The walkways under the porticos are abuzz with wineries and debating chambers, artists' missions and fetish clubs, drinking studios and pleasure galleries. There are few establishments equipped for catering for practical needs. Artisans and ironmongers are outnumbered by craftsmen working with soft metals and precious stones. Butchers and bakers are diminished by gastronomic deviants capable of producing absurdly delicate pastries and marinated meats. An illustrious drapery of precious cloths hangs ragged over the entrances of the numerous guilds.
And the Gutter fucking despises the place.
He passes through one district to another, of which there are three: the Carnal District, the Cymbeline District, and the Cerebral District. The Gutter is on the edge of the Carnal District. He passes several girls attired in reptilian sex-suits whose hair is braided with live snakes. When he passes them, even the snakes recoil at the sudden blast of the stench he bears.
It makes him smile: and, when he smiles, you can see how he has removed his teeth with a set of tongs for the purposes of sucking up his foodstuffs with greater efficiency.
But now the Gutter is growing restless, his glances darting like sparks from his eyes, and his gums chaffing with slavers on his lips. He is looking for a particular door with a particular sign carved upon its lintel, but not so visibly as anyone might see.
Within two or three hours of conducting his search, he discovers the sign ― a cleft circle ― over a heavy door made of parched oak. It is the sign of the Information Syndicate. The Information Syndicate have offices throughout the entire continent, but finding them isn't so easy. It is often said that the whereabouts of the Information Syndicate is their most precious commodity. But, if and when you find them, they will sell you information at a price that is equal to the value of whatever it is you wish to know.
But the Gutter doesn't think he'll have to pay, because the Gutter doesn't have any money. He does, however, have a currency that serves him better.
The Gutting Knife.
The Sisters of No Mercy were up against a dangerous adversary.
Whorefrost.
Whorefrost was utterly reviled by female Meta-Warriors because of the extreme nature of his preferred method of killing them.
He had a pale, bloodless physique that looked like gelatine rather than flesh. His skin was smooth and greasy and largely hairless. His arms and belly seemed to consist more of muscle than fat only by the slightest of margins. He was big but not ungainly, with a huge mouth, thick-set lips and heavy jowls that swung pendulously as he walked.
Whorefrost's movements were deliberate and glacial. His preferred method of killing was exactly the same. First, he would try to disable his enemies by shattering their kneecaps, breaking their arms or stunning them with a carefully measured blow to the head. His Weapon of Choice was suitably designed for this approach: a heavy metallic baton forged in the shape of a gigantic penis. His aim was to keep his enemies alive for as long as it took to satisfy the requirements of his bodily ritual.
And this was the part that female Meta-Warriors reviled the most.
Death comes in many guises, some of which are more desirable than others. Death by Whorefrost is perhaps the most undesirable of all.
Should all things go according to plan, Whorefrost's enemy will be lying in a stupor of helplessness before him. It may be necessary to make them even more helpless than they already are, but this is a formality. As long as they're not too helpless, Whorefrost is happy.
And happier, still, when he begins to remove their clothing, which he does with a ponderous delicacy that ensures the maximum arousal of his vital parts, which are by no means a source of arousal for his victims.
Whorefrost's cock is long and thin with a remarkably bulbous head that makes it look like a bauble on the end of a stick. His testicles are disproportionately huge and, like the rest of his body, hairless. More to the point, his egg-sac is teeming with semen that has an unusual potency: it is deadly cold and, to this extent, is biologically devastating.
Whorefrost's sperm is as thick as pus. It is also capable of causing the spread of frostbite within seconds which, when it spreads, causes a slow and insidious destruction of the body, from inside out, that lasts a matter of minutes or even hours.
Extreme cold burns like fire.
When he has dumped his seed in his enemy's nook, she feels a sudden numbness that, by gradual stages, begins to burn. The numbness is like a chill of ice which rapidly diffuses with the forcefulness and feel of acid. The acid sensation quickly grips the womb and begins to spread throughout the internal organs ― the bowels, the guts, the spleen, the stomach, the kidneys and so on. The insides begin to boil, then become gangrenous and begin to rot. A further stage of numbness may occur, but only after a lengthy period of emphatic suffering that no other pain in the world can equal.
Which is why Whorefrost is especially reviled by female Meta-Warriors. But which is also why he is more reviled by their male counterparts.
An anal ravaging is bad enough at the best of times. But when Whorefrost is doing the buggering, the degeneration of the anal cavity, followed by the deterioration of everything else, is not a thing to be taken lightly.
It is apparent, then, that the Sisters of No Mercy were up against a dangerous adversary.
And the only comforting thought about it was.
So was he.
The stairwell was in darkness. It smelt of damp plaster, mildew and dry rot. The stairs curled upwards in a crooked spiral. Sometimes they sagged. Sometimes they stiffened. Sometimes they increased their steepness. Sometimes they almost flattened out. Sometimes they seemed so brittle that they would break. But they didn't. There were no landings, no doors, except at the top.
The room at the top of the stairs was a room of shadows. Two men lay on either side of the doorposts, their limbs twisted, their bodies soaked in blood around the chest, midriff and thighs.
They had died quickly. Too quickly. Their cries had been silenced before they could summon the breath to make them. Two broad cuts across their throats had silenced them forever.
These men had been assistants to the Information Master. Their true purpose in life, however, was to act as his protectors.
Clearly, they had failed.
The Gutter had the Information Master by the throat, the Gutting Knife poised against his belly.
"Rest assured," he said, "that you will speak." He cocked his head. "Unless, of course, you prefer to be gutted."
The Information Master wheezed because the Gutter was gripping his throat too tight. The Gutter slackened his grip.
"Speak," he said. "Or." He applied a miniscule amount of pressure on the Gutting Knife.
It was enough.
This time, the Information Master didn't refuse to tell the Gutter everything he needed to know ― about the Psychomatics, about where he must go to find them, and about where he might go to finish them off.
"So this is the fucker who likes to fuck all the other fuckers," said Little Sister.
"Looks like he's fucked himself with a fucking claw hammer." Big Sister scowled like her mouth was full of sour milk. "His face shows years of experience of being ugly."
Whorefrost smiled, and it was, as Big Sister had said, a truly awful sight.
"I will take great pleasure in dipping my oar in your waters," he said, rubbing his baton against his groin to emphasise the point.
"The only thing that'll be getting dipped is our blades in your blood."
Little Sister drew her long sword. Big Sister drew her short sword.
Whorefrost unstrung his greatcoat made of wild heifer and threw it behind him. He was bare-chested, his torso glistening like a chunk of lard. His tight pantaloons showed the full measure of his excitement. It was big.
"Pretty soon," snarled Little Sister, "we'll be ramming that cock of yours down your own fucking throat."
"Oh," said Whorefrost, "I think that me and my cock'll be doing the ramming." His huge mouth formed a broad, lasc
ivious sneer. He raised the baton, rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb, and took a step forward.
Little Sister spat an unintelligible curse. Big Sister slapped the flat of her blade against her palm and positioned herself in a crouch.
No wonder Whorefrost was aroused. The Sisters of No Mercy were an impressive pair who did little, clothes-wise, to conceal the fact. Little Sister was short and extremely curvaceous, her thick arms and solid thighs betraying an immensely powerful strength in one so small. Big Sister was sinuous and agile, her flat breasts taut and masculine alongside Little Sister's sumptuous orbs. But anyone with any pretensions of fucking them was asking for trouble. The only people the Sisters had sex with was each other, and anyone who tried to prove otherwise would pay a very heavy and painful price.
Except for Whorefrost.
As far as he was concerned, their cunts were his.
Once, they had been three, clutching each other as they slept. In the recollections of their dreams, they would walk again in the Forest of Sores, hand in hand through trees as thick and closely knit as they were.
But these trees were of no ordinary caste; nor were they the product of the functions of Nature as they are normally perceived through linear means of scientific enquiry.
The trees of the Forest of Sores were a corruption of the basic elements of form ― with whips and flails instead of branches, razor-wire instead of leaves, and shards of glass instead of blossoms.
Corruption, however, is of itself a consequence of Nature.
And so it was with the Sisters. With every step they took, their naked bodies were shorn of skin or cut to the bone or flayed of flesh; and their blood would turn to puss instead of scabs because of the constant rawness of their wounds.
At night, they wept together in the darkness, shivering on beds ofwet moss, soothing each other's wounds with tears. In the morning, when they woke, they would begin again their aimless migration through the abysmal vastness.
There was no sense of the world's passing in the Forest of Sores, no fleeting indication of the motions of time. The momentary provocations of agony were equal to a prolonged suffering that defined them forever.
Random violations of innocence are liable to induce a reaction of ferocity. The wild beast that suffers the taunts of the baiter responds with a superior malice in its defence. There is an abiding equality between chasteness and cruelty ― just as a diamond is an intensification of the mineral implications of coal.
The Sisters of No Mercy were in a very bad way when the Mother of Sores called them to her roost. But the Mother soothed them with her balms and tended them with a loving hand they had known only for each other. Then the Mother told them of what they must do to purge themselves of their eternal suffering in the Forest of Sores.
And then the Mother gave them Weapons.
Once, they had been three, searching together for enemies in the world of linear men.
But not anymore.
Middle Sister was dead.
And the Sisters of No Mercy would honour her memory with a measure of cruelty that was equal to her prodigious chasteness.
The Light That Never Shines was accustomed to shadows. Or maybe the shadows were accustomed to her.
Either way, she slipped from the gloom like she was casting a cloak off her back, and blended in with a shaft of light that filled the street like liquid metal fills a mould.
The Light That Never Shines was hungry for a skin to wear. She dressed herself in skins and could reproduce one for every occasion. That was the secret of blending in. Her body had absorbed them and she could muster them at will ― a skin for all seasons ― and right now was the season was for harvesting.
She smiled, but it was nothing to do with feeling happy. She smiled because it was always the season for harvesting.
And tonight she was planning a good yield.
The Salon of Catastrophists lay on the border between the Cerebral and Cymbeline districts. It was a guild frequented by an exclusive coterie of artists, poets and theoreticians renowned for their speculations on the various ways in which Life as they knew it would come to an end.
The Salon of Catastrophists was a square-shaped, spacious auditorium with a high ceiling and no upper floors but, it was said, plenty of lower ones. On the whole, it was grim. It was also one of the few buildings in the city whose walls were divested of the pictorial extravagance that was common to others. This was in keeping, however, with the principle that buildings should be decorated according to what they were used for; and, given that the Salon of Catastrophists was used for discussions about catastrophe, it is only right that its walls remained bare.
Members of the guild generally assembled to practice rituals of attainment and loss, consisting of recitals, readings, performances and exhibitions, followed by uproarious drinking sessions (lasting for days) that were intended to convey the passage of Life through various stages of degeneration. Yet, in spite of the seeming absence of formality, the Salon of Catastrophists was organised into two distinct intellectual groups.
Overall, it is agreed by the Catastrophists that the Universe is encoded with contradictory conditions of order and chaos which necessitate its failure as a sustainable entity. To this extent, all things are destined to perish: but the question remains as to the nature of how?
In their attempts to resolve this issue, the Salon of Catastrophists has become divided into the Continuity and Discontinuity Schisms.
The Discontinuity Schism believe that the destruction of the Universe will come as a result of a catastrophic deterioration or collapse -a Cataclysm ― while the Continuity Schism is firmly opposed to a climactic destruction, and prefers to concern itself with theories such as the "Permanence of Disorientation." The Permanence of Disorientation states that the Universe consists of a continual extinction of its contingent parts, which are simultaneously replenished by their re-emergence as universal forces (life, light, precipitation, and so on) which, in turn, begin to decay at the very moment of their re-emergence as existing phenomena.
There are, of course, various interpretations that apply to Continuity Theory, but the Continuity Schism can be roughly summarised as a belief that the world exists in a state of perpetual calamity, which also implies that Existence and Time are essentially meaningless.
As such, the Continuity Schism tended to appeal to thinkers who were not inclined towards divine interpretations of catastrophe, while the opposite was true of the Discontinuity Schism. But the Continuity Schism did have its share of fanatics.
The Psychomatics, for example, were prepared to take extreme measures in order to emphasise the legitimacy of their position. They were the militant wing of the Continuity Schism who sought an active involvement in the way of the world as they defined it. In other words, they liked destroying things ― or, more to the point, they liked destroying people. Which is why they had developed a formidable range of expertise in various means of sabotage and assassination.
It had taken the Gutter a lot of effort to find this out ― and a lot of gutting. He had first been alerted to the Psychomatics when he was doing some reconnaissance work on a Meta-Warrior called Hecticon who was posing as a linear usurper in the disputed northern province of Uin. As luck would not have it, the Psychomatics had tried to assassinate Hecticon while the Gutter was trying to figure out a way to do the same. When their attempt had failed, Hecticon stepped up his security measures which made him temporarily unavailable for an appointment with the Gutting Knife. So the Gutter decided to do some reconnaissance work on the Psychomatics instead. The fact that they'd targeted a Meta-Warrior like Hecticon had led him to suspect that they might have been acting under the influence of a non-linear element.
Which, as it happens, is perfectly true.
There was a bee wrestling with a bud on the ground that had fallen off the broken stalk of a wilting flower that was growing from a crack in the ruptured brickwork.
The Light That Never Shines reflected on the fact that
she had seen linear men and women work with the same mindless vigour, and with the same failure to comprehend the underlying motivations of their most rudimentary tasks.
"Are you any different?
"Of course," she replied. "My automatic functions are distinguishable for their emphasis on the wilful elimination, rather than preservation, of my species. To this extent, it is not a question of performing rudimentary tasks in order to survive, but a question of killing or being killed."
"Is there a difference?
"Yes, there is. It depends on the amount of risk you are exposed to. I am exposed to an extreme measure of danger in performing my routine tasks; a common bee is exposed to much less; while a linear human (except in cases of disease, famine or war) is exposed to almost none at all."
At the same time, the Light That Never Shines had been careful to take advantage of occasional individuals who surfaced from the linear tide with an almost Meta-Warrioristic compulsion to commit themselves to a cause.
"But who's to say they're right to do so?'
That's obvious, thought The Light That Never Shines.
She was.
The Light That Never Shines arose from her basic element wearing a singularity of dark matter that had no basis in ― was a precursor of ― the totality of form.
Emerging from her non-awareness, and having only been able to register her existence through emotions, she was formulaically integrated into a linear means of physicality.
The Light That Never Shines had known the primordial absence of herself without ever knowing that she had existed.
Until that time.
"Existence can only be measured by the fact that it must come to an end," she told herself. "Is this what it means to say, I live? Which is only another way of saying that I must die?"
The Light That Never Shines had harvested a multitude of skins in order to saturate herself in the depths of personality that she was lacking until, finally, she consisted of more expressions of herself than she could account for. The intellectual capacities of her various aspects are boundless to the point that, mathematically, she is devastating and, poetically, she is the purveyor of many fine examples of genius.
The New Weird Page 32