“So it is,” Pink Guy returned. Indeed, the land outside the circle remained as hard as a diamond but the ground inside continued to soften and liquify. The more they trod within the circle, the more pulpy the ground became until before long they were ankle deep in water. To hasten the process they began to jump up and down, being very careful to stay within the confines of the red band.
Neither of them were aware of the rate at which they were sinking into the hole so suddenly being waist deep in water took them both by surprise. The greater shock came moments later when Frank found himself on his own, in near-total darkness, overtaken by torrents of water. He was drowning. At first his sole awareness was of his impending death. Yet this fear was easily surpassed by the torment of the Wretched as he brushed by them. Souls of children long deceased, yet still perishing grabbed at his fingers and toes, begging for help, pleading for mercy, wailing and cursing, tossing about in their torment and laying hold of him. They stared at him through empty eye sockets and wailed through stitched mouths. They would float by him, writhing and holding their bellies in agony as they inflated and then burst open. From the wound, new infants would ooze out before their bellies swelled and ruptured, and so the nightmare would go on. Other babies, gliding with awkward flinches through the murkiness, would suddenly stop and then turn completely inside out. Muscle and bone would remain frailly bound together, but strings of intestines and sinew would be flung off into the swell. As such, the current surrounding him was a thick amniotic soup.
The infants were instinctively grabbing and gnawing on each other as they drifted about. Yet a sad semblance of compassion developed in which they would pull out their own teeth to spare the others, but their teeth would rapidly and constantly grow back. Frank felt their agony. He felt their pain in all its forms and degrees. His screams became bawls. “I’m sorry!” he roared. “I’m sorry I can’t save you!” The grasping and calling, the sorrow and the sobbing continued unabated until Frank took one final gasp, filled his lungs with the fluid and floated off to his quiet end.
Chapter 5
It was like so, but wasn’t. Frank came to, but didn’t. He was conscious but of the sort that might accompany an out-of-body experience or an animated suspension. The first thing he perceived was that he was floating through an entirely new dimension - one of previously unknown physical qualities. He was free of gravity and completely weightless. His skin tingled as though he were being lightly caressed all over. The light around him was distorted in an other worldly way and made everything look soft and beautiful. Pretty shadows and reflected lights danced around him. Time ceased to exist and a beautiful silence encapsulated him. For Frank, it was a rare, beautiful moment, shattered only by the realisation that he was floating face down in a swamp and about to choke.
He rose from the waters, coughing and spluttering and retching and crying. He needed a few moments to regain full awareness and when he did, misery was there with a comprehension that traveling between realms was like death and rebirth each time. He sat in the shallow water amidst a vast forest of mangroves. Strips of seaweed fluttered in slow motion under the water, tickling his calves and wrapping around his toes. Small fish darted under and out of the roots of the trees. Occasionally, flat creatures with gill slits that looked like stab wounds, would hover over the sandy bed and slowly move away when Frank tried to kick them. Frank was relieved to find familiar ecosystems in other realms.
He stood to look about over the branches of the trees. The mangrove forest around him extended to the horizon in all directions but one. Above him was a sunless sky that sat hot and heavy like a bronze dome. Bat-like birds flew above and through the trees, which were infested with all manner of insects, spiders and giant winged arthropods. Pale, flakey-skinned snakes slithered quietly along branches and across the surface of the water. To Frank, this place was eerily like the jungles of Okinawa on a bad day and moving through it brought bitter memories and an ominous sense that worse was to come.
Pink Guy was nowhere to be seen. Frank didn’t want to bring attention to himself so calling for him was out of the question. The logical thing was to move in the only direction that didn’t lead to more mangroves. In that line, above the forest was a cluster of golden, rather picturesque foothills which skirted an enormous pointed mountain. It rose up and almost touched the rusty sky. The water he was wading through was never deeper than his waist so his only real challenge was avoiding the fauna, half of which scattered in fear as he approached and half of which moved toward him in the hope of enjoying a warm meal.
The last region of the mangrove was ankle deep so Frank made quick progress toward the amber fields. Just short of the shoreline he stopped and listened carefully. An odd sound could be heard from nearby but then ceased. Frank waited patiently, listening and peering. He could see nothing. He had hoped that it might be Pink Guy. The sound came again, like a beast prancing on the spot in the muddy waters. Frank moved more closely toward it, trying to keep his sodden footsteps as quiet as possible. Again the sound came, wild and moist, through the low lying trees. It was near now, a ferocious and juicy sound, and Frank felt a fresh nausea rise up within him.
Peering through a leafy scrub on his left, he saw a white creature with a bulbous yellow head devouring the intestines of a still-conscious beast kicking in the shallow waters. Though the creature seemed skittish, it didn’t notice Frank watching him from behind. He moved around in a large circle to come into the creature’s view and when he saw Frank he jumped and let out a hideous cry. “I’m a lemon!” It was an apt introduction. This creature looked like a warty lemon atop a thin radish. Frank kept his distance as the two sized each other up.
“I’m a lemon!” the creature yelled again. Frank quickly assumed that debating might not be this thing’s strong point.
“I’m Frank,” Frank called back with a friendly wave.
“I’m a lemon!” he heard again.
“Yeah, I got that,” said Frank before quietly mumbling, “I’m in the land of morons.”
“I’m a lemon! I’m a lemon!” it called again, slowly approaching Frank.
“Well, you know what they say about when you get stuck with a lemon…” Frank chuckled.
“I’m a lemon! I’m a lemon!” He was becoming more agitated as he spoke, his voice rising with each profession. Frank began to sense that this creature might actually be a complex soul imprisoned in its lemony shell. As he drew nearer, Frank got a better look at his counterpart. He had an enormous yellow head, like a lemon on its side. Some lemons have a beautiful symmetry to them. This one did not. It was bulgy and lopsided and covered with pox and warts. Pure ugly. And the unattractiveness of the head was not helped by its eyes, which were vacuous and black, or the entrails of the organism dangling from the corners of its mouth. Whatever intelligence may have been buried within, it held an overall countenance of retardation.
“I’m looking for Pink Guy,” Frank said. The citrusy organism just stood there looking at him, utterly confused. “Pink Guy,” Frank continued in slow speech. “Ah, a pink humanoid who is actually a rankenfile. Looks… pink. And sort of like… a guy.”
“I’m a lemon!”
“Yeah,” Frank said before mumbling, “this could take a while”. He took a few steps toward Lemon Man. “Listen carefully, I don’t have all millennium. I’m looking for Pin…” Taking his approach as a threat, Lemon Man immediately set upon him with a flurry of blows and a maniacal ripping with layers of razor sharp teeth. “Lemon! Lemon! Lemon!” was all Frank could hear screaming at him as his head was buried in the ground. He rolled back over to defend himself, kicking and occasionally punching, but the Lemon Man was too quick and too powerful. Again and again Frank received the hard end of a warty lemon in the face; over and over it was pounded into his mouth, his eyes and for good measure, his groin, all to the accompanying sound of an animal in great distress. Frank was done. He had nothing left to fight this creature off.
As the brown skies above him were abou
t to dim to gray, he saw another white shape drop from a tree above him onto the Lemon Man. The new white creature planted itself firmly on Lemon Man’s shoulders and began to shout and holler as the Lemon Man tried eagerly to throw the creature from him. The two of them formed a singular staggering, screaming beast, the white and yellow one on the bottom, bucking and convulsing in terrible distress, and the white and green one on the top holding on for dear life and calling out in an entirely different dialect. “Nyeees!” he called in a most triumphant but still cautious manner. “Nyess!” Frank sat up with an acute desire to have his eyesight and hearing checked. He had no idea what to make of this flurry of white and yellow and green, and this cacophony of ‘lemons’ and ‘nyesses’.
Eventually the Lemon Man was able to free himself from the green and white creature and ran off sour and sore. Frank’s savior watched him flee before turning to Frank and helping him up. An odd-looking entity, he appeared unnervingly like a humanoid salamander. His body was slimy and white, while his head took a green amphibious form. Frank opened his mouth to thank him for coming to his rescue but was cut off with a face palm. Immediately, the creature then produced - seemingly from nowhere - a recorder, placed it firmly in his left nostril and began to play a rousing rendition of an ancient tune.
“Ah, a cultured man!” said Frank when he had finished the tune. “I guess you’re here to help me and not eat me?” He was beginning to calm down from his beating.
“Nyeess.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
“Nyess.”
“Listen, I wonder if you can help me. (That was beautiful by the way. I wonder if you could play a few oom-pah-pah tunes for me later on.)” The Salamander Man looked perplexed but continued to give his attention. “I’m looking for Pink Guy,” continued Frank. “You haven’t by any chance seen him?”
“Nyes,” he replied, shaking his head. Frank was beginning to speak this guy’s language.
“Well, would you mind helping me look for him? I don’t know my way around here and I’d hate to come across Lemon Man again on my own.”
“Nyeeeesss.” Frank somehow understood this to mean, ‘Lemon Man is not a bad guy. You just scared the shit out of him, that’s all’.
The two of them walked out of the waters and along the dry shoreline, between the muddy banks of the mangrove to their left, and the hazy fields to their right. “I’m Frank, by the way,” said Frank, checking his cranium and his testicles for injuries. It was an odd series of gestures to accompany an introduction.
“Nyyeess.”
He was going to explain where he’d come from and why but stopped, realising this would be an impossible task, if not a risky one, given the turn of events so far.
They hadn’t walked much further when they heard, off in the distance, the faint sound of a caterwaul. They hastened toward it and as they drew nearer they could hear just how intense the howling was. Some creature was in terrible agony and Frank could only hope it was Lemon Man. The screaming came from a cluster of trees in front of a large rock formation. Frank ran toward it with Salamander Man galloping right behind him. Approaching it, Frank was able to see what he had been hearing and it filled him with horror. They had found Pink Guy. Still kicking and screaming, he had been noosed from the highest branch of a tree. Only this clearly wasn’t the common hanging of a common land. Shadows passed in and out of his eyes and nose and ears and mouth and with each entering and exiting he shivered in pain and fright. Not an orifice was left untouched, nor a fear left unstoked. The rope choked the breath out of him as the shadows violated his spirit. Pink Guy completely lost his coloring.
Salamander Man was up the tree in a flash and produced - again seemingly from nowhere - a knife with which he cut the rope. Frank caught him as he fell, lay him on the ground and removed the noose from him. It took some time for Pink Guy to regain his composure.
Salamander Man reproduced his recorder and began to play a soothing tune which cut through the stilling air. As he did, the shadows retreated and a spirit of calm returned.
“What took you so long?” he eventually asked Frank.
“Um, well, Lemon Man. That’s what.”
“Ah, Lemon Man,” said Pink Guy with a knowing nod. He was familiar with the lemon folk. “He can be a real pain in the ass.” He turned and saw Frank’s new friend. “Hey, Salamander Man,” he said cheering up. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Is this guy safe?” Frank asked Pink Guy, pointing to Salamander Man.
“Absolutely. Trust me on this. I can sense it.” Indeed Pink Guy’s ability to sense the good and evil in creatures was one of his defining traits, and a reason that he had been chosen to bring revelation to Frank.
“Nyeess!” Immediately Salamander Man had his recorder in his hand, shoved it into his left nostril again and began playing his favorite tune. It was beautiful. For a short while there, everything felt right with the omniverse and Frank was happy.
“Okay,” Frank said. “What do we do now?”
“We lay low,” Pink Guy returned. He was back to full cognition now. “We have to stay here until your chromosomes are fully replenished and then we look at getting you an audience with a higher power. I suggest we make for the woods along the foothills and use their cover.” Everyone was in agreement, so they forged a track through the long grass of the fields and didn’t stop till they were in the shade of the trees and sipping water from a pond.
Frank reclined by the still waters. “Now this is more like it! I’ve had quite enough of lemons and nooses and being groped by embryos.” Pink Guy was tempted to ask about the embryos but knew better than that. “Don’t be fooled, Frank,” he said. Frank looked at him. “It’s in the quiet oases that the greatest perils lie. Always be vigilant, Frank. Always be on the watch.”
“What, are you clinically depressive, or something, Pink Guy?” He’d forgotten that Pink Guy, just a few moments ago, had been hanging from a tree and tormented by demons. “Can’t you let a guy enjoy a quiet moment?”
“Enjoy it while you can, Frank,” Pink Guy said, but there was more than a hint of resignation in his voice.
Before he finished speaking, there was a loud rustle from a shrub behind him and a brown creature sprang out and cried “Be all!” Frank jumped up and immediately spooned Pink Guy. “Who is this and what does he want?” Frank whispered in his ear in a way that was much more creepy than concerned. The creature in front of them was another humanoid, brown from head to foot, except for an enormous black afro on his head, black sunglasses and a huge set of white choppers in his mouth. He looked very happy to see these three visitors. “The by up for jump and happy!” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Frank, sitting up and releasing Pink Guy. “My filter’s playing up. Could you say that again?”
“Ah!” he said with a chuckle, “If without or a buckle so likely!” he said, before breaking into a tremendous cackle. Clearly, he was having a wonderful time. “Can’t up the heath for soil!” he added, ribbing Salamander Man in the chest.
“Nyeess!” said Salamander Man.
“What is this guy talking about?” asked Frank.
“He’s a balderdash,” said Pink Guy. “A rankenfile of small intellect but enormous charm.” The creature stood there beaming. “But no-one has any idea what they are going on about.”
“A balderdash?” said Frank.
“So the last!” said the brown one. He was thrilled.
“Does he have a name?”
“Don’t know,” said Pink Guy. “But even if he does, we wouldn’t understand what he was telling us. I suspect he can understand us but we can’t follow him.”
“Far too the lucky but cheese and excited!”
“Nyes, nyes,” Salamander Man chirped in.
“You understand Balderdash?” Frank asked him. He was starting to enjoy this communion.
“Nyess!”
“Ah, so you’re both retards.” He turned to the newest entity in their troupe.
“Brown Guy, ah, Turd Man, ah, sir, do you have a name?” Frank asked.
“Ha ha ha!” The Brown one replied. “A pus bucket to enflamed!” No creature had ever looked prouder of himself.
Salamander Man turned to Frank. “Nyess!”
“What did he say, Frank?” asked Pink Guy.
“He said his name is Negi Generation 4.”
“I have to admit,” said Pink Guy, reflecting to Frank. “I never would have guessed that.”
“Kind of odd for a name, don’t you think?” he whispered back to Pink Guy. “How do you say your name again?” he asked Negi Generation 4. “In your language. I want to speak your lingo.”
“Blonde muscles of under and coughing,” he said. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet and pissing himself with joy.
“Negi Generation 4,” Salamander Man confirmed in his language.
“Ah, but that’s not, er, what he said before.” Frank was genuinely baffled.
“Hence, a balderdash,” said Pink Guy, reclining back down beside the pond.
They spent the rest of the afternoon catching their supper, and the evening roasting it over an open flame. Frank recalled stories of Okinawa, slightly embellished for the telling, which Pink Guy occasionally interrupted with calls of cock and bull. Salamander Man played his flute whenever there was a lull in the conversation, which was rare because Negi Generation 4 talked virtually non-stop, pausing only to laugh at his own, rather fabulous eccentricities. Indeed Negi Generation’s delightful chuckling was the last thing Frank heard before falling into the most pleasant sleep he’d had since childhood.
When he woke in the morning, the sky above him was a pale yellow and the higher foliage around him moved with the gentlest of breezes. The others were still sleeping by the remains of a fire that continued to smolder, and a few small creatures were docilely picking at what was left of their meal from the night before. Yet all around them, on the floor of the forest, on the canopies of the shrubs and the branches of the trees, sat ever so delicately, a sea of translucent spheres ranging in size from grape to watermelon. Despite the frivolity of the previous night and the peace he had found in the present company, Frank was gripped with alarm at the sight of these bubble-like apparitions.
Francis of the Filth Page 6
