Cry pt 2

This is the second part of the story Cry, the first part can be found in the achives. This story I wrote during May 2009 and is currently under doing the rounds through a couple of magazines trying to find a home.. It was originally called Servant to the Star and then I Didn't Cry.

II

Lets skip ahead a bit to when I went to high school, it wasn't until then that they returned to ask for me to fulfil my pact to the star.

It was during high summer, I was just getting to be comfortable around some new friends I had made earlier that year. We hung around at one of their houses, smoking pot, listening to alternative rock from the 90’s. We were total 90’s junkies and japanophiles as well I remember. You know anime, manga, nine inches, manson, bret easton ellis and that archaist guy chuck whatshisface.

It was hanging around these new friends of mine that I got introduced to Dylan Acker. A faired haired wanna be nihilist poet with a snarky self loathing attitude, what can I say he hooked me instantly.

And somewhere deep inside I must have heard those bastard ghouls laughing away.

I was sitting out on the patio of his house listening to him read out some of his (what I now realize god awful) poems.

He was in a daze of his own creativity, drunk on his own half baked meaningful words. As I watched him I heard a voice in my head:

This little treat of yours Julian, he's the one. Do it or your birther rots in hell if your lucky, you as well if your not.

Dylan? Why?

No answer, not even laughter. As soon as I heard the voice I knew what I had to do they had told me all those years ago in the cemetery, occasionally they had talked to me over the years even visited me once or twice in my room at night. They had shown me in my dreams what must be done, the preparations necessary for them to bypass the barrier of the spirit.

‘Hey want a drink Dylan?’

My light haired angel awoke from his self obsessed state and with a wicked grin answered my question.

‘My mums got some bourbon stashed behind the breadbin, mix it with the coke in the fridge or maybe the freezer I forget.’

I walk inside the house, my bare feet feeling numb on the cool wooden panels of the dinning room. Once inside the kitchen I easily find the bourbon and the coke (in the freezer). From the shadowy entrance to the bathroom I see a figure gesturing to me faintly. Then a decaying hand juts from the darkness and places a bottle of unidentifiable liquid on the floor. What was it? I don't remember and it doesn't really matter does it? I knew what it would do, what it was to be used for and I used it.

The next couple of minutes are a bit of a blur in my memory, me walking back outside with the drinks in hand, giving Dylan his, watching him show off by downing as much as he can as quickly as he can, now he's collapsed in the corner of the dinning room, I’m rolling him back outside onto the patio, rummaging through his bedroom for some cheap paints, painting a glyph on his head, pushing him off the patio into the garden below.

Then I’m staring up at the demon star above me trying desperately not to hear the sounds of the ghouls lips smacking together, struggling not to look down and catch a glimpse of someone being devoured.

No one ever found his body, the ghouls made sure of that.

No one ever suspected me, I suppose they must have had a hand in that too.

Is a little bit of explanation needed?

The pact was simple in its barbarity and cruelty.

These ghouls of the night couldn’t feed on the conscious living and hated feeding on the already decayed bodies of the dead. They could however feed upon people who are unconscious and have had what the ghouls call their ‘soul barriers’ disabled. This doesn’t take much, another human simply has to paint a symbol of their head while they are unconscious.

They would pick out the people they wanted I would get them unconscious and draw the symbol, they would devour the body and the evidence.

They left me again for awhile at the time I wasn’t too sure why they didn’t use me as much as possible.

At any rate it wasn’t until I had left high school and moved further into the city that they returned seeking to renew my pact again.

It all started (or restarted) with me deciding that it would be easier if I shaved before going to bed that night rather than the next morning before work. It was of course about two o’clock in the morning but that did little to stop me. I was living in a fairly dingy apartment, one bedroom, a living/dinning/kitchen rolled into one and a bathroom.

In the bathroom I found myself struggling, maybe it was the hour or the various substances still flowing through my blood, in the end I had a patchwork of cuts. I started to feel sick, the metallic tang of the shaving cream reminding me off the alcohol I had previously consumed. I remember telling myself not to faint, not to vomit and then a hand extend in aid from the mirror.

Yes another undead limb appearing before me, this time it flowed out of the mirror.

‘Now, now little one you must look your best. You’ve got a visitor coming soon, the star has seen her coming and she is ours.’

I nodded.

‘You don't understand yet but you will and you will do it. You always cared more for him than her at least that‘s what you said to all your friends right? Knock, knock Julian.’

A knock at my door of course and when I open the door-

‘Mother?’

III

‘On the run hey?’

One of the ghoul’s said this as he materialized out of the cheap motel’s television set. In the fading light coming through the window and the fake brightness from the lamp it appears less frightening more like a decaying corpse- pathetic really. Little more than a rotting meat puppet on invisible strings.

‘Of course I am! Because of you, the three of you. Where are the other two by the way?’

The ghoul’s head cracks as it rolls right around, disconnecting and then reconnecting to the spinal column before answering.

‘On important business you know, finding someone to replace you I think.’

‘Replace me?’

The ghoul eyes me, or it would if it had any.

‘I thought you would be pleased, usually this lasts longer sometimes until death. Your getting off early although not for good behaviour. Now you can live the rest of your life.’

‘In a prison cell!’ I remember screaming that at the creature and being disturbed that it didn’t really react.

‘Well, they might hang you instead? Do they still do that here?’

‘Why didn’t you get rid of her entire body? Huh? Was it you who told the police? Was it?’

The ghoul contemplated this and then appeared to shrug.

‘I did what you and the other two asked me to do! Even though it was insane, crazy-’

‘Why did you do it little one?’

I stared at the thing before me then for what seemed like decades.

‘You killed your first real love and the one from whom you sprung. All for an already dead father? Not even a father at that. It doesn’t really seem to make much sense to me and I’ve sat here since the dawn of time watching the random chaos rumbling towards the present.’

Dumbfounding I picked up the desk lamp and threw it at the ghoul. It exploded before it even touched it, silently showering pieces of plastic and metal everywhere.

‘See that was a reaction to something, it had purpose and although I generally adhere to the principles of no principles I would like to see what lays underneath your actions because I think they have purpose just purpose veiled.’

The ghoul seemed to be examining me and thinking about what it should say, how it should present whatever it would say to me.

‘I don’t understand what you mean you stupid corpse, I did that to those people although I didn’t really do much to them that was left up to you. But I did that stuff to them because it would save my stepfather whom I loved and most likely myself from having our souls and bodies devoured by your trio.’

The ghoul answered quickly.

‘No, that's not it.’

Silence for awhile and then the ghoul broke it.

‘What was your real blood father like? Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know, no one that's left of my family talk about it much. Once I found some photographs of him, he looked sad and I think foreign. Maybe that’s why they didn’t like him but really that's just guessing I don’t know.’

The ghoul nodded, then started to cough violently spraying what I presume to be some of my mothers blood onto the floor.

There was a knock on the door.

The ghoul disappeared suddenly and I walked over to see who is outside.

A motel maids with my rather disgusting looking dinner, a combination of slush and slop.

She handed it too me and I kicked the door shut behind me.

The ghoul returned now that she is out of sight.

It grinned awkwardly at me.

I took a slip of the drink that came with my dinner and then turned my attention to our discussion from before.

‘So why do you think I did it huh?’

‘I don’t think that really matters much anymore actually.’

I tried to ask why but it is then that I collapsed to the floor.

My veins pulsed, my body and my mind slipped from one another.

On the floor during the last seconds of my life I saw the other two ghouls walk into the room and with them the maid. She has a paint brush in her hand and trembles as she approaches me. I try to tell her to stop, try to tell her that its a horrible thing to take my life but even if I could have said that, should I have?

IV

I don’t really know why I’m telling you this, I doubt you care with those hungry eyes of yours, anyway the past doesn’t really matter that much down here does it.

But I will tell you this before you devour me and then give birth to me and then devour me again.

I don’t think I really ever liked my stepfather that much, I didn’t feel anything when he died and that I think is why I didn’t cry.