Underneath the Draconian Sky

by Chatwin, Dale M.

  Underneath the Draconian Sky

  A Tragedy

  By

  Dale M. Chatwin

  Copyright © 2014 Dale M. Chatwin.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN – 978-1-326-17652-5

  Cover Design by Jason Scott Adams

  Steam rises up from the carpet on the floor,

  Chlorine from the Jacuzzi is all I breathe anymore,

  Fly me away, fly me away to your side.

  Sleepwalking through each week that we’re apart,

  The letter I sent you has gotten no response,

  And I wait, and I dream I’m made of steam.

  Made of Steam – Dengue Fever

  The magnolia blooms so sweet

  Only torturing me.

  To the stars my love,

  To the sea.

  To the wheels my love,

  Till they roll all over me.

  Gravedigger’s Song – Mark Lanegan

  Underneath the sky of red,

  There’s a storyteller sleeping alone,

  He has no face and he has no name,

  And his whereabouts are sort of unknown.

  Underneath The Sky – Oasis

  Prologue

  The Guy took long, steady strides across the linoleum floor. The room was dark and echoed the sound of creaking leather from his black boots. A man stood in the corner facing the wall, he shuffled awkwardly, his topless body was stained with gelatinous oil and blood; he could sense that someone was behind him. The Guy stared at the pathetic, quivering excuse for a Human and smiled, calm and collected, then spoke:

  “It’s all in your mind, they told you. Your insanity has become a liability. Today is the day your head implodes.”

  The man began to ramble in some foreign guttural language then proceeded to dry masturbate with his right hand over his sewage stained chinos. The Guy brought out a UV lamp, turned it on and hung it on a rusty nail 3 feet away from the wretch; casting a numbing amethyst beam of light. The Human vermin still pleasured himself, grunting and gobbling words nobody would understand; he raised his left arm to his mouth and began to chew viciously on it, savouring the rouge fluid that flowed like urine and exposed raw muscle. The Guy spoke again:

  “Okay Remer Blake. Pray to whatever foul, brooding God you worship and when you meet It, spit on It for me.”

  The Guy took both of his hands and clutched Remer’s head and squeezed; a vice like grip and an insane pressure that caused Blake’s cranium to collapse in on itself; the same way an elephant’s eyeball would implode if you were to step on one. The UV lamp revealed an organic tapestry; thick spatters of white liquid were strewn upon the wall. His naked hands were full of flabby brain and the remnants of Remer’s skull.

  The Guy sighed, left the lamp hanging on the wall and walked away in long, steady strides across the linoleum floor, breathing heavily.

  Act I

  1107

  1

  “Where the hell is 1107?” Palmer Stanley sounded anxious. He fidgeted on the bar stool and knocked back a shot of bourbon.

  “Relax Palm, he’s always on time, never late, never early. The most punctual guy I’ve ever met,” said Sylvester Claproot. He was the proprietor of “The Rift Inn Time,” a pub and illegal brothel that attracted the usual riff raff from the local neighbourhood, but that night, the pub was closed.

  “Well what does he do? Stand outside the fucking door until it’s time for his grand entrance? Sounds like some pretentious nonsense to me Sly.”

  “I told you to relax. You’re looking tense Palmer, how’s about I get one of my honeys to give you a rub down? I think Nancy and Patricia are upstairs and you have 10 minutes to spare.”

  “No, no. Thanks for the offer but I’ll pass.”

  “I wasn’t offering them for free you piss-ant,” Sylvester chuckled and Palmer followed suit. Outside it began to rain, a moment of silence fell upon Palm and Sly, they listened to the moist, marching feet of the Gods.

  “The Aakmanu blessed us with the gift of rain, but dammit, I gotta walk home in this,” Palmer took another shot and continued: “So, brass tacks and all that shit. How many patients are out there?”

  “The count at the asylum was well above 50 but I’m not clued up on the exact figures, 1107 has taken care of 22 so far. They’re dangerous to the wellbeing of this community.”

  “And since when did Sylvester Claproot give a fuck and fry about this community?” Palmer tried to laugh but ended up coughing instead.

  “Since I knew it was bad for business. Imagine; the most insane criminal minds tearing their way through our small town. Both my whores and beer barrels would either dry up or be shipped off to the City of Debauchery.”

  At that moment the front door swung open, Palmer turned around perplexed, but Sly remained calm wiping the bar with his age beaten cloth. The silhouetted figure stepped into The Rift Inn Time, drenched in rain and blood. The Guy had blonde hair, swept back and brown stubble spreading like moss on his face, but the one defining feature on this entity, Palmer noticed, were his eyes, those glistening emerald eyes.

  “There he is!” Sylvester said with his arms open. “Bang on time, as usual…Jeez, you look like you’ve just torn a man to shreds son.”

  “You ain’t far off,” the Guy replied in a soft tone.

  “1107 I’d like you to meet Palmer Stanley; he’s going to be handling my accounts on this little venture.”

  The Guy tipped a nod then walked past both men without saying a word, he opened the door that led upstairs and finally spoke:

  “Is Nancy in?”

  “Uhm, yeah, Patricia’s there too if you want double relief,” Sly turned his head from the Guy to Palmer but Palm was concentrating on pouring himself another glass of bourbon.

  “No, just Nancy.” With that, he proceeded upstairs.

  “Who is that guy?” Asked Palmer.

  “He’s an exterminator, pest control. He takes care of the vermin in your apartment while you’re out banging whores and slinging rocks at spooks.”

  “So a bounty hunter then?”

  “No.” An awkward silence drowned them both.

  “Meeting went well,” Palmer broke it.

  “No, it didn’t,” Sylvester reinstalled it.

  2

  Nancy Mooring was a whore. She wasn’t being exploited, neither was she being used and abused; Nancy enjoyed her job. She was a refugee from Egypt after an Islamic terrorist organisation stole the seat of power from the government. Nancy moved to the Island at the age of 16 and into the small town at 18. Sylvester took her in and it was she who made the decision to become a full time member of The Rift Inn Time’s illegal operation.

  Ms Mooring didn’t know the Guy per se, all she knew was that he had been in town for a week and she was his favourite, and he was her favourite, oh Gods yes. The bedroom was in darkness save for a stream of moonlight that poured into the centre of the room like a silver waterfall. The bed was caught in the platinum veil and in it laid two naked beings, post intercourse. The Guy stared at the ceiling and Nancy held him close, her supple, brown breasts pushed against his heated body.

  “You don’t make any sounds Mr, either during or at your climax. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing my job right with you,” she said, sounding half asleep. The Guy turned his gaze upon her and looked into her eyes; Nancy glimpsed into the glassy realms of his soul and what she saw was a yearning; a yearning for something she would never comprehend. He smiled gently.

  “I’m only in town for another fortnight,” she would never forget how soft spoken he was, how he never sounded cruel, how he sounded like an angel. “After that, you will never see me again.”

  “Where will
you go?” she asked, but received no reply; instead the Guy rolled a cigarette in liquorice paper, struck a match that briefly cast a warming amber glow on his face, he inhaled deep. Outside in the great wilderness of reality, the sounds of foraging raccoons could be heard.

  “I’m going to rest now. I won’t wake you in the morning,” with that he kissed her softly on her right cheek and slept. Nancy lay awake for a few more minutes beholding this complex man. She kept deluding herself, thinking he would one day open up to her, but he never did.

  Eventually Nancy mooring let Old Mother Sleep carry her aloft to the realm of dreams, back to Egypt, to a time where the world functioned differently, and Gods only existed within Humanity’s consciousness.

  3

  The Rift Inn Time was at full swing the next morning. The clientele that were forced to stay at home the previous night due to the saloon’s sudden closure now flooded in to get their fix of alcohol, hookers and under the counter drugs. Sylvester saw the Guy reach the bottom of the stairs.

  “Son, come over here a second would ya?” He beckoned the Guy into his office.

  “I don’t need a briefing Sly, I know what I’m to do.”

  “No it ain’t that, it’s about last night. You were supposed to have a meet and greet with Palmer and, well, you kinda just blanked him.”

  “Ain’t no ‘kinda’ about it. I did blank him.”

  Sly looked as if he’d been slapped across the face, he struggled to get his words out.

  “Now son, Palmer don’t look like much but he has powerful friends, he does the accounts for the Cult of Aakmanu. He and I go way back, always been a workaholic and never handles two jobs at a time so for him to dedicate some time to this project is a gift…”

  “Stop Sly, I know where this is going. You hired me for my services as an exterminator, not to chin wag with a daddy’s boy accountant.”

  “Okay, you’ve made your point,” Sly hung his head like a boy who had been caught watching the girl next door getting undressed in her bedroom. The Guy reached into his black satchel and took out a gold slab; it was roughly the size of your average slab of chocolate and was engraved with Arabic symbols. The Guy laid it on the office desk and pushed it towards Sylvester.

  “That’s payment for last night’s lost business,” he said. Sly saw the slab, his face lit up with surprise and shock. He grabbed the gold and hid it under his desk.

  “Shit boy! How the hell did you get something like that?! You gotta be careful with that shit.”

  “It’s legal Sly, any back alley pawn broker will change it for currency. I have no use for it.”

  “Hmm, that may be, but still watch yourself. Ha, you’ll basically get this back once you’ve fulfilled your task.”

  There was something bitter in Sylvester’s tone of voice.

  “I told you, I don’t want pay.”

  “There must be something you want though, some kind of payoff?”

  “Like I said; provide a bed, food, drink, and a woman. Those are the essentials,” said the Guy as he turned to leave.

  “1107,” Sly said, their eyes met, “another day in the Great Beyond, hope you can still hack it.”

  The Guy flashed a smile, then left.

  4

  Sadistic chortles echoed through the sewers; cackles that made the rats cower in fear. The stench in that putrid underworld was a fetid cocktail of excrement and rotting corpses.

  Travis Stamshaw was a loner and the first thing he did after escaping from the asylum was make himself a home in the colon of the town. It had been a week since the suspicious electrical failure at the Bachman Gardens Institute for the Criminally Insane, and already Travis had killed 10 people. He dragged his victims into his lair, torturing and murdering for his own depraved pleasure. On this day he had been having his way with a young couple in their twenties; the corpse of the male lay in mutilated shreds in a puddle of his own waste while the woman still dangled from the ceiling by her arms. She was still alive, but her arms and legs had been broken, smashed in at the joints.

  “The Aakmanu smile upon those who possess the intelligence to not get caught my darling. Down here in my, humble abode,” he sniggered, “not only will I not get caught, but you’re broken and used body will never be recovered. Your beloved family won’t have a damn thing to bury. There’s nothing more heartbreakingly hilarious than a token funeral,” Travis burst into shrieks of laughter, followed by fits of mucus drenched coughing.

  He took a lengthy pair of rusty scissors into his spider like hands, tossing them back and forth in a pendulum motion.

  “Now my sour apple, I despise women,” he hocked out a glob of creamy mucus. “So I won’t waste my precious time on you, but you will die painfully, that much I can promise.”

  The girl began to cry again, despite feeling emotionally drained from seeing her boyfriend being sexually molested, she had witnessed this creature wear her lover’s skin while he masturbated using rat shit as lubricant. Fresh salty tears tracked down her bruised face, in her mind she prayed to the old Gods, the ones that existed before the Aakmanu’s reign. The ones her grandmother used to rave about in her state of dementia. If the old Gods did exist then she would be with her lover again in some new world. It gave her peace.

  While the girl was lost in her thoughts, Travis plunged the scissors into her belly button, she let out a gasp, shortly followed by a cacophonous shriek of pain. Travis cut her body open upwards.

  The process was slow and clumsy, he stopped a few times to massage his arm muscles. In the final seconds of her life, as her organs spilled into the disease ridden pools of blood and excrement, she smiled and the pain dulled to a throb as she imagined holding hands with the love of her life again.

  The girl’s final thought as the scissors reached her neck was:

  If I’m to die in such a horrific place, it will be with a smile on my face.

  Travis peeled the skin from the girl’s body in one disgusting yank, he unhooked her cadaver and let it drop to the floor in a heap, and then threw the sloppy remains of the girl on top of her boyfriend’s dead body.

  “Let’s see the police try to deduce who is who…oh, wait, there are no police!” He howled with laughter, like a werewolf being tickled. “The Cult never venture into these parts, oh Stamshaw you clever bastard,” his stomach began to growl with ferocity.

  “A blood lust sure makes a guy hungry. I’ll go topside for food, maybe for topside of beef! He he! Then I think I should move on to a different location.” Travis gathered what little gear he had and made his move.

  “Check.”

  The ladder he used to escape the sewage tunnels was coated in moist moss, nature’s grease. His mind flashed between the images of the deceased (and now decaying) couple whom he had laid to rest in filth, and a juicy, tender rare steak; possibly rump.

  “Yes rump, rare and bloody. If I had it my way the bugger would be smeared in blood,” he muttered. The last two words were stifled by him pushing the man hole cover aside. It made a hideous scouring noise along the concrete road; a sound akin to a brick being stroked by a cheese grater.

  Travis peaked out of the drain like a timid animal, the street was empty. Perfect. Just as he began to lift himself out he heard a voice; cold and full of devilish charm:

  “Check mate.”

  Travis felt a hefty hand take a firm hold of his auburn hair; he was being dragged along the road like a child’s doll. He began to holler like a teenage girl in a school yard bitch fight.

  The Guy dragged Travis 3 feet away from the man-hole. Stopped. Then lay the drain cover on Travis’s chest. All this he did without breaking a sweat.

  “Cocksucker! Where did you come from?!” Travis exclaimed with brutal force.

  “Tut, tut Mr Stamshaw. They told you it all existed within the binary oceans of kinetic dreams. Why are you still here and not flying the banners of treason with the High Occultist?” The Guy stared into the eyes of this insect that lay before him. Travis spat and coated his
own face with saliva.

  “The High Occultist? Fuck him and fuck his jaded revolution. You think just because you know of his existence you know all of his plans? You know nothing cocksucker. The Man with the Emerald Eyes, the man who has killed more people in this past week than I have. You should be Beelzebub standing on the shoulders of the High Occultist, chief advisor to the fuck machine. I know what you are, 1107,” Travis let off a condemning smile, but the Guy never withdrew his gaze.

  “Everyone just wants to chin wag these days,” he took hold of the man-hole cover, lifted it above his head with ease and brought it edge way down onto Travis Stamshaw’s neck, severing head from body. There was a “Give Way” street sign on the pavement and the Guy thought it would be an ideal place to display the grimacing noggin. The rest of the corpse he dumped back down in the sewers. Once he had finished washing the sickly blood from his hands the Guy replaced the drain back to its natural state and took his leave.

  5

  A deep iron sheet had been pulled across the sky and the Guy stood at the edge of the ocean watching the frothy waves wash away a varied array of pebbles. He had tears in his eyes, either brought on by the savage wind, or by the monochrome sights laid out like a raw sketch before him. Across that gulf of water was the Island, shrouded in cotton mist, but the Guy could still make out the outlines of skyscrapers and incandescent lights that burned from the city.

  ‘I have been summoned to that place. Escaped patients from the asylum, this should be a tasty job,’ he thought.

  “The dream became the man who devised his own destruction for the cause of a divine plan,” a gruff voice spoke from behind him. “A very apt expression for you, 1107.”

  The Guy turned and saw a 7ft tall figure, obscured by fog; he sensed a potent smile emitting from this entity.

  “I presume you are the High Occultist?” The Guy remained calm.