he had snapped after the years of cruelty and killed his master. That’s what they’d say. And they’d question what monstrous things the apprentice was involved in. The fat. The meat.

  “No!” he screamed. “The Master! Not me! The Master!”

  Despair overwhelmed him as his world went black.

  “Gren?” the voice whispered softly from the shadows at his back

  He jumped, then froze as a hand slipped slowly over his shoulder and squeezed. A drift of hair brushed his ear.

  “Gren,” the voice was even softer. He felt a waft of cold breath against his cheek and he knew. She was here. She was alive.

  “He never loved you, did he?”

  Gren gave a sharp animal grunt, his eyes trying to look sideways without turning his head.

  “He only ever loved me – even as he killed me for my imperfections,” she whispered, her voice becoming harder. “He loved me. He killed me and remade me to his perfect image.” Her voice tingled in his ear. “But I am my own perfection.” The fingers walked from his shoulder and gripped his cheeks, their length easily straddling his face.

  The fingers turned his head and he looked at a white, darkly framed face; into brown, beautiful eyes that he knew. The long fingers, both white and familiar gripped his head and pulled his lips to hers.

  “No! No!” Gren gasped for air.

  “And he will live in my perfection; always,” her voice a husky whisper.

  He tried to pull away but an arm encircled his waist, the grip too tight. Powerful fingers were biting into his flesh, holding him, caressing him.

  “He never treated you well. Never gave you anything, except…me. So don’t worry, I’ll look after you now.”

  THE WHEEL OF LIFE

  by

  Garrett Ashley

  Beep.

  Get up, your grandfather is dying.

  "Get ba
ck filthy machine bastard."

  William's grandfather had already died once before. But the old man was saved by the machine in his brother Martin's underground storage room, which was once used for refining gunpowder for ammunition. Those days had ended. No one had used gunpowder in years.

  CO2 levels are a minimal 37 percent. Congratulations, it's a good day to be human.

  "Every day is."

  He was afraid of saying goodbye. He was also afraid of his uncle, and all the great things of iron and steel that had collected on his plantation during the second Great War. A horrible sound always emanates from the place. Little machines in holes trying to claw their way up and break free so they can avenge their dead brothers. They're all deep down now, and pose no threat to men and their simple, innocent ways. William could see the fires burning and hear the machines screaming. They deserve to suffer. But he was more worried about his grandfather than his uncle's buried treasures.

  I am detecting high levels of Adrenocorticotropics in your blood. What's wrong?

  "I'm about to go bury my grandfather. You wouldn't understand."

  But I am a good listener.

  Martin met him at the gate and told him not to touch anything. "Don't move around a whole lot when you get in there. It might scare him."

  William held his breath. "I'm not sure if I can go alone."

  Martin closed his eyes. "He doesn't want to see me now," he said. "Just go on down the path and tell the door you're with me. And watch out for Brutus. He's taken on some sort of glitch I don't know how to kill. He might not remember you anymore. So tall now."

  "Thanks," said William. They parted. The path was a little dirt road spanning across a cattle pasture. The smell of burning iron polluted the air. Little gray trees and rotten things were the only signs of life. A machine in a cage at the halfway point whispered in a tongue William had never understood.