pearly gates excerpt 1-campfire

dont sugar coat it

 

 

Dusk brings slightly more substantial relief from the oppressive and drawn-out mid-day heat.

He has been walking for an innumerably long time. The shirt is clasped tightly in his hand. He gazes ahead, eyes and face red with tears and blood.

The forest grows darker every few paces. Through the trees shines a little light. He walks to it, caring not about its origin or who or what might have started it. It is just another feature of the wilderness to him.

As he approaches he can hear faint music being finger picked wildly. It echoes eerily through the darkening woods. It sounds like a stringed instrument.

G…Am…Bm…C#...

He doesn’t know how he knows it but he does. As he hears the chords he repeats their names in his head. As he repeats their names he sees his fingers bending to form them on the neck of a guitar.

He must have played.

Long ago.

When he wasn’t…you know…

Dead.

He emerges form the undergrowth into a clearing much like the last one, except the break in the leafy roof of this clearing is illuminated by a bright moon.

There is a fire. It brings to mind other fires he knows he has sat by in his youth. The faces of those who were with him around those fires are obscured by smoke but he is sure he remembers the fires. This one, its smell, brings back the feeling of comfort and companionship that he felt around those other fires long ago.

Unlike the others there is only one figure around this fire. And it isn’t human.

The dark thing sits on a chunk of log, hunched over what he can only assume is a guitar. Its back faces him. Its arms dangle from is black body like long sinewy vines. Its right arm pumps ferociously while the left seems to move with the changing of the chords. The top of its head is barely visible let alone discernable nodding and swaying from side to side with the music from behind the black mountain of its back. Mortimer stops at the edge of the clearing, staring.

The thing finishes whatever it was playing. It seems to sigh and shudders visibly, its shoulders slouching downward at extreme angles on either side of it. Its head rears up to its full height. It stands on a precariously thin neck, wrapped with sinew like the things arms. It has no visible ears. The light of the moon reflects off of the blackness of its hide. It appears to have not skin, but black, shiny rubber covering its bones and organs. It sets the guitar down and speaks.

“Come on down Mort…the fire’s fine…”

Its voice is like that of a cartoon snake in any kid’s movie. It is a slinky black voice the same color and mood as the thing’s sleek black body. Mortimer doesn’t want to go but some part of him makes him; the part of him outraged that the thing would dare to touch what he is now is sure used to be his guitar.

He approaches from behind. The crickets seem to shake Mortimer’s skull with their deafening, incessant chirping.

He grows closer to the thing and the crickets grow louder. Somewhere in the distance, by some boggy body of water a bullfrog croaks and seeks shelter beneath the tepid waters.

The thing stands suddenly. Mortimer has time to notice the absurd length of its arms. They seem to extend to its knees, and then he realizes that it is the creature’s fingers. They are long black oily spikes ending in smooth dangerous points. Mortimer sees these fearsome weapons and tries to stop but he can’t. The thought of those b*****d fingers molesting his guitar makes him want to scream and instead of slowing down his rapidly paced walk turns into an outright run.

Then the thing turns around.

Its eyes are moons.

They are pools of oil.

They bulge, protrude, from an emaciated boney black skull, the skin of which is spread precariously over sharp looking cheekbones and a high, boney, smooth, forehead.

Its teeth are crooked. The bottom row protrudes from its lower lip meeting the teeth that hang from beneath upper lip. It wears a perpetual grin of pearly white. The canines on either side of the bottom row are elongated and they protrude awkwardly outward. They must make speech impossible. Its face is a bare skull covered in a black, oily, cartilage looking hide. The corners of its mouth turn up slightly. It grins viciously and swoops its left arm to an empty log adjacent to its own.

“Mortimer,” it slithers to him, its mouth frozen in that gruesome grin, “take a seat.”

 

 

The log does not make a comfortable seat but Mort is too preoccupied to notice. The thing says nothing. It stares at him from its log, hunched over, long sinew ridden arms draped over long muscular legs whose feet end in five sharp black spikes. It stares at him with those full moon eyes and grins its impossible grin. It makes no sounds. Mortimer sees no movement, not even breath, no Adam’s apple or anything comparable bobbing up and down in its neck when it swallows…if it swallows. The fire crackles and pops beside them.

Finally the thing moves. With out averting its gaze from Mortimer’s battered shiny face, it brandishes the guitar up from behind it. It folds the thing into its arms and begins to play. The long fingers of its left hand delicately and expertly find their place on the fret board. The right hand hangs off the side of the guitar, long enough to easily reach the strings suspended over the sound hole. It gazes into Mortimer, a faint expression of contemplation, humor, spreads over its alien features. It begins to play.

Mortimer and the creature sit and the creature plays and the young man listens. The notes that the thing’s fingers manipulate form the wood and metal of the guitar are none like Mortimer has ever heard. The thing plays beautifully.

After a while it looks up. The fire reflects in its eyes of pearl and it seems to smile again. It hands the guitar to Mortimer. Its arms are so long it doesn’t have to lean forward. Mortimer takes the guitar, hesitantly, and holds it in his lap.

The thing puts its elbow on its knee and its head in its hand, gazing at Mort comically. When Mort doesn’t play for a moment the thing waves it’s free hand languidly at him, motioning for Mort to play. Mort looks from the thing to the beautiful piece of wood in his lap and begins to play.

The second his fingers press against the strings and he can hear the familiarly faint burst of untouched chord he knows what he’s playing and why. He remembers faces of family members and their voices and every memory of everything that has ever happened to him. He remembers who was in the field in the blanket with him. He remembers who she is and why he is here. He bows his head and weeps, partly in the great pain of such an instant recollection has caused his mind, mostly for his own self and what has happened to him.

He finally has the strength to raise his head. The thing is glancing at him sideways now, head still in hand, still in that comical pose that is no longer so comical as much as it is mocking. Mort, his eyes red with tears that have become red copper tasting by the time they reach his lips from the dried blood on his face, parts his thick sobbing lips and asks thickly:

“Where is she?”

The thing smiles even wider now. Its eyes seem to narrow a little bit, as if satisfied.

“First, play”, it hisses lazily.

“Where is she!?” Mortimer now nearly demands, fresh currently un-reddened tears springing from his red irritated eyes.

“You will know soon,” the thing hisses patiently, “First play. Let me hear about your life. Tell me why you’re here and you will know where she is.”

Mortimer breathes heavily, composing himself. He reassembles his fingers against the fret board, wincing slightly at the memories that shoot through his nerve endings and into his brain when he does so. He drags his blood and dirt coated nails down the metal strings and begins to play.

It feels as if it has been forever sense he has played. He now plays like he never has before. The act is one that is more intimate than any other he has ever experienced. He plays forcefully and doesn’t notice the blood or and bits of skin and nail that shoot from his fingers after what may be hours of forceful strumming.

He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. The colors of the chords he creates and the notes that create the chords mix and mingle to form dark purples and reds and blacks and grays and blues and greens. His mind bends around the guitar losing track of where he is going or where he’ll go next; focusing on only what is being played and experienced at that instant. Finally, he begins to die down. Somewhere along the line he begins to taper off, slow down, and somehow, he ends on one momentous chord. It rings in the night, slowly dying until every aspect of the chord can be heard; every note slightly out of tune from the severe beating that the strings experienced at Mort’s right hand, their tension thrown out of whack.

The creature raises it’s head from its hand and brings those long spindly spiders together creating an eerie applause for Mort’s performance.

Mort looks up. His eyes are dry but still puffy and red. His face is stone. He takes no notice of the blood pouring from his fingers. He growls at the thing: “where is she.”

It is a demand, not a question.

The thing grins that toothy grin again. He sits up straight, towering over Mort.

            “You’ll know soon enough. Don’t you want to know more about this place? About me? Why, Mort, Morty, my friend, don’t you recognize me?”

            Mort stares at him in disgust. He doesn’t care. He wants her back.

“Just tell me where she is you-you-you f**k!”

The creature just keeps on smiling. He stands up straight and steps one long step

 Mort leans back now, deterred from his questioning. The thing looms over him. It looks down at him menacingly.

            “Don’t you remember me Mort? Don’t you recognize your own son?”

Mort falls off the stump. He was leaning back too far, trying to get away from the monster claiming to be his son. His mouth is wide, his eyes also wide. They do not blink when he falls to the ground; the guitar makes a hollow open noted sound as it falls in the grass beside him.

“Can’t be.” He manages.

“Is,” His son professes, “is. You made me. You gave birth to me. And, in a sense, you are not only my father, my creator…you are me…or rather, I am a part of you.”

“How…how is that possible?”

“The same way you can be alive and functional with a broken neck; after bleeding pints of blood: it’s not.” The thing slithers.

Mort is backing away now, toward the edge of the clearing, on his back, doing some sort of awkward crab walk.

“Who…what are you?” He gasps.

“You were never kind enough to give me a name,” it answers, “so I gave myself one. Of all the names in the world I am Akuji: the dead and awake.”

“What do you mean ‘dead and awake;’ like a zombie?”

Akuji is still looming over him, still watching him crawl backward toward the woods. The light from the fire shines on the Akuji’s back and leaves his front in a blackness into which his skin fades perfectly. He has become two moons and two sets of dangerous icicles.

“I suppose,” Akuji growls deep within its sinewy throat, “I guess that’s what you might call me. The thing is, Mort, father, me; the thing is, that I am not as substantial as the living dead. I am inside you. I am yours and, in turn, you are mine.”

“I don’t understand!” Mort cries. His pants are wet with the dew of the grass. He has finally made it to the woods; to a tree. His back is against its cool bark.

Akuji crouches before him. He runs one dark finger down Mort’s cheek. His skin is more hideous to the touch than Mort could have ever imagined. It is cool against his face.

            Akuji’s finger stops at Mort’s chin. A black oily, cool thumb caresses Mort’s lips. Its elongated tip finds its way between the upper and lower lip. It pulls the lower lip down exposing Mort’s teeth. Akuji seems to sigh slightly. It is a sigh of satisfaction. Mort, though repulsed and on the verge of vomiting, can do nothing but stare into the moons of Akuji’s eyes. He is paralyzed, unable to react.

            Unable to scream.

            Akuji’s thumb moves quickly, pushing past Mort’s teeth and into his mouth. The black fore-finger moves from Mort’s chin to his mouth. Mort cannot move. His screams well up in his chest and never come out of his mouth. The two fingers taste like rotting flesh might taste. They taste as black as they look and are as cool and wet as they look. They pinch Mort’s tongue and pull it out between Mort’s lips.

            “Ahhh, red and healthy as usual,” Akuji coos, “It has been so long since I have been home. So long. I can’t wait to get back where it is always wet.” With that Akuji’s hands fly to Mort’s face. Akuji’s wide eternal eyes drop to the same level as Mort’s wide terrified eyes. Akuji’s teeth press coolly against Mort’s chin.

            Akuji holds him like this, in this horrible mock-lovers kiss. It makes that cooing sighing sound again, obvious pleasure racking its black clammy frame.

            Akuji’s hands pry Mort’s mouth wide open. Finally Mort is able to scream and he does as something slimy shoots down his throat. His eyes glaze over. Before blackness darker than Akuji envelops him he slumps to his side to see that Akuji has disappeared.

           

 

 

Author's Note

be honest