RE: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]
01-01-2018, 06:10 AM
As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. Call it a wash. And in your anger, do not sin.
Do not give-
Sonora raged, her mouth full of clogging, rotten sounds: howling dogs and tearing silk, engines stalling on rusted pistons, sucking mud, screeching cars. Her teeth broke on glass, on concrete, on metal, on air.
-the devil a foothold-
Her innards were knotted in agony. A witch had taken a needle and sewn barbed wire through her guts, and with every twitch of her muscles it bit deeper and deeper into depths she hadn’t known she possessed. She vomited blood and water, but it only wrapped all the tighter.
We glory in our sufferings.
A little blue voice tickled her ear. Sonora, it said, the blasphemer, the invader, the betrayer, the spy. I don’t really want to hurt you. But you need to understand me. Anila. Anila. Do you remember? Do you know her name?
If you could imagine the sound of a finger bent in the wrong direction, the gristle bending and snapping- if you could imagine the sound of mud sucked through broken teeth- if you could hear a mouse being ground underfoot-
Anila. Her name was Anila.
She swallowed herself and dove.
__
Cade Silverheart trudged along the riverbanks, burning his fingers on a lonely cigarette.
It didn’t make a damn inch of sense. Not the- crab, whatever it was. Not the smell of smoke in the damp air. Not the city, not the flood, not the rain. He sloshed through a smog-laden puddle, soaking the hems of his already-wet slacks. Water crept into his socks and stayed there.
The ever-present storm thundered overhead, its rumbling a dark undercurrent to his thoughts. He had all the pieces to a puzzle he was too old- too drunk- too stupid to understand. In his younger days he'd have been hammering away at a typewriter, a glass of something nonalcoholic at his fingertips as he straightened what needed to be straightened and sorted through the detritus. A visitor. A living tank. Rumors uptown of some new spiritual movement. Mass destruction of property. The war, as always, about to move from cold to hot. The rain. The city. The smoke.
Cade coughed. His cigarette sputtered weakly, the sleeve of his greatcoat only doing so much to shield it from the rain. It seemed like the downpour was thickening, trying to drown Fort St. Alban for good. Maybe the rain knew something he didn’t.
A flash of white by his shoe caught Cade’s eye and he paused, letting the tired gears of his brain grind to a halt. The sluggish flow of the rain-choked streets had dragged something from the direction of the high ground: a piece of paper, soggy and stained with running ink. He knelt, letting the muddy water claim further territory on his clothes, and fished it out just before it slipped into an overflowing storm drain. It was a flyer, the kind the anti-war protesters used to bother with ten years ago. But this didn’t have any message of hopeless peace or pictures of smiling children: in its middle was a crude drawing of a sun, its rays jagged and knife-like. There was nothing else except for a slogan, printed slightly crooked at the top of the page: YOU WILL BE FREE.
It didn’t sound like a suggestion.
Cade crumpled the flyer in his hand and let it drop as he trudged ahead. The whole damn city was going mad. Maybe it was time for him to follow its lead. He’d be happier, at least. No longer a tired old drunk, wasting away his last few pennies as he waited for the city to sink; just a madman, dancing to the city’s rain-choked tune.
A tune... Cade cocked his head, unsure of what he was hearing over the sound of the drumming rain. The street was empty, this part of town long-abandoned as the water crept over thresholds, into carpets, up stairs. But still he heard some faint twinge of music, some sad soul plunking away at a piano. A squatter? Some drunk, lost musician?
He crept towards the sound, slipping into his old policeman’s stride: heel, toe, heel, toe. The notes tumbled through the air from beyond a broken-down fence between two crumbling tenements. He picked through the remnants of the slats, ignoring the calf-high pools of grey water that threatened to suck away his shoes. Not a damn soul in sight. Except-
For a moment Cade thought, absurdly, that the river had grown tired of running through its worn-down banks and taken to the land, that it had leaned out of the canal and laid down on the cobblestones to rest. A looming black shape was lying half in and half out of the water, rippling as the rain pelted it- but the drops didn’t slide off its surface. They fell into it, pooling in translucent layers over the curving black mass and running down in dark streams. A long-abandoned wagon protruded from somewhere in its middle, dwarfed into toylike proportions. Cade felt his eyes sliding down the long, sinuous form to a narrow end nearly forty feet down the avenue, curved in a gentle S. Its tip chimed with gentle notes, the sound of a piano played by rain.
What in- Cade felt himself take a step, and then another, the water rising to his knees. The black mass shivered, its sides rising and falling. Pockets of air opened and closed in rows along its back as it- breathed? Air whistled through it as it folded and unfolded a hundred liquid mouths, gaping at the sky. Some vast thing from the long-lost sea had come to die, beached far away from whatever alien shore it had crawled from.
And it saw him.
No, it didn’t. As Cade approached the great thing’s narrow end- its head, he realized, a huge blunt skull like a whale’s, its jaws lined with rows of glittering black teeth- he saw that it was eyeless, a smooth black expanse of dark fluid. But it sensed him, as a man can sense a flame beneath his palm. It sides rippled as he neared, twitching like a boxer’s muscles after a long fight.
“Easy, now,” Cade said, softly. “Easy.”
The great thing wheezed. Up close he could see that its breaths were labored, struggling to pull in the rain-choked air. When it exhaled he could taste something bitter and dark, like a pot of coffee left too long on the stove. The great head curved towards him, heavy, ponderously. It snorted, spraying him with dark droplets. He sensed its wariness.
Gently Cade lay a hand on the thing’s neck- or where its neck might be, if it was an animal. Its flesh was cold, congealed, like a rotten peach. His fingers sank up to their knuckles.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said quietly. “Easy.”
“Hands- !” the thing shrieked, its voice a woman’s, loud and panicked . Gill-like slits in its sides flared open, sucking hungrily at the air as Cade pulled his hand back in alarm. Black fluid clung to his fingers, sticky and cold.
“Hands- hands- unrighteousness- a thousand- If I made of earth, if thou art of air memoranda sugar high deprecation, depreciation, forgotten curious violence faith,” the towering thing gasped. Its jaws yawned open, teeth as long as his forearms waving like a centipede’s legs. “You wanted to talk- plaything- game. Love me-killing- has a point never met perspective presence bravery- to you, to you, to help. Living inside of me. Keeping me alive. This station. War. Apocalypse.”
Cade took a step back. The cacophony of voices had burst forth all at once in a scream, rattling the windows of the nearest apartments. Years of paranoia crept up on Cade; he rubbed the back of his neck and scanned the street again. Nothing. Where the hell had this thing come from? What was it?
Something nagged at the back of his mind. A queasy sense of deja vu. “I... know you ain’t in real good shape. I’ll do what I can. But there’s something I gotta know … that big bastard that leveled the building downtown. Do you have something to do with that?”
Thick muscles coiled with tension at the corner of the great black mouth. “Iceworlder,” it growled, its voice glacier-heavy. “Weapon.”
“Got it.” He didn’t. Cade looked the thing up and down, rubbing the stubble on his chin. The arch of its back rose ten, twelve feet into the air, shuddering with exhaustion. Every breath it exhaled came in whistling whines, oddly musical. If this part of town hadn’t long since been ceded to the floodwaters no doubt the cops would… would… what would they do? Even standing next to it Cade could tell the thing weighed in the tens of tons. Its head was longer than he was, toe to crown; it could swallow him and three other men in an instant. There was no moving it. And to kill it-
Cade paused, the dripping black skull still watching him. His hands had gone numb from the contact with its body. All liquid. No bullet would hurt it, this beast, this congealed river. But something had anyway.
He bent down unnecessarily; at his tallest, he wouldn’t have cleared its upper jaw. “Listen. I don’t expect you to trust me. But something rotten’s happening in this city, and I think you and me might be on the same side. I don’t know what the hell that side that is, but… Tell me what I gotta do to get you off this pavement.”
He felt the thing’s intangible gaze travel over him. Something resonated deep down in its black throat. “Doctor Robin Pearson. Talking. Introduce….a very good place to start.”
A dry, young woman’s voice. Cade nodded, though he wasn’t any closer to understanding. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The thing hissed and gurgled, then lay still. For a moment Cade thought he could see some flash of electric blue surfacing where its eye might have been, an iridescent fish flicking through a pitch-black lake. He turned and left it, its piano notes still chiming, as the rain did its best to wash away them both.
Do not give-
Sonora raged, her mouth full of clogging, rotten sounds: howling dogs and tearing silk, engines stalling on rusted pistons, sucking mud, screeching cars. Her teeth broke on glass, on concrete, on metal, on air.
-the devil a foothold-
Her innards were knotted in agony. A witch had taken a needle and sewn barbed wire through her guts, and with every twitch of her muscles it bit deeper and deeper into depths she hadn’t known she possessed. She vomited blood and water, but it only wrapped all the tighter.
We glory in our sufferings.
A little blue voice tickled her ear. Sonora, it said, the blasphemer, the invader, the betrayer, the spy. I don’t really want to hurt you. But you need to understand me. Anila. Anila. Do you remember? Do you know her name?
If you could imagine the sound of a finger bent in the wrong direction, the gristle bending and snapping- if you could imagine the sound of mud sucked through broken teeth- if you could hear a mouse being ground underfoot-
Anila. Her name was Anila.
She swallowed herself and dove.
__
Cade Silverheart trudged along the riverbanks, burning his fingers on a lonely cigarette.
It didn’t make a damn inch of sense. Not the- crab, whatever it was. Not the smell of smoke in the damp air. Not the city, not the flood, not the rain. He sloshed through a smog-laden puddle, soaking the hems of his already-wet slacks. Water crept into his socks and stayed there.
The ever-present storm thundered overhead, its rumbling a dark undercurrent to his thoughts. He had all the pieces to a puzzle he was too old- too drunk- too stupid to understand. In his younger days he'd have been hammering away at a typewriter, a glass of something nonalcoholic at his fingertips as he straightened what needed to be straightened and sorted through the detritus. A visitor. A living tank. Rumors uptown of some new spiritual movement. Mass destruction of property. The war, as always, about to move from cold to hot. The rain. The city. The smoke.
Cade coughed. His cigarette sputtered weakly, the sleeve of his greatcoat only doing so much to shield it from the rain. It seemed like the downpour was thickening, trying to drown Fort St. Alban for good. Maybe the rain knew something he didn’t.
A flash of white by his shoe caught Cade’s eye and he paused, letting the tired gears of his brain grind to a halt. The sluggish flow of the rain-choked streets had dragged something from the direction of the high ground: a piece of paper, soggy and stained with running ink. He knelt, letting the muddy water claim further territory on his clothes, and fished it out just before it slipped into an overflowing storm drain. It was a flyer, the kind the anti-war protesters used to bother with ten years ago. But this didn’t have any message of hopeless peace or pictures of smiling children: in its middle was a crude drawing of a sun, its rays jagged and knife-like. There was nothing else except for a slogan, printed slightly crooked at the top of the page: YOU WILL BE FREE.
It didn’t sound like a suggestion.
Cade crumpled the flyer in his hand and let it drop as he trudged ahead. The whole damn city was going mad. Maybe it was time for him to follow its lead. He’d be happier, at least. No longer a tired old drunk, wasting away his last few pennies as he waited for the city to sink; just a madman, dancing to the city’s rain-choked tune.
A tune... Cade cocked his head, unsure of what he was hearing over the sound of the drumming rain. The street was empty, this part of town long-abandoned as the water crept over thresholds, into carpets, up stairs. But still he heard some faint twinge of music, some sad soul plunking away at a piano. A squatter? Some drunk, lost musician?
He crept towards the sound, slipping into his old policeman’s stride: heel, toe, heel, toe. The notes tumbled through the air from beyond a broken-down fence between two crumbling tenements. He picked through the remnants of the slats, ignoring the calf-high pools of grey water that threatened to suck away his shoes. Not a damn soul in sight. Except-
For a moment Cade thought, absurdly, that the river had grown tired of running through its worn-down banks and taken to the land, that it had leaned out of the canal and laid down on the cobblestones to rest. A looming black shape was lying half in and half out of the water, rippling as the rain pelted it- but the drops didn’t slide off its surface. They fell into it, pooling in translucent layers over the curving black mass and running down in dark streams. A long-abandoned wagon protruded from somewhere in its middle, dwarfed into toylike proportions. Cade felt his eyes sliding down the long, sinuous form to a narrow end nearly forty feet down the avenue, curved in a gentle S. Its tip chimed with gentle notes, the sound of a piano played by rain.
What in- Cade felt himself take a step, and then another, the water rising to his knees. The black mass shivered, its sides rising and falling. Pockets of air opened and closed in rows along its back as it- breathed? Air whistled through it as it folded and unfolded a hundred liquid mouths, gaping at the sky. Some vast thing from the long-lost sea had come to die, beached far away from whatever alien shore it had crawled from.
And it saw him.
No, it didn’t. As Cade approached the great thing’s narrow end- its head, he realized, a huge blunt skull like a whale’s, its jaws lined with rows of glittering black teeth- he saw that it was eyeless, a smooth black expanse of dark fluid. But it sensed him, as a man can sense a flame beneath his palm. It sides rippled as he neared, twitching like a boxer’s muscles after a long fight.
“Easy, now,” Cade said, softly. “Easy.”
The great thing wheezed. Up close he could see that its breaths were labored, struggling to pull in the rain-choked air. When it exhaled he could taste something bitter and dark, like a pot of coffee left too long on the stove. The great head curved towards him, heavy, ponderously. It snorted, spraying him with dark droplets. He sensed its wariness.
Gently Cade lay a hand on the thing’s neck- or where its neck might be, if it was an animal. Its flesh was cold, congealed, like a rotten peach. His fingers sank up to their knuckles.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said quietly. “Easy.”
“Hands- !” the thing shrieked, its voice a woman’s, loud and panicked . Gill-like slits in its sides flared open, sucking hungrily at the air as Cade pulled his hand back in alarm. Black fluid clung to his fingers, sticky and cold.
“Hands- hands- unrighteousness- a thousand- If I made of earth, if thou art of air memoranda sugar high deprecation, depreciation, forgotten curious violence faith,” the towering thing gasped. Its jaws yawned open, teeth as long as his forearms waving like a centipede’s legs. “You wanted to talk- plaything- game. Love me-killing- has a point never met perspective presence bravery- to you, to you, to help. Living inside of me. Keeping me alive. This station. War. Apocalypse.”
Cade took a step back. The cacophony of voices had burst forth all at once in a scream, rattling the windows of the nearest apartments. Years of paranoia crept up on Cade; he rubbed the back of his neck and scanned the street again. Nothing. Where the hell had this thing come from? What was it?
Something nagged at the back of his mind. A queasy sense of deja vu. “I... know you ain’t in real good shape. I’ll do what I can. But there’s something I gotta know … that big bastard that leveled the building downtown. Do you have something to do with that?”
Thick muscles coiled with tension at the corner of the great black mouth. “Iceworlder,” it growled, its voice glacier-heavy. “Weapon.”
“Got it.” He didn’t. Cade looked the thing up and down, rubbing the stubble on his chin. The arch of its back rose ten, twelve feet into the air, shuddering with exhaustion. Every breath it exhaled came in whistling whines, oddly musical. If this part of town hadn’t long since been ceded to the floodwaters no doubt the cops would… would… what would they do? Even standing next to it Cade could tell the thing weighed in the tens of tons. Its head was longer than he was, toe to crown; it could swallow him and three other men in an instant. There was no moving it. And to kill it-
Cade paused, the dripping black skull still watching him. His hands had gone numb from the contact with its body. All liquid. No bullet would hurt it, this beast, this congealed river. But something had anyway.
He bent down unnecessarily; at his tallest, he wouldn’t have cleared its upper jaw. “Listen. I don’t expect you to trust me. But something rotten’s happening in this city, and I think you and me might be on the same side. I don’t know what the hell that side that is, but… Tell me what I gotta do to get you off this pavement.”
He felt the thing’s intangible gaze travel over him. Something resonated deep down in its black throat. “Doctor Robin Pearson. Talking. Introduce….a very good place to start.”
A dry, young woman’s voice. Cade nodded, though he wasn’t any closer to understanding. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The thing hissed and gurgled, then lay still. For a moment Cade thought he could see some flash of electric blue surfacing where its eye might have been, an iridescent fish flicking through a pitch-black lake. He turned and left it, its piano notes still chiming, as the rain did its best to wash away them both.