Underneath the Draconian Sky

by Chatwin, Dale M.

  “Very moronic. You have chosen your path then, I will devour you and masturbate as I excrete your corpse from my anus,” he said, cupping the Guy’s crotch and fondling it.

  The Man with the Emerald Eyes glowered with disgust and managed to jab the High Occultist in the shin with his foot, once he was free of his grip, the Guy fought fiercely.

  Huge chunks of glass began to shoot out in every direction as the tanks buckled from the pressure, like cast iron balls firing from a cannon. From the gaping holes poured briny water, the halls were engulfed in a great deluge and the Guy repeatedly smashed his fist against the High Occultist’s Halo, amaranth liquid poured down his forehead, curved around his eyes and flowed down his cheeks like tears. The Guy screamed as he felt the bones in his hand smash like marbles in a hemp sack, water sprayed from every direction; a great roar echoed from all around and the High Occultist tittered manically, dropping to his knees and clutching his head like it was infested with brain eating parasites.

  The laughter was soon drowned out by the bellowing of water and the abomination spread out his arms, again in that condescending welcoming gesture. The Guy stared; rage turned his emerald eyes into inky, hollow insignias. The deluge swept them away, swallowing them both like a liquid whale. He found himself lost in a metaphysical ocean populated by his demons, his memories, his regrets. He began to drown in those regrets. In that murky beyond he saw castles made of coral where giant crabs fought with mutated sea anemones and faces formed on the bodies of plaice. Above him the turquoise aurora bled through the water causing eerie forms to manifest.

  The Guy felt strangely euphoric; he became light headed and was close to inhaling, he wanted to drown his lungs in obscurity. He saw the Frilled Shark approaching, he did not wish to be eaten alive by such a hideous beast, but he was powerless to stop destiny rowing along the rivers of his mortality.

  It stopped 3 centimetres away from his face and opened its Precambrian mouth, inside the Guy saw the kaleidoscopic swirl of Thaddeus’s hypnosis. Amidst the bizarre abyss, the lost world of his subconscious, he had a vision of her; of Nancy Mooring. She came to him naked, a wreath of perfection as she laid her hand upon his brow.

  “I have always been behind you, so let’s skip the part where the heart beats and just walk with me along the coast of realities fracture. I want to suture your wounds, heal that jaded mind of yours he seems to admire beneath his telepathic microscope. Take a picture of the road, it is real. Face the unexplainable technology that tears you apart. One day a ship will come in to carry all of your crimes away, your possessed dreams will become clean and a season of rain will wash you away to an unknown place. My morphine will soothe the aches of your condition. Come now, tie up the loose ends and dive into the maelstrom.”

  He closed his eyes, and inhaled…

  …then exhaled a clot of blood upon a patch of grass that withered and turned yellow. He was shackled in thick, lead chains. His wrists and ankles were raw and cracked and a pulsing thu-dum thu-dun of pain flowed through his body in sadistic waves. The horror of the situation crashed upon the rocks of his consciousness.

  The High Occultist stood over him, hooded and cloaked and the Halo burned with a deranged incandescence. Amaranth liquid still poured down his face like a perpetual waterfall. The Guy tried to break free but each attempt was as futile as the last. Observing his surroundings he found that he was on top of a hill. 38 feet away to his right there was a tower, no, a beacon, derelict and mistreated by time, it was flanked by two electrical pylons on each side.

  He was on the Severn Beacon, 777 feet above sea level and the monolith was known as Romsey Tower which was 236 feet high. In some time long before the Aakmanu it was used as an astronomical observation point where an elite group of Druids would go to communicate with the extra-terrestrial beings that lived within the Hollow Moon. The Druids thought they were the creators, the true Gods who genetically modified the Human species. They sit in there spaceship casting an illusion upon the Earth and watch over Mankind with apathy. When the Hollow Moon became full and bloated with splendour, the Druids would kidnap 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls, and sacrifice them to the aliens above. That, however, all existed in a time when politicians and men with strict religious affiliations would meet in secret and perform occult rituals behind the curtain.

  The Guy wasn’t sure whether he was back in reality or still in the unconscious realm.

  He felt a searing pain flash across his forehead, the High Occultist had cut him with a shaving razor, a line of blood sat upon its sharp edge and the abomination caught a droplet of the Guy’s maroon fluid betwixt his thumb and forefinger. He toyed with it, smeared it on his lips like a whore’s lipstick and smacked them playfully.

  “Feels good. I would ridicule you my dear, but to do so would render the architecture of our confrontation impotent. We duel, taking our 10 steps, turning then firing our weapons and then we vomit up words to stall the inevitable. It is a farce that ends upon this hill, for you will see no flamboyant Morris men mincing upon this hill, 1107. There is only the illustrious dance of death, swaying psychedelically in his ebony robes,” the High Occultist danced to a phantom rhythm inside his head. His robes rippled like marble cake and suddenly he started to pound the side of his head, howling like a wolf and laughing like a hyena. Sounds that could cause a baby to whimper and die in its crib.

  “My Halo burns! It burns my thoughts! It burns my being! The man who I was has melted like a snowman in the summer sun. It remains to be seen. It remains to be hidden. It remains to be a victim of the night’s veil, hiding a corpse within its folds of sinister silk. You and I, 1107, are both victims of déjà vu.”

  The Guy could feel the Hyper Intelligent Bacteria working inside his body; he had a flashback of wandering through the City of Debauchery. His instincts had tried to tell him back then that something sinister was afoot with the Aakmanu’s proposal, but instead of acting on that instinct he had ignored it; the smell of blood was still fresh upon his nostrils and the excitement of seeing Bruce Wozniak die horrifically still echoed in his mind, now the Guy was in an unpleasant state of euphoria. The sensation was like being inside a fresh bed, the duvet made of silk and the pillows stuffed with feathers; it was comfort like the first waves of an MDMA trip. But amidst the pleasure you cannot help but question the how’s and why’s of your purpose in that environment, you begin to feel trapped and suffocated. All around you, images of a brutal nature strike the walls like red paint against a white surface, and then a gremlin leaps onto your lap, masturbating frantically and poking you with an iron rod.

  His tonsils began to swell, making it feel like there was a lump of coal lodged inside his throat. Breathing became a chore and swallowing became an acrid and repetitive experience.

  At the bottom of the hill, a colossal castle made from Elkhorn coral appeared from a huge lake of tar. It was a theatre production, the Guy and the High Occultist both watched as a prince recounted his tale of woe about the odious wizard who wanted to tear away his manhood in order to cease the royal bloodline. Above them, dragons flew in the night sky; they glowed with tumultuous orange fire. The Guy felt his heart stir as they broke through the barrier of the turquoise aurora. The High Occultist began to babble:

  “When you ride a two penny haystack upon clouds of toasted toffee, you begin to see the world with eyes that have been slashed with blades only…

  You forfeit your misery?

  The brig awaits you with cesspool desires and dreams of children being tattooed on vaginal cavities.

  Chewing, the gristle was chewed, not swallowed and the grease was licked.

  What a hullabaloo, what a shambles.

  A perpetual cycle of deceit.

  Is the candy sweet you confounded sprite whore?

  Your mother’s nipples are raw from suckling baboons and her pussy is a bleeding waste land from being fucked by a Narwhal.

  The error of my ways has been sewed into a khaki jacket, camouflaged between the stitchi
ng so I am blind to its advice.

  See the reptiles crawl; see how their serpentine bodies lactate putrid mucus. See how they eat the liver of that squirming platypus.

  Machines quicken to the hastening ambitions of Human thought processes. Stop motion control.

  Beat. It. Like. A. Beast.

  BILAB? Shut up.

  You will never know. Time slows. Moving through dreams is like piecing together a 9000 piece jigsaw puzzle. But I am the master of dreams. I am the master of dreams. I. Am. He…”

  “Agony in ecstasy, all it was meant to be.”

  All of their wallowing in self-indulgent sin led them to that moment, that crux of pure obscurity. The High Occultist smothered himself in cruel and deadly delight, while the Guy loathed and choked.

  “On fumes baby, all it was meant to be.”

  Haunting truths induced a philosophic satisfaction within his soul. The Guy began to be at peace with the fact that maybe neither one of them would survive this ordeal. Every moment he had experienced began to boil in a cauldron, full of pretences.

  “We are tangled in our song, 1107, where we belong. Our nude emotions erupt from the fastidious geysers of déjà vu. You and I will dance together again, like long lost lovers, with violence and distorted silence.”

  The Guy replied: “With static, baby. All it was meant to be.”

  The dragons disappeared, along with the manic theatre show, night became day again and everything was in its right place. It was all a mirage. It was only them, upon Severn Beacon overlooking an industrial landscape littered with factories, graveyards and semi-detached houses.

  The Guy imagined himself bouncing high upon a bed made of elastic strings, his body ripped in half and his entrails flowed out of him like frequency waves, joining the strings of fate. His skin began to fray, blotches of ink made his torso look like a patchwork ragdoll that had been crafted by a schizophrenic toy maker.

  He jolted out of the daydream. He came to accept that they weren’t on the Island anymore, they were somewhere else.

  The coast of realities fracture.

  The only wretches on that discombobulated plain of existence.

  The High Occultist materialized from a cloud of mustard gas, the entity formed into a malignant crest that broke the fabric of time.

  It was a velvet sheen, mirrored only by the roots of cold, sensitive eyes. Upon the hill the wind blew, causing the grass to bend to the right.

  The abomination grabbed the Man with the Emerald eyes round his throat and squeezed with inhuman strength, then let go. His laughter was frenzied, tears streamed down his face, mixing with the amaranth liquid and his eyes rolled back, exposing the whites.

  “I have delayed the inevitable for far too long, 1107. Your company bewitches me and I am a slave to your aura. Death has come to feast on your body and your soul, I will devour you.”

  Thunder broke through the following silence like water breaching a ship’s hull, it began to rain and dark clouds loomed overhead. Lightning struck the tops of trees and distant mountains.

  “It is my lullaby, my song of fate. Over the ocean, through the immense pressure of inter-dimensional travel, I am being summoned,” said the Guy, closing his eyes and imagining liquid metal pouring down his arms like lava down a mountain side. He heard words being spoke in the rain and each droplet had its own voice. People he couldn’t recognise, but all sounding too familiar, like being on the cusp of a dream while an invisible audience mutters through open halls.

  The High Occultist bared his left wrist and began to slowly remove a long, sharpened knife from beneath his flesh. The steel was smeared with blood and he made no signs of being in pain.

  Engraved down the centre of the blade was a bastard language that the Guy could not read in its written form, but when the abomination spoke the words it all became clear:

  “Halla mershum katak boso,” he screamed at the sky, “before the end there is only insanity, and insanity shall reign 1107.”

  The High Occultist took the knife and held it aloft as an offering to whatever masochistic forces resided in the heavens, when the lightning split open the sky its light silhouetted the abomination and his weapon, making them look like an oil painting melting in the rain. The Guy felt the razors edge carve an X into his chest. The pain was excruciating and the process was slow and when it was the finished, the High Occultist jabbed the blade into the centre of the X and carved out a small, round chunk of flesh.

  “An appetiser to appease the senses,” he said, popping the hors d’oeuvre into his mouth and chewing with a sadistic satisfaction. “A gallivanting spirit with a hole in his chest, a master of his own self-deprecating attitude. You had a job to do and you saw it to the end, but my majesty has saved the sour perspiration that beads on your mental stability. Now sleep child, dream of paranoid laughter. Will you enchant mankind’s author? Prophecies misplaced and theatre dreams in space.

  I’ve always given you my soul. The masses have congregated to pay homage to the loathing of Humanity’s segregated attitudes that will make the malice mills turn wheels of burning greed. I have given you all, my soul, black book; my undesired teacher taught how to dress souls in pretty bows.”

  The Guy began to laugh, it was cruel laughter full of poison and relish. The High Occultist began to tear great chunks of hair from his head, screaming like a torture victim. The dagger glimmered, as quick as a fleeting shadow it swiped for the Guy’s eyes, aiming to blind him, but his reaction was quicker. He jolted backwards, avoiding the perishing blade by mere centimetres, and found that he was no longer shackled: the metal had melted. Like a bird of prey patiently hovering above its prey, the Guy found an opportunity and seized it, striking at the High Occultist with his bare hands. He jabbed his hand into the abomination’s neck, choking, then spun and kicked him in the chest, feeling ribs snap underfoot. The High Occultist landed face down upon the grass and before he could regain his footing the Guy was on him, taking the knife that had been cast aside.

  “I’m going to remove your spine and then rip out your brain, Patrick Holness,” he said while jamming the dagger into the High Occultist’s neck, the Guy began to cut down, severing flesh, nerve endings and arteries. Thunder exploded, lightning blazed and rain came down like tiny balls of lead being dropped from space. The Guy continued laughing as blood gushed from the wound. As he neared the centre of the High Occultist’s back a great gust of wind threw the Guy into the air, landing him 22 feet from the still breathing body. The lightning was overhead, thrashing the sky, bolts began to slam like giant’s fists into the ground near the abomination and the Guy felt dazed and half blinded from retina burn. Out of the pandemonium there appeared a figure, statuesque and slim with a face that was all too familiar.

  “Thaddeus?” asked the Guy, perplexed by what he was seeing.

  “Thaddeus Melvin is no more, 1107. I am once again the Operator and Patrick Holness is mine. Do not fret my precious Rift Walker, you will have him again, in time.”

  The Operator grabbed hold of the High Occultist, his arms extending and wrapping around the limp, half alive body, finally his hand entered the gash in his back and slithered up to the abominations brain, caressing it like it were a pet chinchilla. The Guy saw Patrick’s eyes flicker open, eyes full of lonesome contempt and sadness. Patrick locked on to the Guy’s emerald eyes and carved out a rough smile, then spoke a few words through choking blood and mucus:

  “A moment of madness can lead to a life of heartache, old friend.”

  Savage quakes shook Severn Hill.

  The Operator’s indigo eyes glowed with a cold incandescence and the High Occultist’s Halo was eclipsed out of existence.

  The Guy reached out his arm and shrieked.

  “You cannot take him! He is mine! He is mine!” he repeated over and over until his tonsils felt like they would split in half. Lightening hammered down again like a blacksmith deforming steel on an anvil in order to achieve his vision. The cacophony of light cracked like the devil�
��s horse whip sending the world into an unhindered delirium.

  Gone.

  Then came the silence. The calm before another storm.

  “Before the end, there is only insanity,” the Guy whispered to himself, and there upon Severn Hill he wept oh so hard.

  A violent tremor knocked the coast of realities fracture askew, the wind blew hard and fast; it was refreshing. The Guy stood and watched as the Dimension Eaters came down and did their work.

  The clouds began to spiral, looking like an ice cream sundae as it’s being poured into a glass container, the wind felt like it was blowing at 55 knots but the Guy never lost balance nor stumbled. As he walked slowly to the edge of the hill his eyes beheld a terrible sight; creatures descended from the heavens, grey beings that looked divinely mechanic and frightfully organic. Thus began the cleansing, the eradication of a dead world to pave the way for a new one.

  The Cosmic Forces formed a hurricane of inexorable destruction and it tore roofs from houses and swept away the debris of a dead world. It was like the ripple effect after the detonation of a nuclear bomb. The Dimension Eaters crashed down like meteors, creating massive craters in the Earth; they were giants of the void and began to devour everything they laid eyes upon. The land around the Severn Beacon, and beyond, was a buffet for these beasts.

  A quake caused the ground behind him to split open; the gaping mouth of a demon.

  The Guy chased away all fear from his soul and breathed in, closed his eyes and dived backwards into the cavern, allowing the ground to swallow him whole.

  EPILOGUE

  In the realms of a broken nation a star burns and answers an age old question, to which the answer is death’s blissful caress. Ignorance forms a pattern of selfish obligations and all around souls commit beggar’s law on a land scorned with poverty. Trust: hard to come by and will only be stumbled upon a handful of times. Listen: an abominable apprehension looms over the land and only a shift in attitude can change the course of a month solely dependent on brittle marble and other stones formed from the Earth’s magma. Breed: mass insemination for the morons that decide sex is an act beholden to a violent nature and not a right of Human evolution. Towards dawn we all look, hoping that the new day will wash away the sins of yesterday. Too little, too late. What’s done is done and now we must live with ourselves and find a new way to fall asleep at night, where we all kiss beneath a beautiful parasite.