Underneath the Draconian Sky

by Chatwin, Dale M.

  Silence fell, something the Guy had grown accustomed to. Eventually the Shaman’s spoke again.

  “You may leave, 1107, but you will receive no blessing from us. One day you will pay for your atrocities, as we will answer for ours. It has been seen in the Yage. Go, and face thy doom.”

  The Guy took his leave; he found the gunman’s shooters in his sleeping quarters and the UV goggles were in his black bag. He would need all of his wits about him to get through the final leg of his journey. Topside he found Heliodorus grazing a withered patch of grass; he mounted the gelding and rode for the Moffatt Fields. Above the Aurora Borealis burned like a trail of paraffin.

  So begins the final chapter of my time on the Island. Clarity and conscience must win through and all of those rotting emotions must be thrown onto the slag heap of death. Somewhere gums bleed and insurance men knock on doors and beg money from the poor. Somewhere engines turn and new thinking breeds new possibilities. Somewhere a miracle breeds a survivor from smouldering ruins. Somewhere…in time a man is waking from a coma, he knows not where he is or what date in time it is, all he knows is that the flesh he inhabits is not his own, he only sees misshapen shapes and hears smashed voices in a winter chill. All is lost to him, all is unknown and all is a fabrication of some foul liquid brimming with a hostile prosperity. Numbers churn within and seeds are planted that will not take root in summer, so the harvest will be cheapened by a harsh Mayor who chortles inanely to a heart wrenching beat. Boom de bum bom, over and over and over and over until his liver bleeds.

  Somewhere they all see the endless possibilities of being enslaved by a race of hyper-beings that focus on sexual malice and depraved blood sports. Somewhere I am on an Island riding towards my fate, riding towards my death, riding towards that Quantum Aurora feeling calm and content. There is no loathing here; there is no fear to grasp with fearful hands. There is only turquoise and amaranth, coexisting.

  He brought Heliodorus to a halt once reaching a safe distance and strapped on the goggles. The Guy focused them on the Lair of the Desert Shamans, he was greeted with a marvellous sight of Tangelo lightning lit up the sky, the ground shook brutally and collapsed, spewing out fire and tar. The built in audio enhancer allowed him to hear the screams of people dying, the Guy took comfort knowing some of those cries belonged to the Shamans. It was a tough decision, but he knew deep down he couldn’t let them live. He had eradicated the original Cult of Aakmanu and possibly the only chance of defeating the reptilians, now the Island would be left to its own fate.

  From the Journal of 1107:

  The stars are out tonight...

  sheep bray in the distance.

  I lie in a ditch with dust for a blanket

  and in my mind a guitar licks a solo.

  Cold and hollow.

  Sleep is not an issue here

  for the question of whether my eyes will close

  is still at a crossroads.

  I saw a landscape that could cook the very fabric

  of Satan's hoof prints.

  This dark settles

  and now it could freeze the world

  into an oncoming ice age.

  The body shivers and

  the mind rots in a sense of self deliverance.

  One by one my digits fall apart.

  It starts with the toes, big first, getting smaller.

  There is no pain in this unforgiving act.

  Just a robotic emotion to toy with

  and piece together a solemn jigsaw

  of random thought.

  "Why is this happening?"

  I whispered

  although there was no need to.

  This habit turns on automatic

  in these late hours.

  Act V

  Phantasmagoric Blood

  And

  Diminishing Light

  1

  All too real…

  It took him a matter of seconds to be fully reborn into the world, but those seconds seemed like sand slowly pouring through a fine sieve. Flashes erupted in his thoughts.

  FLASH: He was on a hospital bed looking up into a mirror; there were lines of blood on his face. His eyes were clamped open, they moved with a confused ferocity. The masochistic surgeons surrounded him, armed with curious implements. Amongst the reptile doctors he noticed one Human. The surgical mask obscured his face but Patrick knew the eyes and the sharp shape of the thick black eye brows: Dr Hades.

  The world melted back into existence, the taunting dreams had departed.

  FLASH: The skin on his skull was being peeled away and a rotating saw began to cleave the top of his skull open. No pain was felt, there was only the sensation of vibrating and the scene didn’t alarm him in the slightest. Indifferent, that was how Patrick Holness felt.

  The green polka dots had returned, they fluctuated through a colourful spectrum like a kaleidoscope that has been dipped in water.

  FLASH: Exposed brain and fingers meddling in forbidden territory, reptilian fingers disguised in turquoise surgical gloves. Patrick saw wires running through the crevices of his vital organ. Dr Hades examined X-rays and blue prints of Patrick’s body.

  Bacteria now swam where the psychedelic dots had floated like bloated ballerinas. He blinked but his vision was still blurred like someone had rubbed Vaseline over his eyes.

  FLASH: A cylindrical glass tube was being placed over his brain like a crown; it touched the bottom edge of his skull.

  The doctors shuffled and Patrick heard muffled voices, the clinking of metal on metal, the occasional running of water and the squelching sound of fingers touching his flabby brain. Why was he being forced to watch this?

  He saw water well up in his eyes and trail down his face, morphing the tracks of dried blood, though he wasn’t feeling any sad emotions. His subconscious must have been working overtime.

  Gradually a visual construction of the operating room formed and the bacteria disappeared.

  FLASH: A cacophony of frenzied laughter filled the atmosphere and it was at this point Patrick remembered struggling, he remembered the torment, the pain and the overwhelming feeling of sadness washing through him. For a time he was alone, the reptilian doctors did not rush to stop him, they just watched him squirm and laughed coldly.

  His head throbbed and his skull felt like it had been smashed to fragments by a thick icicle. In the mirror he saw that his head was whole again, with an added extra: the glass crown running around his forehead like a halo. A foreign object embedded in his flesh and bone, but something that would quickly become a part of him. Patrick thrashed in his restraints screaming, not knowing if any sound was escaping his mouth, saliva churned and was sprayed in every direction. Then the fear slapped him in his stomach, fear of not knowing what had happened to him. Patrick’s bowels lost all will to function and his bladder deflated, unleashing a tide of urine on to the bed and soaking what little cloth covered his convulsing body.

  In the background the laughter continued. It became the soundtrack of the moment, each laugh was a different pitch, all rising and falling at different intervals. The clapping of clammy reptile hands provided a malicious beat to a moment full of torture. The only silent character was Hades, his mask had been removed and Patrick could see his devilish smile, the man had taken pride in this piece of art.

  Voices, there were voices. A random string of words that could have meant nothing, or meant everything. Were the voices in his head, or were they coming from the surgeons?

  22,000 leagues away from the sea a man came to port with a boat on a string and on that string there was a creature out of myth and out of time and all the spaces were filled with beats and people came to rubber neck at such a horrific wonder but the man only cried and in his tears were galaxies and bacteria with the power to wash away all of the man’s fears and those fears were justified by the opening ceremony of his prey the kraken out of myth and out of time though oceans and rhyme and all things sweetened with star dust and Turkish delight isn’t it a sigh
t to see such power in the hall of the dead? Too many years have passed and now the man broods for another beast since his escaped and bought a farm in the abyss with a wife and kids to shelter them from the end of the world.

  Patrick had settled into an unsettling calm, the 7 reptilian doctors surrounded him again and all linked hands. Hades had hurriedly left the room. There came a deep rumble and he saw the scales on their necks ripple. All creatures opened their mouths and swarms of Hummingbird Hawk Moths invaded the room. Patrick watched, hypnotised by the spectacle, he could feel the insects brush rapidly across his skin and the collected humming sound created by their wings merged into a splendorous sound that soothed his soul. Suspicions, there were always suspicions. The moths flew up and settled on the ceiling, covering every inch of Artex. False Morel fungi began to sprout all over him, his body began to take on a very droll appearance and some folk in Bachman Gardens would call him the Brain King or the Tumour Lord. Patrick sobbed like a pathetic creature, his mind was broken, his body mutilated, he was an experiment to which he was not privy. There was nothing else left to do but weep while fungi grew on his skin and moths threatened to eat him alive.

  The reptiles broke out of their trance and all stared at Patrick, they glared for what seemed like hours, then suddenly a bolt of pain stabbed him in the head and he passed out. Dead to the world.

  2

  The walls were tiled ivory made from the bones of creatures from other worlds. A glowing steel table sat at the side of his bed and on it were the instruments of his transformation, still slick with blood. Staring at the floor made him feel nauseous, for Patrick was seeing shifting stars and rotating planets, nebulas formed and dissipated in colourful clouds of silk. The sight was awe inspiring, but it couldn’t take away the vertigo. Soon the entire room was the cosmos, only he and the hospital bed existed in the great beyond. The universe was in the room, in a state of cryogenic sleep, never expanding but always making its revolutions and always privy to the will of the Gods.

  Patrick’s mouth became sticky and the taste of molasses seeped into his saliva, the cosmos melted like treacle, a never ending waterfall of space and time. Something was in the room with him, he could feel a presence. The sugary sensation turned bitter and tasted like sage mixed with cinnamon, his ears beheld a deafening sound; a screech that sounded like a hybrid of metal scraping against granite and a child being pummelled in the stomach. There was a flow to the clangour meaning it had to be either a form of speech or a new way to lobotomize patients. At the foot of his bed there was…something, he could not make out in any Human sense. At first it appeared to be organs floating in a solar system and then it was a cross section blue print for some kind of aquatic animal, perhaps a barnacle from the untimely fathoms of an infested sea bed. The image was never truly those things, but it this realm they served as physical representations of the real Great Beyond. Patrick Holness let out a spine shattering howl that could have created another big bang, his eyes widened as if they were clamped open again and in a matter of seconds his bed was wet with perspiration and urine. Defecating seemed like the only sane thing he was capable of at that time. His body began to fluctuate and he felt his eyes roll into the back of his skull, but vision remained. Blood began to pour from every orifice, starting with the ears then moving swiftly on to the eyes and mouth, Patrick could even feel blood pouring from his urethral opening.

  The halo that was embedded in his skull lit up with shining magnificence, amaranth poured out like milk and Patrick Holness was filled with ancient knowledge, the image that had caused this new suffering was one of the Aakmanu in its true 11th dimensional form, but he couldn’t work out why they would show themselves in their pure physicality when his 3rd dimensional mind wouldn’t have been able to have comprehended such a sight.

  The light palpitated and he could feel the amaranth flowing through his body and coursing through his veins as thick as his blood. Maniacal laughter burst through Patrick’s lips, he laughed and laughed and laughed until his buccinators began to spasm. The amaranth radiance became too intense to handle and the last thing he felt on that world was the sensation of his head exploding.

  Dwarves in gimp outfits pushed duck billed platypus’ in trollies whilst smoking cigars rolled in sheep’s bladders. A rusted clockwork man played bass guitar in a street full of burnt children and somewhere up the road a mutated businessman wearing a vinyl suit rolled 10p coins into a drain where a pygmy minotaur melted the nickel plated steel and moulded it into a bride. Patrick walked without questioning his location, he just observed. He approached an outdoor Arabic market where giant earwigs served up plates of donkey meat, a Hercules beetle the size of a dog strutted through alleyways flashing its horn intimidating groups of jungle nymphs. What caught his eye was the Human sized Orchid Mantis, it danced with a psychoactive grace, striking beautiful moves and flicking its arms out rapidly to grab tiny skipper butterflies from the air.

  He moved on, out of the market and into a busy city street, none of the faces Patrick saw were familiar to him. Some looked like pug dogs and other looked like buck toothed wilder beasts. There was one face, however, he did recognise; Remer Blake.

  Remer was wandering the street, staring up at the sky and bumping into people without a care and he eventually stopped, but never took his eyes away from the heavens. Patrick approached him.

  “Remer, are you my dream?” asked Patrick, sounding like someone had stuffed cotton candy into his mouth.

  “No Patrick, I think you’re in my dream,” Remer replied sounding far away.

  “Oh, not a lot makes sense these days. What are you looking at?”

  “This is the point it falls and creates a lake of oil.”

  “What falls?”

  “That.” Remer pointed towards the sky. Patrick saw an oil rig fall from the heavens, it landed on a skyscraper filling the world with deafening sounds, debris, dust, broken glass and oil. All around people ran in many directions calling out for loved ones or for others to move out of the way. Everyone ran, except for Patrick and Remer, they stood like statues and let the oil river wash over them, letting the liquid fill their lungs and feeling it on their skin.

  Patrick felt like he had been born anew. Even in the ebony of the oil he could still see the amaranth glow, it was inside him, a part of him, existing within his consciousness and ingrained on his soul. He found Remer’s hand and held it tight, squeezing until it vanished and all that was left was oil.

  All too real.

  3

  Gases spewed from the surface of a forest, forming shapes that shared a similar appearance to Japanese bones. Patrick saw machines churning out fast food controlled by Preachers dressed in ornate, bronze codpieces with octopus tentacles engraved onto the surface. Train conductors from Guatemala grated cheese in water beds filled with cuttlefish and beneath the gigantic girth of a redwood, several Sasquatch monsters engaged in a beastly gangbang. Dominating thrusts were accompanied by bone melting roars. Too many abstract scenes began to drive Patrick mad, but curiosity grasped at his consciousness like pale fingers of lightening grasping an apocalyptic horizon. The forest was dense, the foliage larger than natural and there was a hole in the sky where 2 burning creatures took turns playing chess with the world.

  A river made of silky cream flowed through the vegetation, in its waters little white tadpoles swam hungrily hither and thither searching for a purpose. In the distance he saw a towering bridge of polished brass glowing in the sunlight. Patrick entered a spherical clearing where rays of sunlight descended like teleportation beams and in the centre there was a man mounted on a Caribou, arms outstretched and head up to the sky. He recognized the man immediately and almost broke down into tears.

  “Hilstrom, it’s been so long, I am ashamed to say that you had faded from my memory. Could you forgive me and help a lost soul?”

  The man dismounted and approached him.

  “It has been too long old friend, you may have forgotten me but I have never forgotte
n you. On my new world we have ways of watching events on other dimensions. I never stopped watching you, and your transformation,” said Hilstrom.

  Tears welled in Patrick’s eyes, the halo’s glow had softened and now only sorrow flowed through him.

  “What has happened to me?” said Patrick.

  “They wanted you to be like them; a Rift Walker. You were chosen as the first Human trial, the halo you wear should have enabled you to enter other dimensions at will, but the experiment failed. They inadvertently created something more powerful. Some will call you an abomination but I call you a work of art; you are a Dream Walker, Patrick, like in the old fairy tales.”

  The Caribou groaned and exhaled thick saliva and mucus, its belly split open and out poured entrails and blood. Hilstrom smiled and took Patrick’s hand.

  “Come, let us make love like we used to.”

  Except it wasn’t anything like how they used to make love. What they did in that pool of gore was something fierce and full of pain induced pleasure. When they held on tight to each other, their bodies merged into one being. Patrick’s hands writhed beneath Hilstrom’s flesh and they moaned in agonizing pleasure. A group of lumberjacks approached and joined in and created an orgy of huge, throbbing members. Some of the men hacked great chunks out of the redwoods during penetration. An Austrian mime artist was perched in a branch, he stood up with perfect balance and began to piss a waterfall over the orgy and somewhere deep inside of him, Syphilis lurked, biding its time until it could burst through his crotch and reclaim the world as its own. He would become the Syphilis king, wearing a crown of warts with lice minions crawling through his hair.