The beast intercepted him with lightning speed, and he was literally bowled over by the creature. It then turned on him, and with pincered legs that revealed themselves from recessed cavities in one of the front segments, picked him up and raised him towards its mouth. A tan mucus-like substance jetted out of its circular mouth, and it spun Gabriel in its claws, coating him from head to boot.
Jehovah screamed in protest, but he knew there was little he could do, and he wished like he had so many times before that Herbert West was there when he needed him.
The insect-train then turned its attention on him, and he backed towards the rear of the same hut, waiting for the killing blow. His view out the front door was awe-inspiring in a life-ending way, with the two pyramids book-ending the beast statue, the creature at the fore, but it was what he saw in the background that gave him hope.
Herbert West stood, a speck on the horizon, his re-agent thrower still spewing the sickly green mist in the sky, and then it happened…the statue, which Herbert had assured him was just that, began to move. Slowly at first, but already drawing the attention of the insect beast, it shook the mucus from its emaciated body, bones and its shell-like tomb crashing to the ground.
Its head loose, it roared, a sound that shook through its hollowed body, and more of its shell fell to the ground below it.
Jehovah forgotten, the insect creature turned to attack, and the battle brought down huts and buildings all around them. The statue creature was far shorter than the insect, but its pent-up aggression gave it the upper hand and it launched itself at the other, pinning it to the ground, which shook the walls of the hut that Jehovah still hid in.
“Let’s go, while the thing is distracted!” Herbert West said as he emerged from the dust and sand raining down all around. He was wearing his white hazmat suit to help protect him from the re-agent mist that still issued itself from his modified flamethrower.
The insect had turned itself over and was using its legs to wrap up the statue-creature, and with a power reserved for the living, it snapped the creatures back, bringing it down like a demolished building.
“Move now!” and they were off, Jehovah glancing back and regretting it as he saw Gabriel’s gloved hand exposed in a pile of rubble. He tried to get Herbert to stop, to do anything, but it was no good, so he kept going until they had reached the river.
“How did you know?” Jehovah asked when they had stopped.
“I wasn’t sure,” Herbert said, trying to catch his breath. “But when Gabriel hit the doorframe back at the hut, he dislodged a piece of the wall, exposing hair and bones beneath it. It took me a while to put all the pieces together, but I figured that creature was collecting bodies and building those structures with them, and using the town to attract more victims.”
“What about Gabriel? We have to see if he’s alive,” Jehovah said, but he already knew.
“He’s a big fish, Jehovah,” Herbert West replied. “He’ll be OK.”
But deep down, Herbert West knew that answer, too…
Through Eyes of Rot
My people are close…Death, I feel, is closer still…Three suns rise, three blind eyes in the sky…I stand alone atop a cresting wave of sand. I can feel every grain as the swirling winds grind them into my flesh.
I watch as the sands rise and fall with the winds; dunes crash against a distant mountainside like rolling waves. A storm cloud of grit threatens to erode the world around me.
A forgotten brother lies at my feet, his body half-buried, his head an ivory beacon. His hood waves like a tattered flag of surrender. He never made it back, but his undoing has paved way for my opportunity, my chance at being remembered by those who will read of my triumph in the millennia to come.
A year of my life spent in exile, wandering these desolate wastes, offering myself to the elements under the fiery gaze of those ever watchful suns, two of which shine only on this godforsaken valley through a tear in the fabric of space, a wide black smear across the crimson sky. The third, our own, cowers next to the cosmic intruders.
Many times I lay at death’s door, and many times I would awaken to the sound of dirge beetles as they tried to worm their way into my skull, eager to get at the soft tissue hidden within. Each time I would rise and push on, my destination not a place, but a time; a time when I might return and take my rightful place among my people.
As I wandered the wastes, I experienced things I didn’t know existed in my limited travels outside our valley. Things that made me question everything I had lived up till now: my faith, my existence, even my ability to comprehend the words written in the metal tablet that I was given, the tablet containing runes that, when spoken during the time of alignment, will connect my mind with those beyond.
Over time, the sand erased my identity, flaying the skin from my face, layer by layer. It laid bare my inner façade, one of muscle and bone, but it never broke me, never crushed my desire to be part of something bigger than this valley and the world that cradles it.
A flock of skin skates glide overhead, held aloft by thermals. All wings and skin and hollow bones, I can see through them as they eclipse the suns. Their veins pulse with blood, blood that many times quenched my thirst when my throat was more parched than the land.
I hear hyenas cry, and I know that I’m close. A hunting party must be nearby, as hyenas never stray far from the valley on their own. They are tracking bloaters, small rodents that expand when the suns rise, their bodies distorted by bladders of hot air. I can hear them lowing just beyond the rise.
My return will be cause for celebration, for I am the last. I will fill the ranks of the chosen, the faceless, the brotherhood’s inner circle of advisers who will set in motion the resurrection of our king—the King of Rot—who has written in flesh the words that, when spoken in conjunction with ours, will bring about the end, but will also carry forth the beginning of a new world, one that will see the rise of he who dwells beneath briny seas.
I see the herd of bloaters as they mount the hill in front of me, and in a panic, they overtake me before I can react. I am trampled under hoof, but the sand saves me as I am pushed under. It pours in on me like water breaking through a ship's hull.
I shield my lidless eyes from further harm, and struggle like a drowning man as I try to dig myself free. I hear a shout, more voices.
Hyenas and robed men attack the sand, and soon I’m being pulled from my tomb by members of the brotherhood. They lay me down gently, their touch reverent.
It is then that I realize that the hunting party was, in fact, looking for me.
They have laid me on a bed made from the hide of skin skates, wing bones giving it support. They wrap my body in soft linen, but take care not to cover my head. When I return home, everyone must see that I have survived my ordeal, that I am ready to become a member of the faceless. My wounds are not looked after, nor am I spoken to directly. There are people in the valley that will heal me, ceremonies to follow. They lift me slowly, and we descend the dune. They walk single-file towards the suns.
I turn to look into the eyes of the individual behind me. His left eye is patched, his skin sloughed off in strips. My lack of features will be a symbol of importance, of power. His is a symbol of disease.
I drape my arm over my eyes to shut out the suns and dream.
When I awaken, two suns have set, and the third hangs low on the horizon. We stop at the upper rim of the valley—our valley. I stare out at the graveyard before me; at mountainous skulls that meet the horizon. The skulls were those of Sand Leviathans, whale-like creatures that live beneath the desert’s surface that come here to die. Some of them were here long before we were, the exposed bones picked clean by leathery scavengers and beaten porous by sand-charged winds.
Beneath the sands, their immense bodies decay so slowly that they will remain here for thousands of years.
Our people decided early on that we would benefit from the shelter and cool comfort the corpses provided, so we adapted from a life of
using the creatures to construct our villages, to building our villages within the bellies of those vile beasts.
A life among rot.
The hyena men run ahead, hemp ropes and muzzles reigning in their animals. We have found that hyenas, like the brotherhood, are highly adaptable and able to survive in harsh lands. They eat what is placed before them and never complain.
The ground rumbles.
We wait.
A sand leviathan is on the rise. A life of a thousand years or more is coming to an end.
The coincidence of this—of the leviathan’s death and my rebirth—is not lost on me; it will not go unnoticed by the elders either.
My keepers set me down, enraptured by the spectacle below. I, too, sit up and watch the death show unfold.
The beast breaches the valley floor and sand spews skyward. Its eyeless head is calloused and scarred from the abrasive world it traverses. The boney protrusion that pushes the Earth aside underground is used one last time to burst through the ground that for its entire life formed a barrier between it and the sky.
Its mouth gapes as it begs one last breath. Sand pours from ejection vents just behind the jaw line and spills to either side. Its breath turns to steam in the cool, night air.
The brotherhood reacts almost immediately, running across the sands and launching hook-tipped ropes over the creature’s lower jaw, pinning it to the ground. They pull the rope taught, the mouth becoming a jagged-edged cave leading straight to hell’s doorstep: A new home for an ever-expanding people.
The second wave use saws lined with thrasher spines to sever hinged tendons and remove teeth, making the opening more accessible. Nothing will go to waste.
By tomorrow, the skull will be completely clean, and we will feast for a month.
Aftershocks threaten to change the landscape as the creature twitches beneath the surface.
Still time is short, so I am lifted, and we resume our march home.
The brotherhood stands aside as we appear. They stare. I am carried across the valley, between the skulls, each painted in designation of its occupants. They are hovels; I am destined for greater things.
We traverse the valley, the only home I have ever known. The elders knew life outside the valley, it is said, for they came from far beyond the desert. Up ahead, I see our destination, the skull of the chosen.
They stop before a skull decorated with red and gold flags; they beat furiously in the high winds. All the other members have moved on, save the two charged with carrying me. I am lowered onto an ornate platform made from the bones of a creature that has never been seen alive.
The skull towers over me—it towers over everything.
Two warriors—naked, save for tattoos made from leviathan oils—emerge from the skull and lift me. The men who carried me all this way have already gone.
We descend.
They carry me down the esophagus, torches wrapped in animal hair burning at intervals. It is cool here, the sand keeping out the desert heat, but a foul warmth radiates from the rotting flesh of the creature, and I am reminded of the crushing bulk that surrounds us as we go deeper into the beast.
We pass by the lungs on our way through to the cavernous stomach, and wind funnels down around us. A gentle piping fills the air from wind-catching holes drilled into exposed rib bones. The sound lulls me into a false sense of ease, but in my mind I know that the ceremony is not complete, and I could still become one of the sun-bleached carcasses so carelessly thrown into the wastes.
A carpet of moss covers everything, tiny stalks of plant life ending in bubbles of phosphorescence. When they are touched, they burst, releasing sparks like stars in the night sky. Membranous skins of glowing fungus light from above.
There is even beauty in rot…
In the high, dark reaches of the stomach, gaunt-bats hang from cancerous polyps and dead cilia. Their guano litters the ground. They launch themselves into the air and flock in a dance of shadows towards the throat and up into the night sky. Our intrusion has disrupted their slumber.
A river of acid and bile meanders through a village of two-story tents, air bubbles seeping up from pores below it. The tents are made from the wings and bones of skin skates and the tanned hides of bloaters. The openings flap in the wind.
Everywhere I look there are plants and animals; not like the leviathan I used to call home. This corpse is reserved for the chosen, which I have now become. I have never seen its like before, and it is paradise. There is music and color here…but there is still death and disease.
A leprous man, his arms ending in stumps, walks across our path. His back is hunched, his legs bowed, his gait that of a man on crutches. He is not one of the chosen. He still has a face. Not a word is said as he disappears into one of the tents, no doubt to attend to the special needs of its occupant.
I am carried through a field of fungal grass and into a tent of gold, the walls made from the silk of parasites that live in the bowels of leviathans. I had heard of their existence from my grandfather, but didn’t believe it to be true until now; such splendor, I dared not dream.
The warriors lower me onto an even more ornate platform than the one topside, one made from hand-blown glass formed from the desert sands and heat focused from the suns. Tan mist swirls within the glass like a trapped sandstorm.
The warriors bow and leave. I cannot see who they were bowing to because the tent is sparsely lit with only flickering firelight from a chimneyed pit.
From the darkness beyond steps a man (if indeed he is a man) wearing a robe of the brightest white I have ever seen. In this world of sand and decay it seems an impossible task, but the robe is perfect and pure. The robe, I notice, is not his most unusual feature, as he is possessed of two extra sets of arms, both large and powerful, ending in gloved hands. The gloves are red, as is the mask that covers his hooded face. Engraved in the mask are a multitude of eyes, the pupil’s gems in colors that none but nature could create.
There is no introduction, no congratulatory exchange, and little explanation. He simply notes that time is short, and that he is here to complete my transformation. It is time, he says, for my re-skinning. I know not what he means by that, but I have come too far not to see it through to the end. I am now, and will forever be, one of the faceless.
Unnoticed by myself previously, there is a plain table beside my “bed” that contains a beautifully carved box of bone and an urn made from a hollowed-out tooth.
The man steps forward and uncaps the tooth. I can see that the inside is alive with insects, as they are already pouring over the edge of the urn as he walks towards me.
“Trust in me, my son,” he says quietly.
I bow my head, and he pours the contents of the urn over me. Instantly I writhe at the thought of the things crawling over my exposed flesh, my unprotected eyes.
“These are Glass Ants,” he explains. “They survive by eating sand, and nothing more. They will clean your wounds far more thoroughly than I ever could. Do not be afraid.”
I can feel them on my exposed nerve endings—at least, the ones that haven't been deadened by the harsh desert winds or cauterized by those demon suns. I can feel each grain of sand as it is removed from the tiny creases in my flesh, the holes that gape in each deposit of fatty tissue. My face is a mask of living things, and I can barely stand it. This goes on for more time than I can comprehend, and I feel it will be the end of me. Then, as quickly as it began, it is at an end.
Their feasting complete, the insects congregate on my face, and I can feel their weight push in on me. It is suffocating.
The man hands me the urn and pours a handful of sand into it. He instructs me to lower my face over it, and as I do so, I can feel the ants leave me and return to their cage. The man retrieves the urn from me and caps it, then sits it down on the table and picks up the box, which is carved like a face, if a face could be perfectly square.
He opens it and gently removes a sheet of gold leaf, gossamer thin, which he then lays ove
r my head. He then removes another and does the same. With calm determination, he covers every inch of my exposed flesh from my crown to my throat, including my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. I find that the material does not impede my sight, breath nor hearing, but when I ask about eating, he simply responds that I have transcended such trivial needs. It will take some time to master speech with such limited movement.
When he finishes, he turns and disappears into the darkness. I didn't notice until now, but his extra arms did little but hang limply at his sides. I wonder to myself if they could be a symbol of his importance and nothing more.
He returns a short time later with a robe of the deepest red I have ever seen, and he explains that it has been dyed in the blood of gods from beyond our world or any other. The blood, he says, will help to heal my other wounds and is the rarest thing on Earth.
He lays the robe on my bed and claps his hands. Upon doing so, two young women enter through the door wearing simple dresses made from linen. Both are blindfolded and carrying bowls of water. The six-armed man instructs them to remove my clothing, wash me and ready me for “what I was reborn to do.”
He turns away, but not before saying, “From the bellies of thousand-year-old corpses, we wait no more. Our time is at hand.”
Then, he is gone.
As the women wash me (which they do quietly and blind), I think of many things, many questions, many puzzles. Why hasn't he asked me if I know the words? How have I transcended eating? Wasn’t I still but a man; changed, transformed maybe, but still just a man?
I am dressed, and the women take their leave. Moments later, the leprous man appears and informs me that I am to receive nourishment, then sleep, in preparation for tomorrow.
“Already?” I ask.
“The planets,” he says, “align of their own accord, not ours. Now follow me.”
We leave the tent, and once again I am in the alien landscape that is the leviathan’s stomach. A small herd of hoofed mammals with incredibly long legs and very large ears eat the fungal grass outside the tent. They scatter as we exit, and the leper tells me that, although they are boney, they are extremely delicious.
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