In this caliginous sprawl, where crumbling spires jut like shards of fractured desire, I find solace in the debauched symphony of ruin. Neon hieroglyphs scrawl their bitter testament across the velvet blackness, a funereal litany that echoes the cadence of my own splintered heart. The asphalt's slick, oil-slick skin seems to whisper secrets of a shattered psyche, as if the city itself had become a madwoman's labyrinth, each twisting alley a serrated edge slash through the fabric of reason. In this soggy, gin-soaked purgatory, I am the Hierophant of decay, chronicling the anatomy of despair in this, my diseased Empire of Dust.
These sulfurous courtesans, with their painted smiles and syphilitic hearts, they finger the raw edges of my rage, taunting me with every coquettish glance, every whispered lie. The alleys, a fetid womb, incubate my darkest impulses, nurturing the malignant embryo of my wrath.
The whispered secrets of the woodland carnival, where syrupy sunsets dripped like honeyed venom, and the trees, they whispered sweet nothings of the abysm. The fox, a trickster of twilight, beckoned me to join the mad waltz, where petals of poisonous flowers swayed to the rhythm of wolves' wild laughter. As I sipped the blood-red elixir from the golden cup, the sugar valleys dissolved into a lake of liquid moonlight, reflecting the silhouette of the fox, now a tattoo on my skin, a mark of the initiated, the chosen, the damned. "Here, is where the madness begins, and the trees bleed candy"
The voice's aphorisms of anatomy and annihilation unfurl within me like a Macedonian widow's black silk-banner of bereavement, as I swoon into the Carpathian void, where my cognitive cartography dissolves like an Afghan hashish-peddler's promises.
"Commence at the neck,"
he whispers, a fellated nous,
"where Jugular Johannes kisses carotid cheeks, and the stigmatic kiss of the knife conjures the hieroglyphs of the ancients, an Evolian rush of odalisque-temples unsealed by splinter-tongues of ivory"
My geomorphology of desire is thus vivisected, rebuilt, and gloriously incongruous, reconstructing the gyroscopic gimlet- failed obstetrics of saurian observation, as reason stromatizes...
I am ensnared in the cadaverous grip of a sepulchral cell, my visage a mortified cipher, my gaze plummeting into the abyssal void. As I trill a haunting air, the tattered remnants of my past begin to exhume themselves, like bloated corpses bursting forth from a charnel house. My screams, a choreographed ballet of the damned, ricochet off the frozen stone walls, a maddening dirge for the final disintegration of my tenuous hold on reality. My mind, a mausoleum of shattered mirrors, is consumed by a maelstrom of apocalyptic visions and unholy terrors, as I succumb to the abyssal hunger that devours my sanity, leaving naught but a gutted, vacant husk, a ghastly parody of my former self.
Even now, I could recall the intoxicating ecstasy that consumed me as the blade bit and tore. A perverse mix of terror and dominance, an unholy sacrament enacted to satisfy depravities that should have died in their infancy. My soul had birthed a monster that had gleefully slaughtered loved ones and disappeared into the chaotic night.
In the script of my cerebrum, where luminous oneirism had long since soured into a noxious bouquet of desperation, a funereal hush enveloped me, a mournful susurration that rustled the tattered habiliments of my sanity. Amidst this cumbrous, velvety expanse, I listlessly meandered, a soporific, ectoplasmic revenant, forlorn and forsaken, as a syzygial moon cast its crepuscular glow upon the cadaverous landscape. It was here, amidst the fetid, mephitic ruin of my psyche, that I encountered the specter of my mater, her countenance a ghastly, papillary grimace, her eyes two glittering, obsidian ouroboroi that devoured the very marrow of my existence.
Emerging from the sulfurous miasma of my guilt-ridden psyche, my father, his imposing figure sliced through the tenebrous air with lithe ease. His wounds, a gruesome painting of suppurating flesh and exposed bone, pulsed with an insect vitality, as if the very dirt itself had taken umbrage with my existence. His voice, a low, throbbing growl, caressed my eardrums and startled me, each syllable dripping with a honey-like menace that left my skin slick with a cold, lascivious sweat.
"You!"
he hissed, his tone a serpentine message of wrath,
"You wretched child, you killed us, your own fucking family"
My mother's specter lunged, her hands seizing my throat in a stranglehold of accusing wrath.
"I am the one you slaughtered, the face of your dark crime given a mockery of life! I come to drag you down where neither forgiveness nor escape may follow!"
With a shriek louder than any mortal throat should utter, I jolted awake amidst streaming tears and jagged sobs tearing free. Darkness had taken root, deeper than any depth of nightmare, and its foul fruits were only beginning to show.
Booted footfalls neared my cell. A key's grinding heralded the opening of the cage, an invitation to fresh agonies perhaps beyond any mortal psyche's endurance. I opened gummy lids, vision swimming as rough hands seized my limp form. Struggling took on a detached quality, the body a disjointed thing acting of its own diminished accord.
As they hauled me down treacherous halls, scrabbled for purchase, raking an orderly's cheek with broken nails. His howl morphed into a gurgle as I found and crushed his throat with all my strength. A sickening crunch, and he collapsed, eyes bulging helplessly in crimson-flecked agony, I kept squeezing hoping to make them burst.
My triumph was short-lived. White-hot agony lanced my skull as a meaty fist impacted my temple. The dingy halls spun crazily before going out all at once, consciousness shearing away on the cusp of rebellion's final act of defiance against these soulless captors. Darkness dragged me down, the sounds of chaos fading into the soft hush of nothingness eternal.
As I careened through the fetid underbelly of my own twisted desires, I chanced upon a femme fatale whose gaze was a ghastly, cadaverous bloom, petal-soft and poisonous. Her presence was a Gilles de Rais-inspired waltz of death and debauchery, a Lacanian "mirror stage" of primal, lust-fueled selfies, wherein I became both predator and prey, hunter and hunted, aggressor and victim. And yet, as I hurtled through the surreal, Dalí-esque landscape of my own fractured psyche, I found myself increasingly enthralled by the morbidity, the macabre majesty of it all, like a shipwrecked sailor thrall to the siren's deadly, hypnotic song. The alpha male within me, a rabid, Cronenbergian creature, slavered and slobbered, as I stumbled through the necropolis of my own making, leaving a trail of shattered, papyrus-like promises, like so many macabre, Aaron Komanski-esque "white goods" in my wake. It was as if I had become a vessel, a deranged, revelatory mockery of the Promethean ideal, wherein the seal of my own damnation was the very spark that set my existential inferno ablaze.
But she was an instant glass shard of a nympho song, shattering my existential viscosity, making me feel like a temporarily perturbed, sentient sleeper, stripped of my Kafkesque anomie, if only for a fleeting, flickering instant. And the ring I presented to her, that abyssal, demented token of our narcotized affection, sealed our pact of mutual, solipsistic damnation, a gustatory, fever-dreamed marriage of convenience, forged in the fiery crucible of our shared, pathological recklessness. We razed a trail of ultraviolent, Dadaist disdain through the city's sclerotic, Sovietesque infrastructure, our psychotic, fugue-state rampage of amphetaminic, Juvenalian invective leaving in its wake a fetid, Hieronymous Bosch-esque tapestry of mangled, porcine flesh, twitching, synaptically-shocked rigor mortis, and ophthalmically-scorched, retinal-burnt detachment. She was up by four, a Raichman-esque, dissociative quotient of pleasure-pain braces us for impact, a Shawshank-esque redemption through trigonometric, gallows humor, reassurance that in this fragile, Thelma & Louise-esque sojourn of hierarchical, Stockholm-syndrome echt-love, our lips would be forever seared, perpetually plunge-baptized in the ecstasy of decadent, thanatotic endorphin release.
I fucking loved her is what I am saying.
The evening we converged, she was warbling a haunting, funeral dirge of a melody, her voice an abyssal, velvet-wrapped whisper that shrouded the dimly lit bar in a sulfurous, sepulchral haze. Her arms, a florid, tattooed topography of ink and flesh, sprawled like a canvas of Gothic, elegiac art, from wrists to neck, an ornate, hieroglyphic cartography of her turbulent, Byronic soul. Her raven tresses cascaded like a waterfall of night itself, framing a face that was a macabre, alabaster mask of exquisite, sylph-like beauty. And yet, it was her eyes that ensnared me, two glittering, gemstone voids that pulsed with a feral, predatory intelligence, as if they held the secrets of the underworld within their dark, lupine depths. She finished her song, and I, a latter-day, existential vampire, had been stalking my prey, intent on unleashing a nihilistic, blood rage upon the world, when she swooped in, a valkyrie of carnage, and commandeered my kill, leaving me awestruck and bewildered in her wake. And then, I chanced upon her, axe raised, poised to strike, a Medusa-like figure of apocalyptic, feminine fury, as she shattered the skull of our shared, hapless victim, his face reduced to a pulpy, visceral smear on the floor. She rotated, her eyes locking onto mine, a smirk dancing on her lips, a contemptuous, sadistic spark that only served to inflame my already-rabid desire,
"What the fuck are you staring at?"
A light chuckle left my lips, my Cheshire grin creeping,
"Someone who owes me dinner, that was my mark"
Her head tilted,
"Piss off, should have got him then"
I lit a cigarette, the flame casting a sepulchral glow on my face, as I blew out long, languid plumes of smoke, a studied, cinematic gesture meant to showcase my insouciant, louche demeanor. But my companion, that ebony-haired, axe-wielding fury, grew increasingly restless, her patience fraying like a thread of silk unraveling from a rotten, gothic tapestry. She rose from her seat, her eyes blazing with a combustible, fatalistic intensity, as she slammed the axe onto the floor,
"You suck at trying to be scary"
Her countenance, a map of creased, furrowed skin, underwent a metamorphosis, transforming into a visage that was at once familiar, yet disconcertingly alien, a face that triggered an primal, atavistic response, a Pavlovian reflex that whispered, "Here we go, trouble's coming." And indeed, trouble did come, in the form of a hurtling, humanoid projectile, my companion, now a frenzied, flailing dervish, advancing towards me with all the coordination of a sedated, drunken rhino. Her attack, a wild, overhead swing, was telegraphed with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, an easy-to-read, grimace-distorted warning that allowed me to sidestep her clumsy assault with all the nonchalance of a veteran escape artist. And yet, in her enthusiasm, she overcompensated, embedding the axe in the wall with a resounding, sonic boom, a clumsy, oafish gesture that left her momentarily stunned, her chest heaving, like a spent, panting beast.
As she tried to dislodge it I got a bit too close, was feeling cocky,
"Would you like some help with-"
elbow right to my bloody nose, eyes do their thing making my vision blurry, but again broad is not very smart, she continues trying to dislodge the axe, thankfully.
"What the fuck, just let your assailants regain composure, how the fuck are you still alive?"
Her head tilted and for the first time it crossed my mind, this bitch is a killer, but not for money, the axe comes out of the wall and she starts a full berzerker flurry display of wanton abandon that clips me numerous times, gashes that trickle but not pour, then she does an uppercut swing, chin on my right side to top fucking left forehead, a scar,
"You just fucked up!"
Her laughter, a harsh, guttural cackle, rent the air, a jarring, discordant note that shattered the tense, anticipatory silence. Her next swing, a wild, flailing arc, was met with a fluid, economical counter, as I slid towards her, a knee-deep, athletic movement, grasping a blade from my boot, its steel glinting with a deadly, ephemeral light. With a trio of swift, surgical slices, I disarmed her, the axe clattering to the ground, as her eyes widened in shock, her face a parchment of pain and outrage. Undeterred, she launched a fist, a furious, primal swing, met by another trio of precise, calibrated slices, this time with a palm strike, the impact dislocating her shoulder with a sickening, crunching sound. A leg sweep, a swift, economical motion, sent her tumbling to the ground, supine, her throat bared, vulnerable, as I pinned her, the blade pressed against her jugular, its edge a razor's whisper from her pulsing, vulnerable flesh. And still, the bitch laughed, a maddening, hyena-like cackle, a sound that rankled, a shrill, ear-piercing shriek that goaded me, taunted me, prodded me to unleash a maelstrom of violence, a whirlwind of steel and bloodlust.
"Do it!"
"How much were you getting paid for that kill?"
Just as I suspected, her brows furrowed and I laughed letting her up.
"Just a serial killer?"
"I am the 'Hatchet of Nightmares"
My laughs grow louder, her voice takes an almost heartbroken edge,
"I've killed 30 people..I.."
even louder, cackling like a clown,
"Got your face didn't I, that won't just go away"
"Hahaha... ha .. ha... Sweetheart, I could have just said let me tag the head we would split the money, your notorious so, I am laughing because we fought for no fucking reason, you wouldn't have said no, my face is my own bloody ignorance inn't it?..."
"You kill for money?"
The way she asked was almost like she was trying to demoralize which furrowed my brows.
"Better than killing for nothing, a scrapbook newspaper letter cut out of an invitation to get caught"
her shoulders dropped,
"I am sure you think what you are doing is noble, obviously you got someone worth killing, but the way you're doing it, they see you, not them"
"I just want the city back to how it was before"
her voice cracked, actually put welts in my eyes.
"Me too"
My eyes open, back to reality as the table lifts me for my lethal injection, guess this is it. She sold me out down the road, married some guy or something, and left the city, I am ready to fucking die anyways.
"Any final words Miss. Sophia Valley?"
"You're all going to fucking burn in hell... for your complacency, for flip-flopping on the hero you once thought I was, while you sat back and did nothing!"
I bellowed, my words a furious, venomous indictment, as the moments ticked by like grains of sand in an hourglass, slowing time's passage.
And then, that hollow, ritualistic pause, a fatalistic, elegiac moment of suspended animation, before the inevitable sentence was pronounced:
"This is out of my hands, you..."
The sentence trailed off, a dying ember of bureaucratic regret, before I cut him off, my voice a whip-crack of impatience:
"I said do it!!"
The words still hung in the air, a noxious, lethal fog, when the hapless functionary intoned his final, pathetic benediction:
"You were a hero, in your way... may God have mercy on your soul, because you didn't show an ounce of mercy on those..."
But it was too late, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed, and the machinery of fate set in motion. Explosions shook the very foundations of the building, the power shutting off like a fatal, cardiac arrest, the table that had held me prisoner relinquishing its grip, the doors swinging open like the very gates of perdition. And in that instant, I locked eyes with the guard, our gazes meeting in a fleeting, mutual understanding, a brief, unspoken acknowledgement of the apocalypse that was about to unfold. I sprinted out the door, into a maelstrom of chaos, greeted by three others, their faces indistinct, their intentions unknown, but their presence a harbinger of the inferno that was to come...I pop my neck, and as the door closes on the one who let me pass, he curls up into a ball, as he hears me rip his friends apart.
Looks like God had other plans for me, merciful indeed, because he was right, someone had to be, wasn't going to be me.