And now …
Walther Neck sprawled in the backyard where a magnificently-tended garden had rioted into a jungle. He lay as still as the dead, his left paw locked onto the throat of a Stoic. Splinters of bone protruded from the Stoic’s limbs. Its staring wet eyes swam with gnats. Mindlessly loyal to the bitter end, it had expired pursuing her quarry.
Delia could have revived her minion with a finger snap—although the result might’ve proved more interesting had the Ur swallowed her pet. She poised to make the gesture and utter the fateful syllables. Neck coughed. His grotesque bulk shuddered. He pushed the corpse aside and laboriously rolled to his knees. That brought him and Delia to approximately the same height.
“So, we meet again,” she said. “You look terrible.”
He glared at her. “Says the goth chick with the lazy eye and bad makeup.” His breath was a pungent cocktail of half-digested carrion, hot offal, and poison.
“And that voice …”
“We can’t all be silver-tongued devils like Rabbit Abbot.” He knew she was right. It pained him, nonetheless.
“Rabbit Abbot isn’t a name I recall.”
“Exactly. And you’ve never crossed my path either. I’d remember your attitude.”
“As a young toad, you dwelt near the foot of yon vine-entangled fountain.” She retreated several steps and opened her hand. “I held you in my palm.”
“Hate to be the bearer of ill-tidings, crazy lady—I haven’t been a “young” anything since the Bald Mountains were pointy and the East and West Continents were a vast, swampy plate.”
“We kissed. It did not end well.”
“If you can’t discern the difference between a frog and a toad, you were doomed at the outset.” He climbed upright. His shadow fell over her. “I’m dying a slow, horrible death via poison. The pain is exacerbated by this tedious conversation.”
“Yes, yes, you swallowed a dose of Sanguine Dream Eater,” she said. “I suspect that Mr. or Mrs. X became anxious, fearing a delayed reaction meant you’d either avoided the poison or were immune. He or she sent me to finish the job.”
“Mr. X? Oh, no mystery in that regard. Seneschal Geld decided to terminate my services now that the royal coup is accomplished.”
“That asshole. I wondered who could afford the extravagance of SDE. There are seven doses left in existence. Er, six doses.”
“You intend to come at me, or what? The sun is going to set in a million years, give or take, and I don’t want to miss the spectacle.”
Though he didn’t appear to be in any condition to threaten her, Delia maintained a healthy distance as she turned the problem over in her mind. “Here we are at a pretty pass. I hesitate to dispatch your miserable soul to the Great Dark. Due to these exigent circumstances, our fates may be temporarily intertwined.”
“O fortunate me.” Neck peered at the sky. “Don’t take offense when I say that your intentions are the least of my problems.” He pointed at a speck that detached from the sun and floated closer. “You will regret that bit about our intertwined fates. Apologies.”
A hair-raising shriek echoed across the gulf.
Her demons returned with a gleeful monologue. Time is a ring. The hole in its heart yawns. It is the crack that runs through everything. It is the bottomless pit that nothing can fill. The great toad is expressed in his myriad iterations as some believe all men are mere fragments of a singular god.
“What approaches?” she said.
“He who finally noticed our arrival. The Terrible Shadow that Dwells on High.” He glanced at her. “Heard of him?”
“God of the beasts of the air. Fisher of souls.”
“Fisher of amphibian souls. And also whomever happens to be standing nearby.”
The speck bridged the gap with astonishing velocity, and grew by magnitudes—a monstrously enormous heron surmounted by a hemisphere of glittering shadow, astride a second inverted hemisphere of thunderheads.
The heron to end all herons descended to the mouth of the delta. It might have swallowed an elephant; it might have devoured an army mounted upon elephants. Water boiled to vapor with each crashing beat of its wings that cast shadows across the earth and the water and into the forest. Wind battered Neck and Delia and they were drenched. The heron of herons folded its dripping wings and loomed. Azure head and feathers; crimson-throated, crimson-beaked; midnight black of breast; and eyes of molten gold. Tall as the trees, its bill parted to emit a frightful shriek that caused lesser birds to pelt against the canopy and the crocodiles to hurl themselves into the reeds, tails whipping madly. One lizard rolled over and floated belly-up in the shallows.
Delia went to her knees and bowed her head in instinctive supplication. Neck covered his eyes to ward off flying chaff, and waited for whatever must come.
“Oh, fuck me running,” the God of Herons said, nasally and dinful. “I know you, toad. I’ve had you in my throat, once upon a time.”
“That’s what your mother—”
“Shut up, be-warted imbecile!” The heron raised his voice and the blast was bonfire-hot and rich with blood and righteous bile. “Let me recount our history. I speared your fecund sire with my bill and drank his nasty juices until naught remained but a warty sack. My mate Agatha feasted upon the rancid innards of your dam. We romantically gazed into one another’s eyes as we gulped the vast, ocher strings of eggs that were your embryonic siblings. We gorged upon the pollywogs who fled in vain beneath the mossy sludge of these ponds. Made it a game of hide-and-seek, in fact. How many wrigglers could I shish kebab at once? Loads!
“But you, you, foul, poisonous, feculent turd on legs! You caught in my throat as your glands oozed a hypnogogic poison, not unlike the Sanguine Dream Eater I scent upon you now. Your squamous, vile hide choked me and I spat you into the world. Good riddance, says I. Then I curled into my nest for five-and twenty winters, shitting explosively while regurgitating a bellyful of hapless lesser glade dwellers as I succumbed to a febrile dream of unlife.”
Neck wiped the heron’s spittle from his misshapen dome and waited for the trees to cease swaying and the roiled waters to calm. “Aloysius, either eat us or fuck off back to your stump.”
Aloysius, God of Herons, The Terrible Shadow that Dwells on High, Bloody Bill, and a hundred others, shifted his head side-to-side. “I would, I would, dear slimy brute. Yet, I dare not. You are a piece of meat wriggling beneath my invidious talon, but you are also an aspect of Dread and Awful Joad whom I’d rather not offend. His claws are long, his tongue is longer. As for the semi-mortal, she is human. Worse, she reeks of the White Ones’ unlife taint and it riles my gorge. Agatha ate the little shits like Turkish Delight, Green Goddess keep her.”
“What does he mean, you’re an aspect of Joad?” Delia, still bowed, spoke sotto voce to Neck.
Neck said, “The heron’s fearful presence is a purgative of the subconscious. Memories return to me as if gaseous bubbles long suspended in muck rise to the surface of a lake. It sounds correct, although fog remains. I am diminished from a previous life. Greatly diminished.”
“Hurrah!” she said. “Are you a toad dreaming you’re a god, or the ass-end around?” Her demons hissed, whether in rage or delight, she couldn’t tell. “Neck, you gorgeous devil! All becomes clear—you’ve likely died a thousand deaths, only to reincarnate anew. Albeit with your original form and vestigial memories. You exist as a broken mirror exists. Each scattered shard reflecting within its frame of reference, yet an inviolate piece of the whole. We might yet quit this backwater oblivion.”
“To what purpose? The king desires my head on a stick. You mean to collect the reward. The definition of untenable.”
“Geld desires your head,” Delia said. “Not I. Considering this revelation regarding your provenance, a bag of coin is insufficient. The residual damage of SDE is liable to be ongoing. Which means you may persist as dual
iterations simultaneously. God of the Toads and toad. The possibilities are staggering.” She poked his chest. “Someone well-versed in esoteric methods must watch over you to ascertain your body and soul remain integrated with corporeal reality.”
“I kind of like it here,” Neck said. “It’s peaceful. Perhaps, I’ll rest a while …”
The God of Herons clawed a gout of muddy water into the air. “Forget it, bilious sack! O murderous sucker of slugs! This is my demesne. Your particular acre resides far from these shores, should you crave a return to that benighted realm. Go squat in primacy, over garter snakes and tadpoles. Go in peace or go in pieces. That’s the best offer you’ll receive today.”
“Fine. How do you propose I effect my departure? So far as I can determine, the poison is a one-way trip.”
“Soon, the Sanguine Dream Eater in your blood shall dissipate,” the God of Herons said. “The wound in your mind shall seal. Neither of you belongs in this paradise. You shall be expelled from my demesne as a splinter is ultimately disgorged from its seat in flesh.”
Neck regarded Delia. “This is beyond my ken.”
She nodded. “Our intrusion has deformed this reality—time and space are out of joint. By all rights, we should rot for eternity or be devoured by a lumbering denizen of the land. However, the god of the everglade wishes us gone, so it shall come to pass. His will is irresistible in his domain. I would expect the earth to open beneath our feet and swallow us at any moment.”
“Allow me to assist.” The God of Herons pecked at the shore with his executioner’s bill. The ground crumbled and fell into a pit. “You’d best be gone when I return.” He fluffed his plumage and waded into deeper water before launching toward the sky.
Delia and Neck exchanged glances. Since there was nothing for it but to do it, they descended. They rested at the bottom. A tunnel cored into the gloom. Above, the patch of hazy sky winked out like a blown candle and they were sealed in pitch blackness.
Delia gripped his elbow as they moved forward, blindly into the unknown. In a while, a guttural, wheezing cry echoed from the way they’d come. It sounded again, closer. Something enormous must’ve uttered such a cry.
“Dare I ask?” Neck said.
“Faster,” she said. “Lest you meet yourself on the road through purgatory. I am unprepared. His freedom to roam shall be curtailed in our material reality. We must survive to reach it. Haste, toad.”
“I’ve seen myself, glorified in the Hall of Doom.” He began moving again, dragging her along. “Joad would be sorely disappointed in what I’ve made of his legacy.”
Delia said nothing.
“One question.” His raspy voice floated strangely in the dark.
“Speak it, toad.”
“Did we really kiss?”
~
The sands of midnight had recently passed through the hourglass when Seneschal Geld strode into the royal bedchamber sans invitation. Tall and lean, he bowed, bending like a half-opened folding knife. His conical hat of office scraped the tiles.
“Your Majesty, pardon me.”
King Dick, sunk to his chin in an herbal bath, was not amused at the interruption. The king was seldom amused unless the activity related to something pleasurable, such as the complete destruction of one of his countless enemies or detractors.
“Why are you bothering me, Geld? Your expression of acute fear is troublesome. What has gone wrong? I do hope you’ve snipped all loose ends and nothing will come back to haunt us. Please be exceedingly concise as I have no wish to become acquainted with the details of your heinous undertakings.”
“Heinous undertakings on your behalf,” Seneschal Geld said.
“Indeed? You must truly be in the soup to speak with such temerity.”
“The good news, Sire? The “loose ends” are well and snipped, as you say. The bad news? The, er, help in this matter are rather disgruntled. If you take my meaning.”
“Yes. I hear you’ve solicited the talents of a black magician, among other unsavory villains. Kudos on securing the magician—I thought Jon Foote and Julie V were the last of that ilk for another generation or two. Never mind. How does this concern me?”
“Assassins threaten my person,” Seneschal Geld said. He’d not seen a Flat Affect Man prior to tonight. However, when a Stoic had emerged from behind a colonnade, there could’ve been scant doubt as to its purpose or ability. “The miscreants lurk within the palace itself. As your loyal and trusted servant, it would stand to reason that my problems are inevitably your problems. Sire.”
King Dick scooped soap into his hand and blew a bubble. “Dear Geld, as of this moment, your position is vacant. Hie thee into town and take lodgings wherever you deem fit. Wait for the herald to announce a call for candidates. I’d say a tenday at minimum. Perhaps a fortnight. If your head rests upon your shoulders at such time, please be welcome to submit yourself with the other applicants.”
“Sire—”
“IF you are not beheaded, Mr. Geld. Or worse. My money is on something worse.”
Seneschal Geld didn’t bother to plead his case. King Dick’s favorite bodyguards waited outside the door and would cheerfully cleave the seneschal from stem to stern if their master so much as whistled.
“As you say, Sire.” He bowed again as protocol demanded, and hastily departed for his own chambers to retrieve a satchel of personal items before making good his escape.
~
A draft moaned in the corridors of power. Lamps were spaced at lonely intervals. Seneschal Geld bunched his robes in his hands and hustled, aware that some grim fate pursued him.
Indeed, an Ecstatic blocked the passage back. The seneschal ducked into a doorway and fled through a series of unlighted antechambers. The palace was a honeycomb of levels piled upon levels that few had ever fully explored. It sprawled with disorienting grandeur and he soon lost his way. No matter what door he opened or what hall he traveled, a White One was there to chivvy him along, down short stairwells, then longer, narrower stairwells connected by longer, narrower, less illuminated passages. First dust, then moss and mold and dripping water as stone roughened and cracked with antiquity. No matter that he broke into a trot, then a panicked gallop, a White One paced him with a queer, shuffling gait.
Finally, he staggered, gasping and spent, into a decrepit cathedral lighted by a pair of iron braziers. The braziers seethed and simmered with red coals. Broad flagstone steps descended to a shallow basin at the heart of the chamber. Ankle-deep water rippled, disturbed by the flow of hidden spring. A scaly plinth, surmounted by a rusted iron hexagonal pyramid, rose from the center of the basin.
The temple walls were formed of basalt. Weird red shadows crawled across weirder stone and plaster effigies of neglected gods. The Heron; the Toad; the Leech; the Sleeper; the Lord of the Black River; and the FatherMother. These figures towered within alcoves that nearly scraped the vaulted ceiling.
There were no visible entrances besides the archway. A trio of White ones slouched at the threshold, content to observe Geld’s escalating terror. They grinned and scowled, perfectly still, perfectly content.
A dripping, squelching eructation caused the braziers to gutter. Geld turned even as the distended, lolling tongue of Joad drooled forth, its barbs scraping over stone. He sprang backward, but the reeking flesh coiled around him, its barbs pierced him, and he gasped in pleasure or agony; both are the same. He was drawn upward, kicking and squirming toward a monstrous bulk shed of its plaster shell.
This isn’t as grand as the Hall of Doom, Joad whispered in the seneschal’s mind. But it’s a decent likeness.
~
King Dick nibbled a fig. He sipped wine from a gem-encrusted goblet. He said, “Well, I suppose that’s the last anyone will ever see of the pointy-headed bastard. Unfortunately, I’m down a seneschal. He was pretty effective, too. He absolutely terrified the staff.”
“Don’t think of it as losing a seneschal. Think of it as gaining a court magician.”
“And a … whatever in the Nineteen Hells your friend is,” the king said.
“An exquisitely dangerous pet.”
“As you say. Meanwhile, the bath grows tepid. Perhaps you’d care to fetch that fluffy towel and dry off the royal fundament?” His smirk faded as he noticed the water in his tub was rather inky. It stained the marble a deep, rich crimson. He wondered if he should call for his guards, if it would make a difference.
The faint glow suffusing Delia’s flesh drained into her eyes and they briefly flared, metallic purple. Then her eyes too dimmed and dimmed and she sank into the shadows.
“Er, tell me more about our burgeoning friendship,” the king said to make conversation.
“It isn’t going to be anything like you imagine,” she said.
Only Bruises Are Permanent
Scott Edelman
After Amanda broke her lover’s wrist, but before she broke his legs …
After she threw him out of her apartment, but before she threw him out of her apartment window …
She found herself in a tattoo parlor, not entirely sure how she’d gotten there. She was alone, studying the art pinned to the walls, having made up her mind, while at the same time unable to make up her mind.
Miscreations Page 16
