Gabriel's Horn

by C Ross

and continued chuckling himself while choking on his own blood.

  “Down to business now, my boy,” with a quick movement he slashed my face above my left eye. I don’t know if my perception can be trusted as my sight was obscured, but in those moments I saw indescribable horrors. Fleshing splitting, inhuman screams, erupting fountains of bloody gore and the stench: that terrible stench.

  But it wasn’t long before a dark mist rolling in from the outskirts of my vision, and thankfully I passed out to the soft whisperings of my murderer.

  …

  A burning sensation in my skull woke me up suddenly. It felt as if something was hatching out of the top of my head. I clung to the sheets writhing from the pain that struck across my face.

  “Up the dosage,” someone said and once again I sunk into a drug-fuelled slumber. The next time I was conscious I could almost rise out of the bed.

  “Whoa, whoa. Easy there,” someone gently but firmly pushed my chest back into the bed. The whole interior was blindingly white. I was in hospital that was clear. The bigger realisation that immediately followed, as I recalled my last conscious memories, was that I was alive at all.

  “You have been the victim of an attack, Mr Garett,” said the Doctor was recording figures from some sort of medical device. “My name is Dr Bhaji and I will ensure you are fit and healthy before you leave my care.”

  “I remember bits and pieces, but what happened to the man?”

  “Ah just a second sir, I believe some officers want to speak to you about that.”

  “Yes but I need to know if-“ but the Doctor had left before I could get a word in.

  I felt angry at his rudeness. Angrier than was justified, I wanted to throw him out of the window and even though I was aware my level of anger was unjustified this awareness didn’t calm me down.

  With great effort, I propped myself up as the two police entered the room. I attempted to smile but the facial expression tugged on the stitches holding my face together.

  The female officer sat next to my bed and took out a small notepad, in the process she damaged the stem of one of the sympathy flowers. “Okay, we’ve just got to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Okay, go ahead then!” I barked.

  She looked taken aback by my aggression, as was I. Defensively the male officer took a step forward, “We just need to iron out some details, we don’t think you’re a murderer of anything but…”

  “He’s dead…?” I asked half to confirm that the beast was truly gone and half because I didn’t believe he could be killed.

  “Yes, and it looks like you put up a hell of a fight. We linked him to another murder that happened in the area prior to your attack.”

  I felt like crying out of the sudden relief that my attacker would never be able to find me again. “It all happened in a matter of seconds I didn’t mean to… You understand that it was either him or me.” They continued to ask me trivial questions which I answered truthfully except for details concerning my attacker’s behaviour. I was overly modest. I told them he wasn’t as intermediating as he seemed, why was I trying to be the big man here? I should tell them the crazy shit that went down. My tongue stirred not. I let the officers confirm the story they had already formed in their mind. A few minutes later and they left me alone with my thoughts.

  I felt different. I didn’t feel like a victim. There was a sense that I was fragile, I felt it with the doctor and the police who acted cautiously around me like I had been fucking raped or something. Perhaps I didn’t feel like I was the victim because I had won, it almost felt like the opposite. Either way, I needed to get out of this room… this cage.

  When Gwen got here everything would be sorted out.

  My agitation slowly grew over the hours as I waited with nothing to do but feel my wounds slowly heal. At first, it came like an almost unrecognisable vapour but soon because aware it was the same smell of rotting fish and sulphur I had smelt on that fiend. My heart rate rocketed, he was here. Without hesitation, I ripped the bedside curtains aside to reveal my old attack only to greeted with empty space. Relax, he’s gone. Nonetheless, the stench remained, and with it brought back memories of the vicious assault I had survived. Although my life seemed to be back on track, the sink followed me everywhere. Out of the hospital into my apartment, at work, it followed me everywhere. It was infuriating, and it had an effect on my mental health. At a specific low point, I scrubbed my skin till it was red and raw seeking. Nothing alleviated the stench which no one else could seem to smell.

  As with all disasters, the relief of surviving wearing off slowly as you become acquainted back again with the little problems which fill the day. However, I didn’t remember always being so annoyed by them. Gwen tried to cheer me up, especially when we were in public and I was found myself causing scenes by having arguments waiters and other minimum wages workers. Gwen was helpful, but ultimately her efforts were only emasculating and angered me more.

  Some things don’t fade, his face for example. Not that I was horrified by the memory of it, but as is the running theme; it was annoying. His gloating smug face. He had won the fight, but I had survived how was that possible. It set me off thinking about death a lot and the afterlife.

  I found the topic intriguing to think about at work, probably because of the lack of life I saw around me. I should be happy to be alive, that’s what the doctor said. Sometimes I wish I had died on that lonely woodland road, in the filth of that gutter. At least then I wouldn’t have to deal with the bills. Fucking bills, the constant wolf at the door. That’s the thing with modern life, there isn’t any finality. Things just go on and on and on. That’s the reason I hate that smug little face, he’s free from the tediousness of daily life.

  It’s not all gloom though, there is a glimmer of hope in this dark patch. It appears the night air soothes my short temper as well as blowing away that incessant sulphurous smell. I think about the history books I read in high school. I think about a lot of things as I take my night walks but history interests me especially. I wish I could travel backwards into the times of legends and myth. The trouble with society is that we have forgotten the virtues of the past. Instead, we value new technology, but it doesn’t really solve anything, it isn’t truly technology in the terms of how the wheel and fire helped humankind but is instead another type of vanity. A new gadget comes out and then a newer one. Same thing with magazines and newspapers, the new issue comes and suddenly the last one is worthless. And the stories in it are useless as well: last month tomatoes caused skin cancer and now they cure it. Gwen loves these sorts of cosmopolitan publication, she loves to do little quizzes and put peoples in boxes. Apparently I have PTSD and then next week (according to the next issue) I am a “fucking psychopath”. She’ll come back from her mother’s with the latest Women’s Weekly feature which will show, according to the scientific data of some yuppie journalist, that I am a fucking unicorn. Fucking bitch, I never liked her anyway. Doesn’t she know it is too late? You can’t turn back time , the river flows in one direction, downstream. I am living in the stagnant backwash. But I am climbing out using the something the modern world has forgotten. A warriors code: my survival was a disgrace and a dishonour, I should have fallen upon the sword. It was his right to slay me as he beat me in martial combat but… Argh, that incessant smell haunts me again!

  But he let me live and he knew what my life would be, a curse. How do we fix a curse? Even a child knows how, through a ritual. I look in the mirror and see the same face as my attacker. Tortured and alone. The same cast across my face. But he was smiling in the end, he was happy. I need that.

  I feel like a night walk. An end can be achieved, and I have known this all along. All it will take is two knives and a brave opponent. A champion, I understand now. I am watching the sunset and the smell is overwhelming, there is no point resisting it anymore.

  The sickly sweet stench must spread and I will be its deliverance.

  Homage to Human Nature


  Day by day,

  I shoot and play.

  In the desert

  I hide in the soil

  causing pain and hurt.

  Blood and oil,

  reward for our toil.

  The homeland in denial

  when a Muslim dies,

  a reason to smile.

  The war machine

  milks them clean.

  Breaking arab necks.

  Forever God Bless

  The Military Industrial Complex.

  Promise of Pain

  My imagination is a canyon,

  streams of consciousness carve through the tributaries

  eroding with each flood.

  One path is deeply cut and the pain is an old acquaintance.

  Vivid particulars spark between neurons

  decades in prediction I can see

  my mother lying on a spotless white sheet

  an IV dangles from a breathless being.

  A stifled whimper from a boy,

  who knows death is life’s goal.

  It echoes into the present,

  the river of thought reaches the delta,

  tear ducts dilate with tight fists.

  I can’t fight this battle.

  There is nothing I can do to stop an end for those I love.

  The bedridden face is replaced by friends, family, lovers,

  wrinkled and grey the inevitable fate for some,

  but Death awaits all.

  Why man fears his own death is a mystery is to me,

  it is the final consolation in the face