Counterpoint to Cassilda’s ravaging press, banshee-guitars rose up, screeching like the damned singin’ out in The Pit.
Often the sounds of the city burrow into your brain like grave worms. But sometimes they suddenly confront sensitivities as sharply as the gleaming edge of an arcing razor. The hell-storms-into-your-town malice roaring from SYS gashed ears like the latter. SYS’ bass-heavy message was on the march. And it didn’t plod, it swaggered in its jagged pummeling—Just as if it had a mission. And it did! The shit had hit the fan—BIGTIME! The NewThing was out of the box. Yep, bet yer dead-ass. It jammed & rammed & (surerthanhell)slammed. And if they didn’t step aside—FLEE—Superquick—more than 2 screamin’ guitars, a bass & drums, would be in their faces.
BUT they COULDN’T MOVE—Cassilda held them in the black.
The spot offed and Cassilda’s prayer decayed.
A motionless moment. Breath held. Expectation.
The storm-chord hit like the first salvo of a blitzkrieg. Aerial missiles of aural napalm and hot metal poured over and penetrated the crowd, vaporizing all but this moment of power & dark burning rapture.
Waves and spears of STEAMROLLERHEAVY rock rolled over the hellraisers. Then came the whirling/fLaShInG/searing MEGAwattage of strange lights lashing and fanning in synchronicity with the volcanic soundfire.
POP-POP-POP it ripped into ‘em. Their fear gushed out like blood fleeing the pressure suit we term skin.
The black was banished. Exploded. Eradicated. A sharp, tight spot hit the skull-moon face of Cassilda. Perhaps in the bowels of Hell the slight movement of her facial muscles and jaw might be a smile, but here on Earth, even in this den, it was the cold salivating promise of the harshest rending death. Shark-black eyes open full and wide, projecting psychotic madness and hateful blasphemies, body, arms, and hands as tight as piano wire encircling a dying man’s neck, Cassilda’s razor-etched maw opened to deliver the word.
“Slaves of pain & DAMNATION!
Rise and adore your New & Only MASTER!”
Eeee-yowaaaaaaaa! They were outta their seats—as if their asses were on fire. UP! Fast & Hard & Ready as cocks! All were willingly branded by her command. Forever to wear the sign of the King. They loved it!—BUT!—But . . . still they were full of fear.
“In hate, and with malice, the King has bought your soul.
YOU, Death’s OWN,
are but crumbs . . .”
Boots stomped. Burnt throats howled. A frenzied gallop of kickass, combat-ready, eat-’em-alive surging running wild, the beat rode the torture road.
Street-hawked chemicals, adrenaline, and pure unfettered angst melted to fear slammed through the concert-goers’ veins & souls & brains as Cassilda sang.
The sun shook and the earth cracked, murderous indignation rose to challenge and consume Heaven’s light as Cassilda sang on, delivering one ferociously-gritty plague-spell after another.
As suddenly as a 90mph/head-on/carcrash the band stopped grinding their hell-hammer riff.
Cassilda, the King’s beautiful and perfect daughter, spun to face—
An image of great feathered wings of dusky light spread wide. There hovered pure malignity—The King, arms fully extended, welcoming. What little could be seen of the exposed gray flesh of his hands & forearms & face appeared as desiccated as a long-interred corpse in hot dry ground. A carcass denied the preservation techniques of mummification.
Wide, blasted-eyes. Fear-dry throats. None in the hall showed their fangs. Tight jaws and tighter urges tense in their waiting. The stillness of near silence—a few seconds in duration, a few lifetimes in impact—suspended like a waiting noose.
Then the breach, the slight fracture. The low-register bellow of a single chord issued from the pipe organ. It rose and fell like the subharmonic breathing of an unseen leviathan in great rattling breaths. As the vast 5-cycle exhaling was expelled, thin gray/white wraiths, hideously twisted and skeletal, streamed forth from the black pipes etched with the King’s cipher. Bolts of jagged fire hounded their fleeting arcs. In pain the fire-lashed specters writhed in the devil’s rodeo until they were ripped apart by the teeth of invisible rending winds.
The demonic members of SYS knelt head to chest before the image of their King. Hands clasped together as a fist, burning tears from clamped eyes, each adored HIM.
Cassilda arose and faced the crowd, her voice the ambush of the poisoner.
“Suffering children of mortal fire—
Flesh is the mask.
Behold the divine hour,
When flap the tatters of the King.”
Her whisper ascended. A song and prayer across urban abysses, Cassilda’s adjuration flew—finding force, power in its need.
“Come to us, Lord of the Grave!
Come to us, Grim One!
Come to us, Truth.
Ruler of all, behold the anguished flesh awaiting—
Come NOW!”
Enjoined echoes. The crowd embraced Cassilda’s cry to Hell. Shortened. Hungrier. “Come, Truth! Come, O King! Come, O King!” The free chant of the anvil chorus. The stomp. Doom walking. Wanting. Rapid heartbeats lashed to the wheel of heavy need. Hearts painfully aflame. Now LOUDER. A demand. “Come-KING! Come-KING!” Thunderous. Desperation raw.
ON & ON & ON the black petition pressed. Out of the hot arena. Winding & turning. Left/Right/Right/Left & straightahead—thoughtfast. Wheeling around rats sifting mounded garbage and jagged brick angles. Over—under—through—Past speeding taxis and parked cops—Deeper into hard-walled streets weathered by man’s neglect and mutability—Past pissed in alleys that mirrored 12-dollars a night compartments—Past broken windows and the shattered dreams of the city’s ejected scatterlings bludgeoned with disgust’s rough laughter—Past lives sagging with all the forward&backward&aroundAGAIN—Forward & forward & straight to the far/too/fuckin’REAL to be a mere nightmare overTHERE the call hurled. Fast to the target. From senders to receiver—
Into the sky—
Past the moon—
Past stars of every color & configuration—
Ash light . . . clouds . . . formless shining superclusters . . . expanding margins . . . unimaginable cataclysms . . . diffuse rings . . . dwarf & spiral . . . tightly bound broods—
Past arrogance, notion, and hardship—
Though measureless black lagoons of emptiness to the Place Where the Black Stars Hang—
Delivered.
The plea, how it aroused the gluttony of the King. He heard the summons, hoped for a fat table. He turned. Head back, bathing in the feverish want. Motionless. Raw want as hard as hate’s pure heat. His unknowing conscripts awaited. His heavy boots marched forward. Change a letter and the deep toll of his footfalls would have sounded like doom, change the pitch of his breathing and its rasp would have sounded like a slashing razor.
From far, cold Carcosa he came.
~*~
The King came to his table.
There was spread
l
i
f
e
Without
master
or cause
or purpose
it exists.
It rapes the heart.
It’s as heavy as facing guilt in the mirror.
they felt they were lost in it—blind in a labyrinth of traps set only for them
they were right
they stood on the heights
each alone
hands empty of everything
except. . .
FEAR
And each, on their feet or on their knees, having heard the word of the King’s priestess, having felt the cool stroke of the King anoint their brow, gave up their breath and their souls. And having acknowledged the unavoidable Yellow Sign, death’s sigil, each troubled young mortal shed the last of their desires and expired.
Lily beheld it all. Tess & Boo, and even Byron & his ghoul-pack—desiccated, sucked dry. Picked clean. They all lay like scraps. Lily, baptized in th
e pure wild truth, was the last standing.
TruL(il)y
a
l
o
n
e
This wasn’t the Cassilda Lily came to see, to worship. These weren’t the SYS songs she loved—knew—not the ones on her bootlegged tape. She desperately wanted Cassilda to sigh the victorious rituals on the cassette, those so hauntingly akin to the ceremonial minstrelsy of Ordo Equilibro. This wasn’t supposed to happen on the way to heaven! Where did this sudden turn come from?—And WHY????? She’d come so far. Why couldn’t this just subside and be swept away? WHY?
To brave the windmills for a mere glimpse of redemption, and—
And she emphatically didn’t want death. NOTNOW! She’d lived through
—the rape by her brother’s beerguzzling college buddy,
—and Ann’s stupidOD,
—and the ridicule by the cheerleaders & the sluts,
—and her own bungled suicide attempt.
She came here to find life, to bloom and be glad to be in the arms of a beautiful young lover who gave his treasures as freely as his perfect kisses. Lily didn’t want death, she wanted celebration.
But the King—call him Doom or Destiny or the Grim Reaper or the Collector of Souls or Cessation or simply, Death—wanted her for his celebration.
Open, everything inside OPEN, but there were no miracles in this touching. Stealing all the warps & processes flourishing within her, the invader took every self-portrait, every meditation, all the montages collected for rainy days. GONE—devoured—the Lord’s Prayer and the name of her favorite TV show. SO TO—the taste of pepperoni pizza with EXTRAcheese
. . . worries over frizzy hair
. . . rain
. . . shame/BLOOD, but no outer tears her 1st time—Toofast/Toopainful. “Is that all there is?” Later, much later, laughing at it
. . . neighbors
. . . the near-hysteria of spiders crawling on her
. . . the name of the white flowers she brought to the cemetery and placed on (Dear)Ann’s grave
. . . knowing what month followed June
. . . cinnamon . . . quarters for ice cream
. . . Alice’s adventures . . . gloomy wet weather afternoons in the house wishing for The Cat In The Hat or the sun to pop up
. . . beads . . . language/round poems like innocent lullabies
. . . indifference
. . . anger
. . . Aunt Joyce’s flattery . . . why she left home
. . . chanting peepers . . . barefoot summer, running
. . . each visitation of golden blustery autumn
with it’s
kaleidoscope dance of boisterous leaves,
and
bounding, bustling “My, aren’t you just darling.” ghosts & princesses & OLDER-FRANKENKIDS scaring the little ones right outta their SWEETdreams,
and
the BIGFATHUGE glowing jack-o’-lantern on the front porch with rows of candy corn teeth
. . . Tess’ smile
. . . gorgeous Boo
. . . being alone
. . . color
. . . want, emphasis . . . lies—
NO MASKS/NO LIES!
Lily/trembling mumbled as her hot tears ran. Something was shaking her—IT had hooks or talons buried in her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. IT/Agony’s cyclone—all thorns and poison—tore at her belly, scraped cheek & breast & nipple. SHE WAS A STICK IN A DOG’S MOUTH. This was it? THIS? sharpness was the dance?—THE END of voyaging?
Pain & pain on top of pain on top of pain. THUMPthump—THUMPthump—THUMPthump THUNDEROUSLYfast, her heart was choking on its own fear. She was cold. SO VERY(unmercifully)COLD & weak. Frail, quickly unraveling—No hope/No dreams. Overcome by the cacophony/clamor/noiseGRINDING & the shock & the crushing feelings of disappointment & the claws(SOVERYTIGHT) of the raven. Nausea. PARALYSIS—The claws? A whimper(not strong enough to implore) before—
Her head hung, dangled gallows-style/neck snapped. She couldn’t feel her body. Insidedeep there should be texture, petals, ALL the this&thatmarvels of living flesh&blood, NOT the UGLYtortures of this vast infinite crush.
falling,
she was falling.
Lily lay there extinguished. Nothing in her eyes. Cold meat among the dead flowers.
And Cassilda, Death’s demondaughter, glowing as exquisitely as any angel ever rendered in poetic strokes, now in the bittersweet voice Lily had so dearly(so verydearly)loved, sang—
And the King laughed.
~*~
Café Morphine. Just another stop on The Tour. And tomorrow? Who knows? That newly opened Black Metal dungeon in Moscow?—or that deserted warehouse the Vampire Underground used as a concert hall in Paree?—or that steamy club in São Paulo?—or—
Who can say? There are so very many ripe gardens of pleasure these days.
~*~
On the street the marching gaunt clad in black & black & angst-unbridled spanned a single step on the uneven, cracked concrete. Then half of another. His finger pushed the play button of the boombox he carried, and Cassilda sang—
And in far, cold Carcosa
the King laughed his laugh . . .
The Sky Will Not Fall
The world didn’t collapse suddenly. It didn’t smash into something and die. It was slow to take on this shape. It began in blood; on the day when my father’s blood was spilled, but the emotions—horror, shock, grief, didn’t follow. The bodies on the walls and turrets, and outside the gates, were like stones, gargoyles which had donned vivid colors, and she on her high balcony, looked out over them, slowly, seeing and not seeing. She, my dead father’s wife, my mother, was full of apathy and the city was as cold as forgotten ruins.
I was still young, seething with tragic and riots, and frequent pauses. I had yet to find routine and explanations. I would still defy, and I believed in nets and remedies. I was quick to reply about the consequence of crime and argue necessity and the value of living beings. And on that day, on that balcony, faced with the overwhelming quiet and the despair of the voices which had disappeared into the long shadow of forever, I tried to cast out the spirits of our haunted house.
“The Lord of the Dead and His savages have come calling . . . How many nice girls and mothers will cry themselves to sleep tonight?"
“Are we to submit completely? Mother?”
She sat in her great regal chair, her hair and tears were a mask. I awaited her emotion, her reply. And it came. “Why must you always act as if you are dying of thirst? Leave me, Uoht.”
And she turned back to her stone dance of thought.
I left. There were graves to dig.
~*~
A million hours later, on the same balcony, I looked across the waves at Alar. When Camilla said yes, and I knew she would—she had to accept the diadem and my proposal, I would take my army and burn it down. The sons of Yhtill would know the wrath of Hali’s new liege. And after Alar’s fall, there would be a new world, a new age, where the fogs spun in Carcosa would not infect Hali’s once-bright towers. I would not allow the decay to turn my fair city to mere dust.
“Let it take Alar—banish it from the light of the suns. Plunge its disease beneath Dehme, beneath the hungry waves. Carcosa and her King may have Alar, but she shall never have Hali.”
At the entrance to a hall without spectators, or a clock to mark my decision, I had chosen. The grand hall, once the finest ballroom in Hali, was, now, just a box of dust. I wanted it filled with ladies, and patter, and the inspiring colors of a thousand village fairs. I wanted young and old striding to a buoyant waltz. Yes, music, its joy painting tongues. I wanted to hear one man in Hali laugh. Perhaps my mother, so often lost to her conversations of one, had not fought when her soul dried up with her bones, but my soul longed for the return of spring. Time and her millions of years did not sit upon me, nor would it for many ages to come. And by then the Dynasty, the sons and daughters born of my need, will be revitalized.
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In her cold, dim corner, Mother yawns and the black deathbirds circling o’er the sister cities turn, noting pale flesh on bone. Mother, wrapped in her obsessive mourning, haunted by degenerate madness, the illness that split and quartered the tender flowers of her plump breasts, opens her mouth. Her darkened whisper stretches, “This is the end”. Her nails have grown long and brittle, ancient gray weather has bleached the sunlight from her hair. “I see my fruit, black and in the grave.”
My sword aches to reveal truth to her autumn.
I have a heart. I will stand tall and face the Yellow Sign and Carcosa’s black deathbirds. Hali will not crumble . . . My city is in need of repair, the gray gulls of grief swing low and the cloudwaves press… but this is not the end.
[Adele “Skyfall”]
Tark Left Santiago
[for Karl Edward Wagner]
Tark left Santiago and its stalkers to their experiments of felt. Left behind his bike. Brought his scissors (always)(seems to)(rusted in the endeavors of his ice-white chapters he has to). Wanted to see her legs. In those black stockings. Sheer. Thin. Lovely. The ones with the run in them. The run that ended with a hole at the knee.
He didn’t fit in with them. Wasn’t a stalker, or low, pitiful, wasn’t a thief, or a mirror, wasn’t the Anti-Christ spilling statements of distance and damn it all on the broad veneer of abstraction. Let them say what they wanted. Let them. They would anyway.
But what would she say?
Hi and smile?
Hiss?
Try to bite him?
She might have a gun. Might still look like the woman in the black and white film. The one who didn’t smile. Not ever. Not even After.
Another After.
One more for the line. One more road to push it out on. Let it walk. See how far it would go. And if it lead anywhere.
The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 Page 16