Detached

‘You like horror stories right?’ asked Leonard with a smile, as he lit up another cigarette. He sat in the parking lot of the Opus Hospital with Marissa, watching the setting sun paint the buildings overhead a deep red. ‘Tell me a ghost story from Malaysia.’

Marissa shook her head and smiled. ‘You’re a very morbid one, aren’t you?’ she asked. He shrugged, not denying it. Leonard worked in the morgue, a job most people found unpleasant, but one that he found fit him fairly nicely. He had tried being a nurse like Marissa, but found that his bedside manner was lacking despite his technical expertise. Working with the dead was a perfect compromise. Seeing he wasn’t to be deterred, Marissa exhaled a puff of smoke. ‘I suppose it’s why I like you. Alright,’ she said. 

Marissa was a petite girl of Southeast Asian descent. When not in her nursing scrubs, she let her waist-length black hair fall down her back in a cascade. Her dark skin, modest and secret smiles and small frame had been irresistible to Leonard when they had first met, and it hadn’t been long before they were taking smoke breaks together in the parking lot. He quickly found that they shared a love for horror movies and ghost stories. Leonard had promised himself he would ask her out. Any day now.

Marissa smiled mischievously. ‘You Westerners like vampires right?’ she asked. ‘We have a lot of different vampires in Southeast Asia, and none of them are sexy and suave either,’ she said with a teasing look. ‘At least, not for long.’

Leonard gave a good-natured grin. ‘I like the scary ones better anyway. So what are your vampires like? Do they wear capes? Do they live in old castles?’

‘Nothing so obvious,’ said Marissa. She stared off, as if recounting from memory. ‘In the Philipines you have the Aswang and the Manananggal, in Singapore, they fear the Pontianak and the Langsuir. None of those compares to the queen of them all,’ she said, with mock theatricality. ‘In Malaysia, our vampires are called Penanggalan. Those are the worst of them all.’

‘You lost me about five unpronounceable words back,’ said Leonard, taking another drag. Marissa gave a chuckle. 

‘Penang-Galan’ she said, stretching out the word. ‘It means to detach, or to separate. Because, you see, the vampire looks like a normal person during the day, when it blends in with the rest of the village. But when the sun goes down, its head detaches, dragging all of its internal organs as it flies out, looking for blood.’ 

‘Wow,’ said Leonard, unable to keep the look of incredulity off his face. ‘That’s insane.’

Marissa giggled. ‘Is it any crazier than pale boys in leather seducing maidens in the night?’ she asked. Leonard nodded.

‘There’s different versions of the legend,’ continued Marissa. ‘You have to understand, these are folk tales passed down orally through the generations. In some versions, the Penanggalan can only be a woman, in others, she’s a demon born from a maiden who was interrupted mid-prayer, or a midwife who made a pact with the Devil. The details that remain the same though, are the flying head, the dangling intestines and the taste for blood.’ 

‘People believe these things exist right?’ asked Leonard. He was suddenly afraid of saying the wrong thing, in case he was being insensitive. 

‘Some people do, some don’t,’ shrugged Marissa. ‘Most say it’s just old wives tales, or an excuse to drive away witches and spiritual healers. Still, you can find plenty of people who get extra scared at night when a baby has just been born,’ she said, with a smile. ‘They say that the vampire’s favorite type of blood is that of children.’

‘Do you believe in that sort of thing?’ asked Leonard, choosing his words carefully. 

Marissa gave him a playful shove. ‘Ayah, Leonard,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. Do you believe in Dracula? Or the Boogeyman? These are just ghost stories for bored housewives and children.’

Leonard laughed along with her, finishing his cigarette and stubbing it out on the concrete. ‘You guys definitely have a….unique imagination,’ he said. He felt bad because it seemed crazy to him. The idea of a floating, bloodsucking head wasn’t scary, just stupid. Marissa could see the look on his face and burst out laughing.

‘It’s ok,’ she said, with a warm smile. ‘I can see you think it’s ridiculous. That’s what I thought when my Grandma first told me the story. Can you imagine what it would look like?’ she shook her head. ‘If you ask me, too much of Malaysia is still caught up in superstitions. It’s one of the reasons I left. They need to catch up with the rest of the world in the Twenty-First century.’

Leonard smiled awkwardly again as Marissa’s watch beeped, indicating her break was over. She got up and smiled again at him, banishing all thoughts of floating heads from Leonard’s mind and filling his stomach with butterflies. ‘We should go out sometime after work,’ said Marissa with a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she took one last drag and gathered her things. ‘Maybe get your mind off such morbid things.’

‘Definitely,’ stammered Leonard as Marissa breezed past him, giving him a final wave as she vanished into the stairwell, leaving him in the darkened parking lot. The sun had finally sunk behind the horizon, giving way to the cool night and the chirps of crickets. Leonard stared for a few moments out at the darkening sky and replayed the last few minutes in his head, unable to believe his luck.

---

It was midnight by the time Leonard was finally finished with his work. Most of the other hospital staff had been replaced by night-shift workers, who patrolled the wards and looked after the patients. Marissa was working late tonight, and as he finished packing up his things, he wondered if it would be weird to pop by the nurse’s lounge and say goodbye. In the morgue, he was surrounded by cold corpses packaged away in sterile, silver cabinets, neatly catalogued and organized. Most days, Leonard wasn’t a squeamish man, he couldn’t afford to be in his line of work, but tonight, there was something about the quiet, dimly lit and mostly empty hospital that gave him the creeps. He shook his head. All this talk of ghosts and vampires must have unnerved him more than he thought. 

The morgue was in the basement, and Leonard walked through the fluorescent-lit hallways and up the empty staircase to the first floor. There were no cleaners around, and the nurses must have been occupied with their duties on other floors because Leonard encountered no one on his way up. A mischievous idea had entered his head as he passed by the darkened rows of beds containing sleeping patients on the ward. Marissa had often snuck up on him in the morgue during the night shift, and Leonard thought it might be time to finally return the favor. It might even be romantic or something, he thought to himself as he rounded the corner to the nurse’s lounge.

Marissa was standing at the counter, her back to Leonard as he reached the door, making herself a cup of coffee. The lounge was a large, empty room, with a wall-length window. It was lit by harsh, fluorescent lights, making sneaking up on her a difficult prospect. Leonard was about to abandon the idea when Marissa checked her watch and abruptly left her still-steaming cup of coffee, making her way to the exit at the far end of the lounge and vanishing up the stairwell. Leonard propped his bag down on a couch and followed her, the smile not leaving his face. It seemed like tonight he was having a streak of good luck. 

Shadowing her, Leonard followed Marissa up three flights of stairs, before she finally exited on the maternity ward. This had confused Leonard, Marissa having no duties up there as far as he knew. The ward had several criss-crossing corridors, surrounding a large room rimmed on all sides with glass windows, where the newborn babies slept in separate cots. Leonard had never come up here before, not being a kid person himself, and paused as he followed Marissa, looking through the glass at the slumbering babies in the darkness. 

A door closing at the end of the hall caught Leonard’s attention, and he followed, reaching a supply room. None of the lights were on in the ward, and Leonard had still encountered no night staff. Maybe Marissa had been covering someone else’s shift, he reasoned as he pushed the door open quietly. The room was dark, illuminated only by an open window, and in the corner, facing the wall, Leonard could just make out the familiar form of a petite girl in nursing scrubs, standing in a patch of moonlight. 

The hairs on the back of Leonard’s neck stood on end as he stared. Marissa was facing the wall, not doing anything. She stood, still as one of the corpses that Leonard was used to seeing, and in a strange way, his brain couldn’t help but think of her as a corpse propped upright. He had been about to call her name, to reach out, when suddenly, her body jerked unnaturally as her head tilted upward and her neck muscles stretched like coiled snakes beneath her skin. 

Leonard could do nothing but watch, bereft of speech and breath, as Marissa’s neck stretched, longer than any person’s, the skin tearing like plastic to reveal a grotesque blossom of naked muscle. A foul stench filled the room, sickly sweet, like rotting vinegar, that burned Leonard’s nostrils and made his eyes water. He stared, paralyzed, as he watched Marissa’s head, followed by a mass of bone and gore pull itself free from her body, hair dangling weightlessly around her face like a veil. Leonard watched her lungs swell out of her neck-stump like two crimson balloons, followed by dangling coils of glistening intestine that unravelled as they were pulled forth from the husk. Marissa’s headless body, cold, grey and now resembling a long-dead, though perfectly preserved corpse, twitched as it disgorged its contents into the air, before standing still. 

The ghastly apparition did not waste time, floating languidly toward the ceiling tiles and slipping between them with no apparent resistance. The head and intestines folded themselves into gaps, vanishing like a worm burrowing into the earth. Leonard managed to pull himself into the room. The stench had grown worse, decay and musty rot mingling with the reek of sewage and the sickly-sweet smell of putrefying fruit. He could hardly breathe as he staggered over, not daring to make a sound, grabbing Marissa’s headless body. It felt cold and hollow, and though his eyes burned, he forced himself to look at the wound. His blood froze as he saw only darkness, as if Marissa had been hollowed out like a pumpkin. 

Leonard pushed the body away from him, letting it slump against the wall, his revulsion growing as he looked at his hands and saw them wet with blood. It was brown and filled with rot and bits of flesh that clung to his skin. He backed slowly toward the door to the supply room, hardly believing what he was seeing. It had to be some kind of hallucination, his medical mind rationalized desperately. Maybe born of stress and listening to Marissa’s insane Malaysian folktales. He was probably dreaming, he thought, as he backed away from the body, out into the hallways of the maternity ward.

He was disabused of the notion when he turned around and saw the creature hanging, like a glistening sculpture of gore, in the air above the cots of the sleeping children. Leonard crouched, hiding beneath the large window as he watched the ghoulish figure, organs dangling from a ruptured neck-stump like a nightmarish jellyfish. The hair floated around the head, but in the darkness, Leonard could see Marissa’s face, eyes wide and milky white, skin pale and bloodless, mouth a gaping hole rimmed with rows and rows of fangs. As he watched, he saw tongues emerging from between those fangs, uncoiling like fat, red worms as they descended upon the sleeping babes. Like leeches, those feelers found the necks of the newborns and greedily swelled with fresh blood as the babies moaned and weakly struggled with discomfort. 

Leonard’s mind was racing, and insanely, he remembered a line from Dracula. ‘Die Totden Reiten Schnell, the dead travel fast.’ Dracula had come to England, a land that had never heard of vampires to seek prey. It made sense, was inevitable, thought Leonard’s panicked mind, that vampires from other lands would seek new, unsuspecting feeding grounds as well. He couldn’t look away as the grotesque apparition fed, its organs swelling scarlet. As he watched, he almost swore he could see children’s faces and hands, thousands of them, struggling and pressing against the walls of the distended stomach.

His legs finally found strength as Leonard took off, racing for the stairwell and crashing down the flights of stairs. On his way, he reached for and pulled the fire alarm, filling the hospital with the sudden cacophony of whining noise. He dared not look behind him as he went, the stench of blood, rot and sewage following him throughout his flight, even as he ran back through the nurse’s lounge, past several surprised orderlies. He crashed through the doors of the hospital, lying on the tarmac, panting and crying, as the panicked nurses and orderlies crowded around him, trying to help him. Before he finally passed out, he thought he saw Marissa’s face staring down at him from a window, high above. 

---

Leonard had been committed to a psyche-ward shortly after the incident. Firefighters had arrived to find him, unconscious outside the entrance of Opus Hospital, The night staff had been questioned extensively, and none of them had seen anything untoward beyond Leonard’s crazed behavior. 

Leonard sat in his white, sterile room, so very much like the morgue he was used to with the exception of an open window that allowed sunlight in. he had been in the psyche-ward, under the care of professionals for three days now, recounting his story of vampires and floating heads uselessly to anyone who would listen. The consensus among the staff seemed to be that Leonard had suffered a total nervous breakdown, perhaps brought on by the stress of the job or the admittedly gruesome work of dealing with dead bodies all day and night. His co-workers had confirmed that he was a morbid sort of fellow, and it seemed the best for everyone concerned that he took some sick leave until he was feeling more together. Leonard sat by the window, staring out at the late afternoon sun that lit up the trees. He turned as he heard his door open.

Dr. Marston walked in with the usual array of anti-anxiety medication. ‘Leonard,’ he began with a warm smile. ‘You seem to be doing better. Are you sleeping well?’

Leonard shook his head. Dr. Marston gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have you out of here in no time,’ he said. ‘These are small steps on the journey toward rebuilding yourself.’

Leonard nodded as he wordlessly downed the pills. He relished the feeling of chemical relaxation, the only thing that allowed him even a small respite from the memories. He had given up talking to people who wouldn’t listen, part of his brain desperately wanting to believe it had all just been a fevered dream.

Dr. Marston smiled as he watched Leonard take the pills, before he got up. ‘Keep pushing forward, Leonard,’ he said, gently. He headed for the door, opening it, and then stopping, as if remembering something. ‘Oh right, and by the way,’ he said. ‘A new nurse has just been assigned to your wing, Marissa. I think you and her will get along just fine.’

Low-Hanging Fruit

Mildred knew immediately what he was as soon as she had seen him for the first time. He was perfect, too perfect, with tanned skin, long, flowing black hair and the body of an Olympian athlete. In the darkness of the club, amid the pounding synth and flashing lights, he moved with such a fluid ease that it was impossible to take her eyes off him, like a coiling snake.

She waited until he made eye contact with her, and the small tingle down her spine made her sure of what he was. He smelled her lust for him, and smoothly, he made his way over. His eyes had locked on hers and when he came over and put touched her hand, the slightest whiff of a putrescent sweetness, like rotting meat passed over her nose. When you knew what to look for, like she did, they could not stand out any more obviously. She took his hand without a word, and led him to the dance floor. She was small and light, and as she danced energetically, she filled the air with her pheromones.

It was midnight when she finally stumbled with him to her apartment. The alcohol in her veins had dulled her inhibitions, an important step, because they could smell her emotions and knew when a human was hiding something. It was a rare thing to be able to string one along, but soon they were on the bed, pressing against each other, as he drank the smell of her sweat and want.

She stopped suddenly, and pulled herself back as he gave a surprised grunt, to gather herself and sit back on a chair in the corner of the room. Her lover looked up, and as he steadied himself, he tried to sit up on the bed. The magical bindings she had painstakingly etched into the mattress, christened with blood, both hers and others, did their job, and the man stopped at the edge of the mattress. He looked confused for a second, before meeting Mildred's gaze.

'What's happening? What have you done to me?' he asked, with a frantic look on his face.

'Drop the act,' said Mildred, as she pulled out a cigarette and lit it up next to the open window to gather her thoughts. 'I know what you are, demon. Save the theatrics for other girls.'

The man's face held up with an expression of surprise and panic for a few seconds, just long enough for Mildred to wonder if she'd made a mistake, before finally, he cracked a wide grin. 'You are good,' he said, his voice now becoming an echoing, husky whisper. 'Tell me, how did you know?'

'I said drop the act, incubus,' snarled Mildred. 'We don't make idle chit-chat until I see what you really look like.'

The man, gorgeous, bronzed and sweaty, melted away like a shape in the mist. The form that replaced it was gaunt, tall and lithe, almost nubile in shape. Skin melted into skin, stitched together by lines of scar tissue, making the creature look like it was wrapped in plastic, with red veins pulsing languidly just beneath the surface. Its body changed slightly whenever Mildred looked away from it. One minute, two delicate, perky breasts rose from its chest, the next, a penis hung between its legs, then small, toothy openings blossomed across its body, poking delicate, wet fingers into the cool air. It had no eyes, nor nose, just a wide mouth, filled with sharp, black teeth like needles, and between them, dozens of long, delicate tongues peeked out.

Mildred found, despite the grotesqueness of what sat before her, she couldn't look away from the creature, indeed, she wanted to join it on the bed, let it....play with her until it was spent. She shook her head as a musky aroma filled the room and she felt a cold sweat go down her back. She breathed in more smoke and blew it out the window.

The creature was watching her with its eyeless face, licking itself across the chest and neck with snaking, meaty tongues. It's voice was a hissing, molten whisper, halfway between a woman's gasp and a man's groan of pleasure. 'Is this the form you want, human? You are a rarity to prefer truth over a succulent lie, but I will love you all the same.'

Mildred shuddered and shook her head. She had read about the demon sitting before her, but all the reading in the world could not prepare her for the thing she was seeing. Her hands were shaking, even as she fixed the demon with a stern look. 'Son of Lilith,' she began, trying to remember the invocation. 'The Circle of the Art has trapped you, and I rebuke you in the name of Christ the Father...'

The creature gave a bored sigh and held up a clawed hand, a small, central mouth opening and closing in the palm. 'Please, spare me, mortal. I am trapped by your Art. Do not waste my time with impotent prayers while my hunger only grows.'

'You are an incubus, and I would use your power,' she continued.

'But what do you know of my power?' purred the demon as it slid across the mattress and lay on its chest. 'You, who call me incubus. You, who tries to label me with your....limited human ideas. Ardat and Irdu Lili....succubi and incubi, these are just mantles we assume. Our nature transcends such childish definitions.'

'Does 'child' of Lilith satisfy you?' asked Mildred, with a glare on her face.

'No,' purred the demon, as it ran its tongues through its clawed fingers. 'Your mythology lies to you. We haunted the ancient lands you know as Sumeria. Those mortals who knew of our talents and experienced our pleasures called us Lilitu, a sacred name, profaned in the holy book of the new era. Your Lilith is but one being, but one sex, but one race. Ours is a legacy of longing and rapture, written across a thousand eras and a thousand shapes.' The demon turned and lay on its back, exposing its muscled, chiseled body, its penis standing erect. 'Come to me, mortal, and share what they shared. See what your foolish faith has denied you.'

Mildred wanted the repugnant being desperately, wanted in her guts to feel those tongues play across her skin, and she knew that the demon knew it. Its effortless deconstruction of her research had shaken her faith in herself, a dangerous thing when dealing with the Art. She noticed the tips of one of the snaking tongues move beyond the mattress, and she focused her will, binding the demon down once more. It gave a hiss and exposed a mouthful of needle-teeth.

'You want food, mortal souls and lust right?' Mildred said. The demon paused, its head crooked as if listening. 'I can give you what you want. Easy targets.'

She got up and went over to the dresser in the corner of the room, never taking her eyes off the demon who watched her impassively. Despite how sedate it was now, Mildred knew the first rule of the Art. A weak spell, neglected, was easily broken, and she knew that the demon waited for the barrier of her will to drop. Opening the top drawer, she pulled forth a small, plastic bag, containing a few hairs.

'These belong to a man. A man who has done me great harm. I'm offering him to you,' she said, throwing the bag onto the mattress. The demon crawled over and sniffed it.

'I care nothing for the dramatics of humanity,' sneered the creature. It breathed deeply over the bag though, and appeared lost in the scent for a moment. 'What he has done to you is nothing. I can make the memory of this man's brutality but a footnote in your experience,' it said, staring at Mildred with its eyeless face, making her skin crawl. 'I can teach your nerves new ways to scream.'

'You will,' said Mildred, finally tipping her hand. 'For the deal I propose, I offer both him and myself, body and soul.'

The demon crawled very close to the edge of the bed, the mane of waving tongues swirling in mesmeric patterns. 'And what would you have me do for such a prize? Souls like yours, and his,' it breathed deeply, 'Are more fulfilling for their experiences.'

Mildred's face had hardened, and for the first time, she stared back at the demon defiantly. 'He took my child. I want him back.'

The demon chuckled, the rippling motion going through its entire body. 'We produce no seed that can take root in your empty womb. Our blood cannot mingle.'

'It's not yours I want, demon,' she snarled. 'What I want is my child back. He stole our baby when he hurt me. I intend to steal our boy back, regardless of what I have to rip out of him. Let me bring my child into this world and let him be free, that is all I ask.'

The demon's smile grew even bigger and more unpleasant. 'I can give you what you desire. We always can. It is our nature.'

Mildred smiled, and wordlessly, she stopped concentrating on the circle. The demon sat up, its body now slim and muscular, and wordlessly, it stepped toward her. Mildred made no move to resist as those probing tongues wrapped around her. She felt her skin press against the demon's body, and felt herself drown in a miasma of sickly perfume. She floated for what felt like years in a narcotic haze before those tongues entered her, and her world flashed into brilliant white, so intense that rapture and agony became indistinguishable in the dance. 

The sensation did not stop once as the demon pulled her finally in a direction that did not exist in her world. The intensity tripled as they left Earth, and joined the rapture of a thousand more souls, fused at the nerves and bound into the superstructure of one, immense being.

Male and female, everything in between, intermingling, mixing, copulating into one another. One endless Father impregnating an infinite Mother. Nerves pulsed delicately in the flowers. Hair grew like grass across a goose-pimpled plain, brushed by sighing breeze. Trees made of fingers, with blossoms of skin grew from the fertile earth. Mildred was flayed, spread across this ecosystem, her veins and nerves melting into a garden of meat and flesh.

A garden that grew, pulsed and bled. Where the Lilitu lived.

It kept its promise. It was one of the few bits of truth that had filtered down into the earthly texts. It had kept its word, once given. It had taken Damian, Mildred's ex-husband in the form of a beautiful, slender redhead, and bound him in the pulsing, red world outside reality when it had drunk its fill of his withered soul. Lilitu enjoyed meat already seasoned, and in the centuries they spent playing with him, peeling and weaving him into the land, into her, Mildred never once regretted her decision.

A tree grew in the fleshy meat of the earth, where Mildred and Damian had long forgotten their human lives. Their mingled essence had grown first as a tumorous cyst, before it blossomed, ripening into a tree of hands and misaligned fingers, grasping together like a horrid knot.

Lilitu had no seed of their own to sow among the throng of humanity, but when it was stolen from a victim, ripened and resown by the demon, sometimes it could take root. The children of the Garden used every part of the base primates, body, soul and essence.  It didn't matter why humans chose it, or indeed if they did choose it. When they were had already ripened like fruit, they couldn't stand out more obviously, and the Lilitu flitted among them like bees, ready to fertilize the flowers and drink the sweet nectar.

The tree was rent apart as a birth-scream filled the air, and amniotic fluid and blood poured like sap as Mildred's child pulled itself from its ruptured womb.

The Sacrament

The first thing that hit Father Lochland as he entered the confessional booth was the smell. It wasn’t that he was unused to bad smells, far from it. Working in the slums of Detroit had more than numbed him to scent of humanity, as it wafted through the stale, night air. St. Anthony’s Church stood alone, amid the crumbling buildings of the district, a single spire reaching up into the sky from the desolation of urban decay. At this hour of the night it attracted a wide variety of people, some faithful, some simply seeking shelter from the cold, and it turned none of them away. St. Anthony was well known as a patron of the lost, and it wasn’t something that father Lochland took lightly.

The smell was something different than the usual miasma of alcohol and sweat that surrounded the unfortunates that came to the place. It was different, sickeningly sweet, cloying and somehow sticky. For a split second, Father Lochland feared that he might catch something, then immediately chastised himself for the thought. He closed the door to the wooden cubicle and took his seat on the bench, trying not to breathe too deeply. ‘I’m here, my child,’ he said in a quiet, comforting voice. ‘What troubles you?’

‘Bless me father,’ began a raspy, breathless sigh. The voice was a parched croak, as if the person who sat in the other booth had a damaged larynx. ‘I have sinned, very much have I sinned.’

‘How long has it been since your last confession?’ asked Father Lochland. Through the screen between them, he could just make out a shape, hunched and wrapped in rags. The shadows robbed the figure of any facial features or even the defining characteristics of sex or race, forming a strangely androgynous caricature of a person.

The figure shifted. ‘I cannot remember. However long it has been, it was many years ago. This is my first confession to a priest, of course,’ the breathless voice whispered.

‘God’s mercy is infinite,’ intoned Father Lochland. ‘Tell me of your sins and by His power you will be absolved.’

There was a quiet chuckling on the other side of the screen. ‘They are many and difficult to describe. Are you sure the Lord has mercy for all of them?’

Father Lochland features softened, even as the smell made him slightly dizzy. ‘Of course, my child. This is a place of absolution and forgiveness. Please, begin wherever you’d like.’

‘You are a good man to work in this little slice of urbania,’ said the figure. ‘Of all the places where you could have gone to spread the Word, you chose this festering place. The buildings decay where they stand, slowly sinking into the dirt. The people are sacks of diseased meat, waiting to ripen, and here you stand, one little light in an ocean of filth.’

‘You have a very interesting vocabulary,’ said Father Lochland with a smile.  ‘But we’re not here to talk about me. Please, don’t be afraid, tell me what ails you my child.’

‘An ailment is a good description,’ croaked the voice. ‘I live in filth, nurture it and bathe in it. Where I come from, filth is all we eat, drink and breathe. It is a black place, a bad place, one that I was forced into. Myself and my whole family were forced from our home.’

‘Who did this to you my child?’ asked Father Lochland.

‘Who else?’ the voice replied. ‘Someone more powerful. Someone who wanted my home for himself. Since then I have had to do many things to survive, many that some would find, degrading.’

‘Who were you before this happened?’ asked Father Lochland, allowing the sympathy he felt to come out in his voice.

‘I’m very glad you asked that,’ said the voice, with another sharp release of breath that thickened the fetid aroma. ‘I used to be a success, if you could believe it. People would come from far and wide to seek my services. They offered me things, gifts that I took with modesty and love, and I offered them many things in return. I was adored in my community. Would you believe that in that old time, that I was a God?’

‘There is only one God, my child’ said Father Lochland automatically, then paused as he realized he was arguing with the poor figure. He was starting to believe this person may have needed more help than was available at a church, but  the priest did not believe in turning anyone away.

‘You’re right about that, Father,’ whispered the figure in a repulsively intimate hiss. ‘There is only one God. One God after he banished all the others from the world. One God to be the protector for the ungrateful flock.’

Father Lochland had heard this interpretation of the Bible before, how God had demonized the old gods of other tribes, the Baals, Moloch, Pazuzu and all the others that had been worshipped at the time. He was the one true God. Still, regardless of his odd eloquence or knowledge of the scripture, this person clearly was not well. ‘My child, you are not a God,’ he said, looking stupidly at the wooden screen. ‘I think you may be confused.’

The figure laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘I think you’re confused Father. You worship at this empty altar, leading your lambs in circles.’

Father Lochland knew from experience that reasoning with the mentally ill rarely worked. If they possessed the ability to cognitively dismiss their delusions, then they wouldn’t have a problem. Still, he decided to give it a try to calm the figure down. ‘If you were one of the false Gods you would not be walking the earth. You’d be banished away to Hell.’

The rags parted and Lochland saw one bloodshot eye staring from the bundle at him. The smell was burning his eyes and nose now and the room was almost spinning. As he stared, he saw something moving in the whites of the eye, crawling just beneath the surface of the sphere.

‘You know nothing of Hell, Father Lochland,’ hissed the figure with disgust. ‘Nothing at all. Your God and your Bible give you fairy tales of Hell to spare you from the knowledge of the real thing. The Hell you are familiar with is a comfortable lie.’

‘Can you imagine for a second, the gardens, where I, Ba’al Zebul held court? When I was exiled from this sphere, there was nothing, nothing to eat, nothing to fertilize the plants and crops. The blood and souls we were offered freely from our supplicants could only last us for so long. Exiled, we rotted silently, turning our hateful eyes to God’s Heaven, where he stole all the fruits of this world from us. With Heaven or his ‘Hell’, your God claimed monopoly over all human souls, removing all competition from the Earth. Our garden is immortal, Lochland. It rots but never truly dies, an entire cosmos of buzzing, bloated flies feasting on our carcass.’

‘I…..I never told you my name,’ said Father Lochland, gripping onto his rosary.

The figure pulled back the rags and Father Lochland gagged. The smell was worse than mere sickness. It was the warm smell of decaying, ripe meat, spoiled and infested. Infested is the word that stuck in Father Lochland’s mind as he tried to avoid throwing up. On the other side of the screen, the figure straightened up, unfurled, accompanied by an awful, droning buzzing. The darkness mercifully stopped the priest from seeing anything other than the shape of the thing as it rose from the seat, but the small shafts of light that entered the cubicle glinted off black carapace, like a beetle, with a crawling, too-white underside and two glistening, fleshy prisms of insect wings. A cloud of black specs circled in lazy patterns, a halo of of buzzing flies.

Father Lochland had never really believed in demons taking a corporeal shape before, and shaking, fighting the urge to vomit, he held up his crucifix. ‘Get behind me Satan,’ he intoned, his mind desperately trying to remember the proper procedure to repel such beings. ‘The power of Christ your Lord compels you.’

The buzzing intensified, filling Father Lochland’s ears, and combined with the smell, gave him a nauseating sense of vertigo. The thing on the other side of the screen gave a few gurgling intakes of breath. Father Lochland barely managed to comprehend that the thing was laughing.

‘Your Satan is a myth,’ said the voice, now formed from the buzzing hum of thousands of flies. ‘A cheap shadow of the real thing to scare children. Your God has abandoned you long ago.’

‘You lie!’ coughed Father Lochland as he struggled to keep his hand steady. ‘You are subservient to God, just as we all are, and I command you to leave us in peace.’

‘The God that you serve, the one who banished me and my kin was not the brave father you believed in. He feared us, and commanded his little flock of cattle to lock us away. Can you imagine how he reacted when he saw that his own precious people, the crop from which he harvested, begin to reach his heights?’ the creature hissed. It was now pressed up against the screen, exposing the white flesh of its underbelly. Father Lochland could see the larval flies burrowing through the soft fat, leaving behind winding furrows.

‘At the height of your war, a scientist split the atom, the building block of creation. Your God panicked. He thought that your little experiment was coming too close to his own Works, and how do you think he reacted? He fled this world like a frightened animal seeing fire for the first time. He left you to the tender mercies of those he locked away, knowing full well that without him, our prisons would not hold for long.’ There was a loud cracking sound as the screen between the two cubicles buckled, and something reached into the confessional. It was long, black and hairy, segmented like an insect’s claw. It wrapped itself around Father Lochland’s crucifix, which bent and snapped like cheap plywood.

Father Lochland, reeling from the smell and half-mad with fear, leaped from the seat and tore the door wide open, abandoning the confessional in a mad dash. As he left the place, he tripped over his own trailing robes, falling with a painful impact to the floor. He looked up with his watering eyes and his mouth dropped open.

Somehow, within the space of the confession, the church had transformed. The one or two people that were praying quietly in the pews were twitching bags of twisted meat, their eyes rolling in their sockets as their bodies puffed up like swollen balloons, crawling with barely restrained motion just beneath the skin. The omnipresent buzzing swelled like a hymn as flies blackened the air, swirling around the room like a roiling haze of living, black sand. Above the altar, a man had been crucified with sticky, organic resin, hanging with his stomach burst open like a zit, his splayed entrails crawling with thousands of maggots and flies. Behind Father Lochland, the door to the other confessional booth slowly creaked open. A set of insectile claws gently wrapped around him, pulling him to his feet, holding him with his back to the warm, pulsing mass.

Tears were streaming down his face as Father Lochland felt something lean against his shoulder. From the corner of his vision, he could make out an immense sphere of glistening color, a huge compound eye. ‘I am eager to feast on the meat of this world once again. Its flesh is fresh and ripe, and we have not nested in unspoiled meat for too long.’

Father Lochland was muttering under his breath as his mind strained to make sense of what he was seeing. ‘Baalzebul….Beelzebub…...Lord of Flies…’

‘Flies are all I lord over in my realm,’ hissed the figure, a long black tongue emerging from its mouthparts and playing over Father Lochland’s flesh with horrid, probing caresses. ‘Deprived of food, they are the only subjects that did not forsake me. They have been eager to return to this world of arrogant, warm primates, to nestle in the meat of your flesh and the dark spaces in your souls.’

The tongue suddenly lashed forth with ferocity, jamming itself into Father Lochland’s open mouth. The priest gagged but the appendage was all pulsing, writhing muscle, and forced its way down his gullet, down into the pit of his stomach, where he felt a horrid warmth bloom. His twitching hands instinctively went to his midsection, and just beneath the flesh, he could feel the crawling of thousands of maggots. ‘Let it not be said I am completely without mercy,’ hissed the voice, oddly unobstructed by the extended, bloated tongue. ‘My flock needs its shepherds, my messengers in this bloated nest of filth. You will serve a true God, and bring meat to your new family.’

There was a surge of hope among the downtrodden of Detroit since then. In one night, St. Anthony’s Church exploded into activity, funding homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Anyone who visited the church found Father Lochland, who seemingly never went home, and was always ready with warm words of advice or comfort. The kindly man soon became seen as something of a guardian angel over the slum district, who provided a home, food and comfort to those who needed it.

When the epidemic hit six months later, and the CDC workers finally managed to clear away the ocean of dead that littered the streets of the slum where they had dropped, no one could find Father Lochland anywhere. St. Anthony’s church stood as an abattoir, its pews filled with the bloated, rotting bodies of those who came to pray for health.

The one thing that wasn’t reported by the team was what they found in the basement. A huge, sticky cocoon had hung from the ceiling, made from clinging, translucent mucus that did not conform to any chemical or substance known to science. Something big had rent it open from the inside, leaving nothing but an empty mess that hung in molten, clinging strands from the walls.

There was no sign of whatever had been gestating in it.

Wallspaces

(Trigger Warning: Sexually Disturbing Content)

Nicholas had told himself many times that he wasn’t a pervert. He was interested in the private side of his customers, that quiet and sultry peek behind the veil that no one else got. It wasn’t like he was standing there, dick in hand as he peeked through the small, carefully drilled holes in the walls of the rooms. These crawl spaces between the walls, the ‘Wallspaces’ as he had affectionately named them, were there when he had begun working at the motel, ten years ago. He had played no part in their creation or cultivation, simply making use of their facilities to watch, quiet and undisturbed.

People showed who they really were when they were behind closed doors, and it was something that Nicholas liked to experience. There was a perversity in it, a naughtiness that he couldn’t shake. Everyone interesting in the world had a dirty little secret, and it was better that his was harmless wasn’t it? He repeated in his mind that he had never acted, merely watched passively, one more ugly fixture tucked away in greasy yellow paper and splintered beams.

The Chalmers’ Motel was named after a person long dead, and stood as a single reservoir of light, amid twenty miles on either side of unending, black road. It stood on a slight hilltop, visible from the turnoff, and standing out in the endless night of the desert. The rooms were small, convenient apartments that had been set into the side of the building, connected but separated. In the walls, a passage ran from the front room, where Nicholas usually sat, and the interior of the last hotel.

The isolation had never bothered Nicholas. The manager of the place, he lived out back in a small trailer, and at times, took to sitting out beneath the stars and watching the highway, as cars flew past. Each one was a small, bloom of light, flickering in the chilly night air. Those were the nights where the urge to watch was irrepressible. Cold beer in hand, Nicholas’s flesh would ripple with goosebumps when he saw one of those lights pull into the turnoff that would lead them to his doorstep. It was an invitation into that metal carapace, a small microcosm of their life.

It was one of those nights, eleven on a Wednesday, and the motel had been fairly empty. Nicholas tried not to begin his show until the clock had passed midnight, when people would start showing up less frequently. Those tourists who would be out partying and drinking certainly wouldn’t be driving on the highway at night, and those who were had usually already committed to an all-night drive. It was a perfect time to go about his hobby undisturbed.

At this hour, however, Nicholas was stuck in the lobby, a very charitable name for the front room of the place. It gave the potential guests no illusions about the kind of establishment it was, with the same nauseatingly yellow, peeling strips of paper coating all the walls, a TV blaring indistinct programs from a ledge above the desk through a haze of electric snow. Nicholas had assumed his usual spot, hunched over the front desk so no guest would be tempted to summon him from the back room with the small bell. On the desk, he had opened a tabloid magazine that he had purchased from a nearby petrol station when he went to pick up some groceries. Nicholas liked his news the way he liked everything else in his life, as a passive observer of the drama from his quiet, orderly world. The only noise aside from the fuzzy, muffled sounds of the television were the sounds of the highway outside and the continuous, monotonous ticking of the clock. Bored and tired, he skimmed across the articles in the magazine. Another serial killer on the highway, possible sightings of UFOs, a Chupacabra feasting on cows and tourists in the middle of the rural countryside, things like that. It was a crazy world out there, Nicholas thought to himself. Always another story to watch unfold.

It was a quarter-hour to midnight when a man stepped into the front room. The door usually had a sensor on it to alert Nicholas when someone was about to step through, allowing him to clear the detritus of the night off the desk. That sensor did not go off this night as the tall, pale man suddenly stood before the front desk. Nicholas had been near dozing off, the small, grainy text of the magazine, the comforting blanket of white noise emitted from the TV and the clock’s ticking all forming a soothing, numbing soundscape of aural oblivion. The last time Nicholas had looked at the clock, it was thirty minutes past eleven, and as he fought to keep his eyes open, he became aware of the fact that fifteen minutes had passed and a man and woman were standing before him at the desk.

The man was tall and pale, with black hair and dark, inset eyes. He wore a leather biker jacket with all sorts of patches and symbols, some of whom even Nicholas wasn’t familiar with. Despite all this, his lips were the strangest shade of red, and something about his smile and his eyes made Nicholas feel oddly relaxed. At his side, a thin, blonde, lithe girl of maybe late teens to early twenties slumped against his shoulder, clearly half asleep. Nicholas unconsciously swept the magazine (and several others of a less savoury nature) into a half-opened drawer on the desk in one smooth, practiced motion and gave his best, most winning smile. ‘Out late tonight huh guys? What’ll it be?’

The girl met Nicholas with unfocused eyes and offered a smile. The man mirrored the smile, and placed a fifty dollar bill on the table. ‘I like to stop by when I pass down this way. It’s a nice, quiet place. One room, just three hours.’

Three hours huh? Nicholas processed the request mentally as he went beneath the desk to retrieve the guestbook. The guy wasn’t even going to stay the night, just spend three hours with his date. He felt the tingles in the pit of his stomach and the familiar goosebumps on his arm. Again, he felt the need to stress to himself, he wasn’t a pervert. It was simply an observation of human nature. Besides, anyone who would come to a place like this for a quick lay would have to expect something like this. Human nature and all that.

The man was still standing there, smile frozen on his face, as Nicholas returned with the guest book. ‘You got any requests, something you’d like to drink?’ he asked with a smile that he hoped wasn’t a leer. ‘Something to set the mood?’

The man gave a cheerful laugh. ‘I think she’s had enough,’ he said, giving his date a squeeze, and eliciting another vacant smile. ‘As for me, I don’t drink alcohol. Terrible for the complexion. Just one room, no disturbances for three hours. Nice and simple.’

‘It’s one-twenty a night,’ said Nicholas, looking at the man apologetically. ‘We go by nights and not hours.’ It was bogus of course, but it was a trick that Nicholas had learned from his predecessor. Sometimes people out late weren’t thinking straight, and that was the time for a little revenue enhancement.

The man didn’t miss a beat, and pulled an aging wallet from his jeans. It was dirty, worn and with dark stains at the edges. The man saw Nicholas looking at it, and chuckled slightly. ‘I know, I’ve had it for longer than I can remember. My friends tell me I need to catch up with the times, but there’s something nice about an old wallet, you know? So many memories.’

He pulled two hundred dollars in bills out and put them down on the table. ‘Keep the change,’ the man smiled, as Nicholas looked dumbfounded. He must’ve been pretty damn desperate, thought Nicholas but he understood when he looked at the drunk girl. She was beautiful, in a thin, waifish sort of way. Nicholas had never quite managed to conquer territory of that sort, but had always been curious. He pushed the guestbook toward the man and woman, and motioned to them to sign their names while he fetched their room keys.

The man signed in one fluid motion, before taking the keys to his room. The girl continued to slump against him as he walked her toward the door. Just before they exited into the night, the man looked back at Nicholas and winked. ‘See you soon, compadre,’ he said with a cheeky smile.

Nicholas didn’t stop looking at the door for at least a minute after the couple exited the building. There was something about the guy that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but he had felt strangely light-headed in their presence. He looked into the open guest book, with the man’s signature in it. The calligraphy was beautiful, and in crisp, black lines, the man had signed his name as ‘Chalmers’. Cute, thought Nicholas to himself, flipping the book closed. He could probably tell that guy as he checked out that lying on the guest book was a fineable offence. If there was one thing that he knew, it was that people who threw around money seldom argued. Still, business was basically over for the night, and Nicholas felt the familiar stiffness in his muscles, the tension in his stomach.

He put the ‘Ring Bell for Assistance’ sign up on the desk and retreated from the public eye, closing the thick door behind the desk labeled ‘Staff Only’. He knew that it was a ludicrous thought, but the thrill of getting caught made him excited and scared. The feeling was exacerbated by the thought that the couple had come through the front door without triggering the sensor. He knew that most people would ring the bell, or at worst, stand around until he got back, at which point he would apologize profusely. It would take a special kind of person, a real wierdo to open the door and see for themselves where he was.

The way the building and the individual rooms were spaced was archaic and old fashioned, and the Wallspace between them was accessed via an old tunnel built directly into the wall behind the ‘Staff Only’ door. The interior of the Wallspace was pitch black and musty, the only source of light being small shafts that peeked through the small, eye level holes drilled in the walls. There was only one for each room, thirteen in total. The man had accepted the thirteenth room, which felt right for some reason Nicholas couldn’t put his finger on. Normally, the procedure for going through these corridors was something to be undertaken with great care, but tonight, Nicholas moved through them as quickly as he could while making as little sound as possible. He was aiming to get to the last room before anything interesting started. He could check the others later that night to see if he had missed out on anything. Squeezing through the labyrinth of beams and mysterious tubes in the darkness, Nicholas eventually reached the correct vantage point, body leaned against the thick wood of the wall, and eye pressed to the peep-hole.

The man and the woman were having a conversation, sitting on the bed, or so he thought. They hadn’t turned any of the lights on in the room, but the closed curtains did nothing to restrain the moonlight that flooded the room in a ghostly, pale glow. The man and his partner were sitting on the bed, hands clasped and faces pressed closed together. The man whispered something into the girl’s ear, and she giggled.

The man finally ran his hand through her long, blonde hair and kissed her deeply. The two of them broke apart, before kissing again, hands exploring the curves of each others’ bodies. Nicholas was watching in rapt attention, feeling a familiar tightness in his pants.

The girl stood up and the man began undressing her, first peeling her clothes off and revealing her black, lacy underwear, kissing her all over her upper body before he undid her bra, and allowed her breasts to fall forth. In the moonlight, the girl looked like an angel, every part of her body angular, petite and ripe with the freshness of youth. The underwear went away quickly before the girl was laid down gently on the bed and the man went to work, undressing as he went.

The two bodies writhed against each other in the darkness of the moonlight, Nicholas the quiet audience to this, as they changed positions and the girl ended up on the bottom, her head hanging over the side of the bed. Above her, the man was grunting, and in moonlight, the shadows accentuated the contours of his rippling muscles. Nicholas was not interested in men, but even he had to admit that the guy looked beautiful. He was considering breaking the former taboo, and pleasuring himself alone in the darkness, when he stopped, and stared.

The muscles in the man’s neck rippled, even as the girl’s eyes were closed and she was too lost in rapture to notice. They coiled, like enormous worms just beneath the skin and suddenly, something shifted in his demeanor. Nicholas couldn’t place it, but somehow, the man didn’t look like a man any more, resembling nothing less than an extremely lifelike puppet as he continued his ministrations. His hungry eyes were focused on his conquest, staring like two black orbs, unblinking in the darkness. His limbs hung stiffly from his body, like a propped-up corpse.

The man opened his mouth, and his jaw split open, the corners peeling away like soft rubber as the mouth stretched much wider than a human’s. It was like watching a snake before it bit its victim, but the mouth just kept distending, like a grotesque puppet made of lifelike flesh and rubber. Along the edges of the mouth, where the lips had pulled back and the gums were still blood-red and pulsing, sprung rows of small, sharp fangs, like the interior of a shark’s mouth. The man arched his back, before pushing his head into the woman’s breasts, wrapping his mouth around one, and visibly biting down.

Nicholas couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as he watched it happen. The girl, head still rolling around drunkenly, gave only a short gasp to indicate that she had been bitten, and her veins pulsed in her neck and arms. They stood out, like overfed maggots as she writhed in the man’s embrace, gasping with pleasure the whole time. The pulsing in her veins became weaker and weaker before she finally gave out a soft sigh, which turned into the rattle of empty lungs as her veins visibly collapsed and her head and arms fell limp. Her mouth was hanging open, as if she had just realised something was wrong, and her sightless eyes, red with burst blood vessels, hung directly in line with Nicholas’s. He felt his legs and muscles, aching from their rigidity, go lax, and a warmth go down his leg. It took him a few seconds to realize he was staring at a dead woman.

The man didn’t seem to mind his partner’s inactivity, as he continued to press against the dead body, running his hands through her hair, and pulling at the flesh of her breast with the sound of someone chewing on soft meat. Each thrust made the woman’s head shake limply and he pulled his blood-soaked face, dark in the moonlight, out of her chest with a deep, satisfied sigh. Nicholas couldn’t take his eyes off the woman’s eyes as he silently apologized to her for his cowardice. She was dead now, and he hoped to god the man wouldn’t smell the urine soaking his pants.

Except, with a sharp rattle of breath moving, the woman wasn’t dead, at least in the traditional sense. Her eyes focused on him for one breathless second before her mouth opened wide, revealing the same serpentine fangs as her mate, and she hissed loudly. The man took this as encouragement and redoubled his efforts, as the corpses rubbed against each other, pale, bloodless hands grasping and clawing at each other’s bodies. She looked feral, with eyes wild and crimson and she bit into his shoulder, sinking her new fangs into his skin. He responded in kind, and as they fucked each other, Nicholas could see the rivulets of blood under their skin passing through their mouths and re-entering their veins before exiting through their partner’s. The man gave a snarl and pulled the woman’s legs back, snapping bone and tearing skin and muscle. She responded by pulling her inch-long claws down his back, slicing open the pale flesh like paper. A horrid cacophony filled the room of breaking limbs, snapping bone and wet splatters of tearing flesh as the undead fornicated, bending into new, horrible shapes the human body was never meant to express.

Nicholas was reminded in an awful fashion of a car crash he had seen once. The victim had gone straight through the windshield, landing on the hard asphalt as he had tried to stop. Before he had even finished rolling, a truck had plowed into his body, filling the air with a sharp crack and a spray of blood that Nicholas remembered hearing even on the hilltop. It took the police and the paramedics hours to pry the remains of the victim out of the wheels of the truck, and when they did, he had been a twisted mass of flesh, arms and legs filled with crushed bones wrapped like snakes around his body, a kind of macabre human knot.

This was not unlike the scene he saw before him now, as he stared, alone in the darkness inside a wall as the two vampires made love in the room. A twisting mass of limbs, torn and bending in different directions, the sound of bone grinding unnaturally against bone, and the glint of the moonlight reflecting off glistening flaps of skin and muscle. The man’s back was flayed completely, the skin laid to the side in neat sheets and the musculature tensing visibly in its nest of veins and nerves as it reflected his actions. The girl’s head had been turned a full 180 degrees, and her gasps of pleasure were marred slightly by the gruesome motion and rattling of the broken spinal cord in her neck.

It could have been hours or minutes that Nicholas had stood there watching, open mouthed, the revolting coupling of broken corpses, before finally, the two collapsed on top of each other, clearly spent. Whereas humans usually found themselves trying to catch their breath after moments of passion, the two undead lay there, nervelessly cold and still, a grotesque, a misshapen mound of twisted limbs, meat and blood. Nicholas had watched them the whole way through, shaking slightly, as he stood ramrod still in the quiet passage where he had hidden. There was difficulty in tearing his eyes away from the sight, and removing the sights he had already endured from his memory. The sounds of bones breaking, and gurgling, rattled gasps of feral pleasure haunted his mind as finally, he managed to drag himself back to the front desk.

Nicholas had spent the night in the shower of his trailer, the door locked, staying far from the other patrons. He had kept the lights in his house on until he saw the first glowing rays of the sun peek over the reddened horizon. The desert was cold, pale and blue in the early dawn, but Nicholas did not emerge from the trailer nor turn the lights off until the sun was high in the sky. Even then he had brought his double-barreled shotgun with him when he went to investigate the thirteenth room at the end of the motel parking lot. He didn’t know exactly what to expect, but when he opened the door, preparing for the smell of meat and spilled blood, he was shocked to find the room pristine.

The man and woman were gone. The windows were open and the bed was made, sheets clean and without a drop of blood anywhere. On the bed lay a small, folded up note. Nicholas walked over, ignoring the note before he checked every nook and cranny in the place. Finally, he walked over to the bed, put the gun down, and opened the note.

‘Your predecessor enjoyed watching as well.

There comes a point in every person’s life where they can either sit and observe forever, or decide to take action. Passivity does not absolve you of responsibility.

No one will believe you if you tell them what you saw, and even moreso, I doubt you want to explain your ‘night hobbies’ any more than you want to explain mine. So I offer you a chance.

I’ll return in about a decade. It’s so hard to keep track of time when you get to my age. By that time I will expect you to have found yourself a replacement. Train him however you like, teach him or don’t, I don’t care terribly, just make sure he keeps the motel running. This place is a convenience I’ve come to enjoy. When I do, I will make sure you are well compensated.

You’ll enjoy the life we have, if last night was any indication. You’ve seen the least of what we can do, and what we enjoy doing. No sense in ruining the surprise yet though, as I’ve seen, you like to think about things. You’ll have plenty of time for that.

Don’t worry too much, just do the job you were paid to do.

Before long, you’ll be inducted into the family business

Best Regards

Mr. Chalmers.’

Teeth

Personal Log of Dr. Gordon Leonard, Marine Biologist.

April 22, 2048, 1900 hours, 47° 9′ 0″ S, 126° 43′ 0″ W Pacific Ocean

The ocean surface, miles above Poseidon Station is apparently in the middle of a tropical cyclone. No matter how long I stay down here, there’s such a weird disconnect between reading something on a surface sensor and feeling it. Down here, storm currents sometimes reach the ocean floor, but the most we’ll ever feel of such a huge incident is a bit of minor turbulence.

I’m being melodramatic. Down here, all we have to see is the sensors. Outside the window, the ocean is just one, big, black empty mass, stretching out as far as the eye can see. Sonar and drones keep us informed of our surroundings, and sometimes a fish or slug or something provides a tiny pinprick of light, but for the most part, the sensors are our eyes down here.

The Station’s been down here a long time, but then, it’s not like we’re particularly high on anyone’s priority list. When they first discovered the ruins of Site A, people thought we’d discovered a new cradle of civilization, some old, undiscovered ruin of Pangaea that had sunk beneath the sea. Over the years, interest fades. There are newer, more impressive discoveries to capture the public’s attention, and slimy old ruins in the bottom of the ocean lose some of their appeal.

I almost wish I hadn’t taken this assignment. I haven’t seen the sun in two months. We’re just in this little bubble of light in the middle of nowhere, and even with a hundred or so scientists down here, it gets really lonely. If I didn’t have my Nudibranch samples, I think I’d go mad. It’s amazing seeing the little guys, see all the colors that no one ever would see up close. Their little bodies, not always bioluminescent, are streaked with beautiful patterns and I don’t know why they would have evolved like that in a place like this. One of God’s little secrets I suppose. I’ll update this little project if anything interesting happens. If nothing else, it’ll make for a great memoir.

May 3, 2048, 1508 hours

Darnell found a new passage today. His manner and methods are...unconventional, but I can’t deny that the man gets the job done. Going to Site A in person seems a bit much though. Maybe I’m just jealous, I don’t know if I could brave the darkness and freezing water alone.

Anyway, one of the robots blew a hole in a wall that we thought was solid. It’s opened up a whole new level, untouched for God knows how many centuries. Darnell couldn’t get that shit-eating grin off his face when he sent the feed to all of us. I have to admit, it was impressive. The robot’s nightvision made the entire place look this weird, luminescent green color, but I could still see things, carvings and stuff on the wall, all swirls and shapes. How long could they have been down there? Hopefully the linguists can come up with some answers for us. There’s a running bet on where the thing will end up coming from. My vote’s on something Assyrian, but then, I’m no historian, so I cheated and looked it up on the database.

The really interesting part though, is the samples he brought back. A bit deeper in the new passage they found, there was a nest of fossilized sea-slugs. These big, dark green gastropods, and from my examinations, they’ve got some similarity to other deep-dwelling species, Nembrotha aurea in particular, but the feeding appendages are all wrong, harder and made of some kind of calcium. I’ll need to separate the debris and stuff from the centuries of decay and buildup. I hope there’s enough of the original creature left.

May 14, 2048, 2000 hours

I’ve managed to create a simulation of the creature I’m haphazardly naming Nembrotha antiqua, which I know is tacky, but it’s the best I have right now. I bet most scientists go through a bunch of bad names before they hit gold.

The sea slug is hardly going to get me into a history book, because Darnell’s made another breakthrough, and my study on antiqua has stalled a little bit. Darnell’s done more than bring some fossilized old samples. Somehow, he found something fresh. I didn’t believe him but I saw the feed myself. The drone descended deeper, and the city just spread out like a big cavern. The nightvision was a still a bit grainy, like it couldn’t focus well on things, but when I realized what I was seeing, I couldn’t believe it. This big, organic structure, stretching from one tunnel to another. Thick as a tree trunk, and in the green light, it looked pale and ancient and dead. Its skin was basically translucent, and I could see the black veins under the flesh.

Then they fucking pulsed.

Just one small pump and then it fell still. Barely perceptible but everyone saw it. It’s ridiculous, but something is moving. Darnell is in talks now about cutting a piece off and getting it to me. Maybe some new type of.....I don’t know, some kind of symbiotic life form?

Something tells me I’m not going to be worrying about just naming a species soon enough.

May 19, 2048, 2310 hours

It’s bone, which means I need to change the Genus name. This thing isn’t a Gastropod, it has teeth, spirals of them, like a spiked suction cup. I’ve never seen anything like it before on a slug. Maybe a lamprey? No skeleton, not even trace bones to support the tendrils, just teeth, loads and loads of teeth.

Darnell’s been trying to cut the organic structure, but the stuff just regenerates around most cutting tools. The flesh is stringy and gets in the gears of automated sawblades, and they just kind of sink in before they jam and get stuck. He’s thinking about using a fusion cutter to cauterize the wound like Hercules and the Hydra. Best of luck to him, but I hope he doesn’t damage it too much. I’d love to see how the regeneration process works.

May 19 con’t, 0400 hours

[Heavy breathing] Well, I’m not going to be getting any sleep tonight. I just had a nightmare, that I was touching that thing and...my hand just sank into it like soup. It went straight through the white flesh and I touched its vein. Then that pulsing started and the whole thing just sort of wrapped around me in a lattice of black, veins like seaweed, growing in my skin, and my hair and eyes and...fuck I’ve been studying those slugs too hard. I think I’ll take a personal day tomorrow.

May 20, 2048, 1905 hours

Darnell got a piece of the thing off. It’s currently sitting in front of me, a little blob of white flesh, floating in a tube of water, and surrounded by robots and computers scanning every inch of it. We’ve already determined that it doesn’t match DNA with any known undersea life form, the closest being Enteroctopus dofleini (Giant Pacific Octopus for those of you in the cheap seats).

The most interesting thing about the little tissue sample is its regeneration. It doesn’t seem to know it’s disconnected from the greater whole, and it already seems like a...lattice of nerves is growing, like little probing tendrils from the blob. We haven’t given it any food or changed the temperature of the test tube, so I have no idea where the extra mass is coming from. Maybe proteins in the water or something like that. Obviously we’re going to need further tests, but I’m so excited I almost can’t concentrate.

I just met Darnell for drinks before my sleep cycle, and he offhandedly mentioned he was having nightmares as well. We had a few drinks and he was telling me about being down there, how it felt to be the only human to have ever been in that place in what must have been millenia. After his confident demeanor kind of wore off, he was saying how it did get eerie. It’s so wide and open and dark, and you only have your radar and nightvision that extends like three meters. Apparently even he sees things at the corner of his eye. I’m glad to know I’m not the only wuss, but I guess he’s the only one with the guts to actually go down there. When we figure out what’s in here, we’re going to be famous. We’ve already sent some samples to the surface, both of the slugs and the tissue. We had a whiskey and watched the light of the drone disappear into the blackness.

I need to get some sleep now, tomorrow, he’s going in and seeing how long the organic structure extends into the depths.

May 21, 2048, 0000 hours

[Monotone] I can see him, going further and further in. The walls around me are alive, the carvings moving, re-enacting scenes of worship and bloody, painful sacrifice. Those slugs are all around me, like a shoal of fish, and in their green eyes, I can see they are watching me, leading me deeper into the blackness.

My friends try to contact me, but I am beyond their sensors. The robots abandoned me half an hour ago, and I’m going deeper than I ever thought possible. Air supply is running out but I’m not afraid. In the deep black, there’s only these sea slugs to light my way.

It’s calling me, in the world at the center of the city [indecipherable] is it a temple? People like me haven’t bled here in a long time. I’m starting to feel light headed as the air supply dwindles. I’ll make it to the center. [indecipherable] sings out to me and I answer.

May 21, 2048, 0714 hours
 
Darnell is gone. He’s just fucking gone. At about 2330, they lost him his signal. He was babbling something but with all the feedback and static, it just didn’t come through. He’s been gone for seven hours or so now. The robots are searching every inch of the place but it’s bigger....way bigger than we thought. There’s tunnels and passages down there that stretch for fucking miles. The place should have caved it long ago, and we’re even trying to dig into one of the caverns from the ocean floor where our projections say he would’ve run out of air. Robots are out there right now, little pinpricks of fusion cutter light as they burrow through the rock

I....I didn’t make that recording last night. It was sleep-talk or something, but...I can’t remember...I had such a fucked up dream last night. I’ve always been a bit afraid of drowning, but going that way, covered in those slugs....I woke up soaking my sheets in sweat. Didn’t think much of it ‘till I heard Darnell was missing.

I checked the lab a few minutes ago, anything to get my mind of this shit. The tissue sample has grown even more, the flesh is forming something that looks like...some kind of very primitive nerve cluster? The sensors are detecting electricity moving through it, and this is starting to get crazy. I’m draining the water out in a second, and we’ll see if the growth continues-

[clattering sound as recorder is dropped. 15 seconds of silence, and then the sound of glass breaking. There is a slurping noise, and then gagging and dry heaves]
 
May 21, 2048, 2127 hours
 
I’ve been out for the past 16 hours and a bit, and I can’t remember a fucking thing. My sample is gone- I wake up in the infirmary and the doctor tells me I’ve a fever. My body feels weird...like the bones and flesh don’t sit right. From a medical standpoint there’s nothing wrong, and I’m just overworked or something. Maybe stress, suggests the doctor. I told him I’m going back to the lab and he’s asked me to keep him informed.
 
We still haven’t found Darnell. I’ve been going through the logs and the robots have cut more than a mile into the earth, well into where the chamber should be, and all they could find is solid goddamn rock. It’s...it’s impossible, like it’s bigger or something on the inside. We’ve sent a mayday to the surface. We’re prepping for evac. This situation has officially become FUBAR’d and the atmosphere in here is fucking hectic. I got together the samples of antiqua and put them in a vacuum-sealed case. I’m going to put in a request to get another tissue sample of the tentacle thing. For Darnell’s sake, they’d better not try to cover this up. Darnell’s been gone for way longer than his oxygen tank could support him. I’m not going to let them just forget him.
 
May 21, 2048, 2354 hours
 
Something is wrong with me. My head is throbbing like a heartbeat and every time I close my eyes I feel like I’m somewhere else. It’s an extreme depersonalization. I feel like my real body is outside the airlock, in that pitch black ocean. I feel like an eye-stalk that’s just looking back in.
 
I’m feeling…..very detached from this. I went to my sample case and checked the slugs were still there, laying them out and prying open their little jaws with pliers and scalpels until their fossilized flesh cracked and splintered. The teeth are placed at random looking intervals, until I compared them to my own. Nice and round, circular, and descending like a spiral. Can you imagine getting bitten by one of these things? Your flesh would come out in strings, as if someone gouged it out in neat, spiral chunks. It would be a bad way to die, and somehow, it makes me hungry.
 
Evac will be on its way soon. I’m going to try and sleep and forget about all this. I haven’t even bothered to clean up the lab. Did I eat those samples? I get flashes, and twitches, and it’s hard to think clearly. My brain feels like something is growing over it, a nice, delicate lattice of nerves and veins….
 
May 22, 2048, 0005 hours
 
I’m looking at my face in the mirror and I feel like it’s so wrong. This….mouth….lips covering my jaw? It doesn’t work. Totally useless. [Voice becomes slurred as there is a wet sound] It doesn’t even hurt when I fix it. Underneath my skin it’s become cold and white and wet, just like my real body in the ocean. I can see my black veins swimming in the sea of flesh. [more wet tearing and the voice becomes harder to understand] The Darnell [form? corpse?] swims in the city, already [adapted? advancing?] to new life. It [cracking] needs [cracking] to open [more? cracking]. [So? many? teeth? beautiful? spirals? of? teeth?]
 
After report
 
Dr. Gordon Leonard was declared missing. His quarters within Station Poseidon beside Site A were found disheveled. He appeared to have conducted crude surgery on himself in the bathroom, as it was splattered in blood and contained traces of flesh that had strangely not become subject to decomposition. The Doctor himself still hasn’t been found, and neither has Edward Darnell, an independent contractor and expert of demolitions brought in to help with the investigation into Site A.
 
Despite the logs within the voice recorder recovered with Leonard’s other personal effects, along with substantial amounts of data and witness testimony, no trace of biomatter was found within Site A, when the probes were sent to investigate. Furthermore there was no record of the tunnel that Darnell allegedly swam down when he went AWOL. The inconsistencies in Site A’s geography were chalked up to errors in mapping the place as well as the stress on the professionals responding to the emergency.
 
Suicide rates among the Poseidon Station’s former crew have been high, and many of them have had to go to counseling, reporting of violent nightmares and an urge to drown themselves.
 
The tissue samples and samples of Nembrotha antiqua have not been recovered. The drone went off course approximately 3 hours after the initial launch and then went offline. There is no record at all of the organic structure reportedly discovered within Site A.

Investigations are continuing.

The Clockwork Choir

‘Do you think they have souls, Japetti? Do you think they enjoy being in such artificial shells?’ asked Augustus. The two men stood in the darkened cathedral that Augustus had purchased to use as his studio. The man was an artist, of that there was no doubt, but even after two years, Japetti had never gotten used to his client’s eccentricities. The place was devoid of artificial light, lit only by candles that twinkled in the gloom like stars. The only other light source was the moon, which shone through the red-tinted windows, painting the contraption they stood before in an even more ghoulish light.

‘Don’t change the subject, Manya,’ Japetti said, trying to pick out the details of the device in the dense shadows. ‘This is excessive, even by your standards. Exactly what do you hope to accomplish with this grotesque experiment?’

It was difficult to study Maestro Augustus Manya’s face, which was covered in a strange, expressionless porcelain mask. The modern definition of the eccentric artistic genius, Augustus’ facial tissue had long collapsed after decades of experimentation with surgery and body modification. The only part of his face that was even slightly visible were his eyes, and around them, the skin was a latticework of scars and veins, hinting at the horror beneath. In the reddened moonlight and the flickering candles, as well as the occasional noise emitted from the strange device, Manya’s face looked like a frozen corpse. Japetti needed to take only a look at his eyes though, to know that his client was smiling.

‘Japetti, mi patron,’ the dulcet voice behind the mask intoned, putting a gloved hand on Japetti’s shoulder. ‘You don’t need to hide your disgust when it’s written plainly on your face. Look upon my creation, and tell me,’ he said, turning Japetti to face the device and touching his cheek with his own. ‘Tell me how it makes you feel.’
 
In the darkness, it was difficult to make out what he was looking at it. At first, he had thought it was a pipe organ, but the similarities to any commercially available musical instrument ended there. Four rows of finely carved keys were set into an intricately put together golden windchest, each one connected to a spider web of metallic wires, taut and glinting in the soft light. Each strand of metal was connected to dozens of gears that disappeared into the shadows of the machinery. All of this was vastly overshadowed by what was held above it.
 
Where a normal pipe organ had the pipes of its namesake, a grotesque tree blossomed from the top of the windchest. Silver and gold machinery disappeared into a writhing mass of flesh. Human bodies, stripped of clothes and shaved of hair, hung naked, set in place into carved depressions in the walls, with the organ’s windpipes disappearing into carefully sliced holes cut into their bodies and chests. The bodies fit together so close there was almost no space to see the wall between them, and each one hung in place with small, delicate looking glass needles inserted at every joint to disable the nerves that commanded the muscle. Each man and woman, despite the obvious differences in their anatomy and skin color, had the same vacant expression on their faces and the same shaved heads. Around each of their heads there was a golden device that wrapped around the host, with silver needles inserted at intersections along specially carved holes in their skulls. The people did not seem fully conscious, but moved slightly in their their places, air passing through the machinery they were hooked to and making a haunting, hollow noise fill the room. Long, transparent and red tubes carried blood to a central, beating human heart in a glass sphere, and circulated it among all the people in the contraption, making the wires and veins pulse gently like soft waves of motion that passed through the device.

Japetti had been in the entertainment industry for a long time and had met some artists who took their work to a level that was considered ‘unhealthy.’ He had met people who would never leave their stage personas, people who would talk to their characters like they were real people, and even an artist who insisted that each painting she made had to be christened by the fresh blood of a murdered clone body. For each of these individuals, Japetti had understood. Sometimes art needs to come from a place of fevered extremity, and the artist produced their best work when they fulfilled their strange sicknesses. That was what the clones were for, of course, to provide a human resource ethically to the people who felt that they needed that extra taste of depravity for their work. They were non-sentient, of course, mass produced in a factory on the outskirts of the city, and could be ordered to any design the client needed. So when Manya’s order for no less than twenty five clones, each designed to very careful specifications, had crossed Japetti’s desk, the agent had to come down and see what on Earth he was working on.

Now that he had seen it, this ‘Clockwork Choir,’ as Manya had called it, he felt a gnawing void in the pit of his stomach. Japetti knew what they were, and even watched some of them be made and drawn out of the nutrient vats, and he still felt that this was one of the most horrifying things he had ever seen. His face told the story that his words refused to form, and that seemed to satisfy Augustus, who gave him a hearty slap on the back. ‘The machine has already begun to fulfill its purpose. My Choir is not designed for peace or comfort. This device was designed to explore the visceral outer limits of music. To channel the trapped voices of stillborn ghosts.’

The Maestro walked over to his creation, caressing the keys like a lover’s fingertips. The bodies that hung above it gave a quiet symphony of approving sighs, like wind passing through the trees. It made Japetti’s flesh crawl. ‘All I’m saying is that this had better work, Manya,’ he said. ‘The Company has invested a lot of money and work into this...project of yours. We do expect to see some returns.’

Augustus had hunched over the keys, breathing deeply, and turned his masked face to watch Japetti with one eye. ‘Ah, the eternal relationship between an artiste and his patron. The dance, if you will. Here I am waxing lyrical about ephemeral concepts like music and souls. I do apologize, Japetti, this must bore you so, when you’re so firmly anchored in the base matter of this world. In that spirit, allow me to show you what my creation can do.’

With one hand, Augustus slowly uncurled a finger, and delicately, he applied pressure to one of the keys. In a split second, a whisper of wind and clicks passed through the device, as gears pulled, strands tightened and the silver needle’s point pressed itself into a hole in the clone’s head. His eyes widened and instantly, his mouth dropped open, filling the cathedral with a long, echoing and mournful wail. It was the sound of a father crying, or the slow, aching dirge of despair. Japetti could feel it in his bones.

‘The mechanism is simple, really,’ said Manya, as he pressed another key, which inserted a needle into the tear duct of a woman suspended fifteen feet up, and added her high, lilting gasp to the deep intonations of the man. ‘The keys are linked to a system of machinery and clockwork, made by me and finely calibrated to interface with the brain of the host. Needles are positioned at precise points above the brain, and when the key is pressed, depending on the pressure, the machinery gently inserts the needle, stimulating the parts of the brain that produces chemicals for emotional expression. Personalities unformed and unwashed, they respond the only way they know how, the only way they can. With this device, I have given voice to the human spirit, and created a symphony of feeling, unsullied by this imperfect world.’

He breezed his hands over the keys, fingers hitting them with precise and careful pressure, and an amalgamated, strangely melodic chorus of sighs, gasps, screams and whispers filled the room. The echoes made it difficult to pinpoint the source of the sound. Japetti heard his mother’s voice in his ear, breathing on his cheek as an infant. He heard the laughter of his baby son and the breathy sigh of his wife. His father’s soft death rattle rounded the sound off, as they faded into silence. Augustus had turned, watching him with excited, dark eyes.

‘You’ve gone completely mad,’ said Japetti, walking up to his client. ‘This is too much, Manya, even for you. No one wants to listen to a handful of poor bastards strung up with needles stuck in their faces!’ he motioned over to the mass of flesh and machinery. ‘This joke of yours cost the Company two point five million dollars, and all we have to show for it is a mess of bodies hooked to a pipe organ?’

The outburst didn’t change anything in Manya’s eyes, and he leaned closer. ‘You heard them, didn’t you?’ he whispered with excited glee as he leaned in and almost brushed his face to Japetti’s. ‘Don’t be afraid, my old friend,’ he whispered, ‘It’s only natural.’

‘I didn’t hear anything, you madmad. What are you talking about?’ stammered Japetti. Manya shook his head.

‘The voices will sound like people you know. It’s only natural for the brain to interpret them in that way. The voices of my subjects are neutral, completely artificial and mindless. They don’t know happiness or fear or pain. All they know is what I want them to feel,’ said Manya. He brushed his hand down Japettis’ face. ‘Don’t feel sorry for them. Clones help us explore humanity without hurting any real humans. Through these lost children, we can give voice to the most….intimate expressions.’

Manya’s fingers were flying over keyboard and again, Japetti was lost in the symphony. This time the touches were not gentle, the Maestro slammed his fingers into the keyboard with immense force, and rather than the soft intrusions they were before, the needles jammed themselves repeatedly into the brains of the hosts. Japetti could not help but call them victims as he watched the tips of the needles disappear into those holes. Their bodies tensed up, muscles coiling under the skin and their faces contorting in rapture and agony as they opened their mouths and gave voice to their tribulation.

There was no gentleness, no soft buildup, just a sharp cacophony that cut through Japetti and bled him to the soul. Shrieks and howls, gurgling snarls and high-voiced screams rent the air and echoed around him in an agonized whirlwind of raw emotion. He didn’t know why, but he was crying, like his soul was bleeding out of his eyes. The Maestro continued to play mercilessly, as their air pulsed with a fevered crescendo, pulled from the mutilated choir above.

Japetti didn’t know when he’d sank to his knees or exactly when the music stopped. There was nothing at all he could do. His limbs were jelly, his mind blasted by the force of the music. It was haunting and beautiful, a perfect rhythm of human noise, crafted effortlessly into art. From the bizarre instrument he had heard the banquet of humanity, agony married to ecstasy, despair and joy, love and fetid lust, mixing and intertwining as the bodies writhed and the Maestro played.

Augustus seemed satisfied with the reaction of his patron, and walked over, kneeling down before him, and producing a handkerchief to wipe away the tears. ‘It appears that you do have an artistic soul after all, Japetti,’ he said. ‘I trust that you’re suitably impressed with my work.’

‘I….I…..’ muttered Japetti, as a string of drool descended from his open mouth. ‘It’s…..it’s not something that should exist…..you’ve made something inhuman.’

Augustus Manya, the Maestro, put his hand gently on Japetti’s shoulder. ‘Art is inhuman, mi patron. Real art isn’t just something to please the crowd. It reaches right into you, finds the weak spot, grabs it, and twists. Real art should break you, my friend, and that’s how I knew I had succeeded.’

Japetti still couldn’t stop the stream of tears that were going down his cheeks. He met the Maestro’s gaze and was surprised to see a small rivulet of tears trickling down the side of the mask. ‘To be truthful,’ the artist continued ‘My first idea hadn’t been to use clones, as you might have guessed. Real people picked up off the street, torn from their lives and repurposed into my machine. Do you know what changed my mind?’

‘It’s…..it’s illegal,’ stammered Japetti. Augustus gave a soft, gentle laugh.

‘What changed my mind,’ said Manya, ‘Is exactly what I told you before. The most powerful art is born from monstrosity, and what could be more monstrous than trapping the essence of humanity in a broken husk that has never felt the joy of being human? Can you imagine it?’ he motioned to the contraption. Japetti imagined every last one of those poor creatures staring down at him accusingly, for financing their blasphemous births. ‘They know only what they feel, with no context for what it is. Their lives are but one long moment, shifting and changing with every press of the keys, all for our entertainment,’ the Maestro finished.

‘Can you imagine for a moment what it would be like?’ asked Augustus, staring into Japetti’s red eyes. ‘Can you imagine what they must be thinking, in their own, rudimentary way? That is art, Japetti, the ultimate violation. Not mere kidnapping, not mere murder, but the violation of a soul, unstained and clean. It’s the frontier that no one has attempted before, and now, I have brought it here for the pleasure of those aesthetes who can appreciate it. To truly drink the nectar of humanity, we cannot neglect the perversity within us all. This sickness of empathy, the deepest of all wounds.’

It was two hours before Japetti finally arrived home, and regardless of what chemicals he filled his veins with, the music of the bodies, their staring eyes and Manya’s blasphemous pride at his abominable art came back to him. In his dreams, the haunting symphony accompanied a parade of mutilated figures, people crying, blushing, screaming, all of them surrounding him and caressing him, calling him their ‘Father.’ They wanted to know if he was proud of their work, the completion of the project that they had been born and lived for.

It was the crying of his baby son that sent him over the edge, or at least that’s what the psychologist who compiled a profile of him post-mortem wrote. Japetti had left a note, as was the custom to explain one’s actions in so traumatic a time, but it had simply been an incomprehensible blur of smudged ink and gibberish. The phrase ‘unstained souls’ had been used many times. No one knew why he had done what he did, but when his wife came home, he was on the bed, gun in hand, brains on the wall.

Augustus Manya’s record, ‘A Symphonic Dissection of the Soul,’ would go on to be a hit with the public, a bestseller within the first week of release. The music on the record, forming one enormous, two hour track, was praised for its realism, and a level of haunting nostalgia that the reviewers never could quite place. Some listeners claimed to have bouts of nightmares after hearing the strange, beautiful melodies, and some had even taken their own lives. Of course this did nothing to quell the mystique of the record, which combined with the disappearance of its creator, made it an instant cult hit.

Manya himself, after the death of Japetti, had become even more of a recluse, and one day, simply dropped out of the public eye. The Company, that produced and published most of the music in the city, had put forth one final record of his works from the start of his career to his disappearance. Allegations of a bizarre instrument that used cloned bodies to produce music were denied fervently, and swept under the rug, though those rare and dedicated collectors of cult music continued to spread the urban legend. How else, they would argue, would Manya have been able to produce such perfect, haunting sounds? Singers would have been listed on ‘Dissection’, which was blank except for the title and name of the composer.

The instrument was, of course, never found, and to this day, Augustus Manya’s old studio, the immense cathedral at the edge of the city limits stands crumbling and empty, stripped of everything of value by the Company, and various hoodlums and looters.

The story goes, if you were to believe such nonsense, that if you listen very closely to the end of ‘The Greatest Works of Augustus Manya,’ you can hear his voice, added to the endless, chimeric melody, of what his greatest fans claim, is the ultimate masterpiece produced by his Clockwork Choir.