Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse

by Christian Winter

  I was forcefully doubled over again and my veins burned once more. I spoke dread naughts between gasps as hot sweat ran past my eyes and blood rushed into my head. “I am pushed to my knees for things no one believes in; I draw breath for things no one believes in; I swing for things no one believes in; I swing for mouldering ideals, and one day Tristan your glistening guts will swing from my sword.”

  He sighed, then rose up out of his chair. “Tell me more about Scammander and those oblivion words,” his eyes flashed insidiously as he grabbed me by the throat and shoved back against the high-backed chair. “That’s what I really want to know about.”

  “Philosophy,” I gurgled through his stranglehold. “Philosophy, philosophy, philosophy.”

  He looked down at an open book of black magic as he released a deep, nervous breath. Tristan tucked his hair behind his ears and stretched his arms out. I could see his fingers twitching he was so nervous.

  He mixed the fluid extracted from my spine into a phial of bubbling blue liquid, then poured it across his hands. He screamed as his flesh began to puff and boil, turning into a dark grey and then again into black. Bubbles of skin swelled and popped and the flesh fell away before finally hardening and bubbles turned to dark grey warts.

  Tristan fell to his knees, holding his quivering hands in front of his swollen eyes as he began screaming. “What have I done? Oh what have I done?” He wept as he sank to the floor, sobbing and trembling. He curled up in a ball and fell asleep, all the while he muttered mystical sayings as he wheezed and whimpered in his distressful slumber. For once I was actually rooting for my torturer, hoping his deranged, magical whispers might thread together a syllable of total destruction.

  Time passed as it had for thousands of years—slowly and without event. When Tristan began stirring on the ground I knew I was going to be forced to talk, and made sure his return to wakefulness was as unpleasant as possible.

  “Oh good you’re alive. I was worried for a moment that I had been robbed of the pleasure of murdering you.” Which wasn’t entirely true—I could still profane his corpse. There was always pleasure in that.

  “You…,” he stammered as terror and dismay spread across his countenance.

  “What I told you is irrefragable. It is your notes which must be wrong, or the way in which you tried to use magic.”

  “No more forgetting cow,” he slobbered angrily.

  With a strange chalk the color of bleached pomegranate he drew a giant eye with long lashes over my heart. Next he enclosed the eye with a circle of feathery wings. Then he drew a circle of mouths around the wings. The mouth at the top of the ring was open and smiling while the mouth at the bottom was closed, but had a forked tongue slithering out across its lips.

  I knew what was coming next.

  “Get that claw away from me,” I growled as his long dark hand softly set upon the side of my face.

  His cool skin began to burn my face and I screamed and thrashed in the chair. As my boiled face stitched back together Tristan began to talk backwards. His pupils turned arctic white as they began to roll around.

  The room was draped over in a taciturn indigo, refulgent with thick shadows that stretched across the floor or gathered in corners. Everything was icy and still. Even spiders balanced on their cobwebs did not move. Spectres and soft memories gamboled across the midnight vale of my mind, lilting into moonlight spilt across glossy green vines, then slipping back into the shadows. But even in this darkness my memories could not hide from my speech, so I began to decorate them as I spoke—with adjectives.

  Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit

  “Perhaps even these distressful things will be joyful to remember one day.”

  Virgil

  I rose to the top of the stairs and entered the final floor.

  It was commodious, quiet, and lustrous.

  It was going to be destroyed.

  I saw a youth weeping right next to a door to the room where all the wealthy merchants must have gathered. A large urn the size of a pot of basil was sitting at his feet. When he heard me approaching, he looked up with sparkling, wet eyes.

  “I have heard the horrors below, and know that I must share their fate,” he said as his shoulders shook and he fought back tears.

  “And how have the others on this floor not heard?” I said slowly and began to scan the shadows and corners.

  “They don’t live like the rest of us,” he said balling a fist. “Up here, they don’t hear anything down below.” He looked at the urn once more. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I have failed to deliver your heavy message.”

  “You were never supposed to deliver it,” I smiled. “The message is mine to deliver.”

  “And fate is mine to accept,” he said loosening a long, tremulous sigh.

  I slipped my sword slowly out of the scabbard, then noticed a folded book sitting in the boy’s pocket. “You read?” I asked, quietly sliding it back.

  He nodded. “The man in the stocks was teaching me to read, write, and think. My family was not rich enough to send me to school, and no house of merchants would approve me for loans to pay for school. So I have been condemned to suffer poverty, delivering messages from one house of merchants to another,” he paused to wipe his nose. “The very fact that I couldn’t read was what won me the job, since they would have no reason to fear that I might read the contents of the message in secret.”

  “The vintner?” I said. “What was his name?”

  He sighed and wiped his eyes. “He would never tell me.”

  I looked at the door, then back at the youth. “And what is your name?”

  “Lucifer,” he whispered. “My parents named me after the day star. They said I was bright and full of hope—that I gave them hope and filled them with light and joy.”

  “Well Lucifer, my name is Evander. I am to deliver a dark hour and usher in the eternal night of this world. I will spare your life if you promise to go slowly through each of these floors below, observing the slaughter. If you emerge from the tower while I am still here, sacking this city and its proud merchant towers, then I will cut you down in the street, and you will be like the rest, a corpse with no name.”

  He nodded. “Everything else is done,” he said looking at the door. “Once you enter, once you shut the door, all will be over. My father was a locksmith, and I had to learn the art so I could enter forbidden places to practice reading books.”

  Suddenly Lucifer leapt up with such speed and height that I stumbled backwards and grabbed my blade. But the youth was smiling. “That’s my other talent,” he said still grinning and wiping tears off his red cheeks. “Leaping.”

  I thought about letting him observe the coming mayhem, but I couldn’t be sure I would spare his life after the slaughter started.

  “Evander—do—do you have any last words for me?”

  “You young lamp,” I whispered with twinkling sidereal joy as tears welled up in my eyes. “Happy is he who knows the cause of things.” And with that I turned my back on him and severed our gaze. I knelt down and tucked the urn under one arm and grabbed the door knob, but my hand slipped off since it was covered in so much dark gore. I wiped it on my robe, rubbing fresh blood over the darkened, brittle stains, then slowly turned the knob once more.

  Happier still is he who causes the end of things.

  I entered an ornate, gilded chamber where human merchants were celebrating and cheering. In the middle of the room was a giant desk; on one side of the desk was a series of enormous floor-to-ceiling windows and on the other, a giant mirror.

  “The market is ours!”

  “We should begin celebrations immediately!”

  “Wow a minotaur! I thought they were extinct! How much did he cost?” one said, pointing to me. “You all planned this all along didn’t you?” he said smiling and clapping his hands. “I heard rumors that there was going to be a big surprise today, and somehow Trymalchio was involved,” he chuckled and reclined in his chair. “Is that you
under that costume Trymalchio?” he said looking at me then looking around the table. “What a great day it has been for me! What a great day for humanity! My birthday is crowned with news of market domination and someone has spent a great deal of money on this minotaur costume! Please! someone tell me how much that cost? How much?”

  They all turned in their seats to look at me. I slowly approached the table until I stood at its head, then removed the lid from the urn and set it calmly on the table. A putrid odor swept out across my face and spread down the table as the humans grimaced and swatted at the air in front of their noses.

  I spoke slowly and heavily, for these words were ominous and odious and laden with black destiny. Sentences like this often flowed from my mouth that day, and struck existence like humid, wild lightning, transverse and potent. This kind of speech had seldom been heard anywhere in the world, less in cities, and even less in a human city. It is likely to be millennia before it is ever heard again.

  “You can take your own life, or you can take the death I give you,” I said sweeping my eyes across the room. They stared at me in disbelief.

  “Now wait just a minute, this is preposterous. Get security in here at once!”

  And then I spoke again with the psalmy accent of truth, which is ponderous and terrifying and is seldom spoken in cities.

  “There is no one to save you. There are no gods to sort you out. You cannot hide behind the moralities of philosophers, for there is no more philosophy. You cannot hide behind the songs of the poets, for there is no more poetry. You cannot hide behind your own craven species, too timid for the tumult of justice, for the time of man is over.

  “From your falsely gilded chambers you whisper curses over cradles of the benevolent and just. You deemed yourselves gods too big to fall, but now by a frowning titan see yourselves overthrown. There is nothing so sweet to me as the weeping and wild faces you make as I cast you over the edge of life’s border, out into dark oblivion and the shady kingdom of the Prince of Withered Leaves. This is an unepic hour, and the unending millenniums that flow and wash forth through time will splash without recollection of your small lives.” I grimaced and glared at them. “Know this you gnats: it is Brock Highkeep who strikes you down, though you be low already.”

  I reached deep into the dark blue jar and as I unfolded my arms produced Trymalchio’s wet head in my left hand, and burning Momentum in my right hand. I leapt up on the table and spiked the sword with white fire in the middle then thrust Trymalchio’s dripping head on the pommel.

  Screams erupted from the pack of merchants as they pulled at their hair and shot out of their seats.

  A wormy merchant emerged from under the desk and began desperately crawling towards the door when I grabbed him by the ankles and flung him across the room into one of the windows. It shattered around him as he fell limp to the floor. I rushed over and grabbed his fat ankles, dug my hands into his soft silk socks and hurled him through the broken window. The side of his face smacked into the frame and his neck cracked and his mouth fell open as he went spinning sideways out into the night with his hands and feet spread wide.

  Oh, but what are the lives of men?

  I turned around to see the pack of humans gathered in the corner desperately tugging on the door. I grinned at their coming doom. For the first time in my entire life I felt—good.

  I leapt on the table once more and tugged Trymalchio’s grim visage off the blade and wrapped my hand around the soaking sword. I screamed and trembled and shook the dreadful head at them. They burst out of the corner and ran around the room with wild faces, shrieking and weeping and flinging their hands in the air.

  But one was left jerking madly on the door until he realized he was all alone. He saw me glaring at him and let his hands fall from the doorknob. I stepped down from the table as my heart began to race. He sank down then crawled towards me and flung his arms around my knees and began weeping and begging. “Please! Spare me! I kiss your knees!” he said quivering and kissing my knee-caps. “I have trades coming due! I can call others in early! Anything you want my money can buy! Please, what can I do?”

  “Wither,” I hissed humidly. I grabbed his neck and stood him up, then shoved him backwards and slashed the side of his throat. He threw his hand over the gash as he fled spouting, shaking his neck until he collapsed in a corner—all drained and dry—blood all over him instead of inside him.

  But oh, what are the lives of men?

  I found my next victim.

  The first blow impaled him on the wall. He writhed and gasped and dug his heels into the floor as glistening organs pressed against each other, bulging out of torn skin.

  My arms shot back and my shoulder blades pinched as I stiffened two fingers on each hand then jammed them through his weeping eyes. I bellowed and buried them up to my knuckles as I flicked my fingers around in the mushy sockets and the running ocular gel.

  But oh, what are the lives of men?

  I ripped Momentum out of his loose guts and heaved with hate and gazed at the blade’s pale glow—the pallid fire that would not consume flesh. I continued my godlike labor of hunting humans and hurling them from life’s home.

  I tightened my grip on the terrifying hourglass sword as I stalked through the room and assaulted a straggling human. As he screamed and stumbled backwards I swung but the blade vanished as my arm cut through the air in front of his sweaty face. I threw my arm back then sliced through the empty air again, and I kept swinging and he kept stumbling. I swung my swordless fist across his face, then swung again as the blade flashed into my hand from a jagged hissing lightning bolt, and chopped into his face, driving him to his knees, squirting and squirming.

  But oh, what are the lives of men?

  I drove my fist into a man’s face and stalked a plump female to see if there was any bravery left in this room.A race that prided itself on numbers began to beg with words, but I’ve never cared for any word and never cared for any word that comes from a human mouth. “Spare her,” he gulped as thin streaks of blood slipped down his forehead. “For the love of god spare her.”

  “Your god is the market. Your god is dead,” I said with the heaviness of the setting sun.

  I thrust Trymalchio’s twisted, bleeding head into her face as I thrust the blade through her middle. And through one stomach two lives were lost.

  But oh, what are the lives of men?

  I pulled my soaking sleeve out of her stomach and roared as I spun around and sank the sword into the man’s neck until it smashed through his collarbone and drove him to the ground. I put my sandal on his face as he writhed and thrashed from side to side and buckled and flopped on the floor.

  But oh, what are the lives of men?

  Another man went streaking past me. I whipped the obsidian sword over my head and swung high and hard across the fugitive’s neck. Instead of the sword taking the head, the head took the sword, and the body carried both into another woman who was screaming in a corner, dragging all to the ground. I stormed over as she shoved and kicked and squirmed trying to get the fat man off of her, but it was in vain.

  “Please! I was just promoted eleven days ago!” her smeared visage screeched below the bleeding businessman.

  I looked at my sword and watched the wild atomic spray roll down the onyx blade. “Tell me why I should spare your life—and I will,” I said still gazing at the ebony blade. The hypnotic white fire licked at the human skin and the wall but burned nothing.

  The dying businessman twitched and choked and the blade thudded against the wall in the silence as I waited.

  “My…career is about to take off.”

  The last words of humans were always the least poetic of my slaughters.

  I grabbed the sword and stomped on the fat man and pinned her underneath, then wrapped both hands around the pommel and shoved the blade through both bodies. I shook them off the blade, then shoved it through both bodies once more. The kicking and flailing stopped, but I kept stabbing, bringing sundere
d opposites together and then flinging them apart.

  But oh, what are the lives of men?

  I turned back to the massacre.

  The lone man standing by the huge portal of shattered glass collapsed on his knees as his shoulders heaved. He cried and cried, looking over the edge into the rainy night but couldn’t force himself to jump. I threw the blade against the wall, and as lightning flashed through the sky I jammed my knee into his tiny back and drove him to the floor. I grabbed his hair and shaved his throat across the jagged glass shards. Back and forth I drug the neck until it slipped off in strings of loose veins, thin arteries, and shredded skin.

  But oh! What are the lives of men? The lives of men are like leaves, already withering.

  Three Spadefuls for Soren Goodwynd

  “With three spadefuls of earth to commit the deceased, like everything that has come from earth, to earth again—and then all is over.”

  Kierkegaard

  I grabbed another corpse and flung it through the last remaining window. As the body sprawled out into the air enveloped in a spreading spray of broken glass I heard a blast from below. I looked out into the rainy night to see Scammander gun down another human who was paralyzed, held motionless by soft white tendrils of luminescent mist which circled around his neck and wrists and ankles. The wizard casually strolled through a field of bodies held aloft and paralyzed by illuminated gossamer. Most of them were headless.

  Huddled on the edge of the square were the Circle of Friends, who seemed to be screaming and thrashing and swinging their weapons against some invisible barrier. Scammander looked at them and grinned each time before he shot one of the humans. Point blank and in the face.

  Selwyn came forward with her giant ivory bow and drew back the sparkling white string made from the mane of an ancient unicorn. She released the arrow from Elskov, the bow which shatters everything, and it sped towards Scammander—sinking into his crotch and drilling him across the open square. Thick stones and clumps of mud and gravel shot up as he plowed across the square and crashed into the bell tower next to me.