Curse: The end has only just begun

by Rich Hayden

  With his arms still loosely draped around the woman’s stony shoulders, Amil peered down the row of corroded benches that lined the back wall. They were sewn together by the vine and crippled by the cancerous effects of oxidation. Piles of dust and powdery metal residue dirtied the floor around their feet, and, at the end of this exhausted and spent line, something stirred.

  Amil felt his heart quicken as he focused his eyes upon the charred skin of a Waste. It peeked out from the shadows of an arcade, and the virulent beast met his stare. After a few tense moments, the creature darted out of sight, and Amil was launched from the bench by the fear which hammered inside him. Adopting a sideways gait, he shuffled toward the center of the room, and, with a robotic scan, he directed his vision into each darkened archway. He caught sight of the Waste as it hid in the absence of light, and never removing his eyes from the monstrous being, he plucked a jagged bit of stone from off the ground.

  To his surprise, the creature slowly crawled out of its hole and pulled itself into the periphery of the light that flowed in through the broken windows above. It lay upon its side and twitched in agony amid a torrent of dry squeals that grated the inside of its throat into a pillar of scabs. The black fluid that oozed from the orifices of the Wastes poured in abundance from this unfortunate being. The toxic discharge spread out over the floor and formed a pool around its body.

  Amil thought to run. There were doors at his back. He should pick one and flee the atrium as his silent companion had suggested, but he lingered. He wasn’t sure why he stayed, but Amil couldn’t remove his eyes from the Waste. With morbid fascination, he studied the creature as though glimpsing one of the most enigmatic mysteries of the universe. He remained still as the chaotic sight laboriously dragged itself closer, and, as it neared, the blind rage that he had felt from the other Wastes seemed to be absent.

  With about twenty feet of empty air between them, the beast stopped its crawl, and a heavy rain of sweat dropped off Amil’s skin. In a lethargic process that was spastic and heavy with twitched movements, the Waste pulled itself onto two feet. It stood nearly erect, and as its savaged body hung before Amil, he was able to discern its former gender. The Waste was a woman, or at least she used to be, for there was very little left behind that hinted at her feminine nature.

  She was terribly thin, and other than two wrinkled lumps, her breasts had all but disappeared. A shock of matted blonde hair flipped off the side of her flaked scalp, and her left hand looked as though it had its fingers recently chewed off. This gnarled mass of carnage nauseatingly dangled from her wrist, and the bottoms of her feet were mercilessly fitted with an assortment of broken glass. Her wails retreated as she fought to steady herself, the only sounds being made by the rotting female were the sharp pops that were spat out from between her worn joints.

  Amil continued to stare in a state of horrified fixation. He came to understand, from the condition of her being, that this Waste was a recent victim of the disease she carried. She still possessed the ability to stand, and not all the aspects of her human description had fallen under the perverse erasure of her affliction. It was in that moment that Amil lifted his sight from her bowed limbs and seared flesh. He looked, not at the opaque pus that stuck to her cheeks and leaked from her nose, but instead, he glanced into her absence of eyes. In the abyss of her sockets, the most excruciatingly painful symptom of her curse was revealed. At least for a while longer, she could still think.

  “Oh god,” he said aloud, with an almost involuntary reflex.

  She stared back at him without the use of her eyes, and continued to bleed the floor black and fill the air with the failings of her joints. Amil gave a thought to who she was before this sickness. Had he known her? Was she the president of a nation or a chart-topping songwriter? Whatever she may have been, it didn’t matter anymore. Then he gave a thought to the possibility that she once accepted a key from Aphelianna. It was a likelihood he could barely entertain. Be that as it may, this wretched abomination could have been nothing more than a mirror. A reflection of Amil Young in a future not yet realized.

  He choked on the spit in his throat and felt a genuine sympathy for the girl. He took a step toward her, but as he did, the Waste displayed the one and true nature of her condition. She dropped onto her knees and flung her withered arms out wide as a blistering yell erupted from her throat. Globs of the acidic fluid were forced out of her nose, and, as she screamed, her toes curled and drove slivers of glass deeper into her feet. Her jagged call scraped off the walls and tore down the hallways. Its shrill din leapt through the broken windows, and further saddened the lugubrious statue, who had tried in vain to warn of the Waste’s presence.

  He knew the time to depart the atrium had come, and then passed him by. For Amil had already tarried too long, and before he could craft a proper thought, his pursuers caught up to him en masse. Wastes stormed the atrium from every cavity and crack, and set their murderous thirst upon him. They crashed through the doors, were purged from the darkened arcades, and they dropped without hesitation from the wounds in the ceiling above. A cacophony of discordant rage filled the space, and soon the whole of the ground would be slicked in their virulent emission.

  Near the center of the room, Amil was found exposed and vulnerable, with the visions of every plague and menace set to all sides of him. He cast his eyes overhead, and, as he witnessed the smeared silhouettes of the Wastes as they crawled upon the outer surface of the glass, his instincts took over.

  Amil rushed forward and into a crowd of the beasts. His arms flanked his head as he ran, while the sensation of injury was his to absorb with a relentless regularity. Although bereft of proper nails, the Wastes dug rough canals over his skin with their jagged fingertips. As his flesh was divided, Amil’s body burned intensely as a hot sensation of distress found his nerves. With a ferocity that could rival the clamp of a pitbull’s jaw, the Wastes slashed their prey with rotted teeth. The damage caused from these impressions became evident all across his form. His punishments were constant and cruel, but still, he pressed forward, ever closer to an opening. The only salvation left to him, the splintered remnants of a broken door.

  He tossed the creatures aside, and flayed his knuckles upon their mouths as they bit and snarled. But during his desperate flight to preserve the farcical existence that he knew, Amil was tripped, and sent to the wetted ground below. He lay on his back, and the sight of more Wastes swelled into view as they poured through the wounds in the roof. He put that rough piece of rock in his hand to work. As the creatures descended over him, his weapon was thrust with wild abandon.

  His crude knife sunk itself into the faces and flesh of the Wastes, but the afflictions they suffered did little to deter their bestial desires. Amil pushed his body backwards as he kicked and slashed, all the while inching closer to the sanctuary of a broken door’s threshold. Fatigue momentarily forced Amil’s head to contact the soiled ground. His skin recoiled from the acidic touch of the fluid, and his hair stuck to the floor. Ensnared by the pus, a clump of hair was ripped out of his scalp as his head frantically tossed about. In his fevered attempts to spare his lips and nose from the jaws of those that assaulted him, Amil’s eyes delivered a sight of bounty and release to his mind. The enigmatic exit was mere paces from his besieged position, and with the hope that this offered, the strength required to continue was found.

  He rolled onto his hands and knees, and although the most profane descriptions of humankind tore the skin from his back, Amil scurried for the passageway. He felt the muscles of his back ripped asunder by teeth, and he felt the cold beauty of broken wood as it lay scattered about him. But as he reached the divine barrier of blackness that the threshold held, the mouth of a Waste clamped onto his ankle. The compression of its bite cleaved the material of Amil’s shoe, and he felt as the fractured bones inside its mouth sunk deep into his skin. He spread his arms wide, and the desperate grip that he applied to each side of the doorway chased away the blood inside his fingers. Aid
ed by the slick condition of the stone under him, and expending the last of his strength, he vaulted his body fully across the spectral border.

  Ribbons of flesh were left behind in the mouth of the Waste. The sounds of ligaments as they snapped were hurled into the air like bellowed vulgarities, but still, Amil was free. He felt as his foot was nearly torn from his leg during his thrust. The pain threatened to send Amil into unconsciousness, but in the instant that his body left the atrium, a fresh door materialized behind his flight, solid and locked tight. Its emergence sealed off the Wastes from his sight, leaving Amil in darkness and perilously near to his own extinction. He allowed himself to go limp upon the ground, and his skin began to burn and twist with all the damage that it had taken. Rivulets of the black discharge dropped from his hair, and as it ran about his face, the fluid stung his eyes and ruptured blood vessels with its kiss.

  As he lay on his stomach, Amil’s face was rearranged by pain, and as his agony swelled, his form contorted and writhed. Blood spurted and seeped from the many wounds that had been carved, and rivers of the red fluid cascaded off his ravaged back. The escape of blood dulled his mind, and as this warm flow of life rushed away, his face was drained of its color.

  After the onslaught of this suffering began to subside, his body started to cool. His anguished twitches softened to a mild tremor, and a fresh outpouring of sweat glazed his skin. The water soothed his fiery body, but as the liquid left him, Amil was robbed of his focus. The ground below the stare of his eyes began to blur, and his tiny world of one started to swirl and shake. A feeling of nausea bubbled up in his gut, and with no inclination to move his face, he vomited a halo of acidic slime around his head. His lids were heavy, and as his mouth slid back into the pool of filth that it had created, he felt powerless to stop whatever may come next.

  With only a rudimentary sense of thought left to him, Amil dwelled on the true meaning of death. He felt as it raced toward him. He wondered wearily, through which of his many injuries would expiration elect to enter and collect what remained? He couldn’t escape the pestiferous implications of his failures, and as he thought of Ali as she hung cold and naked from that tree of eternal torture, he fell away into unconsciousness.

  Part 5. The Great Carillon

  Chewed and scratched within an inch of his new and repugnant existence, Amil awoke among a blanket of dried blood and vomit. The amount of congealed liquid that surrounded him was alarming, but most surprising was that he felt relatively well. Sitting up, he inspected the many holes in his tattered clothing and the injuries that lay beneath. It felt impossible to accept, but nearly all of his wounds had closed up. There were even some that looked to be scarred over, as though the wounds they described were suffered many years before. He undid his shoe and witnessed the ghosts of the teeth that nearly severed his foot, but other than this faded reminder, little damage was there to be found. He swiveled his ankle around and felt not the slightest hint of pain. As he tied his shoe, Amil noticed that his knuckles bore no signature or scrape of the punishments they received seemingly moments ago.

  It was in this innocuous act of knotting his laces that Amil was made to wonder about how long he had been asleep. Had his body healed this rapidly, or had he lain upon the ground for days or weeks untold? No explanation was too absurd to believe in this place, and yet, he could not place the smallest amount of trust in his own senses. If he had discovered one truth from his journey deeper into Aphelianna’s house, it was that the impossible had become the common and ordinary.

  Minutes after his waking, Amil came to realize that this was the first time that he had slept since his arrival in the afterlife. He wasn’t sure if what he had experienced could actually be classified as proper sleep. It was more or less an involuntary surrender to pain. Then he thought of food and other such things that fuel life, and how he had nearly forgotten them. He wasn’t sure why no sense of longing for things once essential could be found. Maybe this lack of desires could be linked to the relative insignificance that time now held. He had no means to crudely mark the passage of time, if, in fact, time could still be measured. Perhaps, then, it failed to exist, and all that was left were a series of dismal events chained together in an ever-repeating cycle of hopelessness.

  Nonetheless, he found it odd that the need for sustenance or rest seemed to have evaporated entirely. The idea of annihilating a steak or just plowing through a bowl of ramen noodles sounded euphoric, but the need to do so simply did not exist. As he felt his chest heave, Amil doubted that his lungs were actually processing oxygen. Rather, they flexed out of habit. He felt truly dead, nothing more than an entity of routine. Doomed to wander the evermore and practice inconsequential and meaningless behaviors.

  With nothing more than minor muscle aches that begged for the relief of Tylenol, Amil rose to his feet. He found himself inside an enormous courtyard. The open air was above him, and, in a welcome change of environment, the sky above was blue and decorated with a healthy assortment of fluffy white clouds. The grass under his feet was short, and a bit thin, as the dirt below peeked through, but it was green. Even the trees that spotted the land had leaves, and they shifted with the persuasion of a gentle breeze. Benches of painted iron and weathered wood slept under the many branches, while pillars of stone supported ornate arched roofs that offered a shady cove for a mid-afternoon’s nap.

  Paths of brick were laid out in a staggered grid that flowed out over the land and curved with the soft undulation of the hills. Amil set a slow pace over the narrow road, and passed decorative archways and stone monuments that were set within landscaped areas of mulch and ground shrubs. He approached a large circular area fashioned out of tan paving stones, and from this surface, a cozy gazebo rose. A few of the shingles upon the roof had begun to peel, and the wood of the railings was mildly warped, but the partial enclosure was too charming to resist.

  As he slouched upon a bench, Amil took a respite from his troubling venture and looked out across the land. He closed his eyes and breathed in the freshness of the air. It tasted as cool and pure as a foggy Virginia morning. And that’s when he heard it, the delicate sound of a bell as it peppered the air with its song. Amil sat up and concentrated. He waited for the sound to come again, and made not a motion. Every other area of this cursed place had been so deathly silent that he was certain of what was heard. It stood out and grabbed his attention. Desperate to hear it again, to know that he wasn’t suffering from madness, Amil barely breathed as he waited for what felt like hours, just to hear that mild knelling another time. As he watched the roll of the clouds and diligently listened, he began to question if this place was real. Maybe it was a cruel illusion, an oasis of sorts, constructed to lull him into a false sense of security, but then the sound came again.

  Like a pistol shot to begin a race, the second time that he heard the bell, Amil leapt to his feet and started back down the path. He followed the delicate ringing in whichever direction seemed to bring him closer to the source. As he raced along, the tune became much more than the tolling of a single bell. True music was being played, as a finely tuned melody was produced from many bells. He pictured them to be the size of thimbles, but soon, a low throb echoed over the land. It vibrated in his body, and as it did, he was left with the impression that the bells responsible for the lower tones were the size of grown men. Notes of every variety came to his ears as he advanced, and soon, entire chords were formed and woven together to craft a proper song.

  He slowed his pace, and began to delight in the interminable epic that accompanied his walk, but as his eyes were set upon one of the little music makers, he stopped suddenly. Dangling from a tree branch, and strung with a thin pink thread, was a bell. It lay still, and it rattled right on cue, but as Amil’s eyes followed the path of the string, he could not locate its source. The material must have traveled for miles. Through the sky and over the trees it went, connecting to other bells, as it flowed in a precise journey to the trained hands of its master.

 
; Amil followed the increased volume of the music, and as he did, he spotted more and more of the bells. Thousands were hung from the trees, while more still were made to swing from the archways and other sculptures that gave definition to the great courtyard. Bells that greatly outweighed his previous estimation were suspended inches off the ground, and from a considerable distance away, he was made to feel near breathless from their reverberations.

  It looked as though the pink thread that bound the bells was one impossibly long rope. The thread begat tentacles, fingers reaching into the horizon, that all worked together in awesome harmony. Their sprawl formed elaborate designs overhead, and, as the strings continued to lace the sky, bizarre angular shadows striped the ground. A heavy stitching hung above him, and as he ventured further into the swell of the music, the sky was made to resemble an intricately woven quilt.

  The landscape he trod over curved upward, and as Amil ascended the mild grade, the song’s volume rose with his progression. Once the summit of the long hill was reached, he was able to glance down at the origin of the captivating music. Far below him was a massive stadium. It was carved right out of the land, and an immense auditorium of stone seats coiled three quarters around the arena. It looked a bit decrepit and largely forgotten, as most of the stone was dulled by weather and housed a fine glaze of moss. It appeared as though not a soul filled the area reserved for spectators, and probably hadn’t for some time, but at the center of the venue sat the carillon player.