Third time’s the charm?
Maybe? This one will start and end with a short one.
Sweet
Sickeningly sweet,
A trick for the treat.
Come now you dashing boys,
And grovel at my feet.
Occult
The trip down to the house wasn't pleasant. I was hungover, I'll admit. The cabbie was loud, but nice. The road wasn't. It was more void, more pothole than tarmac. Council should get on that.
But I sobered up when I stepped out and saw the house. It lurched on top of that hill, like an ill-fitting hat. Thin and wiry like a nerve. A wave of air stalked into my nostrils. At the time, I don't know if it was from the house, our the shrubs nearby but it smelled like fresh death.
Just before the maggots come in. Before the body knows it's dead. I slid on my mask right about then.
I paid the cabbie by the way, in case you were wondering. I'm not a monster.
The hill's rim was gated, the fence a hive of diamonds, interlinked steel wires that shone in the waning sun. New, it was all new. Even the sign:
DO NOT ENTER -- TRESPASSING WILL BE PUNISHED SEVERELY
Not a hint of age on it.
I saw to that, by jimmying the lock with a my usual hamfistedness. Many scrapes and scores later, I opened the gate and began my climb. It was a steep fucker.
At certain points it felt like my feet were pointing straight up, flush against my shins. I was lucky it hadn't rained in a bit, the mud would have made this a joke.
I made it to the door, the house looming over me now. It was built, they said, from the local black wood. Trees that survived something called The Moonless Day. It creaked as I neared, like it was tasting the air or sighing.
I stopped at the door, something snapped underfoot. I looked under my dirt covered shoes, it looked like a stick of chalk. I picked it up, it was chalk. No doubt.
The house was empty. Like a toothless maw. A gap pretending to be a building, the walls were a joke like a painted window. And I kept finding chalk. Seven sticks in total. I wandered into the middle room, calling it a living room would be insulting but accurate. And I saw the only thing in this bloody house, a candle.
Sitting alone on the creaking bare wood.
That smell came back. It was pungent. A perfumed fist in the face. I sighed. I knew there wasn't a normal wick in that wax cylinder. I edged nearer and almost tripped. On nothing. Distinctly nothing.
My instability knocked some of the chalk I was carrying out of my pocket. It landed on what I had clattered against, a few particles of dust coating what I had missed.
I took the chalk and made more of a mess.
Nothing was in the room. So it seemed.
I marked seven bodies. Hidden from view.
The spell was strong, I don't think I could have unwoven it if I had the time. Which I didn't. I was running low. And they, the family, weren't my concern.
I stepped to the candle. Knelt, said my prayers to those who were listening and those who were hungry. I shifted the candle, spun it in place. And saw what I had feared.
"Síog bocht..."
I muttered. Drowned and pinned into that cylinder, acting as wick and ward, was a fairy. She was still screaming, her last moments on this Earth petrified in wax.
I won't lie, I took a moment. I didn't hear the little girl rise from the smallest marked body. I got a fright when she said:
“I never wanted this to happen. She was my friend. She helped me tie my shoelaces. I taught her how to read. She... She liked to read with me.”
The ghost... the girl started to cry.
Have you ever seen a ghost cry?
See tears form in their hollow eyes and steak down through them? I hope you haven't.
“Daddy said... it was going to be good for us. I knew he was lying, but...”
She looked at me. And then at the candle.
“I'm sorry.”
She kept crying. I was at my brink, I felt around in my coat pocket and fished my flask out. I took three long swigs.
She hiccuped on her tears, and I took another.
That house was a dark place, and not because the sun went down. I take pride in the fact, that I glowed that night. My antlers, my crown of horns, my markings that spiralled and streaked across my skin. I was me again, not the shade I was when I arrived.
I was young. Powerful again. I melted that wax prison with a bellow of my Clúrachán breath. No more smell of death.
The little one, the girl she looked up at me and my light. She was afraid.
"I'm not a monster."
I said. The fairy in my hand choked, spurted the damned constraining cream out. The smell of life, I drank it in. Intoxicating.
I don't recall much of what happened after that. I don't tend to when I return to this, shade of myself. Dimmed, but still rather bright.
But that house was felled that night. And there tales out there, 'round that hill, of little girl and a fairy reading on the moors.
Green
He emerged from the cave, scarred. A thousand decades had passed, and he remained. His form, what was, was gone now replaced with blisters and coiled melted fat. Hidden beneath a green cloak.
He arose, full height, in spite of his screaming legs and groaning back. He arose to breathe in the fresh air.
His name was Veridish.
Stumbling from the prison that had held him, his bare feet knotted and worn leather. With the grace of a drunkard, Veridish walked through the gardens that hung on suspended rock, through the forest of masts and the desert of a burning ice. And at last, he looked upon his home.
The Emerald Capitol.
Nestled in the bosom of two mountains, dusted with the half yellowed snow of both, it lay bustling. Smooth curving cathedrals meet and dance along roads of crushed jade. The palace at its heart beats with life. Unnoticed by the denizens, so full of life, the shade of Veridish walks.
He walks and walks, while others glide along the paths carved for them. Until the statue, the palatable parody of him. Clean, unmarked, smiling. He could not smile any longer. This marble marvel, erected at his fall, it took that from him. Beneath the insult he felt them.
He felt them calling to their master, like babes longing for their mother. From under the thin covering cloak, a frail hand emerged and beckoned.
An uproar was born, a panic. The older folk knew, they knew to run. The young and beautiful were hopeless.
They saw, they saw the slight shift and shatter under its lies. And from the rubble, he gleamed again.
A lime jewel slung side to side like a pendulum,
A wand gleefully waving in the air leaving behind acidic warts in reality,
Viridescent Veridish stood, his crown, wand and jewel returned.
Their king had returned.
And they would know... pain
Madness
The house is hollow and the doors are all open.
The wind, it passes by and through like a needle and thread.
There's nothing here. Nothing of note.
The wood is rotten. The pipes groan and croak. The glass peers out, but clouds the outside with grime.
Everything is still as you left it.
As you left me.
Isolation
How long does it take to kill a Dragon?
You've heard tales no doubt. Of heroes slaying Dragons, tricksters besting them, wizards consorting or conscripting them. These affairs are brief in the grand scheme of things. As long as the storyteller weaves it so.
This... this is not that.
Long ago, a Dragon was clipped. It plummeted from the skies between, the soft realm where legends lie. A harpoon made of dark metals and searing crystal tore through its wings. Where it fell and bled, men of ill intent waited.
Their motivations were human. And like all things human it withered and died, lost to the shuffle of nations. What didn't was... their prison.
They kept the Dragon under lock and key. They built a mountain, a tower they called it, and they locked it beneath the foundations.
It was free to a degree. Chained, yes. But not physically. It pottered about in the dim light, listless and ashamed.
It could not fly away, those scars were proof. It did not need food nor water, something other sustained it.
In the dark of that cellar, the dragon stayed.
And stayed.
And stayed.
It etched one mark for every thousand days.
Go there now and every surface is tallied.
But what of the Dragon?
...
Who do you think is telling you this story?
Wake
He was lying there, still. On a table in the centre of the living room. Everyone was wearing black. Everyone was sad.
A plate of sandwiches was passed around, I took one with cheese and mayonnaise in it.
He was my Granddad.
Everyone was talking, quietly as if not to wake him. Talking about him. About what he did, who he was, where he'd gone. Every now and again, someone would turn and look at him.
In the corner, there was an old man. He had what I thought was a lump of lard in his hands. He took a knife, and started carving it.
Long milky ribbons curled and fell. He wasn't wearing black, just a deep grey and a flat cap. I took a sandwich and walked to him.
He stopped, and looked up above his thick glasses.
"For me?"
I nodded. Biting a corner of my sandwich.
"Cheers, young man. You... Ah. You're Paddy's son?"
I nodded again.
"Sit down. I... I got a story to tell ye."
I did as he said, kicking my feet. He kept carving.
"I knew your Granddad for a long time. He was my brother you see, not... by blood but we -- We met in the war. Only two fools in that Hell from this town."
His carving slowed as he chuckled. The chuckle faded.
He kept carving.
"We came back. Not many did. Not whole at least. I'm sure they'll teach you that in school. What they won't... is whenever someone died."
He looked at me. I looked at him. We had a short stoic moment of silence.
"Whenever one of us died, one of ours, we'd carve a pipe. A wax one. Like this. Our Grannies and Granddads did that back in their day. You could only use it once. The tunnel through, you see? That'd melt. Collapse like a cave."
He sniffed, and sniffed again.
Looking back... I think he was trying not to cry.
Instead, he kept carving.
The hunk of wax, not lard, was starting to form into something thinner. Thinner and thinner, into a single ornate shaft. Engraved with my Granddad's name and another.
The man pointed at it and said:
"That's me."
He smiled looking at it.
"I don't like... carving these. I've gotten too good at it."
He ate his sandwich while looking for the missing pieces. A match and some long dried, long dead leaves. He cleaned up the mess he made too. I sat there, just watching.
He came back, and lit the pipe. It took a few pulls but, he became a dragon. Spewing bellowing streaks of dusty grey and rings that whirled around.
I'm at his wake now.
Some fifteen years later.
Uncle Gar's on the table.
And I... Well, I have a lump of wax and a knife.
Western
They say the Frontier is where madness meets man. Its wild out there, they say.
They don't know what that means.
Those words are foggy, half remembered dreams to them civilised folks.
Out here, they're as real as you or me.
Take these two. Men, they say, boys in reality. A misheard slight or some drunken slur set something alit in them. They stomped out into the fresh mud, Moon hung low to watch.
They howled at one another. Words like knives scored their virgin honour. One boy was lankier, blonde. The other was meaner looking, tufts of brown around his chin and head.
Blondie spat at Piggy, and turned slightly heading to the bar. Piggy took offence, tackled the twig to the mud and rolled.
Thick slabs of slimy dirt flung around. But the fists hit hard, cracking like whips. One of Blondie's brothers threw out a club. It sank into their fight.
Blondie swam for it, took it and smashed it across Piggy's block.
Piggy screamed.
They were tired. They laid in the mud for what must've been minutes but felt like hours.
They stumbled to their feet, slipping into the fight. A jab, a punch, a kick.
Blondie pushed Piggy, and Piggy went. Blondie whistled to his brother.
Piggy's eyes widened, he flung and flew for the broken plank of the club.
Blondie Two threw Blondie One a filled holster.
Piggy took hold of the shard of timber.
Friends. It lasted less than a second. Two men, boys, in the mud -- Blondie fumbled at the sight. Piggy galloped like a lame horse.
BAM
CRUNCH
The newspaper said "Two Men died in brawl." Two men, boys, died in the mud. Bleeding out and cold.
Hm.
Demon.
The cult slit her throat at the right time in the right way.
Upon an altar, in a conquered church, right to left.
Who she was didn't matter, she was number 7 to them. That's what mattered.
Her name was Rachel.
The moonbeams that bleed through the stained glass suddenly ceased as Rachel faded away gurgling. The cultist brandished their fetishes and idols, crude metal beaten into odd shapes, beads and wire wrapped around their bloody hands.
Rachel was still. Still warm. Still there. Still.
The church grew cold. The robed men's breathe clouded around them. The head cultist threw down his hood, revealing an achingly normal face.
"Incubolo! Hear me! Hear me, Demon! We summon you, First Adam, Man of Men! Come and Grant Us Your Wisdom!"
He bellowed, spit slinging forth every other syllable. He looked rabid. Eyes bulging from what would have been a respectable and well bred head.
The windows warbled and shattered. One by one, panel by panel.
Right to left.
The dust, the shards and such, warbled again, limply. Before ceasing.
The same was not true, for Rachel. One by one the cultists turned. The sacrifice, the girl, floating. As if carried.
The glass started to roll, tumble, led by the sliding dust and whatever remained. It danced around the cultists feet and pooled under Rachel.
It climbed, built itself, into something shapely. Something...
Feminine.
"Incubolo?"
The leader sputtered, his vigour gone.
The shape, holding onto Rachel, like a mother with child stared at the men. The sad boys, playing cultist.
"Her name was Rachel."
The church was found the next day covered in viscera.
The entire interior, slick with oily pulp.
Owls
By night they fly,
By day they sleep,
Come to eat,
Come to die.
There we go. Some stories might not have made the cut, but that’s ok — They can’t all be home runs. Regardless of their quality, I hope you enjoyed at least some.
Thank You For Reading.