APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead

by K Helms

  “Benjamin!”

  Benjamin White thrust his head into the opening, and stopped suddenly when he saw the scene before his flashlight beam. The dead man was ripping bloody chunks of flesh from his professor’s face again and again as the doctor screamed in fear and agony.

  White’s momentary paralysis passed and he hurriedly squirmed through the opening and rushed to his mentor’s aid. He grabbed Farthingham by the ankles and violently jerked him from the dead man’s clutches. The corpse straightened and roared at them as White drug his professor to the opening and helped the wounded man through before scrambling outside himself, but the dead man wrapped in strips of brown cloth did not follow them.

  Benjamin half carried- half drug the professor to their Range Rover, and pushed the old man into the passenger seat before slamming the door shut. Benjamin darted to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. White slammed the vehicle in gear and sped toward the closest hospital in Cairo. He did not witness the corpse crawl through the opening and stumble over the dunes, the wind covering its footprints as it lumbered toward a large group of tourists that busily snapped photos of the mystery that is Giza.

  Prologue Part 3 – Season of the Lich

  The Isle of Hate

  The Plane of the Ark

  Dusk is a garden where darkness blooms. Darkness pools in liquid night and grows long like phantom's cloaks as they seek other dark souls with which to commune. Here the cool moist air gave the island a perpetual low lying fog that the Isle's top predator, the Fog Widow, skittered beneath its shroud like wraiths in search of their next meal.

  Micheliel drew his great sword and slashed at the giant arachnid. With a leg span of twelve feet and standing four feet in height - eight feet when reared back to strike. Venom dripped from fangs the length of a man's hand, but Micheliel was no mere man. Micheliel was born of nobility of the Nephilim race; the descendant of angels and human women- the giants of old.

  The sword cut through the air with a whoosh and the sound audibly dulled as it halved the Fog Widow before him. Black blood dripped viscously from the oiled blade. Micheliel shook the sword, sending the remaining blood spattering onto the stone floor of Shadow Keep.

  A heavy iron door separated the giant from his prey; Baliel the Lich of Ba-al was Nephilim too, but had traded his mortality for the hidden knowledge of ‘the Fallen’. Death had recoiled from him, though the relentlessness of time had ravaged his body. As the cells of his flesh succumbed to disease and decay, that spark of soul had never left his decomposing corpus.

  Micheliel sheathed his sword, reared back and kicked the door with the heel of his plate mail boot. The iron door buckled but did not give. The giant kicked again and the hinges screamed as the metal ground against metal. Another kick and the door crumpled in the center, its reinforcing bands popped like springs but still the door held. Micheliel bellowed in frustration as he summoned all of his strength into the next kick and the door flew back from the frame of stone, sending chunks of basalt with it as it careened into the arched cathedral-like room.

  From within Micheliel heard a scream of rage and the horrific vision of a living incarnation of death darted before him.

  Baliel, the Lich of Ba'al resembled a freshly exhumed corpse; gray mottled flesh covering part of his moldering soft tissue, while the yellow-brown of ancient bone had torn through the flesh and glistened with rotting putrescence. A tarnished crown rested heavily upon the skull-like face and seemed to be held in place by Widow's Web. The sorcerer held a skeletal hand before him with fingers splayed. An enormous ruby ring adorned one bony finger and sparkled in the flickering candlelight.

  With no time to draw his two handed sword from its sheath, Micheliel snatched his dagger from his belt and flung it at the Lich. It was well known and feared of the sorcerer's power to melt virtually any object with a flash of intense heat and Micheliel had no desire to become a pile of ash. The dagger found its mark and pierced one cataract covered eye and exited through the orbital bone on the left side of his skull. The Lich howled in agony and stumbled awkwardly, momentarily stunned. It was all the time Micheliel needed as the armored knight charged toward Baliel, brandishing his sword in both gauntleted hands.

  "Noooo!" screamed the Lich as Micheliel swung the blade and severed Baliel at the waist. The sorcerer's torso slid from atop his hips and toppled to the stone floor with a bone rattling clatter.

  Micheliel stared down at the dying that should have died long ago. Disgusted, the giant spun on his heel without a word and strode from the Shadow Keep to let the Widows feast on the sparse flesh of the revenant.

  Baliel moaned and a spirit appeared beside where he lay and materialized into the corporeal form of a young man clad in white robes.

  "My...Lord..."

  "Shhh..." said the young man who knelt down on one knee beside the head of Baliel. With a look of heartfelt compassion and a casual indifference he plucked the dagger from the Lich's ruined eye socket. The eyeball still impaled upon the tip of the freed blade. The young man smiled as he slid the blade from the orb and absently tossed both to the floor. "Do not worry, Baliel, my servant," said the young man and produced a red orb from somewhere within his robes. "This one will serve you better." He placed the orb in Baliel's empty socket with exaggerated delicacy.

  "I'm dying My Lord," Baliel whispered.

  The young man laughed "Baliel, I think I'll let you loose for a little season yet. I do not believe your work is quite complete."

  "My Lord?"

  The young man dragged Baliel's lower half toward him by a portion of exposed vertebrae. He matched the halves and placing his hands over both severed ends, fused the two together again. "There you are, good as new...well maybe not new, but in one piece again." The young man’s lips parted into a wide grin, revealing row upon row of teeth like cat's claws. Something writhed beneath the surface of his skin, like snakes beneath a bed sheet. "I am, however going to require a payment, a sacrifice for your new eye. You see, this eye is special; it will let you see through the eyes of the dead and the dead inside."

  "What do you require, My Lord?"

  The young man's face shifted back into an appearance of innocence with a sparkle in his eyes. "Noth, your son, I require his blood, his life, for I am a destroyer and not a creator."

  "Please, My Lord, not Noth, anything but him..."

  "It is not negotiable, give him to me or I will take all that you have acquired since your service to me began, which includes your precious Noth as well." The young man raised an eyebrow expectantly, "Your decision?"

  "I will do as you say, My Lord," Baliel said with a grimace of hatred and his new red eye seemed to glow as it gained in power from that raw emotion. The young man nodded in approval.

  "It was always your choice. Free will and all of that nonsense," The youth stood and helped the Lich to his feet "But I am the one that gives you options."

  As quickly as the young man had materialized, he faded into the shadows and with red eye blazing Baliel summoned a Fog Widow with the wave of a hand.

  “Bind my son's body completely,” Baliel told the spider. The Widow’s eyes caught the glint of candlelight and sparked in the dimly lit hall with malign intelligence. “Preserve him,” added the Lich with a humorless smile.

  The Fog Widow drained Noth of his fluids which it held in one organ while replacing the bodily fluids with a diluted venom like formaldehyde. The Widow regurgitated Noth's fluids into a cup for the father of the dead.

  The Lich grasped the silver chalice and tipped the cup to his lips. The blood of the dead was thick and a film of insects floated on its surface. Some of the fluid ran down his chin from ragged lips, but he managed to fill his mouth with the warm corpus blood and spat it in a red mist upon a crystal skull. The blood did not drip down the sides; instead the skull absorbed it, turning the clear quartz a crimson color that swirled within its depths.

  Through the Anubis' eye he had seen through the eyes of the dead Egyptian and witnessed th
e Seven Insidious Spirits expelled from the mummy's mouth in a fragmented cloud of Et Spiritus that had been released and would cause such chaos as to raise the murder rates to heights never before seen on Earth. Paired with his necromancy, those newly dead would not rest, but become enraged at the living, in remembrance of what they had lost. They would be true golems; mindless beings that knew only destruction. EMET would be the Hebraic word imprinted on their frontal lobe by his sorcery. As long as the word remained intact the dead would continue to be reanimated to fulfill their function; only destroying the brain would erase the word and extinguish that false spark of life.

  The sorcerer smiled with no trace of humor and tissue thin flesh stretched over cords of sinew and his lipless face that transformed his expression into a hideous parody of joy.

  Baliel concentrated on seeing through the red Anubis’ eye that now rested in his own socket and visibly recoiled. Soon his mind relaxed and he grew, if not comfortable then at least adapted to the odd sensation. His vision to the other plane wasn’t limited to only the dead, but also to those whose parts of their brain no longer functioned or those whose brains functioned improperly; drug addicts, alcoholics and the insane, as well as the dead. Earth was becoming full of these pitifully dead beings and the Lich was able to widen his search for the traitor Nephilim.

  The Lich settled into his throne, shut his good eye and let his mind file through the kaleidoscopic visions. Through the red Anubis' eye his vision bounced from one being to the next, strobing, locking on for a moment then moving on to the next, like a flip book, hundreds, then thousands, then suddenly…It was him!

  There was no mistaking the red haired giant. On the plane of Earth he was not as large as in his own plane but still formidable and still covered in the scars of his past battles.

  “I see you Regeliel…I see you well,” Baliel of Ba-al croaked with a hatred as pure as that he held for his master.

  . Prologue Part 4 - Marital Bliss

  Whispering Willows Apartments

  Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

  The arrival home from another tedious day of work where Akihito Takahashi worked as a security guard for the Robson Gas Company was always a blissful experience. Akihito hated the monotony of his job, but he relished the quietude.

  Akihito’s face was formed by sharp angles and he could have passed for an anime hero, an Asian game show host or news anchor. His black hair was cut short but for the bangs that fell over his forehead and had a tendency to fall over his left eye, and even though he constantly brushed it aside with his fingers, it always seemed to fall back to rest over that same eye.

  His workday consisted mostly of walking the grounds and checking to be sure locks were secure. According to the pedometer he wore on his side he walked an average of eight miles a day. Occasionally he had to chase some kids out of the rows of vacant buildings that The Robson Company refused to tear down due to tax write-offs. He had worked there for three years and had only had to resort to violence four times. Transients liked to hunker down in the dilapidated three story structures and huff paint or turn tricks and the company looked down upon that type of P.R.

  Akihito or Hito, which he preferred, came from an old-school Japanese family that highly-valued personal success. Hito, however, knew little of that value. He had excelled in school and had attended business school for a few semesters, but had quickly grown bored with it. He got a job at the local textile mill as a common laborer, which his family considered appalling. He worked there for a few months before landing the security job, which his family thought was even worse. He then denounced Buddhism and began attending a Church of Christ where he met his wife, Victoria. Victoria was tall, thin, blonde and very beautiful. Hito had been instantly attracted to her but not solely for her all-American good looks but also because she was smart and deeply religious and as an additional bonus, had a thing for Asian men. After his engagement to her his family had disinherited him.

  Hito married Victoria a month later and found that his dream girl had turned into his own personal Succubus. The more he pampered her the more she grew to hate him and verbally abuse him. He strongly believed that divorce was amoral and believed that God would make everything good in the end. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the Children of God.” It was a verse that he said under his breath a thousand times, but as of yet he didn’t feel all that blessed. It was an impotent mantra that’s power had faded with repetition.

  As usual his wife sat on the couch watching television. “Hi, baby,” he said as he hung his coat on the hall tree.

  “Did you have a good day at work?” Victoria asked.

  It had been a rhetorical question, he knew, but he shrugged and answered anyway. “It was OK, I guess,” he answered and dropped the mail on the coffee table before her. She glared at him as he walked to the kitchen.

  “I just cleaned in here, you know?”

  “Sorry Vic,” he said as he poured himself a cup of coffee. She stood and followed him to the kitchen.

  His shoulders slumped slightly. And the pecking begins… he thought as he spooned sugar into his cup. She immediately grabbed a dish cloth and began to vigorously scrub at the counter top in a theatrical display of irritation. He closed his eyes and breathed.

  “So how was your day?” he asked as he picked up the cup and then took a sip.

  She scoured the counter where the cup had left a wet ring, saw the three or four grains of sugar and gave a loud, exaggerated sigh of exasperation. “We’re going to have ants all over the house if you don’t start cleaning up after yourself!”

  Peck.

  She draped the dish cloth over the faucet. “I went to the bank today and we only have two hundred dollars in my account.”

  Maybe you should get a job. Hito thought, but said, “I can only work the hours they give me, Vic.”

  Peck, Peck.

  Her tone eased a bit and was almost nice. He shivered; it was never a good thing when she started acting nice. “Maybe you should get another job, babe. Maybe you could ask your parents to work for them.”

  Peck…

  “Vic, I already work ten hours a day,” he said and took another sip of his coffee.

  “Do you have to slurp your coffee? You sound like a pig.”

  Peck, peck, peck…

  “It’s hot,” he explained.

  “Then maybe you should let it cool down, genius.”

  PECK.

  “Yeah…” he said dryly and then decided to try to change the subject. “I was talking to Glenn today…” he began.

  “I don’t want you talking to him, Hito, he’s a cheating bastard.”

  Peck…

  “His wife divorced him after she hooked up with that meth head in 8C,” Hito explained.

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “Whatever babe, Glenn’s a liar.”

  “Vic, I saw Peggy leaving the dude’s apartment. She was wearing a towel.”

  “That’s real nice, babe. Did you get an eyeful, did you?”

  Peck…peck…peck…

  Hito immediately knew that he’d screwed up. He was never allowed to mention another woman; if he did she became a jealous nut, though he had no idea why; Victoria was a beautiful woman at least outwardly.

  “Vic, you are way prettier than she is,” he said truthfully.

  Her face tightened and she didn’t look all that pretty at that moment. Her eyes burned through him “Is that why you’re always late?”

  “Huh?” he asked confused.

  “You’re screwing around on me, aren’t you?” Victoria screamed at him in a shrill voice that would make chalkboards cringe.

  PECKPECKPECKPECK…

  Here it comes. He thought. This was probably the worst part, even worse than the incessant nagging and the verbal emasculation, this utter disrespect and contempt that dripped from her lips. She had no filter, or restraint and it made all her talk of the Bible seem unbelievably ridiculous in her profane fury.

  He forgot where he wa
s for a moment and sipped his coffee again. It seemed to him that he spent most of his time at home ducking for cover in this apartment full of hidden little shit bombs and sometimes he came down with a case of shell shock.

  There was a loud thumping from the ceiling as the neighbor upstairs stomped his feet. “Shut up would ya?” yelled a muffled voice. “I called the cops.”

  Victoria angled her head upward and screamed at the ceiling “Shut up and mind your own fucking business!”

  “Vic…come on…” Hito tried to calm her, touching her shoulder. The man that lived upstairs had recently been paroled after serving a two year stretch for assault and battery. Hito didn’t feel like mixing it up after a long day at work.

  Victoria gaped at him as if he had just taken a hearty dump on the carpet and jerked her shoulder away from his leprous touch. “Don’t you try to manhandle me! I’ll kick your ass!”

  PECKPECKPECKPECKPECK…

  Hito fought to control himself. He turned and walked to the door. He wanted to get away from her before he said or did something in retaliation that he would regret.

  She shoved him from behind with both hands. “You want to go? Go then!”

  He sighed and reached for the door. She slapped his hand away from the knob and he looked at her, his face and neck coloring. “You said to go, Vic.”

  She grabbed his shirt sleeve, ripping it along the seam at the shoulder. Her nails dug into the skin. “Get…the fuck…away…from the door!” she said, taking great pains to enunciate each syllable.

  He hated it when she decided to get physical, it wore on his pride. Even though he knew he could snap her like a twig if he wanted to, he was also aware that she thought that she was capable of doing the same to him. Pride told him to show her, but restraint reasoned that it wasn’t necessary, and he fought to shake the thought from his mind.

  “What do you want me to do, Vic?” he asked looking at the floor. He didn’t believe in divorce, but the idea of ticking off God was beginning to look like it might be worth the pay off.