He might've killed him, maybe not. Randy slowly backed away from the motionless body, horrified. He looked around, lifted the lamppost away from the man, looking at the bruised face, the motionless twitching hands… Like some strange insect…
Randy expected people to run out. He saw the police holding him down, ready to kill him, murder him in cold blood.
But there was nobody. Nobody in the empty blood-filled streets…Doing whatever they were doing. He had a chance, he was alive. He could run now, or stay with the body in the dark.
"He deserved it!", Randy whispered to himself, "He almost killed me himself! He was going to!... Oh god…"
He ran away into the night, wobbling, drunk on guilt, and deathly pale.
"I swear…", Randy muttered to himself, looking behind him, watching the strangeness, the limpness, in that crumpled body.
"Oh god...", the words echoed through the neighborhood. Taxi drivers watched him run. A man in his office who'd rested his head on the keyboard woke to the sound of sprinting.
"Oh god… Oh god… Oh god!..."
Randy woke up dizzy… Dreamt of a great blood-drenched stick… And nearly sickened himself by laughing… Laughing about the damn world! The damn stick, the damn blood everywhere! The world laughed at him… Police rushing through boards, through great sheets of iron shooting all dead… Everyone!
He shuffled, and lay back in his sleeping bag, in the grey tent, fog rushing through the air and snow softly dripping through, like cold, inhuman tears. Near him, the parts of a broken bike lay littered across the grass, rust pouring through, enveloping the metal…
"Randy… We need more money…", George approached him from the outside, staring at him. Watching him with strange, mournful eyes. "We're all out of food, water… Everything… We need much… Much, much more… "
"I can't", He stared at the wreckage ahead. Watched the water glitter in the sunlight… The raindrops slowly scuttle down the drain.
"What do you mean you can't?", George approached him further, "Get some! We're going to need some more! Siphon some from the ATMs, siphon some from the banks, the gas stations! Get some!"
"No… No… I can't… I can't…", Randy paused in silence, thinking to himself… Then straightened himself up. "I think we should turn ourselves in."
"But what… what about the police… What about…"
…
Silence. George stared at him for a while. A strange dullness… A strange looseness… Tired of life, bored of himself… Bored of his strange existence… before he walked away into the fog… Treading into the great puddles… The small forest of leaves and dead bugs… Into a strange world filled with blue people…
The Forkman looked up into the strange void of grey, where the strange people danced and played their little flutes…From the mountaintop of trees and when and where and place of time and things… Where was whence? When once from thence of trucks went hence… Time like a passing bulb of light, strangely twisted… So stupidly degrading… Degradation by humanity, by the dust, the wind, by nature's snow and sun, where words were warped by minds and power… The towers… The great grey towers of fire and snow, like hanging trees, rubbed with rope and rope till flames spread. Spread and dance and dance and once went hence and whence and thence…
The Forkman woke from his strange dream…On the nighttime streets, wet rain fell from the steeples and roofs of thousands of apartments stacked above and above to form a falling tower.
The grinding great machines fetishizing their return, as smoke and smog formed strange shapes in his mind, and he saw the schools, the stupid government… The stupid world… The stupid society…It was all a great degrading lie… Built upon centuries of ignorance and stupidity…
He saw the pale faces, the strange spirit of the world, lying like a deadened fresh brain, oozing with a secret of the world..…
Like the fleshy discoveries of anew… Past providence falling, smugness watching the disappointed lumps of rawness… Of stupidity in the flesh and mind… Like twirls of fresh soup… God! It was a horrible mess… The raw brain… The pinkness throbbing in pulsating swirls, twirls… Drinking the horrible blood of his mind, clotting his thought, until he wobbled in the dark, despised the world… Hated the stupidity of it all… Hated the stupidity of the world….
God, he wanted to eat them… He wanted to devour their stupid thirsty necks, gobble up their stupid minds, eat their skull and flesh and mind… Drink from their belabored backs…. Tear skin from foe and foe from the skin until all was strange and combined… A man and a seagull together, with blood binding brain together… Strontium cleansed their deadened minds and souls…. The metal from forks grinding together, until stress cleansed him, gave him purpose, sent him from steed and drank his wounds, and gave him purpose. Music throbbing in his ears, he saw a man walk past, a familiar face… A wonderfully familiar face, and he grabbed the tines of his fresh fork…
He followed the man walking, watching him with a strange bloodlust.
Then attacked…
Drank the knowledge from the blade, sharply piercing the skin, he saw it all…. The great rush of psychopomp-ic energy… Like great rushings, words… Slurs… Until all was a slog…. A slog of human flesh and fresh blood.
There was a great sky of purple blood, like rains of strange teeth, and great gnashing dead things wrapped his head in crow's feet and a dull concrete sound rang across his mind… As he remembered hands wrapping around his head, a fight between blood and fist, and bone splattering… Snapping…And it was all gone… That enormous bearded figure… Gone onto the place of wheels, tossed into a bloody road, full of dead, strange things…
The cattle were drinking from the lake. It was time to hunt the dreadful little things that trotted from their little homes to stomp on the mud, make a great stink forth, crush the deadened dirt, and deafen his eyes until he was gone from his home. Until the men that made small sheets of stupid things, scritched-scratched and stitched out his arms, until there was nothing in them… Just a great metal fork, stuck into the crevasses of his back, until great holes. Great craters, full of unhealed scars filled with his godly ichor. Like a great canvas of blood and worship…
Full of strange hooks that bled and pierced the holy eyes of god… And a man screamed as a fist punched through his heart. And he laughed out of a strange cave, in the forests, in the trees, where a lake built its home, and he mumbled and muttered strange words to himself… Strange, pretty words. So much religion. So much chagrin. So much drama and death dancing like a wraith.
A ghost of some strange thing. And a blood-covered body sang crickets and flies from the deepest ribs.
He ate the holy flesh of God and man and sniffed the stink of cattle and death. Of rubber wheels and manly beers, and years of driving, all of that sickened his taste… His fresh fork… Until he poked the blood and left it on the road as a godly tribute...
Randy rode his bike on the street. Into the vastness of his mind, his thoughts… Into the beautiful place that was the streets, where he remembered faintly about the dirt, the grime, the city with the men and their guns… Eradicating the homeless population… The mayor screaming about the grime and muck… And the blood running down the streets, and the echoes of machine-gun fire continuing forever…
He was alive… Free to cycle around the neighborhood, watch the world as it was… Wake up, eat, sleep, watch television… Live a beautiful life. Of joy…. Of freedom…
There were gasps, horrors, phones recording, calling the police… All the people watching in strange fascination… Watching the body…
All staring at the mangled body of somebody… The man was dead… His head ripped from his own body… His legs were mush, stomped by some strange creature… His fingers had been smashed and broken… Crushed on the highway, where a line of cars behind the crowd was empty, all silent…
He stared at the strange man, looking strangely like George… With his familiar beard… His strange, distant, stare… But he did not remember… It was only a brief, blur… A memory lost to time… An angry, distant memory that he had preferred to forget…
An ambulance stood, echoing its siren…
The police, with their police cars, their guns had put great swathes of warning tape. Prodding at the dead man, putting a giant white curtain over his head, loading him onto a small cart. A stern woman told people to back away. To get away from the dead body, to tell them how disgusting they were, how they were doing nothing, only staring at a dead body… Staring at the horrible disgusting lines in the flesh, the scrapes in the back of the head, the feet, fingers, all being disemboweled so easily… The horrible reality…. Like a pack of wolves had eaten away at a dead man's body, worms and maggots writhing through the corpse… The smoke weaning thinly in the air, the sun rushing through the empty clouds…
Someone had killed George… They had murdered him in cold blood, as he walking, slowly running away from the city… Leaving a place filled with murder, muck, death… A horrible emptiness… A great rot, filled with the smell of crickets, flies, a void, an emptiness… A deed, a horrible, horrible deed…
And a fork…
The fork carved of wood, covered in the blood of George, covered with a bland sickness. Stuck into the dirt like a grave marker. And then a trail of blood leading into the mountains, leading into a deep, strange cave. The stirring images of blood, covering the concrete, covering the world of the police. Covering every injustice. Every man. Every world.
Hiding deep in the mountains. Hiding in the emptiness of the forests. With a trail of insanity, with a keen sharpness in its eyes. He remembered the man. The man ran after him, and he had ridden away into the night.
The bike crashed into concrete, the entirety of a concrete block thrown upon the unconscious man, holding a single fork in his hand, as he stayed up all night, wondering if the man was alive, if the man had a family, if the man lived by himself, alone, hated himself for what he was.
Strange…
Horrible…
…
He followed the tracks He remembered the man. The man who was once dead. Now alive again. Insane, strange, chaotic. Eating away at the flesh of George, devouring the skin, the soft bones, the meat. Feasting like some maniac, murdering and murdering.
The mountain twisted and writhed, while a path grew forth from the trees, carved by rough hands, carved by the Forkman. As the trail grew wider, encompassing wide swathes of the forest, until only carved dirt remained, in the crust of the earth.
Footsteps behind him…
He turned around and saw a man watching him, staring. A man shaved bald, red staining his nose and his face, and forks strung and stuck into his back, blood dripping down his spine.
George was dead. Rotting in the ground, his guts strung across the ground, murdered…
"I'm thinking… I'm thinking…", his eyes staring at the Forkman, watching him walking forward.
He lifted an oak and its tangled roots, thought and thought to make it fly above and run into the sky.
"Ah!"
The tree collapsed onto the Forkman, but out of the smoke, the blowing wind, out came a dark figure, still alive.
He heard the words of the Forkman echo.
"The power came to me in the night, the great transcendental power, the beautiful power. Spinning, running from the beautiful tines of a fork, the beautiful rays of power flooding over me…"
The Forkman walked closer and closer, watched him, nearing closer to him, holding two bloody forks.
"I expected you, from the writhing, wormy earth, after seeing through your eyes, I saw, and I remembered. I became from strange cattle to a beautiful god, I see all the wrinkles, the infinite strings weaving themselves to form a web. And I saw your pitiful life, and I built a new one. One with blood, with such a wonderful, rich taste…"
"God…", he stared at the Forkman, his face growing grimmer. "Oh god… Murdered him, tore him in half. You devoured him… You ate George… "
He stared at the ground, sickened, standing there….
"God… Oh god…"
He held his hands in his head again, whispered "I'm thinking… I'm thinking…", again and again to himself as he pushed the Forkman away, with great winds shrieking past. Yet only blasting Forkman into the trunk of the tree, until it was split in half, and the Forkman revealed himself from the dust.
Forkman ran toward him, screaming outwards, as Randy yelled out the words again, and brought his powers from fruition, bringing forth a blast of force from himself into the world. But a hand reached his ear and ripped it from his skin until blood spat out from the wound.
He screamed. The Forkman stared, watching the blood spurt forth from the wound.
"Lovely, lovely", smiled from a voice that rumbled, echoed, deep and swaying. Randy sprinted forth, toward him, almost gliding off the ground.
Randy continued spitting out the strange words, "I'm thinking… I'm thinking…", repeating them, trying to focus in his mind, think about the horrible violence, the blood running through the streets, as ran toward Forkman, as he jumped up and launched himself into the air.
Seeing the beautiful sky, the wonderful forest expanding, and below watching for the Forkman. Seeing a small figure run up the collapsed tree, sprinting faster and faster, tearing into the wood, the trunk, until the Forkman was jumping up to reach him.
Randy launched another blast of power straight into the Forkman's chest until the impact was heard.
The forks split away from the Forkman's hands and back. All shattered, broken, gone, and gone. The Forkman's eyes, red with madness, blood screaming, laughing from a strangely human world, a personality. Fear scrawled, scribbled, scratched upon his face…
Forkman fell from the sky, twirling through the air, and a sickening shatter of the bones and blood reverberated through the forest. Until he lay dead on the ground, with the forks sticking through his chest.
The Forkman was dead.
Randy stared at the body and watched the sun rescind from the sky, and the blue fade away until only the moon shone through the night.
Only emptiness now…