alistairmather

because i really have nothing else to do and the fifth chapter is coming along very well, albeit brokenly thanks to a strange recent schedule, i present to you, my faithful readers, the second installment in our stunning drama of an age gone, or perhaps of an age that never was meant to be. welcome new and old to the second act in The Adventures of Hunter Cartwright, in which our narrator learns a little of madness and we see the shape of things to come.

(for those who are immediately enthralled by my deft hand, or who just need to know how such a stupendous amount of verbal filth came to be, the previous chapter can be located in past entries. enjoy in either case.)

Two

Falling. Flailing. Spinning. Sudden sharp pain. Light blossoms behind my eyes, flowering and blooming into strange, non-Euclidean shapes and patterns. Bouncing. Falling again. More pain. More light. A swift, jarring stop. A final, searing stab of pain as something lands on me. Air rushes from my lungs like an explosion. Blackness encroaching from the corners of my vision. Lungs screaming for breath. An eternity without oxygen. The darkness grows closer. A short, clipped inhalation.
And I have to fight to keep from retching. My mouth and nose are flooded with the scent and taste of corruption. The smell of meat left too long outside the ice house. Of rot, and filth, and the worst charnel house excesses. The smell of death.
I gasp, gagging, and try to escape the cloying scent of decay. I flail my arms wildly, trying to push the weight off my chest that prevents me from getting away, from breathing fresh life into tortured lungs.
At first my swinging arms come only in contact with the empty night air. Then there is a ringing sound as my cuff links, small silver studs given to me by my mother at the last Christmas tide, strike a slick, cool surface. My fingers scrabble blindly over this glassy surface, till one of them slides over a slight contour and into a soft wet opening. There is a sound like a large soap bubble bursting, and then something cold and viscous is running down my hand, further complicating my attempts to gain purchase.
I finally find the presence of mind to actually open my eyes and look at my assailant, an assailant who has thus far made no attempt to get off me or continue the assault. I took but a brief look before pulling my arms back against my chest and screwing my eyes tightly shut.
Painted red grin on a porcelain face. Two empty spaces for eyes, the right one leaking brackish corruption onto the gleaming white. Tattered finery, clothes you would wear to Sunday dinner. Or to a funeral. Soft, gray flesh starting to peel and rupture beneath holes in coat and shirt. Grayish brown muscle and grimy white bone and something that may be the silvery traces of fine metal wire showing where the flesh has peeled or burst.
I fight my nausea successfully for a moment, but then I am forced to take another ragged breath and the stench overwhelms me. I turn my head and heave the contents of my stomach onto the pavement. The smell of bile mingles with the heavy scent of rot and further sickens me. I begin to pray to Gods I have not taken seriously in years, while in the night around me a high-pitched wailing has begun. Like an injured animal caught in a trap. It is not until necessity forces me to take a shallow breath and the sound ceases that I realize I am the one wailing.
There is no strength left in me. I do not even try to throw off the horribly limp, though stiff jointed, thing atop me. I have resigned myself to an eternity spent beneath this monstrous profanity. My own personal hell now come to collect penance for my earthly sins.
And then the thing begins to move.
With a sharp, sudden jerk, the corpse sits up, like a marionette being yanked upon by a puppeteer. I open my eyes at the sudden shift in weight. Open them to a grinning glass face that is now crouched over mine. Open them to two hands, cold as the night air, closing around my throat. The dead man moves with the quick, jerking motions of a bird. Its speed is disturbing, but not nearly as disturbing as the unnatural motion of its movements. The angles it holds its arms at are... wrong. I find myself unable to explain exactly what is so unsettling about the way it moves. In spite of the alien horror of it though, I cant help but watch it at work, even when its work is the slow strangulation of me.
Its back arched at an odd angle, its arms held too far out, its fingers spaced wrong around my throat, it begins to steadily squeeze the soft flesh beneath my chin. My face flushes, filled with heat and a tense tightening of the skin. My fingers clutch at the dead things own, tearing off bits of rotted muscle and sinew, feeling thin metal cut into my own flesh, but having no appreciable effect on the sharp bones that continue to dig into my throat. I stare in sick fascination at the porcelain face, the glassy dead left eye, the slow oozing filth of the right eye, the garish crimson clown grin.
Im not even gasping anymore. My fingers dance on pins and needles, numbing my grip and sapping my strength. My vision is going black again, peaceful darkness creeping in from the edges of my vision. Nothing seems to bother me anymore, not even the vile stench still rolling off my killer. A zen state of acceptance and understanding as the last of my life slips away. Some sleepy part of me wonders if my life should be flashing before my eyes right now. I dont care.
Thunder crashes from nearby, and I watch in detached fascination as my deceased assailants head explodes in a wet mess of white shards, glittering circuits, and pulpy flesh.
Somewhere, far away, someone draws a breath, deep and noxious. Somewhere, someone is lying prone on a cobbled walk, face cut by glinting shards of porcelain, fresh warm blood mingling with the cold congealed viscera of a long dead thing. Somewhere, at the very edge of hearing, someone is screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming.
Someone moves, throwing a body with only half a head off of himself. Someone compulsively and obsessively begins to scrape at his clothes and his face, desperately trying to rid himself of a filth that will not come off. Someone is sobbing like a baby, rapid dramatic stutters of sound and hiccoughed breaths that have fallen into their own tortured rhythm.
And then there is a loud click. Someone suddenly realizes that he is me, crouched on his knees in a wet street, bawling like a child. I stifle my cries, choking on my own vocalizations and look up.
Directly into the barrel of the largest gun I have ever seen.