A Death Of Ages - FINALIST

[carnage_lee]

A DEATH OF AGES

All I felt in that first moment was a rising surge of panic; but it felt muted, otherworldly. Whatever it was it wasn't cold sweat, trembling, or wide-eyed fear: it was more subtle than that, more spiritual I suppose: emotional rather than physical.

My initial thought was of paralysis, and of pain-killing drugs which, I knew, could cloud the mind and cause bizarre hallucinations. At that moment I felt a twitch in one leg, then another: faint, like a mini-spasm. Then a surge of relief when I realised that I could, in fact, move myself, but only with extreme difficulty. By concentrating as hard as I could I attempted to move my legs. It felt as though I were dragging them through wet concrete. I was aware of muscles and tendons but could feel neither tension nor resistance. My legs and arms did as I commanded but without solidity or strength.

After a couple of minutes of hard concentration my legs suddenly broke free of their restraints and I flailed forward. I immediately became overwhelmed by disorientation and windmilled my arms in an effort to remain upright, failing miserably as I teetered backwards, expecting to fall crashing to the ground….

….amazingly I felt no force of gravity.

I appeared merely to hang parallel to the ground, arms stretched out behind me, fingers groping for contact but touching nothing.

I tried to look around me but saw only blackness and it took a moment of bewildering clarity for me to realise that my eyes were shut.

It took the same effort to raise my eyelids as it had to move the rest of my body, but when I finally succeeded the first thing I saw was a grainy sky. All colour seemed to have been washed out, like a bleached negative. Shades of grey speckles swam into my vision in a kind of pixellated false-dawn, with here and there splashes of pale sepia which may or may not have been clouds.

I found myself ever so slightly beginning to return to the vertical. I knew I had to see more of this place, wherever it was, and it was as if this thought was transmitted through to my body which reacted accordingly. And as I looked around it dawned on me that something was seriously not right.

My immediate surroundings, like the sky, was a dull, monotonous monochrome. I could make out trees and an expanse of grass. To my right was a large body of water with the opposite bank lost where it merged, seamlessly, into the sky. Weeping willows and bullrushes dotted the water's edge. Other trees I couldn't identify stood in lonely clumps throughout the landscape, like sad sentinels in a land robbed of it's colour.

I turned my attention to myself and was shocked at the blurred outline and shifting striations of grey, as if a shoal of plankton had formed itself into the image of man.

It was at this point, I think, that I began to suspect the truth. I still hoped that I was dreaming but something deep inside my troubled brain convinced me otherwise.

The panic I'd momentarily experienced earlier was abruptly replaced by anger. I opened my mouth but heard only a faint bleat, like a distant echo. I wanted to scream, to cry and shout; to implore somebody, anybody, to tell me what the hell was going on!

As my mind blasted forth the words my mouth couldn't produce I suddenly became aware, from the corner of my eye, what I took to be figures. Or at least the bitty outlines of figures: people who lingered as vague shadows at the periphery of my vision, who shifted and changed each time I tried to focus on them. The more I tried to see them the angrier I became. My frustration was a burning ache in my head and I thought-screamed my indignation:. 'How dare you…!'

Whereupon, as a single entity, the figures swam into focus.

I instantly wished they hadn't.

The figures, dozens of them, hovered before me wraith-like. Though some were fully formed most were in various states of disembodiment. Here a single bare foot walking heel to sole an inch or two above the grass. There an arm swinging rhythmically as if attached to the form of a marching man. A head with spittle
dangling from slack lips bobbed up and down like a cork in water. A torso without limbs cart-wheeled across the surface of the lake before disappearing into it with a slight splash causing ripples which lapped at the stems of the rushes.

'What the hell is….'

….and as the thought left my mind all movement instantly ceased. Whatever their hideous condition they all had one thing in common. The figures with heads were all staring directly at me. All the other body parts also faced in my direction. The expressions I could make out were not particularly friendly, with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. Even in their pixellated form I could sense their disgust and I felt a surge of panic.

I wanted to scream at these apparitions, and then suddenly found myself doing so: 'Why are you staring at me? Who are you? What am I…..?'

Before I had time to complete this last thought I felt tendrils of intrusion overlap the unfinished question. Sound ballooned in my mind and I heard whispered sentences:

'….ignore him….'

'….keep away….'

'…. he's too bad….'

'Stay away laddie, ye're no' wanted here.' A soft Scottish brogue came from the figure nearest to me. He was a tall man with a Hitler-esque moustache wearing tweeds and plus-fours with grey tufts of hair poking out sideways from beneath a well-worn pork-pie hat. He would have looked comical in any other situation but here he just seemed to fit perfectly into this whole surreal scenario. If anything I was mildly relieved that his voice held none of the scorn of the others.

By leaning slightly forward and willing myself to move I hesitantly drifted towards him. Although my legs worked as they would normally I nevertheless appeared to be floating about a foot above the ground. I experienced an overwhelming urge to speak to this man. He seemed to be the only one not abjectly fearful of me.

But as I drew nearer to him a cacophony of voices warned him to leave me be and though he stayed put a flicker of doubt creased the corners of his eyes. I made myself stop short in case I scared him off and faced him with a twitch of thought.

'Can you help me?'.

'Why would anybody want to help ye'?' the figure replied without moving his lips, though his moustache jerked slightly up and down. 'Do you think anyone here cares aboot' ye?'

'Wh-why not?' I stammered back at him,

'Have ye' no' worked it oot' yet?'

'Worked what out?' I implored. 'That I'm dead? How did I die?'

There, I'd said it. Or rather thought it. The reality of it was overwhelming.

The man cast a quick glance over my shoulder and as he did so his expression changed to one of regret and I was sure I caught the hint of a shrug.

'Good luck laddie,' he said softly and with that he was gone, leaving behind an amorphous wisp of vapour.

'What the hell is happening to me?' I screamed. At all the other figures I screamed again: 'won't one of you help me?'

But even as I begged them they began to fade away. One by one they dematerialised; some in a puff of smoke, others in the blink of an eye.

Helpless and alone I felt as if I'd been sucked into every living nightmare I'd ever experienced. If only I could remember something. Anything!

It came to me in a flash that I really must be dead. I knew it wasn't a dream. I just knew

I began to wonder if this was a part of being dead. Was every recollection of a previous existence wiped clean in preparation for a separate existence beyond? And yet if that was the case how did that allow for so-called spirits inhabiting
familiar places; or for that matter haunting people they had known before death? None of it made any sense. Was it simply that I 'd been a believer and that was why I was here? Or didn't it matter whether you believed or not; in that an after-life existed and you automatically became a member once you expired? And if the reality of a higher plane was inevitable then did it really matter how I'd died?

Yet I couldn't help wondering whether I had family and friends. Was I buried or cremated? Was there anybody shedding a tear over my mortal remains?

'For Christ's sake what the hell's going on?'

'An interesting turn of phrase.' A low voice; sibilant, off-key and menacing, blew rancid breath in my ear.

Instinctively I spun around, forgetting I lacked the friction of firm ground. I caught a brief glimpse of a solitary figure behind me as I fought to control my momentum. Three revolutions later I began to slow but even then I overcompensated and had to will myself back before I could properly see the strange form before me.

This lone person appeared more solid than all the others and though his clothes and features at first appeared normal he seemed to ooze with malignant menace. He wore a dark, double-breasted, pin-stripe suit with sharp creases and a large collar. A velvet shirt with shiny nap was complimented by a thin tie held in place by a bright clip in the shape of a scythe, (which in itself you would've thought would have given me a clue). His long, silver hair was slicked back and tied into a pony-tail. His face was all angles and stretched skin with a scalpel-slit mouth raised slightly at the corners.

His eyes, though, were his most striking feature for they burned with a fiery-red glow like fractured neon, while his pupils were tiny and appeared vaguely vertical. When he smiled I could see that his teeth had been filed into sharp points, the top row of which had emerged from corresponding sheaths behind his lower lip.

And then he winked at me.

For the first time I floated backwards without thinking the movement. I felt engulfed by despair and could only raise my arms away from my sides in a kind of supplication.

'If you can't tell me what's going on then just do whatever it is you're here to do.' I said, and for the first time my voice came to me verbally in a flat monotone.

He said nothing but his eyes bored into me and I felt a part of whatever was left that made me Human leech from my soul through every pore in my body, and I felt a wrenching surge of sadness.

'What am I supposed to believe?' I asked, seeing his head twitch and his eyes narrow with each pathetic word I uttered. 'I don't know what to believe any more. I'm pretty sure I'm dead, but I don't know how or why. I mean…,' I faltered and looked about me, '….what is this place? Is it Heaven…?' He threw back his head and laughed, '….hell then?' He laughed uproariously; then stopped, snapped his head forward, and fixed me with a cold, desolate stare.

"Ye people of the world have such quaint notions of the afterlife. As if the sum of your pathetically short lives should leave ye deserving of redemption." His voice sounded biblical, like he was quoting scripture. He raised his arms to the sky and his head tilted back and the next words he spoke resonated with echoes as if coming from the depths of a distant cavern. 'See thee thy evil and bear thee thy misery. There be more to death than transition.'

He cocked his head to one side as if anticipating a reply but I was lost in despair and confusion. I simply wanted a straight answer, good or bad.

'Please tell me who you are?' I asked softly.

He raised his index finger to his mouth and pressed the tip against one of his pointed canines. A dribble of blood welled up from translucent skin and traced a course down the palm of his hand to his wrist where it disappeared inside an immaculately pressed cuff.

'I am thy temptation and thy ego,' he intoned quietly. 'I am thee as thee were before and as thee shall forever be. Nemesis and usurper. I am all thou art.'

The rivulet of blood which had dried against his white skin suddenly took on a darker hue and seemed to rise away from the surface. As an elongated tube it wavered to and fro in front of his features and as I watched it took on the form of a snake, with a banded pattern along it's sleek sides and a bulbous head with obsidian eyes and a flickering tongue.

I gazed in awe at this bizarre spectacle; then balked in horror as his features began to change. His whole head expanded outwards and his lips, eyes and nose stretched sideways. His mouth became a cavernous void full of overlapping, jagged teeth like those of a shark. His cheeks and brow began rippling alarmingly as if small creatures just below the skin were struggling to escape. As I watched these undulations they began to form lines and angles and I soon realised they were the outlines of faces, dozens of them, with gaping mouths and wide eyes, venting silent screams as they thrashed from side to side.

In the blink of an eye the grotesque head shot forward and I heard the sound of his teeth clack together as they engulfed the snake and I flinched away from him as a spray of dark matter erupted from the corners of his mouth. His neck began to stretch and like the snake his head reared back: then, with lightning speed, snapped forward, stopping to within an inch of my own terrified face.

'I have many names,' he growled, clots of blood and tissue forming a web of gore between his lips as he spoke. 'But only one that need concern thee. And when I speak thy name thou knowest thy heart and soul be forever lost to despair and torment, forever tainted by thy evil. That name, dear traveller, is….DEVASTATION!'

A furious blast of rancid breath struck me with the force of an explosion. My body jacknifed as I flew away from him, my scream unheard in the rushing gust of wind, drowned out by the hideously feral laugh which accompanied my headlong flight.

I struck the lake at a low trajectory and skimmed its limpid surface on my back two, three times before plunging into it's icy depths. The force of the impact sent my chin hard against my chest. I plummeted backwards and down, sinking ever deeper into a world of vague shadows, and all around me were long, waving fronds which wrapped around my body and slowed my plunging descent.

As I drifted to a halt the clinging leaves wafted away from me. I knew without thinking it that I wasn't holding my breath, knew also that I didn't need to. I wasn't breathing but I certainly wasn't drowning. I maintained perfect buoyancy by slight movements of my hands and feet. Around me I could see blurred outlines in various shades of grey which hovered and wafted like faded ectoplasm.

And then more figures appeared out of the shifting miasma. Dresses and shirts
billowed about pale, puckered flesh. Hair fanned out as if caught in conflicting currents, intertwined and knotted. Skin pulled taut and in places split, exposing bone and red-rimmed sinew edged with torn tissue. Eyes bulged and mouths gaped and I thought all the horror in the known world had visited me in my torment.

I felt a rake of fingers across the back of my neck and as I screamed a huge bubble of air grew from between my lips. As the micro-thin sac inflated before my eyes a fish-eye reflection formed on it's translucent surface. It was the image of a woman floating behind me, her arms stretched out, her diaphanous skin, less damaged than the others, framed by lustrous coils of dark hair.

As I slowly turned the bubble popped free. Some sense that I recognised her tugged at the fringes of my memory. I felt my shoulders twitch. Before I knew what was happening my arms raised of their own accord. Before my eyes my fingers closed around her throat. It was then that I noticed the dark oval bruises, ten of them, encircling her slender neck.

In a series of clicking chromium flashbacks I see a woman….no, not just a woman….my wife. Click! Her and I…. arguing….fighting. My fault….mine alone. Click! Black anger….mine. Black eyes….hers. Broken bones and split lips. Click! Never sorry…. excuses, always excuses. Kicks and punches. Deserving none of it. Click! My anger, a twisting, coiling serpent, my dark soul without remorse, without conscience….consuming, destroying. Click! The rage within me defiling everything I should have held dear…

….and still I squeezed And I heard small bones crack as the thumbs and fingertips of both hands met. Then….then….

….the knife, slipped from the waistband of her jeans. The knife she had groped for even as her larynx collapsed and blood-vessels burst in her eyes. The knife which she thrust into my stomach and drew upwards with a savage yank, a gleam of triumph in her hate-filled eyes. The knife which ripped and tore and shredded my bitter heart into bloodied clumps of gore.

*

I write with charcoal on a scrap of paper. I squat quivering with fear beneath the burnt-out hulk of a Panzer. I have some fellow murderers with me; all of them sorry, but, hey, it's a bit late for that now. We're a truly pathetic bunch, comrades in evil, paying for our sins in a purgatory beyond imagining

There is no brimstone here, or horned demons with leathery wings. No
Mephistophelean arch-lord deciding our fate or punishment. There is fire however. A storm of fire in a blasted wasteland. Explosions and bullets too. Sometimes a rain of arrows or the slicing clang of steel.

Every historical character who ever committed atrocity is here somewhere, along with a million nameless individuals like myself, who's blame lies in the premeditation of violence.

I am good at killing now; but even better at dying. There is always someone quicker than me, more aggressive, more murderous. And the pain is real, as it should be; and the scars I bear burn with the fire of infection and crawl with insects which bite and sting

Survival, for however brief a time, is the overriding instinct. To be free from the impact of a bullet or the slash of a sword. For an hour. Or a day. Occasionally longer, but rarely.

And always revival. To continue in eternal torment. I shall carry on writing though I know it can never be read. Survival is not a choice, merely an interlude between dying.

This is my life now. Life after death

A death of ages.