Coffin Island

by Will Berkeley

  Shouldn’t all these painted corpses be attended to by some horned sexton? A paintbrush and wooden palette loaded with oils in his claw. Putting the finishing touches on all his corpses? Had some hideous creature planed down the beast? Some creature had taken out the devil, himself? Where was this fearsome carpenter that wore down the beast?

  I was shouting to no avail for him to come out. I was desperate for a fight. I couldn’t be trifled with by man or beast. It was time for whatever was running my test to reveal itself.

  Come darken my door for the final showdown. Or just kill me. I don’t care which. I’ve had my fill of this. It wouldn’t come out though. I was back shouting to no avail.

  There were plenty of trowels in this Flemish hell which I was viewing somewhat ominously. What is the symbolic import of a garden of shovels that is littered with corpses? Surely we aren’t going to have to be the gravediggers of Flemish hell? Where was Flanders located anyway? Was it geography that I needed here?

  It was always advisable to leave that treachery to others. They’ll just move the borders on you if you draw them yourself. Let the cartographers speak for you. My mind was definitely slipping. I was able to observe it a bit from the side and shake my head. That guy is crazy. Who is he anyway? It’s just you, that’s all. What the fresh hell is going on here in hell? Stop playing with my head.

  I yelled for the beast to reveal himself. So that’s how you want to play this hell, I yelled. You will come out. I have all eternity to yell.

  “I’m not digging,” Professor Coffin declared.

  How dare that costumed fool interrupt my tirade? Surely I am not powerless to do something about that insult that is Professor Coffin.

  I peered deeply at Professor Coffin as I continued my tirade against the devil. I was able to divide myself as it were and continue to harangue the devil with my mouth while peering with my eyes elsewhere. Why not multitask a bit? So what do we have here?

  Professor Coffin was walking in circles like a schizophrenic. He had to be certifiable to be interrupting my tirade. What sort of fool interrupts a man that has lost his mind in hell and is demanding immediate showdown with the devil, himself? It didn’t seem terribly clever to me. However I did admire Professor Coffin’s quick appraisal of the situation as well as his indolence. He wasn’t digging any graves in hell. Good call, dead man.

  Professor Coffin was not without his uses. He helped you fixed your mind in a given direction. It was just atypical that it was his direction. I was going to have to dispose of him in an indelicate fashion before this became a dangerous habit. You can’t let your enemies start infiltrating you like that. They begin with the affront to put you off balance. You’re standing there a bit off-kilter. Wobbling back and forth from the assault like a bowling pin. Then the mind control begins to set in like a gutter ball. You’ve got to strike them out as a preventive measure. Why do you think people that go bowling wear such ugly shirts? It’s a reflection of their souls. The shoes are merely a diversion. It’s the bowling shirts that you’ve got to worry about. Did I just think that or shout it out loud?

  “It’s one hell of a body of work,” Madison snorted. “Booster has flipped out in Flemish hell.”

  “How do we jump into the red sky?” The Red Lady demanded. “My work is done.”

  The fiery sun was hanging over us like an atmosphere. A few fingers were reaching down for us. The red sun of this world was the volcano from the prior world. We had just traveled through it to get here like some sort of fiery mass transit? The sun in this world was the bubbling lake of rum in the prior world? I pondered what it had been on Coffin Island. Perhaps the flaming birds in the entrance maze if I had to hazard a guess. The phoenix was a symbol of death in witchcraft. Not a symbol of life.

  Chapter

  Flash was on the red sun. Just when I didn’t think hell could get any worse. There was Flash again. The flaming ape was peering down at us malevolently. He was walking on the sun like his old cantankerous self. He was roaring down at us heartily. Was the flaming ape the god of this awful world? I could never stand for it.

  An almighty being that was also somehow utterly powerless. Flash seemed like an appropriate god for this world. That’s how I knew he wasn’t it. He was demanding for our deaths in his fiery tongue. You didn’t have to speak his vernacular to understand the message.

  Flash wanted us dead but he couldn’t do it himself. He wasn’t the god of this world. He was powerless to kill us. I laughed in his fiery face. You fiery eunuch, I shouted. Give it a break.

  At least some order had been restored. What’s a world without hate? I was starting to feel like my old self. That’s why you don’t extinguish the light at the end of the tunnel even if it’s a flaming ape. You never know when that incendiary creature might come in handy.

  “That lovely beverage is failing me again?” Professor Coffin pouted as he reached towards the sheltering sky which wasn’t particularly sheltering unless you were a fireball in need of a home. There he was interrupting my dark thoughts again. You make a habit of that, Professor Coffin, and it’s going to be perilous to your health, I thought. Shortly, I am going to be short on distractions and you will rise to the forefront of my murderous mind. Then I will kill you.

  “What do I have to do to placate you, my dark fairy?” Professor Coffin cried while dropping to his knees in front of his god. “Booster is threatening to kill me. Take me out of this rum-less place.”

  “The demon rum,” Madison snorted. “It refuses to save you from Booster.”

  “The rum or me,” Professor Coffin said and raised his hands to the fiery heavens in supplication. “One of us has got to go.”

  “We got it,” Madison shrugged at the fiery sky.

  “Eighteen gallons is my record,” The Red Lady said apropos of nothing. “Get up off the ground. Rum doesn’t love us. It’s left us to these cruel children. It’s Lord of the Flies time.”

  “Why has it forsaken me?” Professor Coffin cried as he stood up. “I’ve done everything that lovely beverage has requested of me. Think how I suffered for it in the doldrums.”

  “You didn’t kill Booster,” The Red Lady said.

  “Don’t remind rum or Booster,” Professor Coffin shouted.

  “Rum had it out for you, Booster,” Madison snorted.

  “I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” The Red Lady said.

  “It was out to kill me too?” Madison snarled.

  “You’re magically attached,” Professor Coffin shrugged.

  I was desperately trying to ignore Professor Coffin and The Red Lady. They were beginning to speak in their language of symbolism that only they could decipher. They were also speaking in the language of the dead in the land of the dead. I was about to edit them right out of the frame.

  There are certain horrors that I just won’t tolerate even in hell. However there were more pressing matters in hell. There was some fresh hell that had to be attended to immediately. Even in hell there is an orderly path of destruction. Otherwise the locusts will takeover.

  The books had reentered the rebuilt glass Cadillac. They were driving it now. They were actually trying to escape. The glass Cadillac was trying to pull a Houdini? The Coffin Island library was fleeing from my malevolent presence. I didn’t blame the books for trying to escape. Everything in this world should run from me including the corpses. I had firmly established my intentions with all the murderous shouting.

  Paper was flying out the tailpipe of the glass Cadillac. The vast library of Coffin Island was being dispersed all over the killing fields of hell. Some say the dead can’t read but I begged to differ. They can.

  They just can’t learn because they’re dead. How else to explain that the library was dumping its knowledge all over hell? Something interesting would surely grow. I was thinking a bountiful crop of ignorance. But I doubted that plentiful harvest too.

  I wasn’t going to be surprised if nothing more than hypocrisy took root in hell. Climbed all over those corps
es like vines and snarled its way down those dead throats. The Coffin Island library would flourish heartily. It would probably revive those corpses for some dark purpose too.

  Those books were nothing but trouble. Knowledge was best left to nude hermits standing on pillars in the desert. How else to explain how they got there? You didn’t want to make your life out of knowledge that was for sure. Those books were being tossed into the inferno as soon as I crafted one in this hell. Why not spark one if I was sticking around as the keeper?

  Honey Badger was trotting off into the hinterland. Or more like running for her life. Kaiser was chasing after her. Or more like running for his life. Under different circumstances this would have been a cause for celebration. Cue the champagne. Kaiser and Honey Badger were running away from me with great haste. They were running off into hell. Why might I care?

  Kaiser kept looking over his shoulder at me. He was doing it at every convenience. Honey Badger too. They were peering over their shoulders at their inconvenience too. This caught my particular attention.

  Kaiser and Honey Badger were tripping over the dead at the expense of their escape. They wanted to see what I was going to do next. I was getting some discernable guilt vibrations from their direction. It was hard to say how I deduced this. They were both screeching in abject terror. My shouting at the devil had apparently alienated someone. It was just the wrong someone.

  That’s the problem with alienation. You alienate the wrong people. Then you refuse to apologize. It’s the refusal to apologize that frightens people. Not the alienating act itself. That’s far more understandable. It’s being hideously bold. That’s what frightens people.

  Kaiser and Honey Badger were also fleeing from the crash. I wasn’t about to let them getaway with that. I was not going to idly stand still like a spectator in hell. Hell no, I was an active participant in hell. I was going to kill them for what they had done. There was not a question in my mind. I merely wanted to prolong their horror as they had done to me. That’s why I had been threatening and shouting for so long.

  Chapter

  I was also casually considering that I might be the most horrendous force in this new world. I had summoned the devil himself, after all. Where was he? It somehow seemed appropriate that he might be me. I didn’t see any other fierce candidates.

  Why not strike down some natives as my first act of colonization? I’ve named the joint. Welcome to New Hell. The Casket Island School for Witches has gone under. We’re all going to have to make some uncomfortable adjustments that include death under the new ownership.

  Dead natives being brutally murdered seemed like the next logical step. Why not bloody up this new world? Welcome to the New School. Visiting Professors include Death.

  I didn’t care that the savages had arrived on the same ship as me. I was holding them responsible for putting me in the hold. Also running away from me whatever the circumstances was an admission of guilt as far as I was concerned. The looking over the shoulder while fleeing confirmed it. The screaming in terror while doing the above was also a strong indicator. It was time to graduate out of this test for good.

  I had sentenced the whole planet to death actually. What was the big deal? Was casually voicing your desire to perpetrate a brutal over the top holocaust on an entire planet a crime in this world? Let’s not be unreasonable here, gentleman. Freedom of speech has its distinct limits. That’s why protesters show up at funerals to give you one last trouncing. Step aside pallbearer. I need to urinate on that coffin.

  Pardon me, madam, I am defecating in this hole. I can’t believe you have the audacity to put soil on top of that coffin. Not until my toilet paper goes into that hole. That’s freedom of speech in hell. Or at least it’s a funeral for a world in which nobody has the good taste to die.

  The only reason that I hadn’t already perpetrated my hideous holocaust of brutal over the top destruction, in my defense, was that I was savoring the thought of it. I was plotting that thought like mathematics. I was working out the geometry of this apocalypse with deadly precision. I was also studying the vectors of the victims that I was about to kill to learn more about their algebra before I ended it. The species was about to be solved. Why not gather up as much field theory for posterity as you can? The hideous stupidity of these creatures needs to be documented with bloody precision so that it can’t be replicated by new idiots. What good is a cautionary tale without bloody murder as the ending? It just doesn’t pack the appropriate force. You need to put the children to bed crying. Or just kill them.

  Honey Badger and Kaiser were chasing after the library. Of this much I was certain. Rage hadn’t deluded my senses to the point of total madness. Or rather the talking animals were chasing after the vehicle of learning. I didn’t like this. The ignorant beasts were chasing after knowledge that they didn’t crave. And yet they didn’t even know it. Why couldn’t the talking animals just content themselves in their pursuit of ignorance?

  Honey Badger and Kaiser just wanted a free ride! I stepped back to at peer at that a bit. What was the symbolic import of a glass library on wheels in hell with ignorant animals chasing after it? I didn’t like the feeling of that.

  Did knowledge just roll up on you like an animal and pull down that mask real horror show? Then fail to rob you? Then it started talking nonsense to distract you!

  Why not put these talking animals to good vehicular use? I wanted to send whoever was in-charge of them a terse little message. It was pretty simple. Here are your dead messengers. I’m coming for you.

  I like that payphone that you’re holding but you might want to brace yourself because we’ve got a serious collect call coming through. Let’s just say that you can’t afford the freight. There is also the custom tax too. Never mind the shipping and handling. I’ll spot you that. I’m a generous when it comes for paying for funerals.

  Professor Coffin seemed to be taking pedagogical note of the situation. I was yelling in his face. At least he was learning something. Or he was feigning ignorance, his base expression. It was hard to tell because I was burying him with abuse.

  He was standing there, from my vantage point, like a dead dog with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He was probably savoring the idea that the glass Cadillac would swing back for him and give him a ride so that he didn’t have to walk in hell. Or rather crawl towards Babylon in his instance.

  But that’s not how learning works. It dumps you on the side of the road and sends gravel over your head as it tears off for destinations that are beyond yourself. You must walk down that highway barefoot and crying if you want a shred of independent thought in this world. Otherwise you must content yourself with all the hired knowledge which isn’t even sure of itself. It cries itself to sleep in its bunk in prison when the fluorescent lights flicker out. The grim guard rattles his nightstick down the cold bars as his lullaby. Then something hideous happens with the cellmate. How else to explain all the ignorance in this world?

  The world is merely a string of tiny prisons that is populated by hostile guards and perverted prisoners. However I refused the message. I was getting out alive. There was no force holding me back. I would have been pinned down by now if they could do it. This hell was nothing. Did it take me down? Not a speck. It actually brought me up. It filled me to the brim with power.

  The glass Cadillac was driving over the dead bodies towards some sort of mother of harlots and abominations in this world. I didn’t like that at all. There was some sort of Tower of Babble in the middle of this world. Some raving idiot commissioned the atrocity and the equally incompetent architect cribbed his ideas off some foreign fool. They beat the slaves so mercilessly that they violently revolted before completion.

  The monstrous wart was covered with decrepit scaffolding. It looked like the only thing that was holding it up. Huge blocks were falling off the Tower of Babel periodically. I wondered what sort of creature called this tower of blasphemy, fornication and golden cups his home. I was going to evict him. Or just ca
ve him in. There was no way that I was going to tolerate a holy fool in a Tower of Babel in my personal hell. Why suffer the fools?

  Kaiser was still running away. He was pretending to chase after Honey Badger who was pretending to chase after Kaiser. They were alternating. In their minds the ruse was working. Or at least they were bravely trying to convince themselves of it. They weren’t looking back as much. Why not let them run those legs in place a bit more?

  Chapter

  I suppose we’ve all go to marry something in this life even if it is just nothing like those talking animal idiots. Or a sociopath such as Madison which was looking like a distinct possibility for me seeing as all the other life was slatted for slaughter at my hand on this planet. But back to the void because it’s more pressing. The void cannot wait.

  Marriage to Madison can wait. She’s magically attached to me so what’s the risk of losing her? She’ll just come back like a boomerang. She’s already come back from the dead once. I can get down on bended knee anytime I like. And propose to death.

  The void is the real matter at hand because I’m peering right into it. It’s not as bad as it seems, strangely enough. Perhaps I might jump into it. Once you finally muster the courage to march on it. Or it taunts you with such ferocity that you’re given no choice but to confront it. It’s not nice, the void, but what are you going to do? Nobody promised you a pleasant journey into yourself.

  The void is just as good a bride as anything else now that I was upon it. My toes were dangling into the hole. I wasn’t frightened at all. I was merely a little ticked off that’s all. Now if I could just decapitate those two pesky pirates. Remove them bodily from my checklist.