by Eric Dulin
Eric Dulin Collection: Short Stories and Poems
Eric Dulin
Copyright 2012 Eric Dulin
Collection: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AKT5Q0K/
The Lost
Literary Short Story
“God’s here. God don’t wait for no man.”
The man on the corner watched the blind friar pass by. On the road to nowhere. One foot behind the other. Soon gone from sight. Beyond the dark horizon.
Eyes spoke as the man left. The empty words trailed behind like the ash in the wind. An ashen leaf fell from a white tree in the center of the gray town. Only a hundred remained, shriveled veins fighting to hold on.
The final ray of light gone, the darkness engulfed everything. The man on the corner didn’t move beneath his tarp. The other ghosts crawled back to their broken dreams, whispers of the Lost passed in silence between them. Whose echoes were long forgotten. Even though others treaded in their steps.
The endless clouds shrouded the sun as it rose. The shadow of the future passed away with it. Ash falling from the heavens, ash rising from hell. The ghosts returned to the streets.
The man waited under his tarp, waiting for the future. He fiddled with a key around his neck—the bronze long rusted. The ghosts tended their crops with water from a well, a trek of a thousand steps. The sacrifice for life. Skeletal animals sat silently in the ash. Cold and unforgiving, the sun stood high above the things below. Watching with empty eyes.
The darkness again. A host of wind kicked up. A thousand miles of screaming pain. The man waited under his tarp, the cloth flapping in the wind. His ears blind to the words that came. The ghosts into their huts of broken dreams. The earth sighed in remorse.
The servants of the sun sat stagnant and dead. Their corpses piled atop the clouds. Their filtered blood forgiving the things below. But at the same time condemning them. The man on the corner watched the blood fall as he waited. The ash sucking up every ounce of moisture. None left for the ghosts. A dozen leaves left.
The light and dark blended together. A week passed. The man on the corner opened another gallon of water as he waited. Another tin of gruel. The well long gone. the ghosts looked for another. The man drank and watched from his corner.
The skeletal animals were taken to the huts. Never to see the darkness again. The gray shrubs withered. Many against the cold ground. Frost weaved itself into their flesh. The man on the corner fed them to his fire as he waited. The ghosts watched him with low eyes and watched the lighter in his pocket. They fled into their huts.
Frozen ash fell from heaven. Hell already frozen. The man covered himself with his spare blankets. Deeper into his dugout. He cupped the fire in his hands, hiding it from the ghosts. Their naked faces watched him from their huts. The man’s eyes deaf to the screaming. His ears blind to the truth around him. He waited.
Cold days. Colder nights. Only his fire stayed lit in the night, feeding it life with pages from his books. The crackling embers spitting out ash. A glint of silver in his hand. The skeletal ghosts only stared.
Ash rain. Only half of the ashen ghosts danced in it. The other half were beneath the ground. Their shrunken bones flailed through the air. The man waited under his tarp. The rain pooled and fell into his buckets as he watched. The bloody sun trapped in the clouds.
The man waited on the corner. He rubbed his gut. Pain. The edge of the future slipping away. He boiled the water and waited for it to cool. He took a sip and spit it out. Ash. He drank again. With every sip he spat out ash.
Warm days. Warmer nights. The clouds parted. Blood soaked through the gap and flooded the land. The ghosts shrank back from the light. The man blinded as he turned away. He unearthed a pair of small shades to shield his eyes. The ghost emerged one by one to dance in the light. Jubilant cheers rang through the ash. The man waited behind his dark shades.
The man waited on his corner when he saw it. A color long forgotten. It grew out of the ash outside of his tarp. Slender and serene. Glistening in the morning dew as it stretched. Soaked in the blood of the sun. He lowered his parched lips to it and removed his shades. Slow at first. Then he stared at the sprout. The color long forgotten. He reached for it. The blood startled him and he drew back. The pain in his side. Nausea. He vomited on the plant and waited.
The man waited. The sprout pulled at its roots. Reaching for the father that bled to bring it life. Against all odds. The man prepared to water it. He shook his head and left the bucket at his side. The sprout grew. The ghosts watched from their huts. The color long forgotten.
An explosion in his gut. Feral screams rang through the night. The ghosts shook from their tombs and looked to the street. The man on his side in agony. His shades shattered.
Another minute of screams. Then the ghosts stumbled from their huts.
“What do you think?” one asked.
“Can be a lot of things. Only He will know.”
The ghosts snatched up the man, taking him into one of their tombs. “Doctor.”
The Doctor kneeled above the man. His screams endless. “Where does it hurt?” He asked.
The man pointed to his side. The Doctor pressed down. A louder scream. “Has it hurt before?” He asked without waiting.
The man nodded. “How long?”
The man shrugged. His eyes spoke of eternity. “Appendicitis.”
The Doctor said nothing more. With a mind that held no doubt. He waved the other ghosts out. “Do you know what that is?”
The man shook his head. Gritted teeth. “There’s nothing that can be done. Nothing but wait for the end.”
The man shook his head. He pulled out the silver object from his side. A shiny revolver. Four shells in the cylinder. A key dangled by a chain around his neck. “Is this what you want?”
The man nodded. “Then you don’t need to wait.”
The man looked at the gun through teary eyes. He pointed the hilt towards Him. He only watched the man. “You can’t do it?”
The man shook his head. The ghosts crowded outside as their eyes spoke to one another. A gunshot. They waited.
He stepped outside. A smoking gun in his hand. “Doctor?”
The Doctor continued without a word. He went to the corner. The supplies had already been taken except for a lock box with no key. He picked it up. Then he knelt next to the sprout. Six inches. He rubbed a finger down the stem. He stood and returned to the crowd. “Help me with the body.”
The ghosts carried the man to the top of a hill over the town. “Where do you want it?”
“Here is fine.”
The Doctor took a shovel and shoved it into the rocky crust. The ghosts floated back to town as He dug.
Ash rain. It didn’t stop Him as he worked. Hours of digging. Lightning in the distance. He never stopped.
By the morning His work was done. He placed the man into the hole as the sun came up. Its fresh blood coating the land. The Doctor placed the revolver with the three shells on his chest. He pulled out the key and box in his pocket. He put the key into the hole and stopped.
Roaring screams lured him in. To break them free of their prison of souls. A prison built upon a world beyond. Where words held meaning and fate entranced all. Where good and evil held purpose.
He yanked the key out and placed both objects next to the gun as he shook his head. He then covered the man with ash and patted the ground. He placed a wooden sign in the ground with a name. He returned to town as a cloud covered the sun. The hill remained in darkness.
A week passed. The last three leaves on the tree had fallen. The ghosts returned to the hill. In an hour He lay in the hill next to the man. The rain ha
d claimed Him. His journey complete. The ghosts packed their belongings and bid their goodbyes to Him. The final addition to the Lost.
“God’s here. God don’t wait for no man.”
The blind friar had returned with an entourage of angels. Bread and wine from a land beyond. Built from the children of fallen gods. The group of the dead made their way down this new horizon. The shadow of the future gone. The light of the present filling its void. They carried the sprout in a pot. His last wish.
With one fire gone, a new had begun. A brave future on the horizon. A passage for the dead.
Analysis:
The Lost is supposed to demonstrate how stagnancy leads to decay, how waiting instead of taking action and abandoning those around you can lead to one’s downfall. The Lost is representative of all the past ideologies that were “lost” to mankind: by forgetting what makes us human and our histories, we are but ghosts of a desolate past. But it is better to think and move for the future rather than reminisce and analyze what cannot change and what has already been lost.
Love is Clockworks
Literary Poem over Romance
Love is clockworks
Made of cold steel,
Played by blind gods
They have nothing to feel,
Made of a thousand parts
And a dead faith,
Holding broken hearts
And shattered hate,
Laid in a deep well
Of frosted veins,
From a frozen hell
And a game of flames,
It is a ticking clock
Made of threaded knots,
Held by a broken lock
Sealed in silent mocks,
With molten glass
And sunken dreams,
A squelching mass
Of choking scenes,
They have nothing to feel,
These blind gods
Made of cold steel,
Love is clockworks
Analysis:
This poem is demonstrates the endless nature of love with its reciprocal beginning and ending as well as lack of periods. It also, through paradoxical phrasings, shows the madness love can become, and how people, (blind gods) cannot truly understand love.
A Final Branch
Literary Poem over Nature and Life
Leaves green and turgid
Branches a rich brown
As a fleet of birds
Dive deep on down
Screaming their war cries
As their prey flee
Crying to false gods
As they are cut down beneath
Yet this final vagabond
Sits tall and serene
As though misplaced
With a sanguine sense
This silent guardian
Between a dozen worlds
Takes a leap of faith
As it travels to and forth
Analysis:
This poem emphasizes the facets of nature and the complex undertones it carries. Though simple and beautiful, it can also house great misery and chaos, yet as a whole it remains untouched by what goes on within. Comparable to society, the “weak” are devoured by the young, but society can only watch. That is what it, and nature, are destined to be.
Segmentus Invictus
Fiction Short Story
(Related to universe of my novel Condemned)
“Zorrul, this is suicidal. We are farmers, not soldiers,” Azrael said. The earth shook as Akrad took another blow from the ometron fleet. Dust fell from the ceiling of the tight basement as the room shook, the stale air stirred by the explosion.
“I would rather die now than live forever without them.”
“But-“
“Listen to me! Victoria and Gaius…they are all I had left. What if Alexandria was alive? What if-“
In an instant I was against the wall. “Don’t go there brother. Do not go there.”
“Would you not fight for them? Die for them? For even a chance?” The earth shook.
His eyes were unmoving, his jaw clenched. “I…yes, I would.”
“Then you understand what I must do.”
“Yes.” He backed away, breaking from my eyes as he watched the ground. His fists unclenched.
“I…I’m sorry for what has happened. They…they didn’t deserve what happened.” The earth shook. Dust.
“Nobody deserved what happened.”
“Seraphir said they will likely be in Segmentus Invictus, correct?”
“Yes, where the fighting is the worst.” Nothing.
“Then let us hurry, the bombardment is over.”
“Lead the way brother.”
We powered up our arm-mounted energy cannons, the energy cells humming to life as they restored power. The weak weapons all we had to defend ourselves from any ometrons we encountered. I was unsure how much time we had before the bombardment began again; hopefully our brothers in the sky could drive them away soon. How had this happened? How had the machines turned on their creators? The Code was perfect, the Emperor himself had secured it. Unless Seraphir was right, and one of our own brothers betrayed us…but why?
And Victoria…I must find her. Our mountain village was razed to ashes when we returned from our trip to the marketplace. Azrael had told me to go tomorrow. I had insisted. Now his wife and three daughters were dead because of me, while Victoria and Gaius were somewhere in the city according to the gate keeper. There are no words to describe the guilt I hold for Azrael, and I still do not understand why he chose to come with me; perhaps he hopes that at least one of our families will be alive. Seraphir, Lord of Legions 176 and 284 was trying to withdraw the civilians, but the attack was without warning so there were few survivors before they could mobilize. We had five minutes if we were lucky to make it to Invictus, and I could already tell by the screams and explosions outside that hell had already started up again.
Shoving the door open, I leapt to the metal floor as fighting raged outside. The blurred orbs of ometron displacement cannons tore apart everything they hit as ometrons on the other side of the street had opened fire on a squad of arcadians, already moving to the rooftops for mobility. Arcadian energy cannons fired invisible laser beams at the ometrons as their blue shields absorbed hits, several falling over motionlessly with the failure of their shields. Some took cover and reattached missing limbs with fusion cutters before returning to battle, but I couldn’t help my brothers for Victoria was all on my mind.
Azrael was right behind me as I broke through the wall in a heap of rubble, the familiar scent of scorched flesh filling my nostrils, the taste hanging on my tongue. Explosions and screams tore through the air in a continuous flood as ships waged brutal dogfights in the skies. The ometrons were too focused on combating the soldiers to notice us as we escaped an alley to the next street. Invictus was straight in the direction we were heading. As we came across the Grand Plaza of Invictus after crossing another war torn street, my heart stopped beating.
Words could not describe the battle. Tens of thousands of arcadian and ometrons alike fought upon as many mangled corpses, torn apart by weapons of both sides. Smoke obscured most of the battlefield, but my eyes pierced the clouds as though they were nonexistent as I absorbed every detail in seconds. Hundreds fell in droves on both sides as massive amounts of firepower wiped out entire platoons and the fallen corpses that were used as cover. Powerful anti-matter missiles annihilated hundred yard chunks of land, leaving charred craters, the ometrons without care for friendly fire. The lines were mixed together; the forces indistinct from each other as vicious close quarters combat broke in several areas only to be wiped out from a volley of fire or a missile. It wasn’t burning flesh that choked the air; it was Death made manifest. The fumes of a thousand corpses tainted the air; it was a stench that I would grow accustomed to.
I broke from the scene, for I had barely even spoke of the atrocities going on in the agglomeration of flesh and metal. “Azrael,
with me,” I said, leading us around the perimeter as it became apparent that no area was safe.
My eyes scanned the block a mile away at four hundred civilians, but many weren’t looking my way to identify. We pounded the ground with our feet onwards as an orb destroyed the ground twenty yards in front of us; another moment and we would have been killed. Four hundred yards ahead, the glowing muzzle of an ometron standing atop a mutilated arcadian fired again as I leapt out of the way with Azrael at my side. We landed on the side of the street as the land we had been standing on was obliterated.
The helmet of the ometron had a dull grey octagonal visor that traced after us. It was around fifteen feet tall and a good eight feet wide, considerably larger than me in height and twice the height of Azrael. The bulky armor of the machine was deceptive for they were as mobile as even the fiercest arcadian warrior. We opened fire simultaneously on the ometron, it’s shields absorbing our hit’s as it fired again. It traced me as I moved, continuing to fire as Azrael reversed, escaping harm as the ometron let him go.
The hits drew closer as we continued pounding the machine, but it’s shields were powerful compared to our weaker energy cannons. However, it suddenly turned as several soldiers opened fire on them, sensing our threat level was next to nothing. Our gold visor comrades quickly kept them in combat as I led Azrael through cover towards the civilians, knowing that we had little time.
We were a thousand yards from the civilians when something pounded the ground behind me. Azrael vanished into the side of the building with colossal force as an ometron charged me, it’s cannon damaged beyond repair. My weapon was useless as I tried to outmaneuver it, but it grabbed my ankle and flung me fifty yards through the air as I smashed into a building. I broke through several walls before coming to a stop, the world shaking as I stumbled up. Dust, ash, and debris fell off my body as the ometron was already on me again, flinging me back into the street as I smashed into a crashed ship. A fresh wave of screams reverberated from the street up ahead.
Ignoring the pain and blood that filled my mouth, I found the hilt of a sword next to a fallen brother. I had never used a sword before, but the ometron was going to kill me if I didn’t kill it now. Rising to my feet, the ometron scanned my new weapon as it wrenched a large bar from the floor. A blast hit the ground to the left of us, but I was focused on every movement of its body to notice it. It limped on its right leg. The bar was bent on the upper half. It’s right arm was critically damaged. It put extra weight on its right heel. Then it came forward.
The blade was light but strange as I attempted to wield it, but as our blades danced in a storm of metal, I knew I couldn’t win. I had never practiced the art of a blade while the machine had been programmed by the best of the Legions. It smashed me in the side, sending me into the ship again as it leapt atop me, swinging the bar upon me again. I caught it in my hand, but it had tremendous strength as its fist pounded the ground next to my face. I kicked it’s right leg were it limped as it staggered back for a moment. Taking advantage, I tackled the titan as we rolled on the floor.
It became apparent that the machine was stronger than I, but I continued to keeps myself out of harm. “Zorrul!”
The voice I knew from anywhere. The sweet angelic voice that I savored every morning. Keeping the machine at bay, I turned to the direction of the voice. All I saw was a figure with a bundle vanish in a blast. Everything stopped. Debris rained on my face . They were gone. This was all for nothing. What was once my heart died away, cracking to pieces as each shard shattered into a thousand fragments. Pain in my chest. Anger. Hate.
The ometron tried to overpower me as I smashed my fist into its face, ignoring the pain of the blow as I broke my hand. The machine continued to function as I reached for the blade, gripping it tightly as I drove it through the center of its chest. I wasn’t sure if it was dead, but I didn’t care. That couldn’t have been them. It can’t be.
I ran over to the crater, but all that remained were the pieces of charred remains. Burnt flesh singed my tongue and clogged my nose. I collapsed in the pit, grabbing a handful of what was a body as it degraded to ash in my fingers. Then metal. I lifted the charred piece, white hot from the explosion. Impossible. Our wedding amulet.
The pain in my chest intensified. My hands trembled. Something wet landed on the amulet. It vaporized to steam in a second. It couldn’t be possible. None of this was possible. The metal didn’t cool down; it grew hotter. The ground was smoking around me. My mind was collapsing on itself. Nothing could fill this cavern in my heart; the only salvation would be death. Why didn’t Death take me? Victoria nor Gaius deserved death. Why? The pain exploded.
A thousand knives pierced my heart at the same time. My skin was scorching. The amulet was melting away in my hands. The smoke around me grew in strength. A bloodcurdling scream tore through the smoking crater, across the field, the entire city. It was not my scream. It wasn’t an arcadian scream.
Pain. My skin was on fire. My skin was fire. My brain was swelling like a balloon, and I tried to press my skull together. The amulet was molten metal, and it slipped through my fingers in the smoking pit. Pain beyond measure. As I became fire, so did I become pain. The heat became worse as plasma replaced the blood in my veins. I collapsed onto the ground as the beaming sun pulled my eyes away from the pain; its invisible rays were gushes of flame against my body. Fire erupted in the ground around me as white hot flames engulfed my entire body. The fire burned my body, and I cried out in pain as I sought out some way to expunge it along with the hole that had replaced my heart. Displacement orbs flew at me, but they vaporized in the air fifty yards away harmlessly as I screamed out in agony.
A torrent of the fire left my body, reducing the pain by a miniscule fragment. An escape. It was no longer fire that surrounded me, but pure energy. Time became non-existent. I was trapped in this cycle for an eternity. This was insanity. Inch by inch the pain lessened. A thousand inches and I was only a thousandth of the way there. Insanity.
Freedom. The ground met my smoking body. Half of the city was gone; one side was a black smear the went on indefinitely. The other half held combatants still fighting. The stench of thousands who had vaporized clogged my lungs in clouds of smoke as Azrael and a group of heavily armored arcadians approached me. A booming laugh.
Darkness.
Analysis:
This is an entertainment work offering some insight on the mysterious characters, “arcadians”, which are discussed in both my novels Condemned and Nightfall. In particular, this scene reflects over Segmentus Invictus, the first battle in which the ometrons (machines the arcadians built to protect themselves) instead chose to destroy them. This war became known as “The Fall” and lead to the essential extinction of the entire arcadian legacy. The survivors, known as The Legion, still wander space as vagabonds searching for purpose.
