Living coffin

This is about a man who wants to resurrect the woman he loves, through arcane power, and ends up signing a deadly contract.

        Hidden in spidery shadows, ridged and elongated, was a crudely carved, enormous human statue; eerily embedded into the weathered wall of a ruined Palace Chambers. The erosions in the walls seemed synthetic, as if proving to be evidence to what could possibly be the blow of the statue, if of course it were alive. The only light that shed itself into the room came from the collapsed ceiling which exposed its wooden frame; looking at it from the ground, it showed only it’s silhouette. The marigold coloured sun was complemented with a brilliant deep-blue sky, high above the once prosperous structure. Tethered to it, were bands of its light, almost glowing with vivacity into the remnants of this lost civilization. Its hue revealed the illuminated rubble, support columns, and also a cloaked figured, quickly walking obliviously towards the ominous statue that towered above him.
        His Garb was crimson, a stern reminder of the bloodshed he had witnessed to arrive in this ancient land. It flowed behind him like an ocean rolling into a beach. With his hood, which cascades its broadly opaque shadows, consuming the contours of his face, the phantom looking figure looked down to the corpse he carried, cradled in his arms.
        “We are here my love” he says in a gentle reassuring voice. “Soon you and I will be together again. Soon I will make your life eternal”. He paused, and stared at her angelic face.
        Haunting was this image, for every memory of her was complemented with a warm vibrant smile; now it was rendered as still as the waterway that they first met on the edge of, that one hazy morning.
        Her hair seemed like it was spun from golden spools, with copper streaks, and her face molded by master sculptures from a block of marble. Her clothes though, were the uniform of a notorious and feared band of vicious pirates; it was a tight coal colored silk shirt, and tattered shorts, suited for the temperatures of these parts. The man carried her with his hand over her exposed mid-drift. Vermillion sap trickled continuously from underneath his palm. The vivid red of this syrup ran down his forearm, as if it were an ice cube, and just as cold. She was nineteen, too young to leave this world, but they arrived to a place where the cloaked figure could change all of that.
         Climbing a set of splintered stone carved steps; they reached a higher platform, and finally made it to the foot of the altar.
        It was formed by pillars shooting up to the ceiling that seemed to lock the statue in place. There the giant seemed to look upon them coldly, its eyes hidden with haunting triangular shadows, forged from the protrusions of his brow. It stood in pose; arms in mid stretch, in a stance of belligerence, and anger. The monstrous hands of this beast could easily hold the torso of a poor human being, and squeeze him dry. Inside its palm, of what the man could make out, was an elaborate design of angular ridges that formed into the shape of a spiral. In the centre of this crude delineation, was a duct that led deep inside the giant.
         In front of the cloaked man and his corpse of a bride, was a stone bed, which bore similar markings of the statue’s palm. Along the wall of the bed was an engraved passage.
         High noon struck the chamber, revealing the phantom to be a man in his late teens; a long chiseled jaw, fair skin, eyes like the sea, and long oily hair, coloured like the trunk of an Oak tree. His stubble suggested that he had been on his travels for some time now.
        As he read the passage, his lower jaw quivered in fear for what contracts he may be signing.
         “May the burden of eternal life be carried by the shoulders of the Golem, and may the lives of all be its fodder” he read out loud. However, his love for her was persistent, and with that emotion, he blindly placed her upon the altar carefully; his hand removed, her fatal wound opened wide, he held back his mournful tears, and focused on the moment that she would be alive again.
        He knew the procedure, for he was once a scholar of ancient lore, and it was this knowledge that brought him to this land in the first place. Meeting her he thought was a blessing, ironic how that would be disproven.
        He reached into the overlapping fold of his garment, and from his waist he pulled out a small leather satchel. Inside the bag from which he retrieved was a tall vial, abounding to its cork with a most unusual substance; a perpetually bubbling liquid, of a green hue, otherwise, being clear. As the light from the top of the day’s morning pierced through the vial, it allowed the bubbles to sparkle brilliantly.
        The man softly, with his thumb and index finger, lowered her jaw. Removing the cork, he poured the foreign fluid into her mouth. He missed slightly at first, and it splashed against her upper lip, and ran quickly down her colorless cheek.
        Next he reached again into his cloak, but this time drew out a dagger from its scabbard. The blade was encrusted with emeralds, each glowing its majestic green; the emerald’s hue grazed its beauty upon the surfaces it came near too.
        “With my blood” he chanted in a deep baritone voice, in emulation to the antiquity of this ritual, “I share my life source to raise you from the world which lies underneath”.
         With his wrist extended just above her bare flesh, and his dagger ready, he stalled, and gave a thousand mile stare into her lifeless face.
        His face winced, and then relaxed from the pain coming from his arm. He knew what he was doing. He knew this was the only way.
        In an ancient tongue, he muttered a final verse to complete the incantation, and squeezed the wound he had slit across his wrist. He would loose a lot of blood, but he would live. Taking the end of his robe, he tore gracefully a piece of the fabric, long enough to wrap tightly around his cut; the bleeding stopped, the ritual was over.
        She bled still, but now, with his added, it seemingly gushed from her body to the surface of the stone table. As it made its way to the markings on the table, the blood was then guided by the intricate design.
        The incantation worked, and the blood behaved as if it were influenced by a divine force, pulling it through the spirals, and bends, defying gravity. Reaching the edge, which winded around the passage, it slid down the wall of the table. Reaching the main design in the very centre of it, the flowing blood magically was fractured into all directions of the stone altar, violently consuming, and filling every engraved marking on the table. Soon it reached the floor, and rushed quickly towards the direction of the stone statue that sleeps before them.
        The man did not expect any of this, and realized that something terrible was on the horizon of this blood contract.
        “The Golem...”he whispered to himself in raising concern. “Could that be the beast of which the incantation refers?”
        Like a spiny insect, the now dark colored sap connected with the designs of the statue before him, and climbed vertically, in such a diabolical way. It took no time at all to dance around the statues heavy form; rising over the enormous stretch of belly, to its broadly slouched shoulders and finally to the edge of its hands. The blood disappeared into the caverns inside the Golem. The man’s heart stopped. He now knew his fate.
        “What have I done!” he said in absolute regret, as he readied his dagger in defense.
         From the depths of this monster’s eyes, once hidden in shadow, bursted into a pulsating red radiance; Coming from the palms of the monster’s hands, that same radiance from its eyes soon replaced the blood.
        Shaking the ground tremendously was the animation of this creature, which shattered its earthly bonds, and its once timely pose, was now realized. It had been in a state of slumber in an age that has been barely been recorded or passed down. As it broke free, the pillars burst into spidery cracks, the stone around his plump form crumbles; he is free at last.
        Without any hesitation at all, the Golem quickly stretched to loosen the remaining grasp that his stone prison had on him, and he began to advance.
        With every sluggish step of the monster, the sheer weight of his being caused dust and ruble to sift down from above, and billow into the rays of light.
        “Away with you vile creature of the incarnate”, he stood frightened to the very fiber of his soul, shaking the dagger in his loosened hand. “I wish to summon my beloved and not a necromancer’s minion”.
        The monster’s lower jaw, which seemed to connect to his rolling chest, liquefied into putty, and it spoke.
        “I am a tool of Eternity. Existence of one I prolonged; demise to others for what it is traded” it said in broken word, as it inches closer.
        The man’s innate will to survive kicked in and he stepped backwards; slowly at first, but when the Golem came near, he was caught in a full sprint, leaving his fallen angel where she was. His hood flying back to his shoulders, for he was human, just as frail as everyone else it seemed, or so the monster would prove.
        As a sign of wit, and cunning logic, the ancient creature pounded his enormous fist into the ground, causing a tremor to shatter the ground into pieces. The man fell, helpless into the path of this giant!
        This moment was inevitable the man thought, ever since he seen the blood stream upwards towards the Golem. He, however, did not expect as the Golem stood over him, to swat at him with such a great force. Through the rumblings of fragile palace, was the snapping of the man’s bones, underneath the weight of the palm.
        The monster would go in for the final blow. Effortlessly, it grasped his entire body, and raised the man in the air; blood and gravel squirted from the monster’s fist.
        The man gives a shrill cry that echoes out from the palace, and into the rolling country side, from beyond the walls. His last sights are that of the birds, once perched atop of the structure, flying away into the sun above. With that, an aura seemed to surround him as the creature’s magic took hold. His essence was being drained, traded for the life of the girl, lying lifeless on the altar.
         He was dropped from the height of the ceiling, so coldly by the Golem. Limp, and eyes wide in terror, the man was gone; left to bleed and rot in this once sacred land, protected by a hermetic entrapment of sorts.
        However, end has always been a means of a new beginning! The twitching of the girl’s hand would confirm this; then a gasp, followed by the struggling with the heaviness of her eyes.
For this is the girl’s curse. She was bonded to a creature now, of whom appeared to be indestructible, and morally callous. Her lover would be the first of many, and from their life source, would come immortality. Irony would scar this woman’s life…forever!

Author's Note

I like the idea behind this chapter because the theme of this entire story is that she is trapped inside of her self. The fact that her lover was killed coldly just for her to live immortally is enough to make her hollow, and feel dead. I'm very satisfied with what I wrote.